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Are they fixing a random bug we've been playing with for a decade, or adding even more god awful creations? Only Todd knows.
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Jan 15, 2024 18:24
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:Are they fixing a random bug we've been playing with for a decade, or adding even more god awful creations? Only Todd knows. I think everyone knows the answer to that question. I mean beyond just the fact they enjoy breaking all the mods a couple times a year. A hobby's a hobby.
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Jan 15, 2024 18:44
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:Are they fixing a random bug we've been playing with for a decade, or adding even more god awful creations? Only Todd knows. Repeat, because it's a new page If you have a modded setup that you like, it can be a good idea to set things up so that Steam won't update it automatically. https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/articles/6074/
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Jan 15, 2024 18:53
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I think Bethesda should try putting effort in their more recent releases and not patching a game that is 12 years old
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Jan 15, 2024 19:16
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ive been replaying skyrim a hell of a lot recently, SE, and ive got like 3 or 4 broken quests in the list now very cool. im still playing that garbage
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Jan 15, 2024 19:24
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Raygereio posted:Apparently Bethesda is planning to drop another patch for Skyrim this week. thanks for the heads up/
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Jan 15, 2024 20:32
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Gonna break all the mods everyone got and installed over the years so they can sell you mods. I fricking love this industry. The next Elder Scrolls game is going to be hot garbage isn't it. Gonna make ubisoft's naked cash grab store look subtle by comparison. Every hundred bounties you do you get 1 bethbuck towards an armor set from the store. They cost 10k bethbucks each. That's 20 dollars.
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Jan 15, 2024 20:42
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Jimbot posted:Gonna break all the mods everyone got and installed over the years so they can sell you mods. I fricking love this industry. Maybe you should have paid Bethesda for each of those 2000 mods you installed and then they wouldn't need to do this. Poor suffering Microsoft only being *checks notes* the most valuable company in the history of the world.
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Jan 15, 2024 20:45
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Jimbot posted:Gonna break all the mods everyone got and installed over the years so they can sell you mods. I fricking love this industry. The next Elder Scrolls game is going to be hot garbage isn't it. Gonna make ubisoft's naked cash grab store look subtle by comparison. I'm thinking this as well. It's impossible for Bethesda to pull themselves out of whatever tailspin Starfield has put them in, it's clear they are incapable of creating compelling stories nor learn from when they fail to do so.
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Jan 15, 2024 20:54
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KakerMix posted:I'm thinking this as well. I see your initial enthusiasm for Starfield has cooled.
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Jan 15, 2024 21:01
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Rinkles posted:I see your initial enthusiasm for Starfield has cooled. I honestly was enjoying myself for a long while, but then little things started to bubble up, then I played BG3 (I intentionally avoided it to start JUST because everyone was saying it was so good till after I played Starfield) and then the whole thing just felt very juvenile in the sense of writing and story beats. Then I placated myself with the idea of mods fixing it, but if there isn't the initial fervor for it like Skyrim or Oblivion or Morrowind then it isn't going to get the attention. We still don't have a creation kit, Bethesda has gone 'well actually' about people's criticism of the game and then they joke won a Steam award and thought it was legit. They aren't self aware, they take themselves too seriously and they have no idea how to write compelling things. Plus they INSIST on trying to double and triple dip and try to monetize mods themselves which kneecap the entire enterprise and cuts off the whole reason mods were compelling: People couldn't help themselves but create things for a game they loved and Bethesda won because their game stayed popular and they sold more copies. Adding financial aspects to the modding community flips that all on its head and poisons the entire well. The Bethesda that made Skyrim doesn't exist anymore, isn't in a position to fall into success like before and is far too corporate now. Edit That is to say Starfleid isn't a bad game, it's mid as heck. It's just absolutely not going to get better either via Bethesda themselves or mods. KakerMix fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Jan 15, 2024 |
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Jan 15, 2024 21:12
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Jimbot posted:The next Elder Scrolls game is going to be hot garbage isn't it. 100%
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Jan 15, 2024 21:42
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Bethesda hasn't made a legitimately good (Elder Scrolls or Fallout) game since Oblivion. Skyrim has a lot of mitigating factors that Fallout 76 and Starfield didn't, that's the only reason it's stuck around so long.
