A simple solution that would make Bethesda games inherently better

[Makabb]

Daggerfall was big, yes there was fast travel, but you just traveled instantly which brakes the immersion.
Why they just didn't have map travel like in Fallout? Have the possibility of 'fast travel' by traveling on overland map and you would be brought back to the world on combat encounter....... and if someone would want he still can travel all the way by foot (mount makes a lot more sense for traveling big distances)
It's been over 20 years and I can't believe no one from Bethesda has thought of this (maybe they just didn't want it as the worlds later built were nothing like the size of Daggerfall)

It's a way better system of fast travel, because you just don't magicaly appear in other place, but you see your characters moving across the world, which helps the immersion, it just worked so well in Fallout, I can't believe no other games apart from jrpgs does it.

 

[Don Peste]

 

[aweigh]

<insert meme reply>

 

[Jarmaro]

Bethesda games would be better if they simply gave a shit. They don't, thus they are bad. Not really much to talk about, they just don't care about making good games.

 

[Makabb]

I remember there was a New Vegas mod of Fallout 1 that wanted to do this... but it never got completed.

 

[The Old Kiwi]

The underlying problem with Bethesda was always the poor attitude of the administrators. They hired decent artisitic and programming talent, then crippled them with poor management. I always thought that the company resented having to deal with real, actual, human customers, AND didn't want to know enough about computer hardware to come up with minimum requirements that were workable.

Bioware also constantly named senseless requirements, although I never had the impression that the management resented having to really sell products to actual people.

 

[Wayward Son]

The underlying problem with Bethesda was always the poor attitude of the administrators. They hired decent artisitic and programming talent, then crippled them with poor management. I always thought that the company resented having to deal with real, actual, human customers, AND didn't want to know enough about computer hardware to come up with minimum requirements that were workable.

Bioware also constantly named senseless requirements, although I never had the impression that the management resented having to really sell products to actual people.

Part of their massive requirements (at least for Skyrim) compared to the graphical fidelity was the fact that they didn't optimize things. From what I heard, they even forgot to do compiler optimization.

 

[Beastro]

Daggerfall was big, yes there was fast travel, but you just traveled instantly which brakes the immersion.

If you want the feel of a long arduous travel the run around whatever town to went to trying to find the one random building you're there for doing your quest for made up for it.

Bethesda games would be better if they simply gave a shit. They don't, thus they are bad. Not really much to talk about, they just don't care about making good games.

There was one in Daggerfall. It and to a lesser extent Morrowind had that strong simulationist ethic built in.

 

[Iznaliu]

The real cause of Bethesda's decline was the success that Morrowind faced, which made them unable to critically look at their design decisions and instead go down the path of increasing simplification. The success that their subsequent games enjoyed only reinforced this tendency.

 

[DosBuster]

The underlying problem with Bethesda was always the poor attitude of the administrators. They hired decent artisitic and programming talent, then crippled them with poor management. I always thought that the company resented having to deal with real, actual, human customers, AND didn't want to know enough about computer hardware to come up with minimum requirements that were workable.

Bioware also constantly named senseless requirements, although I never had the impression that the management resented having to really sell products to actual people.

Part of their massive requirements (at least for Skyrim) compared to the graphical fidelity was the fact that they didn't optimize things. From what I heard, they even forgot to do compiler optimization.

From what I understand compiler optimizations can cause issues with games; a game developer posited back then that the reason for disabling them is that they probably caused crashes on certain hardware configs. (source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3385126)

It's a temporary solution, not a very good one but they also had to ship the game on a certain date so that's why they disabled them, remember they're also optimizing for two other consoles as well at the same time. They did end up enabling them in a patch so they must have fixed the issues the optimizations caused.

 

[DosBuster]

The underlying problem with Bethesda was always the poor attitude of the administrators. They hired decent artisitic and programming talent, then crippled them with poor management. I always thought that the company resented having to deal with real, actual, human customers, AND didn't want to know enough about computer hardware to come up with minimum requirements that were workable.

