water_wendi
Water is not wet!
ive felt that way since he described magic in Oblivion like using a rocket launcher in a FPS.LCfiner said:
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
TESV: Skyrim Game Informer info
- Thread starter Dennis
- Start date
- Status
Confidence Man
Member
Meh. Not as offensive as Oblivion, but the scaling in Fallout 3 was still noticeable.
Ok, having seen the magazine I just have to say, it seems to be impossible for Bethesda to do realtime shadows on anything but character models! By now this is beyond standard! I realize you don't want the pc version to look a lot better than the consoles, but lets get with it! I put up with the fact that you stripped the realtime shadows from the pc version of Oblivion, (the earliest demo was showed realtime shadows, and even talked them up), but here we are in 2011. And lets not even mention the fact that you have Carmack around!
..........for God's sake!!
As for it being a new engine, it doesn't look like it. Seriously without a proper shadow/lighting engine, it looks just like Fallout 3.
I love the ES series. I have beatin every game in it. And I'm 100% sure I'll be rolling into the store to drop my bones on SkyRIM. But I am really disappointed!
Now on with the, "Shadows are not important, blah blah blah". I am aware of all this, so please keep it to yourself. I just wanted to comment on the graphics!
/takes another sip of wine.
..........for God's sake!!
As for it being a new engine, it doesn't look like it. Seriously without a proper shadow/lighting engine, it looks just like Fallout 3.
I love the ES series. I have beatin every game in it. And I'm 100% sure I'll be rolling into the store to drop my bones on SkyRIM. But I am really disappointed!
Now on with the, "Shadows are not important, blah blah blah". I am aware of all this, so please keep it to yourself. I just wanted to comment on the graphics!
/takes another sip of wine.
I just hope that this doesn't lead to situations like in vanilla Oblivion where I was unprepared for the retarded level-scaling system. I wanted to level non-combat skills initially (stealth, alchemy, restoration and block which were a really fun main skill combo and suited the game exactly how I wanted to play it at that time) which raised my character level too quickly and resulted in me getting anally raped by minotaurs every time I stepped foot outside.LCfiner said:
SirPenguin
Member
Well, going from 21 to 18 suggests 1 skill of each spec was cut.water_wendi said:
Magic - Mysticism
Combat - ???
Stealth - Mercantile + Speechcraft combined, perhaps?
I cannot imagine what they could cut from the combat section, assuming they did in fact cut one from each. Here are combat skills from Oblivion:
Code:
[b]Combat: Armorer | Athletics | Block | Blunt | Blade | Hand to Hand | Heavy Armor[/b]
Magic: Alchemy | Alteration | Conjuration | Destruction | Illusion | Mysticism | Restoration
Stealth: Acrobatics | Light Armor | Marksman | Mercantile | Security | Sneak | SpeechcraftGrimm Fandango
Member
Yo Gotti said:
Don't think so but here's the map of Tamriel:
Confidence Man
Member
Enchanting is now a skill, so assuming it takes the place of Mysticism the Magic category hasn't lost any, though the way they're presented in the screen they don't seem to be classified anymore.
GarthVaderUK
Banned
HUD-free first person view 
Classless system is fine, not like it makes much sense anyways to emerge as a lvl 1 nothing from a ship/prison/etc. with a badass title like Assassin or Witchhunter from the start anyways
Level scaling as it was in F3 was fine, as it didn't impede exploration (same stuff was in X building at level 1 as in level 20, and so on), so as long as they tweak that and improve on it it should work well
Combat in morrowind and oblviion was terrible, so any improvement is welcomed.
Any word on seamless interiors (no loading, working windows, etc.)?
Level scaling as it was in F3 was fine, as it didn't impede exploration (same stuff was in X building at level 1 as in level 20, and so on), so as long as they tweak that and improve on it it should work well
Combat in morrowind and oblviion was terrible, so any improvement is welcomed.
Any word on seamless interiors (no loading, working windows, etc.)?
viewtifulsub
Member
Enchanting was a skill that was removed in Oblivion from Morrowind. And Mysticism is a different concept to enchanting.Confidence Man said:
Zoso
It's been a long time, been a long time, been a long lonely lonely lonely lonely lonely time.
The screens look great. I'm shocked to see a good-looking woman and the environments are beautiful. Some really interesting ideas in the article too.
I've got a lot of faith in Bethesda after the improvements from Oblivion to Fallout 3.
