A simple solution that would make Bethesda games inherently better

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Morrowinds way of building fast travel into the world was a nice little touch. I'd also say it was largely pointless as there's no sense of urgency to the game. Now if it had a system like Dead Rising where quest were time-sensitive, having a multitude of fast travel options that could get you where you're going at different speeds and levels of safety would be useful. Like teleportation could get you where you're going instantly, something like slit striders could get you places faster and with the safety of a caravan, and normal fast travel would just simulates you walking to a place and be the more dangerous way to go. But as they've been, there's not really a need for it. Although it'd be interesting to see them make a need for it.

I could see them having dropped the teleportation spells because they don't want you escaping combat situations so easy in their combat focused game. Now to fast travel when enemies are around you've either got to kill them, sneak away, or just run away until there's enough distinct between you and the enemy. This is probably a better way of doing it, as it puts the player in a more active role than before. Teleportation for fast travel also becomes largely pointless when the fast travel walking system doesn't have random encounters, making it especially like teleporting anyways.

 

[Reapa]

The skyrim fast travel system is not a new one. morrowind actually made a mistake from a game design perspective with the introduction of fast travel services. they added more "muh realism" at the cost of having to backtrack. backtracking is not a typical role playing "mechanic" so nothing of importance was lost by removing it again.

Morrowind had three different types of teleportation: mark/recall to return to one specific spot, Divine intervention to arrive at the nearest Imperial Cult chapel, and Almsivi intervention to arrive at the nearest Tribunal temple. A character who lacked spell-casing abilities could still use scrolls and rechargeable magic items with all of these teleportation effects. Backtracking long distances was never necessary.

you are of course correct. but your point is then that there was no need to backtrack so it makes no difference if they replace all those spells with simple point and click fast travel.
if morrowind came after skyrim we'd complain about an artificial inflation of abilities that serve no purpose.
and i was saying that daggerfall already had point and click fast travel so what they did with skyrim in that department was actually a kind of return to the roots. some might say it was incline.
sadly like all the other "incline" we've experienced in recent years it still fell short of going all the way. bringing back a nice big landmass to go with all those radiant quests for example and a time limit with the possibility to fail quests and repercussions like reputation loss.

i opened a thread about making a land mod the size of daggerfall in the fallout 4 nexus forum and i was told the engine couldn't handle it. i don't know how true that is and there were no posts that argued with that assessment so it could very well be true. however if that is true, there are much more grave matters to worry about than fast travel. it means that fucking studio went for an inferior engine, and not just less/worse content. it means they completely gave up the idea of making quality games.

and i fear it's not just them. i feel every single studio, whether AAA or indie is in it just for the money. the idea of trying to push the limits of how good a game they could make doesn't even occur to them any more. to any of them.
your elex, your twitcher, your whatever devs are not making open world RPGs because they follow a superior/daring/new design philosophy, they do it because it's what now sells well without having to put any thought into it.
your numanuma, your poe, your whatever devs are not making IE games because they follow a superior/daring/new design philosophy, they do it because people miss the good games so they will buy whatever reminds them of those.

 

[DosBuster]

i opened a thread about making a land mod the size of daggerfall in the fallout 4 nexus forum and i was told the engine couldn't handle it. i don't know how true that is and there were no posts that argued with that assessment so it could very well be true. however if that is true, there are much more grave matters to worry about than fast travel. it means that fucking studio went for an inferior engine, and not just less/worse content. it means they completely gave up the idea of making quality games.

Uh, I don't think any game engine could easily handle a game world the size of great britain as a seamless thing. (excluding procedural generation)

 

[anvi]

I think Todd and company actually do want to make the games they want to play and quality RPGs.

it's not that far fetched.
for example: in my recent play through of morrowind it occurred to me that backtracking is not that interesting.

Yea but... what about the million other things that make these games terrible?

