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RBA Starblade posted:The Elder Scrolls is always going to have the problem of the lore being a million times more interesting than anything they can really do on a console. This is why they chose to cover the canton buildings in Vivec but not in Molag Mar. Vivec managed to be far more impressive than the imperial city or mournhold.
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Feb 20, 2017 17:57
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basic hitler posted:Daggerfall looks like a game I might enjoy trying, if I had grown up during that era of weird experimental RPGs, but as it stands morrowind is about as far back as I'm able to go without wanting to pull my loving hair out. if daggerXL ever gets completed it'll be worth revisiting imo. The guy was making huge impressive progress for a while and it seemed like it might actually happen but I can't work out what's happening with it now because he uses complicated computer words
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Feb 20, 2017 18:03
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RBA Starblade posted:The Elder Scrolls is always going to have the problem of the lore being a million times more interesting than anything they can really do on a console. This has always and will always be my biggest beef with Bethesda games. Why does everyone have to have some terrible generic story and dialog that I can talk to and not care about. Go Witcher 3 so cities actually feel like cities.
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Feb 20, 2017 18:25
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Mr. Crow posted:This has always and will always be my biggest beef with Bethesda games. Why does everyone have to have some terrible generic story and dialog that I can talk to and not care about. Witcher 3 hits similar problems for the more populated areas but got around a lot of it by just not letting you into every building. Towns and cities are big.
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Feb 20, 2017 18:31
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RBA Starblade posted:Witcher 3 hits similar problems for the more populated areas but got around a lot of it by just not letting you into every building. Towns and cities are big. What?
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Feb 20, 2017 18:35
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Mr. Crow posted:What? I misread your post, sorry. I was referring to the scale of the cities.
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Feb 20, 2017 18:39
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RBA Starblade posted:Witcher 3 hits similar problems for the more populated areas but got around a lot of it by just not letting you into every building. Towns and cities are big. The problem is that the TES style of gameplay very much sets the standard that any door that is unopenable has some way to open it if you experiment and explore. The Witcher doesn't really set that expectation.
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Feb 20, 2017 18:47
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I really liked Novigrad but Oxenfurt was weird. It looked cool but there was literally nothing to do in it. At least TES cities (Morrowind, at least) there's all the generic stuff that comes with your average city - going into every house, shop, full dialogue with everyone etc All rubbish filler of course but it set me up for a life of being deeply unsettled by RPG towns with a dozen static building props, two interiors and three unrepeatable conversations
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Feb 20, 2017 19:25
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Oxenfurt really fleshes out in Hearts Of Stone and is basically the hub for it. The base game it's a place you can optionally visit and the main story takes you there once? Twice?
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Feb 20, 2017 19:29
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Even all the random tiny towns in Witcher 3 feel more alive than the biggest cities in any of the Bethesda games (unmodded anyway, Morrowind does a decent job with mods). It's not even like you can visit every building either, most of the buildings are blocked off in fallout games, and there are plenty of blocked off ones in TES cities. Who cares if you can go into yet another house when they all look the same and the most valuable thing in there is a silver candelabra.
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Feb 20, 2017 20:51
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LeftistMuslimObama posted:The problem is that the TES style of gameplay very much sets the standard that any door that is unopenable has some way to open it if you experiment and explore. The Witcher doesn't really set that expectation. Yeah it's interesting the difference between TES and Fallout in that sense. It actually makes it far easier for them to make post-apocalyptic towns and cities feel bigger than they are, because they can just throw rubble, or boards up over a door and it's not questioned why you can't get in there. e:fb
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Feb 20, 2017 20:55
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Cat Mattress posted:The best end-game armors are heavy and light. Medium armor is kind of neglected, though the expansion sets improve that a bit. But still, medium armor is basically heavy armor that sucks. Counterpoint: Bonemold armor is the most Vvardenfell thing imaginable and consequently the correct choice.
