Oh, come on, Bethesda!, Closed cities AGAIN? Options

[Thomas Kaira]

May I ask exactly why? Oblivion could take open cities in perfect stride. The only reason the cities got closed at all was because BethSoft panicked about the console support.

Granted, they did have an excuse then, as they only received the Xbox 360 to do actual testing over the last three months of dev. time, but here... not so much. The current excuse is that the consoles can't handle what they are doing. Trouble is, the industry always manages to surprise us with exactly what those consoles CAN handle.

So long as the NPC count in the cities goes up by at least twice what we got in Oblivion, I will be understanding and shall complain no more. If not... well... then I will KNOW you are just being lazy. I want to see progress in making these games the best they can be, I don't want Skyrim to simply be Oblivion HD.

Source

In other news:

- Alchemy is becoming a stealth skill. (Approve! Approve!)

- There will be no minigames involved with the crafting skills (Thank you!)

- Giants, Draugr, and other creatures will receive a bit of culture from the AI engine (Looking forward to this.)

This post has been edited by Thomas Kaira: May 3 2011, 07:07 PM

[Destri Melarg]

First off I need to stress that I am not a Bethesda apologist here. I have the same concerns about the future of the games as the rest of you. I just don’t understand the negativity about all of this. Can’t we at least try to give Bethesda the benefit of the doubt until we have the benefit of seeing the game?

Classes are no more because the class system tied directly into the leveling system and both were flawed. Maybe they should have fixed it to give us something better, but they chose instead to try something new. Something new does not automatically equal ‘dumbing down’ for all you PC snobs out there (ok most of the time it does ). I give Bethesda kudos for scrapping a flawed system rather than just recycle something that didn’t work properly.

Attributes . . . this one just floors me. Other than overall magicka and encumbrance (both of which are better addressed with perks), what did attributes really do for you in Oblivion? The base weapon (silver does more damage than iron for example) plus enchantments determined weapon damage more than character Strength or Agility. Mastery of a particular school of magic determined spell cost more than Intelligence, Willpower, or Personality. Health gains per level were a static ten points plus whatever your Endurance rating was, meaning that you would still have decent health even if you never touched Endurance.

As for the argument that attributes helped to make distinctive characters, I would ask one simple question. How? Most players max their character’s attributes. I have several characters in Oblivion. My Bosmer is just as strong as my Orc who is just as intelligent as my Altmer. Race, clothing/armor, weapon choice (if any), and faction affiliation did more to make characters distinctive than attributes. I think that we all have a tendency to panic whenever we feel that we are losing something from our beloved Elder Scrolls, no matter how ridiculous that something is. I won’t argue that the games couldn’t benefit from an attribute system that worked properly, they absolutely could. But that isn’t something that we have ever had in a TES game, and whatever we think we are losing in the absence of flawed attribute progression is being compensated for by (count them) 280+ perks.

Open cities would have been nice aesthetically, I suppose. But in a region rife with Giants, Draugr, and other hostile wildlife (not to mention warring factions/clans) it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. To create such only because the technology allows it would feel cheesy to me.

Just my two cents.

[Helena]

First off I need to stress that I am not a Bethesda apologist here. I have the same concerns about the future of the games as the rest of you. I just don’t understand the negativity about all of this. Can’t we at least try to give Bethesda the benefit of the doubt until we have the benefit of seeing the game?

Okay, I'm going to answer this purely from my own point of view. I don't claim to speak for anyone else.

Firstly, I should point out that unlike most people here, I'm not a big fan of Oblivion. It was my introduction to the Elder Scrolls series, and I wasn't particularly impressed (especially given the insane amount of hype around the game when it was first released). Since then I've played Morrowind and a bit of Daggerfall, and I can see clear trends in the way the series has developed - which from my point of view are in completely the wrong direction. So I have no reason to expect that I'll like Skyrim any more than I liked Oblivion, and good reason to expect that I'll like it less.

Secondly, I'm still so unutterably furious with Bethesda for destroying the only part of Tamriel which I actually care about (i.e. Morrowind) that I'm not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt on anything, let alone the first game post-Infernal City. It doesn't help that the setting (Skyrim, 200 years after the last game) doesn't interest me in the slightest. As far as I'm concerned, they wasted a golden opportunity to show Tamriel in the chaos following the Empire's fall - a period which could have been really interesting. Instead we just have "oh, the Empire is back but it's on the brink of collapse. Again."