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

i opened a thread about making a land mod the size of daggerfall in the fallout 4 nexus forum and i was told the engine couldn't handle it. i don't know how true that is and there were no posts that argued with that assessment so it could very well be true. however if that is true, there are much more grave matters to worry about than fast travel. it means that fucking studio went for an inferior engine, and not just less/worse content. it means they completely gave up the idea of making quality games.

Uh, I don't think any game engine could easily handle a game world the size of great britain as a seamless thing. (excluding procedural generation)

Well, procedural generation is likely how they'd do it. Given that's what they did before. I've got to imagine by this point they're already looking to that kind of thing for there next game anyways. A big thing about their games, and a big selling point of their game is how large the maps are; but they're already starting being fucked on that by other developers when it comes to size and the level of detail going on, and they're going to be double fucked if stuff like Beyond Good & Evil 2 actually works out.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

I think Todd and company actually do want to make the games they want to play and quality RPGs.

it's not that far fetched.
for example: in my recent play through of morrowind it occurred to me that backtracking is not that interesting.

Yea but... what about the million other things that make these games terrible?

That's crazy talk, these games don't have a million things. Realistically it's probably just a hundred things or something.

 

[DosBuster]

i opened a thread about making a land mod the size of daggerfall in the fallout 4 nexus forum and i was told the engine couldn't handle it. i don't know how true that is and there were no posts that argued with that assessment so it could very well be true. however if that is true, there are much more grave matters to worry about than fast travel. it means that fucking studio went for an inferior engine, and not just less/worse content. it means they completely gave up the idea of making quality games.

Uh, I don't think any game engine could easily handle a game world the size of great britain as a seamless thing. (excluding procedural generation)

Well, procedural generation is likely how they'd do it. Given that's what they did before. I've got to imagine by this point they're already looking to that kind of thing for there next game anyways. A big thing about their games, and a big selling point of their game is how large the maps are; but they're already starting being fucked on that by other developers when it comes to size and the level of detail going on, and they're going to be double fucked if stuff like Beyond Good & Evil 2 actually works out.

I think there's a big difference between how big your game area is and how much content/stuff you put into it and Bethesda tends to go for the latter. Really their world size hasn't changed much since Oblivion.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Yeah, but everyone else's world sizes have changed. On top of that everyone else packs them with a level of detail that makes what Bethesda does look even more embarrassing. Given the nature of what Bethesda is trying to do, how they're trying to make some epic thing, having the world actually be huge could good a long ways in helping it actually feel epic. It gets a bit silly when what they're going for when you're meant to be on some long trek basically amounts to walking down the street.

 

[Akratus]

 

[Reapa]

i opened a thread about making a land mod the size of daggerfall in the fallout 4 nexus forum and i was told the engine couldn't handle i

t. i don't know how true that is and there were no posts that argued with that assessment so it could very well be true. however if that is true, there are much more grave matters to worry about than fast travel. it means that fucking studio went for an inferior engine, and not just less/worse content. it means they completely gave up the idea of making quality games.

Uh, I don't think any game engine could easily handle a game world the size of great britain as a seamless thing. (excluding procedural generation)

they had such an engine. thats why i'm reluctant to believe the engine has such limitations. i don't understand what there is that is so hard to handle. tamriel rebuilt has a huge landmass added to morrowind and all they had to do was to change the world map.

here's Tamriel
do you see?
and in the north east is morrowind.
do you see?
and tamriel is several times bigger than morrowind.
do you see?
and it all runs on the same old morrowind engine.
do you see?

Final Numbers
Skyrim=14.5 sq miles
Oblivion=22 sq miles
Morrowind=9.3 sq miles
FO3=50 sq miles
FO:NV=21 sq miles
Fallout 4=14.2 sq miles
daggerfall=62,394 sq miles
do you see?

 

[anvi]

Take on Helicopters has a map that is 122km squared. And you can play it in Arma3! Also (arma2 at least) has procedural generation for landscape outside the edges of the map so technically if you go to Chernarus region or whatever and then keep running, it will go forever. Thus, the biggest thing evor.

But size doesn't mean much if the content is empty or crappy. Imo Skyrim is too small and too shit.

