30 min vid about the dumbing down of The Elder Scrolls franchise

[Namutree]

 

And how I imagine it to be? Yeah I'm totally making things up, there's a ton of variety between playthroughs of different races besides offhand comments made by NPCs. I care so much about Skyrim that I just had to make up the fact that there is so little difference between races because while I was playing through it I was so focused on this element of the game that I began to imagine things.

 

 

You did. Behold this objectively untrue statement:

 

 

 

 

ETA: omg I was literally just talking about this with a friend, I always play Argonian in ES games and he always plays Khajit and there is zero difference EXCEPT PEOPLE BEING SLIGHTLY PISSY AND RACIST.

THIS ISN'T TRUE! You imagined this. The different races have mechanical differences too. When I pointed that out you said this:

 

 

 

I think Argonians get a resistance to poison... Doesn't really impact play too significantly.

 

 

This technically isn't true. Argonians get a resistance to disease, but by only listing this one racial feature it's clear that you were ignoring that Argonians get Histskin.

 

Histskin is a powerful ability that only Argonians get.

 

Your claims were false. Your idea that race doesn't have any impact on the game besides a bit of dialog was imagined. 

 

 

 

I personally think you are imagining a much, much better game when you think of it. It would be wonderful if we had a word that described our personal perception and tastes... Like opinion, for instance.

 

I'm not imagining anything. Issue like quality of combat may be subjective, but the FACT that race in Skyrim affects gameplay AND how people react to you is not imagined; unlike your previous claim.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 29, 2014 by Namutree

[Stun]

 

 

Skyrim was a masterclass in tremendous wastes of development time.

ROFL

 

A 5 year development cycle that results in a $1 BILLION payout is not, by any definition, a waste of development time.

 

It is by many definitions. The only one you give is monetary.

 

If you don't care about monetary payout and instead focus on making a good game,

 

There's no such thing as a development studio that does not care about monetary payout. So no. Stop defending stupid comments

 

Commercial studios do not make games in the name of altruism.

Edited December 29, 2014 by Stun

[Stun]

 

 

Skyrim was a masterclass in tremendous wastes of development time.

ROFL

 

A 5 year development cycle that results in a $1 BILLION payout is not, by any definition, a waste of development time.

 

Under this logic The Avengers is one of the best films ever made.

 

:::looks again at the quote pyramid:::

 

I'm sorry, were you commenting on how good or bad the game was? Nope. You just claimed it was a waste of development time. So I'll say it again. a 5 year development cycle that results in a $1 BILLION payout is not, by any definition, a waste of development time.

 

Now you could argue, as someone else did on this thread, that Skyrim was a waste of YOUR time and you'd get no argument. But, in your hyperbolic hipster zeal, you didn't.

Edited December 29, 2014 by Stun

[Luckmann]

 

 

 

Skyrim was a masterclass in tremendous wastes of development time.

ROFL

 

A 5 year development cycle that results in a $1 BILLION payout is not, by any definition, a waste of development time.

 

It is by many definitions. The only one you give is monetary.

 

If you don't care about monetary payout and instead focus on making a good game,

 

There's no such thing as a development studio that does not care about monetary payout. So no. Stop defending stupid comments

 

Commercial studios do not make games in the name of altruism.

 

First of all, that's not remotely true. Second, you're making a strawman argument; no-one said that there is such a thing as a development studio that does not care about monetary payout.

 

There are, however, a lot of definitions under which monetary gain is not the end-all be-all of existence. By a lot of definitions, Skyrim was most definitely a waste of development time. I've already addressed this and it's a bit childish to not just admit that your ridiculous hyperbole was wrong.

[Elerond]

 

There are, however, a lot of definitions under which monetary gain is not the end-all be-all of existence. By a lot of definitions, Skyrim was most definitely a waste of development time. I've already addressed this and it's a bit childish to not just admit that your ridiculous hyperbole was wrong.

 

 

Product achieved and exceeded all the goals that it's buyer and developers put for it so it was not by any sensible waste especially tremendous waste of development time, as those who put their time and money in it were more than pleased for the result. I would claim that any claim to claim that Skyrim was (most) definitely a waste of development time has born from childish notion that other people must use their time to please claimer and/or people like the claimer.  

[Hiro Protagonist II]

I personally think you are imagining a much, much better game when you think of it. It would be wonderful if we had a word that described our personal perception and tastes... Like opinion, for instance.

