[QUOTE=WillerinV1.02;52412271]this is my problem - it's dumb [I]for you.[/I] some people really like a more complex, unforgiving experience that streamlining certain elements fundamentally sacrifices. like yeah, you [I]could[/I] pre-plan your skyrim character, but why would you? the game doesn't support or promote that play. same with fallout 4, there's a difference between streamlining an experience and fundamentally removing an aspect that made that game so enjoyable to some. fallout 4 eventually makes all character the [I]exact[/I] same, no matter what you do. this is coming from a series where mismanaging your character basically made the game impossible. again, this is stuff that people [I]really[/I] like.
now i'm generally with you in that i'm appreciating the streamlining that RPGs are doing because pre-planning characters was never a huge thing for me. but as someone who enjoys less conventional experiences in gaming, i know how much it sucks when an experience gets streamlined and your complaints are met with "lmao who cares that was boring/dumb/tedious anyway" while fundamentally missing what made the experience enjoyable. there's a huge push for streamlining in gaming which is great b/c then more people get to enjoy your favorite video game but it often comes at a price of your favorite features never getting developed on again, ie punishing character builds.[/QUOTE]
I'm sorry but this is ridiculous. In Oblivion you don't have to pre-plan your character, you have to understand that if you play COMPLETELY optimally the game is [i]still[/i] stacked against you due to terrible scaling, and that the only way to get ahead is to essentially cheat and select only skills you won't use as your major skills so you can actually control what your bonuses will be. It's shit game design no matter how you look at it, you have to pre-plan your character because going in blind will result in you being underpowered as fuck, but you also have to know that the system is fundamentally broken and plan around that, which no one playing for the first time could possibly do.
There's a world of difference between playing Wasteland 2 where all the skills are adequately explained and Oblivions "Use a sword, use a bow, sneak a bit. Now pick your class, major and minor skills, and attributes with no major explanation on how any of this actually works". If you're pre-planning a character in DnD you have an entire fucking manual to explain how everything works beforehand. You don't get that in Bethesda games.
And please knock it off with the bullshit "Every character is eventually the same" shit people always spout for Skyrim and Fallout 4. Yeah, you can get every stat up to ridiculous numbers but no one actually fucking does it because it takes hundreds of hours and you can only use so much while playing anyway.
[QUOTE=WillerinV1.02;52412271]this is my problem - it's dumb [I]for you.[/I] some people really like a more complex, unforgiving experience that streamlining certain elements fundamentally sacrifices. like yeah, you [I]could[/I] pre-plan your skyrim character, but why would you? the game doesn't support or promote that play. same with fallout 4, there's a difference between streamlining an experience and fundamentally removing an aspect that made that game so enjoyable to some. fallout 4 eventually makes all character the [I]exact[/I] same, no matter what you do. this is coming from a series where mismanaging your character basically made the game impossible. again, this is stuff that people [I]really[/I] like.
now i'm generally with you in that i'm appreciating the streamlining that RPGs are doing because pre-planning characters was never a huge thing for me. but as someone who enjoys less conventional experiences in gaming, i know how much it sucks when an experience gets streamlined and your complaints are met with "lmao who cares that was boring/dumb/tedious anyway" while fundamentally missing what made the experience enjoyable. there's a huge push for streamlining in gaming which is great b/c then more people get to enjoy your favorite video game but it often comes at a price of your favorite features never getting developed on again, ie punishing character builds.[/QUOTE]
if you already enjoy pre-planning characters in previous games then you would still be doing it in the newer games. if you want to set arbitrary limitations for yourself then go ahead. those who don't want to don't have to.
if you suddenly decide not to in the new game because it's not mandatory then you didn't care about it in the first place, and should stop complaining since it's due to your own failure to practice what you preach
person A and person B both play the same game. person A plots out the entire route they're going to take and how to allocate every skill point before even starting the game, and beats the game that way. person B plays a few hours every night after work and beats the game as well, although they take somewhat longer. if person A has a problem with that then they're a fuckin dickhead
[editline]28th June 2017[/editline]
[QUOTE=Janus Vesta;52412311]And please knock it off with the bullshit "Every character is eventually the same" shit people always spout for Skyrim and Fallout 4. Yeah, you can get every stat up to ridiculous numbers but no one actually fucking does it because it takes hundreds of hours and you can only use so much while playing anyway.[/QUOTE]
most people don't even reach level cap in regular playthroughs but somehow every single casual finds a way to sink hundreds of hours into grinding these games to max out every skill
suspicious
I'm watching the whole thing.
A lot of people give Skyrim shit for it's leveling system but it's pretty good. I'm surprised he didn't mention fallout 4's leveling.
