Hi All

So i was thinking, ive heard the game has same kind of world formation like in Fallout3. Fallout3 was a bit of disappointment and here are some reasons behind it (also many of my friend agree).

1. Gaming area in Fallout3 was marketed to be big, well it was "big" but there was huge areas that were mountains and blocked by invisible walls
2. Oblivion and Fallout3 "dungeons" inner areas were .. really small and not so many when compared to => . ( Comparison ie. a really old game => Daggerfall , it had huge gaming world and a really enjoyable amount of dungeons ).

Now, the thing that i am mostly interested in is ;

Is the gaming world going to be how big ? when compared to Oblivion or Fallout3, and i mean the actual gaming area... do not calculate mountains and areas behind invisible walls.

Is Skyrim going to loose to Daggerfall in the gaming area size ?

Roughly the size of Oblivion says Todd Howard. Thus I am hoping slghtly larger. It's also said you can go anywhere you can see, so no invisible walls (save probably the borders of the province).

Nowhere near the size of Daggerfall. Personally, I'd like it to be at least 1.5-2 times Oblivion size, but to have it the sze of Daggerfall would be stupid as you'd have to make so much stuff generic and lose all the individuality and have miles of endless monotony.

EDIT: Fun fact. Daggerfall had the biggest map of any game EVER, at least according to a comparison chart of all the largest game maps I found.

The whole exterior world is the same size of Oblivion apparently their making more detailed caves but I think their doing less or the same amount of caves not sure, but the total landmass isn't going to be the same size as daggerfalls anytime soon

Weren't like 80% of Daggerfall's dungeon's just copy and pasted?

Skyrim will have borders just like Fallout 3 and Oblivion did... the invisible walls in Fallout 3 were there for a reason, you're supposed to explore the already huge world Bethesda made for you, not explore the nothingness past the invisible walls.

The game world is supposed to be the size of Oblivion, but the dungeons will be bigger (or at least more unique), though it's unknown just how big they'll be or if they're as big as Daggerfall's. But a more detailed, large dungeon is better than a bland huge dungeon, imo.

Oblivion size suits me perfectly, but I'd really love a LOT more personallity.

Well they're handcrafting it all instead pf just generating some of it, so that's a bonus. Plus there's like 6 distinct regions, when in Oblivion it was pretty much just snow, forest(ish), and swamp, and they were all almost the same in many ways.

But when they made Fallout 3 (and Obsidion with NV too) they started with a decent sized world that was their goal to fill, but eventually found it wasn't enough space so they added some more on. This may well be the case with Skyrim too

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Regions

As you can see here (and on the big map that shows a sattelite view on UESP) there are really 10 different regions in Oblivion, and they all do have different vegetation and geogaphical features, but it's generally not that noticeable.

I don't know where people got this information from, but no.

80-90% of the dungeons were randomly generated, however.

That's the one xD thanks.
But yeah, at least most of the dungeons will be unique this time around. That's if Bethesda lives up to their word

As huge as Oblivion, but due to mountain areas and vertical places, it will seem bigger.

I played Oblivion thru in 8-9h, Fallout3 took me 6h, Vegas took me about 9h. Daggerfall i played for a year or so.

I am concerned that they make huge investments to special dungeons... but have anyone pondered what happens when player just explores the dungeons, empties them and when one goes to make the storyline some of the dungeons are already empty

Would be nice to have a Dynamic faction, that grows in power the more time goes forward ie. Bandit faction, Assassin Faction, Evil Lord Faction.

Bandit Faction : Automatically spreads its NPC groups to dungeon enterances and patrols areas and gathers stuff they loot/find.

Assassin Faction : Automatically spreads to pubs and inns in the gaming world stealing and plundering the rich and escaping and gathering the loot to a specific campsite, also a dunamic moving NPC force that grows by time => eventually might even attack a small tower or castle and take it over (nonstroryline place) and scale up operations.

Evil Lord Faction : controls farms,inns,roads,scout towers/outposts => patrols and enforces payments from merchants/travellers and basicly is located in area that is not game quests related, also does not spread out of x area and is very dangerous place to go in.

