Skyrim lead designer Bruce Nesmith explained that Larian’s success is an “exception” to the last decade of gaming trends, but one that shows a shift in desire from gamers.
There’s been no shift, we’ve just been ignored and under-served for around two decades. But, sure, keep ignoring us.
It’s what AAA companies do best!
You’d think the sensible business decision would be to see an under supplied gap in the market and fill it, but God-forbid they do something sensible.
but that gap has less potential revenue than a sucessfull live service gacha horse armor battlepass.
so we need to take another shot at the monetisation jackpot,
surely this time we will make it big.did you know:
99% of devs quit before they make a sucessfull live serviceDid you know approximately 1-4% of the population are projected to be sociopathic?
“Streamlining” has been their mantra since Oblivion. TES6 is going to be even more watered down than everything else, but also crammed full of useless things. I’m willing to bet they’ll let you build a town. But the town will do nothing and won’t have any impact at all in the game.
It will do something. It will be a resource sink for a while, and then it will become a resource faucet. Nothing more interesting than that.
Nah, you just described Starfield. They’re going to decide that was too easy and gate building behind even more story/skills/tasks for less reward.
I also described Fallout 4.
That’s not how Bethsoft works. They make everything easier than the last game. They’ll decide Starfield was too difficult, and streamline from there.
I wish. I got Starfield a month ago and everything is gated like that. Core space combat abilities from the tutorial are gated behind perks. Want to craft? You have to invest 15 levels for guns, then 10 for space suits, then 10 for ships, and on, and on. And there’s no getting better just because you do it a lot.
Starfield seems like someone thought Skyrim was too freewheeling so they locked everything down way beyond what’s necessary.
Oof that sucks
The town bit is so uncannily spot, Christ
Yeah, it will be bad. I don’t really understand how some people can be excited about it.
It will be passable, it will have a few moments, but in the end you’ll be left wanting and it will set in just how disinterested the owner of the franchise is in any problem that doesn’t preclude sales. It will sell well enough in preorders just because it’s a Skyrim sequel.
Actually, if they have creativity left in them they’ll have the option to make your own guild! Imagine building each part of your new guilds headquarters! And then imagine absolutely none of it doing anything!
Well they did that in the Elder Scrolls: Blades mobile game. And it’s exactly how you describe.
For town creation that works, see Dark Cloud.
The Magic System was simplified, but was made more reactive with things like igniting oil spills
Man, fuck oil spills. You walk into the first dungeon, you set fire to an oil spill with a spell. Then you’ll try dropping one of those laterns, which are always conveniently placed above the Exxon Valdez. And then, that’s it, the fun is over, the joke is told, that’s all you can do with oil spills.
I’d also really like to know what other examples there are of it being more reactive. You can’t freeze the ground to make enemies slip. You can’t zap a river to fry some fishes. You can’t set fire to wood.
It really feels like some dev thought to themselves, we’ve got oil lamps, maybe we could have some of that drip out, and then the Sweet Little Lies guy said fuck yes, put lakes of oil into every dungeon, so I can claim we’ve made the magic system more reactive or some shit.
I mean for god’s sake, you had a spell in each hand but they didn’t do spell combos.
cmon man
It can be too reactive as well. I love BG3, I did 3 full runs. But I never used the grease spell again after the first run. They made it flammable to the entire puddle. What that means in practical terms is every tiny candle can turn the entire puddle into a small amount of fire damage. The prevalence of flame sources also means this will nearly always happen. So instead of getting a bunch of prone enemies that are easier to hit, I have mildly annoyed enemies.
So now that question is in the back of my head whenever I see this. What kind of damage and reactivity are we talking about here?
I can’t play Divine Divinity 2 anymore. Every. Single. Fight. is just lighting puddles on fire, and freezing them. Or you throw poison on the puddle, and then light it on fire! Wooo
Making it so holding a fire source sets any surface you stand on on fire is so cursed tactically.
The larian games have some interesting interactions beyond just oil. You can make people slip on ice.