I agreed with most of it, except for:
His suggestion of a level cap to nerf stealth archery in Skyrim is pretty dumb, since you should have every right to become some sort of god in a bethesda game. To fix stealthy archery, you just need to make it so that someone witnessing a stealth kill is an instant detection.
The suggestion of a codex seems like a bad idea. I just think there should be more books.
[url]https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Bestiary[/url]
In skyrim, there are a whole series of books on certain types of enemies, however they don't exist for every creature and they're very hard to find.
[QUOTE=matt000024;52411942]wtf i can only think of one movie i've even watched that is even close to this length (full length das boot). why would anyone spend 5 hours watching this holy shit?[/QUOTE]
we es fans are a curious bunch
let's talk about CHIM
[QUOTE=BrickInHead;52412432]we es fans are a curious bunch
let's talk about CHIM[/QUOTE]
mods and the console are technically canon and i will fight you over it
[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;52412518]mods and the console are technically canon and i will fight you over it[/QUOTE]
Kirkbride's mad ramblings on Reddit should only be broadstrokes canon and we cannot trust the word of Vivec the traitor and god-usurper. However, CHIM very definitely exists because of how trustworthy individuals like Manky Catamaran and some guy who is probably Tiber Septim talked about it.
the warp in the west is the greatest bit of elder scrolls lore because it is simultaneously the best and worst possible way to resolve story inconsistencies resulting from allowing multiple endings
Sidenote at 1:40:39
Speech in Skyrim wasn't handled by entirely chance, it was handled like fallout new vegas except the speech requirement was hidden.
Sidenote at 1:48:00
Essential NPCs in Skyrim do actually become unessential after their quests, except the problem is that some quests don't do it for some stupid reason.
Sidenote at 1:48:50
In Skyrim, "protected npcs" were introduced where only the player could kill them. Most followers are protected NPCs.
Sidenote at 1:58:00
There are actually no algorthms that bethesda uses to place clutter, it's all hand done (save for the calculation of leveled items). There are only automatic placement options for trees, foliage, and grass.
[QUOTE=BrickInHead;52412432]we es fans are a curious bunch
let's talk about CHIM[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=eatdembeanz;52412542]Kirkbride's mad ramblings on Reddit should only be broadstrokes canon and we cannot trust the word of Vivec the traitor and god-usurper. However, CHIM very definitely exists because of how trustworthy individuals like Manky Catamaran and some guy who is probably Tiber Septim talked about it.[/QUOTE]
in every elder scrolls game the player is actually playing akatosh in human form
fight me
[QUOTE=Jund;52412216]there's nothing wrong with it. i pre-planned all my 3.5e and 5e characters
what is wrong is the smugness that comes from people who believe that pre-planning should be mandatory for all players. they can still fully pre-plan their skyrim characters if they choose to do so, but then they complain that filthy casuals aren't forced to do the same. or that they removed the most important stat from the game, speed
if it's still unintuitive within the first few hours, it's bad video game design. could skyrim have done better with their streamlining? absolutely. but at least it was an attempt at a step forward in the right direction [I]as a video game[/I], instead of walking backwards by making it even [B]more[/B] convoluted than oblivion like some people wanted
some hardcore TES fans still think that having miss chance in 3d games where you manually aim is a good idea, so hell yeah i'm gonna be dismissive of certain opinions
[editline]28th June 2017[/editline]
if having to waste 20 hours making new characters until you find one you like enough to play though the game with is part of the experience, then maybe the experience is dumb
meta-gaming is icing on the cake. icing alone can't fix a poorly made cake[/QUOTE]
I think there's a fine line an RPG has to dance between being accessible and having complexity to be something good, really A convoluted RPG can be learned to make it interesting, a dull, overly simplistic RPG is dull forever - until you download mods specifically designed to make it more complicated, I guess.
I mean like, the practice of always trying to streamline games is how we get something like Fallout 4's RPG mechanics where you just pick one of the increase damage perks whenever they're available because why the fuck would you pick anything else? It's simple, but ignores what worked about the older system in the name of making it easier and less punishing to use.
All of that said I [I]really detest[/I] Oblivion and Skyrim's level scaling systems, particularly Oblivion's. Genuinely encourages grinding, that's never okay.
4:38:41
Oblivion Spoilers:
[sp]The guy criticizes that story element of the how single kvatch gate that the player is tasked with closing could not have brought ruin to kvatch since those gates only spawn a few enemies at a time.
