• mox
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    18619 days ago

    I hope they’re using this time to learn lessons from their Starfield flop and gather the talent and budget needed to improve upon Skyrim. A modern engine probably wouldn’t hurt.

    However, my expectations are very low at this point.

    • @[email protected]
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      13519 days ago

      They haven’t learned from Oblivion, Skyrim, or Fallout 4. Probably others.

      Or really, they learned they can just keep releasing games on a hacked-up Morrowind engine, and make huge piles of money. So that’s what they’ll keep doing.

      • @[email protected]
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        6619 days ago

        Yup. ES6 is going to sell like condoms on an STD themed swinger convension no matter how many bugs are going around.

        And the saddest part is that too many have learned nothing about AAA titles, and will preorder the game, making the game a massive financial success even before releasing anything of quality.

        • @[email protected]
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          918 days ago

          People have such nostalgia boners for Morrowind. Warranted or not, it’s still annoying.

          • @[email protected]
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            918 days ago

            What does that have to do with the comment you replied to?

            Also why would it be annoying if people say a good game is a good game and it is warranted?

            It’s like people on this thread have some pathological need to complain about SOMETHING.

          • @[email protected]
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            518 days ago

            The nostalgia boner is that it was a very unique game, and nothing has come out quite like it since. It’s not even like Daggerfall or Arena. For someone looking for that experience, Oblivion and Skyrim were massive disappointments.

            Going from a volcano that is spewing flesh mutating disease while riding giant bugs around to Tolkienesque Medieval Fantasy Landscape #3045 gave me whiplash. (The Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine save the package though.) And losing the ability to kill whoever I want? Spears???

            Skyrim is better. It mangles what could have been a good story by retconning lore and making Alduin into big evil bad, just as Oblivion was about basically Satan invading the world. Morrowind’s villain may not be right, but his motives are 100% understandable and he has a good point. (In Oblivion: why would you join a cult dedicated to killing everyone for no reason?)

            As a Morrowboomer, I’m willing to accept the series changed, but there just hasn’t been something to replace what I hoped for ES4. They don’t make games with that vibe anymore. The closest thing I’ve had to scratching that itch would be Planescape Torment, Pathologic, or Zeno Clash.

    • @[email protected]
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      6019 days ago

      The budget for Starfield was twice that of Baldur’s Gate 3. Throwing more money at it isn’t going to do a lot if they’re allocating it poorly.

      • mox
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        19 days ago

        I’m not suggesting that a big budget alone is sufficient to make a good game.

        However, enough budget to keep the team employed (note the many gaming industry layoffs lately) and appropriate budgeting (in terms of both money and time) affect things like code, art, and writing quality. It’s kind of important.

        • @[email protected]
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          1519 days ago

          I think it’s going to require the people making the most high-level decisions to come to the realization that their old way of doing things is outdated. I don’t have faith that they’ll come to those conclusions.

          • mox
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            519 days ago

            I don’t have faith that they’ll come to those conclusions.

            Sadly, I don’t have much faith in them either. (Hence my low expectations.)

            I can still hope, though. Elder Scrolls has enough fans and lore that there’s certainly potential for a great new game.

            • @[email protected]
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              718 days ago

              lore

              Friendly reminder that the original “loremaster” of Elder Scrolls left Bethesda before they released Elder Scrolls Online, and they replaced him with someone who has apparently been making pretty questionable decisions with ESO lore.

              I mean, they always have the out of dragon breaks rewriting reality/making multiple conflicting timelines simultaneously canon (see the events of daggerfall as referenced in later games) to handwave away retcons, but overusing that just means that no lore actually matters.

              • mox
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                718 days ago

                I think of it as a pool from which to draw and connect story elements, rather than rigid canon. If good writers were given the chance, I think they would find plenty of material to work with.

          • @[email protected]
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            219 days ago

            at the end of the day they are going to make the game they want, whether we like it or not, microsoft is now involved as well so who knows how that is going to affect them with their decisions

              • @[email protected]
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                18 days ago

                I think that is the most controversial take I have read in my entire life.