Did you actually work there or are you just speaking out your ass?

 

[Jimmious]

Bethesda games would be better if they didn't sell more the more shitty mechanics they added.
So basically since the customers are retards, the product constantly drops in quality.
THERE IS NO HOPE.

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

Bethesda like many others dropped the balls the moment started to make rpg for people that dislike rpgs..

 

[Trashos]

Bethesda has to make big money, because they run big budgets. So I don't expect that making good games is high on their priority list. Their managers have to solve much bigger problems than the quality of their games, so they don't give a shit. This is obvious by now, because New Vegas showed them how they can make a good game that sells well on their engine, and they still don't care.

 

[V_K]

The underlying problem with Bethesda was always the poor attitude of the administrators. They hired decent artisitic and programming talent, then crippled them with poor management. I always thought that the company resented having to deal with real, actual, human customers, AND didn't want to know enough about computer hardware to come up with minimum requirements that were workable.

Bioware also constantly named senseless requirements, although I never had the impression that the management resented having to really sell products to actual people.

Part of their massive requirements (at least for Skyrim) compared to the graphical fidelity was the fact that they didn't optimize things. From what I heard, they even forgot to do compiler optimization.

People always complain about shit optimisation in Beth games, but somehow my experience has always been completely opposite. Morrowind ran way better than Gothic 2 on my then-toaster, and my current toaster handles Skyrim at decent settings a lot easier than e.g. DAO or even NWN2 (and Witcher 2 is completely unplayable on it).

 

[circ]

Bethesda has to make big money, because they run big budgets. So I don't expect that making good games is high on their priority list. Their managers have to solve much bigger problems than the quality of their games, so they don't give a shit. This is obvious by now, because New Vegas showed them how they can make a good game that sells well on their engine, and they still don't care.

And that's bullshit. Bethesda is one of the, if not the, smallest triple A studios around. Unlike bigger studios though, they work on a single game at a time, but even so, their budgets are not as astronomical as some are.

Arena and Daggerfall and off-shoots around the time were made mostly by one man and a handful of contractors. Any talent Bethesda had left around Morrowind, the remaining ones left around Oblivion. What's left are some of the most incompetent veterans you will find in development.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Yes, it does make one wonder how Bethesda can be so fucking stupid they don't do fast travel like the original Fallout games; especially after getting the rights to the series and making something called Fallout. The biggest problem with their fast travel system is the lack of random encounter, which makes fast travel completely consequence free. It's the safest way of getting around in their games. But then their games are full of stupid shit like that. Like why would you even want a way of getting around that skips combat when your whole game is built around getting into combat encounters while going from one place to the other? Sure it's shit combat, but if you've bought the game it's at least a tiny bit likely you don't think that. Same with the horses. Nice idea, but they're total shit as you can't fight while on one, and the simple act of walking and jumping rise your stats. So horses mean you can't do the thing they want you to do while walking about, and your character isn't getting better while going place like they do on foot.

Although there's a whole lot of shit they need to do, like make their combat system and encounters not be total garbage.

 

[Wayward Son]

The underlying problem with Bethesda was always the poor attitude of the administrators. They hired decent artisitic and programming talent, then crippled them with poor management. I always thought that the company resented having to deal with real, actual, human customers, AND didn't want to know enough about computer hardware to come up with minimum requirements that were workable.

Bioware also constantly named senseless requirements, although I never had the impression that the management resented having to really sell products to actual people.

Part of their massive requirements (at least for Skyrim) compared to the graphical fidelity was the fact that they didn't optimize things. From what I heard, they even forgot to do compiler optimization.

People always complain about shit optimisation in Beth games, but somehow my experience has always been completely opposite. Morrowind ran way better than Gothic 2 on my then-toaster, and my current toaster handles Skyrim at decent settings a lot easier than e.g. DAO or even NWN2 (and Witcher 2 is completely unplayable on it).

