Just for anyone who has yet to discover Google and is unsure what Mainstream really means > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainstream

To sum it up for those that don't wish to read an entire Wiki page (It's so hard for some of you I know :wink_smile: )

Mainstream = Something that appeals to a majority

You could also say that Mainstream in the way it's being used in this thread also applies to "lowest common denominator"

Lowest common denominator = The most basic or least sophisticated opinion

I believe that Oblivion and also Fallout3 both were on the Mainstream side of things, trying to cater for everyone, even those that didn't like RPGs; by doing this they ended up going for the lowest common denominator in order to please as many people as possible.

For example...

Some people might get lost on quests > Give everyone a compass and popups even if they don't want them so no one gets lost, ever.

Some people might find the game too hard > Make it rediculously easy so no one can fail, ever.

Some people want to go everywhere straight from the start > Introduce leveled areas and leveled everything so everyone can go anywhere and not die, ever.

Lets be honest here, there isn't much money to be made by making rpgs like the elder scrolls. So they went in the direction of Oblivion which appealed to a broader audience and not just rpgers and is something I can't say about their previous elder scrolls games.

In order for the RPG genre to continue and to succeed financially, they must be mainstreamed. For those of us who do not like the mainstreaming, there are some good indie games out there. But mainstreaming has in my humble opinion saved the genre from becoming a dinosaur. :shrug: There just isn't enough folks looking to play the older styled rpgs to support a successful game.

I voted no, but honestly it's just wishful thinking. Beth has gone more and more mainstream as the series has gone along. I hate it, but I also understand it. They're in the business of making games to make money. It's business, that's all. The more folks they can market their product to, the more money they'll make. They care far greater about money than making a true RPG. The proof is in their product and how that product has evolved. My gut says, it will be even more dumbed down, although I sincerely hope it isn't.

Moral of the story is. Careful what you wish for!

All of this i believe is directly addressing complaints to do with MW.

man how many times did people, yes rpg players, moan about getting killed straight away or wandering into a monster that was way too tough to kill, or wandering around aimlessly. these 3 things are probably the biggest gripes Beth heard in relation to MW.

See they 'fixed' all that for oblivion.

Or just "mainstream"=sellout.

I dearly wish that were true, but unfortunately a lot of media that finds mainstream success today is just that. People here often flirt with the idea that because something is popular it must be good.

Truth is, and this has been pointed out, the term "mainstream" has absolutely no impact on quality. As a Hollywood worker bee I like to make comparisons to the film industry--I know it's not 100% anologous to the video game industry, but I think in this case it's relevant. Transformers 2 is, I think, bad, simple and dumb. It made 400 million dollars, and at the screening I attended people cheered themselves hoarse. The Social Network was one of the most intelligent, clever, and moving movies I'd seen in years. It made much less money and when I saw it the theater was 3/4 empty. However, both movies are as "mainstream" as they come. Made by giant studios with famous directors and famous actors and tons of money. It's not like the better movie is some obscure scrappy underdog that came out of nowhere and ignored the rules of what makes a film popular. Quite the contrary.

With that in mind, the TES series has always been mainstream. I first discovered Daggerfall by reading a gushing review in PC gamer, one of the most mainstream PC magazines at the time. The issue had, if I recall, Command and Conquer (one of the most "mainstream" games of the era) on the cover, illustrating several tanks blowing up in glorious eye candy explosions. The popular myth that TES was somehow the domain of an elite cadre of hardcoe fantasy RPG nerds with 200 IQs is completely false.

So "mainstreaming" is not the problem. Mainstream products can range from godawful to sublime. It's a word used to talk around specific gameplay problems. However, I dislike being labeled as some sort of gaming elitist because I'm concerned with the way changes made in Oblivion will affect Skyrim. There were some baffling gameplay changes in Oblivion that should give any TES fan pause. The complete lack of lore development, the overall blandness of the game world, the insane level scaling, and mechanics like insta-healing after an hour of rest and instant travel definitely constitute a trend in the wrong direction.

On the other hand, every "mainstream console kiddie" I know who came to the series with Oblivion has the same issues with the game as "hardcoe RPG lovers", so blaming the bigger audience for the simplification of the series is misguided.

Because they are promoted enough. Older style RPG's can and will still work, if they are promoted and advertised right. Morrowind is a great example, and that game is only 10 years old or so. Even adventure games would still work, if done right.

