The decline of the Elder Scrolls series

[Luzur]

"but coupled with how much buggier Bethesda's games are these days,"

i'm all for bethesda bashing, but wtf are you smoking?

Well they can't all be as bug-free and perfect as Daggerfall

i guess some people are either lucky or unlucky with Daggerfall, ive encountered the void bug since i started playing Daggerfall, and only heard of the other ones.

 

[Kukulkan]

i guess some people are either lucky or unlucky with Daggerfall, ive encountered the void bug since i started playing Daggerfall, and only heard of the other ones.

It also depends on what version of the game you are playing.

 

[Kahlis]

I've only ever had problems with falling into the void and some quests occasionally crashing the game upon talking to the NPC to receive your reward. But I think that only ever happened with some of the fanmade/CompUSA patch quests, not the base ones. I always make a save right before accepting a quest just in case.

 

[Kirtai]

It also depends on what version of the game you are playing.

Wasn't the release version uncompletable due to bugs? And in those days patches were not so easy to obtain...

 

[Luzur]

I've only ever had problems with falling into the void and some quests occasionally crashing the game upon talking to the NPC to receive your reward. But I think that only ever happened with some of the fanmade/CompUSA patch quests, not the base ones. I always make a save right before accepting a quest just in case.

yeah game could crash if i asked NPC´s for map pointing too much.

It also depends on what version of the game you are playing.

Wasn't the release version uncompletable due to bugs? And in those days patches were not so easy to obtain...

it is kinda true, you could only play some version of it safely after the first patching, which you got by sending a letter to Bethesda, if i recall correctly.

but if you had the wrong kind of Processor (Cyrix i believe?) in your comp, you couldnt play it at all.

 

[eric__s]

Got two really specific Daggefall questions, not sure if anyone can answer them. First, is the Oghma Infinium artifact (or whatever it's called) in the game? I don't remember ever seeing it but I never spent too much time specifically looking for artifacts. I remember the manual said you could only have one artifact at a time so it made me too nervous to look for too many. Second, do you lose faction influence if you reject a quest? The NPCs always seem so disappointed : (

 

[eric__s]

my... body... is... telling me to... play... daggerfall....

 

[Broseph]

Second, do you lose faction influence if you reject a quest? The NPCs always seem so disappointed : (

Not that I recall. I rejected Fighter's Guild quests all the time so I could get the easy ones and I was still able to advance through the ranks pretty quickly.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

As for the Oghma Infininununiuminium, according to UESP it's in Daggerfalll, yes.

 

[Carrion]

I had hardly any bugs with Skyrim on launch at all. It's nearly impossible to make a bug-free game of this size on release.

I think I had half a dozen potentially game-breaking bugs (broken quests fucking up entire questlines, not being able to pick up quest items, radiant quests getting all messed up because I cleared a random dungeon too early in the game), and this was after a couple of patches. I can easily forgive dragons that fly backwards and companions that get stuck behind trees and rocks, but a lot of this stuff was something you could not see in advance and which could potentially bite you in the ass one hundred hours into the game, completely screwing up your progress because you did something "wrong" ten hours earlier. Fortunately it was nothing you couldn't fix with a couple of console commands, but I have no idea how console peasants manage to play the game without such luxuries.

First, is the Oghma Infinium artifact (or whatever it's called) in the game? I don't remember ever seeing it but I never spent too much time specifically looking for artifacts. I remember the manual said you could only have one artifact at a time so it made me too nervous to look for too many.

You get it from Hermaeus Mora's quest IIRC.

 

[potatojohn]

Bethesda is capable to create a relatively cool static settings (Morrowind and Skyrim) but completely fails to make them dynamically interactive.

But who can? What game is more 'dynamically interactive' than Morrowind?

Because it looks like a lot of people criticize Beth (of old) against some impossible standard that no game has ever achieved.

 

[eric__s]

I don't know what you mean by dynamically interactive, but I'm going to go with Gothic, Ultima 7 and even Teudogar and the Alliance with Rome. Morrowind is a big space you can move around in, but the most interaction you have is taking books off of shelves.

 

[AgentBJ09]

"but coupled with how much buggier Bethesda's games are these days,"

i'm all for bethesda bashing, but wtf are you smoking?

Nothing, but you missed the other half of the reason why I said that.

The community they so graciously give modding tools to, saying they want mods for their games and support modding, are proving how bad the bug-testing staff at Bethesda is. (Unless my recollection is wrong, on the Oblivion Making-Of DVD, only ONE guy is bug testing their games.) When new DLC comes out, there's a community patch within two weeks, if not less, or an official patch within a week or so.

Since Bethesda has this kind of track record in the first place, why are they, as a company, not trying to do better with their more current games and move away from this trend? It's not impossible to make an open-world game with very few noticeable bugs on launch. See also Far Cry 3, Borderlands, Red Faction: Guerrilla, Minecraft, Miasmata, and Inquisitor. All of the companies behind those games have far less experience with open-world creation versus Bethesda's 20 years, and Minecraft is a random map generator at its most basic. That honestly doesn't make a lick of sense to me, unless something else is going on.