                What good has Microsoft done for Mojang/Minecraft? They kneecapped development by splitting the codebase and tying most features to their ability to run on mobile hardware, slowed development to an absolute crawl to increase long-term revenue (these motherfuckers openly develop three new features for minecon every year, then delete two of those for no reason other than “we can”), turned the console/mobile versions into garbage microtransaction boxes, started policing private speech in private servers hosted on private hardware, turned the mod-supporting version of the game into a second-class citizen, basically made for-profit private servers illegal, etc.

                Minecraft was a great game that stood on its own merit when Microsoft bought it. Everything they did only brought it down, and the few good features the game has gained since then were long overdue and done despite Microsoft’s meddling.

      • @[email protected]
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        719 days ago

        The real number is Morrowind had something like 10-20 writers that worked on it. Modern Bethesda games have 1.

        • @[email protected]
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          1019 days ago

          I think I counted 6 quest designers in Starfield, which was a spot in the credits I was specifically looking for given how many quests they had and how many of them would have been better off not even existing. You can’t talk about having 1000 planets and then make quests that aren’t interesting to populate them.

          • @[email protected]
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            19 days ago

            There’s a recent video that adds all of that up. Starfield had some crazy low number of quests, I think 50ish, and Morrowind had like 300+.

            And of course Starfield has an astronomical number of devs on it.

            • @[email protected]
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              19 days ago

              There are more than 50 quests unless you’re getting creative with how you count. There are over a dozen in each major faction, and those ones are mostly okay, but the ones I really take issue with are the nothing quests that aren’t part of any faction; the ones that basically just have you go to a location and then report back. Those are awful. There should be zero quests in there that the quest designers themselves aren’t excited about. Even the bounties that you pick up for a given faction that have you go to a place and kill an enemy mob should be more exciting than what I’ve already described in this sentence.

                • @[email protected]
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                  1118 days ago

                  Perhaps “you’re right”, “you’re wrong and also short, here’s why”, or even “I don’t know”. These would all be things you could tell them and a better response.

            • @[email protected]
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              318 days ago

              Starfield has more quests than Skyrim (both somewhere around 200 or so quests). Morrowind definitely felt like it was twice as much as those.

      • @[email protected]
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        218 days ago

        It’s a tricky balancing act. They need to recover the investment as early as possible to pay less in capital costs but doing that will mean that later on when the product is sub-par it will cause problems and extra work.

        Since the engine, game logic, art, story, testing is so heavily coupled together changing the engine a little bit could cause a month of work down the line.

        I think personally the best way is to start by making an engine or taking one off the shelf and then write a mini version of the game with shit art that has a lot of bugs.

        At the same time making models with hitboxes that all have the same physical properties otherwise, dialog content and recordings and all other content that can be done separately.

        Once that is fun to play then you can start working creating a slightly bigger system with a single short storyline to have a cohesive experience and will have the genaral feel of the game.

        Once everything above is done setting up a closed beta is the way to go. Take some feedback, add features and redo the small story to be more fun.

        Then once everything is a fun experience but people just want more you do the whole everything.

        • @[email protected]
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          218 days ago

          While you’ve made some valid points, keep in mind this isn’t a startup, it’s a massive studio

    • DarkThoughts
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      2919 days ago

      A modern engine probably wouldn’t hurt.

      If it does not have similar levels of moddability then it will absolutely hurt.

      • mox
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        819 days ago

        I think it’s safe to assume they know that and would bear it in mind when choosing or building an engine. Their games are famous for modding, after all.

        • DarkThoughts
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          519 days ago

          That’s a years if not decade+ long project though, including major investments of time and money that you could pour into actual games. You can’t just stomp a new game engine out of the ground, especially not with how complex video games in of itself have become, and if you want it to be as moddable as their current one.

          • mox
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            18 days ago

            That’s a years if not decade+ long project though

            Yep.

