Elder Scrolls The dumbing down of The Elder Scrolls

[DalekFlay]

But can you really blame every design flaw on graphics? Sweet pixels can syphon resources and time, but then you have something like the Quest Compass. World of Warcraft didn't have that - but then some fan went and created the QuestHelper addon, which added the functionality of a compass - eventually incorporated into the base UI years later.

You could look at the compass two ways, either a necessary evil because of the wandering NPCs, which are rooted in graphical presentation to some degree, or as a concession to idiot broader market gamers, which were courted in part to cover the cost of building such a large, pretty game. I'm sure wanting to get rich factors in as well with the mass market thing, but in the end the point remains that higher budgets demand higher purchase numbers, which meant courting people who didn't play Morrowind.

Further, aren't graphics also getting cheaper to make? Sure, there will always be new fronts in the impossible quest of photorealism, but isn't it true that the cost of graphics weighted more for Oblivion than for Skyrim?

I'm sure. Epic Games made some comments about more and more middleware like speed tree countering rising budget costs. I'm sure if we kept graphics more or less current for another 10 years eventually indies could make a Skyrim. We're not though, new consoles come out this Fall, which means a new PC upgrade this Fall for me, which means higher and higher graphical demand which means higher budgets which means more demand for high sales numbers than ever before. It's a recipe for disaster if you look at it on the surface, the Xbox 360 generation was already turning middle-class games into failures, but I would guess the new consoles will rapidly diversify in their offerings. Perhaps only one retail game will come out a month while middle-class games go digital and sell for a lower price point, sort of like Steam.

 

[Luzur]

i already posted that video in the Dragonborn DLC thread, but coolio anyway.

 

[IDtenT]

Good video. Nothing I disagree with. There's a few things I'd add like random loot (which he somewhat addressed) and level scaling. I also agree that Skyrim did improve many things. I prefer the perk system over classes and I liked how alchemical properties are learned, but that's about it.

While on the topic of graphics, I do feel that with bigger draw distances, and thereby bigger areas, has made a quest compass almost a necessity to navigate. With the draw distance as it is, it is just impossible for them to add goods around every corner - as they did in Morrowind - yet keep the world realistic.

 

[Mastermind]

Good brofistable post but why should mage even touch greatsword? Skyrim just punish you for playing jack of the trade character which is over Oblivion again.

Skyrim warriors shouldn't touch greatsword either.

 

[BobtheTree]

Agree all around with those points. Friggin' hate the follow the arrow quest marker system of modern games that you pretty much have to use with modern games since they don't give you enough info to figure out where your objective is on your own. That alone is what makes so many modern open world games miss the entire point of what makes an open world great: exploring at your own pace and finding things along the way to your objective. Yes, you can still do this, but part of the fun of an open world is getting lost for hours on end. I could do that in Morrowind and it was fun. Now I'm never lost at any point in an open world game.

 

[Commissar Draco]

^ This and effortless and instantaneous quick travel which encourages devs to put such exiting quests like bring my fork back... from the second end of Skyrim... o_O

Gaming becomes more boring than working.

 

[Broseph]

I remember getting lost in the Dimwood Forest in Betrayal at Krondor and having to savescum for like three hours before I could just barely make it out alive to get to a temple. That is what open world games should be like; free to explore (and get lost in) at your own pace, and free to get your ass kicked if you venture into dangerous areas. Skyrim doesn't really have any of that, but it's still a fun hiking simulator.

Somewhere along the line beating a game became not a question of how good you were at mastering the systems and figuring out what to do, but rather how much time you were willing to invest.

 

[SCO]

But can you really blame every design flaw on graphics? Sweet pixels can syphon resources and time, but then you have something like the Quest Compass. World of Warcraft didn't have that - but then some fan went and created the QuestHelper addon, which added the functionality of a compass - eventually incorporated into the base UI years later.

I must hunt down this individual

 

[Luzur]

But can you really blame every design flaw on graphics? Sweet pixels can syphon resources and time, but then you have something like the Quest Compass. World of Warcraft didn't have that - but then some fan went and created the QuestHelper addon, which added the functionality of a compass - eventually incorporated into the base UI years later.

I must hunt down this individual

you will be paid handsomely for his head.

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

It's not as if the World of Warcraft is anything more than a primitive grinding game, though. As if it was capable of anything more. Save for some retards that couldn't find Mankrik's wife a'la "where is Caius Cosades" -- it's not as if that game was designed with anything else than grinding, and hunting some random quest mob. So I guess all this individual did was saving those losers some time on leveling.

EDIT: http://www.wowwiki.com/Mankrik's_Wife ... yeah. Exactly

 

[Delterius]

'Mankrik's Wife' became a thing because its one of the very very few quests that didn't give you any directions. The Barrens region was huge and the quest giver was close to the middle of it. Further, it was a newbie zone.

