The Elder Scrolls XV: This is my Thu'um Stick

[factotum]

I've never liked ideas that force you to go into one of the three paths at the expense of the others. The flexibility of Skyrim has always been one of my favorite parts of it.

On the contrary, I'm entirely happy with stuff like that. Designing the game so that literally any character can see all the content means you can't make anything properly challenging for specific builds, so we get the situation already mentioned where you can become the Archmage of the College of Winterhold--e.g. the most powerful magic user in Skyrim--by casting just three low-level spells.

[Vinyadan]

In Morrowind, a Paladin would have had two different temples from which to choose.

Besides, TES already has a backstory for everyone.

You are a thief? You got caught and you were put in jail.
You are a warrior? You got rowdy and you were put in jail.
You are a wizard? You got drunk and you were put in jail.
You are a paladin? For the greater good, you were put in jail.
You are an alchemist? Didn't pay your taxes, you were put in jail.
You are a smith? You didn't upgrade the workshop in accordance to safety laws, and you were put in jail.
You are an assassin? Imagine why, but they put you in jail.
You are a conjurer? You summoned a zombie that appeared with his hand in the mayor's cup of tea, and you were put in jail.

[veti]

And yes, defaulting to a heavily-armored battlemage was very common in Morrowind. I grit my teeth and stuck to a lightly-armored mostly-mage, but heavens, was it an uphill battle. Maybe Morrowind Rebirth helps with that.

Speak for yourself. I played Morrowind several times with light armoured thief or scout type characters, who dabbled in magic (mostly because the mages guild gives the easiest start) but remained firmly focused on stabbing people, whether in the back or front.

Once i get to high levels - which in that game means anything much above level 20- I'll admit, heavy armour starts to look more attractive, with its higher enchantment capacity (and my greater carrying capacity). But by then I've completed most of the questlines this character is interested in, and am pretty much ready to retire the character anyway.

[Eldan]

In Morrowind, a Paladin would have had two different temples from which to choose.

Besides, TES already has a backstory for everyone.

You are a thief? You got caught and you were put in jail.
You are a warrior? You got rowdy and you were put in jail.
You are a wizard? You got drunk and you were put in jail.
You are a paladin? For the greater good, you were put in jail.
You are an alchemist? Didn't pay your taxes, you were put in jail.
You are a smith? You didn't upgrade the workshop in accordance to safety laws, and you were put in jail.
You are an assassin? Imagine why, but they put you in jail.
You are a conjurer? You summoned a zombie that appeared with his hand in the mayor's cup of tea, and you were put in jail.

And quite possibly:
You were born on the right day under the right sign, so the Imperial secret service threw you in prison on trumped-up charges to fulfill the prophecy.

[Morty]

Speak for yourself. I played Morrowind several times with light armoured thief or scout type characters, who dabbled in magic (mostly because the mages guild gives the easiest start) but remained firmly focused on stabbing people, whether in the back or front.

Once i get to high levels - which in that game means anything much above level 20- I'll admit, heavy armour starts to look more attractive, with its higher enchantment capacity (and my greater carrying capacity). But by then I've completed most of the questlines this character is interested in, and am pretty much ready to retire the character anyway.

Your point being...? Yes, it's perfectly possible not to play a heavily-armored spellsword/battlemage, but it's not going to be easy. That's what I said.

[Aeson]

Your point being...? Yes, it's perfectly possible not to play a heavily-armored spellsword/battlemage, but it's not going to be easy. That's what I said.

Armor value in Morrowind is far more dependent on the character's skill in that type of armor than on the theoretical protective value of the armor piece in question, and in my experience you basically set the armor type you're using at character creation. Armor skill increases (slowly) when you get hit, and you don't want to get hit very much by anything that's actually dangerous because that'll get you killed - especially if you're wearing armor that has little protective value because you're not skilled in its use; therefore, unless you pay trainers or let a rat or a mudcrab or something like that flail ineffectually at your legs for a few hours, your character's armor skills tend to be about the same at level 20 as they were at level 1. Additionally, characters with less than maybe 40 - and preferably more like 50 - strength at character creation probably don't want to use heavy armor, because a full suit of low- to mid-tier heavy armor plus a halfway decent weapon is already pushing 150 units of carry capacity, leaving very little room for loot, trinkets, and consumables, and on top of that low- to mid-tier heavy armor isn't actually that much better than low- to mid-tier light or medium armor, which is just about as available as the heavy stuff anyways (especially with Tribunal active, since that provides you with a personal delivery service for one or more full sets of Dark Brotherhood armor about every other time you rest until you talk to Apelles Matius in Ebonheart).

