I'm okay with this. Now let's get started.
I really wouldn't call Skyrim a roguelike, but what I mean is that we accept games that aren't really heavy and complicated on the plot
And this is why we have this talk. Skyrim has shallow mechanics, shallow fight, shallow story, shallow crafting/skills even perks. Shallow loot (few uniques are good though). Shallow almost everything. What it got is vistas. We can accept games that are not heavy and complicated plot/mechanics if rest of game is simply amazing. Skyrim rest is not amazing. Only big ass world for hiking is good piece of Skyrim but rest is simply not atractive to RPG gamer.
I have like 200-300 hours in Skyrim and never got to end of main storyline. Those 200-300 hours are thanks to mods like "roleplay requiem" where game is totaly changed (no level scaling, combat rebalance and things like arrows bad vs skeletons). Without mods i would put in Skyrim max 4-5 hours and forget about it. But mods doesn't justify Skyrim being good game because it have mods. Morrowind is vastly better in almost everywhere than Skyrim. It had big ass world and at the same time people there talked more than one line.
Well to be fair, there are only roughly 10 character important enough to mention from TW1 and TW2, but being able to recognize a character for what they look like is relatively recent, even everyone in Oblivion looked the same, so no forgiveness for old mechanics carried over? Even then, I'd STILL keep quest markers in. They're fantastically useful to the player for a number of different reasons and I'd hesitate to take those tools away.
Recent ? It is old as RPG gengre. Ultima, Fallouts1/2, Wasteland. Even in wasteland 2d pixelated game where characters that were momorable and what is more important you could say something about them. Morrowind also had memorable characters. Oblivion started this whole one liners thing for almost every character and Skyrim only expanded it giving NPC even less things to talk about.
Well it's a good thing quests like that exist already. Skyrim's loot isn't exclusively randomly generated. There's a good deal of hand-placed loot which reflects specific dungeons and quests for which you're in that dungeon for. So you beat the boss at the end and your reward is the Steel Sword of Asskicking. What else do you have in the chest? Is that it? You already have the boots of badassery, and the next dungeon you get the helm of no shits given, what could they possibly place in there but other, unnamed equipment in there for you to pick up? The dungeon was for the Sword of Asskicking, but now you have it. Now what else? Then you get your gold, your jewels, your decent-but-not-quite-amazing armor... what's the difference between that being placed there by hand versus by random generation? You DO get linear progression with level scaled random loot. You DO more often get equipment appropriate to your level, maybe with some kind of enchantment to sweeten the deal. But after a certain point, they could give you Auriel's Armor of Invincibility and it wouldn't matter because you already modded in some sweet armor set that makes you feel awesome. There's plenty of hand-placed loot though. In fact, I think my favorite was Zephyr, which I got after I started a quest from exploring an area I hadn't before. It was it's own self-contained quest, and I got a sweet bow for my troubles. But most of the rest of the loot was random, and even if the designer handplaced those 234 gold septims, 3 gems, and potion of ultimate healing in the chest near the bow, I wouldn't noticed any better than if those things were randomly placed. In fact, if the designer had handplaced those there, I would have ended up with something much more boring and disappointing, like less gold, fewer gems, and a shittier potion. It's not the notable loot I'm talking about here, it's the random shit that fills in the gaps.
And this is where you don't understand. Level scaled loot is closely tied to level scaled enemies. You need both to be unleveled to have working dungeon mechanic.
What you described is what you get when you have level scaled enemies and non level scaled loot.
In your case when you have non scaled everything you can't just beat dungeon of asskicking sword without proper gear/level/skills. When you do have everything mentioned then you can try to get that sword. This sword then will allow you to go somewhere else where you could not go earlier.
Also this needs to be tied to level design. dungeons which are near main road need to be low level dungeons/caves/bandit camps etc. High level dungeons need to be hard to spot and only deep exploration should reward you giving you place to explore like underground castle, wizard tower or something like that. As someone mentioned people need to be warned before going in dungeons like that. One high level monster where you had ton of problems to kill and then you see whole dungeon is infested with them then you will not proceed anymore and wait till you will be higher level.
Well, scaling enemies is just a mechanic. If this mechanic isn't carefully balanced, then you end up with inconsistencies, which is what people complain about in Skyrim. I'll not say that Bethesda does enemy scaling perfectly. I'll not even say they do it well, but the use of level scaling is not inherently a bad thing. That they're not scaling the difficulty of boss enemies is probably just not a great idea in general, but I understand why they do it.
Level scaling is answer for developers who want to create more content in less time and at the same time put even less work into world design and quest structure when they create vast worlds. At the same time if there is to much of that world is not believable and feels generic.
As you mentioned Skyrim had hand placed items and because of that those were fun to get. Getting next ebony armor from be it bandit camp or underworld castle is simply not fun.
1. It means that people look for different things out of entertainment. What you look for in RPGs might send others running for the hills.
2. Then you know that the earliest PC RPGs were dungeon crawlers with no story to speak of. (sorry, mistyped there I did mean PC RPGs) Which is my point. Story is a relatively new thing, and not everyone has embraced it like CDPR.
