Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

A bandit ringleader (a "named", i.e. a boss of that dungeon, cave, etc.) were the only ones that carried enchanted gear (like + 5 str). It's true that they did all carry Daedric or Glass, eventually. The game just needed more armor variety, that's all.

As for enemy leveling, I think Oblivion engine had the means to make it right, but the developers didn't have the time. For example, there were some characters that did not change level. A few of the guards, at least. Now, this could have been used more extensively with more enemies... in combination with the auto-leveling of the other enemies, which was + or - 5 of your level (or something similar).

I agree with the system to some extent -> because the caves, dungeons, etc. regenerate enemies at a later time. Also it's nice that, now that you aren't level 2 anymore, neither are they. Who wants to go raid a dungeon only to find out everything in there is weak as hell and the items: worthless.

They wanted you to be able to have a challenge in that dungeon, no matter when you decided to go there. Because they spent a lot of time and work crafting the dungeons, puzzles, and traps.
 
Who wants to go raid a dungeon only to find out everything in there is weak as hell
Errr, everyone? Because we've just spent donkey years levelling up and making money to buy new equipment so we can beat them easily. Was all that for nothing? If so, there's no point in levelling up at all. They might aswell remove levels from the game.

Look at Dragon Quest. You can't go into the first caves without dying. You have to level up, buy better equipment, and then you get the satisfaction of being able to go through it easily. With scaling it would always be reasonable easy, like Oblivon/Fallout 3/NV.

The issue with open world games is that they're not as easy to balance, because players can enter the dungeons at almost time, so you would end up with some easy dungeons as you've said. But, instead of scaling, they should just create more dungeons with all different levels of enemies.
 
Errr, everyone? Because we've just spent donkey years levelling up and making money to buy new equipment so we can beat them easily. Was all that for nothing? If so, there's no point in levelling up at all. They might aswell remove levels from the game.
It may have been a rhetorical statement, but some of us agree.

You should be able to increase certain skills - like in reality. 'Level up' a character is something archaic that doesn't make any sense but is still clinging on for some reason.

To go from Neophyte to Novice, to Apprentice, to Journeyman, to Master - in a fighting style or crafting style, these are the kinds of levels that make sense. A level 50 'person' doesn't make any sense and it's dumb.

(Note that you can have levels in between those big titles, like a level 2 Master, for example - AKA 2nd Degree Master)

*If you gain a 'Fighter' level, you would still get attributes increased like strength, and still get more 'Hit Points'. Maybe you can unlock new fighting moves as well.

*For a 'Wizard', or 'Priest' level, intelligence and wisdom would increase your Mana pool and make spells more powerful and/or having a better chance of success.


An Apprentice Wizard; Neophyte Priest; Journeyman Ninja; 3rd Degree Master Fighter, and so on..


So, it's not like I'm saying 'take the game' out of it. Just take character leveling and throw it away, it's retarded as hell and isn't useful for anything but grinding - fighting the same enemies thousands of times for some reason. Like grinding was the part of the game that was important or fun?


Look at Dragon Quest. You can't go into the first caves without dying. You have to level up, buy better equipment, and then you get the satisfaction of being able to go through it easily. With scaling it would always be reasonable easy, like Oblivon/Fallout 3/NV.
You shouldn't compare this with an linear turn-based RPG. They are really nothing alike.
The issue with open world games is that they're not as easy to balance, because players can enter the dungeons at almost time, so you would end up with some easy dungeons as you've said. But, instead of scaling, they should just create more dungeons with all different levels of enemies.
Okay, but... you'd still miss most of the world, because that would make most of the game too easy by the time you get there. And that's a shame too.

I found that Oblivion just wasn't challenging enough because level scaling didn't take into account the uber items you had. And increasing the game difficulty just gave them a shit load of HP and made them Heal-over-time faster, which essentially just made battles take forever and get boring. What it should have done was make them deal more damage with magic and weapons and make them have better AI, and/or give them uber items too.
 
Errr, everyone? Because we've just spent donkey years levelling up and making money to buy new equipment so we can beat them easily. Was all that for nothing? If so, there's no point in levelling up at all. They might aswell remove levels from the game.

Is that why people like to level - so they can beat things easily? I don't think so. I think people like to level because it lets them tailor their character and play in the way they choose. Plenty of games have shown that's it's possible to beat seemingly indestructable enemies without diminishing their threat. That's air punchingly satsifying, and it could be even more empowering in an action rpg as the methods for taking down the beasties will be of our choosing.

With scaling it would always be reasonable easy, like Oblivon/Fallout 3/NV.

Only if mobs were scaled to be easy.