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Feb 20, 2017 21:03
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Mr. Crow posted:Who cares if you can go into yet another house when they all look the same and the most valuable thing in there is a silver candelabra. But that's what a real city is like? Mostly uninteresting houses and businesses. Unless you are playing as a cat burglar in which case you want that candelabra dangit. The problem isn't that the houses are sameish, it's that they scale the cities down to a tiny size compared to their canonical size so then all the dead-weight stick out more. If they randomly generated a lot of the urban terrain, filling it with generated NPCs, apartment blocks, houses, etc, it would go a long way to making the cities feel alive. You don't need unique content for every house because in reality players make their own fun going on crime sprees or terrorizing a specific neighborhood or whatever. As long as you have a few large, interesting landmarks in an area and interesting quests and content for those, large generated areas feel natural. Imagine if there were a quest to chase down some specific faction member and they were hiding out in a realistically sized imperial city neighborhood. If their pathing was good enough you could be chasing them down alleyways and through corners, maybe through random houses, over rooftops, etc. The large generated urban areas become a backdrop for emergent interactions with important NPCs. If you turn off quest arrows you could lose them in the crowd and have to start asking random NPCs if they've seen a guy fitting that description and so on. The thing is that Bethesda is already generating so much content anyway with loot lists and levelled monsters and stuff that it feels really dumb that the one thing they won't generate any part of is the landscape of a city, so you end up with cities of two roads with 14 houses because dammit all that geometry has to be hand-placed but we'll gladly fill it with terrible radiant quests.
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Feb 20, 2017 21:06
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I'd have a lot more fun being a thief if there were more than like eight buildings to loot before calling it a And also if guards didn't magically know who I was or what I did, Oblivion.
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Feb 20, 2017 21:10
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RBA Starblade posted:I'd have a lot more fun being a thief if there were more than like eight buildings to loot before calling it a In theory urban terrain is much easier to generate than nature terrain too because buildings follow certain easy rules for the most part in terms of their construction and how they fit together. Give your generator a few basic types of building geometry to generate and leave spaces at random naturalish intervals for handbuilt assets to be placed. Every chunk of the imperial city in Oblivion should have been about 50x bigger.
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Feb 20, 2017 21:31
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If there wasn't so much downscaling to have stuff like "here's the capital of the entire continent, it has 20 houses and 50 inhabitants" then you could have radiant quests make sense. Whereas here, you get situations where a random vampire can mean that a large city no longer has any blacksmith.
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Feb 20, 2017 21:36
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Cat Mattress posted:If there wasn't so much downscaling to have stuff like "here's the capital of the entire continent, it has 20 houses and 50 inhabitants" then you could have radiant quests make sense. Yeah. And you notice super generic randomly generated NPCs a hell of a lot less when they're literally just a face in the crowd in a huge city. In a real city most people are just some face you've never seen before and wouldn't recognize if you see them again. In Oblivion and Skyrim you can memorize every (non-mob) citizen of the world if you are bored enough.
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Feb 20, 2017 22:15
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LeftistMuslimObama posted:But that's what a real city is like? Mostly uninteresting houses and businesses. Unless you are playing as a cat burglar in which case you want that candelabra dangit. They just shouldn't try to make cities bigger than Vivec. Who wants a "real" city? I'm much more comfortable doing quests for people in Balmora, maybe remembering the characters' names and what they are like. I kind of know who every NPC in Balmora is because I helped them all out and fixed their stupid problems for them and made the town better. Vivec is the upper limit for that I think. I want every character to be distinctive in some way and you can't do that in a big city. I hate anything randomly generated to fill up space like radiant or the way Oblivion randomly generated forest areas. It just never fools me and I never care about it.
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Feb 20, 2017 22:52
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Novigrad felt vast and alive, and all the same as you got to know some of the big players in the story, do witcher work, and side stories, felt like you were making a difference and improving things, while also feeling like the city didn't exist solely to dispense busy work and react to you, as the story progresses (and things worsen), it almost doesn't care about all the good you've done. Because it's a far more complete simulation of a real city.
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Feb 20, 2017 22:55
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Shibawanko posted:They just shouldn't try to make cities bigger than Vivec. Who wants a "real" city? I'm much more comfortable doing quests for people in Balmora, maybe remembering the characters' names and what they are like. I kind of know who every NPC in Balmora is because I helped them all out and fixed their stupid problems for them and made the town better. Vivec is the upper limit for that I think. I want every character to be distinctive in some way and you can't do that in a big city. I dunno, I think Balmora and MW's other cities are like they are because that's what the tech allowed at the time. But when descriptions of locations are so grand and amazing, it really blows to go to the capital of the empire and encounter 50 buildings and 100 NPCs tops.
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Feb 20, 2017 22:56
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The icing on the cake is that most dungeons have more bandits than there are people living in the cities. 
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Feb 20, 2017 23:24
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It really shocked me that they set up a way to randomly generate the forests in Oblivion. Sounded really cool, thinking there are gonna be vast forests.. Uh nope. Really how much extra time would it have taken to hand place their raggedy rear end forest instead of leaving a program to do it? God drat I hate Oblivion.
