Bethesda Softworks - Next Game Revealed Thursday

That reminds me that I really need to finish putting together that retrospective/review I started on Battlespire... last year? Good grief. I hate crunch mode.

Supposedly, it's not THAT bad if you can get it to run.
 
The whole "huge autogenerated world" has always been major part of TES. Hopefully they have seen by now that it doesnt work. The world doesnt have any depth. Bad thing is the series have sold well so they might not change this.
Sorry, but :wall:

Did it cross your mind that maybe it simply means that huge autogenerated worlds actually do work, just not for you?

I have my own issues with Bethesdas latest offerings, but frankly its a bit silly to criticize them for whats one of their main advertising points and what most fans of the series would probably describe as being at the very core of the TES experience.
 
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Sorry, but :wall:

Did it cross your mind that maybe it simply means that huge autogenerated worlds actually do work, just not for you?

I have my own issues with Bethesdas latest offerings, but frankly its a bit silly to criticize them for whats one of their main advertising points and what most fans of the series would probably describe as being at the very core of the TES experience.

Well, I think he WAS speaking from his own point of view. I can't know that, but such is my suspicion.

Anyway, I agree with him.

But I'm not sure it's one of their main advertising points. In fact, since Morrowind - Todd Howard has been pretty vocal about how everything is hand-placed. Their marketing has emphasised a huge free-form world, where the player decides what to do, how to do it, and when to do it.

The problem is that their hand-placing FEELS auto-generated. That's kinda counterproductive to the whole concept, if you ask me.

I'm sure there is a lot of auto-generated content in Oblivion, but AFAIK - they've claimed that everything is, in fact, made and placed by hand.

Probably, they're not talking about loot tables and scaling enemies - but the world, towns, and dungeons. I'm pretty sure they marketed the game like that. Same was the case for Morrowind.
 
Sorry, but :wall:

Did it cross your mind that maybe it simply means that huge autogenerated worlds actually do work, just not for you?
Sorry for not putting IMHO into the post. Ive stopped writing them because it feels stupid to repeat in every post that the thing written in my post is "my opinnion". Of course it is my opinnion by default (unless I say othervice which i didnt) - I wrote it!

Now as for TES though there are several cases like radiant AI, NPC speech, mazes of daggerfall, huge world filled with repeative stuff, etc that speaks for teh failure of random generated world. Many people not just me have made critics about it.

If you look at the series the success of TES is actually related to the diminishing size of the world. Each new game while been more successful than the last has also been smaller and less randomized. Hopefully the trend will continue.
 
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I think part of the reason things *felt* auto-generated in Oblivion was due to the level/loot scaling. I never felt that way with Morrowind though...
 
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I think part of the reason things *felt* auto-generated in Oblivion was due to the level/loot scaling. I never felt that way with Morrowind though...

Not even with the dungeons?
 
Not even with the dungeons?


I suppose if you're comparing MW to an average crpg that might have a dozen or so dungeons then I could understand why it might feel that way after a while. It has to be incredibly hard for devs to put that many dungeons in a game (approx 350) and keep them feeling all unique.

Personally, I was satisfied with the variety of dungeon types in MW, especially with the placement of unique items.
 
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I suppose if you're comparing MW to an average crpg that might have a dozen or so dungeons then I could understand why it might feel that way after a while. It has to be incredibly hard for devs to put that many dungeons in a game (approx 350) and keep them feeling all unique. I was satisfied with the variety of dungeon types in MW , especially the placement of unique items.

Out of curiosity, would you rather have 350 MW dungeons than, say, 30 dungeons of the sort we're talking about?
 
Well then it would depend on the setting, and also what your definition of "good" is. I thought the smaller dungeons in Morrowind were somewhat realistic, and I enjoyed that aspect. Lets face it, giant cave systems with multiple floors are not that plentiful in reality.
 
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Well then it would depend on the setting, and also what your definition of "good" is. I thought the smaller dungeons in Morrowind were somewhat realistic, and I enjoyed that aspect. Lets face it, giant cave systems with multiple floors are not that plentiful in reality.

Why are we talking about reality?

I'm just asking you a simple question - would you ENJOY something closer to UU/Arx/Dungeon Master more than what's present in Morrowind/Oblivion?

