I've read many of the new articles and i think its obvious that you focus very strongly on new technical features like improved Radiant AI, graphics and physics. There is nothing wrong with it as long as you dont think: "Whoa, no time to make beautiful quests and especially side quests. We have to focus on new techs. So lets generate the side-quests automatically!"

Also i don't think Skyryms "Radiant Story System" will be better than the 10000000 trys of other Game Designers. There was never ever a game where random missions were fun. They may be ok when you play them the first time. But they get boring and old very fast.

No random mission generator can beat the good old handcrafted quests we know from Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout, the Witcher and the Gothic Series. So please(!) don't even try it because it will fail.

Conclusion: you cannot succeed with random generated quests. They are random. They have to be generic because they are random. Nobody likes generic quests.

Thanks for Reading!

First of all, not all of the quest are randomly generated.
Second of all "There was never ever a game where random missions were fun" Ever hear of TES2 Daggerfall?

Pete Hines:



Seriously, even if you don't take the time to read all the information available about the game. Do you really think they would make a game in 2011 where all quests are boring randomly generated 'bring me 10 wolf pelts' quests?

EDIT: Apart from that I personally wouldn't mind a random quest system additionally to the story-driven main and side quests. It's always better to have a goal, even if it's a simple one without a full-blown story background. Better than just entering dungeons to kill all enemies and grab the loot.

They aren't "randomly generated quests" from what I can tell. They are designed quests with multiple possible locations or enemies and the game chooses which one to activate based on your characters skills, level and where you've been before.

So, if there is a quest to retrieve a family heirloom from bandits in a cave, the designers will put those bandits in four different caves in a disabled form. When you get the quest, if you've already cleared two of those caves those two will be eliminated as possibilities and the game will decide to activate the bandits in one of the remaining two caves.

The purpose of it is to prevent you from clearing out all the trolls from the "Cave of Endless Sorrows", walking into town and then being told by a woman that bandits robbed her and are hiding out in the "Cave of Endless Sorrows" and when you go back there the "Cave of Endless Sorrows" is suddenly full of bandits that have apparently been there for weeks.

There are always generic quests. Morrowind and Oblivion had them.

My guess is that these random quests make already generic quests random; trying to give them a greater variety, and thus a better feeling.

Random quests can be done wrong and they can be done right.

If done wrong, they will seem bland... and they'll all feel the same. The player will eventually have no incitement to do them, and that would be very bad.
If done right, otherwise generic quests will feel like they have a greater variety. You'll feel more challenged by them and always surprised. That would be very good.

We've read about them, but we don't really know for sure until we play the game...
I really hope Bethesda have done it right. If done wrong, it could practically ruin quite a big part of the game... like the leveled lists for Oblivion.

Technologies are improving a lot in the course of time, so previous failure to make fun random content can be overcome, and not all the previous attempts were failures as well.

Random content can have hooks that let designer define what parts to be random and what parts to be controlled and designed manually as they like, and they can have an intelligent event manager that molds events and quests into the present situations and conditions in a way that they do not even seem as random, and I'm hopeful that we can reach a level of sophistication that you could not guess which part of the game is really procedurally generated.

So I vote that the more developers try these solutions the better.

I think you're confusing random for pseudorandom. It seems highly likely that they won't be completely random but rather some chosen from quest components, and a large pool of traditional scripted sidequests that are given out pseudorandomly.

Guys, by random, the OP means "Not scripted".

Oh wait. Random quests... I think that's perhaps the wrong term. Showler got it right I think.

I guess it's easy to misunderstand.

Proof from twitter:
"@DCDeacon Oh, could you also tell me, will there still be hand-crafted side-quests, or are they all this radiant story random quests?
@Silvade14 If you think Radiant Story is "randomly generated quests" then you misunderstand what it is."

i think they said in one of their updates that they're gonna try not to litter the game with random "save my child" quests, they said that was the fall of a few games.

and a small random quest here and there won't kill you...

Maybe I'm missing the point, but didn't Fallout 3 have some wonderful random encounters. Stuff like the guys fighting over the fridge full of water really added to the feel of the place. If Skyrim has touches like that, talored to your character as well, then bring it on. Remember the Talon guys with the contract on your head if you were a good guy? Well imagine finishing a nasty dungeon, loaded up with treasure, you finally reach daylight alive, only to be attacked by hard as nails DB or Morag Tong. Yes sir, that will do very nicely, thank you.

