That sandbox gameplay is one of the biggest draws for this series and what it's been designed around forever.
If you don't think it buys anything worth it, maybe its on the franchise for you?
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Kotaku: Debugging A Massive RPG Like Skyrim Means Leaving Some Bugs In
- Thread starter LordOfLore
- Start date
That sandbox gameplay is one of the biggest draws for this series and what it's been designed around forever.
If you don't think it buys anything worth it, maybe its on the franchise for you?
Huh, that could be Minecraft, couldn't it?
But Minecraft itself was a low budget game that just have revenue that'd put most AAA games to shame, and that's with simple visuals and basically no NPCs to worry about, or at least no quest chains or anything tied to them. Bethesda really had been making "everything and the kitchen sink" games and most open world games aren't going THAT far with feature sets.
James Scott
Banned
Zelda was on two different systems. One at launch.
Don't think the slight difference in genre would make the comparison less apt.
And I think this is a fair criticism of the game that takes into account what makes Bethesda games unique (and how they are ruining them). And what they need to change to get better.
I wish more people would look at it from a standpoint of what Bethesda does good (or what they are known for) in teh game vs. comparing it to other games like Witcher that really aren't trying to do the same thing (you play Geralt, you play how geralt would solve things, this isn't a choose your adventure and how your character does things kind of game). As I said, I think New Vegas is a better game to compare Bethesda games to than Witcher as to what they should do to get better (for the type games people enjoy them for).
Maintenance
Member
Nice try, Todd.
badcrumble
Member
Man, Bethesda's games aren't the only ones that big. What a poor excuse.
And the people who've grown to see the bugs as part of the game's charm have the same Stockholm-syndrome shit as people who like it when framerates hit single digits because they think it feels like something really powerful or intense is going on.
And the people who've grown to see the bugs as part of the game's charm have the same Stockholm-syndrome shit as people who like it when framerates hit single digits because they think it feels like something really powerful or intense is going on.
I think it because they've found a sweet spot for many people were things are simple, "just mess around" world is often friendly of a say a GTA modern open world approach, and just enough of the older sim stuff to make it be more feel like living in an actual fantasy world.
If they started turning up the sim elements and made more of that complexity matter i think it would overwhelm a lot of the new audience they've found more recently.
Yes it does. I think you're missing the point. The point is immersion and a literal sense of continuity that enhances the world and the games rpg experiences.
For instance, tou can make any place your home. Whether a random house or a grocery store you came across full of Raiders you killed, doesn't matter. Take the Raiders dead bodies and throw em out/ put em out of sight cause you don't want dead bodies in your new home, or chop of the heads of their dead bodies and display them on the shelves to show you efforts of claiming the store.
Drop your weapons/armor/trophies, etc., and rearrange them on tables, counters, wherever, you know.
It'll all be there in the same place when you come back.
Theres definitely more they could do as far as cementing the mechanics as more direct features (I'm assuming that's why they introduced settlements), but generally this enhances the players ability to role play and get into the world.
KampferZeon
Neo Member
There are 2 types of quality issues , design issue and implementation issue.
Debugging is mostly referring implementation issue like a typo or incorrect initial value.
After some many games, I think Betheseda problems are due to their design / methodology.
As no amount of debugging can fix design issues.
Betheseda just sucks as their games are the most crash prones.
Edit : It's so embarrassing. Stop making theses excuses and start investing.
Debugging is mostly referring implementation issue like a typo or incorrect initial value.
After some many games, I think Betheseda problems are due to their design / methodology.
As no amount of debugging can fix design issues.
Betheseda just sucks as their games are the most crash prones.
Edit : It's so embarrassing. Stop making theses excuses and start investing.
Gormenghast
Member
The average textual roguelike has far more complexity in rules and world states than any Bethesda games.
The problem with Bethesda games isn't about complex game design or complex interactivity (or because of ragdolls, as some people have written). The problems are because they use a very bad engine and tools to build the world that have never been redesigned in concept since Morrowind (those tools allow to build quickly, but just more of the same hardcoded patterns).
What that means is that Bethesda is using a certain production process since Morrowind. To change that in a radical way means having to rebuild everything from scratch.
They have something that works and that sells, and that allows them to quickly retool everything to make games ranging from Skyrim to Fallout. People buy them.
Erasing all that and starting from zero with a new engine is not something that looks appealing to them.
So, if they want to build one of these games in a relatively short and acceptable timeframe, then they need to stick with the production process they already know. Otherwise it means spending 5-7 years to gamble something entirely new and hope is that much better.
