The Elder Scrolls Megathread XV: A Song of Ice and Draugr - Games

[QUOTE=evilweazel;42000142]Is there anyone who actually likes Windhelm? It has a neat house but the location is awful and depressing and stormcloaks[/QUOTE] Windhelm is the best You can always buy the house after wiping out the stormcloaks and installing a new jarl

[QUOTE=evilweazel;42001273]Winterhold would actually be very neat imo if it kept the same architecture and style as the College had. Actually, it'd be pretty neat if there was a mod like the rebuilding Helgen one that let you rebuild Winterhold, as unfeasible as that sounds :v:[/quote] I wonder why nobody have done that yet. You just need some expansions on the cliffs and not making all the houses ruined. Heck, even add a nice little player house on the edge on a cliff, so you can see all the way over the landscape while freezing to death. [quote]Always wanted to make a big mod that improved the cities, with proper voice acting and the like. But the biggest experience I have with modding was using the GECK to make dungeons in FO3 so it'd be difficult.[/QUOTE] Such a project would require a lot of work. If you want to join such a project, a couple of Facepunchers are working on [url=Luftahraan.com]Luftahraan[/url]. It seems quite dead now, though.

I just don't like how small the cities in skyrim are. With the exception of Solitude most of the cities just feel like they are there solely to provide the player with services and random side quests rather than actually being actual cities. I mean the nice cities in skyrim feel more like fancy villages than anything else.

[QUOTE=hypno-toad;42001326]Windhelm is the best You can always buy the house after wiping out the stormcloaks and installing a new jarl[/QUOTE] That doesn't stop me from falling into depression every time I walk outside I mean it's not that bad when it isn't snowing but it is always snowing no wonder Ulfric is such a grumpy Gus

The problem with the cities in Skyrim is that most of them were made using modeling programs rather than proper mapping tools. If Bethesda were more creative with what they had, we might get some bigger cities.

Classical mapping tools have basically died out. In engines like UE3 or Cryengine BSP mapping is only used for the very basic foundations, almost everything on the surface of any given level is made up of static models.

Most of Skyrim's cities were pretty boring

[QUOTE=cdr248;42001631]Most of Skyrim's cities were pretty boring[/QUOTE] They are all pretty boring. Let's be honest here, Skyrim should have went for more content rather than the quality of the graphics (or at least optimize it better) because the Cities are small and hardly populated. Major Cities, barely large enough to be considered a village in real life.

I liked skyrim's cities. Whiterun sucks, but Markarth is awesome, Windhelm is awesome, Solitude is cool (too small though) and I really like the whole riften autumn forest. The same can be said about any of the TES games though. Molag Mar is pretty boring, and Vivec (while enormous) has a lot of Copypasta going on. I hated most of the cities in oblivion except for skingrad, cheydinhal and the imperial city. The rest were fairly humdrum. [editline]28th August 2013[/editline] Too many goddamn guards, though. The guards have been getting progressively more and more stupid as the series go on. Shittier armor every game, it's never explained where the hell the guards actually come from, is it a local militia or something? Why don't people have children in the town garrisons and why are there no named guards? Why are the guards so fucking OP if they are just common soldiers with trashy armor? The number of guards in skyirm completely dwarfs the number of tradesmen and merchants that live in town, one would think skyrim has some sort of guard-based economic system.

[QUOTE=hypno-toad;42001747]I liked skyrim's cities. Whiterun sucks, but Markarth is awesome, Windhelm is awesome, Solitude is cool (too small though) and I really like the whole riften autumn forest. The same can be said about any of the TES games though. Molag Mar is pretty boring, and Vivec (while enormous) has a lot of Copypasta going on. I hated most of the cities in oblivion except for skingrad, cheydinhal and the imperial city. The rest were fairly humdrum. [editline]28th August 2013[/editline] Too many goddamn guards, though. The guards have been getting progressively more and more stupid as the series go on. Shittier armor every game, it's never explained where the hell the guards actually come from, is it a local militia or something? Why don't people have children in the town garrisons and why are there no named guards? Why are the guards so fucking OP if they are just common soldiers with trashy armor? The number of guards in skyirm completely dwarfs the number of tradesmen and merchants that live in town, one would think skyrim has some sort of guard-based economic system.[/QUOTE] I tried to walk across Vivec I alt+F4'd about halfway across

Vivec is like a maze full of rude masked mer who hate you for existing. I always get lost and get called scum a million times before I get to where I wanted.