            You can’t just stomp a new game engine out of the ground

            I don’t know what you mean by that, but creating new game engines and migrating from one to another have both been done before.

            Is either of those tasks fast or cheap? Of course not.
            Are they worthwhile? Sometimes.
            Are they possible? Absolutely.

            especially not […] if you want it to be as moddable as their current one.

            Well, I can understand why you might assume that if you don’t have a lot of experience in software development, but it’s just not true. Making an engine that allows for very moddable games is mainly about planning for it during the design, and either building good tools for the game data or publishing the specs so other people can. It’s not arcane magic.

            (And for what it’s worth, while Creation Engine is quite moddable, it has enormous room for improvement in that area. Actually working with it can be a very frustrating experience.)

            • DarkThoughts
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              919 days ago

              lol, no. Starfield is still using the creation engine, which is based on gamebryo, which they’re using since Morrowind.

              • @[email protected]
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                319 days ago

                Correct. And they made a new version for Starfield. That’s all they’re going to use. Anyone that thinks they’ll ever switch engines is daydreaming.

                • @[email protected]
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                  619 days ago

                  It would be nice if the game speed and physics interaction were not tied to a inconsistent variable such as frame rate. And it seems that the more they pile on the gambryo engine the less receptive to modding it gets. But i can also accept that the cracks in the games that grow over time may not be the engine, but Bethesda prioritizing MVP centric development over hammering out the problems. Modders are carrying an auful lot of load to even get the games running.

      • @[email protected]
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        218 days ago

        I think we’re only ever see a new engine once Todd is no longer part of the company. Because the quote him out of context ‘it just works’

    • @[email protected]
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      1519 days ago

      I’m replaying Starfield, and on my second playthrough, I’m noticing the depth they put into this game. Sometimes a single dialogue line you said days ago will have an effect on NPC attitudes through an entire side story. I’m not going to argue that it’s not a regurgitation of their lame formula they’ve milked for the past 15+ years, but they do need to reevaluate where their money/dev time goes to.

      • @[email protected]
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        618 days ago

        Replaying as well, doing side quests I put off and surprised they actually go interesting places. Just did the one where zero G kept turning off and on at the space station that got taken over.

        • @[email protected]
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          217 days ago

          Damn, TIL you can come across these locations on accident just exploring. I thought that place was weird to be randomly floating out there with no real good loot. 😂

          • @[email protected]
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            117 days ago

            I misread your comment and now seem foolish lol but that is hilarious, I think Bethesda needs some work on their world engine and random events. Saw a mod where people are making custom towns now and man would random encounters within that environment…would take it to the next level.

    • @[email protected]
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      619 days ago

      The only thing Bethesda is motivated to do, frothing, absolutely chomping at the bit, is figure out a way to successfully monetize modded content.

      • @[email protected]
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        418 days ago

        Yes, will probably make a monthly subscription that walls off ability to download mods.

        (Also, it’s “champing” at the bit. Sorry for the correction but it’s a small pet peeve seeing chomping so much now)

    • @[email protected]
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      319 days ago

      We all know that all they are going to do is re-release new versions of their old games on devices we largely don’t care about.

    • @[email protected]
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      118 days ago

      as long as they don’t have space travel between every objective and hundreds of barren procedurally generated planets it will be fine.

    • Ephera
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      6018 days ago

      I don’t believe, they’re actually 6 years into the development. Back then, they just announced that at some point, there would be a TES6, but they’ve been busy developing Starfield since then.

      As part of Starfield, they did do some engine upgrades. You know what that looks like…

      • dinckel
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        3918 days ago

        Their announcement for the 30th anniversary implies that it is in early pre-alpha right now. Chances of it running on the same exact engine as Starfield are practically 100%

        • @[email protected]
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          918 days ago

          Wonder if it’ll be ready for the 30th anniversary of Skyrim

          Anyway

          Chances of it running on the same exact engine as Starfield are practically 100%

          You can still make improvements in pre-alpha for sure. Not massive overhauls of existing systems, but there’s no reason you couldn’t fix bugs, incrementally improve existing features and add new ones.