The genres are still there, you just have to find new and creative ways to target your audience. Spend more money on advertising and promotion and you'll see the returns.

Actually, I think you are wrong. There are still incarnations of 'older styled rpgs' going on to this day, Final fantasy, any DnD universe game. And they sell very well. The rpg market is booming. Granted there hasn't been another baulders gate or planescape, but if there was it would fly like hot cakes.

I think it would be interesting to look up how many copies Oblivion sold vs. Dragon Age. I'm not sure the answer myself, but I think Oblivion probably sold more. DA was aimed at more of an RPG audience, where Oblivion was aimed at RPG and FPS types. Larger audience will typically mean more copies sold.

Exactly, they tried to please everyone and that is impossible, you're more likely going to end up pleasing no one and offer a mediocre experience for everyone.

Fallout 3 addressed much of the complaints against Oblivion, obviously not interseries complaints, but some of the sandbox elements were addressed.

In the shivering isles bethesda delivered a more alien world because that was what the fans wanted, and you couldn't just fast travel to new sheoth either you had to walk there, in order to unlock the ability to fast travel there, really you had to walk everywhere before you could FT there. This addressed the fast travel complaint, and was also seen in F3.

Knights of the Nine featured a pilgrim hunt for shrines where you only had a vague in game paper map telling you in which area the shrines were, addressing the complaints about the quest compass.

In F3 you could no longer identify things in your vicinity by looking on your compass, all locations were simply marked with dots. Speech was a percentage thing in F3 instead of a minigame, and lock picking was also handled better.

No, I think Oblivion just recieved far to much criticism to be mainstreamed again. Morowind didn't have to much criticism for it, which is why they thought they could get away with it in Oblivion.

Morrowind did not have sells that could compete with today's sells. I find people all the time that never heard of Morrowind but think Oblivion is the cat's meow.

Again, we can still find some very good RPGs in the indie market. I can't think of any mainstream rpgs's that are better than TES games (including Oblivion) or Fallout:3 and NV. There is not a good market for the non-mainstream games and that said, the word "mainstream" itself means "majority". The majority of RPG gamers today enjoyed Oblivion and Fallout:3. There are a few of us around who wish for the older style and difficulty of the older RPGs but we are very few in the game world thus Indie game makers continue to do fair but won't be seen breaking into the mainstream very often.

We were also more forgiving of bugs and glitches. Morrowind and Daggarfall were riddled with them and while Morrowind was patched pretty well, nobody was screaming so loudly as they do today about it.

Again, people who play RPGs are not more capable or intelligent than folks that play any other gamer, but for some strange reason we all like to pretend we are special and want more difficult aspects to our games. One example is the compass. While most mainstream players like the compass, most old style RPG players prefer NPC's to give us directions. There is nothing harder about walking in circles for a couple of hours in game to find something. It's just more tedious and not much fun. So some that isn't dumbing down, it's just a change that really does nothing but give direction. The compromise in Oblivion was that we had a compass but were also given directions and the ability to set the compass on a different quest and use the NPC directions. There were a couple of players on this forum that played through the entire game never using the compass for quest directions and still found their way through.

But then I personally don't see this dumbing down stuff others discuss. I see games getting more difficult, more immersive and more interesting but less tedious. We all have our own opinions and we all get to vote with our buying dollars. Don't pay for something that does not meet your desires. And if you buy it, don't complain if you already suspected it would not.

Too bad, you won't get that in Skyrim :hubbahubba:

You will never get your Morrowind clone. The modern RPGs (excluding TES) are as follows: Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Fable, Two Worlds and The Witcher. They are nothing like the RPGs of old times. It's like wanting the 80s music back on the pop charts... close to impossible.

Although they will add new things to it (eg More skills) but don't expect not to have the compass or fast-travel ect.

I really don't like that word "mainstream." Mass Effect sold millions of copies, but can you say that its gameplay was "mainstream?" It had many RPG elements, and felt pretty classic to me. Is a game "mainstream" just because it sells a lot of games, or is that an aspect of its gameplay?

No, Skyrim will be its own game first. You don't try to make a game this or that label, you just try to make a game. The labels are created by people.

Yeah, jut look at Morrowind's advertisments. I didn't even know the game existed until a friend of mine had it. I never saw a single advertisment for the game. I saw a crap load of Oblivion adverts, on the other hand. I think, if advertised well, any game can sell great.

