Thoughts on Bethesda

[Twinkle]

Bethesda should drop this moronic LARP ES bullshit and make another Terminator game.

 

[Kraszu]

Gothic 3 looks the best, and even on released by Bethesda screen Skyrim looks like shit in comparison.

 

[Zeus]

I can even somewhat understand Bethesdas reasoning behind ditching attributes, as they anyway didn't have any meaningful influence (beyond "intelligence raises mana") in their recent games.

Did stat checks ever factor much into Bethesda games?

I don't remember any added dialog options from having a high intelligence score in Arena. I don't recall much of that going on in Morrowind, either. TES skills always seemed pretty closely tied to combat and nothing more--INT granting more MP which means more FIREBALLZ, that sort of thing.

 

[King Crispy]

Not directly in dialog that I can remember, no, because DF and MW-era TES has traditionally relied on the wiki-style dialog tree, allowing the player to make the best choice directly. I personally always appreciated its contrasting style with Fallout's, etc. It was a little annoying in terms of having the whole wikitree on the screen during a conversation, but I think it worked.

But don't forget about other stats like Mercantile and Medical. Non-combat skills were certainly present.

Edit: This was an image of a Daggerfall character sheet, before the iced frog ate it

They were there! There are long distant now, but they were there!

Edit: Come to think of it, could this be where Todd's line of thinking of "let the player control absolutely everything" including not even having any annoying text on the screen originated? From the ditching of the wiki-style dialog tree to the "streamlined" one-liners derp way of interacting? It seemed like it kind of started with that, because that's the first thing that I can recall noticing not only in the leadup from MW to Oblivion, but certainly once I started playing it.

I guess it was a systemic thing -- Todd's been bent on his vision of "immersing" the player into his role of the character by cybernetically attaching as much of him as possible to the mouse and keyboard for a long time now, but if I had to guess where that all primarily stemmed from it'd be from the removal of the dialog trees. The transformation looks like it will be complete with V.

*sigh*

 

[jancobblepot]

Languages, Lockpicking and Medical needed INT... Also, I think there were some stat checks in Bloodmoon (I'm not sure).

 

[mediocrepoet]

I've never played Daggerfall, so my view may be skewed, but having played Arena, Morrowind and Oblivion; TES has never struck me as being an RPG in the sense of being story driven or featuring character development beyond the classic dungeon crawler type of level up, gear up and become godlike. The series has always revolved around combat and exploration and Oblivion did that fine, though it had some strange missteps that are well documented.

The gameplay has never used stats for much of anything beyond combat-related activities (crap like mercantile and speechcraft were incidental and though they could be developed, they weren't the focus of the game and couldn't be used to make your way through the entire game like in a few other titles) and by Oblivion the stats weren't doing much of anything other than governing your combat ability (e.g. how fast you run, how much health, magicka and stamina you have, how much weight you can carry, etc.). Although removing primary attributes looks bad from a classical standpoint and even while looking at pre-Oblivion TES titles, the main shift to this was done in Oblivion where your attributes did almost nothing and had that retarded use based multiplier level up system.

Basically, removing the attributes strikes me as a complete non-issue when compared to what they'd done in Oblivion. What I am curious about is whether they have perks that change your weight allowance (or if they're bothering with a weight allowance at all) and whether every character has identical movement speeds and jumping heights, etc. with what they have removed or if this is being displaced into the perk system. But since Oblivion, the attributes themselves strike me as left over baggage from when the game was trying to emulate AD&D which can be pretty clearly seen in the system for TES: Arena. There are issues to be worried about in terms of the decline and they're kind of related to the attribute system being removed but it's less about the attributes themselves and what remaining function they played. I'd be curious to see a list and description of the perks they're putting in place.

 

[King Crispy]

Good post.

All I know is that there's a lot of them. Thirty-something? More?

 

[Xi]

I've never played Daggerfall, so my view may be skewed, but having played Arena, Morrowind and Oblivion; TES has never struck me as being an RPG in the sense of being story driven or featuring character development beyond the classic dungeon crawler type of level up, gear up and become godlike. The series has always revolved around combat and exploration and Oblivion did that fine, though it had some strange missteps that are well documented.