The problem with Bethesda games isn't about complex game design or complex interactivity (or because of ragdolls, as some people have written). The problems are because they use a very bad engine and tools to build the world that have never been redesigned in concept since Morrowind (those tools allow to build quickly, but just more of the same hardcoded patterns).
What that means is that Bethesda is using a certain production process since Morrowind. To change that in a radical way means having to rebuild everything from scratch.
They have something that works and that sells, and that allows them to quickly retool everything to make games ranging from Skyrim to Fallout. People buy them.
Erasing all that and starting from zero with a new engine is not something that looks appealing to them.
So, if they want to build one of these games in a relatively short and acceptable timeframe, then they need to stick with the production process they already know. Otherwise it means spending 5-7 years to gamble something entirely new and hope is that much better.
Having several orders of magnitude more persistent physics objects in every cell in the game.
You're wrong.
Comparing a text game to a fuckin 3D game with a billion physics objects in it is just nonsensical. Don't do that. Skyrim is infinitely more complex than Dwarf Fortress, even though it doesn't simulate cat blood alcohol levels and Dwarf Fortress does.
Gormenghast
Member
This is like saying Dark Souls is more complex than Dark Souls 2 because DS2 doesn't have ragdolls.
Adding physics to objects adds computation, not complexity. It's what the objects do that adds complexity. In general the objects in Skyrim are just pick up items. Actors largely ignore them as if they don't exist.
It's BotW that actually adds real complexity by using a different kind of "game grammar". Bethesda's game grammar is still about the same as it was in Morrowind.
Head.spawn
Junior Member
Excuse the ignorance, but what does BotW do that hasn't been done in a Bethesda game? I know it has climbing and such. Is AI compaarable? Spell, crafting, enchanting etc etc?
MetroidPrimeRib
Banned
Not buying it for a second. Bethesda has never shown any desire to improve on their games that take half a decade to make, but that won't stop people from constantly making excuses for them.
Maybe these games need to let go of things like object permanence and the blatantly shitty engine? Maybe more good would come out of that then desperately clinging to bad design decisions?
Maybe these games need to let go of things like object permanence and the blatantly shitty engine? Maybe more good would come out of that then desperately clinging to bad design decisions?
Nothing like the smell of bullshit in the morning. Witcher 3 doesn't have object permanence/persistence the same way TES does iirc and it's also received a number of patches since release to deal with performance issues itself.
old manatee
Banned
Every Bethesda pc game has a giant fan-made patch that fixes like a thousand bugs, big and small. Somehow that stuff never actually gets fixed by Bethesda.
Adam_Vania
Banned
they forgot the biggest bug: the dungeon and enemies you fight while playing your first hour are going to be exactly the same as the dungeon and enemies you fight 150 hours in. i know because i lived this, years ago.
thank god i remembered it 30 minutes into Skyrim: Remaster. i promptly quit and never looked back.
thank god i remembered it 30 minutes into Skyrim: Remaster. i promptly quit and never looked back.
Maintenance
Member
Gormenghast
Member
No, the AI isn't comparable because in BotW the AI reacts to multiple possible aspects.
Does Skyrim models wind, sound, heat and cold? Is the weather more than a graphic effect and a script that sends NPCs into their houses.
BotW is built to have a far more complex "grammar". Just watch a video, this is what the world is praising about the game, out there. It's full of stuff that is actually modeled and that you can use in a creative way: it just works.
BotW is not some incredible technical feat, either. Most of those things remain simple and naive. But it shows how a different approach can provoke an enormous change.
It's a different philosophy of design.
Thing is, this isn't causing the game breaking glitches and bugs. It's also not (relatively) hard to do, or patch into another engine.
Most of Bethesdas worst bugs are core engine bugs or broken questing.
Exactly, and it's a shame that some bugs still persist from one Bethesda game to another.
The first thing people usually do on PC when playing a Bethesda game is installing the Unofficial patch. Wether it's Skyrim, Fallout 3, NV, Oblivion.
Install. the. Unofficial. Patch.
There is a reason why those mods are always in the top downloaded files.
What this thread has shown me is that a lot of people on GAF just aren't down with how much Bethesda has stuck to its old PC-style immersive sim heritage.
I'm not saying that makes them better than console games, but the taste that Bethesda games satisfy is a bit different from that of Final Fantasy or a Ubisoft game or really a lot of the most popular console games today. Some like Zelda, Dishonored, or Witcher 3 may borrow and inherit things from that same PC immersive sim lineage, but they don't hold as steadfast to the philosophy as Bethesda has.