Good randomly generated quests would probably be a nice addition to the mills, mines and farms that now populate towns.

Yeah, they should keep working on what they started with FO3, it was cool.

Just ignore random quests, and, maybe they made some good logarithms for generating new quests, we will see.

the only issue that i have with the radiant story idea is that they have level scaling involved which should be banned from the game entirely. the only areas that should be consistently safe are on main roads and immediately around major settlements because of patrols cleaning up the area. other than that issue it sounds like it might be interesting. the one part im confused about is the "based on your past actions bit" does that mean that if im a warrior character that im only going to face warrior type enemies or are they going to mix it up. i dont want to be fighting the same types of enemies over and over again.

Maybe the "past actions" is a bit like FO karma? Like, if your character is a known "good guy" who helped people before, a woman may approach you and ask for your help recovering her valuable item. If you are a degenerate thief, however, you might get approached by the bandits for help in stealing the valuable item from the woman in the first place.

Don't believe everything you read , if they cannot set it right they will abandon it and usually they can not set things right so have hope.

If you want i can PM you a list of dev lies about OB

I was randomly attacked by a vicious gang of old ladies with rolling pins in New Vegas

Have you? Because the Technology Behind Skyrim article, page 2 said,



This isn't Fable III with their dull, boring, and tedious random generated Relationship Quests that have you going off to a location digging up something and returning to deliver the package to become friends with someone. Over and Over again, doing the same thing. (What a stupid addition that was for Fable. I honestly preferred just interacting with them as in Fable I and II to make friends with them.)




They are more like the Random Encounters in Red Dead Redemption. Where when out in the wilderness you may encounter Strangers that are not considered side-quests but rather random encounters that will reward the player for choosing to do them. They are optional.

Bethesda's though can happen in or outside of towns and they take it to a new level as they differ based on your character.



So basically it's a new tool to keep things from feeling repetitious and gives Bethesda a way to direct you into exploring new areas, so Bethesda still has a hand in there design and I doubt they'll be dull. They may be repetitive to an extent, you might come across the same event or do the same task but just at a different place for a different person in the world.


No worries...

that would be kinda of nice. hopefully its done that way. i just dont want quest tailored specifically to me all the time. it would be nice to have quests that would be easier for a particular type of character such as one where you could sneak by a crap load of guards or monsters which would be great if im a thief type dude but if im a warrior then id have to do it the hard way.

Main quest and guild quests/house quests, etc. should stretch your character and give as many optional ways of solving things as possible.

But nobody should approach a 300 pound Orc Berserker with a bad reputation and a bounty on his head and say "Mister, the bad wizard stole my puppy to experiment on. Can you sneak into his tower and save him for me, please?"

Removing level scaling presents a whole other issue when it comes to balancing the game world. In an open world there is no way for the developers to know which way your going to go off. An unleveled world is really not an open one because then you are restricted by level to where to can successfully explore and that's in it's essence, corralling the player.

Not to mention the fact that with a game measuring perhaps into the hundreds of hours, it's nearly impossible to balance (1) a sense of character progression with (2) sustained, if reduced, challenges from enemies and the environment.

Those weren't really random in the sense that they were actually randomly generated, though. the encounters themselves are scriptes by Bethesda, however, they may randomly occur when you go to certain locations, as opposed to always happening at the same time in the same place. Which is probably why they can still be good, as each one is hand-made, from some things I've read, I get the impression that the "Radiant Story" is sort of like that too, just perhaps more advanced. And in any case, it's been stated that the game won't lack hand-crafted quests, so the Radiant Story thing doesn't bother me too much. I'm generally against reliance on actual randomly generated quests because they simply can't be as interesting as quests written by developers, but as long as they don't replace such things, it's not too bad.



I doubt they would specifically tailor enemies to your character class, that wouldn't make any sense, I'm assuming what they mean is that the sort of random events you might encounter will be somewhat effected by your past actions. Like if you've generally been the sort of person who helps people willingly, you might meet someone on the road who asks you for help, or maybe if you have a bit of a reputation among criminals, you're more likely to be approached by someone who wants you to commit a crime of some sort Obviously, those are just examples of what I assume "Based on your past actions a bit" means, and when they say "a bit", it seems to imply that your choices will have some effect over what sort of random events you encounter, but won't actually entirely prevent certain types of events from ocurring.

Of course if you were a warrior for that type of quest, then the sneaking part would be the hard way.