The way I see it, Bethesda knows we'll do that bug-testing job for them, with the very same tools they are giving to us because they love modding so much, and even fix their game for them to an extent. All while the title is still being supported, in the case of Skyrim and it's DLC. That aggravates me because any other company that did something like this, unintentional or otherwise, would be burned at the proverbial stake.

With the track record Bethesda has for releasing buggy games like they do, you can write off their shortcomings as due to their game engine changes, making games like this in the first place, ect. But, the PS3 lag issues with Skyrim, despite Oblivion not having those problems, the XBOX beta-testing, and some community fixes like the LAA fix being added into the game after someone else solves the problem should be enough hints that this is not the case.

Which is what I believe is going on, past history or otherwise.

 

[Kirtai]

But, the PS3 lag issues with Skyrim, despite Oblivion not having those problems, the XBOX beta-testing, and some community fixes like the LAA fix being added into the game after someone else solves the problem should be enough hints that this is not the case.

You forgot to mention that they neglected to turn on compiler optimisation when building Skyrim until someone on the forums spotted it and make a hack that vastly increased performance. All the while denying any performance problems.

 

[sea]

Actually the PS3 memory issue existed in Oblivion and Fallout 3, it's just that the problem didn't become apparent because the games used less memory and the problem took far, far longer to manifest. It's simply a limitation of the game engine and the hardware - Bethesda use the save file to persistently store info about the game world, but when you have two small, split up memory pools like the PS3 does, the amount of data you can have loaded in at once is far smaller than on the Xbox or PC. All it takes is a save file greater than X megabytes to push the game over the edge into a brick wall.

 

[Rostere]

But, the PS3 lag issues with Skyrim, despite Oblivion not having those problems, the XBOX beta-testing, and some community fixes like the LAA fix being added into the game after someone else solves the problem should be enough hints that this is not the case.

You forgot to mention that they neglected to turn on compiler optimisation when building Skyrim until someone on the forums spotted it and make a hack that vastly increased performance. All the while denying any performance problems.

I already knew they were retarded, but this takes the prize...

 

[AgentBJ09]

But, the PS3 lag issues with Skyrim, despite Oblivion not having those problems, the XBOX beta-testing, and some community fixes like the LAA fix being added into the game after someone else solves the problem should be enough hints that this is not the case.

You forgot to mention that they neglected to turn on compiler optimisation when building Skyrim until someone on the forums spotted it and make a hack that vastly increased performance. All the while denying any performance problems.

I did see posts concerning that on PCGamer and RPS. Thanks for reminding me; I should've added that as well. That was another mind-boggler though considering how few lines of actual code were needed.

 

[Kukulkan]

Did any similar incidents to the one above happen to Oblivion?

 

[Mastermind]

IIRC the developers originally intended for you to be able to have conversations with those creatures, but it got cut. Like a lot of other things in the game, such as the Prostitute's Guild.

That's what I had in mind. No less than half a dozen skills with no other purpose, than to "communicate" with monsters you kill? That's the definition of useless/inferior. Obviously, any sane player would rather fill the precious skill slots with something that actually makes the game playable, like archery, magical schools, lockpicking/etc. I'm really glad they cut down the number of skills in Morrowind, leaving only the bare minimum which should suffice for detailed character building, without fake options that serve no other purpose than to make a newcomer slap his forehead in frustration and click "New Game".

Eh, it's kinda pointless to object to the existence of a feature that was never finished. The entire game's filled with them, and there was still plenty that never made it in at all. For all we know, maybe you could gain great advantage from conversing with said creatures; access to quests, shops, world locations, etc.

Sad thing is, instead of improving said skills and other game features that were unfinished/cut or never made it in, and eventually adding even more features, they instead decided that ambition was evil and should be purged with fire. Ever since Daggerfall, Bethesda has taken the approach of "if it doesn't work well, scrap it". And since they've always sucked at game features/mechanics implementation in general, we get less and less stuff in every sequel.

We got fewer skills but their depth increased (except for spellcasting).

 

[Wyrmlord]

Acrobatics was a surprisingly useful skill in the previous two games. If I came across a difficult enemy in a narrow corridor, I could jump over his head way past him, and get to my objective.

 

[Broseph]

For Skyrim, athletics and acrobatics should've been merged into one skill and given a perk tree. That could've been pretty interesting.

 

[AgentBJ09]

Did any similar incidents to the one above happen to Oblivion?

None that I'm aware of, but even my XBOX copy unpatched works OK.

IIRC the developers originally intended for you to be able to have conversations with those creatures, but it got cut. Like a lot of other things in the game, such as the Prostitute's Guild.

