Do you think Bethesda has learned from oblivion?

Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 1:57 am

That was something they improved in F3. I remember most parts of the waste being deadly, until level eight, or so.


Obsidian did a great job in F-NV with that.
When you're around level 10 you can explore about 50% of the map in relative safety, but some places have wildlife and bandits that still make you pee your pants, even beyond level 15. The locals often warn you about which places are dangerous. It makes exploring a lot more 'adventurous' because you know there are regions on the map where you have to make careful preparations before you go exploring / questing there.

The downside to all this are all the invisible walls they put there. The developers force you to take a certain path to make it really difficult to get at certain locations too early in the game. Understandable, but limiting your freedom is never a good thing.

I really hope they'll take the design TESV in the same direction while getting around the need for invisible walls. Especially if they plan to bring levitation back. Not being able to jump on a 2 feet ledge is one thing, but flying against an invisible wall in the middle of the map would be a complete failure. :)
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Donatus Uwasomba
 
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Post » Fri Feb 18, 2011 9:25 pm

I'd have to say yes, they already started to learn in the expansions to Oblivion, for example in SI you can't just fast travel to New Sheogorath, you have to walk there before it becomes an option, same in F3, you pretty much had to walk somewhere before you could travel there.
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Brooks Hardison
 
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Post » Fri Feb 18, 2011 9:56 pm

I just wish that next time Bethesda just follows their heart. (as corny as that may sound) I trust that next time Bethesda will find the right mix to make the best RPG ever. :thumbsup:



yes little Timmy .... :angel:
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kirsty joanne hines
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 9:13 am

hmmm

I do agree that casual gaming (which will be the undoing of game companies, REMEMBER ET :) hehehehe) is upon us.

BUT bethesad will also try to please the not so casual players like us :P, because believe it or not, casual gamers are not more than serious gamers especially on PC platforms which houses a massive majority of gamers who want to use more brain than thumbs to play a game.

anyway when my prophecy comes true (it always does) I will be sure I come online and say I TOLD YOU SO and laugh my evil laugh which I do oh so well MUAHAHHAHAHAHHAHH
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sarah taylor
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 12:00 pm

I am pretty sure they have listened, because have you seen fallout three, it basically had fixed all the things that Oblivion had wrong
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Sophie Payne
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 12:01 pm

"Learned from Oblivion." Heh heh. Considering Oblivion sold far better than Morrowind, they've learned that an Oblivion-esque game sells much better. No, they haven't "learned" anything from Oblivion. However, they realized its flaws, though not compared to Morrowind for the most part.
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Luis Reyma
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 6:40 am

yes I think they have learned LOADS especially after fallout 3 as well.

what I expect this time is better combat/stealth/magic

better levels

better story

better body animations

and better (different) leveling system

if they do not make the changes I mentioned above then chances are the game will fail big time.


It will fail YOU, not those millions of people that bought the game. Even if it was Oblivion 2.0 people will buy the game. Why? Oblivion was easy to get into fun. Morrowind was more directed at hardcoes. The ration? hardcoe:Casual 1:1000.
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Racheal Robertson
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 1:41 am

It will fail YOU, not those millions of people that bought the game. Even if it was Oblivion 2.0 people will buy the game. Why? Oblivion was easy to get into fun. Morrowind was more directed at hardcoes. The ration? hardcoe:Casual 1:1000.

That's not what Daggerfall players screamed about Morrowind, and that's what I strongly disagree with. I've been playing video games with most of my free time for over 10 years and I prefer Oblivion. I'd like to tell people where to stuff their accusations of being "casual". The term "casual" is used as a derogatory insult to those who would dare to prefer the newer, more popular game simply because it attracts more people.
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Lyd
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 11:07 am

Bethesda as a company seems to really listen to their fan base, which is a really good thing. I'm confident they'll fix at least some of the things that Oblivion has been critisized for in TES: V. I've heard that they've already fixed a bunch of these in FO3, though I haven't played it myself.

