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Someone tell me what the fuck is so special about Daggerfall

LlamaGod

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Tell me!

I've installed the game atleast 5 different times, each time trying to find what is supposedly so great about the games.

So far, i've found nothing.

Random generation can be nice, but the way the game handles it is incredibly retarded. Instead of actual neat areas being done, its just the same stupid bullshit but all arranged in a way that makes 0 sense at all. How is exploring a dungeon that resembles a Lego Mishap by a 5 year old fun?

Especially considering they all look the fucking same and give you the same experience. All it is is just a long search for loot, a long and boring search.

The main plot is terrible and everyting is so flat. It's so goddamn boring.

Not to mention the guilds and their quests are terrible. GO KILL <ANIMAL> IN <HOUSE> and then you get some gold and then you repeat. Gain a rank, MORE GOLD and maybe a map.

Use the map and go to a terrible dungeon, woo! Get more gold!

The need to teleport from town to town is fucking lame, too. Explore all you want, as long as its cities and dungeons!

The character system is pretty shit too, alot of neat skills to detail your character and 90% of them do fuck all. All you need are combat skills, even the thief skills are total dogshit.

And speaking of thieves, those guards sure are omniscent.


All in all, it's incredibly boring, simplistic and a makes a terrible RPG or anything else for that matter. A cardboard world full of cardboard people and cardboard quests. Why the fuck do people praise it so much?

Ultima is a trillion times better than this bullshit.
 

Twinfalls

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My my, don't we feel strongly about this!

Just admit you're a fucking pussy who can't handle the biggest dungeons in CRPGs.
 

LlamaGod

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Because the dungeons in Ultima 4 were so pussified.


Being big in addition to being boring and resembling something someone with downs syndrome designed doesn't mean it's good because it's big.

Edit: The starting dungeon (Privateer's Hold, I think) is probably the worst dungeon in an RPG ever. Especially considering how incredibly shitastic the game is at giving you starting equipment.

Short Blades skill? Here's a fucking longsword and a staff.
 

Twinfalls

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Mmm.

Seriously, I think the reason it's so popular is the whole 'life another life' thing, if that concept can be taken seriously ever again since New Bethesda and Oblivion.

It is truly huge (note that it's not randomly generated every time you play - it's all the same towns and dungeons everywhere, every time). Name a crpg with a bigger world, more towns, npcs, etc.

It's in 3D, its art design is very good, its got heaps of guilds, clothes, items, blah blah.

It's fantastically atmospheric, thanks to the best muscial soundtrack in crpg history. Also thanks to touches like seasons, holidays, etc. And it's got a big, well-written and planned set of lore and backstory to its plot (which is a good one - mature, intelligent, and you have to make real decisions as to whom you help)

It's also a very good RPG, in terms of what it is - a 3D rogue-like. There are enough skills to flesh out a basic character-type and play accordingly, even if the gameplay is restricted to fighting and looting.

So for those who play this type of thing with a bit of a 'you are there' LARP-pretend mindset (yes, I'll admit I do that with DF), there hasn't been much else to compete with it.
 

Excrément

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because it was new and captivating (sorry, but I did like the main plot)

it was clearly quantity over quality. but quantity pleases collector people.

and it really looks like Oblivion, that's why all the codexers love Daggerfall. :wink:
 

Twinfalls

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Fuck you stupid morons up your stupid asses.

Quality/quantity is a spurious dichotomy here.

Daggerfall was quality. Name another game which does what it does. Go on - what are its competitors?
 

LlamaGod

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Twinfalls is suffering from a severe case of nostalgia.

p.s. Ultima 7 > Daggerfall. and it came out 3 or 4 years earlier r00fles.

and Fallout 1 even was higher quality and came out before it, I think.

Daggerfall is just a shitty overrated game with a bunch of paper thin features with half-assed implentation, just like OBLIVION.
 

Dhruin

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I'm completely with you on this one, LlamaGod. Hated the damn thing, especially the masochistic dungeons and towns full of randomised clones.
 