And really, nothing I've seen of Skyrim so far inclines me to change my mind. Apart from the improvements in graphics and AI, which were to be expected anyway, all I see is: A plot which is basically a retread of Oblivion, with extra dragons. Gameplay which has been simplified even further in all sorts of ways. Starting off as a f*cking prisoner AGAIN (seriously, I point-blank refuse to even consider playing the game until someone mods this). A gameworld which constantly rearranges itself around your character, just like in Oblivion. Randomly-generated missions, which I've seen in various other games (including Daggerfall) and always hated. And so on. The only glimmer of hope is Todd Howard's statement that the gameworld will be closer to Morrowind in terms of design, but so far I see no evidence of that.

Something new does not automatically equal ‘dumbing down’ for all you PC snobs out there (ok most of the time it does ).

Well, you said it. In all honesty I couldn't care less about the 'PC vs console' debate; dumbing down is dumbing down, whatever the reason for it.

As for the argument that attributes helped to make distinctive characters, I would ask one simple question. How? Most players max their character’s attributes.

I never got close to maxing any of my characters' attributes in either Morrowind or Oblivion. It depends on your playstyle; I don't powergame, and don't try to do everything with one character, so I always moved on to another one well before I reached that stage. That said, it is a genuine problem - but the solution is to make attributes more significant and less easy to maximise, not to get rid of them altogether. It's not like this would be difficult; there are player-made mods for both MW and OB that do exactly that.

And while getting rid of classes and attributes may not make a huge amount of difference from a gameplay perspective, it's absolute murder from a roleplaying perspective. I don't want my character to start off a complete non-entity, and only develop into something unique at the point where I'm getting bored of playing them. In Morrowind, I can tell a huge amount about my character just by looking at her starting stats: that she's strong and tough, not stupid but not especially intelligent or scholarly; that she considers herself a freelance mercenary; that she's a fighter, trained in various weapons and armour skills; that she's learned a little about Restoration and haggling to help her along in her daily life, but otherwise has no interest in stealth, diplomacy or magic. Already, before I've even begun the game, she has a background and a strong personality which I can then build on.

In Daggerfall, Bethesda actually plans out a detailed background for your character based on your class and starting skills. In Skyrim they seem to be going to the other extreme, giving you a character who is literally a nobody - no past, no strengths or weaknesses, no identity apart from 'hero of today's random prophecy'. The focus is all on how your character is OMG THE DRAGONBORN and none at all on what sort of person they are.

I think that we all have a tendency to panic whenever we feel that we are losing something from our beloved Elder Scrolls, no matter how ridiculous that something is.

Honestly, I'm not panicking. I never expected much from Skyrim in the first place, so it's hardly a huge disappointment to me that I don't like what I've seen of it so far. My overall reaction to the previews has mostly been 'meh', with a few instances of 'oh God, you cannot be serious'. But that's part of the problem; at the moment I care so little about Skyrim that I'm not even sure I'll bother to play it.

[Bolzmania]

Luckily for me I have a very open mind when it comes to games. So I honestly don't mind when rpgs have more action than usual. Because of this I was able to enjoy both Morrowind and Oblivion and I reckon I'll love Skyrim as well.

Starting off as a f*cking prisoner AGAIN (seriously, I point-blank refuse to even consider playing the game until someone mods this)

I really don't see why that would be such a big deal.
Seriously, games are alot more fun if you don't build up your own rules of how the game should be.

[Helena]

Luckily for me I have a very open mind when it comes to games. So I honestly don't mind when rpgs have more action than usual.

Who even said anything about the amount of action in the game? All the Elder Scrolls games seem fairly action-heavy to me.

Starting off as a f*cking prisoner AGAIN (seriously, I point-blank refuse to even consider playing the game until someone mods this)

I really don't see why that would be such a big deal.

It's not really such a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but for some reason it really, really gets on my nerves. In the first ES game, Arena, there was a good reason for your character to start off in prison - it was part of the story. But now Bethesda seem to have decided that they have to start every single one of their games that way, even where it makes absolutely no sense - look at Oblivion, where no one inside the prison seems to recognise you or have the faintest idea what you're doing there. It's also exasperating from a roleplaying perspective, since it limits your character's background to two basic choices: 'ex-con' or 'wrongfully accused'. That's not so bad for one game, but three in a row is just getting ridiculous.

Seriously, games are alot more fun if you don't build up your own rules of how the game should be.

It's not a question of 'rules'. Like everyone else, I happen to enjoy certain things in games and dislike other things - your criteria may be different from mine, but I'm sure you still have them. So far it appears that Skyrim has few of the things I like in games, and many of the things I dislike, which is why I'm not optimistic about it.

[Bolzmania]

Who even said anything about the amount of action in the game?

Is that a joke? That's one of the things people on forums comlain about the most. I didn't direct that at you in particular.