[Kareeah_Indaga]

I still want my Elder Scrolls game that tailors the main quest to your class. Playing a Thief? You get an origin story befitting a Thief and you get involved with the apocalypse-of-the-week by how it's causing trouble for the Thieves' Guild. The Thieves' Guild quests are deep enough to take you through the whole game, and you only become Guildmaster right before you tackle the final boss. Meanwhile, the other Guilds are simply not accessible. If you want to do those, then you start a new character as a Fighter, or a Mage, or something tailored to the game you're in like Imperial Soldier or Nordic Loyalist.

I'm also not keen on this as written; I prefer my backstory to be something I can roleplay with and not something the game inflicts on me, and I prefer my barriers to to be less binary. Have some logical restrictions in place and have them gradually get more restrictive as you get higher in the ranks, but don't forbid a clever player from finding ways around those restrictions.

EX: Joining the Mage's Guild requires you to cast three spells, but you can fudge it a little by using scrolls or staves. Then a later quest requires you to go through a dungeon where all the monsters can only be harmed by magic, so you could technically get through that with nothing but scrolls too, but it would take an impractical number of scrolls. Faction quests that will hurt your reputation with a different faction if completed; Thieves' Guild quest to rob the Mage's Guild, Fighter's Guild quest to kill some Thieves' Guild people, etc. That sort of thing.

Discourage multiple factions, make it difficult to get high ranks in all of them certainly, but don't outright forbid it, as in most cases it feels arbitrary. And do have them interact to some extent; as-is most of the Skyrim factions exist in their own completely-separate bubbles.

[veti]

Discourage multiple factions, make it difficult to get high ranks in all of them certainly, but don't outright forbid it, as in most cases it feels arbitrary. And do have them interact to some extent; as-is most of the Skyrim factions exist in their own completely-separate bubbles.

Well, it makes sense that you can't simultaneously hold prominent positions in both the legion and the stormcloaks, but apart from that... I'd agree. I may be forgetting something, but I can't offhand think of any case where Skyrim factions actually interact with each other.

Maybe you could count the bit where becoming a vampire cures your lycanthropy. Maybe.

The reason for that is that every interaction increases the potential complexity of the questlines geometrically. Which means, way more writing, dialogue, and testing.

[deuterio12]

Discourage multiple factions, make it difficult to get high ranks in all of them certainly, but don't outright forbid it, as in most cases it feels arbitrary. And do have them interact to some extent; as-is most of the Skyrim factions exist in their own completely-separate bubbles.

Well in some cases it makes sense like if you're the mistress of the Thieve's Guild or the Assassins, you only made it by knowing how to keep a low profile and want to keep it that way. Very few people know about your high rank and you want to keep it that way.

But still with so many organizations there's the question of why exactly the regional arch-mage is applying for a mercenary group or to fight in the arena or whatever. That should be the kind of thing that would raise a lot of questions and probably make you skip a few ranks right ahead. If the Arch-Mage wants to fight in the arena, they're not gonna throw them at some newbies.

So clearly the protagonist is a sleeper agent infiltrating everything, always working his way up from the bottom, keeping their true allegiances secret.

[Vinyadan]

why exactly the regional arch-mage is applying for a mercenary group or to fight in the arena or whatever.

Trebonius is staring at you with suspicion.

Although even he didn't throw himself on a newbie.

[Balmas]

I still want my Elder Scrolls game that tailors the main quest to your class. Playing a Thief? You get an origin story befitting a Thief and you get involved with the apocalypse-of-the-week by how it's causing trouble for the Thieves' Guild. The Thieves' Guild quests are deep enough to take you through the whole game, and you only become Guildmaster right before you tackle the final boss. Meanwhile, the other Guilds are simply not accessible. If you want to do those, then you start a new character as a Fighter, or a Mage, or something tailored to the game you're in like Imperial Soldier or Nordic Loyalist.

I really can't agree with this, for a number of reasons. You're talking an immense amount of time, programming, and effort--in essence, one version of the main quest for every faction. You'd need to carefully plan out the game, and plot things out so that people are able to tackle all the challenges you'd throw at them in that run.

And it can be done, too. Take a look at Divinity: Original Sin II, which has six playable characters, each with their own backstories and quests that interact and weave throughout the others' quests. But that's a highly curated game, with a well-written main quest that simply doesn't allow the player to really step out of the line of what the devs thought you could do.

