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2020-09-29, 12:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
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2020-09-29, 04:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
Yes, well, that's - what "not having time to finish something" looks like. And many other quests in Skyrim suffers from exactly the same thing, although to a lesser degree: they leave many plausible endings/avenues simply unresolved. A lot of content was written, and dialogue recorded for it - then cut simply because nobody had time to finish testing and troubleshooting it, which is why the 'cutting room floor' mod exists.
"None of us likes to be hated, none of us likes to be shunned. A natural result of these conditions is, that we consciously or unconsciously pay more attention to tuning our opinions to our neighbor’s pitch and preserving his approval than we do to examining the opinions searchingly and seeing to it that they are right and sound." - Mark Twain
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2020-09-29, 05:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
Game publishers make profits hand over fist whether they take a bit of extra time for polish or not. Maybe not if they did it for every title, but for flagship series like the Elder Scrolls games? Absolutely.
You seem to find it impossible for the companies to make their money back without raising the prices or forcing crunch hours...and that's simply not true. The profit margins on a AAA game are unbelievably huge already; they can afford to make them better, and anything else is a myth those publishers claiming otherwise desperately hope you believe.
You keep trotting out the Outer Worlds as some kind of "gotcha" in this conversation, as if it somehow proves your point. The game has about 15-20 hours of playtime in its main story, with multiple choices per quest and a few neat sidequests. People keep harping on the "12 minutes" thing but it really makes them look stupid. You do know that speedruns are designed to beat games unreasonably fast, yes? You can beat Skyrim in a bit over an hour as well.
In any case, a 20 hour RPG with fully voiced dialogue and solid choices was made on an extremely SMALL fraction of the budget that the typical Bethesda game gets. All without any reports of overwork in their staff that I've heard of, and without raising the price of the game. That scales up just as easily; not at a clear 1:1 where every 20 hours of content is going to cost that same fraction, but close enough.
Given a higher budget than the few million Obsidian had and a longer dev cycle, if Bethesda is not capable of producing a better product, it is because of their own incompetence, not any reality of the industry.
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2020-09-29, 05:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
I wonder how things would be different if they decided to leave the civil war unresolved... except in DLC.
So, you have the story there from the outset, you have some skirmishes on either side... then they have DLC that resolves the war, possibly even involving something other than the usual mechanics to resolve it (i.e. some sandtable wars, for example, culminating in you facing down with the opposing general).
This also has me thinking of how I would have appreciated a "**** it, I'm the Dovahkiin, I am king now" option.Last edited by LibraryOgre; 2020-09-29 at 05:35 PM.
The Cranky Gamer
*It isn't realism, it's verisimilitude; the appearance of truth within the framework of the game.
*Picard management tip: Debate honestly. The goal is to arrive at the truth, not at your preconception.
*Mutant Dawn for Savage Worlds!
*The One Deck Engine: Gaming on a budget
Written by Me on DriveThru RPG
There are almost 400,000 threads on this site. If you need me to address a thread as a moderator, include a link.
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2020-09-29, 06:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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2020-09-29, 06:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
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2020-09-29, 06:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
I'm reminded of the lighthouse quest in Solitude. They even had a dialog option for threatening Mr. Come-See-Me-When-You-Get-Bored-Stranger to tell the guards! But no actual option to do so.
Honestly I'm a little surprised the Medes didn't at least try to get the Dragonborn married off to someone in their family tree. It's as close as they were ever going to come to getting their own Dragonborn dynasty, and the PR boost from that would probably be worth whatever they had to do to smooth over the whole, 'sorry we almost executed you without trial' bit.
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2020-09-29, 06:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
You know, they could still do it, even after the game released. The Empire can still send in a bigger army. There could emerge a new Nord faction led by a charismatic pagan warrior priest. And it's not like the Stormcloaks have to like this new movement, or the Imperials all get along. There could be Imperial pretenders involved, or simple mutiny in the ranks, or accusations of serving the Thalmor, rather than the Emperor. There could be legends of Talos himself appearing under disguise, this time stoking resentment among Imperials.
And the Thalmor could strike. Frankly, they looked far more punchable and interesting than the other two factions.
Skyrim: New Vegas would have been a cool DLC.Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
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2020-09-30, 10:54 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
Okay, so what degree of polish would you think is necessary to satisfy every conceivable RPG grognard's complaints about the game? Also, considering Skyrim is one of the most successful RPG franchises ever in spite of those gripes, what precisely do you think Bethesda's incentive is to keep pouring work into a product that is not only sufficient to turn a profit, but to get re-released successfully numerous times?
You seem to find it impossible for the companies to make their money back without raising the prices or forcing crunch hours...and that's simply not true. The profit margins on a AAA game are unbelievably huge already; they can afford to make them better, and anything else is a myth those publishers claiming otherwise desperately hope you believe.