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Jan 15, 2024 21:48
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KakerMix posted:Then I placated myself with the idea of mods fixing it, but if there isn't the initial fervor for it like Skyrim or Oblivion or Morrowind then it isn't going to get the attention. We still don't have a creation kit, Bethesda has gone 'well actually' about people's criticism of the game and then they joke won a Steam award and thought it was legit. They aren't self aware, they take themselves too seriously and they have no idea how to write compelling things. I’m holding out a bit of hope that they realize they hosed up (and I think it’s pretty apparent the general consensus has turned negative), and put actual effort into addressing the bigger issues, rather than following their usual MO of leaving it to modders. I think it’s a salvageable game, but a Cyberpunk style redemption would require commitment (and a lot of money).
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Jan 15, 2024 22:01
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nine-gear crow posted:Bethesda hasn't made a legitimately good (Elder Scrolls or Fallout) game since Oblivion. Skyrim has a lot of mitigating factors that Fallout 76 and Starfield didn't, that's the only reason it's stuck around so long. I'm genuinely curious as to in what ways you find Oblivion is a better game than Skyrim. Morrowind > Skyrim due to the writing being vastly better is a position I'm used to seeing, but Oblivion not so much. e: especially without mods, Oblivion's leveling system was hopelessly hosed imo.
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Jan 15, 2024 22:24
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Skyrim was a step up from Oblivion, both being a step down from Morrowind. And in any case, Bethesda, like them or not, is still pretty much the same company they were 20 or so years ago, they've just been making evolving the same game formula since Morrowind.
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Jan 15, 2024 22:41
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Eric the Mauve posted:I'm genuinely curious as to in what ways you find Oblivion is a better game than Skyrim. Morrowind > Skyrim due to the writing being vastly better is a position I'm used to seeing, but Oblivion not so much. Not them, but to me Oblivion has a lot of really great quests that Skyrim does not, and I only play it modded where the issues with the leveling are fixable anyway. I miss the character building of the older games that was removed from Skyrim. Skyrim also really did my preferred playstyle (magic) badly. Morrowind is better than either.
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Jan 15, 2024 22:42
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They really do limit themselves by having Pagliarulo being the designer and writer. This guy's ethos is poison. Morrowind isn't a classic because the lead designer and writer said "We gotta make everything dumb!", it's a stone-cold classic because the designers and writers said "We gotta make everything weird!" It's the last thing I want to hear from someone writing fantasy (or even friggan sci-fi) is that they're making it dumb. I enjoyed Skyrim well enough but it is a whole lot dumber and the did nail the exploration loop despite the dumb as nails design and writing. All those systems were improved by mods but it didn't fix the core, fundamental problems. When it comes down to it and I think I'm going to lose a lot of you with some of these takes is that the series lost something big when it moved into fully-voiced NPCs and "skill" based combat. With the former you can only have so much space and writing to fill out a conversation without it being bloated. You can get away with having deep conversations filled with text and semicolons when it's you, the player, reading it. But when you have someone speak all those words the pacing turns glacial and it sounds weird to hear out loud. So you can only have minor conversations with a limited pool of topics. Barring all that, it'll cut the time and energy for all the VA too. The later is more contentious but hear me out: the chance-based combat isn't good but it's better than what we have now. The random chance of the combat worked for the floatiness of it. You get better at short blade, you hit more often and you do more damage. Instead of hearing the swish sound of attacking you start to hear the hitting sound and it's satisfying. Your brain tells you that your skill investment is paying off despite the animations still being bad and floaty. Sure, it stunk until you got good but it's mitigated by you just hammering on the attack button, alchemy and enchantments. It's not good, but it fit. Now we have skill-based combat that's absolutely trash. It feels bad and looks bad. Sure, ranged combat does feel more satisfying and the magic spells do have some oomph to them (but still weaker than the previous two games) but melee combat is as bad as it ever been. It doesn't have the excuse of being percent based anymore as to why it feels the way it does. You get a perk, do "25% more damage" and it feels the same. The enemy health goes down slightly faster, your green bar goes down slightly less when you do a power attack. It's just a junk system, most likely concocted by a bad designer whose design philosophy is "make it dumb". Anyway, that's my "Morrowind is one of the best games ever made and Bethesda Game Studios is poop from a butt these days" TED talk, thanks for reading.