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Feb 20, 2017 23:28
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LeftistMuslimObama posted:But that's what a real city is like? Mostly uninteresting houses and businesses. Unless you are playing as a cat burglar in which case you want that candelabra dangit. You're taking my post to literally, we're saying the same thing. My comment was because some guy said that's what makes Bethesda games unique, which is both partially true and partially false, for the reasons I stated. Arguing that they're fine as-is because they've gone the lazy least effort way to implement everything, is silly. Like you said, they could very easily (existing engine limitations not withstanding) just generate most of a much larger city to be samey with some unique hand placed landmarks and it would be waaaay better. The Witcher proves that it is technically feasible as well as significantly more immersive.
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Feb 20, 2017 23:34
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And TES doesn't even have seamless, open buildings. Each interior is its own cell. I really don't understand how it would be that much more taxing to make the cities larger.
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Feb 20, 2017 23:39
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WhiskeyWhiskers posted:And TES doesn't even have seamless, open buildings. Each interior is its own cell. I really don't understand how it would be that much more taxing to make the cities larger. A DVD holds about 7gb of data tops, and the previous gen of consoles didn't have very good hard drives. I bought a halo edition 360, and for the short time I had it what I remember the most is that the hard drive was complete dogshit and I was constantly really glad I rarely used it for anything other than save games. I know it takes extra resources but I just wish we went back to the days when console and pc development was more or less separate even for the same game. Oblivion could be scaled back for console hardware, and pc could have gotten whatever insane technological fever-dream the developers imagined for the pc release.
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Feb 20, 2017 23:48
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If the tech can't handle a populous megacity, why not just set the 4th game somewhere else?
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Feb 20, 2017 23:52
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In Daggerfall, cities were scaled down too, but a lot less so. What Arena and Daggerfall cities suffered, however, was lousy generation, resulting in a city floor plan that was also square and buildings that were kind of free-floating. Nothing that looked like a medieval city's narrow streets where houses are huddling together tightly. To be frank, though, they didn't improve all that much when moving to hand-placed buildings. I think the Bethsoft guys should go on a field trip to a few actual medieval cities which have preserved historical quarters.
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Feb 20, 2017 23:52
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Doc Hawkins posted:If the tech can't handle a populous megacity, why not just set the 4th game somewhere else? I would love to know more about the design thought that went into Oblivion. I recall post-Morrowind scuttlebutt was that the last planned TES game was going to be named Oblivion, which made a certain amount of thematic sense. Oblivion's basic concept would do well as a finale to the series as we knew it. Its intentions were suitably epic in a way no other TES story was (when played straight, anyways; the Numidium breaking time was awesome but was elaborated on in Morrowind instead of being a feature of Daggerfall's plot).
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Feb 21, 2017 01:18
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Conskill posted:I would love to know more about the design thought that went into Oblivion. I recall post-Morrowind scuttlebutt was that the last planned TES game was going to be named Oblivion, which made a certain amount of thematic sense. Oblivion's basic concept would do well as a finale to the series as we knew it. Its intentions were suitably epic in a way no other TES story was (when played straight, anyways; the Numidium breaking time was awesome but was elaborated on in Morrowind instead of being a feature of Daggerfall's plot). There's a fairly good and detailed Wikipedia article called something like The development of Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion, it's worth reading. In particular they say they wanted to de-emphasise content which isn't connected to major quests chains. I wouldn't say that's the impression I got from Oblivion, but it certainly was much more empty than Morrowind. Which if you think about it is kinda sad and unlikely to be because of hardware, since Morrowind after all ran on the old original Xbox. I can't link it because I'm on my phone, but here's an excerpt: quote:Oblivion would include fewer NPCs and quests than Morrowind, and mindless filler, which Howard felt the team had been guilty of in the past, would be avoided. In exchange, Producer Gavin Carter later explained, there would be greater focus on length and depth in the quests, adding more "alternate paths", more characters "to connect with, who actually have personalities". Carter cast negative aspersions on aspects of gameplay too far removed from the game's central plot. Carter stated that such material was not needed, preferring instead that the focus be on the plot, on "fighting these demon lords", and that further material is "tertiary" and "takes away". Some of the links in the article references are pretty good too. e :link added after all Private Speech fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Feb 21, 2017 |
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Feb 21, 2017 02:11
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Or reading between the lines, trying to add voice acting to everything lowered the overall quality across the board (except in voice acting... Obviously). You have less time to create cool stories, it's not as easy to branch them out, you have to have dedicated writers rather than giving creative liberty to guys creating the world and side quests, you can't have as many people in general because they all have to have unique dialog, the list goes on and on. I just hope they learn from Witcher 3 or hand it off to people who can (Obsidian).