It's a bit easier to fly/waterwalk/jump around towards where you think you're going. Or at least you avoid the Ordinators that way.

[QUOTE=fear me;42002119]It's a bit easier to fly/waterwalk/jump around towards where you think you're going. Or at least you avoid the Ordinators that way.[/QUOTE] "Why walk when you can ride."

[QUOTE=evilweazel;42000142]Is there anyone who actually likes Windhelm? It has a neat house but the location is awful and depressing and stormcloaks[/QUOTE] Its my favorite city TBH It looks much more unique than the other cities, I love snow, and its very atmopshereic Of course the fact that everyone there is a cold hearted racist and sad bitch makes me not want to live there or anything but lol [editline]29th August 2013[/editline] Wow having serious issues when I wasn't this morning :\ All of a sudden I crash every time I hit esc :\ Guessing its a skyUI issue but no clue

The anorexic city experience isn't helped at all by the fact that you can't fucking talk to an NPC without them immediately sending you back out the gates to a dungeon. Or talk about their fucking mom or farm or self-referential diarrhea that does nothing for building world depth

-thanksgreg-

[QUOTE=hypno-toad;42001747] The guards have been getting progressively more and more stupid as the series go on[/QUOTE] [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18CGW9P5Y9M[/media] I dunno man...

Characters in Skyrim never want to talk to you unless they want to give you their whole life story.

[QUOTE=cdr248;42003284]Characters in Skyrim never want to talk to you unless they want to give you their whole life story.[/QUOTE] Or brag that they own a farm

[QUOTE=Kommodore;42003101]The anorexic city experience isn't helped at all by the fact that you can't fucking talk to an NPC without them immediately sending you back out the gates to a dungeon. Or talk about their fucking mom or farm or self-referential diarrhea that does nothing for building world depth[/QUOTE] Its due to the quality of writing steadily declining with Bethesda, Arena and Daggerfall as well as Morrowind were part of the succession of true RPGs (Dice rolls and everything, although calculated behind the scenes), A focus on textual information rather than voice dialogue given the limitations and cost. With the release of Oblivion, Bethesda began their cycle of streamlining their games and removing or cutting down various integral parts that made the previous installations of TES have the charm they still retain even after revisiting them years apart. The writing was chopped down, various meta-lore and a few breaks of the fourth wall were marginalized and not discussed even though they added a compelling depth to the mythos of TES universe, (CHIM, Amaranth, 36 lessons of vivec[do you even muatra?], etc). They simplified the story to an almost cliche'd look at western RPGs, a reluctant king-leader who sacrifices himself for the greater good. There were a few saving graces and quite a bit of lore gems for those who delve in to them though (Mankar Camoran and his plan, tie directly in to the meta-lore), thanks to Michael Kirkbride. As for the game engines, (Bethesda's weakness) combat mechanics were trivialized to a power attack and regular spam; the removal of various context sensitive moves of Morrowind, the bastardization of the magicka system as a whole (removal of dynamic and interesting spells as well as limitations on customizability with creating them), the scaled leveling of loot and enemies; probably the most egregious error they made in Oblivion which made exploring dungeons etc very unrewarding past a certain level threshold (fighting bandits with glass and daedric armor; the rares materials ingame). Overall they have "commercialized" the series and various other games in their library for logical reasons, albeit at the expense of the magic of what made the previous games so enduring and enjoyable. The plight of Skyrim is that is is a full realized world, but one with a beautiful gloss and no substance. I should insert here that I played skyrim at release and have devoted hundreds of hours to it, but the urge to boot it up is lacking. This is not just a nostalgia induced ridicule of the extreme success but rather a jaded and heartbroken response to what should have been a groundbreaking expansion of TES universe, instead it is watered down to Nords and dragons and a baby's view of a "civil war" with no battle taking place aside from instanced fights that are only initiated by you when you choose to do so. Characters are largely forgettable aside from a few comedic performances, interactions are more cardboard than talking to an NPC from Morrowind, nothing has immediacy, the care for any NPC is never felt. I can recall the sincere greeting of Jiub on the prison boat, the whispers of Azura as I slept in the Ashlands, the jovial and inquisitive Yagrum Bagarn, but I cannot recall any notable person from Skyrim who I ever felt something for or even cared about. This may come off as highly pedantic or hipster but, even with the massive success of skyrim and the introduction of literally millions of people to the realm of The Elder Scrolls, I can't help but feel that a large part of the soul of it disappeared. I think back to the first time chatting with Dagoth Ur, my friend, brother in arms of a life past; and his grand vision, the betrayal of my closest friend Vivec, the insanity of my lover Almalexia and her descent into madness, and my hopelessly intelligent companion Sotha Sil who took solace in the detachment of reality and the delving into of machinery and enlightenment. The history of TES is a goldmine that was sadly left abandoned in the later parts of Oblivion (Ayleids, The last Septim line, etc) and the lamps snuffed out in Skyrim. From the information of ESO I can see the same veins of Morrowind ripe for the picking, but they are sadly overlooked and instead replaced with the soul-crushing irrelevancy of MMO-dom. I am reticent to delve in to the world I love so much only to be heartbroken again.