Oblivion had shitty exploration. All the loot was scaled, including monsters, and there were no unique items to find. That's my greatest criticism of it actually. There was literally no reason to explore the world. None at all. Every location was pretty much identical in terms of what kind of loot could be found. So, unless you like the joke of a story and shitty quests, it was just a POS.

"Thanks for the +41 sword, I guess I can replace my +40 sword now."

 

[mediocrepoet]

Oblivion had shitty exploration. All the loot was scaled, including monsters, and there were no unique items to find. That's my greatest criticism of it actually. There was literally no reason to explore the world. None at all. Every location was pretty much identical in terms of what kind of loot could be found. So, unless you like the joke of a story and shitty quests, it was just a POS.

Well, on the one hand, that's what Oblivion mods are for. Beyond that, FO3 wasn't as bad in that area - it strikes me that they've learned a bit from Oblivion so I doubt Skyrim will be as bad. If you felt that way about FO3 too, well... alright.

 

[Xi]

Oblivion had shitty exploration. All the loot was scaled, including monsters, and there were no unique items to find. That's my greatest criticism of it actually. There was literally no reason to explore the world. None at all. Every location was pretty much identical in terms of what kind of loot could be found. So, unless you like the joke of a story and shitty quests, it was just a POS.

Well, on the one hand, that's what Oblivion mods are for. Beyond that, FO3 wasn't as bad in that area - it strikes me that they've learned a bit from Oblivion so I doubt Skyrim will be as bad. If you felt that way about FO3 too, well... alright.

Mods will never be an adequate excuse for a game that has shitty design. There are no amount of mods that can fix that piece of shit. To anyone who can perceive its structure, the game becomes a disgraceful, pitiful excuse to make money. It does so much wrong. Mainly, as an aRPG it's laughable. Imagine if you took out unique loot in say Diablo. Would the experience remain the same? Fuck no. People would not play it. Now, imagine if they scaled it. It would just get shittier and shittier. The designs they keep adding are terrible from a roleplay perspective.

Instead of adding more depth, they keep on simplifying. As a company, Bethesda just isn't trying to make an RPG anymore. They are trying to make a mainstream game that appeals to random joe who can only perceive the surface elements(graphics). /shrug

 

[DraQ]

Oblivion had shitty exploration. All the loot was scaled, including monsters, and there were no unique items to find. That's my greatest criticism of it actually. There was literally no reason to explore the world. None at all. Every location was pretty much identical in terms of what kind of loot could be found. So, unless you like the joke of a story and shitty quests, it was just a POS.

Well, on the one hand, that's what Oblivion mods are for.

Well, no. Mods aren't for covering devs' slip-ups and half-assed cop-outs.

 

[visions]

The FP view was never really suited for a classical style RPG as it depends too much on player skill at point.

Player skill? As in, look in the direction of the enemy and click to attack/cast spell? Yeah, hugely dependent on player skill.

There was never a character skill element in any meaningful fashion.

You attack an enemy with a weapon you have a 10 in skill. You attack the same enemy with a weapon of comparable quality you have a 100 in skill. Huge difference. How's that not a meaningful character skill element?

 

[mediocrepoet]

Mods will never be an adequate excuse for a game that has shitty design. There are no amount of mods that can fix that piece of shit. To anyone who can perceive its structure, the game becomes a disgraceful, pitiful excuse to make money. It does so much wrong. Mainly, as an aRPG it's laughable. Imagine if you took out unique loot in say Diablo. Would the experience remain the same? Fuck no. People would not play it. Now, imagine if they scaled it. It would just get shittier and shittier. The designs they keep adding are terrible from a roleplay perspective.

Instead of adding more depth, they keep on simplifying. As a company, Bethesda just isn't trying to make an RPG anymore. They are trying to make a mainstream game that appeals to random joe who can only perceive the surface elements(graphics). /shrug

I think we may be talking about different things here. I mean simply that if you use a mod or make your own edits to get rid of some of the retardedness in the levelled lists for mobs and loot and then play the game the thing that was bugging you is no longer there to continue being pissy about except possibly in comparison to past games or whatever. So if you mod the thousand and one generic caves filled with daedric armoured bandits to have varied mobs with varied loot and to not put any daedric/glass armoured bandits in the game at all - the game can then provide a decent experience if that was the source of your irritation regarding level scaling and exploration. I think this is something of a pragmatic standpoint in relation to a game that's already shipped and that I paid money for. Rather than simply being pissed off forever that it wasn't everything I hoped and dreamed, I plug the holes that I can and get what enjoyment I can from it.