So that would only be the same thing if A) Morrowind didn't tell you where Caius Cosades is and B) If Caius Cosades was several feet away from Balmora.

What just occured to me is that Skyrim quest descriptions are what passed for a bad design joke in World of Warcraft of all things.

With the draw distance as it is, it is just impossible for them to add goods around every corner - as they did in Morrowind - yet keep the world realistic.

I can assure you that's not the case. I removed the quest compass before playing the game.

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

Weird, I had no problem with doing that quest, and back when I did this quest Blizzard didn't incorporate any addon into their interface yet, nor did I use any helper.

I'm not 100% sure, but I recall Mankrik mentioning something along the lines of "attack site", and it was in fact near the Crossroads; two destroyed huts with smoke on the horizon. The Barrens was a mostly flat savannah zone and many potential points of interests were in plain sight, with a considerable view distance, too. Also, the Crossroads hub was of certain size, and so it was logical to assume that either this quest's solution was in the near vicinity of the player/quest giver (it surely couldn't be near the Thousand Needles) or it could be stumbled upon while reaping several quests from one hub at the same time with paying attention to the environment.

It was just a couple of factors that clicked for me when logically taken together. A specific, explicit direction wasn't really necessary, it was near the player.

 

[Cromwell]

Weird, I had no problem with doing that quest, and back when I did this quest Blizzard didn't incorporate any addon into their interface yet, nor did I use any helper.

I'm not 100% sure, but I recall Mankrik mentioning something along the lines of "attack site", and it was in fact near the Crossroads; two destroyed huts with smoke on the horizon. The Barrens was a mostly flat savannah zone and many potential points of interests were in plain sight, with a considerable view distance, too. Also, the Crossroads hub was of certain size, and so it was logical to assume that either this quest's solution was in the near vicinity of the player/quest giver (it surely couldn't be near the Thousand Needles) or it could be stumbled upon while reaping several quests from one hub at the same time with paying attention to the environment.

It was just a couple of factors that clicked for me when logically taken together. A specific, explicit direction wasn't really necessary, it was near the player.

The problem with this was, that you assumed you had to search for her and found a logical starting point. For all "normal" players this startiing point was the barren chat since they were to lazy to find out on their own. I checked the old quest and waht he said was that the two of them battled in a small tauren camp, and said further that he woke up as his wounds where tended to by a tauren druid who found him lying on the gold road. You simply had to search the road until you found the camp, inspect it, find the wife. So no ...go south then east then south... and suddenly many players couldnt find it anymore and it became a thing.

 

[evdk]

But can you really blame every design flaw on graphics? Sweet pixels can syphon resources and time, but then you have something like the Quest Compass. World of Warcraft didn't have that - but then some fan went and created the QuestHelper addon, which added the functionality of a compass - eventually incorporated into the base UI years later.

I must hunt down this individual

you will be paid handsomely for his head.

Of course info about him is sparse, so you'll probably have to rely on your quest compass to find him.

 

[DalekFlay]

I do despise quest arrows but at least you can remove them from the compass in Oblivion, Fallout 3/New Vegas and Skyrim. That way I don't feel like I'm always playing follow the arrow but I still know where to go if I open the map.

Risen did it that way, IIRC.

 

[Brayko]

I had fun with Morrowind when I was an alcohol and speed addled chainsmoking 16-17 year old. The series did not go in the direction I wanted it to go in, and I think it has something to do with one of their writers leaving (MK I think his name was) and overfocusing on shini graphix. I was blown away at first but it wore out its welcome fast.

Nowadays not a single fuck is given, about any of their games really, it's almost anachronistic looking back when I did give a fuck.

As for the video, he's far too gentle on Oblivion, actually, because I hated the combat and he looked at it as improvement. I liked Morrowind's combat!

 

[RK47]

yeah when i discovered the guild quests are no longer random, i felt TES has lost its magic somehow.

 

[Delterius]

Weird, I had no problem with doing that quest, and back when I did this quest Blizzard didn't incorporate any addon into their interface yet, nor did I use any helper.

I'm not 100% sure, but I recall Mankrik mentioning something along the lines of "attack site", and it was in fact near the Crossroads; two destroyed huts with smoke on the horizon. The Barrens was a mostly flat savannah zone and many potential points of interests were in plain sight, with a considerable view distance, too. Also, the Crossroads hub was of certain size, and so it was logical to assume that either this quest's solution was in the near vicinity of the player/quest giver (it surely couldn't be near the Thousand Needles) or it could be stumbled upon while reaping several quests from one hub at the same time with paying attention to the environment.

It was just a couple of factors that clicked for me when logically taken together. A specific, explicit direction wasn't really necessary, it was near the player.

I did start playing WoW by late Vanilla, so there's always the possibility that the community made me a retard. Though, to be fair, I never bothered with the Barrens.

 

[GaffQ]

Elder Scrolls? More like Aged Homosexuals.