[QUOTE=Katatonic717;42003186] I dunno man...[/QUOTE] It's a technological miracle that a game like daggerfall could even exist in 95/96, you can't expect everything to make sense. The guards in skyrim are just totally useless, and there's so many of them. Just stand around in populations larger than the city population of commoners, don't nothing but making wisecracks at you all day and offering no dialogue options [editline]29th August 2013[/editline] [quote]Arena and Daggerfall as well as Morrowind were part of the succession of true RPGs (Dice rolls and everything, although calculated behind the scenes)[/quote] I agree with most everything else, but Dicerolls do not make an RPG. I'd go as far to say that reliance on dicerolls, especially for combat is one of the main things holding the genre back. So goddamn tired of DR armor systems and flat damage values, that shit needs to go away.

[QUOTE=hypno-toad;42003567]It's a technological miracle that a game like daggerfall could even exist in 95/96, you can't expect everything to make sense. The guards in skyrim are just totally useless, and there's so many of them. Just stand around in populations larger than the city population of commoners, don't nothing but making wisecracks at you all day and offering no dialogue options [editline]29th August 2013[/editline] I agree with most everything else, but Dicerolls do not make an RPG. I'd go as far to say that reliance on dicerolls, especially for combat is one of the main things holding the genre back. So goddamn tired of DR armor systems and flat damage values, that shit needs to go away.[/QUOTE] Indeed, the armor system of Morrowind was based on essentially dodging attacks as with quite a few other RPGs of the time, it's an extremely successful way to calculate armor, rather than mitigation via % or flat reduction of damage done, as the case with armor values.

[QUOTE=hypno-toad;42003567] I agree with most everything else, but Dicerolls do not make an RPG. I'd go as far to say that reliance on dicerolls, especially for combat is one of the main things holding the genre back. So goddamn tired of DR armor systems and flat damage values, that shit needs to go away.[/QUOTE] I dunno, I thought it was acceptable how if you took a weapon as a primary skill in Daggerfall, you would actually be decent at hitting things with it as opposed to an untrained weapon. And even then the different attacks like the weaker stabs almost guaranteed even a mediocre swordsman/axe wielder could hit something. As long as games don't make it as bad as morrowind where even characters specializing in something amounts to nothing when hitting something I don't mind dice rolls. I kind of prefer missing something that's there to hitting it consistently but doing fuck all to it in terms of damage. Maybe a compromise system would work, where when an AI successfully performs a "dodge" it plays an actual dodge animation (or when the player fails a roll it does the same) but have it so the player can redirect his strike mid-swing if he's quick enough as to still land a hit. As for guards, well, Daggerfall guards could give you directions to whatever you needed if you came across one [I]most[/I] of the time, so they can actually be useful.