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Jan 15, 2024 23:30
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Skyrim combat owns actually I love to smack enemies with a giant axe and then send them flying with a fus ro dah
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Jan 16, 2024 00:18
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I'm of the opinion that BethSoft has never made a single unreservedly good game on its own merits. Morrowind has this fun strange world where elven wizards live in mushroom towers and ride giant bugs to get places, but the actual game systems are complete jank. I haven't played Oblivion but all I hear about it suggests it's even more jank in the gameplay department and more generic fantasy in the writing and world-building. Skyrim is the one that's most fun to actually play, but the whole "civil war" beta plot is obviously unfinished and the main plot has you running through endless crypts filled with the same draugr enemies and the guild plotlines are kind of dumb. The less said about Elder Scrolls pre-Morrowind the better. Modding can fix a lot of the jank if you're willing to invest the time, and can even finish some of the unfinished stuff and add side quests, but if the game's design is a mess to begin with there's only so much that can be done.
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Jan 16, 2024 02:14
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KakerMix posted:I'm thinking this as well. One of my good friends works at Bethesda and without divulging anything specific he's shared with me in confidence, management is very much stuck in a 1990s mindset to game design.
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Jan 16, 2024 02:57
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nine-gear crow posted:Bethesda hasn't made a legitimately good (Elder Scrolls or Fallout) game since Oblivion. Skyrim has a lot of mitigating factors that Fallout 76 and Starfield didn't, that's the only reason it's stuck around so long. I actually genuinely like the original main storyline of Fallout 76. If it were a single player game I think it would be up there with New Vegas as one of my favorite Fallout games. I'm also kind of surprised you picked Oblivion of all titles as the last good one. Of modern Bethesda games that's by far my least favorite and I always kinda thought of it as a notable failure; am I the odd one out there? (edit: Looks like I got beaten there)
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Jan 16, 2024 03:04
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Dameius posted:One of my good friends works at Bethesda and without divulging anything specific he's shared with me in confidence, management is very much stuck in a 1990s mindset to game design. There's a comment from Rutskarn which has stuck with me since it was posted in 2016, so it doesn't take into account anything post-Fallout 4: quote:There’s one thing I think is important to remember about Bethesda: their fanbase has swollen tremendously with every installment. From Arena through Skyrim, every game they’ve put out has effectively doubled their audience. It is reasonable to ask them to listen to that audience–and I will put it to you that they absolutely do that. What is not reasonable, or at least not practical, is to ask them to listen to their “oldest” and “core” fans, because that’s the one group that’s guaranteed to be the minority.
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Jan 16, 2024 03:20
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Vavrek posted:There's a comment from Rutskarn which has stuck with me since it was posted in 2016, so it doesn't take into account anything post-Fallout 4: To clarify, I didn't mean in terms of like, in game mechanics or anything. More in the structure and process of the craft. And employees very much are trying to not do that.
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Jan 16, 2024 03:33
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Every now and then I try to get back into Oblivion but modding for it sucks rear end since it predates mod organizers and people would use images for the installation instructions where the host no longer has the image. And even after all that it just crashes all the drat time
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Jan 16, 2024 03:51
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If you ever do feel like giving Oblivion modding another go, there's the Through the Valleys modding guide which is semi-current (updated last summer) and not too long. Mod Organizer 2 got Oblivion support a couple of years ago and the guide makes full use of that. There's even some stability fixes out there. From what I've experienced with Oblivion modding over the years, the single most important thing to ensure stability is to never install Better Cities, Unique Landscapes, or anything like them. They're cool, but they simply push the game far too close to its hardcoded limits. Hardware isn't the problem.