Twinfalls

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No. Death is too kind for these poltroons.

They should live and continue to suffer their stupidity.
 

Slylandro

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Aw, what a cop out. :)

Of those who didn't like Daggerfall, how many don't like roguelikes in general?
 

LlamaGod

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I like roguelikes.

Daggerfall is like a really really bad roguelike but with omg 3D grapiffix and MIDIs and repetitive textures.

and SURPRISE, those things are the things that put a limit on how much you can do in a roguelike. Part of their awesomeness is how you can do pretty much anything since they dont need graphics there to detail it for you. Just letters.

So I guess that's that: Daggerfall is a really shitty roguelike, but IT HAS GRAPHICS.


Same reasons why people like Oblivion, but since its 10 years old and some people played it when they were young and stupid, it's a 'classic RPG'.
 

Goliath

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Slylandro said:
Aw, what a cop out. :)

Of those who didn't like Daggerfall, how many don't like roguelikes in general?

Daggerfall plays like a roguelike?! Maybe I should try it...
 

LlamaGod

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if you like roguelikes where 80% of the skills are broken, go ahead
 

Section8

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Daggerfall is just a shitty overrated game with a bunch of paper thin features with half-assed implentation,

Scarily, I think that's pretty close to the truth...

Except that Daggerfall deserves a whole lot of credit for having style, balls and ambition, and for being ten fucking years old. This was a time when CRPGing was much simpler, and "ESF-Brand-do-it-yourself-imaginary-fantasy-RPing" was acceptable in the face of the limitations and scope of the game.

Daggerfall can't really be compared to Ultima VII, but it does hold up pretty well as far as being a very ambitious 3D roguelike.

...just like OBLIVION.

Actually, playing Oblivion, I was very much reminded of Daggerfall. The dungeons were all assembled from a collection of component pieces, the whole world felt cookie cut, the NPCs hollow, etc.

Oblivion would have been fucking incredible 10 years ago (even with graphics appropriately scaled back) and yet, Daggerfall does everything Oblivion does, and then scales it all up by a couple of orders of magnitude.

Daggerfall is a classic in the same way Grand Theft Auto is a classic. Both are thoroughly flawed, but they have enough nearly realised ambition that they promised great things for future installments. It took GTA a couple more iterations to realise it's potential in GTA3, while it's pretty certain that the Elder Scrolls series will never even touch upon the potential of Daggefall, let alone realise it.
 

Twinfalls

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Section8 said:
Scarily, I think that's pretty close to the truth...

Except that Daggerfall deserves a whole lot of credit for having style, balls and ambition... [Daggerfall and GTA] are thoroughly flawed, but they have enough nearly realised ambition

Don't be a pompous, patronising arse. Daggerfall has plenty of well-realised ambition. It delivers on its principal aims. It does have flaws - the major one being the unchecked size of dungeons. To say it is 'thoroughly flawed' however is thoroughly wrong.

It has plenty of quest variety - there are over two hundred individual quests. Yes, they are not quests with fallout's sophistication, but that was never the aim of this game - and wouldn't be possible within the technological and time constraints the makers had.

Here is the map of Daggerfall City. One of thousands in the game - and one of a number which are individually planned.

Those that are random still present stunningly well as believable looking towns, with plenty of variety, not only between regions, but intra-regionally - a credit to how successful the random-town-design algorithm is.

Name a single other game which does anything like this.
 

Excrément

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It was new and huge.
people liked that and it is so one of my 3 best game I ever played.
that's the main problem with Oblivion, it just seems not new, not original like DF was, so the charm is gone. but for sure, it is an excellent charmless elder scrolls game.

the main problem of games today it is not what people call the "dumbing-down", the "mainstreaming" it is just the lack of originality and this feeling of déjà vu we have each time we have a new video game.
consequently the only people who can fully appreciate Oblivion for example are the newcomer to the series so teenagers.
don't you have the feeling that your favorite game (I dodn't say "best") are always when you are a newcomer to a type of game?

but I can understand people could hate TES games (DF, MW, Arena or Oblivion), it is a particuliar genre, you can love it or hate it.
 

yipsl

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Anyone who misses the point of Daggerfall misses the point of RPGs, unless of course they think an RPG only means top down "fog of war" small unit tactical combat with an RPG storyline based on a major PnP franchise. Daggerfall, and Arena, were so much more than that in their day.