I've got a lot of faith in Bethesda after the improvements from Oblivion to Fallout 3.
BlueTsunami
there is joy in sucking dick
The shot of the woman NPC makes me wonder what the hell happened with the designs in Morrowind and Oblivion. Well, I can give Morrowind some slack but Jesus at Oblivion.
Should i trust them this time, about the AI? Remember Oblivion's bullshit Radiant AI video?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjbx6-KQoRg
uhm...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjbx6-KQoRg
uhm...
TheVampire
Banned
UrbanRats said:
Yeah thats what Im worried about, they made alot of promisses before Oblivion came out and didnt follow through on some
RebornYeti
Member
Gattsu25 said:
Hey I remember one time I went through one of those mines and came out with an enchanted ring that gave 40% Chameleon. It was during my first playthrough, so when I got it, I went crazy because I was so excited. :lol
Col. John Matrix
Neo Member
Speevy said:
And if you steal one of these spoons, can you sell it? Or is it magically marked as stolen (and as a consequence unable to be sold) to all but a select few npc's?
SenorDingDong
Member
Interesting info, some good amongst the bad. Hopefully enemies and allies for that matter have improved combat AI and varying behavioural patterns. If I recall correctly there was little to differentiate between the behaviour of an unarmed human and a heavily armed minotaur, they'd just charge you all the same.
Speevy said:
Depends on how much they're relying on the scaling to balance the game for them. For the benefit of those who didn't recognize this issue in Oblivion:
Oblivion had a strict adherence to the idea that everything should be balanced, in every facet of play. Bethesda developed a scaling system such that at level 1 you would never find powerful loot, no matter what enemies you defeated in the game world or regions you explored, and as you advanced in level the loot tables would provide you with level-appropriate loot from the dynamically generated contents of treasure chests and the corpses of enemies.
Loot is WYSIWYG in Elder Scrolls, too, so at low levels you'd only encounter bandits wearing basic hide armor (because after defeating them you'd be able to wear that armor), and at high levels you'd encounter those same kinds of bandits wearing the most powerful magical glass armor. Only then did many players start to realize the treadmill-like scaling in place.
Shopkeepers didn't sell good equipment, since the player could hypothetically save up and buy some armor or weapon and have it before it would be balanced with the difficulty of the enemies in the game world (all scaled to the player's current level). Completing the same quest at level 5 or level 20 would yield the same item but with vastly different stats, again so that the player would always be using something balanced and appropriate.
Then we come to static objects placed in the game world, like items being proudly shown off in display cases by nobility or merchants. All of these items had to be unusable imitations to not upset the balance in case they were stolen by the player. Can't give the player too much money, either, even though nothing of value can be bought from merchants, so the nobility use copper plates and not anything that could be stolen and resold at a high price.
In Oblivion the player's level is advanced by skilling up the skills tagged as major or minor at the start of the game. So if you had an interest in alchemy or acrobatics or anything else not directly related to combat, you might tag a few of those skills. But if you actually used them frequently, you would level up and all the enemies in the game world would become stronger. Yet you had only increased skills not directly related to combat, so your combat proficiency hadn't increased. Since players had no idea that the game world scaled in such a way, this often spiraled out of control and left gamers with game worlds completely broken for their characters. It didn't help that if this delicate balance between player strength and enemy strength wasn't maintained, for whatever mechanical reason under the hood it could suddenly take dozens of sword slashes or spells to defeat every enemy.
After people started realizing that these mechanics were in place, they would create characters where, intentionally, none of the skills they planned on using would be tagged as major or minor skills. That way they would never level up just by using the abilities they wanted to use, and could control the scaling curve or become all-powerful compared to the enemies.
Destroying any sense of exploration, excitement, uncertainty, or challenge. All in the name of balance and design convenience.