          • @[email protected]
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            1018 days ago

            Sure, you could, but given beths track record in that regard, why would they? They have been perfectly happy shipping Skyrim to new platforms with the same bugs for nearly a decade.

        • JackbyDev
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          217 days ago

          I don’t think the announcement implies anything. Truly. It’s just them trying to get shareholders happy about hype.

          • dinckel
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            117 days ago

            Who knows, honestly. I’m not holding my breath for this game anymore. When it comes out, i’ll check it out, but if it’s in the same pitiful state as Starfield, then idk

    • @pantyhosewimp
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      218 days ago

      Elder Scrolls especially Morrowind will always have a place in my heart but I’ve moved on. If they ever release a better game I will come back. What ever is running Starfield won’t be it.

      I’ve found New World and as far as MMOs go, it’s the best I’ve played in comparison to Elder Scrolls Online and Guild Wars 2 (in depth) and a few others (<40 hours).

      But New World has the lore, baby. That’s what seals the deal. Superior gameplay: check. Great art design: check. The lore is the final block and New World is so interesting. I didn’t think a fantasy setting could have new and interesting lore but they succeeded.

      How the Lost came into creation from

      Tap for spoiler

      trying to cure the Corruption

      is so tragic. I’m still learning what Angry Earth is all about tho.

      And it’s just fun! Like, I would have never guessed that I’d enjoy running around in a pilgrim hat getting killed by a giant turkey with laser eyes. And who would have guessed you could successfully merge the giants from Nasusicca Valley of the Wind with 1500s Caribbean aesthetic?

      But if you’re thinking: “We’re talking about single player games, dumbass.” Yea, I know, I like New World so much that I wish the same dev team would make a proper single player game in the exact same setting.

  • kingthrillgore
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    7418 days ago

    Don’t worry, in five years it will launch with the same physics tick rate bug and the dearth of anything interesting that is customary of any Bethesda Game Studios game.

    • ArxCyberwolf
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      3018 days ago

      Welcome to the place washed by Iliac waves

      There’s two and a half peasants with the same ugly face

      You’re not into small towns? Check out big-ass plains

      Fifty times the size of Skyrim’s, twice as many pointless caves!

  • @[email protected]
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    7119 days ago

    They could take 30 years to make it, but it would still be made by Bethesda and it would still suck.

      • @[email protected]
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        2018 days ago

        I have great memories of Skyrim. And FO3. And New Vegas. And Fallout 4. And Fallout 76 actually got not bad. And Elder Scrolls: Online had one of my favorite quest chains in a game. And…

          • @[email protected]
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            418 days ago

            Lenny indeed lacks some casual fucks, almost every thread has some extreme opinions. I had someone unironically try to explain to me why it would be beneficial to the human race to go extinct.

        • @[email protected]
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          518 days ago

          Ok so, I didn’t enjoy Skyrim as much as I enjoyed Morrowind, in fact I never finished it; I skipped Oblivion 'cause at the time it came out I… had other things to deal with.

          I liked FO3 (weirdly, I liked it better than FONV), but in my opinion the new ones don’t hold a candle to the first two.

          • @[email protected]
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            318 days ago

            I agree almost 100% with you on this. I did play Oblivion, but Skyrim has the more interesting world IMO which makes it a slightly better game. The strength of Bethesda games that makes them good, in my opinion, is the same every time: explore a large interesting world with your own created character. This explains (in part) why people like Morrowind so much: the world is just so weird and interesting.

            The problem is they don’t know how to improve on that concept. Instead they are mostly adding features that either don’t add anything to it or actively detract from it. For example, Fallout 4 received settlement building and weapon crafting. But, the time I’m spending on my town, I’m not actually out exploring. If I can craft weapons, I care less about the cool weapons I find in dungeons. Now, Starfield got rid of most of the crafted world altogether in exchange for procedural planets that aren’t interesting to explore at all.

