Skyrim - Preview @ PC Gamer

rune_74 said:

I see what your saying, but what about if they could do whatever they want and you could as well? The world is just shared, you don't even have to be on at the same time. This of course would require a world that is sufficiently big enough to handle that(think daggerfall) but I think the potential for self contained rpg multi worlds would be great.

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Then it goes back to difficulty with world changing/reacting events. Also if you allow persistent timelines then how do you explain what your character is doing when you're not playing (but someone else's is)? You start having to cludge things like saying they are 'staying in an inn'. Conveniently. And they didn't come out when the world was cast into darkness through the actions of X. To avoid cludges you end up reducing the scope until you end up being left with local and temporary reactions and you've lost the hero scope altogether.

Mechanically it's not easy either. Take item clutter for example - one of the great things about a good single player game is the ability to play about with thousands or more of objects, to rearrange them how you like and have it persistently remain in the new state. That is a lot of things to track, and one of the reasons save games can end up large as they either have to save the altered game save states or track changes to a default game state. Introduce more players and you now have to synchronise that data.. so you have to stick a master copy on a server instead. Ditto the game world/quest states if you want people to be playing asynchronously. Now, how do you handle persistent timelines? Keep the server running? What if it crashes/needs to reboot?

Those things can all be overcome, but they each introduce compromises.

No one is saying that compromises are unavoidable. It all comes down to what you consider important for the game, and what features you're willing to sacrifice.

The item clutter aspect has been solved in other games, and pretty impressively in games like Red Faction - where physical and dynamic changes seem to be calculated in a shared way.

The key is to design the game from the very outset to handle shared dynamic content.

I know they're doing amazing stuff in certain games, like ArcheAge - where physical dynamic changes happen for everyone on the server.

I'm sure there is some way to have the famous TES item clutter - but it would possibly have to be with a delayed update routine, or something that would calculate final position based on an initial action - so that it would be about strict math - rather than constant persistent changes shared between players.

But I don't know.

Obviously, the market is not there for it. Too many players want their private experiences, and they don't want to sacrifice a single thing for this to be implemented.

So there's zero incentive for developers to care about it, and most will just point to the MMO market - as they don't appreciate the difference between a shared friendly experience with finality - and a fully online environment, with the endless grind.

DArtagnan said:

and they don't want to sacrifice a single thing for this to be implemented.

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So ... You say that SP lovers fear to sacrifice things to get MP implemented.

This sounds to me like (and of course you'll state that you didmn't mean it that way) SP lovers should sacrfice things in order to get something better, something more glorious ?

It's because the term of "sacrificing" implies that one should "sacrifice" something for a better/higher ... thing. Deal. Goal.Whatever. And this means to me that you imply MP to be a higher goal than SP.

Which sounds to me just as if you were feeling like Standing On Higher Ground and you were looking down on all of the poor SP players who just don't know what kind of goodness they are missing ...

And of course you'll say that you didn't mean it *that way* ...

Reverse deduction : What kind of things are MP players supposed to sacrifice when they get SP implemented ? (Sort of, not the exact wording, just in case you jump at them [words] ) ?

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Which sounds to me just as if you were feeling like Standing On Higher Ground and you were looking down on all of the poor SP players who just don't know what kind of goodness they are missing …

And of course you'll say that you didn't mean it *that way* …

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Tee-hee....

Alrik Fassbauer said:

So … You say that SP lovers fear to sacrifice things to get MP implemented.

This sounds to me like (and of course you'll state that you didmn't mean it that way) SP lovers should sacrfice things in order to get something better, something more glorious ?

It's because the term of "sacrificing" implies that one should "sacrifice" something for a better/higher … thing. Deal. Goal.Whatever. And this means to me that you imply MP to be a higher goal than SP.

Which sounds to me just as if you were feeling like Standing On Higher Ground and you were looking down on all of the poor SP players who just don't know what kind of goodness they are missing …

And of course you'll say that you didn't mean it *that way* …

Reverse deduction : What kind of things are MP players supposed to sacrifice when they get SP implemented ? (Sort of, not the exact wording, just in case you jump at them [words] ) ?

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You have quite a vivid imagination when it comes to other people talking down to you.

This is something I can't help you with - and something you must figure out about yourself.

I meant exactly what I said, without any kind of narcissistic sensation.

I have never been bothered by what other people prefer - as that's on them.

However, I feel it's a natural reaction to be sad or annoyed when other people prefer things - when it directly or indirectly affects what I can do, or what I can have access to.