There's always something to gripe about with every game that comes out, especially when you have such a large fan base. You really can't please everyone, but I'm sure Bethesda takes in to account what fan reactions are like to different things they try in games - or else they're just really good at guessing, because you can see how they've responded in the games to the commonest complaints about predecessing games.
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Ricky Meehan
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 7:22 am

It will fail YOU, not those millions of people that bought the game. Even if it was Oblivion 2.0 people will buy the game. Why? Oblivion was easy to get into fun. Morrowind was more directed at hardcoes. The ration? hardcoe:Casual 1:1000.


LOL

oh well maybe they will release the game when face book gets an upgrade or they make Halo 23 (never played the game :P so shooting blind there) or something then all casual players will be too busy to notice :P

but honestly I don't think there is much difference between casual and hardcoe, its just hard core play 5 6 hours a day while casual plays less or something, if that's the case then I'm stuck in a casual/hardcoe limbo
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xemmybx
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 4:29 am

That's not what Daggerfall players screamed about Morrowind, and that's what I strongly disagree with. I've been playing video games with most of my free time for over 10 years and I prefer Oblivion. I'd like to tell people where to stuff their accusations of being "casual". The term "casual" is used as a derogatory insult to those who would dare to prefer the newer, more popular game simply because it attracts more people.


People will find Oblivion easy to get into and play, but if someone wants to get the most out of the game, they'll have to REALLY get into it. Oblivion appealed to casuals and some hardcoes, Morrowind appealed mostly to hardcoes and some casuals.

I've constructed my previous sentence in a wrong way.
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Sarah Evason
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 8:13 am

Much better. Honestly, every game in the series was designed primarily in response to how players reacted with the previous one. Battlespire originated as an expansion pack for Daggerfall, and Bethesda stood by the assumption that many considered dungeon delving to be the "best thing" in the game. Redguard was a test to see just how detailed a world could be while still having compelling gameplay - and Morrowind expanded on this idea of quality over quantity (even though to this day it's one of those games that has quite a bit of both). Oblivion was designed in response to complaints about the AI and how stagnant the world felt.

TES V will be designed with approximately 15% less bloom.
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maya papps
 
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Post » Fri Feb 18, 2011 11:17 pm

I actually created a thread about this same thing - or at least really close to it - but it got locked and I was told to take it to the speculation thread. I guess since it's allowed now, I'll just repost what I posted back then:

---

So here we are, eagerly awaiting The Elder Scrolls V. Sure, it hasn't been announced yet, but they might as well. Nothing newsworthy about that except that they finally came out with it. The forums are still rife with Oblivion vs Morrowind threads and you can definitely see a pattern emerging here. Morrowind was loved for the way its world was built and the excellent writing, and Oblivion was more eye-candy and the more physical combat. But we have all discussed that subject to death, and so I will leave that equine corpse to pummel for other threads. Instead I'd like to ask for your expectations. I'm not talking ideas and suggestions, but I'm talking about the learning experience from the development of the last two games. Allow me to elaborate.

Though Daggerfall had a world of sorts with towns and wilderness, it wasn't nearly as detailed and immersive as its successor, Morrowind. Morrowind was a game with a fixed 3D landscape, cities painstakingly hand-built by the developers and with some real personality. Oblivion expanded on that later on by making the cities larger and add more realism to them. However, with the larger, more crowded cities of Oblivion also came the issue of walls. In order to save your computer from blowing its cycles on crap it didn't need, cities were placed in cells that required loading.

Another example was voice acting. Morrowind didn't have much voices. Oblivion improved on this by giving every single NPC out there a voice. But this backfired in a different way. The voices quickly became stale - after all, voices were shared between races and thus NPCs. And there were so many of those!

The cities and the voice acting are just two of the many examples, but we can definitely see how improving something on Morrowind had backfired in another way. Todd Howard's team, a group of fantastic programmers with some amazing RPG titles firmly under their belt, will have learned from this. This will be their third modern open world game, and they have now experienced that there's no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to making games like these.