The old Magicka game also had some fun interactions that more games could learn from.
I think they were talking about skyrim
Yeah, playing Magicka when I was young certainly set me up for disappointment. I thought by now, all sorcery games would have ways of combining spells. Alas, the need for high-fidelity 3D graphics has nipped that in the bud, because creating good-looking animations for so many combinations is nigh impossible…
Oof. I liked character stat screen in morrowind. I hate tjat newer bethesda games hide it.
Baldur’s gate 3 characters aren’t even that complicated. You pick stats at the start from a limited range of options, and then make very few choices when you level up. Some levels you don’t pick anything at all. This ain’t path of exile.
I got a mod for bg3 that gives you a feat every level and holy shit did that make it more interesting.
To WotC’s credit, making character choice really shallow is probably why the game succeeded so well. A lot of people don’t really want a lot of choices, especially when some are traps.
Hardest part was item management
Yeah, I quickly installed a Containers mod to deal with items. They automatically grab the items (based on how the item is tagged in the backend) so your inventory is just sorted into “melee weapons”, “jewelry”, “books”, etc… The only downside is that encumbrance can sneak up on you, because your inventory doesn’t look full when you open your character sheet. Luckily, sorting by weight still works, so you can see which containers are the heaviest and start with those.
Bag of holding mod is clutch imho
Skyrim turning star-signs into shrines was a brilliant move. Didn’t oversimplify their effects, didn’t put the quiz before the lesson, didn’t give you any reason to delete a character and start over. And by making them in-world objects, at disparate locations, you couldn’t just open a menu and rewrite yourself. So much streamlining, especially in the Elder Scrolls, paves over interesting systems in the name of approachability. But occasionally they nail it.
Skyrim had good, smart devs. Starfield didn’t. Skyrim 2 won’t.
Skyrim 2 is just Oblivion 3
Oblivion is just Arena 3 which means Oblivion 3 is just Arena 6
you mean arena 5, surely?
Oblivion is actually Arena 4. Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind.
Daggerfall doesn’t count.
Uh but actually Redguard 2
Obsession with character sheets comes from the misapprehension that the R in RPG stands for “roll” and not “role” imo.
Obsession with character sheets comes from pen and paper and a desire to simulate every aspect of the world. Without the tools to tweak your ability to interact with the system you can pretend to be a master thief, but unless the game reinforces that with its behaviour you’re just pretending. Like you can pretend to be a vampire in Skyrim, sure, but it’s more fun when you’ve actually got the curse and the game reinforces that.
Fundamentally a stat sheet is just a way to tell the game what your character is like in a way that it understands and can reinforce that’s more granular than definition by class or by what skills you’ve used. And every game has one, whether you can see it and change it or not.
It’s why “everyone” ends up as a stealth archer in Skyrim. Because stealth and ranged attacks are something every character would try to do, Skyrim’s design means if you as much as try something it makes you better at it, even if you want to be a clumbsy barbarian.
Which ironically makes it so you can’t just roleplay, you have to avoid trying anything that isn’t what your character is best at. It means you can’t hide from a patrol you can’t handle, you have to just charge in and swing, because the game will change your character otherwise and you can’t tell it not to.
When Elder Scrolls had a character sheet, you designated specific skills that would contribute to leveling. Stealth archers were only as common as the people who preferred that play style.
Archery did kinda suck in ES3 though. Point being, incidental play didn’t sabotage your character authorship. Character sheets are great.
Well, there’s no reason why the DM couldn’t hold the character sheets and you only perceive that your character is good at certain things from your choices and their outcome in the scenario (but you could be wildly wrong). In real life you don’t know exactly how many charisma points you have.
True, but you do learn what you’re good at and what you’re not. You don’t play as a child or teen still learning their place, though you could, but generally that’s not what’s done. People generally have a decent grasp on their capabilities, though they can surprise themselves it’s rarely orders of magnitude out like it would not having a sheet.