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Jan 16, 2024 04:26
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Raygereio posted:According to the heads-up they gave Nexusmods, it's to fix issues with the creations menu. So yeah... Wanted to say thanks for posting this, it would have been just my luck to spend a bunch of time modding and troubleshooting and poo poo the last two weeks and promptly lose it all
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Jan 16, 2024 07:54
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Dameius posted:To clarify, I didn't mean in terms of like, in game mechanics or anything. More in the structure and process of the craft. And employees very much are trying to not do that. Ah! That makes sense. What I remember getting from one or another Todd Howard interview was the sense that, compared to modern dev teams, Bethesda* is or was remarkably small and had low turnover. That there was a deliberate decision to not just hire a ton of people and Get Huge, because they wanted to maintain any sense of team cohesion. This seems like the kind of situation that would lead to ... I mean, you can talk about team cohesion, but it's also traditions, the "we've always done it this way" style throughout everything, not just game content. *Meaning Bethesda-the-developer, BGS Rockville, and not the satellites or the publishing arm.
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Jan 16, 2024 09:05
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For Enderal, do I need a fresh install of SkyrimSE, or does Enderal not care about that sort of thing? I've got 20 or so mods installed, and it'd be a hassle to find/install them all over again.
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Jan 16, 2024 10:00
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inscrutable horse posted:For Enderal, do I need a fresh install of SkyrimSE, or does Enderal not care about that sort of thing? I've got 20 or so mods installed, and it'd be a hassle to find/install them all over again. You can install it standalone on steam. And then further mod that.
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Jan 16, 2024 10:15
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Leal posted:Every now and then I try to get back into Oblivion but modding for it sucks rear end since it predates mod organizers and people would use images for the installation instructions where the host no longer has the image. And even after all that it just crashes all the drat time Morrowind is fun because major mod sites (a lot of stuff wasn't on Nexus) have gone offline forever so you are searching archive.org for the file you need.
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Jan 16, 2024 11:31
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nine-gear crow posted:Did they all take an arrow to the knee? It was a big arrow.
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Jan 16, 2024 11:49
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Zereth posted:You can install it standalone on steam. And then further mod that. Oh wow, how neat! Thanks!
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Jan 16, 2024 12:58
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Vavrek posted:Ah! That makes sense. What I remember getting from one or another Todd Howard interview was the sense that, compared to modern dev teams, Bethesda* is or was remarkably small and had low turnover. That there was a deliberate decision to not just hire a ton of people and Get Huge, because they wanted to maintain any sense of team cohesion. This seems like the kind of situation that would lead to ... I mean, you can talk about team cohesion, but it's also traditions, the "we've always done it this way" style throughout everything, not just game content. Todd was just another team member on Morrowind, which was led by Ken Ralston and had a relatively mature team. Ralston was not around for Oblivion and after. Emil was also another team member on Oblivion - which, while not Morrowind or even close, still had some decent quest chains - but took over as writing lead on Skyrim. There's a really good interview with Ralston on Morrowind design and development, possibly mirrored on the UESP, that's really worth reading. He truly did not want there to be an objective truth to the story but only what each person said was the truth - this is one of its great strengths to me. No other game so embraces the mystery of having to figure out what happened based on what extremely involved people and gods tell you was the truth. Such s cool but of design and writing. Morrowind to me exists on a different plane from anything Beth was ever done since or before. But the unique confluence of people and circumstances and that make it possible will never happen there again - plenty of people like what followed as has been pointed out, so why would they go back? Skyrim has a genuinely interesting world to explore, visually and map design-wise. The quests and most of the writing are inane and ridiculously shallow. The gameplay is meh but better than its not very good predecessors in this regard. But mods can fix the combat gameplay and some companion mods can give you interesting writing and characters, so the game is still fun to me heavily modded. Oblivion has much better quests than Skyrim to me but sits in that uncomfortable valley of tech with potato people and graphics that are worse than Morrowind to me - the loving bloom alone! I stopped buying Beth games at FO3 or Skyrim, whichever was later. The 1-2 of terrible writing in those 2 games guaranteed it, just like DA2 was my last Bioware game. I did pick up Fo4 on $5 sale but didn't make it out of the tutorial area before I decided there are far better places to invest my gaming time. Blog post for Tuesday: done.