You keep trotting out the Outer Worlds as some kind of "gotcha" in this conversation, as if it somehow proves your point. The game has about 15-20 hours of playtime in its main story, with multiple choices per quest and a few neat sidequests. People keep harping on the "12 minutes" thing but it really makes them look stupid. You do know that speedruns are designed to beat games unreasonably fast, yes? You can beat Skyrim in a bit over an hour as well.
In any case, a 20 hour RPG with fully voiced dialogue and solid choices was made on an extremely SMALL fraction of the budget that the typical Bethesda game gets. All without any reports of overwork in their staff that I've heard of, and without raising the price of the game. That scales up just as easily; not at a clear 1:1 where every 20 hours of content is going to cost that same fraction, but close enough.
Given a higher budget than the few million Obsidian had and a longer dev cycle, if Bethesda is not capable of producing a better product, it is because of their own incompetence, not any reality of the industry.
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2020-09-30, 02:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
Last I checked, an hour is five times as long as 12 minutes, and the reason I use the example is because it proves my point. Getting choices does not meaningfully increase the amount of content or value you get from the game. It just takes the same amount of content (or less) and interleaves it behind narrative decision points. Unless you're determined to re-play with every possible option and a cheat-sheet of where the meaningful decisions are, you're just paying for content you won't see. End result: you get less game.
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2020-09-30, 02:41 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
Despite all the rereleases, Skyrim isn't a franchise...
yet anyway.
Well, considering Outer Worlds sold about 2.5 million copies, and Skyrim sold about ten times that.
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2020-09-30, 06:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
Level of polish? Honestly, not much more. That's the frustrating thing about Skyrim specifically. Maybe another 3-6 months in development to make the Civil War...playable. Because as-is it's a dead questline with pretty much nothing to it that acts as a millstone around the rest of the game; I don't mean that metaphorically, a whole bunch of glitches arise with mods in particular due specifically to the Civil War questline's partial implementation into EVERYTHING.
But we aren't really talking about Skyrim, we're talking about future Bethesda games in relation to things they released AFTER Skyrim. Namely Fallout 4 and 76. Games which lacked a severe degree of polish in terms of narrative in particular as compared to any other Bethesda game in recent memory.
Bethesda's incentive? Making a good product. They get paid either way.
Zenimax-and-now-Microsoft's incentive? Making a product that keeps Bethesda's brand name recognition as a "hit maker". 4 and especially 76 have done a number on Bethesda's reputation. Beyond that, Microsoft likely wants some of that critical acclaim that Sony exclusives have been getting these last few years. The next Bethesda game could in part be a console seller, and it needs to be worth it for that to be the case; another 76 won't cut it, and another FO4 may not either.
The problem with your "sales numbers > all" metric for game success is that it's an extremely shallow top level analysis. Sales numbers only matter to a certain point, beyond which what matters is the sales numbers of the next game.
Your point makes zero sense. Content that you do not see in a first playthrough is not "less game". It is just game you haven't seen yet. Or are you going to claim the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series are failures as well? That would seem to undermine your point a fair bit, if so. I have my own problems with late rentries of each series but even I wouldn't go so far as to say they're failures by any metric.
And this is patently absurd. The game costs will only be smaller because you'll be making a smaller game because your studio is smaller. Trying to make a maximum budget AAA game as a smaller studio is asking to go bankrupt, because the costs remain the same but your ability to create that game are smaller, because your team is smaller. In the absolute best case scenario it takes you longer, which means the costs for HR, benefits, etc. are going to rise commensurately, because you're taking 3 years to make what a team thrice your size could make in one.
And again we come back to the really shallow "sales numbers > all" metric, which I've already explained is silly.
But beyond that, I'm not saying the Skyrim devs are incompetent; it was you who implied that by saying that a team with ten times the budget and manpower would be incapable of making a game similarly complex but ten times the size of another game from a smaller company.
Beyond that, you do realize the "market" is made up of PEOPLE, correct? I AM part of the market, meaning by definition what I care about, at least some part of the market does.
Finally, yes, of course the Outer Worlds fell off quicker; it doesn't have 6 games for people to chat about and does, as you say, have "less content". It's a much smaller game, which you should know as that seems to be the only thing you care about.
That does not make it a WORSE game. There's no thread for the game Control either, and it was one of the biggest games last year. Sometimes games end, and people stop talking about them for a while. That is part of the natural cycle of any kind of media, and claiming it is some kind of objective proof that the media in question isn't "cared about" is, again, and extremely shallow metric to judge media by.
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2020-09-30, 06:22 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
And again we come back to the really shallow "sales numbers > all" metric, which I've already explained is silly.
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2020-09-30, 06:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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2020-10-01, 03:28 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
Out of curiosity, what other metric would a studio/company use to determine whether something was a success or not?