That's not what I want from an Elder Scrolls game. And, to be frank, even if Bethesda managed to pull it off--if they managed to make well-written, independent stories for each of the guilds, with satisfying backstories for the player character--I'd still rather they didn't touch anything to do with my backstory. I'd rather have the freedom to make my own character. For instance, I hold Chadwick, Chord, and Gabriel a lot closer to my heart than I do Geralt of Rivia or the Red Prince. They're mine, and that makes a difference.

[factotum]

And, to be frank, even if Bethesda managed to pull it off--if they managed to make well-written, independent stories for each of the guilds, with satisfying backstories for the player character--I'd still rather they didn't touch anything to do with my backstory.

I would definitely agree there. Your character in ES games being a blank slate is one of the things that makes them great. However, I don't see why Rodin's idea necessarily requires them to mess around with that--I know he said he wanted it, but you could still have a main quest tailored to your class without needing to force a backstory onto you.

As for people saying "Oh, more testing etc", well, God forbid we should ask the developers to do their jobs properly. Bethesda in particular are far too prone to shovelling out bug-ridden games and letting the players be the beta testers, and they only usually get a pass for it because the games are good enough to compensate for the problems.

[Spore]

That is why I love to RP as a "bardic" drifter - even though every game under the sun seems to reinterpret what "bardic" means. You should be able to bull**** your way around low level requirements. It brings sense to games that would otherwise simply ignore your class and go "Oh, you're the chosen one. You're an illiterate barbarian from the north but feel welcome in our library with the most important books on this continent."

I love my boy Urag gro-Shub, but in the case of emergency he could not protect his books from a simple flame breath. Granted he would have this problem with any fire spell too, but I can assume the other students aren't as aggressively dumb as the player character can sometimes be.

[Hagashager]

Trebonius is staring at you with suspicion.

Although even he didn't throw himself on a newbie.

Trebonius was also a hack and a fool. Ranys may have been bitter and conniving but she wasn't wrong to criticize Trebonius.

His fight with the Nerevarine was a completely petty ****-measuring contest to see who the true arch-mage was.

In my game he lasted all of about 7 seconds. Coincidentally Absorb Health is a bonkers-good spell.

[The_Jackal]

As for people saying "Oh, more testing etc", well, God forbid we should ask the developers to do their jobs properly. Bethesda in particular are far too prone to shovelling out bug-ridden games and letting the players be the beta testers, and they only usually get a pass for it because the games are good enough to compensate for the problems.

This is a straw man. The question of whether Bethsoft releases buggy games and how exclusively linear, branching, or generic they make their story content are completely unrelated decisions. Yes, Bethesda has routinely sold buggy games, and so long as those games were single-player and could be compensated for with liberal use of quicksave and modding, I don't think many players were that disturbed. This forum wouldn't nearly be so popular if that weren't true. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning was a relatively bug-free game, yet completely lacked the staying power of Elder Scrolls due to the design decisions made by the developer.

But it's important to understand that exclusivity and branching in a RPG have real costs. You need look no further than Outer Worlds to see that cost in action. Sure, it's a good game, you might argue that it's a great game, but it's very short, and that's because the branching and exclusive decisions offered to the player all take the same amount of time to develop, yet for most players, many of those options will never be plumbed. So really, the question comes down to this: What difference does it make if you're able to avoid content by player choice as opposed to avoiding it by developer choice? If you don't want to join the College of Winterhold, nobody's holding a gun to your head. Just don't do it. Don't want to murder Grelod the Kind? Don't do it. The only real difference is that in an Elder Scrolls game, those choices are more flexible than if you're in Outer Worlds. But in both cases, you are, by nature of the platform, constrained to running down the rails the designers have laid down for you, and you'll only get so much track for your $60.

[LibraryOgre]

Trebonius was also a hack and a fool. Ranys may have been bitter and conniving but she wasn't wrong to criticize Trebonius.

His fight with the Nerevarine was a completely petty ****-measuring contest to see who the true arch-mage was.

In my game he lasted all of about 7 seconds. Coincidentally Absorb Health is a bonkers-good spell.

It is one of my consistent favorites. Nothing like "I kill you while healing me" to make fights a lot easier.

Though, thinking about it, an Absorb Int spell might do fantastic things, too. "Goodbye, Magicka."

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Well, it makes sense that you can't simultaneously hold prominent positions in both the legion and the stormcloaks, but apart from that... I'd agree. I may be forgetting something, but I can't offhand think of any case where Skyrim factions actually interact with each other.

The closest I can recall are some slight dialog changes. But they were dialog changes and nothing else.

The reason for that is that every interaction increases the potential complexity of the questlines geometrically. Which means, way more writing, dialogue, and testing.