3. But I do roleplay my character. MY character. And sometimes, my character is an unattached murderhobo. You can roleplay as Geralt of Rivia in the Witcher games, but ONLY as Geralt of Rivia, an attached (if sometimes unwillingly so) monster hunter. I CAN play that in Skyrim for the most part. I've largely ignored the main quest even. They sacrifice their depth for breadth, but the breadth means more places to go and see, more things to do, more things to fight. It feels like ADVENTURE! Not some boring "talk to the people and make choices to get something out of it" political shit that half of the Witcher series is comprised of (mind you, I personally love it). And the systems are frankly too complex and numerous in Skyrim to call it a simple action adventure game.
No it is not new thing. Even earliest RPG had story dialogs etc. Even rogue like RPG had story.
Story is not new thing.
So what about FNV ? It has big world and story. They didn't sacrifice it.
Systems in Skyrim as so shallow that last Darksiders would be better RPG if we could say mechanics=rpg. Hell even puzzle quest would be better RPG.
Skyrim is an RPG, a game where you can play your role. Want to be a grand Knight, crossing the land and doing justice? You can do that. Want to be a sinister spellsword, stabbing your friends in the back? You can do that too. Want to be a dagger in the night, cutting purses and taking the very shirts off of people's backs? Totally. Want to be a mage, running around butt naked throwing fireballs at everything that moves? I'm doing it next character. That's role playing right there. Sure, it's not at the depth you'll find in the Witcher series, but the breadth makes up for it as far as I'm concerned. It's a trade-off you make for the time and budget you have. I'm not saying one's better than the other, they just are. You take the good with the bad.
What you described is action game not RPG. I can be in action game embermage but that doesn't make it RPG. RPG all about different roads to same goal or making those roads impact world.
Some people captured some village girl:
- As a mage i can go there make myself invisible and rescue her making her also invisible
- As a mage i can dominate mind of one of guards to release girl
- As a mage i can fly to her prison on top of the tower
- As a mage i can finally as you said drop fireballs everywhere.
- As a thief i can sneak to her prison and release her sneaking with her out
- As a thief i can try to stab guard defending her prison
- As a thief i can drop some rock elsewhere to make guard go where i want
- As a thief maybe i can join them and later manage to free her
- As a thief i can shoot her dead taking only half of promised reward (for finding her dead)
- As a warrior i can slash and hack them
- As a warrior i can resonate with them making bet that you will manage to beat their bandit lord
- As a warrior i can try to destroy wall behind prison with hammer.
And if those things are still not enough i can later:
- Turn girl to her parents for reward
- Turn girl to her parents and demand higher pay
- Sell girl to slavers
- Make her your servant
- Make her sacrifice for your god
That is what RPG is all about. Choosing between hacking/slashing/fireball is as RPG as Call of Duty classes.
I think that a mix of both hand-placed and random loot is probably the best. You can have the hand placed stuff for the dungeons/quest rewards/unique stuff and you still can have a massive amount of random stuff for the more mundane items.
Just random loot for everything makes exploration really boring. Just take a look at the dungeons in Oblivion. The vast majority of them had the same loot pool and I quickly lost interest in exploring those awful elven ruins to find the same god damn crystal at the end. Skyrim had a good balance of unique stuff and the more common Draugr ruins. I did get quite bored of the tombs but I played too much of that game.
Yes random loot for mundane things like food, ammo, gold etc is good thing. But all tools need to be hand-placed to be worthwhile to get.
Level scaled, randomised and hand placed loot and enemies can all have their place.
I would agree that the way Skyrim did it is not ideal. That said it did have areas that were more difficult than others. Giants, Mammoths, Draugr Deathlords and Dragon Priests all exist at the start of the game and are really difficult to tackle for low level players. The northern parts of the map is actually more challenging that the lower part of the map too, as snow versions of enemies are tougher than the regular versions.
And this is why in Skyrim there is hope left. Those things were hand placed and made you "fuck yeah when you finally managed to beat them"
No, it should be mandatory for every RPG designer.
It's a fucking terrible open world.
We don't agree here. It is one of the best open worlds. Even if it is smaller than Skyrim or Fallout3 it packed ton of things and had terrific atmosphere and what is more important world was coherent it didn't look like bits of places randomly put on map. Lastly it was full of landmarks so you could remember easly way you need to go even without map.
You could go almost anywhere being lvl1 but at the same time if you will dive from road you can expect some enemies which will mop floor with you. World is constructed to tell you where are those places like this dude who tells you to watch out for Deathclaws in quary junkction. Or warning sign at north of Goodsprings.
I don't understand this.
What's more absurdly awesome than having defeated oddly high-level enemies that can kill you in one shout? The victory is awesome.
It would be too gamey for Skyrim to have appropriate loot everywhere, all the time. Skyrim's about putting players in another reality, not adhering to all the expectations of an RPG. "Holy shit, I beat this dungeon! I am awesome!" is what Skyrim is all about.
There is nothing awesome about killing enemies which are scaled to your level. It is like fighting enemies which were crippled before fight. Monster which first mops floor with you, you run scared when you see him and then getting good in game and finally killing him. That is awesome. That is mostly how Dark Souls work.