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MrQwerty posted:hopefully microsoft learns from this and just transfers the Fallout IP to inXile and Obsidiahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha microsoft are a bunch of loving morons they are just going to replace npc dialog with their ai chatbots
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Dec 17, 2023 09:38
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Imagine a game that's so confident in its world and side-content that one of the first things that happens following the main quest is a primary quest giver sizing you up and going "lol you suck, here's some gold please go do literally any of the side content and come back when you're not such a fuckin' scrub."
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Dec 17, 2023 09:39
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Earwicker posted:they are just going to replace npc dialog with their ai chatbots Fallout: Southwest flat land as far as the eye can see with no visible mountains or signifcant landmarks for the map that encompasses Flagstaff to Santa Fe to Carlsbad to El Paso to Phoenix
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Dec 17, 2023 09:41
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Sydin posted:Imagine a game that's so confident in its world and side-content that one of the first things that happens following the main quest is a primary quest giver sizing you up and going "lol you suck, here's some gold please go do literally any of the side content and come back when you're not such a fuckin' scrub." Morrowind did that, the first thing your main quest contact says to you is to go out there, get good and establish a believable cover story also Starfield is good
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Dec 17, 2023 10:16
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yeah, it's good For a clown to play at the circus
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Dec 17, 2023 10:24
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I'm just glad clowns are keeping themselves entertained on their off hours. And not out horribly murdering people in a scary fashion and the such.
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Dec 17, 2023 11:00
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At the time there were a decent number of complaints from people about how directions in text in Morrowind were confusing and how they didn't know what to do when they got off the boat or after they talked to Caius. Also, people didn't like that two of the guilds were mutually exclusive (though you could get around that by doing the quests in a very specific sequence). I always assumed that the game systems in subsequent Bethesda games were designed around that lowest-common-denominator standard.
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Dec 17, 2023 16:57
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Fobby posted:At the time there were a decent number of complaints from people about how directions in text in Morrowind were confusing and how they didn't know what to do when they got off the boat or after they talked to Caius. Also, people didn't like that two of the guilds were mutually exclusive (though you could get around that by doing the quests in a very specific sequence). yea hopefully the recent popularity of Elden Ring will encourage more game studios to realize you can in fact throw the player into a world where they don't know wtf is going on and have to figure it out for themselves (or look online) and the game can still be a success. sure some people will whine about it but you can just... not listen to those people. when i first started playing video games, i dove into nethack and was so utterly confused and it took a long time to figure out what i was supposed to do and how it all worked. that process was a huge part of the appeal. its not about it being harder so much as enjoying that process of discovery. i can't stand how much games spoonfeed you everything these days. also "the player should be able to experience all of the content in a game in one playthrough" is such a godawful mentality that has also hosed up a lot of games. that makes sense for a linear game, not at all for an open world game in which there are supposedly significant choices. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Dec 17, 2023 |
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Dec 17, 2023 17:53
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Sydin posted:I reinstalled Morrowind and it kicks so much rear end it's unreal. What a phenomenal game. correct
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Dec 17, 2023 18:00
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Of course there's a few glaring problems with starfield, they really should have reduced the planet size down to about 100. The fact that there's what four loving cities in the entire game is insane
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Dec 17, 2023 18:04
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empty? bored? and the astronauts on the moon, op...?/
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Dec 17, 2023 18:06
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WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:The fact that there's what four loving cities in the entire game is insane well yea but also the numbers arent really the issue since all of those cities are utterly generic garbage. they need to go back to basics and see if they can do one interesting city and then once they've got that down maybe move onto a region or something imo Vivek was cool but really none of their cities have felt like cities since Daggerfall
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Dec 17, 2023 18:09
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astronauts on the moon were not bored, it’s true, and in fact very soon there will be as many astronauts on the moon as there are people playing starfield, vindicating todd howard once again
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Dec 17, 2023 18:28
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The astronauts had to sleep on the moon, it's possible one or more of them had incredibly boring dreams after 3 days of just sitting in a tin can. Perhaps a boring NASA worker dream was the true inspiration for Starfield. dr_rat posted:I'm just glad clowns are keeping themselves entertained on their off hours. Not a bad attitude, but I reserve the right to curse Starfield owners who pumped up play metrics when the next Elder Scrolls is so bad it makes Oblivion look good. Khanstant fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Dec 17, 2023 |
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Dec 17, 2023 18:30
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Earwicker posted:
It seems like Starfield was initially envisioned with significant choices and lots of content that you would never see in one playthrough. The fact that basic player actions (sneak, craft, scan, pilot ship) are gated behind a ton of perk points means it would be expected to specialize a character a bit more. No more Stealth Archer on everyone. Then the game has the Prestige NG+ mechanic to encourage you to redo runs and retry very significant choices to see other outcomes. But none of the choices matter! I resurrected Space Wooly Mammoths, told the government to assassinate Space Hitler, I killed the Space Admiral and gave his Space Star Destroyer to pirates, I shot Space Henry Ford down as a cop. None of it matters in the slightest or changes anything.