Thing is, they don't have to have all the factions interact with all the other factions, in fact that would have the opposite problem - it would feel contrived and it would be obvious that they were just checking boxes at that point. Just a handful of crossovers would do to make it believable and liven up repeat playthroughs. There's no viable reason for the Companions to go attack the College of Winterhold, but hunting down a Dark Brotherhood assassin is logical. The Thieves' Guild probably wouldn't rob the Brotherhood, but they could get a job to steal Wuuthrad from an interested buyer.

And yes it would be a little more work, but what are these people getting paid for if not to make good games?

[halfeye]

And yes it would be a little more work, but what are these people getting paid for if not to make good games?

They are being paid by the hour, and you are talking about more hours. The price would go up.

[Spore]

They are being paid by the hour, and you are talking about more hours. The price would go up.

Minor point but I think most game devs are not paid by the hour but monthly.

[Morty]

Generally speaking, if you ask something to the effect of "how hard could it be" regarding game development, the answer is probably "pretty damn hard, actually".

Though really, TES is a series focused on solo play that still uses a skill system more suited to a traditional party-based RPG. And still acts like warrior/mage/rogue is a good split, though at least it's very unobtrusive in Skyrim - it only really affects the first three star sign stones.

[Triaxx]

They already end up working 80 hour weeks, so...

Then again, before you go and complain about the making of the game, I suggest you try modding. Make a fairly small dungeon. The CK isn't the easiest thing to work with, and scripting? Yeah, so many things that can go wrong. It's really not easy. And while there are modders who do amazing things, consider they're not getting paid for it and so can spend all the time they want on it. Or as little as they want.

Now, while I won't let them off the hook for bugs that have been there since Morrowind, I don't object to them not catching EVERY SINGLE BUG EVER!!!!, when it's something new from an otherwise awesome game.

[halfeye]

Minor point but I think most game devs are not paid by the hour but monthly.

Salaried, piecework, hourly rate, it all works out that doing more takes either more time, or more people, and the customer, which is us, pays for the extra.

[The_Jackal]

Generally speaking, if you ask something to the effect of "how hard could it be" regarding game development, the answer is probably "pretty damn hard, actually".

Though really, TES is a series focused on solo play that still uses a skill system more suited to a traditional party-based RPG. And still acts like warrior/mage/rogue is a good split, though at least it's very unobtrusive in Skyrim - it only really affects the first three star sign stones.

I don't know if I agree with that assessment. While the stones make for some choices which anticipate certain playstyles, the net effect is pretty minimal, as there's nothing preventing you from hybridizing your skills and making any kind of character that the designers have supported. And as for coming up with a skill or playstyle the designers haven't anticipated and built into the game, that's a constraint any computer game is going to have. But in that case, TES offers more flexibility than virtually any other RPG on the market, in terms of unrivaled moddability.

In fact, I'd argue that TES does a better job of giving players the flexibility to conceive and execute their character as good as or better than any other fantasy game on the market. Certainly you get more flexibility than, say, Witcher, or WoW. Maybe Path of Exile, but then you're still playing a relatively un-customizable avatar with little to no gameplay variety, just horde-mode ad nauseum.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

They are being paid by the hour, and you are talking about more hours. The price would go up.

Programmers are usually salary.

They already end up working 80 hour weeks, so...

Then again, before you go and complain about the making of the game, I suggest you try modding.

I did. You may recall I've commented on it before.

Make a fairly small dungeon. The CK isn't the easiest thing to work with, and scripting? Yeah, so many things that can go wrong. It's really not easy. And while there are modders who do amazing things, consider they're not getting paid for it and so can spend all the time they want on it. Or as little as they want.

It's not anywhere near as impossible as you're trying to make it out to be. The trickiest part I've run into so far is dialog, as there's a whole bunch of unintuitive stuff that needs to be done, but once you know what you need to do it's merely eye-gougingly tedious, not difficult as such. Creating NPCs - at least the physical model - is very similar to making your character in-game, except you can add clothes, loot and so on. (Incidentally Best In Slot has some excellent tutorials which mostly follow the Creation Kit wiki except you can actually see where to click.) Adding new warpaints and such needed some specific save formats and IIRC a plugin for Photoshop, but that's an equipment thing not a difficulty thing.

Modders can do amazing things yes, but consider they are ONLY doing it in their free time. One gets A LOT better at something when one does it all day every day. Modders also have to hunt down tutorials for anything they don't already know how to do, whereas Bethesda should have that sort of thing documented somewhere easily accessible for their actual devs, and if not they can go ping the other devs since they have been using more or less the same stuff since forever.