The difference, in short, mostly comes down to ambition versus "polish." This kind of jank I think is more common in PC games of the past, particularly games that tried to simulate dynamic things, because they just tried to do more, and players appreciated that enough to put up with it. It's a certain taste that developed in the old PC world, and Bethesda games are kind of the last big stalwart of that in the console space. I'm convinced now that STALKER and Arma would get torn apart with comments like these if they had console versions, and people would probably be comparing them to Far Cry and Battlefield respectively despite the vast gulf between what each of those games tries and achieves. We'll see how the eventual console version of DayZ does, but that's a multiplayer game which means less AI jank.
Zelda and Witcher 3 particularly scaled back from Skyim's capacity for emergent sandbox gameplay to fulfill other purposes and look "clean" enough for the console crowd. I have to admit Zelda probably strikes a really great medium between emergent gameplay and polish (so does Metal Gear Solid V, actually Japanese developers have been pretty damn good at this), but Skyrim still offers a lot of sandbox role-playing possibilities you won't find in Zelda or Witcher 3.
Again, I'm not saying the ambition of those PC games is inherently better. It's just a matter of preference between getting games that try a lot of huge stuff at the cost of looking rough, and games that look more polished but at the cost of scaling back ideas.
I'm not saying that makes them better than console games, but the taste that Bethesda games satisfy is a bit different from that of Final Fantasy or a Ubisoft game or really a lot of the most popular console games today. Some like Zelda, Dishonored, or Witcher 3 may borrow and inherit things from that same PC immersive sim lineage, but they don't hold as steadfast to the philosophy as Bethesda has.
The difference, in short, mostly comes down to ambition versus "polish." This kind of jank I think is more common in PC games of the past, particularly games that tried to simulate dynamic things, because they just tried to do more, and players appreciated that enough to put up with it. It's a certain taste that developed in the old PC world, and Bethesda games are kind of the last big stalwart of that in the console space. I'm convinced now that STALKER and Arma would get torn apart with comments like these if they had console versions, and people would probably be comparing them to Far Cry and Battlefield respectively despite the vast gulf between what each of those games tries and achieves. We'll see how the eventual console version of DayZ does, but that's a multiplayer game which means less AI jank.
Zelda and Witcher 3 particularly scaled back from Skyim's capacity for emergent sandbox gameplay to fulfill other purposes and look "clean" enough for the console crowd. I have to admit Zelda probably strikes a really great medium between emergent gameplay and polish (so does Metal Gear Solid V, actually Japanese developers have been pretty damn good at this), but Skyrim still offers a lot of sandbox role-playing possibilities you won't find in Zelda or Witcher 3.
Again, I'm not saying the ambition of those PC games is inherently better. It's just a matter of preference between getting games that try a lot of huge stuff at the cost of looking rough, and games that look more polished but at the cost of scaling back ideas.
Pokemaniac
Member
It most likely isn't impossible for Bethesda to make significant improvements to the technical quality of their games. However, that would require that they actually confront all this tech debt that they're seemingly generating, something which I have doubts they'd really be willing to do.
The tech debt is massive unless they reduce their interactivity and mod-ability to something rigid like Witcher 3 or Dragon Age.
I find it hard to believe it isn't complicated to do when hardly any other games do it. It creates a really amazing level of immersion that you can only get in Bethesda games. I still remember my house in Morrowind where I stacked up the helmets of all the guards I killed in Balmora.
Looks like you enjoy shitposting other RPGs by namedropping W3.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=234456263&postcount=48
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=234494907&postcount=123
I know you've peaced out but it needs to be refuted -
Physics in BOTW apply to fuck all compared to Bethesda titles. In Zelda you can impact pretty much _nothing_ in towns. In Skyrim you can take any item, leave anything anywhere, kill most NPCs, fuck with their pathing, have monsters come fuck shit up in totally unscripted AI vs AI rumbles. In BOTW, a town is a town that nothing can change in. Every NPC has a verrrrrrrry limited routine. Shelving and decorations are nailed down. Theres a few pots you can smash, but theres sweet FA opportunities to unleash chaos. It makes the game much, much, much simpler to bugfix. If you had ever played Skyrim you couldn't fail to see this.
DUFFMCWALIN
Member
This is so incredibly false that it's hilarious.
Well, that's pretty much one of the debates. For some players it absolutely is. Like I don't go around killing townsfolk but many folks love to play the bad guy and decimate a village that might be full of quest givers. Or steal everything that's not nailed down. Or fill a house with cheese. One of the big appeals of their games is the different playstyles.
That being said, as others have pointed out, a lot of this was lost in Fallout 4, so I'd say there's less argument to be made in that one's favor.
And at that point you may as well go play Witcher 3 or Dragon Age.