He's mistaken about a lot of things, I don't know how though since the main quest straight up mentioned it. One giant gate in kvatch opened up and destroyed the place with it's great siege engine, which you destroy later that was about to level a city.[/sp]
--Wrong THREAD--
[QUOTE=Jund;52410645]it's not even that. extreme class railroading in singleplayer RPG games is bad game design
you're 10-15 hours into a Elder Scrolls game and you realize that the class you're playing isn't fun, or that you aren't doing any damage, or that your stats are fucked because of unlucky rounded down bonuses. too bad, start the game up again and make a new character because otherwise the class and birthsign you selected will force you into continue playing with your shitty character
but neckbeards see this as "tradition" and say that any attempts to fix this is casualizing the genre for babies, and how sitting at your desk pre-planning your entire level progression instead of actually playing the game is fun[/QUOTE]
Honestly in this case you are probably going to want to start over anyway because now you have a bunch of skill levels and perks sinked into useless skills. Skyrim is still a class-based game, you just pick your class dynamically instead of all at the start. It becomes harder to level up the higher level you get and the only way to refund your perks is to level the skills you don't want even more to max them out (this wasn't possible at launch also), further increasing your level and the level of the monsters around you. I maxed out pickpocket on one of my characters and another was level 40 as a pure mage. The game was hell for both of those characters - magic is completely garbage in Skyrim and pickpocket doesn't contribute at all to my ability to survive a combat encounter. Picking new skills wasn't going to salvage either of those characters, I'd have to start a completely new character over.
Just to be clear: Skyrim's level-scaling system IS better than Oblivions. This is because in Oblivion you can create a perfectly reasonable character, and the game still turns to shit. My most recent character hit level 20 before reaching Kvatch, without any side-tracking, and the experience was ruined. In Skyrim if you create a reasonable character, it usually won't turn to shit (as long as that character's not a mage). But it's still a problem because the scaling can still ruin the game if you do make a mage or invest in certain useless skills, doesn't solve the problem you're talking about anyway, and still leads to a worse experience than Morrowind, which did use a class-based system but didn't level every monster with you. The problem isn't the class system, which every Elder Scrolls game has (even Skyrim, like I mentioned), it's the scaling system.
Going from Morrowind to Oblivion, Oblivion certainly looked god damn amazing, the combat was more fun, and the 'Radiant AI' was amazing when it was showcased but fell a bit short on release. A lot short.
I think Morrowind is a better story and game, but Oblivion is definitely a worthy TES game
[QUOTE=General;52411268]Has anyone went back to oblivion?
I haven't played it since it came out[/QUOTE]
It's pretty much one of the only games I play these days.
[QUOTE=General;52411268]Has anyone went back to oblivion?
I haven't played it since it came out[/QUOTE]
i played it at the start of this year, it's still a fun game. Only thing I really thought was super annoying were psychic guards which made stealth a pain.
[QUOTE=Jund;52411624]yeah but in what kind of game can you do this? i mean, besides the make-believe skyrim strawman that [I]true RPG fans[/I] like to bash on. if you can easily beat a bethesda game with [B]only[/B] maxed out lockpicking i'd sure like to see it
having to read through guides before you even start the game is bad game design, end of story. it doesn't matter how much you like spreadsheets or if min-maxing makes you feel nostalgic. it's a holdover from tabletop RPGs that didn't know what they were doing when they first started, but a very vocal minority will always feel that it's objectively the best way to do things (cough 3.5e)
the point he makes in the video is that having to choose a class and birthsign in oblivion after a tutorial of killing 3 sewer rats railroads the player into a certain playstyle before they even know if those mechanics will be fun 10 hours down the line. in skyrim you can dabble in skills, and if you end up not liking them you can switch without being punished by having to create an entirely new character. sure you can be a master of everything, but that takes hundreds of grinding hours and isn't done by 99.999% of players, so that's a moot point anyway. the only benefit for forcing min-maxing in TES is being able to gloat over plebs who didn't look up how the convoluted bonus systems work, but doing that in a singleplayer game makes you look like an idiot
if anything min-maxing should be optional, but relying on the player to min-max instead of creating a functional and balanced game is shit. some people like their steaks well-done, but in the end they're still shit and it's pointless trying to convince everyone else otherwise[/QUOTE]
The game isn't well balanced because how you build your character have no consequences. It's a shit mechanic that you can just ''change'' birthsign etc. When you make a character YOU MAKE A CHARACTER and how that character is affects how you're gonna be playing the game. Yes, that means you might have to restart a few times, but guess what? That's part of the fun, for real.