Personally, I find that to be good news. I prefer ES’s “just do the thing to get better at it” approach over arbitrary experience points to get better at whatever you decide to upgrade when you level up.
It also doesn’t mean there won’t be stats. The engine still depends on stats whether or not Bethesda makes UI for it or allows granular control of it. FO4’s perks, for example, set various attribute and hidden skill points in the background to hard values because that’s how the game handles the extra “power attacks” you can make. Instead of how it was displayed to the user in Oblivion, where you get these extra attacks at 25, 50, 75 and 100 points in a skill, you just upgrade the perk and it sets those values to the necessary milestone.
None of these simplifications stop it from being a good action adventure game. I think at this point if you still consider them to be RPGs first and not straight up action games, you’re only setting yourself up for disappointment. They haven’t been good RPGs since Oblivion first shifted the series to being more action-oriented.
I’d say the focus in Bethesda games has always been exploration and world building. I don’t care too much about the roleplay system so long as exploration and looting feels good.
Stats are incredibly boring. People want to see upgrades that actually do something, stuff like perks. Those are far more interesting and tangible than leveling your CHR stat from 32 to 33.
Pfft, just give us stats that improve by doing the thing (eg. agility that improves by jumping around and visibly improves jump height every time it increases). I’d rather that nuance over a block of text with a witty name that gives a massive instant boon. Tangibility is right, but the numbers aren’t the boring part.
This was by far the worst part of the RPG systems in their games. This sort of design always encourages really dumb and counter intuitive play.
The last time I felt that wad in Morowwind
Tell me about it. Skyrim for all its accolades kind of fails as an RPG in the sense that your character can do pretty much everything, but your run speed/jump height is static.
Increasing health/magic/stamina was a really lame way to handle levelling IMO.
It would be a shame if they streamlined the RPG systems even more for TESVI
Nonsense.
“constantly be jumping while conjuring a skeleton” is pretty stupid and counter intuitive for an optimum thing to do, but it that’s what you should do if you want to level those skills up.
Morrowind also had some bizarre optimum behavior if you wanted to get the +5s on stats when you leveled.
You don’t just spam jump, you wedge yourself under an arch or something so that you can trigger more jumps per second.
I’m curious what people are hoping for. When was the last time Bethesda made a good game? I would bet maybe 5% of ppl working on Skyrim are still there. It’s unlikely they will be able to correct course, and we’ll get a new Starfield
I thought Fallout 4 was good. As a first-person looter shooter. Shitty story-line and same problems as every game on the engine; but still great fun strictly as a shooter. Setting is on point, it’s easy to get immersed in the world, all that. It just isn’t a great role-playing game nor does it have a super compelling story after Kellogg’s fight.
Even Fallout 76 is kinda good? Like if it wasn’t for the whole multiplayer angle, it could have been a good Fallout 4-2.
Starfield is such an anamoly. It’s technically (and by that I mean the tech itself) one of the best releases they’ve ever had. Shit runs smooth as butter even on unsupported hardware. But then the game itself is just… So boring. There’s no life to the world like in every single one of their other games outside the major cities. Most of the universe is just empty, and even with the RNG POIs, because they are pre-made things that can just pop up anywhere, they have literally no environmental story-telling. And it also kinda feels like they lied about being sci-fi fans because every reference is as generic as possible. It’s like someone who has never seen sci-fi in their life came up with everything in the game after a single night of barely paying attention to the top 10 sci-fi movies they found on a random BuzzFeed list.
My biggest gripe still is the planet that has an absolute embargo on it, ships stopping anyone from entering, a planet obliterated by the monsters, frozen over. You land, do the mission, and then right outside there’s multiple POI with settlers just casually living, pirate bases just generically there. Like they couldn’t even stop the POI’s from spawning on the one planet that should have been abandoned.
Oi. Fallout 76 is good, at least now. It’s basically just the zany-ness of fallout, with better enviro storytelling than fallout 4 and just pure fun. Nowhere near RPG, but it didn’t aim to be an RPG from the beggining, just a fun multiplayer game.
it has the best map ever too
It’s insanely gorgeous
No. Nobody was asking for Fortnite 76. Single player is all I want out of Fallout and they failed us.