In this same way, I'm sad and annoyed that the casual market is much larger than the enthusiast market. I can feel this way, without "looking down on casual gamers."

However, I can't stop casual gamers from feeling looked down upon, as I'm sure many of them feel. I'm not an "elitist gamer" - I just like what I like.

So, about people who prefer to play alone - the case is pretty much exactly the same as the above. It makes me sad, because it means I can't have the kind of games that I'd really love to play.

Some people can't accept an opinion without imagining a personal subtle message behind it - and I refuse to accept responsibility for that.

So, if you insist that I look down on you - because I find it really sad that you don't like cooperative games - then be my guest.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

So … You say that SP lovers fear to sacrifice things to get MP implemented.

This sounds to me like (and of course you'll state that you didmn't mean it that way) SP lovers should sacrfice things in order to get something better, something more glorious ?

It's because the term of "sacrificing" implies that one should "sacrifice" something for a better/higher … thing. Deal. Goal.Whatever. And this means to me that you imply MP to be a higher goal than SP.

Which sounds to me just as if you were feeling like Standing On Higher Ground and you were looking down on all of the poor SP players who just don't know what kind of goodness they are missing …

And of course you'll say that you didn't mean it *that way* …

Reverse deduction : What kind of things are MP players supposed to sacrifice when they get SP implemented ? (Sort of, not the exact wording, just in case you jump at them [words] ) ?

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I'm not even sure where you are trying to go with all that. It seems a bit sanctimonious, like your preaching to us. I'm not sure ifit a language problem, or it is the way you generally talk, but it is confusing as hell.

I guess it's all at the same time.

But the worst of it all is possibly that I've developed my own kind of "language style".

rune_74 said:

I'm not sure ifit a language problem, or it is the way you generally talk, but it is confusing as hell.

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He's nowhere near as bad as Dasale.

"Standing On Higher Ground" is the title of a song by The Alan Parsons Project, by the way, and I'm a fan of that group since the mid-80s.

This was meant as kind of easter-egg, but apparently no-one realized it as such.

Alrik:

You remind me of my brother's wife.

She's a wonderful person and she has a very dear heart. She's also very smart.

But when we talk about philosophical subjects or have any kind of "serious" debate - she's replaced by an alien.

I just have no idea what she's talking about - and it's definitely not about the world I live in.

It's more like a place with pink fluffy clouds and magical creatures - where people are not human - but shiny beings filled with light.

Something like that

Well, I definitively have the disadvantage of using "Buffy Speak" in the English language, since it just is not my first language.

I feel like ... sheer lacking of words when I want to express somthing delacate I just haven't learned the proper words for it yet.

In my own language I'm very much able to express what I mean. And what I mean can be *much*, much more complex than I would ever be able to do it here ...

I've had Philosophy at school. Regularly. And I even took Philosophy as one of the school subjects into my Abitur. My Abitur school subjects (is this the right term ? - should be "Abitur Schulfächer") were : English, Biology, Philosophy, Religion. A very unusual combination, and I'm still proud of it. And maybe I had better studied Philosophy, too.

I'm used to sophiticated discussions. I am able to express myself in a way that is needed in philosophical diputes.
But only in my own lnguage.
Expressing myself in the English language always leads to some kind of "Buff Speak" in my case.

Arbitur isn't a word in English, but you mean the last level of exams before university. In the UK that's 'A levels', in other places it's probably equivalent to an international baccalaureate.

Cool combination, but no maths? (Mine were also unusual - adding in Philosophy and Music to a set of sciences + maths).

I can't speak a word of German though - we could only learn up to two languages (and that was rare enough, most did one) so mine were French and Spanish, both of which I've largely forgotten since.

I tried to get rig of maths - I loved chemistry, for example, but I knew even at that time that I had some problems with maths … Now, 2 decades later, I know that my problem is a kind of dyskalkulia . I have no problems with the logic in mathematics, but with the umbers themselves.
During my "A levels" (dict.leo.org also thinks it's what I meant) I didn't know about my problems with numbers - what I knew, however, was that I had some problems with maths … And just had to abandon chemistry one or two years before that, because of the calculations there.
But I still stuck with one of the natural sciences : Biology.
I learned French one year (je prend un pan - je ne parlez pas francais - sort of :lol: ), and I think it was 4 years of Spanish. Rusty, rusty, now, though, because I have never used it in real life.