I just started playing Underrail and I fucking love it, yet I keep hearing about these arguments of ''mixmaxing'' as you call it. Took me 1 testing character which I played for about 10 minutes, I then made another one and have been playing that one for 10 hours without a problem. Sure, I spent a lot of time in character creation, looking over each stat and what feats etc that it will give me further in, but again, that's part of the fun.
Having better tutorial sections etc, so that when you start the game for the first time you'll know what each skill does and see all the different ways you could play the game is nice, but kind of a redundant. Playing a 1 hour tutorial or just making another character after 1 hour of play? Same shit really. It's not the end of the fucking world that you have to do that, it's the opposite really. Whenever I've had to do that I just got excited and thought of all the different things I could try with my new character instead.
Skyrim system of just making you a complete blank slate that can get a tiny bit of power in anything you want, is for the most part completely trash. If anything it's encourages minmaxing even more than previous games. Having the atronach sign in morrowind for example affected how you played the game the entire way through and you'd have to find some way to make that work better. In skyrim, if you decide to change your playstyle, you just go to the correct stone and get the sign you want. Sure, it takes a lot of time and is boring as fuck, but it's way more effective.
To me, in retrospect, Oblivion's always felt like the perfect mix of Morrowind's heavier emphasis on roleplaying and Skyrim's heavier emphasis on action.
The game is and was rough, don't get me wrong, but it has a certain charm to it that none of the other TES games have. It's hard for me to go back to Morrowind because of it's rather dated approach to gameplay, and Skyrim just feels a bit too streamlined for my tastes. Every time I play through Skyrim, I just start to miss the Attributes system and the skills they removed (Unarmed being one I miss dearly).
One thing I really love about Oblivion in comparison to Skyrim is just how much more involved the side quests and guild quests are. You really got a sense that you were working your way up through a guild in Oblivion, whereas in Skyrim, you were usually at the top of the guild in only a few quests with the end approaching soon after.
Morrowind and Skyrim certainly had better world design, but that's not to say that I didn't also enjoy Oblivion's to some extent. Surprisingly enough, I thought Oblivion had more memorable cities than Skyrim did. Skyrim had very intricate cities like Solitude, Windhelm, and Markarth, but the rest just fell flat and didn't really have their own personalities. Just about every city in Oblivion felt unique and had their own sort of personality.
I also personally think that Oblivion probably has the best soundtrack out of the three games that Soule composed for. Morrowind sounds a bit basic by comparison, and Skyrim a bit too grand.
There's no denying that the leveling scaling systems in both Oblivion and Skyrim are terrible though.
Still, I have very fond memories of my times with Morrowind and Oblivion (especially Oblivion, maybe I'm just weird), and I wish I could really say the same about Skyrim (though I still think it's a good game).
I still remember spending my 8th grade summer in the upstairs/attic room playing as an Argonian, actually beating the game and getting a lot of stuff done without a guide. It's probably one of my most fondest memories
[QUOTE=Rahu X;52414273]One thing I really love about Oblivion in comparison to Skyrim is just how much more involved the side quests and guild quests are. You really got a sense that you were working your way up through a guild in Oblivion, whereas in Skyrim, you were usually at the top of the guild in only a few quests with the end approaching soon after.[/QUOTE]
I definitely agree with this, Oblivion definitely had you working FOR the Guild with Guild-related matters. You were helping the citizens and helping with competition against the Blackwood Company. The Companions had you doing werewolf bullshit that made it seem more about that than the Companions as an organization. The Mage's Guild had you running around assisting higher ups in each city to prove you were ready to advance, the College of Winterhold literally puts you on the spot with an immensely powerful world-threatening object in the first like two missions.
My favorite one to bring up is the Thieve's Guild. Oblivion's actually had you stealing things to progress in ranks and missions and dealing with the Guards, as well as the satistying build up and payoff twist with the Grey Fox and stealing an Elder Scroll. Skyrim throws Elder Scrolls at you like candy, and the Thieve's Guild rarely has you steal much of anything and you just end up becoming Larceny Batman for some reason.
Oblivion definitely handled Guilds way better than Skyrim imo.
[editline]29th June 2017[/editline]
I'm two and a half hours in and i don't know if i can finish it. Retrospectives, to me, are supposed to go over the positives of the game, but also the negatives without a nostalgia filter. This is 99% negative, for every one thing he says in the games favor, he layers it with ten other negative things. It's grating and getting to be obnoxious. He's also actively contradicting himself and is aware of it, there's been at least two things now where he's been all "yeah this is a horrible idea and goes against everything Elder Scrolls but it doesn't apply here cause it works and is good," most recently for me being the music.
This also screams of him taking this all way too seriously. He's making certainly valid points that we've all made a time or two, but the needle focus he's putting on every single thing is ridiculous. Credit to him for presenting this much content well and being concise with it, but i don't think i can last with the remaining two and a half hours.