            Aan an aside, I don’t think it even makes sense to compare the first two fallout games with the Bethesda ones. Fallout 3 and beyond are not really sequels, they’re a completely different series set in the same universe.

            • @[email protected]
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              18 days ago

              Fallout 3 and beyond are not really sequels, they’re a completely different series set in the same universe.

              I would argue they’re not even the same universe. While F1 had its share of of people living in post-war rubble, by F2 the world was mostly newly-build cities or primitive societies but there was a sense of progress, like having actual money (and by Tactics paper money was in everyday use). Then F3 comes and everyone is living in a pile of rubbish, with unreadable burnt pre-war books on their shelves like they want to pretend the world is how it used to be, nevermind that generations have passed, and everyone is back to trading in caps.

              • @[email protected]
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                318 days ago

                Yeah, that’s weird of the new Fallout games, there’s people sleeping on 200-years old mattresses (what are they made of, asbestos?). I get the destruction, and I understand how they may not be able to rebuild civilization to the old standards for a long while, but ffs, at least patch your walls!

                • @[email protected]
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                  218 days ago

                  There’s an industry to make new guns but people just step over the skeleton in the lobby of the half-collapsed hotel the three dozen residents call “Halftower” without a drop of irony.

            • @[email protected]
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              118 days ago

              This explains (in part) why people like Morrowind so much: the world is just so weird and interesting.

              I think you’re right. Maybe they should make a game based on Scavengers Reign.

      • @[email protected]
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        418 days ago

        They literally said Starfield was in the making for 25 fucking years. And you see how that ended up

        • @[email protected]
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          318 days ago

          Yeah, a pretty cool game that hoards of nerds have a weird hate boner for.

          Game developers do not owe anyone anything, but you’d never know it from this comment section

          • Lightor
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            18 days ago

            This is a forum about games and you’re calling people nerds? Lol, go play more Madden.

            And it’s not a “pretty cool game”, it’s a step back. But hey, some people are just impressed with scale and graphics.

            • @[email protected]
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              118 days ago

              Sports games suck (almost always) so no thanks. I’m sorry that you’re this sensitive to people who don’t take every opportunity to talk shit about Bethesda. It is a fact that they’ve released some incredible games and also that they actually don’t owe anyone anything at all

              • Lightor
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                218 days ago

                I love Bethesda, what are you on about? See, that’s why making assumptions is bad lol.

                No they don’t owe anyone anything. Unless you consider the fact that a company owes fans a good product or else they lose those fans. Like I said, I love Bethesda, but I’m not a blind fan boy. I can see them slipping with each new release. Do you think Fallout 76, with its issues and lies they told about it never having P2W is good? So you think a huge number of barren planets adds and entertainment value? They need to start doing better because they can’t rely on their past success forever.

        • I Cast Fist
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          318 days ago

          I don’t think they ever said that. It’s their “first new IP” in 25 years, and was “in production” since 2013, likely just planning stages. In reality, production only really started after FO76, when more people were available to do actual work.

  • dinckel
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    7019 days ago

    Normally, I would say that I don’t care when a game comes out, as long as it’s a genuinely good, complete experience. But knowing Bethesda, it’ll be another 5 years before we see anything, and then we’ll get an embarrassingly buggy title, that hasn’t innovated on anything since Fallout 3 came out.

    I used to forgive them for anything, knowing that the modding community would just patch things anyway, but we’ve seen how Starfield was rejected by a ton of people with skills.

    • @[email protected]
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      2318 days ago

      I think too many people forget that Skyrim was actually popular enough without mods to bring enough modders to the table to fix the rest of it. Bethesda seems to have forgotten that they actually have to deliver a mostly fun and mostly playable game for a proper modding scene to take root.

      • dinckel
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        718 days ago

        That really is a pretty substantial part of it too. Modding at its core requires a good game, and everything else comes from people wanting to change parts of it, that aren’t necessarily to their liking. Bethesda somehow assumed that people would be willing to reimplement half of the game at launch. That just won’t slide anymore, for 70$

        • @[email protected]
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          216 days ago

          Yep. And the good mods take a while to make too. If your game is dead 3 months after launch, who’s going to still be motivated to keep working on a big overhaul type mod?

