Limorkil
Liturgist
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2004
- Messages
- 304
Feedback:
1. It is too long. To be effective it should be shorter and more to the point. Due to the length, it loses the interest of people who are concerned about one franchise but not another; people like me who are concerned about Elder Scrolls but do not really give a shit about Star Trek or Fallout (omg blasphemy!) I do not think it would have that effect if it were shorter. One suggestion would be to have supporting detail about each franchise on a web site and then link to it, e.g. "To read the full Star Trek story, click here"
2. I do not agree with most of it, but you are entitled to your opinion. Frankly, I read the whole thing and came away thinking that is was a generic "I hate Beth" campaign with no real goal. If you have a goal, be a bit more concise.
3. The whole "Quoting references interspersed with hearsay and conjecture" thing sort of works for the high school blog or the Intelligent Design people, but I think the people that are probably going to be interested by what you have to say are a little more perceptive than that. Once again, if you stuck to the main points and made it shorter it would be more convincing.
4. One of your central arguments is that Bethesda ruined the ES franchise so expect more to follow. Yes, I can see how you would come to that conclusion. However, many people would not agree with you. Some of the apparent negative aspects of Oblivion actually made the game more accessible to the wider market (as opposed to the RPG elite) whereas other "improvements" did nothing but piss off almost everyone. The big draws were these:
- Graphics
- Action-oriented gameplay
The things that annoyed people (RPG old timers and new people alike) were:
- Levelled content (the big one)
- Lack of alternative solutions to quest problems
- Radiant AI not being in the game despite the hype
- Quest compass, quest popups*
* Some people liked these. The real problem with them was not that they were there but: (1) You could not turn them off (on Xbox at least) and (2) The quests were designed with the assumption that they were there, so vital quest information is sometimes conveyed only through popups or compass markers (e.g. NPCs no longer provide directions to goals, they just assume you will use the quest compass).
My own personal opinion, as a long time ES fan, is that Oblivion has better gameplay than the previous games (particularly Morrowind) but suffers from very poor quest and encounter design (single track quests and over-reliance on leveled content).
In general, rather than criticizing Bethesda for subjective issues, such as making games that are "not real RPGs" or "not in the spirit of the fanchise" your argument would be stronger if you focused on very real failures to deliver (like the Star Trek game) or on specific criticisms of final games, such as the rushed design of Oblivion and the failure to deliver Radiant AI. You mention all these things, but there is a lot of subjective noise that weakens the argument.
5. You are criticizing Bethesda's handling of franchises and their dealing with fan sites. Obviously, the two are related, but if one of these is your primary argument you should try and focus on it and remove most of the detail on the secondary argument to some source site/document.
1. It is too long. To be effective it should be shorter and more to the point. Due to the length, it loses the interest of people who are concerned about one franchise but not another; people like me who are concerned about Elder Scrolls but do not really give a shit about Star Trek or Fallout (omg blasphemy!) I do not think it would have that effect if it were shorter. One suggestion would be to have supporting detail about each franchise on a web site and then link to it, e.g. "To read the full Star Trek story, click here"
2. I do not agree with most of it, but you are entitled to your opinion. Frankly, I read the whole thing and came away thinking that is was a generic "I hate Beth" campaign with no real goal. If you have a goal, be a bit more concise.
3. The whole "Quoting references interspersed with hearsay and conjecture" thing sort of works for the high school blog or the Intelligent Design people, but I think the people that are probably going to be interested by what you have to say are a little more perceptive than that. Once again, if you stuck to the main points and made it shorter it would be more convincing.
4. One of your central arguments is that Bethesda ruined the ES franchise so expect more to follow. Yes, I can see how you would come to that conclusion. However, many people would not agree with you. Some of the apparent negative aspects of Oblivion actually made the game more accessible to the wider market (as opposed to the RPG elite) whereas other "improvements" did nothing but piss off almost everyone. The big draws were these:
- Graphics
- Action-oriented gameplay
The things that annoyed people (RPG old timers and new people alike) were:
- Levelled content (the big one)
- Lack of alternative solutions to quest problems
- Radiant AI not being in the game despite the hype
- Quest compass, quest popups*
* Some people liked these. The real problem with them was not that they were there but: (1) You could not turn them off (on Xbox at least) and (2) The quests were designed with the assumption that they were there, so vital quest information is sometimes conveyed only through popups or compass markers (e.g. NPCs no longer provide directions to goals, they just assume you will use the quest compass).
My own personal opinion, as a long time ES fan, is that Oblivion has better gameplay than the previous games (particularly Morrowind) but suffers from very poor quest and encounter design (single track quests and over-reliance on leveled content).
In general, rather than criticizing Bethesda for subjective issues, such as making games that are "not real RPGs" or "not in the spirit of the fanchise" your argument would be stronger if you focused on very real failures to deliver (like the Star Trek game) or on specific criticisms of final games, such as the rushed design of Oblivion and the failure to deliver Radiant AI. You mention all these things, but there is a lot of subjective noise that weakens the argument.
5. You are criticizing Bethesda's handling of franchises and their dealing with fan sites. Obviously, the two are related, but if one of these is your primary argument you should try and focus on it and remove most of the detail on the secondary argument to some source site/document.