 

Then you would be wrong. I don't imagine Skyrim to be a better game than what the game is. I haven't given an opinion on the game itself and said if I liked it or if it's a good game. I didn't know you were a mind reader. Interesting how you know what I'm thinking and how I imagine things, but then it's not hard for you to be wrong at times. I was addressing a point where you said it was a 'tremendous wastes of development time' which it wasn't.

Edited December 30, 2014 by Hiro Protagonist II

[Stun]

By a lot of definitions, Skyrim was most definitely a waste of development time.

Define one.

 

 

Edit: Oh and let me pre-empt any further attempts by you to move the goal posts.

If you judge merit and worth based solely on how much dosh it brings to the farm, BigBripa's comparison is entirely apt.

We're neither judging the game's merit, nor its worth to the consumer. The claim was that the game was a waste of development time. And that being the case, there can only be 2 definitions.

 

1) The money the game generated vs. the dev time it took to create it.

2) The size of the game vs. the dev time it took to create it.

 

When discussing whether the Developers have wasted their time, whether or not Luckmann and BigBripa think Skyrim is a heap of garbage is irrelevant. What matters is that Skyrim has objectively and demonstrably succeeded in both #1 and #2. It is hundreds of hours long and has generated more than $1 Billion in revenue...far, far exceeding what the development Studio invested in it AND their expectations for it.

Edited December 30, 2014 by Stun

[Jarmo]

 

Under this logic The Avengers is one of the best films ever made. 

 

The Avengers is one of the best films ever made! Really, no joke.

Completely awesome film where almost all characters were done almost exactly right. Brilliant.

 

Like Star Wars: The New Hope, Lord of The rings: Fellowship of the Ring, or Lego Movie.

 

Popularity doesn't necessarily mean something is good or bad,

but popularity does signal a lot of people like the stuff, increasing the odds there's something there to like.

 

I don't think there's ever been an absolutely brilliant movie or a game, one that got everything right,

that wouldn't have been a hit, huge or otherwise. Or inverse, a huge hit loved by the great horde,

that was a total stinker in every possible way.

 

Usually the hidden gems are rubbish in many many ways, they just got something right that's of

significant importance to some minority. Inversely, the huge popular hit dismal stinkers are most likely

extremely well made, entertaining stuff. They just fail Bechdel test or rub you wrong in some other way.

[Emc2]

I think some people here are kinda missing the point. "Dumbing down" stuff isn't necessarily a bad thing (look at the XCOM remake). Most of the stuff in that list in the first post are just objectively bad desing choices.

 

1. This isn't really true. You can die and for me that means failing. Also if you fail to kill someone without being noticed in the Brotherhood quests, you have to pay for the crime. For most ppl this counts as failing and they usually reload until they succeed. I do agree that there should've been more instances where failing to do something would lock the quest for the rest of the game.

 

2. This is just bad/lazy game design. The more impact my faction choice has, the more i feel like having a role in that world. I fully agree that this is something OE needs to consider when they do/did the faction stuff.

 

3. This is pretty much the same as the second point.

 

4. This is not bad thing. It's easier to follow the quest when you have clear directions on your journal. You can always ignore the whole journal and map marker system amd rely on conversation info if you prefer. I have just recently learned to appreciate the BG/PST style journal as it adds to the immersion, but Skyrim does it in a way that makes it easier for casuals. I did prefer the journal on Morrowind though.

 

5. Morrowind has the best conversation system in the series and skyrim has the worst (IMO). That doesn't mean skyrim's version is just plain bad: it does its job well enough and i can see some people preferring it that way. This isn't a problem in PoE, as it has heavier focus on the conversations and text anyway.

 

6. I have nothing to say here... did Skyrim have puzzles? This is honestly the smalles problem in PoE as i don't expect it to be very puzzle heavy, in the traditional sense.

 

7. Skyrim had a nice amount of 'artifacts' that made the exploring interesting. I don't have anything to say about the actual value as i just used to play around in dungeons and villages without really paying attention to the items amd equipment.

 

The waste of development time thing... way off topic but if it gave the developers money and if some people enjoyed it, i don't think it was a total waste of time. As long as even a minor group is happy, the game was worth the time. It's not that the game has made any lives worse, as far as i know.

[redneckdevil]

Also a point as well, alot of people preordered and bought the game day 1 because of the companys history of games. Sadly for alot of people, u have to buy it to see if u like it, BUT because alot of people cant refund the game (steam users for example), weither they liked the game or not cant be factored into sales because since u cant refund, the numbers shows "only" happy customers.

Just food for thought when looking at sales.