    • @[email protected]
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      818 days ago

      It didn’t help that Starfield didn’t release with any of the normal modding toolset for Bethsda games. It literally didn’t get it until this month.

    • @[email protected]
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      16 days ago

      Shadow of the Erdtree DLC comes out this month after being developed for 2 years. Even amazing games take forever to develop, I’m certainly not waiting half a decade for another fucking Starfield…

      • dinckel
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        117 days ago

        That’s the difference. I would wait a decade for a follow-up to Elden Ring. It was a genuinely incredible game in every way.

    • @[email protected]
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      118 days ago

      Starfield didn’t have modding, but was it an embarrassingly buggy title that hasn’t innovated on anything since Fallout 3?

  • Scrubbles
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    4319 days ago

    Just in terms of timeline, Dragon Age 4 was teased at about the same time with the same level of teaser trailer. It’s releasing this fall.

    So a full modern RPG being fully developed in that time by a smaller studio, and for elder scrolls we haven’t heard squat.

    Who knows how DA will turn out, but we know modern Bethesda quality thanks to starfield. Not having any news in 6 years proves this trailer was made just to shut fans up

    • bbbbbbbbbbb
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      1919 days ago

      Who knows how DA will turn out, but we know modern Bethesda quality thanks to starfield. Not having any news in 6 years proves this trailer was made just to shut fans up

      Pretty sure they flat out said this was true

    • @[email protected]
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      1019 days ago

      Often times trailers that early are used as a hiring tool, too. Cyberpunk’s original CG trailer was back in like 2012, and that game came out in 2020, but we know from an interview at E3 before The Witcher 3 came out that there was a very small team working on Cyberpunk before Witcher 3 was done, and Cyberpunk at that point was mostly just design documents.

    • @[email protected]
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      I wouldn’t dare to call Bioware a smaller studio, pretty sure people said that Bethesda is the one that is strangely small for a AAA developer.

  • @[email protected]
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    4118 days ago

    The teaser itself is some generic terrain with procedural grass anyone could do in blender in 3h

    • @[email protected]
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      2418 days ago

      That’s what I thought at the time “yes that does spell elder scrolls VI, Bethesda, and?”

  • Lad
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    4119 days ago

    They just released this teaser to shut everyone up at the time

    • @[email protected]
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      18 days ago

      It’s like people have completely forgotten that fact. That snippet was at the very end of a 30 minute Bethesda presentation that had Fallout 76 with its multiplayer being a significant move away from their traditional formula, Elder Scrolls Blades (which is a mobile game nobody remembers) and the reveal of Starfield, a completely new franchise. Of course fans are going to question where is TES 6.

      And a few months later Blizzard showed what happens when you don’t tease Diablo 4 after revealing Diablo immortal.

      • @[email protected]
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        718 days ago

        I played Blades for a little while until it got too ‘gimme gimme’ about me paying. Then I stopped. Not paying to win.

      • I Cast Fist
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        218 days ago

        DON’T YOU GUYS HAVE PHONES???

        But what really hurts is that diablo immoral is a HUGE money printer.

  • @[email protected]
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    4018 days ago

    I want to be positive and I’m trying to remain optimistic, but somehow I just know it in my bones that they’re going to further Fallout 4 the franchise and strip away even more skills and attributes. Hell, maybe they’ll get rid of dialogue entirely.

    • @[email protected]
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      1718 days ago

      Indeed. I would love to have a “modernized Morrowind” experience – an RPG game that really nails the role-playing part of RPG, but without the cheesy parts of Morrowind like the unintuitive combat system – but all of us know that it’s just not gonna happen.

      • @[email protected]
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        918 days ago

        The combat in Morrowind is intuitive if your previous RPG experience used dice and paper.