If you mean that you have issues with Oblivion from a design standpoint and Bethesda's games are continuing to bring in elements that you hate ergo their games will continue to be shitty. Well, maybe. I think it's true that some of their elements are terrible from a RP perspective such as the quest marker (which also sucks from a gameplay perspective). But other things such as fast travel are easy enough to look at as a less restrictive version of mark and recall or just not use at all. They seem to be making efforts to work on their level scaling so that the flaws apparent in Oblivion won't crop up or at least not so blatantly. I think it's a mixed bag and I'm not yet prepared to completely write off this company. Bioware, on the other hand...

As far as a robust RPG with a decent stat system where the attributes are meaningful and show some relation between the strengths of your character and the environment/NPCs, well... although that's something I quite like as well, it strikes me that their removal doesn't necessarily mean that the game ceases to be an RPG nor that the attributes were doing many great things in TES. If you had no attributes, skills or perks and only had a class or race and ran around in the world, I'd see the point. As it is, I'm simply curious about what the perks are doing since they may well provide enough crunchy bits for character definition. Even tabletop RPGs have a variety of systems and some are very stat-light while still having resolutions mechanics and character progression.

Either way, though, it sucks that only independent developers are making much of anything recognizable as a (non-action) RPG but at the same time, Bethesda was always in the 3D space and their games have always been fairly action-y all the way back to Arena. I don't think the things Skyrim is doing is some sort of surprising bastardization of their traditional RPG roots - so far as I know, they've always been about prettier graphics and depicting hack'n'slash dungeon crawling in real time 3D.

 

[Coyote]

Maybe I didn't play the games you did, but I did play many Bethesda games and many stats and skills are redundant. You put in points to strength to increase your damage. You put in points to Intelligence to increase magicka. Can't you see that one step is absolutely unnecessary? Intelligence and Magicka are the same ability, split into a stat and a skill. Why is it better to have both of them rather than one?

Two reasons, one of which has been touched upon and one that I don't think has been mentioned yet:

1) You invest points into strength to raise your melee damage, yes, but also to increase your weight limit and maximum fatigue. The fact that attributes can influence multiple other variables makes them a useful tool, especially if those other variables are not equivalent in terms of utility. For example, if raising carrying limit provides x utility per point invested, raising melee damage provides y utility per point invested, and raising magicka provides x + y utility per point invested, one easy way to balance it so that investing in carrying limit or melee damage is worthwhile compared to investing in magicka is to combine the two under one governing attribute. There are other ways, yes, such as raising the amount that carrying limit/melee damage are increased per point invested such that they provide x + y utility, but see point 3 for why this isn't always a good idea.

2) You can have multiple attributes governing the same variable in different ways, as in the case of strength, willpower, and endurance. Agility might have, too, can't remember and UESP contradicts itself about this).

Edit: Removed point 3, as apparently Oblivion uses a flat increase in magicka when it comes to racial and birthsign-based bonuses rather than adding a multiplier based on your intelligence attribute as in Morrowind. The gist of it was that when such a multiplier is used, it's more consistent for the player if you have primary attributes - that increase by 1 point for every point invested - upon which the secondary attributes are based, rather than just having the secondary attributes - which might increase by anywhere from 1 to 4.5 points per point invested if a similar system was used to calculate magicka. Obviously, this doesn't apply if they use a flat increase, though it's still relevant if you have attributes that are raised by different amounts per point invested (which is why it applied to raising the weight limit/melee damage as mentioned in point 1).

In any event, they're reducing 8 attributes to 3 stats that used to be derived from those attributes, so even if all of the former attributes had previously only governed one stat - and they didn't, even in Oblivion - the overall complexity of the system and number of options available to the player when designing their character would still be reduced in Skyrim (and Todd's statement about why they're removing the former attributes would still ring false, since it fails to account for the majority of them). Perks may make up the difference or not; this remains to be seen.

 

[Black Cat]

I wonder if this is just Black Cat being bored and trolling the Codex.