Fortnite 76
The only thing fortnite and fallout 76 have in common is shooting and building lol. Where comparing them is still a big stretch.
Also, a lot of people wanted coop fallout and while Fallout 76 isn’t exactly a single-player turned coop, it has all the fun of coop and fallout.
Hell, people even wanted fallout multiplayer. Just fallout multiplayer. There’s a reason multiplayer mod exists for New Vegas.
So yeah, sorry but load of bull.
I’m guessing some people are just looking for more of Skyrim. That’s basically what Starfield was, in a sci-fi setting, so I’m confident Bethesda can still deliver it. I’m not confident people want what comes along with that, though (bland story, outdated engine, empty characters, outdated mechanics, lots of loading screens).
2011
Water down the orange drink, Willie.
I’ve watered it down as much as it can go, it can’t take no more!
Just cancel this game or give it to larian studios already, I don’t want elder scrolls 6 anymore
that sucks i was really wanting to play a new elder scrolls, but Dreamscape_ has spoken everyone 😔
I think I wanna fire up Morrowind!
So aside from Baldurs gate 3, who’s actually making good RPGs these days?
Owlcat is.
Wrath of the Righteous, and Rogue Trader are great RPGsGreat rpgs but damn do they have issues with bugs, designing puzzles and some quest pathing/designing.
Make fun games with so many head scratching moments on why they decided to do things
I can see that, and those are common complaints. But I’m happy they even bother to put puzzles in their games. And most of them you can figure out from notes or environmental clues. I think it makes the games better, you can skip most of the puzzles anyways. Or just look up the solution.
I have more issues with the menus and character outlines, circles, and dotted lines everywhere. Also, the gamepad control for Rogue Trader gives me motion sickness.
I love their Adventure Path conversion that is basically straight up a single game worth of content per act. Although the way that the way that they implemented the rules is basically like having a DM that is your partner’s ex.
Interesting. I’ll check that out. Thanks
For a generous definition of “these days”, check out the pillars of eternity games. They’re very good and clearly a love letter to Baldur’s gate. Unfortunately the team is now making a Skyrim-like for some reason, but I hope they come back and finish the main game story sometime.
There’s also that solasta game that’s DND 5e but on a smaller budget from a few years ago.
Inexile though its been a bit since wasteland 3 and owlcat games.
I’ve been wanting to check out Rogue Trader now that that’s out. I loved Kingmaker and Wotr from Owlcat (with the caveat that I always disable the crusade and kingmaking modes…)
Its pretty solid but… limited. You can tell just by looking at the map that they intend to fill it out with DLC over the next couple years. Which is honestly on brand for a TRPG based game especially a games workshop IP.
Is it bad that I dont consider it all that bad since expansion modules have been a thing in RPGs for decades and DLC are just a further evolution therein?
As long as the base game justifies the price I don’t mind as much. I thi the practice is worse when you don’t get a full story and it feels like “pay 40 dollars to see the end!”
I usually catch these on sale anyway. I’m the worst type of customer for Owlcat for sure.
Oh its fine on that front, id say it probably has a out as much content as Pillars of eternity. Though I do suspect they will give more endings in time, but that is moreso owlcat being full of perfectionists than anything else.
Falcom usually doesn’t disappoint.
I couldn’t with Baldur’s Gate. I don’t know what the hell people are doing playing turn based games in 2024, I hate that so much. I hope elder scrolls doesn’t take too many cues from BG3
It’s playing a tabletop RPG on your PC… of course it will be turn based. if you haven’t played live DnD before, you should give it a try!
If I’m playing a table top game I understand it HAS to be turn based. It’s a necessity. But with a video game, turn based is outdated and slows combat to a crawl, and makes it about guessing and mathing instead of actual fighting skill. I personally hate it and the moment I went into my first battle in BG3 and saw it was turn based, I turned it off and never went back
Not liking it does not mean it’s outdated. There’s a lot of us that like it as the success of XCOM and BG3 show. We’re allowed to like things that you don’t.