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Dec 17, 2023 19:22
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Sydin posted:I reinstalled Morrowind and it kicks so much rear end it's unreal. What a phenomenal game. same. been playing with the path of the incarnate modpack that you can autoinstall with wabbajack (2023 modding is easier than ever thank god) and its amazing the same company that released morrowind also made starfield, oblivion and skyrim. truly a fluke, todd howard needs to be fired.
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Dec 17, 2023 19:24
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I think Todd Howard wrote the worst parts of Morrowind (fighters guild?)
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Dec 17, 2023 20:24
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steinrokkan posted:I think Todd Howard wrote the worst parts of Morrowind (fighters guild?) Not sure who did the Fighter's Guild, the only stuff in Morrowind that Todd's been explicitly confirmed to have written is for the Imperial Legion faction quests. This reddit post (yeah I know) has more details and links to some interviews: https://www.reddit.com/r/Morrowind/comments/72b8pe/how_much_of_morrowind_can_be_credited_to_todd/ quote:Douglas Goodall talks about quests and says Ken Rolston did the Main Quest and the Imperial Cult. Mark Nelson did a lot of non-faction quests, the vampires, and a lot of the humor, including Fargoth, Tarhiel, and The Lusty Argonian Maid. Todd Howard finished the Imperial Legion. Bill Burcham did a lot of testing and did some quests. Nelson and Gooddall did some interiors in Ald'ruhn.
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Dec 17, 2023 20:49
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i think he did. video games would benefit from having some sort of showrunner calling creative shots rather than the hodgepodge of poo poo that seems to go into making most games. (USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 17, 2023 20:49
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Dunno if this is an unpopular opinion, but open-world games should be more like Cyberpunk or Yakuza- big cities full of life and things to do, not these vast empty spaces where the objective is to climb some tower again and again, or engage in tedious collectathons or whatever.
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Dec 17, 2023 21:21
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I think vast spaces can work in open world games if you give the player a fun mode of traversal for those spaces. Starfield however has nothing at all like that. like, Just Cause 2 for example has a large map and most if it is actually fairly empty, even the biggest city is quite repetitive and uninteresting if you stop to look at it. but you don't stop to look at it because zooming around the map with the rope thing blowing poo poo up and jumping on top of fighter jets etc. is so much fun. you arent there for a deep immersion into a "lived in" world with npc's who have schedules and minigames and all that stuff, you are there to cause chaos and most of the map is just there to be blown up. and it works very well, imo one of the best open world games of its time or in a different sense, RDR2 has some nice vast open spaces that are just there to be beautiful to look at when you ride across them and the music is playing. that works too. Bethesda cant really do either approach though. you just kind of float and bob over the various landscapes, which are not particularly interesting let alone beautiful or cinematic, and there are never any kind of fun vehicles or anything to play with. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Dec 17, 2023 |
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Dec 17, 2023 21:30
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CommissarMega posted:objective is to climb some tower again and again, or engage in tedious collectathons or whatever. Please don’t remind me that I paid money on the slop that is Dying Light 2.