 

I liked skyrim at first, but coming in expecting they took cues from writing and c&c from fonv and getting into arguements with morrowindnites and eventually trying the game out....well the appearance of handholding, lack of c&c (seriously, take the guard banter out and u woukd literally take most of the c&c away from the game), and the quality of writing necame very glaring to me and my like for the game dropped.

now as a rpg, id say it suffering very much and if i go in expecting a rpg with rpg mechanics then im usually unsatisfied. If i go in expecting an action game with exploration with borderlands rpg mechanics sprinkled in and heavy doseage of cyberLARPing...then im usually having fun.

i guess with skyrim, if i enjoy it or not depends on my viewset of the type of game it is before and while im playing.

[Failion]

I always thought skyrim was massively overrated game. I remember my impression getting top of the biggest mountain in the game that leads to that monastary was a utter dissapointment. 10 thousand steps supposably and its supposed to be the biggest mountain in tamriel. Ya right I walked up dozens of mountains and some even were pilgrimage sites like the one in skyrim with bible quotes instead of skyrim lore lol. They all were way longer and bigger in scale then skyrims. That is the thing about skyrim it gives this grandeur illusion that its this epic big game when really its world is smaller then oblivions. Sure has more content besides copy and pasted dungeons but still pretty small. I found morrowinds lore and world lot more interesting to explore then the mundane short winter wonderland parkour run that is skyrim.

[Namutree]

I always thought skyrim was massively overrated game. I remember my impression getting top of the biggest mountain in the game that leads to that monastary was a utter dissapointment. 10 thousand steps supposably and its supposed to be the biggest mountain in tamriel. Ya right I walked up dozens of mountains and some even were pilgrimage sites like the one in skyrim with bible quotes instead of skyrim lore lol. They all were way longer and bigger in scale then skyrims. That is the thing about skyrim it gives this grandeur illusion that its this epic big game when really its world is smaller then oblivions. Sure has more content besides copy and pasted dungeons but still pretty small. I found morrowinds lore and world lot more interesting to explore then the mundane short winter wonderland parkour run that is skyrim.

Skyrim is pretty overrated. It's a good game, but no where near as good as people made it out to be shortly after release.

[Lord Wafflebum]

What Namutree said.

 

I was pretty bored with Skyrim until the modding scene for it blew up. I can still play it now however many years later and depending on what mods I'm using have a very different gameplay experience. Vanilla Skyrim gets way too hyped up because people can't remember whether they're thinking of vanilla Skyrim or a mod they used to vastly improve gameplay.

[Nakia]

User made mods are the secret of the TES games success.

[Namutree]

User made mods are the secret of the TES games success.

Tell that to daggerfall. Also, even the console versions sell well. Good character creation, big worlds, and lots of junk to do is the secret to TES' success. The user mods just send their popularity into overdrive.

[Nakia]

 

User made mods are the secret of the TES games success.

Tell that to daggerfall. Also, even the console versions sell well. Good character creation, big worlds, and lots of junk to do is the secret to TES' success. The user mods just send their popularity into overdrive.

 

I was thinking of Oblivion and Skyrim.   The games do have the appeal of the open world and the player choice as to how to play but considering that it is not uncommon for people to max out the 255 mod limit and then merge mods so they can get more I still think that user made mods are important to the life of those games.  Shivering Isles expansion, a game I loved, also helped Oblivion a lot.  Morrowind has been revamped and given new life also.

[Sir Newbie]

So i read almost all the comments. I was wondering...

 

What do you guys think of a Morrowind modded to the core ?

[Nakia]

Depends on what you are doing to it.  I understand the graphics have been revamped extensively.  I would want to see more conflict between the factions.  Pathing could certainly be improved.  Freeing the slaves quests could also be improved.  Someone did try that but I found the mod a bit buggy.  

[SKull]

Quest markers should be banned in RPGs since they make games feel automatic, as if you don`t really need to be there. An ape could probably be trained to run after quest markers. For me though the Elder Scrolls games have always felt a bit bland because there`s so little structure. And the further you get the more depressingly bland the games feel. The gameplay in both Oblivion and Skyrim is just awful trash as well, once the fun of exploration passes. In the first one you have to clear endless, almost identical portals until you pass out from boredom and in Skyrim you have to kill way too many impressive looking but feeble dragons. At some point in my first playthrough of Elder Scrolls games I go from fascinated with the expansive game world to incredibly bored, and I never touch the game again. And this was what happened to me when I played Daggerfall back in 1994 already, which allegedly had a game world size the equivalent of Britain. Clearly, TES has more problems than just handholding and casualization.

