Bethesda's never made content for characters beyond level 20 particularly well... nor have they adjusted for it correctly.

In any event, what they did with Fallout 3 is relatively minor. In effect, it re-adds low-grade lists to a greater degree, and changes the way scaling is done (it's no longer an offset, but a ratio. They really should use both at once). If someone has a good way to use the GECK with DLC, I can probably tell you whether anything in Broken Steel is scaled. As it is, the most powerful character by level... appears to be comatose by default. She levels 1.75 to 1 against the player, uncapped. Basically, not many if any creatures are scaled at all (avoiding goblin syndrome), but we traded that for Feral Ghoul Reavers, which have so much more HP that it kind of makes them worse than goblins, in my arrogant opinion.

No, I wouldn't say much has changed at all. Just how we reach the same point: either you slaughter everything at lv. 20, or you face ridiculous HP sponges...

This is nearly impossible answer without seeing the game first. We do know how far the game is along in development and how refined it is. Personally, I do hope the do some more polishing of the game before release. Oblivion really did display in some parts the release had been rushed.

Want it now!

Nao! :stare:

@Ratwar

Once you figured out how the leveling system worked in Oblivion and how magic worked (ie stacking spells) that's pretty much when you were able to basically become a god that killed anything

You could achieve this in relatively little time (depending if you utilized fast travel) much quicker than reaching level 20 in Morrowind I'm sure

Level scaling is only part of how to make a game more difficult

What if we want them to add the things we miss from previous games? I miss summoning daedric lords, or the various extra skills, etc.

Personally a lot of us want them to remove features we don't see the point in. :shrug:

If we wait too long when we put the disc into the 360 it will explode.

What?

I loved that about MW .

I did spend my first 20+ hours roaming around in crappy armor just exploring, then I found Ghostgate. and then I was decked out in glass from then on.
Then I found out I could buy those amulets of shades for like a 150septims or something. bought 5. that and levitate. then I just summoned my way through daedric lords at level 2....

then I found the alchemy+intelligence stacking... only then did it break for me. up until then I was having a great time at a low level and being uber.

I think he's referring to the limited hardware power of consoles, like 360 and PS3, and if the game is very advanced it would be at the limits of what's possible with consoles hardware, which causes heapting up and eventually... :chaos: (not that it would actually explode )

Not now goddammit!

It will take around 2 years to make it done from now. Thats what my brain has decided.
That is what it will take.

I'm now in the mindset that sooner is better. Yes, more development time would mean a better game but I think they've had long enough. My free time is rapidly diminishing as I ascend the education ladder and it would be nice to have release before I head off to University in just over a year. But that is looking very unlikely now.

I can understand those that don't want Bethesda to rush the game, but I think [and hope] that some announcement of the game comes soon. An announcement doesn't mean it is going to hit shelves the next month. I may start a clock towards a launch date, but that doesn't have to be a really bad thing.

I think Bethesda is nearly encroaching on "Valve Time" with their silence about TES:V and I hope that silence is broken soon.

Yeah, even if it isn't released anytime soon, just something to chew on while they continue working would be nice... like licking the beaters after you mix up a cake... mmmm so good... and yeah you still have to bake it, it has to cool, then you have to decorate it... and then you can eat it. Dang-it, now I want some cake...

This topic makes me think. I've played Daggerfall and Morrowind through to conclusion and I'm getting there with Oblivion. Thinking about how these games came out makes me wonder about the next in the series.

All I've got to say is this. I don't think it's a matter of "how much time" as Bethesda seems to have established themselves enough. Their early games (ie- Daggerfall) put the comapny "on the map" as the saying goes. Later titles (especially Morrowind) made them into a superstar company. Trust me, it wasn't Redguard or Battlespire that did this for them. After Morrowind, Bethesda aquired the rights for the legendary Fallout series.. and now they've got the rights to the Doom series? Wow. What's next?

The point is that I think Bethesda has established themselves enough and obviously has a good reputation now. I don't think "time" is the right consideration. They can take the time to work on something. But, even a superstar company is going to have it's deadlines. It has to.

The right consideration for Bethesda is "what are you thinking right now." I am 100% certain that Bethesda didn't have "how fun is this" in mind when they made Oblivion.. at least not completely. Oh sure, Oblivion turned out to be fun enough in it's own way. Even as much as I feel Bethesda went in the wrong direction with Oblivion, I still feel it's a credit to the company.

Here's the problem, sans any personal opinion. Oblivion lacks many "fun" little options that previous TES titles had. I won't go into some huge, sprawling list, but consider how restricted Oblivion's enchanting scheme is compared to Morrowind, or even Daggerfall for that matter. The more options you have, the more things players have to "play with". Even players who normally don't like playing your game the way you want them to play it might find some fun way to enjoy it. Heck, if I buy a spell I can't use yet, I can't use it's spell effect when making spells (which wasn't a problem in either of the previous two TES titles). Seen many people complain about cluttered spell books because you can no longer delete spells (even 1996's Daggerfall had the option to do so). Etc, etc, etc..

The icing on the cake. You can only use 10 characters/letters to name your custom character class. That may not sound like such a big deal, but think about it.. the majority of players make custom classes. Even 1996's Daggerfall didn't have this limitation. Sure, it's not a huge deal in the overall picture, but it's sure sign that Bethesda didn't have "how fun is this" in mind when they were making this thing. In Morrowind, one of their employees had so much fun with the product that he had his character's head mounted on a plaque.. something you can find in the game itself. Doesn't matter what you or I think of either Morrowind or Oblivion. When a developer's employee has so much fun with a product that he mounts his test character's head on a plaque.. well, it makes a big, biiiig difference.