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Dec 17, 2023 21:31
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Earwicker posted:skyrim wasn't a failure tho, it has major flaws gameplay wise but all the suits care about is money, and skyrim is literally one of the best selling video games of all time. Was Starfield a financial failure? My weird concern is that, if it wasn't a commercial failure, the suits have no lesson to learn because by that metric it wasn't bad, so they can just keep releasing slop forever and ever. But that is a minor concern because I think with this, I have written off the expectation that bethesda games could be fun and I can focus on playing other games that are genuinely good and have a soul.
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Dec 17, 2023 21:39
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Earwicker posted:I think vast spaces can work in open world games if you give the player a fun mode of traversal for those spaces. Starfield however has nothing at all like that. Hell I'll even just use Morrowind itself as an example: Vvardenfell is interesting to explore despite being a lot of vast wilderness because the geography is interesting and in some places starkly alien, and the points of interest are likewise interesting to explore. Then you get to Tribunal and while Mournhold is interesting enough as a city, most of the missions send you into the sewers and while this involves the same or even less walking than most Morrowind quests, it's way more tedious because it's through a bunch of boring identical sewers and caves.
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Dec 17, 2023 21:40
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buglord posted:Was Starfield a financial failure? My weird concern is that, if it wasn't a commercial failure, the suits have no lesson to learn because by that metric it wasn't bad, so they can just keep releasing slop forever and ever. But that is a minor concern because I think with this, I have written off the expectation that bethesda games could be fun and I can focus on playing other games that are genuinely good and have a soul. they made a billion dollars on it from the sheer momentum of their brand
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Dec 17, 2023 21:40
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buglord posted:Was Starfield a financial failure? My weird concern is that, if it wasn't a commercial failure, the suits have no lesson to learn because by that metric it wasn't bad, so they can just keep releasing slop forever and ever. i dont think it was a financial failure per se but i dont think it is popular enough for them to spend a decade rereleasing new editions of it over and over the way they did with skyrim
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Dec 17, 2023 21:44
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buglord posted:Was Starfield a financial failure? My weird concern is that, if it wasn't a commercial failure, the suits have no lesson to learn because by that metric it wasn't bad, so they can just keep releasing slop forever and ever. But that is a minor concern because I think with this, I have written off the expectation that bethesda games could be fun and I can focus on playing other games that are genuinely good and have a soul. It almost certainly sold a shitload of copies up front on the back of pre-orders and hype, and then presumably tapered off pretty quickly as word of mouth got out. The game was in development since like 2018 so it probably had to sell a fair bit to make back development costs, but then again a lot of that money was spent before Bethesda got snapped up by Microsoft, so who knows how much the big M themselves actually dumped into the game vs what came back to them in terms of sales. There's also the game pass question which muddies the water further. I'd wager that in terms of actual hard dollars, Starfield did/will end up turning a nice profit. In terms of financial projections for the BIGGEST ORIGINAL IP EVER FROM THE MAKERS OF SKYRIM™ BETHESDA STUDIOS though I don't think there's any way to look at it but a failure, at least right now. They wanted another Skyrim/FO4 type game that was going to get endlessly bought and replayed forever, not something that turned a profit on the back of the hype machine before quietly dying within a year of release.
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Dec 17, 2023 21:45
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Earwicker posted:
BG3 went completely against this and made GOTY so hopefully it will break that dumb thinking. I can think of at least 3 major narrative choices that are mutually exclusive and that's not even counting the origins/dark urge. It would take probably 10 playthroughs to experience every possible thing.
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Dec 17, 2023 22:09
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I just heard from a shady source that starfield is good????? Can this be confirmed please?
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Dec 17, 2023 22:11
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Saalkin posted:I just heard from a shady source that starfield is good????? Can this be confirmed please? was it a man going by "Todd" in a back alley trying to sell you goods and/or services
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Dec 17, 2023 22:12
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MrQwerty posted:was it a man going by "Todd" in a back alley trying to sell you goods and/or services Yeah that's him. He offered to suck my dick to leave a good review. Starfield is good
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Dec 17, 2023 22:13
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Saalkin posted:Yeah that's him. He offered to suck my dick to leave a good review. was it at least a good bj
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Dec 17, 2023 22:14
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Starfield's lack of anybody giving a poo poo and low player counts means Beth can't try to sell mods again and they absolutely wanted to. In fact I will wager that the reason they still use Gamebryo is because they can rely on modders to fix their games for them and easily shill paid DLC.