Beyond that, you do realize the "market" is made up of PEOPLE, correct? I AM part of the market, meaning by definition what I care about, at least some part of the market does.
Finally, yes, of course the Outer Worlds fell off quicker; it doesn't have 6 games for people to chat about and does, as you say, have "less content". It's a much smaller game, which you should know as that seems to be the only thing you care about.
That is part of the natural cycle of any kind of media, and claiming it is some kind of objective proof that the media in question isn't "cared about" is, again, and extremely shallow metric to judge media by.
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2020-10-01, 05:17 AM (ISO 8601)
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2020-10-01, 05:36 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
Originally Posted by Divayth Fyr
A good example to look at is long running franchises like Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed. Particularly the latter.
Ass Creed 2 sold exceptionally well because of the critical reception of the first Assassin's Creed; which to my recollection did not do gangbusters in terms of sales, but well enough to get by at the time. Brotherhood and Revelations coasted on that, but people started to burn out on the series; AC 3 sold very well because people wanted to finish the story started in the "AC 2 trilogy", but sales fell off due to the relatively low fan reception of that game for AC 4, which was very well received so people bought a bunch of copies of Syndicate, then EVEN MORE of Unity.
However, the critical and fan reception of Unity was so horrendous that Ubisoft stopped making Assassin's Creed a yearly series, released Origins to relative critical success (though less copies than Unity; I don't have exact numbers, but every source I can find in a quick search seems to agree that Unity is the highest selling game in the series), and then "refreshed" the market with Odyssey: a somewhat different take on the series; the latter three are the best selling in the series so far (in part due to the market being bigger than it was a while ago, to be fair).
Say what you will about Ubisoft as a company, they know how to very efficiently milk a franchise and keep fans coming back, and that relies on in part actually listening to what the fans say they want rather than just the sales numbers; if they had, the series would have probably flopped completely with those lackluster titles in the middle, with the good sales numbers not carrying over to the newer titles.
Originally Posted by Divayth Fyr
My most played game is Team Fortress 2, with somewhere upwards of around 2000 hours (and I haven't played it regularly in over 5 years). It is a very replayable game, due to it being multiplayer.
Do I think it's BETTER than games I've played less...no.Last edited by Rynjin; 2020-10-01 at 05:37 AM.
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2020-10-01, 06:27 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
My FFRP characters. Avatar by Ashen Lilies. Sigatars by Ashen Lilies, Gullara and Purple Eagle.
Interested in the Nexus FFRP setting? See our Discord server.
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2020-10-01, 06:46 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
Just to clarify, my gripe with Skyrim boils down to the writing (and the interface, and something else that I'll remember later I guess), and I did call it an awesome game. I can't really talk about FO4, which I never finished because I felt overwhelmed by the crafting system and pissed off by a mod that made settlement more varied but also made placement a lot more frustrating, or about FO76, which I never touched.
The matter of choices is an interesting one. It came up in Wolfenstein 2014 and 2015 (aka New Order and Old Blood), both Zenimax games in which you had to make a Sophie's choice. In New Order, you are given no elements to make your choice, and it's extremely dislikable; if you refuse by inaction, in early versions you could not progress the game, as you are literally pinned to the floor, while, nowadays, your character simply gets shot in the head, game over. In spite of the weight the game places on this choice, its effects are mostly cosmetic and related to different side characters (a couple in a fairly big roster). There also are slightly different routes you can take in the levels and one different weapon in your fairly big arsenal. So it's some sort of middle ground -- we give choice, but the game plays fundamentally the same, whatever choice you make, so you don't have to replay it. However, if you want to see what you missed, you have to replay something very similar.
In 2015, there's a lot less emphasis on it, and it's more of a matter of whether you turn left or right (you might not even notice that you're making a choice), and the difference in results is minimal. It's a generally a far less heavyhanded (and, for me, more enjoyable*) game.
*the moon base in New Order was awesome, however. In general, New Order is very carefully crafted and researched in its settings, although its plot is very splatter and vaguely reminiscent of Nazisploitation (evil doctor, cruel Nazi woman with subjugated lover).Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
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2020-10-01, 06:53 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
“Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling, it's all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I'm not a pious hermit, I haven't done only good in my life. But if I'm to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.”
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2020-10-01, 07:18 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
My FFRP characters. Avatar by Ashen Lilies. Sigatars by Ashen Lilies, Gullara and Purple Eagle.
Interested in the Nexus FFRP setting? See our Discord server.
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2020-10-01, 07:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
Climbing checks let you ascend increasingly non-vertical surfaces? So, if I have a good climbing skill, I might go up the side of High Hrothgar, rather than up the path. Set a certain degree that is default climbable, and higher than that requires a climbing check?