Not just how BIG they are - but in terms of interaction, puzzles, wordy riddles, as well as being bigger.

But ok, you enjoy the realism - didn't really think of that, as that's not typically what I go for in terms of dungeon size/complexity.
 
I'm just asking you a simple question - would you ENJOY something closer to UU/Arx/Dungeon Master than what's present in Morrowind/Oblivion?

Assuming we're talking about the exact same type of game (Elder Scrolls), then I would say MW style. When I go spelunking in a sandbox game, I don't want every dungeon to be a 3 hour+ grind. If I'm in the mood to do that then I'll play a dungeon crawler....
 
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Ok, thank you.

Goes to show how there's nothing objective about tastes :)

Naturally, I'm talking about a variety of dungeons - both big and small - but overall just less of them, and all being a LOT more interesting in terms of variety and content.

But I think it'd be too much hard work making precise definitions, and I sense I'm going to need that for a straight answer :)
 
I personally would prefer smaller, MW style dungeons - unless they brought back convenience spells/abilities such as Passwall from Arena, climbing walls like in Daggerfall, or Levitate/fly/etc from the pre-TES4 games.

Some of Oblivion's dungeons were somewhat annoying because of their length. Sometimes I want to just go in and beat something down in 25 minutes and leave.
 
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Realism might be fun if the everything was more realistic not just the size of the dungeons. In morrowind every cave was more or less filled with maniacs who wanted to kill you. What I want in dungeons is more options to interact beyond swordsplay and corpse&item looting.

In uw lizard/orc level you didnt really have to kill the creatures. You could barter with them, try to learn their language, do tasks for them, etc. And there were indepth npc here and there that had lots to say about themselves and the other creatures living in the cave. They had tasks and there were riddles and puzzles.
 
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But I think it'd be too much hard work making precise definitions, and I sense I'm going to need that for a straight answer :)

It would help if you didn't try to compare two *completely* differently types of games though. :)

UU, Arx, and Dungeon Master are games where the entire experience takes place in a single location. We're talking about 30 dungeons in a sandbox game. I just don't know if it would be possible to replicate the feeling of *those* games in 30 different dungeons in the same game.
 
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It would help if you didn't try to compare two *completely* differently types of games though. :)

UU, Arx, and Dungeon Master are games where the entire experience takes place in a single location. We're talking about 30 dungeons in a sandbox game. I just don't know if it would be possible to replicate the feeling of *those* games in 30 different dungeons in the same game.

Well, as I said, it wouldn't be entire games in each dungeon. I'm talking about what separate elements stand out in each game.

Personally, I LOVE the freeform aspects of MW and Oblivion, but I found the countless cookie-cutter dungeons infinitely pointless and I'd just as soon not even have them.

In UU, Arx, DM - I loved the interaction and sense of place and history. I'm a sucker for puzzles and riddles, and I have to say I really enjoy a rich immersive atmosphere backed up by little notes or books. They had SOME of that in Oblivion but it was just not good enough. Some of the story related dungeons had pretty cool stories of demented necromancers and what not - I just want MORE.

I'd settle for 10 really meaty dungeons - and perhaps a few dozen cooke-cutters. That would be a dream-like step up from Oblivion/MW - but it's probably not going to happen.
 
I for one found the Morrowind dungeons to be of sensible size and reasonably varied, but then I dont like dungeon crawling. Unfortunately my opinion was a minority one and the small dungeons were criticised pretty widely AFAIK. Still I find it hard to buy that all these dungeons were completely handmade, there was some degree of repetition (that got worse in Oblivion where it seems like whole sections of dungeon levels were recycled).

I'd settle for 10 really meaty dungeons - and perhaps a few dozen cooke-cutters. That would be a dream-like step up from Oblivion/MW - but it's probably not going to happen.

You might have said it already, but how did you find Ultima IX in that regard? Pretty large dungeons with puzzles aplenty...
 
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You might have said it already, but how did you find Ultima IX in that regard? Pretty large dungeons with puzzles aplenty...

The dungeons were probably the best part of U9.

One of the primary reasons that I actually LIKE the game, where most don't.
 
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