The Thieves Guild is the only questline I've finished in Skyrim and I thought it was really boring.
[QUOTE=ROFLBURGER;52412822]Sidenote at 1:40:39
Speech in Skyrim wasn't handled by entirely chance, it was handled like fallout new vegas except the speech requirement was hidden.
Sidenote at 1:48:00
Essential NPCs in Skyrim do actually become unessential after their quests, except the problem is that some quests don't do it for some stupid reason.
Sidenote at 1:48:50
In Skyrim, "protected npcs" were introduced where only the player could kill them. Most followers are protected NPCs.
Sidenote at 1:58:00
There are actually no algorthms that bethesda uses to place clutter, it's all hand done (save for the calculation of leveled items). There are only automatic placement options for trees, foliage, and grass.
in every elder scrolls game the player is actually playing akatosh in human form
fight me[/QUOTE]
shit now saving is canon
i just never found skyrim's environments or quests memorable at all
the quests in oblivion were so much more fun and unique
I take issue with how he doesn't like how big of an effect personality has on Morrowind.
I remember dumping a ton of points into it and getting through 90% of the quests with just dialogue options. It was really boring and I regretted it, but I appreciated that it was possible.
[QUOTE=DeVotchKa;52414895]Guild talk[/QUOTE]
Skyrim removing all of the interesting members of the Dark Brotherhood and leaving you with a few actual characters and two unnamed npcs was the fucking worst. Oblivion only got away with it because it was you culling the DB, Skyrim did not need a much weaker rehash of that exact same moment.
Been a long time since I last played Skyrim's Thief Guild, but I remember hating it since you weren't really thieves, but just a group of assholes extorting the town. While that isn't inherently bad, I much preferred the the how the Thieves Guild actually felt like a secret group of thieves stealing from people.
That and I didn't really like how you[sp]pretty much just give your soul to Nocturne or something.[/sp]That just kinda felt weird to me. But like I said, I don't remember much of Skyrim's TG since I only did it once years ago.
why [B][highlight]WHY [/highlight][/B]does he and so many others I see tap the attack in Morrowind's combat
This physically pains me
If tapped, rather than charged before swinging, the weapon does its minimum possible damage, which is an absolutely abysmal number for any class of weapon other than short blades and crossbows.
Also different swings deal different amounts of damage depending on what weapon you're using which is something everybody should be aware of after simply looking at the weapon's stats.
Furthermore, you can physically dodge enemy attacks by walking out of the way when they're about to strike, adding a whole layer of complexity to the combat. For that purpose weapons have different lengths, so that you can dodge more effectively while fighting with a spear, but with a dagger you can stab really fast but have to stay close.
[editline]editline[/editline]
Oh right, and using charged attacks consumes your stamina less in the long run, so you avoid becoming fatigued and ruining your hit chance.
I think my favorite thing about oblivion is just how wonky the whole experience is. Most older games feel empty and creepy. Oblivion somehow feels populated and absolutely comedic. Something about the potato people awkwardly talking to each other manages to feel really endearing. Whenever the game goes off the rails I can't help but laugh, and the gameplay kind of encourages you to be a bit wild yourself.
[QUOTE=DinoJesus;52415450]I think my favorite thing about oblivion is just how wonky the whole experience is. Most older games feel empty and creepy. Oblivion somehow feels populated and absolutely comedic. Something about the potato people awkwardly talking to each other manages to feel really endearing. Whenever the game goes off the rails I can't help but laugh, and the gameplay kind of encourages you to be a bit wild yourself.[/QUOTE]
No matter how much of a flawed game Oblivion is, this is pretty much the reason why it's one of my all time favorite games. There has always just been something so charming about all the dumb little things like the game having 10 VAs between 10 races (and genders) and the potato people that make me love it so much.
For all of Oblivion's flaws it does seem common that plenty of people have a love and enjoyment of it and then if you have it on PC you can stack it with some good mods and make the experience all the richer.
[QUOTE=DinoJesus;52415450]I think my favorite thing about oblivion is just how wonky the whole experience is. Most older games feel empty and creepy. Oblivion somehow feels populated and absolutely comedic. Something about the potato people awkwardly talking to each other manages to feel really endearing. Whenever the game goes off the rails I can't help but laugh, and the gameplay kind of encourages you to be a bit wild yourself.[/QUOTE]
I think Oblivion is the only American game I can think of that could qualify as having "Euro-jank". A lot of what went into the game seems more like things they thought would be cool, rather than things which really work or would be marketable.
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