/anothertiresomealtassumption

And if not, well, welcome to the Codex, sis.

Don't mix me with this, Sis. She's just going through the same phases I did. Some day she will arrive to the realization this isn't worth it and leave.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Instead of adding more depth, they keep on simplifying. As a company, Bethesda just isn't trying to make an RPG anymore. They are trying to make a mainstream game that appeals to random joe who can only perceive the surface elements(graphics). /shrug

"Mainstream" is a genre now?

 

[jancobblepot]

Oh please... They're not making games for us, not anymore. Spend your money on good indie games, and stop bitching.

 

[Crooked Bee]

I wonder if this is just Black Cat being bored and trolling the Codex.

/anothertiresomealtassumption

And if not, well, welcome to the Codex, sis.

Don't mix me with this, Sis. She's just going through the same phases I did. Some day she will arrive to the realization this isn't worth it and leave.

Sorry, BC, I was just fooling around. Hope you don't leave though, or at least not entirely. This place may not be "worth it", but it's a fun one nevertheless.

 

[Melissan]

@ Admiral Bob: Tell me that you don't think that Skyrim looks great.

Graphically? It's an improvement over Oblivion, but it's still ridiculously bloom-infested (TES V: Return of the Glowing Stone Walls), working off six-year-old console tech that's frankly losing its "wow" factor fast, and I'm withholding judgement on the art style - it actually exists, which is again an improvement over Oblivion's utterly bland Gondor wannabe, but whether it's good and cohesive is hard to tell at this juncture. Frankly, The Witcher 2 already makes it look like a joke.

Otherwise? Looks like another aimless "sandbox" action game with no brain requirement, a horribly stupid plot, nothing of interest to do and no particularly good combat to make up for it unless the guys from Arkane took pity on them and stepped in. I'd love to be proven wrong.

I said it looks good. I didn't say anything about the plot or combat. Since you've admitted that it does look good, I believe you owe me an apology.

 

[Melissan]

The ironic thing (heh) is that Skyrim's obvious good looks can be worked into a coherent and worthwhile argument, if that's your goal. Problem is, it's not by itself even worth talking about.

Why should everything be an argument? I just said that the trailer looks good. Why isn't anyone listening to what I say and pretends that I said something entirely different instead?! Is it some kind of local humor I don't get?

You say that the gender doesn't matter but why is it ok for you to say that Skyrim looks good (you just did), but not for me? Answer and I'll leave you alone.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

@ Admiral Bob: Tell me that you don't think that Skyrim looks great.

Graphically? It's an improvement over Oblivion, but it's still ridiculously bloom-infested (TES V: Return of the Glowing Stone Walls), working off six-year-old console tech that's frankly losing its "wow" factor fast, and I'm withholding judgement on the art style - it actually exists, which is again an improvement over Oblivion's utterly bland Gondor wannabe, but whether it's good and cohesive is hard to tell at this juncture. Frankly, The Witcher 2 already makes it look like a joke.

Otherwise? Looks like another aimless "sandbox" action game with no brain requirement, a horribly stupid plot, nothing of interest to do and no particularly good combat to make up for it unless the guys from Arkane took pity on them and stepped in. I'd love to be proven wrong.

I said it looks good. I didn't say anything about the plot or combat. Since you've admitted that it does look good, I believe you owe me an apology.

"It's an improvement over Oblivion" means "it looks good" now? Because it doesn't.

 

[Melissan]

I wonder if this is just Black Cat being bored and trolling the Codex.

/anothertiresomealtassumption

And if not, well, welcome to the Codex, sis.

Don't mix me with this, Sis. She's just going through the same phases I did. Some day she will arrive to the realization this isn't worth it and leave.

Did they do it to you too when you started posting? How did you last that long?

 

[Luzur]

sup Drog.

 

[Skittles]

It's a pun.

"Looks good" could be "the graphics are good" or "the game appears to be good."

People are assuming you meant the second--intentionally or otherwise--because "the graphics are good" is a terrible defense of a game.

So's the latter if you're basing your judgement on the graphics.

 

[Melissan]

It's not a defense of the game, it's a simple statement. Hey, look, these shoes looks good! WHat do you think I'm talking about there, genius?