Skyrim - What the Next Game Should Fix

[forgottenlor]

More like I hate shitty AAA RPG developers. When was the last time you seen one of these topics for CDProject Red games?

Well they've only made 3 games so far. As I see it they're bound to get some love soon. And aren't you the one who calls their games "TWitcher?"

 

[forgottenlor]

Could it possibly be because the AAA crowd gets fat and complacent? Or do you think that their products are of consistently high standards and people just bitch?



Some of us can read AND chew gum at the same time

I can't agree with consistently high quality, but they do offer something which indie rpgs don't. Don't get we wrong, I prefer in general to play games that actually resemble pen and paper games, which no AAA rpg does, whether its the Witcher, Skyrim, Dragon Age, or Final Fantasy. On the other hand sometimes I like a spectacle, just like I enjoy going to watch a Super Hero movie like the Avengers or the X-Men in the cinema. Great graphics, quality voice actors, and some rpg elements, even watered down are a nice change of pace from the hard core rpgs I spend most of my time playing

 

[crpgnut]

Amen to everything about the UI. It is horrible on the pc and the very first thing I mod.
I think this will change by default as Fallout-4's isn't as horrible. Since the newer consoles often run in high resolutions too, the user interface should change for the better.

I've spent thousands of hours in Skyrim, but that would have been cut significantly withough SkyUI, MCM and a few other interface tools.

 

[forgottenlor]

Yeah console UIs suck, but I can usually blend that out after about an hour.

 

[Caddy]

Amen to everything about the UI. It is horrible on the pc and the very first thing I mod.
I think this will change by default as Fallout-4's isn't as horrible. Since the newer consoles often run in high resolutions too, the user interface should change for the better.

I've spent thousands of hours in Skyrim, but that would have been cut significantly withough SkyUI, MCM and a few other interface tools.

Ya the UI works great for console, but is horrible on PC. I mean, it works, but who puts the ALT button as a confirmation button for a mouse click?

 

[Wisdom]

Oh, its another "I hate AAA RPG developers" thread. Perhaps someone should do a poll and see if Bioware, Square Enix, or Bethesda is the least popular on this site.

Ubisoft wins with 70% of the vote.

Also....
*Bioware doesn't exist…. seriously how is this still a thing!?*

 

[Caddy]

Bioware stopped existing many years ago. After "The Doctors" sold it off, you know they had just given up.

 

[BoboTheMighty]

The best of the best threads. Always start to chuckle when I see one of these show up.

 

[turian]

get rid of useless emtyness.
no one needs endless "walk trough the woods" simulators.

make dens living and breathing worlds instead endless emptyness filled with nothing to do.

 

[BoboTheMighty]

If the article is critical of Skyrim, Skyrim fans freak out, insist it's an amazing game and people who don't like it should just stop obsessing and play other games. Skyrim haters point out they still don't get the praise and basically get told to shut up.

If the article praises Skyrim as the best RPG evar, Skyrim haters freak out, mention the flaws. Skyrim lovers defend the game and say that people who hate it so much should just stop obsessing and play other games. Once again the haters are basically told to shut up; stop being so negative and let it go.

To be sure, there's hyperbole on both sides. Only thing I take isssue with is the insistence that if you don't have anything nice to say about game X, you shouldn't say anything at all. This is a PC RPG discussion forum, not a Bethesda fan site. Without some criticism the discussion wouldn't be very interesting. Does a wildly successful AAA game really need more cheerleading? Why can't the Skyrim fans just let Skyrim haters complain? Probably for the same reason the haters can't let people throw endless praise on an RPG with many, many flaws. People have opinions. Sometimes those opinions are different from yours. Deal with it.

Eh, it's more problem of people having "beef" with Bethesda and their place in industry.
When you think about it, they're a bit of a phenomenon...their games are generally considered poor at all three "pillars" of video game design: performance, writing and gameplay.
Devs like Naughty Dog may not be popular here, but as professionals they are levels above Bethesda.
If Betsy sold less and had less exposure, most would have no trouble with it.