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Feb 21, 2017 02:24
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Mr. Crow posted:lowered the overall quality across the board (except in voice acting... Obviously). Only one squeaky voice actor for elves including dunmer would beg to disagree. Though there certainly was more of it at least.
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Feb 21, 2017 02:34
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I can absolutely understand why Dunmer on Vvardenfell loving hate outlander Dark Elves.
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Feb 21, 2017 02:37
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I really hate cockney elves
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Feb 21, 2017 03:00
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Private Speech posted:There's a fairly good and detailed Wikipedia article called something like The development of Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion, it's worth reading. In particular they say they wanted to de-emphasise content which isn't connected to major quests chains. I wouldn't say that's the impression I got from Oblivion, but it certainly was much more empty than Morrowind. Which if you think about it is kinda sad and unlikely to be because of hardware, since Morrowind after all ran on the old original Xbox. These are all the hallmarks of a dysfunctional dev team in any type of software. Smdh
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Feb 21, 2017 03:45
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Bethesda really needs to focus on making their engine and tools not be hot loving garbage. A total overhaul is required, in particular they need to get rid indoor/outdoor loading transitions (they have enough RAM now), redo their scripting so it isn't broken as gently caress and make everything easier to debug. It's a miracle their games turn out as well as they do if their construction kits are anything to go by.
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Feb 21, 2017 04:43
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Private Speech posted:Only one squeaky voice actor for elves including dunmer would beg to disagree. I read your post in that voice in my head.
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Feb 21, 2017 08:27
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basic hitler posted:Daggerfall looks like a game I might enjoy trying, if I had grown up during that era of weird experimental RPGs, but as it stands morrowind is about as far back as I'm able to go without wanting to pull my loving hair out. I tried it, read a fair bit about it, made my character and then spent about 4/5 hours playing it before I got fed up. The actual dungeon spelunking content and the mechanics are fun but the UI/Controls, quest timers and it being completely impossible to navigate in towns made it too much hassle to bother for me. I actually loved the old timey graphics and the wide open spaces.
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Feb 21, 2017 09:48
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I would die if I could put on a virtual reality headset and have it work with Morrowind. I'd just live in Vvardenfel for the rest of my life and hope someone feeds me and cleans up my poop.
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Feb 21, 2017 09:59
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:if daggerXL ever gets completed it'll be worth revisiting imo. The guy was making huge impressive progress for a while and it seemed like it might actually happen but I can't work out what's happening with it now because he uses complicated computer words DaggerXL is pretty much dead, but Daggerfall Unity is coming along nicely. You can already download it and explore the world, and it may even be relatively playable (with combat, quests etc) by the end of the year.
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Feb 21, 2017 10:08
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basic hitler posted:I noticed that TESO is a game you can buy outright. Steam has a gold edition with dlc included, but i see there's also a subscription model that's apparently not unlike SW:TOR's? If i pick up TESO, should I just get the base game @ $30 usd and subscribe for content access rather than have permanent access to all the dlc i'd pay out the rear end for? It's the most TES game I've played in a long while, and I consider it more of a TES game then I do Oblivion. No idea what the other guy was talking about, because the combat is just a hacked up MMO version of TES combat. You have light/heavy attacks, a block, a dodge, and you can cast magic in the offhand while fighting. Lots of build variety/putting your points into whatever you want/everyone can basically be everything because while the Templar has class specific healing skills, you could also just equip a Resto Staff and heal through that etc etc. Other then that it's TES but zoned up. Each faction has 5 questing hubs, all 5 combined are about the size of Skyrim. So if you think of Skyrim as separate areas, ie the Riften area/area around Riften, etc you'll understand a bit more how TESO is structured. Almost no quests are about collecting bear asses, most are weird poo poo like you'd find in a normal TES game. Lots of exploring caves and whatnot. It's well worth a play for sure if you like TES. I view it as better then Oblivion and Skyrim, and I actually like Skyrim quite a bit. It's my second favorite TES game behind Morrowind just due to how they treat Kirkbrides stuff/how they built the world. It also helps it's basically three TES games in one.
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Feb 21, 2017 14:23
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