The issue with open world games is that they're not as easy to balance, because players can enter the dungeons at almost time, so you would end up with some easy dungeons as you've said. But, instead of scaling, they should just create more dungeons with all different levels of enemies.

Or just do away with levelling as we know it so we don't end up with this silly situation. Why should a bandit in one camp be 10 times as tough as one in another - isn't it easier to have all bandits pose a similar threat? The problem isn't that levelling makes you stronger, that's fine, it's that throughout current games it makes you so much stronger that balance ends up getting screwed.
 
Anyway back to Skyrim.

It seems quite inspired and lovely. Inspired from within, and also taking some inspiration from the best from the mod community.

The changes sound great, actually. Mysticism was the weakest. I think it was a good idea to drop it, I think that makes the magic path more cohesive and focused. The only reason I ever bothered with Mysticism was to 'cheat' and boost my intelligence bonus points.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Mysticism

And Mysticism pretty much ruined the game when it came to enchantments. You could have 100% reflect damage, which encourages you to get hit by enemies because the damage is reflected back to them. That's stupid, because: 1) the AI didn't take this into account and would continue to strike at you, killing themselves, and 2) because in what world should you try to get hit by a club, arrow, or dagger? It's stupid.

Absorb magicka or reflect magicka were both pretty cheesy, since you were encouraged to stand there and no longer doge fireballs, etc. **** Mysticism. I'm glad it's gone.


And I like that they have enchanting as a skill now. That was one of the things I thought might improve the game.



One of the main things I'd really like to see is that weapons have chance on hit* for their effect, instead of every time, where you are either: constantly overpowered because the weapon is doing so much extra damage, or the charge has run out. Also, recharging the weapons was tedious and going into the menu breaks immersion.

*If not chance on hit, then I'd like to see the 'flame' damage (or whatever enchantment a weapon had) to do much less damage (per hit) but continue to hold the charge for longer instead, for example: hold 300 strikes of 1HP extra damage rather than 10 strikes of 30 extra damage.

I just want a flame sword, man. A sword that is on fire and sets enemies on fire. It's awesome. I don't really even care if it adds much extra damage.
 
Locational damage would be nice - being able to hamstring someone, or take out their sword arm. The evil sod in me would take great satisfaction sneaking up behind a behemoth of a barbarian and slicing his achilles tendon - cue watching him crawl about as I dance around just out of arms reach :)
 
Locational damage would be nice - being able to hamstring someone, or take out their sword arm. The evil sod in me would take great satisfaction sneaking up behind a behemoth of a barbarian and slicing his achilles tendon - cue watching him crawl about as I dance around just out of arms reach :)

I'd love that, especially since I generally be a thief or assassin type, so it's pretty tough to take down the big guys sometimes. It'd be nice to be able to sneak up behind them and harm them in some way where they won't be able to attack as well.
 
I know I've said this about a couple of other games, like Guild Wars II, but I'm saying it again: I will be upgrading my video card [if not just] for this game. 1920 x 1080p, 60 FPS will be glorious. This game is going to be epic.
 
I'd love that, especially since I generally be a thief or assassin type, so it's pretty tough to take down the big guys sometimes. It'd be nice to be able to sneak up behind them and harm them in some way where they won't be able to attack as well.

Yeah - poisoned blades or blow darts would be fun. Paralyse them or put them to sleep. I watched a program on Ninjas the other day - they used to do all types on nasty stuff, like smear shit on their blades. They also used to hollow out eggs, paint them black, and fill them with a liquid and tiny glass shards, gravel, chilli peppers etc and throw them into ppls eyes. This type of stuff would be great for an assassin/thief type class.
 
I know I've said this about a couple of other games, like Guild Wars II, but I'm saying it again: I will be upgrading my video card [if not just] for this game. 1920 x 1080p, 60 FPS will be glorious. This game is going to be epic.

Can't wait for GW2 in 1920x1200 ;) I've got a good chunk of money saved at the moment for my next computer. It's gonna be a beast :D

Yeah - poisoned blades or blow darts would be fun. Paralyse them or put them to sleep. I watched a program on Ninjas the other day - they used to do all types on nasty stuff, like smear shit on their blades. They also used to hollow out eggs, paint them black, and fill them with a liquid and tiny glass shards, gravel, chilli peppers etc and throw them into ppls eyes. This type of stuff would be great for an assassin/thief type class.

Haha that sounds awesome. Yeah would be great to send a cave troll to sleep in his dungeon, steal all his gold n fancy weapons, lie in the shadows and watch him wake up and go crazy smashing stuff up because all of his treasure has gone. Then just send him to sleep again and stroll out whistling. :D
 
I don't want crazy complicated game design, I want a solid cohesive experience and a strong challenge that only gets more challenging as you progress in the game. Oblivion and Morrowind just got easier and easier as you progressed - which is the opposite of pretty much all other games.