[QUOTE=hypno-toad;42003567]It's a technological miracle that a game like daggerfall could even exist in 95/96, you can't expect everything to make sense..[/QUOTE] I know, Daggerfall is my favorite TES game.

Even more crazy is that the engine was coded by one guy, and the gameplay features were coded by two people, one of which was [I]the same guy[/I] that coded the engine. It's so surpising that not only did it turn out to be a playable game, but an actual [I]good[/I] game at that - that's pretty amazing for a project of that scope.

[QUOTE=Bloodshot12;42003724]I dunno, I thought it was acceptable how if you took a weapon as a primary skill in Daggerfall, you would actually be decent at hitting things with it as opposed to an untrained weapon. And even then the different attacks like the weaker stabs almost guaranteed even a mediocre swordsman/axe wielder could hit something. As long as games don't make it as bad as morrowind where even characters specializing in something amounts to nothing when hitting something I don't mind dice rolls. I kind of prefer missing something that's there to hitting it consistently but doing fuck all to it in terms of damage. Maybe a compromise system would work, where when an AI successfully performs a "dodge" it plays an actual dodge animation (or when the player fails a roll it does the same) but have it so the player can redirect his strike mid-swing if he's quick enough as to still land a hit. As for guards, well, Daggerfall guards could give you directions to whatever you needed if you came across one [I]most[/I] of the time, so they can actually be useful.[/QUOTE] Taken in a broader context the appeal of the Morrowind combat can be seen as much closer to involvement with the story and actual roleplaying, granted if you are used to action rpgs of the current generation its a much more visceral experience and you "hit" what your crosshairs are on irregardless, I find that the first time I got off the boat and used that dinky Iron dagger to fight a mudcrab or a cliff racer was the most terrifying and in hindsight rewarding experience, you actually feel like a pathetic level one hero, you can't do anything, but as you adventure you gradually become adept, able to slay monsters of increasing intensity, It was a balance of prioritized leveling (although with the plethora of mods for morrowind that make it essentially a new game, including a streamlined leveling mod) and luck rolls, which gave the combat actual consequence, whereas in skyrim or oblivion you would just spam one button. The dodge aspect seems interesting but in application it would probably be a source of extreme frustration depending on how its coded, against magic, ranged attacks, or melee, and would only increase with added enemies to face. It would also slow down combat compared to the current games, with fights drawn out like within Dark Souls or a Ninja Gaiden-esque gamestyle.

[url]https://www.change.org/petitions/bethesda-softworks-sell-a-flame-atronach-plushie-on-the-official-store[/url] Please sign

[QUOTE=Kragujevac;42003677]Indeed, the armor system of Morrowind was based on essentially dodging attacks as with quite a few other RPGs of the time, it's an extremely successful way to calculate armor, rather than mitigation via % or flat reduction of damage done, as the case with armor values.[/QUOTE] No, morrowind uses an entirely different system. Dodging is just one of the many layers of combat mechanics in morrowind and is unrelated to armor. The armor value = dodging chance is [I]cancer[/I]. Fallout 1/2 uses that, how does wearing a set of 300 pound power armor make you dodge bullets? It makes no intuitive sense and is yet another example of terribly antiquated D&D mechanics making their way into places where they shouldn't be.

Shit it's been so long since I played morrowind I forgot dodge wasn't like daggerfall

[QUOTE=Altimor;42003947][url]https://www.change.org/petitions/bethesda-softworks-sell-a-flame-atronach-plushie-on-the-official-store[/url] Please sign[/QUOTE] I signed it.