 

[TheMadGamer]

Enjoyed Skyrim and played and finished all (well not Daggerfall, because of a game breaking bug) the TES games that came before. Here's some things I'd like improved in some future TES game:

-A Much Improved State of Polish Upon Initial Release

-A Much Improved Effort To Patch Bugs

-A proper PC UI

-A UI That Generally Organizes & Presents Data In A Way That Avoids Dumbing Down, But Speeds Up Decision Making

-More Robust Character Development

-More Gear "Slots"

-A Proper Quest Log

-Ability For Gamers To Remove Sidequests, Remove Spells, Generally Allow Gamers To Manage Everything Which Includes Getting Rid Of Things

-Ability For The Gamer To Annotate The Map

-More & Better C&C (Doesn't have to be to the scale of Witcher 3, just better)

-Dungeons that are NOT monster closets. Create interesting explorable places. Not all dungeons were bad in Skyrim.

-Largely Contiguous World - Get Rid of that Tired Cell-Loading Methodology

- Find A Better Solution Other Than "Level Scaling." I want to perceive how I've become more powerful with each new "level" and with each new piece of equipment or ability I obtain. The more gradual this can be done, the better. Think Might & Magic VII.

-Allow for ways (albeit difficult) that the player can achieve/obtain things beyond their level... through persistence, skill, or perhaps even from knowledge from a prior play through.

Just my 2 cents off the top...

 

[crpgnut]

@TMG, I can go along with all of those. While Skyrim is my fave game, it isn't perfect by a long stretch.

 

[Xian]

but even the exploration is just exploration for exploration's sake. It's just a habit (like collecting) because there aren't really all that many interesting places to explore.

That's what set Gothic apart from TES for me. If you took the time to explore every out of the way spot you were rewarded with a rare plant or special weapon. Skyrim just offered more of the same trash loot if you did so, not really any compelling reason to go off the beaten path.

 

[TheMadGamer]

Skyrim just offered more of the same trash loot if you did so, not really any compelling reason to go off the beaten path.

This aspect, specifically, of Gothic & Gothic II was what made those two games so special to me and fun in my opinion. The entire game world is an Easter egg hunt where it's very possible you are going to find something useful... M&M7 (and 6 too) had this quality.

 

[BoboTheMighty]

That's what set Gothic apart from TES for me. If you took the time to explore every out of the way spot you were rewarded with a rare plant or special weapon. Skyrim just offered more of the same trash loot if you did so, not really any compelling reason to go off the beaten path.

Eh, what? I like Gothic(s) way more than Skyrim, but that's plain nonsense.
In Skyrim you can find a shield that creates ward on blocking, Gothic progression was +10 damage/reduction on every better item down the same line. You could argue that there is too much loot to appreciate, but not variety of it, in comparison.
Plus NotR made it more useless due to better weapons having sky high requirements, and those you can buy early anyway.
Pure nostalgia...I've replayed Gothics recently and aside from faction armor, I've had best weapons even before the end of act one.

 

[Deleted User]

What I would want to see: Add in the removed complexity in skills and stats and game systems such as the dialog system.

This is a good place for me to go in!

I agree. I'd like to see more stats and skills, not less. While Perks make everything efficient, etc., most of the charm in old-school RPGs such as Morrowind, or Baldur's Gate, or Arcanum, etc. etc., is that the game offered you a plethora of choices. Maybe not every choice was balanced to a "T", or exactly equal with everything else, but it gave you endless options of how you wanted to build your character and interesting ways to experiment with the given systems. Also, those games genuinely felt different with different builds for good chunks of the game, even Morrowind before you became a demi-god of raw power. There are so many ways to build/play a character in that game you can still go back today and have a new experience with it.

More things. They should make the UI more immersive. Again, this is an area where they chose functionality and efficiency over feel. The UI in Morrowind is great, but little things like the quest journal looking like a real journal, or in Risen/Gothic how the maps you buy/find are actual paper maps that are drawn, etc., add so much good feel to the game, IMO. And let's be honest, the map in Skyrim, while high-res and cool to look at, isn't going to give you much more information in the vanilla game than a cool looking, beautifully drawn paper map would. The immersive, RPG-style UIs go a long way to making the game feel like a real RPG adventure, rather than some clinical piece of software that aims at maximum efficiency. The Skyrim Perk Chart is actually not a terrible thing in this regard.

What not to do: Don't make it an overly "cinematic experience". Keep the sandbox vibe where the player can craft their own stories with the given tools. Keep any "cutscenes" directly in the game engine and DO NOT add any movie cutscenes to the game. Don't rush the main story. Make it like Morrowind where the player is urged to get stronger and get lost in the world before attempting to start the main quest work in the game. Keep it a laid-back feel for most of the game. While slaying dragons or closing an Oblivion gate at level 1 or 2 is "exciting" at first, this actually cheapens the experience in the long run because dragons are seen as rats, basically. If you build the experience up for hours and then unleash a dragon on the player, while making them rarer overall, it has a much greater effect.