Morrowind can't compete and Oblivion seems to come close, in a mainstream kind of way,, but that doesn't make it the next Daggerfall. I wonder if we'll ever see the next Daggerfall, whether from a Bethsoft that's come to their senses or from a competitor weaned on early Elder Scrolls.
 

Section8

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Don't be a pompous, patronising arse. Daggerfall has plenty of well-realised ambition. It delivers on its principal aims. It does have flaws - the major one being the unchecked size of dungeons. To say it is 'thoroughly flawed' however is thoroughly wrong.

Oh, it certainly does have a lot of well-realised ambition, and that's why it still remains a classic despite the stuff that doesn't quite make it. And I think thoroughly flawed is fair. Even back in the day, it had obvious shortcomings. It didn't require a whole lot of play time to notice the templates for NPCs/quests/cities/dungeon sections, and it certainly didn't need a keen eye to notice the many bugs/quirks/foibles.

But, I guess I should further clarify, that pretty much every flaw is the result of an outside constraint. (Old) Bethesda did an awful lot in a limited timeframe with 10-year-old technology, but that doesn't mean there aren't a large amount of quite legitimate complaints to be made, and more importantly, obvious ways to improve in the future.

With that in mind, I can fully understand how somebody could play the game now for the first time, and be completely underwhelmed, whereas a much more limited, but tighter game like Ultima Underworld is still impressive by today's standards.

And to be perfectly honest, the successors have probably tainted my views quite a bit, becaue even at the time, I felt that Daggerfall was an incredible start.* A rough gem that could be easily polished up and turned into something stunning. A great deal of my captivation with the game was imagining the possibilities of what the Elder Scrolls III could be. Shame on Bethesda for raping my youthful optimism with not one, but two lacklustre sequels.

* Well kind of. I was aware that it was a sequel, but I'd not played Arena.

It has plenty of quest variety - there are over two hundred individual quests. Yes, they are not quests with fallout's sophistication, but that was never the aim of this game - and wouldn't be possible within the technological and time constraints the makers had.

Oh, I get that completely, and also did at the time. I'm more than willing to forgive the technical shortcomings, but I can't quite hold the game in the same regard as the true classics that restrain their ambition enough to deliver games that aren't left wanting in any areas. For instance, System Shock 1 & 2 having only dead NPCs, since NPC interaction "done right" demands a whole new layer of complexity.

Here is the map of Daggerfall City. One of thousands in the game - and one of a number which are individually planned.

Those that are random still present stunningly well as believable looking towns, with plenty of variety, not only between regions, but intra-regionally - a credit to how successful the random-town-design algorithm is.

Name a single other game which does anything like this.

I think maybe that quote that I almost agreed with has misrepresented me a bit here. Daggerfall still represents the ultimate example of a very unique game concept, flawed though it is. For what it does it hasn't been bettered. But I'd still be very hesitant about recommending it as a retro journey for most players. The technological and dev time constraints are all too obvious, and so it's hard for anyone to appreciate it for what it was at the time. Especially when the natural evolution of the series never happened.
 

Jasede

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Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut I'm very into cock and ball torture

Excrément

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Jasede said:
I do not wish to elaborate on thic topic myself. Instead, I would like you to read this: http://www.oblivionsource.com/?style=lib&page=library&op=view&id=27
It's an article that compares Morrowind and Daggerfall, and it points out what makes DF special. Reading it might clear up some things.

And this is for you, Twinfalls: http://www.geocities.com/chronosquadronx/Daggerfall.zip - the complete Daggerfall soundtrack, including all GM and FM tracks.

Daggerfall was Mature. Morrowind is Teen.
wow, what a convincing argument!
 

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