That's what I had in mind. No less than half a dozen skills with no other purpose, than to "communicate" with monsters you kill? That's the definition of useless/inferior. Obviously, any sane player would rather fill the precious skill slots with something that actually makes the game playable, like archery, magical schools, lockpicking/etc. I'm really glad they cut down the number of skills in Morrowind, leaving only the bare minimum which should suffice for detailed character building, without fake options that serve no other purpose than to make a newcomer slap his forehead in frustration and click "New Game".

Eh, it's kinda pointless to object to the existence of a feature that was never finished. The entire game's filled with them, and there was still plenty that never made it in at all. For all we know, maybe you could gain great advantage from conversing with said creatures; access to quests, shops, world locations, etc.

Sad thing is, instead of improving said skills and other game features that were unfinished/cut or never made it in, and eventually adding even more features, they instead decided that ambition was evil and should be purged with fire. Ever since Daggerfall, Bethesda has taken the approach of "if it doesn't work well, scrap it". And since they've always sucked at game features/mechanics implementation in general, we get less and less stuff in every sequel.

We got fewer skills but their depth increased (except for spellcasting).

I disagree with the last part. The speech skills were very useful in Daggerfall if you played a charismatic/non-combat character; now Speech is borderline useless unless you input an economy/dialogue mod. If a certain speech skill was high enough in Daggerfall, you were safe versus those monsters. And, remember the criminal trials? If your etiquette was high enough, you could get away scot-free. And if Streetwise was high enough, you didn't have to hunt for info about quest locations as much. It became easier to get, almost akin to D&D and World of Darkness.

Although, I will agree on this bit: "Ever since Daggerfall, Bethesda has taken the approach of "if it doesn't work well, scrap it"." Having to wait for modders to add Night-Eye back into Skyrim was something I still can't wrap my head around. Nor the loss of the Slowfall spell in exchange for a shout. Skyrim is known for very tall mountains. That would've been great to have around as a spell when exploring.

 

[Raapys]

We got fewer skills but their depth increased (except for spellcasting).

But their depth didn't increase enough to offset all the cut skills, so effectively we got a lot less stuff. And far less spells and spell effects. And less cool item enchanting. And generally, a lot less features.

They've gone from having an excellent idea and horrible execution( Daggerfall) to having a poor idea and decent execution( Skyrim).

 

[hakuroshi]

Bethesda is capable to create a relatively cool static settings (Morrowind and Skyrim) but completely fails to make them dynamically interactive.

But who can? What game is more 'dynamically interactive' than Morrowind?

Because it looks like a lot of people criticize Beth (of old) against some impossible standard that no game has ever achieved.

cboyardee mentioned Gothic (first two, I presume). Setting was much simpler and less original then Morrowind, but your actions changed it significantly and you could see results and react to it (to the degree) in game. There is no point to invest so much in background in game if there is no way to play with it. The setting of Morrowind was rich and potentially very promising. And exactly because of that promise it was very disappointing to find that 1. nothing happens unless you do something and 2. nothing really happens even if you do something. The "impossible" standard was set by Bethesda of old itself and they failed both miserably and magnificently.

 

[Kahlis]

I think we're just doomed at this point because Todd Howard thinks the extent of player interaction in RPGs is "do I kill this person or not-kill them." All the pen-and-paper inspirations such as riddles, skill checks in dialogue or to perform in taverns for money, utterly lost on these people. It is indeed upsetting to see how irrelevant dialog has become in Skyrim - disposition has been completely scrapped in favor of an arbitrary relationships system, the likes of which I still don't understand the distinctions of (after all, it's all reliant on what dialog they've already recorded huehuehue). The only choices you will get in quest propositions are the illusory "I'll help no questions asked" vs "what's in it for me" ones, with an identical response from the NPC anyway. We could have had skill checks to have your character persuade for different rewards, but again, that's just beyond the realm of consideration for Bethesda.

Although, I will agree on this bit: "Ever since Daggerfall, Bethesda has taken the approach of "if it doesn't work well, scrap it"." Having to wait for modders to add Night-Eye back into Skyrim was something I still can't wrap my head around. Nor the loss of the Slowfall spell in exchange for a shout. Skyrim is known for very tall mountains. That would've been great to have around as a spell when exploring.

Despite constantly touting how hip they are for innovating and re-tooling things with every installment, the excuse - at least from the people who defend Bethesda - seems to be that if anything was broken in DF/MW, bringing it back in the latest game would have to produce equally broken results. I don't understand it. I could think of a million ways to make levitation work in the context of Skyrim, such as making it a "channel" spell wherein you can't do anything else whilst levitating or you'll fall to the earth, or the spell ending if you take damage of any kind, or having it hover you a few feet relative to the ground beneath you, so that you can pass low obstacles, bodies of water and enemies without being able to completely bypass all of the poor railroad scripting and linear design their level editors worked so tirelessly to idiotproof.

But do we get anything like that, nope. They could have even have had it as a dragon shout to make it really special. I was expecting Mark & Recall to return in the form of a dragon shout as well, nope.