        • @[email protected]
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          317 days ago

          You can 100% tell someone’s paper RPG experience level by their favorite elder scrolls game lmao

          • I Cast Fist
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            517 days ago

            Not quite. It’s just harder to disconnect the 3D visual of a sword or mace swing very clearly hitting a creature and said hit missing entirely, especially as you’re in direct control of when and where the attack happens. For comparison, it’s much easier to accept misses in Neverwinter Nights because you’re not directly controlling the attacks. The fact that you can also look at the log of dice rolls helps a lot, too.

            Hell, even in Arena and Daggerfall, where you’re also in direct control of your swings, it’s easier to accept when it doesn’t hit thanks to the slow animations and 2D graphics of your equipped weapon and the enemy sprite.

          • @[email protected]
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            217 days ago

            What is the most “paper RPG” version? Morrowind? Daggerfall? Morrowind is as far back as I’ve played, maybe I need to revisit older titles?

      • Fishbone
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        217 days ago

        but all of us know that it’s just not gonna happen.

        Certainly not by Bethesda, but in truly typical fashion, Bethesda games are are held together and made fun by modders (and sometimes, even fully built, as is the case with Enderal). Only trouble is that can take a wild and/or completely unknown amount of time.

        https://tesrskywind.com/

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJkeWN3_fbA

    • @[email protected]
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      317 days ago

      Hell, maybe they’ll get rid of dialogue entirely.

      100% they’re going to try to do AI NPCs and you’re going to get cartoonishly awful dialogue that will be great for memes and terrible for any kind of actual gameplay.

        • @[email protected]
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          217 days ago

          Stop, do not proceed with the unlifening of my entire family. Please, if you do it may awaken some mystical power within me that I have to read carvings on walls and talk to some old monks to use properly.

    • @[email protected]
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      919 days ago

      Do you want another release of skyrim? Because that’s how you get another release of skyrim!

      • @[email protected]
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        318 days ago

        As much of a joke as all the re-releases are, I’m super happy Skyrim VR exists. It’s one of the best VR experiences with the right mods that make it an actual VR game instead of a cheap cash-grab

          • @[email protected]
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            318 days ago

            Quest 3, no doubt. The Index is old and overpriced at this point. HP Reverb G2 has great picture quality, but the controller tracking isn’t great and the cable is super thick. Plus Microsoft stopped supporting its mixed reality stuff. Vision Pro is not for gaming, just forget about it even if you can afford it. PSVR 2 might be a choice now that it supports PCVR, but I dunno. Its future support is kinda in doubt.

            The only real downside of Q3 is being owned by Meta, which is obviously blech, but it’s an amazing piece of technology otherwise, and the price is a steal, since it’s heavily subsidized to grow the market.

            A cheaper version is expected to be announced soon, so that might be an alternative. But otherwise there isn’t much competition unless you’re looking into a very particular niche.

      • @[email protected]
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        319 days ago

        I have a feeling they’ll be pushing different releases of Starfield so they can act like it was good.

    • @[email protected]
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      619 days ago

      why are so many people absent mindedly pushing this buggy mess narrative? starfield was their least buggy release ever (i personally only encountered one terrible bug that was easily fixed with reloading a save)

      its not like bethesda ever released a game as buggy as fallout new vegas or cyberpunk, besides 76 but, like new vegas and cyberpunk, it got fixed

  • @[email protected]
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    3218 days ago

    I used to be a Dragonborn like you, but then I got a fire arrow to my dedicated graphics card.
    Now nothing newer than Oblivion will ever run on that machine.

    • I Cast Fist
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      418 days ago

      Try Daggerfall Unity. Only the engine is newer, also loads of bugfixes and mod support.

    • @[email protected]
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      117 days ago

      luckily the last time Bethesda had good writing was Morrowind so you’re not missing much

      • @[email protected]
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        17 days ago

        In Morrowind I like the story and the music. But as I explored the battle mechanics, I couldn’t stand the randomness.
        Also in a later retries after Oblivion and Skyrim I missed the real talking more than the graphics enhancements.
        A bit unfair, I know. Maybe I’m not that game connoisseur myself.