That sandbox aspect combined with the sheer amount of content and freedom of role-playing is probably the main reason I pay attention to Bethesda games. It's the main thing Bethesda has over other developers like CDProjekt, BioWare, and From Software. When people write about Skyrim they don't write about the main quest or dungeons, they write about all the shit that happened when they tried to build a house to adopt a dog. And honestly, I think the freedom to mess around in a world like that is a big part of why Skyrim has sold a ridiculous number of copies. To a lot of the mainstream audience it's probably "GTA with dragons." Minecraft is popular for the same reason, just taken to a whole other level.
The biggest proof of all his for me is Fallout 4. I lost interest in Fallout 4 pretty much because the freedom of role-playing just wasn't there like it was in New Vegas or even 3. Bethesda increasingly limited to players into a pretty meh main story in hopes to be more "cinematic," which it ended up doing worse than CDPR and BioWare. What's left of Fallout 4 is pretty much just a dungeon loot game with a pretty decent combat system and crafting. I pop back into it every once in a while because what dynamism is left keeps combat pretty interesting, but that's it.
Whatever Bethesda does about bugs, it needs to stay Bethesda and keep making sandbox RPGs that are as emergent and open-ended as it can make them. I'd even argue people would enjoy Bethesda games just as much if they didn't have main quests at all.
Depends on what you do with it. There's a ton of potential to make your own story as you try to do your own thing in the game's world. In my personal experience it mostly just serves to drive home an increased sense that the game world is there, that what you do in it matters.
OminoMichelin
Member
The comparisons with zelda are non particularly relevant, but at the same time being multiplatform is not an excuse for the kinds of bugs bethesda games have.
No, they should just spend more time on QA. No two ways around it.
Oh, I agree. But I think a lot of devs think "better simulation" is a waste of time when put up against larger world and better graphics.
Bethesda does deserve props for sticking to something other devs out little value on.
Ehhhh I would have given them points if they kept pushing it. They may have started out walking in the path of an Ultima Underworld, but they've stagnated. They haven't tried to do anything more with their sim for over a decade. I can't really call standing still ambitious. And as noted when you look at the path of their latest games, especially Fallout 4, they do seem to be dropping ever more of the sim stuff. Skyrim still stands as more Sim then BoTW but far less then say Stalker.
Total truth here. I don't play Bethesda games for the main story. That is just an excuse for me to play the game. I'm much more interested in the story I can create within there worlds (which is one of the reasons why sadly New Vegas does a Bethesda game better than Bethesda). Hell, I haven't finished 4 and I'm not upset about that, hell, I don't even think my character's main motivation anymore is what Bethesda was thinking hers would be (and with a mod that removes the voice actor it is much easier to play her how I want. I really think the voice actor was a mistake and I don't think the VA did a bad job acting, it's just that I resent that you obviously are playing what she sees the character as. Tone of voice matters a lot and her speaking the lines out loud really puts what personality she thinks the character has rather than the one you want your character to have. And that's just one of the things that Bethesda did wrong about 4 that forgets why people love their games...and only one of the aspects that I think is so wrong about it too. And surprise surprise, it's Bethesda trying to copy what people like about other RPGs and forgetting about why people like their RPGs *grumble*. Some one ought to tell Bethesda the reason their RPGs are so popular is because they aren't like other RPGs).
I wouldn't complain if they got better writing as it would most definitely improve their games, but it is obviously not the writing that has me playing and loving their games. The only games I see that do better or the same in the ability to roleplay out your character and freedom to do what you want is New Vegas (from a developer more focused on making pure RPGs and from what I see usually does turn based RPGs) and turn based RPGs (which if you look at how Bethesda does their games they are pretty much taking the same principles of turn based games and applying them to live action).
I fully agree with this poster though that Bethesda is forgetting why people love their games and worrying too much about criticisms about what they aren't and trying to be something they are not (and are not going to be as good at). I think your criticisms of 4 are very on the mark (and I'll even admit 4 is my 3rd favorite Fallout but that's mostly cause of survival mode which saves the game).
NinjaTehFish
Banned
The scariest admission for me is that apparently there were no ideas too crazy to go in skyrim, for real? Skyrim represents the height of Bethesda's creativity? There are literally 100's of mods that make realitivley minor changes for drastic improvements let alone anything I would consider "crazy".
Huge Succeeded
Banned
The comparison to Zelda I keep seeing in this thread isn't apt at all, and it's a shame that the people who believe it is are acting so sure of it, because all it takes is like a cursory understanding of what's going on under the hood where Bethesda games are concerned to understand that on a base technical level, they're genuinely more complex.