How do you think Bethesda will use this newfound wisdom? What have they spent their time on? For example, I recall them mentioning they revamped their engine to be a bit more modular, so they're able to take out one part, modify it and plug it back in without causing a total collapse of the rest of the game.

What do you think they have learned from Morrowind and Oblivion?

---

It's pretty on-topic in this thread, so I figured I might as well put it here and let you guys take it for what it's worth.
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Jack Bryan
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 12:06 am

Gosh I hope so!
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jess hughes
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 8:02 am

What do you think they have learned from Morrowind and Oblivion?


That they're never going to make 100% of their customers happy, no matter what they come up with?

From the changes between OB and FO3, it's apparent that they recognize some of the issues that many previous TES series players had with IV, as well as those with III. Unfortunately, FO3 tended to address the symptoms, rather than the underlying causes. For example, they added "caps" to the mini-games, so you couldn't play them if your skill level was too far below that of the lock, without addressing the basic problem of the minigame relying ENTIRELY on player skill and leaving character skill meaningless, except for those "caps". They addressed the excessive scaling issue by "locking" the level of indoor places you previously visited, which did nothing to fix the underlying problem in areas which you did not visit at low levels or outdoors, yet left those locked areas relatively "boring" in the later stages of the game as was the problem with MW. It was "better", but not by much.

Hopefully, Bethesda has had enough time to consider other options and get it "right" with V. Meanwhile, all we can do is sit and wait, and bicker and argue about the unknown details like a bunch of fickle fans.
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jess hughes
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 12:09 pm

Heh, that's a skewed poll and assumes that OB wasn't good. ;)

In general, of course they have learned from criticism; they used criticism from MW in the developmnt of OB and claim that it's an integral part of development.

The questions are what did they learn, and what will they do with the knowledge. That's anyone's guess ;)
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Lily Evans
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 9:52 am

That they're never going to make 100% of their customers happy, no matter what they come up with?


In my local newspaper there is this guy who reviews a game every week.
When reviewing NV his main criticism that the graphics were "hopelessly dated" and therefor he couldn't enjoy it as much as Oblivion and FO3.

The reality we have to deal with here is that average attention span for a new game these days is about one week(end).
It doesn't matter if the content fits inside a shoebox, as long as all the technical aspects of the game are on the bleeding edge.

Also, if a game doesn't make it to console, you can forget about it.
I think that's why Black Isle studio's (Fallout, Baldurs Gate, Planescape Torment...) went under and Bethesda didn't.

It's really tough for a company who wants to make decent RPG's to compete in a market like that.
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lolly13
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 6:53 am



Also, if a game doesn't make it to console, you can forget about it.
I think that's why Black Isle studio's (Fallout, Baldurs Gate, Planescape Torment...) went under and Bethesda didn't.



I think Blizzard didn't get that memo. Someone should notify them asap. :whistling:
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Lifee Mccaslin
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 12:38 am

Actually Blizzard is also exploring console as they have plans to bring Diablo 3 to the console. A sad day for PC gamers in my opinion, since Blizzard was one of the few remaining companies that was catering exclusively to PC. That being said, you are right in your point that Blizzard has proven PC gaming is still very much alive.

On topic though, I seriously hope they did learn from Oblivion. And from interviews with Todd Howard I'm pretty confident they did, at least on some points. One of the issues that really stuck out for me was the lack of lore depth in Oblivion. In one of the interviews, Howard also pointed this out as a weakness of Oblivion.

So yeah, I'm not sure they will make the changes I'm hoping for, but I sure hope so.
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Raymond J. Ramirez
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 1:29 pm

Actually Blizzard is also exploring console as they have plans to bring Diablo 3 to the console.


