» Sun Aug 16, 2009 3:50 am 1. Interior cells. Every room in the game that had windows that could not look outside, because all the interior rooms in the game existed in a separate area from the outside area. This became a constant thorn in the side of many talented modders, myself included. Why? Because it ruins the most important thing any game needs to have - the suspension of disbelief.
2. More fog that then the Scottish coastline.
3. Uncreative, disappointing travel options. A ride by boat or stilt rider resulted in a black screen and the eventual load of the your destination.
4. Lack of Side, Top, etc. views in the editor,.
5. Clunky editor in general, extremely hard to create dialogue. Bugs like double doors and double chests as well as other technical issues in the editor. There were so many issues folks in the community had to create things like TESAME to fix them!
So Oblivion came out and I couldn't have cared less. I ended up playing a friend's copy on the Xbox 360 and noticed that you could ride a horse now, so kudos to the devs for one needed fix. I think I tried the editor once and discovered that it was much the same as Morrowind's.
Now we come to Elder Scrolls V, and here's your chance to redeem yourself Bethesda! With games out on the 360 now like Arcana Gothic 4 you're going to have to up your game. No more excuses, no more crap. Throw out your engine - it's 4 years old and a piece of garbage. These are some of the features you need to include:
1. No more interior/exterior cells. If Gothic 4 can run on the 360 with no lag, no fog, and no separation between the insides and outsides of buildings ES5 certainly can do the same.
2. No more excess fog. I told you before, many times, how to code a game whereby objects in the distance render with less detail than those within a certain radius of the player. With good coders you should be able to create an expansive world with no lag, no fog unless its a weather effect, and epic vistas for the player to admire.
3. Boat rides should be in real time, In other words the player should be able to enjoy the wind at his or her back as they cross the see to another town. Fast travel should also be included for those who don't want this.
4. Fix the editor, find a way to give the players more views to manipulate objects in, don't have stupid things like certain boxes needed to surround a model in order for it to sit on the terrain of the game world, don't use some proprietary mesh format, make it easier to import custom assets, etc. If you guys have been smart you have kept notes of all the features the community wanted in the editor, and all the bugs they encountered, Add the features, remove the bugs.
5. Be more creative in the design of your towns and villages! Remember this is a FANTASY RPG, emphasis on fantasy which is short for what? FANTASTICAL! Nothing about Oblivion was, and only the mushroom houses in Morrowind were.
6. Better terrain tools for the editor, including the ability to change the angle of the cursor for slanted surfaces and the ability to dig into the ground to create caves and tunnels. Buy a copy of Far Cry Instincts Predator and see how elegantly they designed their terrain tools. Don't re-invent the wheel, study the solutions other game companies have come up with!
7. Make sure you include an editor for the console versions of the game, and that you allow import of custom assets in the Xbox 360 version at the very least. I know it can be done for this system - no so sure of the PS3. This will also help you in the design of your editor, forcing you to keep things simple to use but powerful. Again I recommend you study the FCIP editor. You can do at least 3x better with a more modern engine I'm sure!
I will be back with more suggestions. I hope this time you listen to me, and others telling you the same things -
- Deathbliss
(author of Valenwood, creator of the WD tree models, author of Amaya Lodge, compiler of the Official Mods package and sender of several comprehensive bug reports)