Really? That's quite odd. My old toaster could run DA:O beautiful but got 10 FPS in Skyrim on a good day.

 

[Jarmaro]

it does make one wonder how Bethesda can be so fucking stupid they don't do fast travel like the original Fallout games; especially after getting the rights to the series and making something called Fallout. The biggest problem with their fast travel system is the lack of random encounter, which makes fast travel completely consequence free. It's the safest way of getting around in their games. But then their games are full of stupid shit like that.

You are missing the point. Fallout wasn't game for all. That's why Bethseda turned Fallout into TES, not other way around. They aren't stupid, actually they are brilliant in what they are doing: making money. They made shit load of them beceause of their game making formula. That's what people wanted.

You could say Capitalism is to blame.

 

[aweigh]

i wouldn't call bethesda brilliant. I'd go so far as to say that they lucked into their success.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

On optimization, while I have no real technical knowledge to back this up, it seems that in Oblivion/Skyrim the huge focus on graphics meant they could fit about 4 characters on screen at one time. That's why they had to combine greaves and torso armor in Skyrim, among other concessions they made.

I played Gothic 3 a few months and was amazed how there were entire city battles between Orcs and Rebels with a few dozen fighters at one time. And it may seem silly but things like the grass density, view distance, etc. was pretty amazing for Gothic 3 with some .ini tweaks, especially compared to Oblivion and even Skyrim. They probably used less overall polygons or whatever but were able to make a scene with higher quantity in return, a style that I think is better for these types of RPGs (considering Skyrim's cities are tiny, Gothic 3's are generally larger, without loading screens and have a larger and more natural scale.)

Bethesda should dial back the graphics enough to let them fit even more "stuff" in the scenes and increase the size and scale. I know they won't do that (graphics sell games) but it would be cool to see a slightly less graphically demanding game, yet filled with more details and "stuff".

 

[potatojohn]

Random encounters in Fallout 1 and 2 were a bad idea and an even worse implementation.

Thankfully Bethesda actually gave some thought to game design and removed them in the sequels.

 

[DosBuster]

Daggerfall was big, yes there was fast travel, but you just traveled instantly which brakes the immersion.
Why they just didn't have map travel like in Fallout? Have the possibility of 'fast travel' by traveling on overland map and you would be brought back to the world on combat encounter....... and if someone would want he still can travel all the way by foot (mount makes a lot more sense for traveling big distances)
It's been over 20 years and I can't believe no one from Bethesda has thought of this (maybe they just didn't want it as the worlds later built were nothing like the size of Daggerfall)

It's a way better system of fast travel, because you just don't magicaly appear in other place, but you see your characters moving across the world, which helps the immersion, it just worked so well in Fallout, I can't believe no other games apart from jrpgs does it.

I think it's more of a case that they want to do smaller, more hand-built worlds rather than the proc gen stuff in Daggerfall.

 

[Somberlain]

Maybe they should finally get a new engine instead of adding more duct tape to Gaybryo.

 

[Trashos]

Bethesda has to make big money, because they run big budgets. So I don't expect that making good games is high on their priority list. Their managers have to solve much bigger problems than the quality of their games, so they don't give a shit. This is obvious by now, because New Vegas showed them how they can make a good game that sells well on their engine, and they still don't care.

And that's bullshit. Bethesda is one of the, if not the, smallest triple A studios around. Unlike bigger studios though, they work on a single game at a time, but even so, their budgets are not as astronomical as some are.

Arena and Daggerfall and off-shoots around the time were made mostly by one man and a handful of contractors. Any talent Bethesda had left around Morrowind, the remaining ones left around Oblivion. What's left are some of the most incompetent veterans you will find in development.

Here is $150M. Invest it all in a videogame and return a winning profit. Good luck.

I promise you that whether your game satisfies serious gamers is not going to be what keeps you up at night.