Morrowind was anything but balanced. The noble houses had bank vaults under extremely heavy guard, filled with powerful treasures. If you were clever enough you could use stealth and/or magic to break into these vaults long before you encountered treasures of that sort of power from the traditional routes of questing or dungeon crawling. Morrowind could be "broken" in dozens of different ways. Alchemy could be used to create potions that boosted your alchemy governing attribute and then making more of those potions while under the effect of those same potions. Rings could be enchanted with short duration effects to, for example, be able to jump for miles at a time across the game world. Levitation could be exploited to gain extreme advantages over grounded adversaries. There were many such opportunities, yet in potentially breaking Morrowind many times over, they didn't at all make Morrowind a bad game. On the contrary, that sort of freedom allowed for a strong sense of creativity to foster, and subsequently awe when something you came up with actually worked. It allowed players to plan out dramatic unscripted heists, or to defeat powerful enemies with careful planning and execution. It made Morrowind a brilliant game, not a bad one.
kyo_daikun
Member
Exactly, it was nice to feel over powered sometimes during the game and smash enemies up and find powerful loot, that never happened in oblivion for the reasons you stated and made the whole game feel the same from start to end, you were never too powerful or too weak and it kindof sapped the fun from the game for me.
Give the freedom back to TES and all will be good.
Give the freedom back to TES and all will be good.
Evilore is spot on.
The effect of scaling in Oblivion was to make an open game feel like a linear one. Coming to it from the world of linear console JRPGs, if felt very familiar. I would level up, and a new, better sword would be spoon-fed to me. And then I would use that new, better sword on the next set of stronger enemies. Then, rinse and repeat.
When I first started playing it felt comfortably familiar. I loved the exploration and did dozens of dungeons before touching the main quest. And by then the hamster wheel was laid bare, as was the repetitive (and ultimately fruitless, as nothing of value was ever in them) nature of the dungeons. The system utterly destroyed the value of exploration.
Fallout 3 was much better, and I seldom noticed the scaling. I ignored the main quest and went north, getting into often fatal battles with Super Mutants and high-ranking bandits, but at my lowly level 3 had a gatling gun for my troubles. That's the kind of game I want in Skyrim. I want to break out of the main quest and do high-risk, high reward adventuring.
(Incidentally, this was one of the things I loved about the first Crackdown - being able to go to the hardest area as a lowly level 1 agent and, with careful planning and patience, swim away with a homing rocket launcher.)
The effect of scaling in Oblivion was to make an open game feel like a linear one. Coming to it from the world of linear console JRPGs, if felt very familiar. I would level up, and a new, better sword would be spoon-fed to me. And then I would use that new, better sword on the next set of stronger enemies. Then, rinse and repeat.
When I first started playing it felt comfortably familiar. I loved the exploration and did dozens of dungeons before touching the main quest. And by then the hamster wheel was laid bare, as was the repetitive (and ultimately fruitless, as nothing of value was ever in them) nature of the dungeons. The system utterly destroyed the value of exploration.
Fallout 3 was much better, and I seldom noticed the scaling. I ignored the main quest and went north, getting into often fatal battles with Super Mutants and high-ranking bandits, but at my lowly level 3 had a gatling gun for my troubles. That's the kind of game I want in Skyrim. I want to break out of the main quest and do high-risk, high reward adventuring.
(Incidentally, this was one of the things I loved about the first Crackdown - being able to go to the hardest area as a lowly level 1 agent and, with careful planning and patience, swim away with a homing rocket launcher.)
SirPenguin
Member
That sequence is literally impossible to replicate in the real game, too. I always wondered if there was some "untold story" about the Radiant AI. As in, it was forcibly downgraded. Because as it stands, I cannot imagine they were satisfied with the end results.Gattsu25 said:
This is bringing back all sorts of memories of the broken AI, like homeless people and their magically changing voices
Count of Monte Sawed-Off
un33dab@dpu$$y
Level scaling was all that I was really worried about. It definitely killed Oblivion for me. I can live with Fallout 3 scaling, although I'd still prefer none at all.
AllIsOneIsNone
Banned
Count of Monte Sawed-Off said:
Honestly, the best rpg's out there don't level scale. Bethesda doesn't seem to understand that they are allowed to make some regions harder than others. The regions can branch out, having a loose progression of difficulty as one proceeds outward (some easy areas may still have pockets of hard enemies to maintain the element of fear/excitement), pushing you in the right direction but not letting you proceed too quickly. If you start coming up against harder enemies in a region, take a step back and get more experience from easier enemies. When you're ready, you can move on to harder areas that contain better loot, more experience, etc.
Why would it be any other way? Who wants the whole world of enemies to get better with you? Of course its about making smart decisions in order to stay ahead of the enemy curve, but rpgs should give you rewards just for the time you put into the game. If you play for 50 hours, your skills/items should make you godly against at least a portion of the enemies, even if you didn't designate your skills properly. They should reward experimentation and exploration, not sacrifice it for a hand-holding linear progression.