Wow, well isn't that just a kick in the sack. /sadface
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LittleMiss
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 9:30 am

Wow, well isn't that just a kick in the sack. /sadface


it would be a sad day in human history indeed
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Megan Stabler
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 11:05 am

LOL

oh well maybe they will release the game when face book gets an upgrade or they make Halo 23 (never played the game :P so shooting blind there) or something then all casual players will be too busy to notice :P

but honestly I don't think there is much difference between casual and hardcoe, its just hard core play 5 6 hours a day while casual plays less or something, if that's the case then I'm stuck in a casual/hardcoe limbo


Casual players play Call of Duty, are 12 years of age and scream "[censored]" into the mike all the time. hardcoes complete Mass Effect 1/2 around 10 times, have every single item in Morrowind/Oblivion/Fallouts and have a massive library of RPG and SNES games. :hubbahubba:

Okay, maybe that's far too extreme, but you know where I'm coming from...
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Arnold Wet
 
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Post » Fri Feb 18, 2011 10:58 pm

Casual players play Call of Duty, are 12 years of age and scream "[censored]" into the mike all the time. hardcoes complete Mass Effect 1/2 around 10 times, have every single item in Morrowind/Oblivion/Fallouts and have a massive library of RPG and SNES games. :hubbahubba:

Okay, maybe that's far too extreme, but you know where I'm coming from...


lol

hehe well I don't want to bash on console gamers, but honestly who wants complexity in a console.

its only a bad thing when they make the game for console then make a PC version for it, it will not be as "good" as in not as immersive and time consuming as I would like (begin a PC gamer who never touched a console game pad since Sega)
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Melis Hristina
 
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Post » Sat Feb 19, 2011 12:12 pm

lol

hehe well I don't want to bash on console gamers, but honestly who wants complexity in a console.

its only a bad thing when they make the game for console then make a PC version for it, it will not be as "good" as in not as immersive and time consuming as I would like (begin a PC gamer who never touched a console game pad since Sega)

Where did you come up with your theories? Who wants complexity in a console? How about people that just don't feel like doing what they consider wasting money on a PC but like RPGs? I can use weak arguments too, such as saying shooters were originally for PCs only, and they are simple games, so therefore PC players must not want complexity. If someone can give me decent reasoning as to why console players are a dumbed-down lot who hate complexity, taking your arguments more seriously would be a bit easier, but as it stands, such accusations seem to be nothing more than wild accusations made up by some elitist crackpots as soon as the "sad day in human history" where consoles became popular came about. I'd also like to point out how similar certain PC players are to console players, yet they still view themselves as the great minority of gaming. You've got PC players refusing to share their exclusive goods just as you have console players (from all sides) doing the same. You've got PC players who think they're better than those playing other platforms just as PS and XBox fans that do the same, and not one of these sides has a shred of proof, just wild accusations and a false sense of superiority. My favorite video game genre of the 10+ years I've been playing video games have been RPGs. I am a nearly PS and RPG exclusive player, and I resent what I view as thesis statements with no evidence.

How any of this is related to improving upon Oblivion (in a thread that just seems to exist to imply Oblivion was a crappy game and that Bethesda made a mistake by not rehashing everything from Morrowind) is beyond me, but Morrowind was primarily a PC game, and that didn't stop Daggerfall fans from complaining Morrowind was dumbed-down and if PC players are all as great as some of them claim they are, then please explain all the piracy involved with PC games while I, a console player, have never illegally stolen a game nor would I even consider doing such a thing. Yes, there are console players who pirate games and yes, not even nearly all PC players pirate games, but there is some good evidence right there that there are plenty of idiots and honest people among both groups. One of the reasons why companies are focusing less on PCs is due to piracy issues. There are plenty of criminal-minded morons on that side of the whole debate. You should "thank" some of them, not consoles and console players.
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Ebou Suso
 
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Post » Fri Feb 18, 2011 10:11 pm

Casual =?= Immature

Something tells me that by making games for both PC and consoles, publishers have the financial incentive to invest more in the game's development and may even determine whether the game gets made at all. So instead of bashing the console market, I would be thankful that by including those consumers, games get made that otherwise wouldn't.
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Tessa Mullins
 
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