Oh, and in my restart of Morrowind, I am doing MUCH better. I beat Firemoth (adding a spell to destroy his intelligence, and another to destroy his endurance made him a LOT easier), and I am much happier with my magic items... I made my pants heal fatigue, my shirt heal health, and my belt help me levitate. Since I always want those three effects, and always want those three items, it means less switching of rings and amulets.Last edited by LibraryOgre; 2020-10-01 at 08:00 AM.
The Cranky Gamer
*It isn't realism, it's verisimilitude; the appearance of truth within the framework of the game.
*Picard management tip: Debate honestly. The goal is to arrive at the truth, not at your preconception.
*Mutant Dawn for Savage Worlds!
*The One Deck Engine: Gaming on a budget
Written by Me on DriveThru RPG
There are almost 400,000 threads on this site. If you need me to address a thread as a moderator, include a link.
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2020-10-01, 08:04 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
“Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling, it's all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I'm not a pious hermit, I haven't done only good in my life. But if I'm to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.”
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2020-10-01, 08:33 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
I'm deeply sceptical of its being "trivial" to introduce. But I'll play along. What would the cutoff point be for what kind of slope needs this skill to be ascended? Would a character without a starting bonus to the skill be unable to climb up anything but a gentle slope? Or would they simply do so slowly? Like in Morrowind, where not starting with acrobatics and athletics means our character can only make small hops and moves slowly. Annoying, but ultimately irrelevant.
But conversely, it also means every single character would advance it sooner or later. Since they all have to walk places and climb uneven terrain. If levitation is a thing, then perhaps it's just every character that doesn't specialize in Alteration. But even then, I'm not going to cast levitation for every steep hill, so the climbing skill will still go up. I guess it's technically better than acrobatics and athletics in that there is actually an alternative to using it.Last edited by Morty; 2020-10-01 at 08:34 AM.
My FFRP characters. Avatar by Ashen Lilies. Sigatars by Ashen Lilies, Gullara and Purple Eagle.
Interested in the Nexus FFRP setting? See our Discord server.
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2020-10-01, 08:55 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
Funny thing about F4. You can complete it without any crafting skills. Want a mod? Turns out you can unbolt it and plug it in freely. You only need a particular amount of skill to create the mod.
So play it as a straight looter shooter.
Climbing in Skyrim would be hilarious.I am trying out LPing. Check out my channel here: Triaxx2
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2020-10-01, 09:21 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
Why not have it so you have some sort of climbing stamina reserve that runs out as you climb, and the skill just increases how much of that you have? That will directly make it so a higher skill makes for climbing bigger things in a way that ought to be pretty easy to grasp.
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2020-10-01, 09:28 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
“Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling, it's all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I'm not a pious hermit, I haven't done only good in my life. But if I'm to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.”
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2020-10-01, 12:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
The question remains as to how steep does a wall/slope need to be before it starts draining stamina. And how hard an obstacle can a character with no climbing skill at all overcome. Also, what happens if you run out of stamina midway, because you miscalculated? Do you need to go back down? What stops you from climbing the same rock over and over to train? And finally, what's the benefit of spending time, effort and resources to balance it all?
I don't know about a "glut" of options. You've given one example of a game that's different from Elder Scrolls on a number of fundamental levels.My FFRP characters. Avatar by Ashen Lilies. Sigatars by Ashen Lilies, Gullara and Purple Eagle.
Interested in the Nexus FFRP setting? See our Discord server.
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2020-10-01, 01:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
I dont understand where the issue is here. Any answers we could give here are fairly arbitrary. When the question is "could they do it" the specific details of how they implement it matter very little. Tie it to athletics with sprinting and swimming, make it its own separate skill, it doesnt really matter, there are a lot of different ways they could add it to the game without even really needing to change any of the fundamentals around it (bar level design).
“Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling, it's all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I'm not a pious hermit, I haven't done only good in my life. But if I'm to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.”
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2020-10-01, 01:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Elder Scrolls XVI: Sworn to Carry Your Burdens
Slippery slope fallacy, anyone? Skyrim doesn't have hand-crafted quests?
Look, I'm not trying to present Bethesda as a flawless developer, I'm as critical of them as anyone, I'm just more critical of the people who think they deserve 3D game with a physics engine and a combat system that also is as narratively corkscrewed as Zork. Every developer has to make choices as to what will or won't make it into their game. Features cost money, and branching stories are an INCREDIBLY expensive feature in a fully voiced and animated game, one that the vast majority of the market won't appreciate.
Look, you wanna tell me that the Fallout story is bad? Or that the Civil War feels thin and unfinished? Or that radiant quests are lazy and unrewarding? Sure, I'm with you. I totally agree. But you want a completely parallel alternative to joining the Dark Brotherhood? Or you insist that you have a choice to betray Nocturnal instead of swearing fealty to her? Well, I'm trying to explain to you why that's a really, really big ask. Would those things be nice to have? Sure, why not? But they come at the expense of other content in your game.