Professional devs also have the advantage that they can specialize. If I want to mod a Cold Flame Atronach into Skyrim, I personally have to make the skin in Photoshop, hook it up to the model, fill out the monster entry form with any changes I want to make, go into the game and test it. A dev team, especially a big one, usually has QA testers who do nothing but test. They can and do have dedicated artists who do all the mucking around in Photoshop, and dedicated writers for the stories/dialog etc. If I as a modder am good with Photoshop but terrible with animations, then odds are my mod will just have terrible animations. If I as a dev am good with Photoshop but terrible with animations, then I do the bits I need to with Photoshop and then pass it on to an animator.

Tl:dr: I stand by my original statement. They're getting paid for this they should be doing a good job.

[Caelestion]

Modders don't have bosses or investors standing around, telling them what they can and can't do, imposing deadlines and generally treating them like they work there. In an ideal world, everything will be perfect all the time.

[Rynjin]

Modders don't have bosses or investors standing around, telling them what they can and can't do, imposing deadlines and generally treating them like they work there. In an ideal world, everything will be perfect all the time.

Game doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be better.

An attitude of "Eh, good enough, people will lap up whatever slop we put in front of them" is how we ended up with Fallout 4 and 76.

[halfeye]

Game doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be better.

An attitude of "Eh, good enough, people will lap up whatever slop we put in front of them" is how we ended up with Fallout 4 and 76.

Graphically Fallout 4 was marvelous, in parts. The dog was an Alsatian, what USAians call a German Sheppard. On looks, it looked like a film most of the time.

There were exceptions, but mostly the graphics were very good.

That's one bunch of people (the artists) who did their jobs right in Fallout 4.

The people who make the decisions to "ship it now" are managers and marketeers, blaming the programmers for bugs that they weren't allowed the time to fix is mistaken.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Modders don't have bosses or investors standing around, telling them what they can and can't do, imposing deadlines and generally treating them like they work there. In an ideal world, everything will be perfect all the time.

Devs can, and should push back on impossible deadlines, excessive work hours, rapidly changing requirements etc. Thing is, they have to do that collectively. And that is on the devs to push back, it is not on us the players to forgive the shoddy workmanship that results from them putting up with poor practices. A good developer has the responsibility to raise issues that interfere with their work, and that includes things like unrealistic goals, objectives that keep changing and so on.

Also, if a modder runs into a difficulty like, say, they don't have Photoshop or their microphone breaks, they're out of luck until they can buy what they need, where a dev can go 'Hey boss! I need to expense this.'

[Morty]

I don't know if I agree with that assessment. While the stones make for some choices which anticipate certain playstyles, the net effect is pretty minimal, as there's nothing preventing you from hybridizing your skills and making any kind of character that the designers have supported.

That... is the point I was making, yes. Skyrim mostly does away with the warrior/thief/mage nonsense because it only affects those stones.

And as for coming up with a skill or playstyle the designers haven't anticipated and built into the game, that's a constraint any computer game is going to have. But in that case, TES offers more flexibility than virtually any other RPG on the market, in terms of unrivaled moddability.

In fact, I'd argue that TES does a better job of giving players the flexibility to conceive and execute their character as good as or better than any other fantasy game on the market. Certainly you get more flexibility than, say, Witcher, or WoW. Maybe Path of Exile, but then you're still playing a relatively un-customizable avatar with little to no gameplay variety, just horde-mode ad nauseum.

I'm not talking about variety, I'm talking about quality and balance of the skills. For instance, there's really no good reason for Pickpocket and Lockpicking to be separate skills. Or for either of them to be separate from Stealth in the first place.

[veti]

For instance, there's really no good reason for Pickpocket and Lockpicking to be separate skills. Or for either of them to be separate from Stealth in the first place.

Picking locks is a purely mechanical skill. Picking pockets requires the ability to read people. They're very different skills, and both are almost entirely unrelated to stealth.

Gameplay wise, picking locks is a useful skill in all ES titles if you want to get rich, even as a totally shiny unbesmirchable paladin. I've played characters with no stealth skill at all, who were nevertheless pretty good at locks. And stealth is a skill for scouts and rangers who would never dream of picking a pocket.

To be honest, I wish they'd stop with the "pick pocket" skill entirely. As a way to make money, it sucks. As a quest requirement, it sucks even more. Quest writers clearly don't have any good ideas for how to make it interesting, so on the maybe one time per game when it becomes relevant, it's just a matter of piling on your best enchantments, quaffing a potion, and save scumming until it works.

The only reason it's there at all is because it's grandfathered in from the TTRPGs that were the original inspiration for TES.