I'm not saying that BoTW doesn't put its physics to better use during moment to moment gameplay, but when I walk into a dining hall in Skyrim, I'm looking at several NPCs on their own AI routines who may be involved in resolving one or more questlines, dozens to hundreds of separate in-game objects being rendered with physics and tracked locations (including every NPC as well as their apparel and weaponry), etc.y
Breath of the Wild is my favorite game ever made but I'm reading nothing but facts here
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You're joking, right?
I'm not saying that BoTW doesn't put its physics to better use during moment to moment gameplay, but when I walk into a dining hall in Skyrim, I'm looking at several NPCs on their own AI routines who may be involved in resolving one or more questlines, dozens to hundreds of separate in-game objects being rendered with physics and tracked locations (including every NPC as well as their apparel and weaponry), etc.y
Breath of the Wild is my favorite game ever made but I'm reading nothing but facts here
.
You're joking, right?
I think the important distinction between a game like Zelda and Skyrim is focus. In Zelda there are several elements that stick out as very clear and distinct components of the game.
1.Korok Puzzles
- rock puzzle
- cube puzzle
- metal rock on chain puzzle
- invisible korok
- tree stump korok
- honey pot korok
2. Shrines
- ball puzzle
- blessings
- gyro
3. physics engine
4. chemistry engine
5. dungeons
6. weapons
7. climbing
8. cooking
There might be more but these are the ones that stick out. When playing the game you will notice how modular these mechanics really are. These are all very separate mechanics that can be used interchangeably, but they still remain very distinct from each other.
Bethesda games on the other hand don't really seem to have this modular design . It seems really just a mish mash of things they created and forced to interact with each other and blend. It works well enough that they don't see the need in cleaning things up, and it also results in a very different feeling game.
Basically Zelda has a very clear focus, and Bethesda games less so. This isn't necessarily a good or bad thing in terms of gameplay, but it certainly has its effect on actual game performance. Modular design is important in avoiding the bugs that plague Bethesda games.
1.Korok Puzzles
- rock puzzle
- cube puzzle
- metal rock on chain puzzle
- invisible korok
- tree stump korok
- honey pot korok
2. Shrines
- ball puzzle
- blessings
- gyro
3. physics engine
4. chemistry engine
5. dungeons
6. weapons
7. climbing
8. cooking
There might be more but these are the ones that stick out. When playing the game you will notice how modular these mechanics really are. These are all very separate mechanics that can be used interchangeably, but they still remain very distinct from each other.
Bethesda games on the other hand don't really seem to have this modular design . It seems really just a mish mash of things they created and forced to interact with each other and blend. It works well enough that they don't see the need in cleaning things up, and it also results in a very different feeling game.
Basically Zelda has a very clear focus, and Bethesda games less so. This isn't necessarily a good or bad thing in terms of gameplay, but it certainly has its effect on actual game performance. Modular design is important in avoiding the bugs that plague Bethesda games.
I thoroughly enjoyed my 300+ hours with The Witcher 3, but what it certainly is not is a beacon of unprecedented open-world polish. It still has its fair share of bugs, including Dirty Funds breaking if you loot the final chest before finding the letter that kicks off the quest, which was one of the very first quest bugs people reported (myself included).
All game developers prioritise bug fixes because the reality is that fixing them all would be impractical, and this is particularly true of sprawling open-world titles regardless of whether you're The House of Elder Scrolls or The House of The Witcher.
neurosisxeno
Member
Serious question, have you even played Skyrim? Because everything you praise BotW for doing Skyrim did, and most of them even Oblivion and Morrowind did. The only interactions that weren't dealt with is Wind because if they did it would break everything since there are hundreds of movable objects scattered about in any given area and the game would likely just lock up if you tried applying dynamic wind effects to it. It's also important to remember that Skyrim released in 2011, 6 years ago.
On top of all those things, as someone said below you;
Bethesda titles are insanely complex in a lot of understated ways that people don't even realize because as you yourself said, it just works.
SlickShoes
Member
Every gamer should do a week in QA and see that every single game is riddled with bugs and even when you find a good one there is a large chance it won't be fixed due to a variety of different reasons.
Did YOU play Skyrim? Skyrim modeled none of those things. Heat and cold, for instance, have no gameplay effect other than maybe that standing on a fire hurts you. NPC interaction is pretty limited in Skyrim too. Sure you can kill them but the world doesn't react in any interesting or dynamic way. Civies run screaming and guards attack you, that's it. It's a binary state that flips and runs a simple script. Monsters in town are the same damn thing. The idea that this constitutes some sort of incredible complexity is bizarre. The systems are puddle-deep.
eot
Banned
Like shit compared to Zelda