I think just do those things and I'll be cool. Either way the next game will be a must-play for me. I don't really expect them to go back to the old ways, but I can hope and dream. Maybe some other developer takes ideas from their older games and runs with it. I will just enjoy the next game for what it is just like I enjoyed Skyrim (which was "dumbed down" from Oblivion, etc. etc.). Skyrim for its faults, just like Oblivion and Morrowind before it, was a great game to play and just have fun with for countless hours. Not to mention the modding scene, which whew boy! You could spend more hours tweaking and playing with mods then playing the actual game!

 

[Deleted User]

Eh, what? I like Gothic(s) way more than Skyrim, but that's plain nonsense.
In Skyrim you can find a shield that creates ward on blocking, Gothic progression was +10 damage/reduction on every better item down the same line. You could argue that there is too much loot to appreciate, but not variety of it, in comparison.
Plus NotR made it more useless due to better weapons having sky high requirements, and those you can buy early anyway.
Pure nostalgia…I've replayed Gothics recently and aside from faction armor, I've had best weapons even before the end of act one.

There wasn't much "trash loot" in Skyrim. You could find upgrades at the end of a dungeon, for example. It was the level-scaling that killed the loot system, IMO. I remember how cool it was to see the Whiterun smith have just iron and steel, then slowly but surely he starts offering Dwarven, Elven, etc. etc. It's just too formulaic to do that. Or getting some legendary weapon tied to a quest and having it obsolete a few levels later. That is bogus.

At least in the Gothic games if a merchant offers something powerful or weak, it stays that way for the most part, unless a cool scripted story moment changes things, etc. What Gothic does (like Morrowind) is hand-places everything. So if you do find some hard-to-access chest, it's likely going to have good stuff in it. Or if you find some tucked away corner of the map, it will have a rare plant or 2 to harvest (with the rare plants having much better abilities than the common ones, etc.).

Morrowind's legendary items are literally scattered all over the map in hard-to-find areas. They are not scaled at all, and IMO this is the best approach. Sure, if you know where to look to find them, etc., it's easier (although having a good "level check" to access the area can help this), but it also means that legendary weapons and items generally are powerful and stay powerful all game. Not to mention things like Daedric armor actually being very rare (1 full set only in the entire game), and that sort of thing, it feels like a much more hand-placed world.

 

[Archangel]

Well they've only made 3 games so far. As I see it they're bound to get some love soon. And aren't you the one who calls their games "TWitcher?"

I do call it Twitcher, I been calling it that since TW2. But that is not a derogatory term.
Nobody can deny that since TW2 it has become about twitch combat and even before that it was kind off. I don't enjoy that kind of combat and I am open about it. But the game itself was not done badly, the exploration was not done badly, the graphics are not done badly, the story is not bad, the NPCs are not bad. (Dark Souls has same kind of combat, even more twitch based. You don't see me go around topics and bashing it for it. It is a game made for specific audience and it is good game in that genre. There is no reason for me to bash a well made game that accomplished its marketed goal)

Unlike Skyrim (and other modern Bethesda games) that are just bad products. They don't have one or two things I don't personally enjoy like twitch combat in Witcher but Bethesda games from an objective viewpoint are badly done products that are released buggy and unfinished and never are fixed/finished.
And they get praise by way too many lemmings that ignore all the problems that become worse with each Bethesda game.

 

[ChienAboyeur]

Devs like Naughty Dog may not be popular here, but as professionals they are levels above Bethesda.

ND NPCs are one way to save Bethesda' NPCs.

Bethesda did not manage to deliver on what they want their NPCs to be. There is the excuse of trying to move things forward.

ND's NPCs aim way lower and they are terrible.

 

[Archangel]

Oh please. Refer to your other threads where you make a total asshole of yourself. You seem to only come to threads to put people down. Nobody cares what you think

How do other topics have any relevance now?! You are not talking about Skyrim now or Bethesda games? My comments about Bioware games, or some other games are relevant to what is said here how?!
I don't put people down. I comment upon the state of games and products. I don't come into topics and say "Caddy is a shit gamer and shit person!". If I say that I think most people that play and enjoy modern Bethesda games are idiots, it is not my fault if you see yourself in that group. I didn't name you personally.

And you still didn't accept I beat your argument, but you resorted into personal attacks towards me. You ignored the meat of the argument and started doing what you are accusing me here.