Anyhoo, this aint a business lesson. This should all come down to the fans, imo. Bethesda should cater for the people that actually made thier games what they are.

Skyrim will go platinum in a week :biggrin:

*day

I've never really felt like Oblivion was more "mainstream" than Morrowind (haven't played Daggerfall or Arena, so I can't really comment on them), but there can be no doubt that it was certainly far more forgiving to players than Morrowind. In Morrowind, when we all first played it, whether new to the series or coming in from Daggerfall, most of us got pwned. We got lost (and still do, sometimes), got frustrated, and the game didn't give a mudcrab's rear. And we came back for more, again and again. Rather masochistic on our parts, but I digress.

With Oblivion, that isn't the case at all really, not near as I can tell, and because of our experiences with Morrowind, that has left many of us with an... unpleasant taste in our mouths. Granted, the game isn't bad by a long shot, but in comparison to the rather brutal nature of Morrowind, Oblivion's more like a little fluffy puppy. That does occasionally bite and pee on the furniture.

I would attribute this to Bethesda finding certain aspects of Morrowind to have been a little "extreme" let's say, and when Bethesda sees a problem, they do fix it. Many of us just didn't like how they fixed it, really. Myself included, though the only real problems I had with Oblivion when it comes right down to it were the game-wide level-scaling and the fact that the player wasn't the heir to the throne. Those are pretty big for me personally, since I have so many great memories of finding a really awesome item at a low level, as well as very much enjoyed being the Nerevarine/God-Slayer/Hircine-Pwner/etc in Morrowind, not just some random dude who goes and finds an NPC to steal my damn thunder.

I guess my point is that if Morrowind had been more laid-back, and then Oblivion was the savage one, many of us would probably want Morrowind's style still, because our previous experiences often dictate what we desire in the future.

RPGs are anything but dead or outside the mainstream. The MMO-market alone is huge.
I firmly believe that you can make a game as complex as you like, people are not as stupid as some might think.. As long as you make the actual gameplay - with RPGs that's mainly combat - entertaining, you will appeal to the "mainstream".

I really hope Beth learned that lesson. :shrug:

4 million units sold is a big score. Even today.

Shivering Isles was better and reflected some of the the things the developers learned a year after Oblivion's release. Fallout 3 was released a year and a half after that and showed further refinement. Skyrim is going to be released 5 1/2 years after Oblivion. Give the developers some credit. I doubt very seriously they are going to just sit on their hands and put out another Oblivion in a slightly different setting. In other words, chill.

I get so tired of people pissing and moaning about Oblivion and what a life ruining letdown it was for them. It was an excellent game for its time and only got better with DLCs, the expansion and mods. It still holds up well (I'm playing it again after a year or so).

I'm not in the Fallout fanbase and I don't care what others think "mainstream" is. I had no interest in the game before FO3 and only purchased NV out of curiosity. If Bethesda has as many bugs in TES V as were in FO3 and Fallout New Vegas at release, I will wait until after the first expansion pack to buy it. Therefore, not a TES really devoted fan either.

I also do not think the term "Role Playing Game" applies to either TES or Fallout since the games themselves really do not do enough to encourage playing of a role in the classic RPG sense. If it did, there would be a lot fewer "immersion" mods out there. To me, they are more of a "roll playing game" or "computer adventure game", as shipped.

VATS strikes me as a First Person Shooter cheat and so I believe that it is there to attract the attention of the First Person Shooter gamers, successful or not.

I actually agree with everything you said here. Really. Nobody is arguing that popularity equals quality. There are, however, a surprisingly large number of people who are arguing that inverse popularity equals quality - that is, the more popular something is, the worse it is.

In reality, mainstream success depends on a handful of things: a good marketing campaign and good production values. Neither of these things necessarily raise the overall quality of the game. But, and this is very important, neither of them necessarily decrease the quality either. You can have a pretty, well-marketed game, and still put a lot of intelligence and depth behind it, and while it may not necessarily sell better than a similarly pretty and well-marketed, but dumb and shallow game, it will undoubtedly still be better liked by those who enjoy it.

Yes, Oblivion had some very bad design decisions. But blaming the target audience for those decisions is a mistake. If anything, you should be blaming Bethesda for making that same mistake.