look at the game counterstrike. an absoluteley fantastic first person shooter. it is a hardcoe game. its catered for hardcoe players. when valve software looked at the mod and made a new counterstrike, they looked at it and thought "this is a fairly inaccessible game, we might have to tweak it". but then they found that the hardcoe game was VERY accessible. you didnt have to bother about the objectives, or the ammount of guns . most players simply bought either the "deagle" or the 47/m4 (depending on their team) and proceeded to run around shooting the enemy in the face, the little objectives only mattered when there was am emergency for the casuals, and the other weapons were just some experimenting. to the harcore gamer- simply shooting the enemy in the face is fine too- although with more mods,maps,grenades and weapons (but there are still only around 6 weapons commonly used by anyone). the counterstrike games are the most played games on steam. one version is around than 5 years old and the other around 10-

skyrim can be fun for the casuals too while catering for the hardcoe. so long as it has good combat and other non rpg elements such as acrobatics then the casuals will be immensly happy that they have such a large world to kill things in. the hardcoe rpg bits are little bonuses for them "omg i am a werebear!!... this is so cool im going to kill people now as a bear!!!!" or "i stumbled across some armour that looks rare and powerfull... i feel rewarded" "oh- i can enchant my items- cool". to be hardcoe they dont have to be bogged down by strange interfaces and plotlines you cant possibly understand

casual gamers arent idiots too. i dont see why we have to sacrifice the hardcoe to appease that imaginary audience of six year olds. we dont want immersion breaking compasses that point the player to the exact spot a tiny amulet will be. simple instructions like "follow this road until you see a purple rock, and then head north until you find some ravenous bunny rabits, the cave will be around there." can be followed by just about everybody. when game companies get worried that people get lost, they usualy put in subtle cues like lighting on an exit or other methods to make stuff stand out- not a little icon that says "go here". also- an rpg is an rpg- there SHOULD be places that require a higher level. it is much more rewarding to annihilate enemies that you had to run away from earlier than have them equal to you all the time- even casuals see that. if this was a different genre then everything SHOULD be fair. but if someone wants an rpg they should get an rpg. not a hack and slash with rpg illusions .


its very hard to annoy casuals and make hardcoe gamers like the game. more redundant complexity than fun in the game pisses of hardcoes too. also- tes is a big franchise- casuals will be drawn in because they played oblivion. the casuals would adapt





-as long as the core gameplay is fun for both parties and the story/lore/ details apeal to the hardcoe then everyone wins

Are you suggesting Heavy Metal sounds like crap? :confused:

Second option. Heavy metal sounds like crap only when it wants too... and sometimes when it doesn't.

THe game shouldnt be just for hardcoe fans.....no that would be bad.....I want to see The Elder Scrolls 6.

Do i want it more RPG then Oblivion, yes, do I want it to be as tough and unforgiving as morrowind was, no.......if that was the case they would lose way to many sales to the casual console gamer and it would be a massive failure, prehaps delaying the future of the series.


EDIT: love morrowind and thinks its the best game i have ever played, but going back ot that sort of ES game would be a bad move in today's gameing culture.

Morrowind, tough and unforgiving. What? Did you try the normal difficulty?

morrowind was very unforgiving at times!


ever won against a vampire or dremora at level 4?

thought not.


to this day i still havent killed a morrowind vampire- and i completed the main quest (with the occasional cheat)

Arena was tough and unforgiving, Daggerfall was tough, Morrowind was tough compared to Oblivion

EDIT: At about level 16 I could (with plenty of potions) clear out a bunch of random vampires, I even managed to take out the head of Quarra with about 8 trys

Isn't the question "Should you fight something as that at level 4? Should I be able to beat everything at level 1?" Let's not turn this into something we don't want. Morrowind was actually pretty balanced if you can stomach some effort.

Imagine coming ot it from a gaming past were everything is shown where you have ot go and challenges are all scaled to suit where you should be up to.....morrowind is impossible for players like this.

I have seen non-hardcoe gamers struggle ot figure out what they are doing in oblivion (aka not know what to do/where to go for a quest) simply cause it involved simple puzzle solving or the quest marker was removed for that bit. THis is the audience that makes up alot of sales, if the game cannot be approached by these people it WILL be marked as a badly designed game.

Going to repeat what I said the last time this came up: anyone who had the time to sink into Oblivion is a "hardcoe" gamer by definition.

Compared to Oblivion. Apart from that, complains like "I can't beat a vampire at level 1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" are the reason for level scaling like in Oblivion.

morrowind was balanced. but you never know whats in the tomb.

Dream on. It will be like New Vegas: cater for the casuals, the hardcoe will follow through (with the help of the hardcoe mode). The Devs are there to make money, and actual hardcoe wouldn't sell enough.

I know this, and I know how the press sometimes even sustains this kind of behavior. But let's not complain just for the sake of it. Morrowind was balanced, and I'm saying this not really considering myself a HC gamer. And I know I'll love Skyrim like hell, but I wouldn't want another Oblivion level scaling system. And they agree with me since they're making it more like F3 in this regard.

Is any kind of objective terminology gone now? Are we really just going to use "casual" to mean "person who likes games I don't like?"

casual- plays a game until they get bored, and doesnt care much for lore

I think some people might be missing the points of my posts.

I would love, absolutely love a fully fledged RPG that was so hardcoe that you needed prior RPG experience ot play properly. It would be the wrong direction for the series though, we need more fans ot keep the series strong, we cant gain more fans if we dont cater for people new to RPGs.

If Skyrim was to sell bad, an TES6 would have a longer gap.



EDIT: Not bashing morrowind, like i said, its my favorite game of all time.

I just hope the colored arrow crap is gone this time, or their is an option to get rid of it.

hardcoe = casual, its not much of a difference really casuals just don't put too much thought/time into games like hardcoe players, but they both hate stupid stuff like slow arrows and crappy stories.

the only difference is age group and people who just hate fantasy games, you can't cater to those groups no matter how idiotic you make the game, you just need to find your consumer/fan/audience and make the game for them.

That is the general idea of tombs

Agree with this, the game needs to sell if we want more of it. And now that Bethesda is among the top developers in the industry, they can bring in decisions like renouncing Oblivion's level scaling in favor of the F3 one.

I suggest a different approach to the difficulty settings, much like the one used in Neverwinter Nights. You can read more about it http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Difficulty.

Very good point.

That would be just fine with me!

All I would probably need is a small mod that lets you tweak the rates for hunger/thirst/sleepiness and make stuff a bit more expensive.

I'm happy to turn off my own quest markers by unselecting the active quest and I will install a self-discipline mod that lets me *gasp* choose not to click on map markers for fast travel.

Morrowind really isn't difficult, it's just because you don't get much of a helping guidance in the beginning, or vague directions which makes otherwise trivial things hard, in the beginning you basically have to face some pretty boring stuff in order to get through to the good part. In fact, I play Morrowind more casual than Oblivion. Morrowind could have easily been just as accessible as Oblivion given a few changes.

I think there should be a way for experienced RPGers to turn off the help features, such as the quest markers etc.

The problem is, in oblivion this then made the game impossible, as the only clue ot locations and even what you ahve to do was in the quest markers....its the same with instant fast travel, if you turn it off then you are forced ot ride/run everywhere, making it too tedious at time to do quests that take you from one side of the map to the other.

How ot fix this, provide a 'hardcoe' mode, instead of quest markers you have paper note directinos ot locations, or instead of fast travel everywhere,yo uhave option fast travels points (morrowind style).

Offering both gamestyles mean that the casual can play and have fun, while the hardcoe doesnt have ot suffer from being lead around by thier nose.