Personally, I think Bethesda was too concerned with their radiant ai and their attempts to make a realistic world.. and it kinda blew up on them. "Trying to make a real world" has always been a feeling I've gotten from the TES titles. I think they spent too much time with that and didn't spend enough time with the "how fun is this" type of thing.

So, I say that "take time with it" isn't what Bethesda needs to be concerned with. It's re-adding that "how fun is this" to their mindset. If they can do that, then they can very easily create a superstar product with TES 5. Very easily. Sure, you can't make just everyone happy. But, when I think about all that Bethesda has done since the 90s, I really don't think it's wishful thinking to say that they could bring even the hardcoe Morrowind or Oblivion supporters into a big customer base. Just think about the fun and don't waste too time with a small set of opinions.

Zenimax was involved in that. It isn't like BGS is going around buying up game territory.

Still.

After all, ZeniMax and Bethesda were founded by the same guy with specific purposes in mind. I think it was like Bethesda was the initial developer and money-maker, while ZeniMax was the "primary" company? Something like that. So the arguemnt still stands. Can't go around buying up companies and titles unless something has made you successful to begin wtih. I certainly don't think it was the bowling games their developer Mad Duck created that did it. Since they are placing all these established product titles (Fallout, Doom) into Bethesda's hands and not into the hands of any other developer they own... well, what does that say? Wow, right?

So, I wonder a little about the TES series future. ZeniMax's plans have been a success and they now own something other than Bethesda. Ok. So, if Bethesda fails to deliver as expected with the TES line.. well, there's a lot of ways it could go.

Bethesda isn't making Doom 4. ID is, however ID was bought by Zenimax.

Pff... Details.. His points are still completely valid and true.

Bethesda is a bigger company than they used to be, with more employees and more resources to throw at their projects. Moreover, a large part of the work (the engine) is most likely already done. Assuming they've been working on TESV since Fallout 3, we could easily see a game with just as much content as Oblivion released some time in 2011.

If possible, would I want them to take an extra year and polish the game up even more? Probably not. An extra-long development time doesn't always work out for the best, and you could end up with a game that might have been cutting-edge when development started looking outdated by the time it finally hits. Also, I'm fine with them adding more content later on via expansions, so long as they are *real* expansions like Shivering Isles and Bloodmoon, not Fallout 3-style DLC mini expansions.

Definitely wait. Games like Morrowind and Oblivion take time to *digest*. Even after the game is "finished" in the sense that it is playable and possible to beat, they should still take a month or two to just play the game and make tweaks. So many things on Oblivion can be drastically improved with a tweak.

... or Horse Armour.

I hope that they start announcing by the end of next year, maybe a little into 2012.

I agree with this. It's also possible to over-polish a game and have a lot of the fun little things get polished out. I don't like having only "one way" to do "this one thing." Whether I'm on a quest or just enchanting an item, I prefer having several ways to do this one thing.

That's sort of the point I was trying to make about the difference between Oblivion and past TES games. Options and having little things to "play with" are what draws me.. keeps me coming back and calling a product great. Does the sword shoot fire bolts? Or does it do fire damage when it hits something? Or does the sword heal me when I "use" it? Can I make a spell that I'll just use once and then get rid of? Can I purposely do stupid things, like mix bad effects into my own potions and call it some kinda wiskey? Can I teleport myself out of a bad situation and not get frustrated because I jumped in over my head? Can I levitate around the capital city while the NPC guards look up at me like they're wondering what the heck I'm doing? When I wander about in dungeons are there ledges and stuff that makes me wonder "what the heck is up there?" Or is the dungeon just some basic maze kinda thing? How restricted am I in all the various little things I want to try doing? Do I want to help the king.. or, heck.. do I want to kill the king and feel like a bad mofo and then try a backdoor strategy to winning the game? Sure, I'll gape at the awesome graphics and like them, just like anybody else... but then I set out to play the game and see what it does.

I can't compare to TES 1 Arena because I haven't played it. But, I can say that the other past TES games had some or a lot of these things. As far as I can see, Oblivion has almost none of these things. I've seen people post and say that Oblivion was great but felt lacking. Others dislike it completely. I think this is one of the main reasons. Do something in Oblivion and you've done it before. 'cause there's no other way to try doing it. I don't think the people who made Oblivion had fun with it, first. Don't know if this actually happened, but it feels like someone with a Bill Gates mentality stepped in and cracked a whip.

This is what I want to avoid with TES 5. For me, it's not about time restraints. It's about bringing back common sense. Are the developers concerned with making things fun and keeping the necessary things convenient.. or are they concerned with things like NPC behavior that I'll probably never see?

personally i want them to wait till the next generation of consoles comes out. i dont want some watered down crappy looking game. we only get these games every 5 years or so and game development time keeps getting longer and longer. if they release it for the current gen of consoles, even if.......and thats a big if, they make it so that pcs have all the eyecandy they want, they still have to contend with a limited number of npcs and the AI by definition svck cause you cant have two different AI for each platform.

wait for xbox 720, ps4.

The problem is, look at Kinect and Move, these consoles are just getting started... It could be 3-5 years till next gen comes. I doubt we can all wait that long and I dont think gamesas could afford it. AND I dont want the same problem OB had on these current consoles to happen on next gen.

I say take your time, but release for this gen of consoles and leave the eyecandy on PC.

Let them spend more time on it and release it sometime next fall; I'm going to buy Two Worlds II and Fallout: NV this fall and play it until Rage and Brink then play those until the next Elder Scrolls (maybe).