Will you purchase TES VI?

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ByteMixer
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Re: Will you purchase TES VI?

Post by ByteMixer »

Completely agreed. Though there are some open world games that do it well, looking back at the first 2 Gothic games, or my personal favorite, The Witcher 3. Though I wouldn't call them sandbox, just open world, where the side quests were fairly meaningful. :) Looking forward to diving into The Outer Worlds next year after it hits Steam. (I'm not bothering with the Epic store)

I will say, I am having quite a bit of fun in ESO, and some of the writing is pretty good, particularly with some of the expansions' side quest chains. Though that's Zenimax the parent company rather than Bethesda. Some of the side quest chains were done pretty well, at least in the Morrowind DLC (I'm still finishing Cadwell's gold/silver before I move on to Summerset's DLC, then I'll hit up Elseweyr, since I got that recently). The combat mechanics aren't great. They're functional at best, but it's an MMO, and they aren't really known for deep combat systems. (though I liked the system for good ol' DAoC where you chained certain skills off based on the success of a previous skill in the chain, and based on your position around the enemy or opponent. Some skills could only be activated if you were flanking or behind the opponent, though some classes were one trick ponies relying on whether or not a stun or poison took effect).

Er, anyway, here's to hoping for something more intriguing, and deeper writing than Skyrim. Even in Morrowind, you had at least some political intrigue as you had to resolve and deal with the houses and the Ashlander tribes. Could have been deeper, but it was a lot better than Oblivion/Skyrim where there was basically no real political intrigue. You couldn't really get into bed with the Thalmor, and the civil war was just....whatever. Skyrim did have some well written mods, though. I did like a lot of the companion quests with 3D-NPCs and some of the chains were pretty good.

I think a lot of the problem with Bethesda in the most recent iterations is that they rely too heavily on the modding community to fill in gaps and flesh out the world that the devs and writers should have filled in themselves. They focus too much on a vibrant but empty world, with tons of locations, but there just....isn't much to do at those locations. And I always hated how they had these descriptions of the larger cities and the capital, and all you get in the giant landmass is a "representation" of said city where inside the walls you have a smattering of a dozen or so buildings, if even that many. "Do you go to the Cloud District often?" "Oh, you mean that huddle of 5 buildings up on the hill about 200 steps from here? Nah...no real reason." Always hated that. I mean....come on....give me some meat with my potatoes!!!!
"Whatever you do, make good art." - Neil Gaiman

theJF
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Re: Will you purchase TES VI?

Post by theJF »

Never could really get into Skyrim. It looks pretty enough and I can't say any of the game mechanics are bad, or badly implemented. (But also not that great). Maybe it was the story jumping so far in time since morrowind and oblivion, but for whatever reasons, it just isn't my cup of tea. My expectations for tes6 are far below that.

The correct answer to this question is to wait and see what tes6 actually is. I hope I am proved wrong, but I cannot see myself wanting to play it. And that's without the microtransaction nonsense and "service" idiocy that is ruining games.

I don't follow gaming news much but fallout76 looks like a total disastre. I don't know how accurate my impression is but I wouldn't go anywhere near the company that made that.

dashyr89
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Re: Will you purchase TES VI?

Post by dashyr89 »

As much as I would like to give Bethesda another go. It is quite obvious they won't go back on the changes they made on the skill system with Skyrim's success. It dosen't interest me all that much to be fair...

Sure, let's not blind ourselves, Daggerfall to Oblivion got serious issues in their respective level up / skills mechanics. But, instead of actually addressing the issues... They scrapped the system altogether. Some people don't mind but I do. Being able to to create a character with specific strengths and weaknesses is one of the things that made me interested in the series.

While I still did enjoy Skyrim to an extend. It made you a master of all... It overpowered the character to the point challenges to overcome were rare. It shares very little with an actual RPG and sticks more with other action/light rpg games like Dark Messiah and the likes... The Elder Scrolls is not unique anymore. It is just one more amongst a genre. Given Bethesda's behavior I can safely ignore "one amongst the others"... If it was an actual full fledge roleplaying game... Perhaps. But, we know it ain't gonna happen.

Ommamar
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Re: Will you purchase TES VI?

Post by Ommamar »

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dashyr89
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Re: Will you purchase TES VI?

Post by dashyr89 »

Ommamar wrote: Sat Nov 09, 2019 4:46 pm ByteMixer-I have friends who said the only real reason they got Skyrim and F04 was to have newest modding tools for the engine, I have even heard people say they would be willing to purchase the F076 creation tool as it has network capability that would allow them to build on their own server.

theJF-I liked the idea of FO76 and it wasn't a bad game to solo if you came at it from a mind set of Myst where you are a survivor exploring an empty world with leavings of a lost civilization. The problem of course was you had 30 or so other people on the same instance usually not playing with the same mind set as you. I think it would of been better if they had released it only allowing 8 people based on an invite system to be in an instance, with the recent moves seems someone at Bethesda has the same thought. The problem is the subscription for it is to much so those who haven't already will just move on. I think Bethesda got enough money to consider it a success financially but from a game design and implementation I would consider it a failure. Which hopefully they don't go down that path again but I wouldn't be surprised.