NPC Adventurer faction : starts off small, couple of camps that generates adventyrer PARTYS and sends them off to non questline dungeons and places to kill monsters and loot and gather items and upgrade their gear and even bring some of it to the campsite they have. ( starts in campsite A => goes to dungeon x (does looting killing) => moves to new campsite they do in a random wilderness location ( new homebase ) => attacks the next place => comes back to homebase ( game could have a indicator that makes it only possible to have 10 active groups ingame or 20, totally scalable to fit the world)

Merchant Faction : that travels the world making profit by trading, buys and or builds small camps/trade cart areas to trade / rest / manufacture ( hires NPC guards and or even adventurers to accompany them ) ( Bandits and assassins could ambush these )

Some suggestions.

But will any of it be in game ? =)

There is no way to do everything there is to do in Oblivion in 8 ? 9h, or to do everything there is to do in Fallout 3 in 6h. So, you haven’t seen most of those games. I’m not sure how you can really act like you’ve got a balanced perspective here.

Hubba wha? The worlds of Oblivion and Fallout 3 are massive, and you can explore them for hundreds of hours without finding everything. There's absolutely no way you did anything in Oblivion and Fallout 3 other than the main quest if that's all you played them for. Why on earth didn't you, you know, explore? I mean, you don't buy a Bethesda game if you don't plan on exploring, that's kind of the whole point.

They certainly felt like it, as did most of its outdoor areas. I understand they were randomly generated, but as far as I'm concerned, it pretty much amounts to the same thing. And this is why I'm glad the game world isn't anywhere as big as Daggerfall, even if it would be feasible to do so in a reasonable development cycle, the results would no doubt be horribly dull, undetailed and repetitive, as Daggerfall's world was. Now, I enjoyed Daggerfall, but I don't miss its massive expanses of nothing.

But yes, Skyrim is said to be about the same size as Oblivion, and honestly, I'm fine with that, I never found Oblivion's map to be too small, and Skyrim will likely feel larger than Oblivion due to the large amount of mountains in the province. In Cyrodiil, the mountains and other difficult terrain was mostly focused in the border regions, thus getting from place to place within the province was much better, Skyrim will likely be more like Vvardenfell, where you could often be reletively close to your destination, but need to go around mountains to get to it (If you didn't have levitation.) making the world feel larger, though Skyrim's mountains will likely be more impressive than Morrowind's, which generally felt more like really steep hills than mountains. What I'm really concerned about is whether the world will be more varied and interesting to explore, which, if the game lives up to Bethesda's promises, it should be.



And that's the problem, really. Oblivion had a number of different regions, with different features, but they really didn't feel distinct enough. In Morrowind, when I went from one region to another, I felt like I was entering a distinctly different region, in Oblivion, I felt like I was going from forests to slightly different forests.

Uh... what?

You did not "Play through" any of those games in those small time frames.

You may have finished the main quest and then turned the game off and not played them again because for some peculiar reason you thought that was how these games are meant to be played but you did not "play through" any of those games in any time under 60 hours(And that's pushing it if you fast travel everywhere and know exactly what to do and don't waste any time mucking around at all)

I imagine around 20km2 with 5km2 being mountains
Putting 130 caves in such an area makes me believe that the devs are following the hollow earth theory

Fallout3 ended when you completed the questline, i did that in 2?h, so i had to start from 0 and do it again, the game was too easy and basicly every place in the game was a run thru and smash collect all and in some intervals drop the cheap stuff to enterance collect more run back => npc sell => enterance pickup => npc sell => next place.

Exploring is fun yes, but when you play intensively just exploring and returning back to city and back to dungeon => next dungeon its like 20mins tops per dungeon, usually 10mins. I dont stop and drool or look at walls or corners i roam, pick up the loot, kill the mobs and just go go go, run run run.

In 9h of Oblivion about 30%-50% of the gaming area dungeons were explored, quest in the other hand were not done in most part. Only ended up doing the storyline in a rush mode in the end.

Still too easy, too much money, too much gear, too fast levelling.

There should be a sinkhole for money,gear,materials(resources) => make your own NPC faction => the more you give stuff to them the more they go on active mode, save a village from Warewolfs => gain a village that gives you 2 NPC guys per 3h in gametime time, then your faction eguips them automatically what you have given to the faction bank/stash and sends them do the faction business. Add trainers/blacksmiths/librarys/keeps/towers/inns/stables/alchemists/potionmasters/etc etc and the sinkhole for gold and material and eguipment is there.