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Jan 16, 2024 15:52
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v1ld posted:Todd was just another team member on Morrowind, which was led by Ken Ralston and had a relatively mature team. He seems to have had less influence than in future projects, but Howard was game director for Morrowind.
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Jan 16, 2024 16:01
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Rinkles posted:He seems to have had less influence than in future projects, but Howard was game director for Morrowind. Interesting. All of the interviews on the game with the creative folks barely mention his contribution. It's Ralston and several others. There's a brilliant interview with another writer whose name i forget who disagreed with Ralston's approach, but in a good, creative tension kind of way. It's worth searching for interviews on that games development cycle. Much of it is archived in the UESP.
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Jan 16, 2024 16:06
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v1ld posted:Todd was just another team member on Morrowind, which was led by Ken Ralston and had a relatively mature team. Ralston was not around for Oblivion and after. Emil was also another team member on Oblivion - which, while not Morrowind or even close, still had some decent quest chains - but took over as writing lead on Skyrim. It does something clever in that there are different kinds of warfare going on. There's a real culture war between the Ashlanders and the Tribunal who each have their own versions of history and the main quest has you track down and read books concerning these legends, specially the one pertaining to Nerevar. The lore of the world is tied to the main story and makes it worth getting invested in the setting in ways that you don't in Oblivion and Skyrim. It becomes more of a world and less of a theme park and you, the player, are an inhabitant rather than a guest. It's main quest also is open to interpretation. Skyrim pays a little lip service of free-will versus destiny, but that's one of the core themes of Morrowind. Are you the Nerevarine because of destiny or because you actively made the prophecy happen and happen to be the first one to do it? It was really something cool. It's me, the one who likes to read in-game books but they always felt like little plaques in front of exhibits in later game. In Morrowind, because these stories are often tied to what's going on right now, felt like I was getting a glimpse into the past and learning what it meant to be the character I was supposed to become. There's a concept from Daggerfall that the developers came up that I find really silly, creative and fun that I don't think modern Bethesda would do. It's called Dragon Break. It something they came up with because they wanted all of Daggerfall's endings to be canon. It's such a nonsense concept but them attempting to tie that design ethos into the lore is great.
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Jan 16, 2024 16:42
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v1ld posted:Interesting. All of the interviews on the game with the creative folks barely mention his contribution. It's Ralston and several others. Here's that interview: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/General:Douglas_Goodall_Interview Goodall says at one point: quote:I disagreed with Todd a lot because Todd and I do not like the same kinds of games. This is not his fault or mine. Whether it is more fun to smash things with a huge axe or coax secrets from obfuscated texts is pure opinion. Whether it's better to play against dice or against an intelligent designer is pure opinion. Frankly, most gamers are more like Todd. It is in Bethesda's best interests to appeal to those gamers, instead of making a game that appeals to me. Some of that kind of tension is really good, seems like it was the case here. As Todd was Game Director, he deserves the credit for even letting that tension exist. Oblivion's map design isn't bad at all even compared to Morrowind or Skyrim, but I think it suffers from a few problems: - The tech is in that valley between Morrowind and Skyrim - So the dungeons are very limited in variety. A very few horrible, copy-pasted dungeons where walls and ledges even look very rectangular. - The architecture style based on I assume Roman columns just feels very bland, especially with all of the squared off buildings. It looks and feels worse than even Morrowind to me. - And I think a really big deal: they went for the heavily forested maps, which I really appreciate. But that means rolling, distant vistas like Skyrim's tundras or Morrowind's devastation are simply not present. Morrowind has that short fog which somehow is really atmospheric. Oblivion feels relatively claustrophobic by contrast even though they made the map a big bowl so you can at least see across it when on the outskirts. There's an amazing moment in the Knights of the 9 DLC where you fight Perinal in the sky that shows you the whole map - that whole DLC and all the writing behind that character show off some of the best of Oblivion.
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Jan 16, 2024 16:52
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Wasn't Oblivion's setting supposed to be a weird jungle In The Lore, but they went with ye olde Euro land for marketing reasons or
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Jan 16, 2024 16:59
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CHIM, my friend. CHIM.
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Jan 16, 2024 17:01
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