Bro would hate chess
Bummer you are so negative towards turned based. It’s my favorite type of combat. 😆
that’s the point. Play something else if that’s not your style. It’s not pointless.
I’m of the exact opposite opinion. Take the last two Pathfinder games. So much complexity about what you can and can’t do within melee (5 foot step, melee spell prep gets AOO, have to prep then step in, etc.), but it’s all wasted because the CPU can trigger those same actions faster than a human possibly can, and do it across many combatants simultaneously. It ends up being about building stats/feats that win instead of tactical combat.
It’s a shame you turned it off the first time you realized it was turn based. I have a friend that hated turn-based combat. BG3 made it so he nopes out of real time combat in his favorite games prior to BG3.
For me, turn based is top tier RPG.
Edit: that said, Elder Scrolls is more of a simulationist immersion game and does not need
real timeturn-based combat.Go play Morrowind and come back and say that it’s a simulationist immersion game again.
It is now but it’s roots were deep in RPG stats beforehand.
My first TES game was Arena. I’m familiar with the way it used to be (and still wish we had Thaumaturgy and Mysticism). I still think those games were simulationist immersion games. No other series would let you essentially live a life as a burglar in a fantasy world. I don’t think being simulationist immersion games precludes them from having stats. I do think it means they wouldn’t really be the same if they were turn-based (which is what I was talking about).
Edit: when this posted I saw that I typed “real time” instead of turn-based in my last comment. So I guess I did indicate I wanted turn-based combat, but this was a mistake.
I see where you’re coming from, though when they were using attack rolls to determine hits and was essentially real-time-turns I think I still disagree with your definition. I don’t have a good counter to your point, I just don’t agree on the words used now =P
Roleplaying games shouldn’t be about player skill, the whole point of having character skills is that they can differ from player skill.
Did you ever try Baulders Gate 2?
Never heard of the series till the new one really, maybe vaguely a while back
Good to know they keep going their own way. We got more than enough carbon copy games nowadays, always excited for something unique.
are you suggesting that the elder scrolls series, specifically the next one coming out made and published by bethesda/ microsoft, is going to be unique?
Uniquely bland and devoid of any soul.
You haven’t seen it, you haven’t played it, you don’t work there. You just want to shit on things people like
While all those things are likely true, Bethesda also does have a pretty consistent track record of releasing the exact same game over and over, so it’s not exactly an unreasonable prediction that they’ll do it again.
I’m sorry, are you calling Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim the exact same game? That’s a bit disingenuous.
Brother, these games are thirteen to thirty years old and therefore not in any way relevant to the discussion.
For our sanity we must let TES go. Since Skyrim, Bethesda has only developed Simplified Skyrim In The Wasteland, Buggy Skyrim in the Multiplayer Wasteland, and Very Boring Skyrim in Empty Space. And about a bajillion outright Skyrim re-releases.
Their current leadership is incapable of acknowledging the failures of Starfield, from uninspired game design to extremely outdated engine that holds back the very fundamental vision of the game. Since Bethesda’s leadership hasn’t changed or acknowledged their wrongs, we have every reason to believe that TES6 will make the same mistakes. They do not have the means of their ambition anymore.
Elder Scroll Arena 12 ftw !
And I don’t understand why we should care if it’s unique as long as it’s fun.
Yes they are. Why the hell would you not? What a toxic comment, we haven’t even seen anything about the game and you’re already complaining about it simply existing.
You realize the elder scrolls games are getting less unique as they continue on in their own series… Right?
You realize Skyrim was released over 13 years ago… Right? I can’t understand how this stance makes any sense.
You realize starfield is just skyrim in space right? Its the same game with a different coat of paint on it with very little change in gameplay and mechanics. How innovative of them…
You realize all these terrible opinions start with you realize?
You realize I’ve been doing that to keep the same old stale theme just like Bethesda?