dashyr89-One of the things I liked that they changed from Oblivion to Skyrim was the choice on whether to level up or not. This allowed you to throttle just how powerful you wanted to become, I have challenged myself by completing the main quest using a level 1 build. Doing this really made things feel epic particularly involving dragons as it took me and as many NPCs as I could get to take one down. I also was able to make just a pure merchant and a valid pacifist build within their system. While I understand why some don't consider it a RPG I found the system fairly flexible in vanilla then add in what you can do with mods it does allow for different approach to complete things.
Skyrim is just not an RPG. It is barely any different than those call of duty games and their perk based systems. It looks like an RPG on the surface due to items and weapons that have stats that seems to matter. But reality is... those stats dont matter at all. When I first played skyrim I kept picking up shit I never used or never cared about outside from selling them. Up until I found my first Dwemer sword *gasp* new tier! And resumed the same process from then on. There a few progression tiers in skyrim but that's about it. After that theres a perk system that feels like keeping just the class perk of DnD but make the concept of class irrelevant. That flexibility was already in oblivion and prior. TES games never gated you off anything. Only difference is that if you wanted to progress in something beyond your class. You had to earn it. Skyrim took the most casual approach imaginable by handed it to the players from the get go. You know there is a lot of story about what Todd Howard loved about TES. His favourite part was running around smashing people with a huge hammer. Skyrim pretty much embodies that needs of self-empowerment while completely disregarding the prior games RPG aspects. Skyrim is an action game and a power fantasy... It looks like an RPG on the surface but once you scrape that off it really isnt.

Ommamar
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Re: Will you purchase TES VI?

Post by Ommamar »

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dashyr89
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Re: Will you purchase TES VI?

Post by dashyr89 »

Ommamar wrote: Sat Nov 09, 2019 8:05 pm I see what you are saying but I have found Skyrim system flexible to allow me to fill certain roles in the world even if that was simply by not using the perk system or only taking certain perks that fit the role I envisioned. While it has been awhile since I played Oblivion and even longer since Morrowind my memory is that once you leveled you couldn't get out of the menu until you had allocated points. This is all base vanilla game so it might of been modded in, or I could be misremebering as I always leveled in those games. Come to think of it I might of remembered hearing something about how you could get around the enemy level scaling in Oblivion but I though the strategy was to put in build skills you would never use thus you would never level.
Anyway Skyrim is the first TES game I can remember where I chose not to level my character or to just take certain perks that advanced it in a non combat way. I didn't try that for Daggerfall until I played DFU as I was of the same mind frame as Mr. Howard in that if it didn't let me smash I wasn't interested.
No arguing here. The leveling system of those games ain't perfect. Besides when I play Morrowind I use a mod that completely bypass the way it usually work. Make it work based on the skill only and increase the attributes on its own. Feels more natural that way.. To me that is what Skyrim should have been. Hell.. there is even a skill decay function that actually make your skill go down if you dont practice. (For those that love that.) The problem with the vanilla system is that it pushed you to choose 3 attributes to level up but the ammount of point varied depending on how much you increased it. You cannot like... distribute is evenly how you want. Its linked to the attribute. So yeah kind of pushed you to go out of your way to train VERY specific skills to raise that one attribute you wanted and if you happened to have used something else? Too bad... grind and be afraid of sleeping! So yeah, there was room to improve... but Bethesda just threw it out the window.

Ommamar
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Re: Will you purchase TES VI?

Post by Ommamar »

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dashyr89
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Re: Will you purchase TES VI?

Post by dashyr89 »

Ommamar wrote: Sun Nov 10, 2019 2:25 am Going from Daggerfall to Morrowind to Oblivion to Skyrim there is definitely a pattern of reduction and stream lining, in a way this made the games more popular as Daggerfall has a lot of complex systems going on that aren't always apparent and some where never fully developed. This can make things confusing until you spend some time figuring things out which I would say the majority of the players even back when Daggerfall was released didn't take the time to do. I think what Bethesda does best is give a big open world you can run around in that the last two games I played (Skyrim and FO4) had enough flexibility that I could tailor a build even if it involved me not using the implemented systems. I am hoping they are at least able to carry that ability over into TES VI regardless of how they streamline or expand the leveling system. The other hope is they keep the means for the community to mod the engine, if they aren't able to carry that over to the rumored new engine it might be the end of TES games.
Well.. looking at Fallout 4 there is a legitimate concern they might lower it to that level. Both games development always have been somewhat linked. I have a feeling that whatever RPG system TES VI might have will be very superficial. Even more than skyrim. Because you know... a game where you cannot ruin a character and have zero consequences for taking bad choices (What bad choice?) is hardly an RPG to me... But, hey! That kind of thing "clicks" with the majority! All I am certain of is that the game will not have bad choices. Only good ones no matter if your character is bad or not. There will be zero long lasting consequences...

Just look at the Dragonborn expansion... The literral ONLY thing you could fuck up is your choice of perk. (Even if really... you could struggle your way out anyway... especially if you can enchant.) Then they introduced a way to completely respec.... I know, I know... nobody forces me to use it. But still speaks volume on where their loyalty lies.

Ommamar
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Re: Will you purchase TES VI?

Post by Ommamar »

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