Skyrim Is Radiant Story revolutionary for RPGs?

Thrasher said:

The one thing I don't like about how it respawns is that it can happen right in front you out of midair in come cases. There is a fort of necromancers west of Morthal. If you "clear" it out, and then come back they all respawn. All are in front, walking towards the compound. You get creamed by them because of their numbers all in one place, rather than being spread out throughout the dungeon.

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That is more a coding, under the hood issue/bug then a problem with the mechanic itself.

In general, I don't like respawns, but it's acceptable for Skyrim's huge open world. I just don't like how they did it for the above case.

darklord said:

The Gothics actually do respawn a certain amount of enemies, usually when you hit a new act. The enemies will often be tougher than previously to.

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That's not really respawning. It repopulates everything at once and it seems very artificial. You are on an island and have killed everything that moves; where did the new things suddenly come from?

BillSeurer said:

That's not really respawning. It repopulates everything at once and it seems very artificial. You are on an island and have killed everything that moves; where did the new things suddenly come from?

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I consider the way repopulating works in G1+2 to be just about perfectly balanced between gameplay and realism - from gameplay standpoint, completely absent repopulation would be boring and more dynamic (chapter transition independent) repopulation would be annoying, given the games´ scope.
Partial repopulation upon chapter transitions gives the games some sense of dynamics and realism without compromising gameplay in one of the two above mentioned ways.
Also, it does not repopulate everything. You´re correct there are no real "respawns", only additional spawns, and a lot of these is story related (at least in G2).

Argument that you´re on island and thus respawns don´t make sense is weird.
Both games, G2 especially, maintain a certain degree of abstraction/reduction in their world design and their scale and within these parameters, the context of in-game(s) "realism", "respawns" are perfectly acceptable and consistent in my opinion.

Pretty much every game requires players to accept this sort of limitations, Skyrim included. You have to adhere to in-game realism, otherwise you´d be constantly wondering how comes that such a supposedly major city as Solitude has only 80 or so citizens, for example. Take a stroll through Rift woods, you´ll be hearing birds chirping constantly, but there will be none to be seen - another abstraction.
Etc.

Taking these limitations into account, G1+2´s repopulation scheme feels less artificial than Skyrim´s to me. Skyrim´s wildlife respawns are ok from the in-game realism perspective to me, but the respawns in camps or dungeons are not.
It feels like the world is full of invisible enemy groups which just wait for you to clear a place for them and after a while it starts to feel like there´s a lot more of outlaws than normal citizens.
And all respawns are the same general type of enemies, the difference is only in their strength, based on your character level. The game is big so this kind of limitation is understandable, but it doesn´t make it feel any less artificial.

Also, if you combine exploration with questing (radiant questing especially), you´ll be dealing with these dungeon/camp respawns often and that, at least for me, is boring. I thought the radiant stuff was supposed to predominantly send you to locations you haven´t "cleared" yet, but this very likely does not work in the game. Maybe it works within the radiant quest system itself, but in my game it didn´t seem to take into account "clearing" locations on my own (without a quest) or via a non-radiant quest.

Since the general respawn period seems to be much longer than in Oblivion, it´s definitely an improvement, but overall I´ve found it quite a bit more verisimilitude-breaking than in G1+2 (I actually didn´t find it verisimilitude-breaking at all in those games).
That said, considering the Skyrim´s scope, I think the implementation is good overall. Hopefully few of the truly glaring issues will be addressed via patches - some of the specific cases which I´ve noticed that need to be taken out of respawn include the named vampire mini-boss or the note in Labyrinthian, for example.

I'm curious as to what direction the upcoming expansions will take. Will it be tweaks to Radiant Story? That'd be very nice:

I'd like to see deeper followers, since they're so handy to have around.

Someone other than my character to actually shop.

Mercenaries hired to clean out some of the local dungeons and then have a chance for a Radiant quest to find out what happened to them if they don't come back.

I'd love to see way more skirmishes between the empire and the Stormcloaks. So far, I'm the only one truly involved in making war against either.

More traffic on the roads too. I almost never see anyone, and there should be several patrols at strategic points.

Instead of new areas, I'd really like to see gameplay improvements. This is a wonderful game, but anything can be improved.

I'd love to see some more Brynjolf dialogue after a certain point in the thieves guild questline. As it is, he's the Garrus of Skyrim: all the playerettes I know have the hots for him, but he's always calibrating. I mean, has got more important stuff to do.

Edit: Yeah, I know that's not necessarily radiant-dependent. But still.

I thought one of the features of the radiant quest was to send you to new areas to explore. For example if your giving a new quest that was supposed to be in a dungeon you've already explored it would pick a dungeon you haven't been to yet.

I've been sent to some dungeons 3 times now and I would bet I've explored less that 20 dungeons so far.

I'm over 100 hours in, and Radiant Story continues to send me to new locations. Yes, it has sent me to the same place, but that only happened 2 or 3 times, for the most part it's sending me to places I didn't even know existed.

Fluent said:

I'm over 100 hours in, and Radiant Story continues to send me to new locations. Yes, it has sent me to the same place, but that only happened 2 or 3 times, for the most part it's sending me to places I didn't even know existed.

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Same for me. Been to a couple I was already at but ~90% of what I assume are radiant quests have been to new locations.

Same here. Each region has two or three "popular" locations, but if you do several quests in the same area, you'll start getting new dungeons all the time. Valheim Keep is super popular, for some reason. I get sent there all the time. It makes sense though. It covers one of the only passages into the north, so bandits would love that locale.

I'd still love to see Radiant Story tweakage more than anything else. I'd like to see Belethor's associate manning the store while Belethor grabs lunch, sharpening his axe, either himself or asking one of the town Blacksmiths to do it. I'd like to see Hulda outside buying food while Ysolda watches the Inn, giving her invaluable experience. I'd like to see Amren test his father's sword out on Nazeem's neck. I'd like to see the bratty little girl, knock the Battleborn boy down and kiss him and then run away. Next day, she'd beat him up again, because who can understand women? I'd like to see a hand-holding animation and more signs of affection between members who supposedly care for one another, etc. I'd rather see this stuff than a new epic quest.

Jaz said:

I'd love to see some more Brynjolf dialogue after a certain point in the thieves guild questline. As it is, he's the Garrus of Skyrim: all the playerettes I know have the hots for him, but he's always calibrating. I mean, has got more important stuff to do.

Edit: Yeah, I know that's not necessarily radiant-dependent. But still.

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Actually you do get new dialogue with him once you've completed all the thief quests (not the main Thieves Guild quest but the separate ones from Vex and Delvin) and have the initiation ceremony, Karliah comes along to which is nice.

Daniel.

Yes, but that's just about three sentences, and after that he's back to calibrating. Pah. What could be more important to a guild 2IC than talking to his boss? I really wonder.