        • @[email protected]
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          17 days ago

          yeah but the talking was annoying af. it felt like they had like four people voicing the entire game. meanwhile a small independent studio like supergiant makes a much smaller game fully voice acted but doesn’t feel exhausted as quickly as Skyrim, with thousands of lines both written and performed fantastically. i can’t excuse anything Bethesda is doing anymore. they’re getting worse with every game, both in terms of writing and gameplay.

          • @[email protected]
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            217 days ago

            Yes, mostly Wes Johnson with a bit of a very annoyed Sean Bean.
            But I have a soft spot for the over the top Sheogorath, the unnecessarily aggressive guard shouts and the calm voice of the Khajiit women.
            Some of the other few voices I can’t stand, especially the blacksmith of Chorrol (“A pleeeeasure to serve you”).

  • I Cast Fist
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    2818 days ago

    Well, at least they won’t need to make “thousands of planets” worth of “content”, so the game might at least look consistent

    Still, after Starfaild, my expectation is for TES6 to have something that kinda almost resembles Dark Messiah of Might and Magic’s melee combat; only Archery, Melee, Magic and Armor skills to level up; Emil Pagliarulo’s “greatest” story yet with double the time travel and multiverse bullshit; twice the amount of stories that get nowhere and that nobody in the world cares about; removal of stealth

    • @[email protected]
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      1418 days ago

      Well, if you think about it, they might want to do a Daggerfall with thousands of nondescript villages and dungeons, powered by AI.

        • I Cast Fist
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          117 days ago

          I hope they’re not biting off more than they can chew. I mean, the scope of the whole project sounds bigger than Daggerfall, which means it’s unlikely they’ll finish on time and, when they do release something, there’s a high chance it’ll be lacking tons of features at launch.

          massive, procedurally-generated world with plenty of variety in the environments and locales. Dungeons and cities are crafted to feel unique from one another, offering limitless options for layouts and aesthetics. The world itself is ever changing; cities can grow, deteriorate, or be entirely destroyed by war, and the sky, landscape, and flora change with the seasons.

          Unless they’re Dwarf Fortress level masters of procgen, I won’t expect much more than typical single pass “random perlin terrain”

          • @[email protected]
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            217 days ago

            It will be lacking features, this kickstarter is just to fund a year of early access development to shop it around to publishers to get started on the real work

      • I Cast Fist
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        618 days ago

        Which would be an improvement over the 10 different “dungeon” buildings + 3 caves + 6 POIs you can find in starfield

      • @[email protected]
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        518 days ago

        Heck, if they went back to Oblivion’s concept of having the npcs with predefined lives and goals and slapped a free version of chatgtp onto the npc interactions, it would be cool.

    • @[email protected]
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      216 days ago

      I hope stealth gets a major rework, at least. Or maybe not stealth itself but how the AI handles interacting with it. No NPC should ever guess that it was just the wind when there’s an arrow sticking out of them or their colleague is lying dead in plain view (or even just doesn’t respond when they call to them).

      They should use strategies and tactics that work against stealth. Patrols (including their own stealth patrols sometimes), roll calls, better lighting, positioning of guards to cut off entrance points, traps (and not just the dungeon traps, but NPCs setting new traps when they suspect stealth, where the trap could be as simple as a trip wire attached to metal rings that will jingle if someone disturbs them), spells that locate nearby people, using senses other than sight and hearing, dark vision. Sometimes stealth missions should be forced to end and come back later because the residents realize someone is trying to sneak around and kill or rob them and go on high alert with effective tools to negate stealth. Just sometimes, sometimes it should work like it does in Skyrim where a guard just doesn’t want to deal with whatever is shooting arrows at him and maybe just yells threats instead of using a stealth counter (just get rid of that memory of a goldfish thing).

      I mean, stealth is fun, but it’s not as fun when every single character I make ends up becoming some kind of a stealth archer because the NPCs are effective at generating opposition to everything but that.