 

[Makabb]

For good or for worse, Bethesda can be called the father of open world RPGs, because Daggerfall is still the biggest open world RPG to this day.

 

[anvi]

That's not what "the father of" means.

 

[Iznaliu]

That's not what "the father of" means.

Reading biology textbooks while on LSD means one does come to some interesting conclusions.

 

[RNGsus]

BGS don't have the expertise left to make an rpg. Todd's probably been dying of neurosyphilis for 20 years, and the way they hemorrhage talent over there, all that's keeping them going is Pete's propaganda.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Bethesda Game Studios don't have the expertise to do what they've been doing either, which is action games. Could probably argue they're even worse at that than when they were trying to do RPGs.

 

[RNGsus]

You can argue with yourself, if that's what you mean.

 

[Gimble]

A simpler solution would be to let other (intelligently chosen) developers make their games - including TES and Fallout. As a publisher they seem to be willing to back otherwise 'risky' games. Seriously, if you look at their published lineup every game from their other studios (Prey, Dishonored, DOOM, Wolfenstein, even "The Evil within", and New Vegas of course) is better than BGS developed games after Morrowind.

 

[anvi]

Talent is not a problem. They just don't want to make a real RPG because dumbed down action games sell better.

 

[RNGsus]

Wanting couldn't help them at this point.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Look at everything Oblivion did

and not do that

also fire Todd Howard.

 

[Whiny-Butthurt-Liberal]

They need to make their games MORE REALISTIC!!

 

[Iznaliu]

Talent is not a problem. They just don't want to make a real RPG because dumbed down action games sell better.

I'm tired of that myth; they were far from assured Oblivion would be a success; it could have bombed hard, given that Morrowind, their first breakout success, could've been a fluke.

 

[anvi]

I don't believe that one bit. The entire industry set about dumbing everything down from about 2000 onwards. Oblivion was a perfect example of following that trend, it had high end graphics, famous voice actors, and simplified gameplay. It was an obvious win, and they never would have spent all that money on it if they didn't know it was a safe bet. Skyrim takes it a step further.

 

[mogwaimon]

i opened a thread about making a land mod the size of daggerfall in the fallout 4 nexus forum and i was told the engine couldn't handle it. i don't know how true that is and there were no posts that argued with that assessment so it could very well be true. however if that is true, there are much more grave matters to worry about than fast travel. it means that fucking studio went for an inferior engine, and not just less/worse content. it means they completely gave up the idea of making quality games.

and i fear it's not just them. i feel every single studio, whether AAA or indie is in it just for the money. the idea of trying to push the limits of how good a game they could make doesn't even occur to them any more. to any of them.
your elex, your twitcher, your whatever devs are not making open world RPGs because they follow a superior/daring/new design philosophy, they do it because it's what now sells well without having to put any thought into it.
your numanuma, your poe, your whatever devs are not making IE games because they follow a superior/daring/new design philosophy, they do it because people miss the good games so they will buy whatever reminds them of those.

Used to be we could blame this mindset on the publishers, but with the popularization of the 'indie studio' and the rise of Kickstarter, we can no longer do so. Maybe it's just another branch of the same creative bankruptcy afflicting Hollywood, where no one wants to risk the cash and time on anything fresh and new since a single flop can sink even old industry mainstays like Capcom or Konami and everyone's trying to exploit the nostalgia of 80s and 90s gamers, which is doubly effective because the young hipsters are into the 'retro gaming'. This phase will eventually pass, and the few innovators in the industry will push out fresh games in the background in the meantime. I don't think we're going to get another Atari-level industry crash, at least not without some major economic disaster that affects the world as a whole, but this trend of bigger budgets and bigger graphics with little focus on gameplay has to stop or else even the casuals will get tired of the games.

Frankly I thought VR would be the next new frontier but while the tech is fun it's just not there yet, and the few devs who create for that platform are either pushing out cookie cutter gun games/horror games or have enticing tech demos that never seem to grow into something meatier.