Also training with the Trainer should take time, activate training on ie. 1h swords 10 points dont give instantly 10 points, lets say in the next 2h-xh your skill is increased by 10 points (you get scoll of training that has a % and its automatical). The more higher skill the more time it takes. So when doing Magic, some high level stuff actually takes 2d in gametime or even more (and sleeping does not count). So you coould boost the learning time by investing time to the trainer or magical experiments ie. more content.

will they do it ? i would say no.

Majority of the games are dropping down in content, they say there is content but instead its linear and only optional content on the side.

Adding content that acutually effects YOU, and not some villagers attacked by Warewulfs is the thing they should focus also, thus meaning a faction owned by player, developed by player and micromanaged by player and even moving the faction to different areas, dungeon/tower/keep, depending if you conquer or kill off some bandit lord in his keep.

These kind of things give so much to do in a game, and a reason to actually keep playing after you have roamed majority of the dungeons thru. Adding other factions that might be VERY HARD on your 2nd game start might make you step back and actually be suprised, that would be a such big bonus.

Perhaps my point is, that it would be nice to see the ingame factions actually doing something and not just be idle and wait for player input.

I'm afraid I never really agreed with this. In Morrowind it seemed like marsh, grassland, ashlands (which were horribly boring) and rocky hills with lava sometimes, and all of these had very similar vegetation, just varying degrees of it. It didn't seem more diverse than Oblivion, which to me felt like forest, mountains, grasslands and marsh.

How can you play through Oblivion in 6 - 8 hours? I'm calling bullsh*t! The main quest alone takes about 20 - 30 hours and that doesn't include any of the guilds.

Think about a faction you do, you have a servants, models(to view different armor/weapons and they stand in specific place for long period of time and go to sleep when its night), some guards some peasents you saved, now they need food,clothers,armor,services,place to sleep etc etc

So basically you need to support them, or command them to go out to the world and try to find what they need and bring the exess stuff back to home.

That is just something i would like to see, its been done in some oblivion mods so i know they can do it.

In the earlier games Food/water etc basic stuff is just 100% irrelevant, implementing this, you actually need them, or well not you but your Faction.


And who knows, if your social status is big enuff, you could perhaps someday find a home castle for your Faction.

And when you are in the dungeon and find 20 Cheese rolls, well... this time you pick them up and leave the magic full plate behind. =)

This is what happens when you stupidly rush through the game without thinking or stopping to explore or ANYTHING. You don't even notice that trainers/blacksmiths/librarys/keeps/towers/inns/stables/alchemists/potionmasters/etc are ALREADY IN THE GAME!

Some of the harder mobs you can just skip, its not like you have to kill everything you run into.

Heh well i cant imagine playing Oblivion more then 10-15h tops, there is hardly anything to do. Well you could do some optional sidequests but what does that give you in the end ? 500 gold and a silver dagger ?

When i played Oblivion thru 1st time i had like 20-30k money, did it 2nd time i had 50k+ and after that i just didnt pick anything up if i didnt use it myself. Gold is basically irrelevant in Elder Scrolls games today.

The game seriously needs sinkholes for stuff, and the actual need to gather stuff, Oblivion, Fallout and Fallout: New Vegas were all too easy, too fast and way too easy to gather stuff even on the hardest of gameplay modes.

If you're going to just run through every dungeon, killing all the baddies and collecting all the loot, instead of exploring for exploring's sake... I can't say I understand why you're playing Bethesda games at all. I'm sorry but if you weren't able to get more than 10 hours out of either Oblivion or Fallout 3, there's something very, very wrong with the way you're playing, and it seems like you only spent a year on Daggerfall because it took you longer to get to and loot the dungeons. Skyrim wont have that, it's dungeons wont be very hard to get too, and if you play Skyrim like you've been playing Bethesda's last two games, you'll just be disappointing yourself again.

Just like one doesn't play Modern Warfare 2 and complain about the lack of RPG elements, you can't just run through Bethesda's games in less than 10 hours and complain the worlds aren't big enough.