I'm not too thrilled on hearing about only 18 skills. It seems like they are dumbing down the series as it progresses... With that said, I did enjoy Oblivion the most out of the series. Hopefully the put back climbing and the such from Daggerfall.
Changing up the level system should help things a lot however. It was actually beneficial to stay around level 5 or so and run through the game as opposed to leveling up. It's never a positive in game design when you are actually punished for leveling up.
Changing up the level system should help things a lot however. It was actually beneficial to stay around level 5 or so and run through the game as opposed to leveling up. It's never a positive in game design when you are actually punished for leveling up.
ZombieSupaStar
Member
SirPenguin said:
http://www.bitmob.com/articles/dimming-the-radiant-ai-in-oblivion
please include the batshit crazy AI in the pc version of skyrim (as a modder toggle switch or something), imagine stuff like "You Walk into random bar with a almost naked nord chasing a minotaur with his pants on his head, because the minotaur is a notorious silverware thief, and the nord can't eat his grilled magicians cat without his fork"
I want to play that game!
Yes, It's so annoying getting a piece of great armor and strutting around in the forest looking good. Then you get to town and everyone is wearing the same thing. Great, where were you guys hiding all this armour? If you had loaned it to me I would have an easier time sparing your lives from the goddamn END OF THE WORLD.EviLore said:
That's where the PC comes in. FPS/AA/AF/resolution be damned. Irrelevant technical achievements to me. Just give me my mods. My precious game saving mods.
It looks beautiful, as expected. I can only hope that many of the gameplay decisions that dragged it down are addressed. EvilLore is completely correct in his assessment of Oblivion's stalled sense of adventure thanks to level scaling.
Two NPCs fighting to the death in a forest? I never saw anything like that, but it sounds more impressive than any of the AI experiences I had in Oblivion.
ZombieSupaStar said:
Two NPCs fighting to the death in a forest? I never saw anything like that, but it sounds more impressive than any of the AI experiences I had in Oblivion.
ZombieSupaStar
Member
ivysaur12 said:
hell that skooma kill sounds even better, make a wild wasteland style perk that basically makes the game go apeshit with the turned up A.I. :lol
EviLore said:
This is the sort of post I want to type up every time I see a thread on the Elder Scroll series or any Bethesda game, but give up halfway through only to post general frustration with their design philosophy lately. Case in point, my earlier posts in this thread. :lol Anyway, well said.
Just one article and a debut feature thing at that, but it seems that they're not going back to what Morrowind is. Of course, it's also a considerably bigger game than Oblivion, maybe they think a more guided and limited experience is in line with a smaller game? Maybe Skyrim will actually be shorter than Oblivion? It's really counterintuitive to create a huge, persistent(or is it anymore?), open world RPG and then insert all these limitations while reducing options for the player.
subversus said:
FO3 was too long ago, I can't exactly break down how and where level scaling was more or less apparent off the top of my head. But, it was definitely noticeable in combat. Ever get the sense that any encounter could be dealt with your mid-powered rifle? Always keeping the best stuff in your inventory, never having to use it? Or that there wasn't ever an area that you had to simply turn away from and come back to at a later time, after say you got to Rivet City? It really takes the fun out of the whole exploring for loot stuff when you know it's all trivial. You inevitably became way overpowered in Morrowind, but it never felt pointless. Painstakingly crafting overpowered spells was fun... because raining down fireballs that destroyed a half dozen NPCs in Belmora at a time, is fun. But, FO3 had other advantages. I hope they can craft a world that is just as interesting and full of great sidequests for Skyrim. But then again, that enemy list once again includes skeletons, trolls and now... spiders.
Night_Trekker
Member
If Skyrim is actually more dumbed-down than Oblivion... smh
I guess the modding community will be tasked with saving the game. Again. Thank god I will have PC gaming as an option soon.
EDIT: Fucking procedurally generated quests? God damn it.
"Help! My _____ has been _____ by some _____. They're over in _____. Please go there and _____."
I can't wait!
I guess the modding community will be tasked with saving the game. Again. Thank god I will have PC gaming as an option soon.
EDIT: Fucking procedurally generated quests? God damn it.
"Help! My _____ has been _____ by some _____. They're over in _____. Please go there and _____."
I can't wait!
- Status