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Dec 17, 2023 22:15
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There's no way as an outsider to tell if Starfield was a "success" by Bethesda standards because corporate indicators are often completely deranged and it can be that Bethesda will consider it a disaster unless they sell 100 million copies of something, even if they technically make money. Their responses so far suggest they aren't happy
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Dec 17, 2023 22:23
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Bethesda's response so far has only gone to show how clouded their judgment got after repackaging Skyrim 40 times NO YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO ALWAYS LIKE OUR GAMES
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Dec 17, 2023 22:25
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steinrokkan posted:There's no way as an outsider to tell if Starfield was a "success" by Bethesda standards because corporate indicators are often completely deranged and it can be that Bethesda will consider it a disaster unless they sell 100 million copies of something, even if they technically make money. Their responses so far suggest they aren't happy There's evidence of their thinking in how they refused to pay Obsidian the full amount for New Vegas due to a lower than demanded Metacritic score (due entirely to their engine lol). So there's a good chance the internal metrics are Metacritic (probably steam now) + sales. Which is why their dogshit customer service has been showing their whole rear end on steam reviews. Given that another RPG ate their lunch, there's really no way to possibly spin it as either a reasonable failure (give it time!) or a success. I bet every suit at Microsoft is asking Todd why it isn't selling like BG3 did. The suits expected the exact opposite of what happened this year. It's also possible as you said they might just be stupider than we can possibly imagine. I can see some idiot suit believing that "Skyrim took a while to get up to speed" and "Starfield will truly succeed and meet its targets as of the first re-release in 2025." That or they're going to take the wrong ideas from the criticism (again) and dumb down everything (again) further ruining what once made Bethesda good (again.): People said progression was too slow. see we told you people hate RPG poo poo that's for nerds. TES6 should be a first person adventure game like the Witcher.
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Dec 17, 2023 22:28
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Regarding that fallout NV thing, Josh Sawyer had repeatedly denied (on these forums even) that Bethesda willfullly hosed them over on royalties. Bethesda had no reason to sabotage a game that would have made them more money with better reviews, Obsidian made an error of judgement in drafting the contract.
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Dec 17, 2023 22:32
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Earwicker posted:also "the player should be able to experience all of the content in a game in one playthrough" is such a godawful mentality that has also hosed up a lot of games. that makes sense for a linear game, not at all for an open world game in which there are supposedly significant choices. In retrospect, a whole bunch of mutually exclusive choices with real consequences would have dovetailed pretty well with the multiverse new game plus thing at the end of this game. In games like this I usually try to go the completionist route or get the best ending for everything. BG3 has been pretty refreshing because I basically had to give up on that before I started and just accept that the metaphorical and literal dice were going to lie where they fell.
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Dec 17, 2023 22:43
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SRQ posted:Given that another RPG ate their lunch, there's really no way to possibly spin it as either a reasonable failure (give it time!) or a success. I bet every suit at Microsoft is asking Todd why it isn't selling like BG3 did. The suits expected the exact opposite of what happened this year. From a pure business/investor standpoint, Starfield was absolutely a failure. It was pitched to investors as the next Skyrim and instead it fell out of the popular discourse within a month due to quickly being buried by superior titles. The whole pitch to Microsoft investors behind dropping so much money on Bethesda is that they put out super games that turn a huge initial profit AND stick around for a long time providing additional revenue/customer engagement. If I were to guess there either is currently or soon will be a pretty major push internally for higher ups for development on ES6 to ramp up big time, and going forward there's going to be much more reticence about green lighting anything from Bethesda that isn't FO/ES.
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Dec 17, 2023 22:46
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Sydin posted:If I were to guess there either is currently or soon will be a pretty major push internally for higher ups for development on ES6 to ramp up big time, and going forward there's going to be much more reticence about green lighting anything from Bethesda that isn't FO/ES. Other than Starfield has Bethesda -the development studio- done much that isn't FO/ES in decades? Last I can think of was the two terminator games in the 90s.
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Dec 17, 2023 22:51
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