 

Somewhere between the overexpansive wash of TES and the constraining tunnel vision procedure of Diablo III lies the perfect RPG. You need to be allowed to freely explore (Baldur`s Gate), but there also needs to be something worthwhile there when you actually do explore or it`s going to feel pointless (TES, I would argue). There needs to be a compelling story but there also needs to be the freedom to influence that story or even sabotage it if you want. There needs to be gear but not so little it`s pointless (Dragon Age II) or so much it makes gear too easy to acquire and therefore also pointless (World of Warcraft, post TBC). There needs to be scope for character development and customization, but not so much that you are forced to jump around like a moron to get your acrobatics skill up (Oblivion) or so little you feel like you`re playing an arcade game rather than and RPG(Diablo III, Dragon Age II). And of course you need convincing combat, interesting characters and dialogue and a developed game world.

 

I can see why it`s hard to get all this stuff right. And that is perhaps why it`s apparently so hard to reach the levels of the best RPGs like Torment and Fallout. The development of those games was just so meticulous and well thought out, and the freedom of the developers apparently much greater than today, that you almost have to repeat the same development process from scratch to get to the same place. Imitation just won`t do. Sadly, imitate is all most developers seem to do these days. Maybe that`s the real contamination from the console market. Older PC games felt hand made. Modern PC games feel mass produced, like console games have always felt. That`s the big change for me.

[500MetricTonnes]

Quest markers should be banned in RPGs since they make games feel automatic, as if you don`t really need to be there. An ape could probably be trained to run after quest markers. For me though the Elder Scrolls games have always felt a bit bland because there`s so little structure. And the further you get the more depressingly bland the games feel. The gameplay in both Oblivion and Skyrim is just awful trash as well, once the fun of exploration passes. In the first one you have to clear endless, almost identical portals until you pass out from boredom and in Skyrim you have to kill way too many impressive looking but feeble dragons. At some point in my first playthrough of Elder Scrolls games I go from fascinated with the expansive game world to incredibly bored, and I never touch the game again. And this was what happened to me when I played Daggerfall back in 1994 already, which allegedly had a game world size the equivalent of Britain. Clearly, TES has more problems than just handholding and casualization.

 

Somewhere between the overexpansive wash of TES and the constraining tunnel vision procedure of Diablo III lies the perfect RPG. You need to be allowed to freely explore (Baldur`s Gate), but there also needs to be something worthwhile there when you actually do explore or it`s going to feel pointless (TES, I would argue). There needs to be a compelling story but there also needs to be the freedom to influence that story or even sabotage it if you want. There needs to be gear but not so little it`s pointless (Dragon Age II) or so much it makes gear too easy to acquire and therefore also pointless (World of Warcraft, post TBC). There needs to be scope for character development and customization, but not so much that you are forced to jump around like a moron to get your acrobatics skill up (Oblivion) or so little you feel like you`re playing an arcade game rather than and RPG(Diablo III, Dragon Age II). And of course you need convincing combat, interesting characters and dialogue and a developed game world.

 

I can see why it`s hard to get all this stuff right. And that is perhaps why it`s apparently so hard to reach the levels of the best RPGs like Torment and Fallout. The development of those games was just so meticulous and well thought out, and the freedom of the developers apparently much greater than today, that you almost have to repeat the same development process from scratch to get to the same place. Imitation just won`t do. Sadly, imitate is all most developers seem to do these days. Maybe that`s the real contamination from the console market. Older PC games felt hand made. Modern PC games feel mass produced, like console games have always felt. That`s the big change for me.

 

The thing is, Skyrim feels marvelous for the first few hours. After all, there's this big, expansive world with so much to do and so much to discover! But then it quickly dawns upon you that this whole world is a mile wide and an inch deep.

 

But to Bethesda's credit, they did add some new "features," whereas the only things that Oblivion added were idiocies like the quest marker and worldwide level scaling. But Skyrim's new features are all shallow:

 

Perks? A great many of them simply increase the damage your weapons do, which is completely redundant because your weapon skill level already affects this. Others just allow you to do the same things you did before, but with less difficulty. Others are completely useless - Speechcraft perks are mostly focussed on gaining more money, which was never an issue for me so I never wasted a perk point on this tree. Pickpocketing is worthless because most NPCs don't have anything worth pickpocketing. Lockpicking makes the asinine lockpick minigame easier, but lockpicks are so plentiful and the minigame so easy that investing perks here is largely useless as well. Most of the perks don't change your playing style in any meaningful way. Compare this to Fallout: New Vegas, where certain perks could grant new dialogue options, regenerate health while irradiated, avoid setting off floor mines, and so on.

 

Dragons? Fighting dragons if fun enough the first time, but like so much else in the game, it quickly becomes tedious. You'll be engaged in some task, then suddenly a dragon drops out of the sky and you'll forced to drop whatever you're doing and deal with it. And since combat in the game is so simplistic, dragon fights usually come down to "Cast Dragonrend, hit it with your sword until it dies." Except, of course, when the dumb dragon decides it would much rather fly off and fry some deer or rabbit than deal with me, who is trying to kill it.

 

Shouts? Only a few are useful (Unrelenting Force, Dragonrend), the rest are basically just a substitute for mage spells, making playing as a mage even more redundant.

 

Followers? Most of them are have little in the way of personality or character, and serve mainly as beasts of burden. Their ability to fight is hampered by their boneheaded AI, and prior to the 1.6 patch, they didn't even level up with you. Again, compare this to New Vegas, where each companion gave you an additional perk, and had their own unique line of quests.

 

Marriage? I managed to get married to an NPC by giving her a mammoth tusk. No, that's not some sexual innuendo, that's how marriage works in Skyrim. You wear a special amulet telling people you're available, you do some mundane task for them, and you get married, at which point your spouse moves in with you, cooks you meals, makes money for you, and almost nothing else. I could make a joke about how that's just like real marriage, but that would be too obvious. The "romances" in Skyrim make BioWare's cheesy love stories look like Casablanca in comparison.

 

Oh, and the one NPC (Serana) who actually possesses some semblance of a personality? You can't marry her.

 

Radiant quests? Oh, joy of joy, procedurally generated fetch and kill quests, which fill up the "miscellaneous" section of my journal like so much detritus. All of them are completely lacking in context beyond some NPC saying "Uh, yeah, some bandits or whatever stole something of mine, I'll pay you back if you get it for me." That's it. That's all the "Radiant quests" offer.

 

Really, every new "feature" Bethesda added is completely half-assed and does nothing to mitigate the continued removal of features which has been a staple of TES since Morrowind.

[Namutree]

 

Marriage? I managed to get married to an NPC by giving her a mammoth tusk. No, that's not some sexual innuendo, that's how marriage works in Skyrim. You wear a special amulet telling people you're available, you do some mundane task for them, and you get married, at which point your spouse moves in with you, cooks you meals, makes money for you, and almost nothing else. I could make a joke about how that's just like real marriage, but that would be too obvious. The "romances" in Skyrim make BioWare's cheesy love stories look like Casablanca in comparison.

 

There are no romances in Skyrim and even comparing it to Bioware's romances is asinine and dumb. Marriage does not equal romance. If I had to choose though I'd rather have the lack luster marriage in Skyrim than the cheese filled, immersion breaking, and sometimes content blocking crap romances Bioware gives us.

 

Marriage may have been a bit lacking, but it was a neat little feature. Better than nothing; which is more than I can say about some of the Bioware romances.

 

 

Shouts? Only a few are useful (Unrelenting Force, Dragonrend), the rest are basically just a substitute for mage spells, making playing as a mage even more redundant.

 

Mark for Death and Whirlwind sprint are useful too.

[Emc2]

 

Shouts? Only a few are useful (Unrelenting Force, Dragonrend), the rest are basically just a substitute for mage spells, making playing as a mage even more redundant.

 

There was this one shout that threw insults and could be used to help sneak around dungeons. I found that fairly useful. I'm not sure if there was a spell equivalent though.

I still remember the first time I heard that "hey skeever butt!" after I had beaten that damn dragon priest guarding that shout. I felt a bit disappointed.

Edited January 2, 2015 by Emc2

[Luridis]

Here... scrub this video to 4:00 in and you'll see exactly why I complained about the guy in the rebuttal video to "dumbing down" going on about how he likes quest markers and how quests that tell you where to search for something is, as he says, "archaic design that has no business in modern games." (para.) I lost any and all consideration of respect for his position on the "dumbing down" when that came out of his mouth. 4 minutes in, this guy makes it so clear nothing else needs to be said.

 

[Lephys]

Skyrim is pretty overrated. It's a good game, but no where near as good as people made it out to be shortly after release.

I just still can't believe you get the power to call a lightning storm with your voice, but lack the power to direct it to not-strike you. What kind of magic is that?

 

"Oh, I can make a fireball, but I can't really specify where it explodes, u_u..."

[Stun]

Pickpocketing is worthless because most NPCs don't have anything worth pickpocketing.

Only a philistine uses the pick pocket skill to steal stuff from NPCs.

 

Smart people do this with their pickpocket skill. Because that's how true assassins get their style points.

Edited January 3, 2015 by Stun