I'm using the word cohesion too much, but I mean that the game and all of its different parts should work together perfectly; 'a well oiled machine'.
 
In an RPG, you create a character and that character, your avatar, is what matters. Unlike action games, RPGs put emphasis on character skill, rather than player skill. This is the defining element of an RPG.

Totally agreed, this is what defines a pure RPG. But Tagaziel, to be honest, alas, that genre is quickly fading away. Action-RPGs are the new breed. I struggle to like them, and sometimes I succeed (Oblivion, FO3, NV).
I know that you didn't like FO3, but it was the only action-RPG in which I was able to fight every single opponent out of realtime (VATS). It felt like I was using a (fake) turn-based combat. At least, they tried.
By the way, I miss old school RPGs, but we will not see them anymore.
 
"5 massive cities" I hope the cities are actually massive this time around.
 
I hope the next installment in the Elder Scrolls franchise features numerous changes/tweaks which suit my personal tastes in RPGs, and that Bethesda acknowledges the pain I've experienced throughout the years for not fixing these flaws in past installments.

I hat the next hat in the Hat franchise features numerous hat/hats which suit my personal hats in hats. That hat acknowledges the hat I've experienced throughout the hat for not fixing these hats in previous hats.
 
Not to mention filled with people, rather than 10-15 people per district.

There's that, too. Also, more activities for NPCs. Seeing a city that is truly industrious/filled with people (in a game) would make me very happy. I just want a semi-convincing illusion.
 
Totally agreed, this is what defines a pure RPG. But Tagaziel, to be honest, alas, that genre is quickly fading away. Action-RPGs are the new breed. I struggle to like them, and sometimes I succeed (Oblivion, FO3, NV).
I know that you didn't like FO3, but it was the only action-RPG in which I was able to fight every single opponent out of realtime (VATS). It felt like I was using a (fake) turn-based combat. At least, they tried.
By the way, I miss old school RPGs, but we will not see them anymore.

Google Age of Decadence.
 
I'm currently awaiting Dead State, but there is only one primary reason why I am interested in that game. Brian Mitsoda,...no homo.
 
Can't wait for GW2 in 1920x1200 ;) I've got a good chunk of money saved at the moment for my next computer. It's gonna be a beast :D
Me too! Got 4200 euro currently, which is around 5400 USD.

Though I doubt I will spend all of that on my new PC, but I am also gonna be getting a new monitor and stuff, thinking of making it a widescreen CRT, sure they are clunkier but let's face it, a good CRT still kicks the ass of a good LCD/Plasma/LED.:p

I just hope Deus Ex 3 comes out around the same time as Skyrim because that's when I'm planning on getting my new PC.

Mirage, I also am really excited about Dead State, hope it comes out this year.

Also, I agree with the need for bigger, more populated cities.

http://daggerxl.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/freak2121_sod_1.png

I remember in Daggerfall, in the starting city, I once went on an epic killing spree of civilians to see how big a sentence I could get, I don't remember how big it ended up being but it was massive, I think at least two decades.

Though that wasn't really that much given that I killed like I think 30 civilians.

It was also neat how all the randomly generated civilians in Daggerfall had proper full names, you could ask them for directions to places, they could mark them on your map, all sort of neat shit.

Bring back procedural generation to give epic landscapes please, or something.
 
Game informer did this great 4 part interview with the sound director. Video 4 gave me chills:

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/01/14/the-sounds-of-skyrim.aspx

They've retained Jeremy Soule as the composer!

Haha, I think that guy had the Techno Viking's picture in his notebook. At first I though having vocals in the theme was going to be shitty, but it actually sounds really good. It kind of sounds like a Nazi propaganda piece though. Not that theres anything wrong with sounding like that, because it sounds awesome.
 
The scan still looks like the game's lacking good environmental shadows though.
 
those scans look pretty impressive. i'm hyped because i know how much i enjoyed oblivion and the fallout games whilst still being critical and skeptical about their art direction, environments and graphics being jarring/lazy, but this doesn't look the case here - everything looks pretty tasty. couple that with the things i enjoyed about the games, with hopefully improvements being made to even them, and yeah, excited.
 
Looks cool, looks like Oblivion but with improved animations and no godawful skin textures.
 
i also really hope that the enemies are a lot less static in their movement and attack. it's so boring just seeing enemies advancing towards you in a corridor, i'd like to see some creatures crawling about on the ceiling or actually looking like they belong to a habitat as opposed to just milling about in the wild.
 
I'd be nice if they had some more advanced AI for attacking too. Rather than just running at you (whether they can reach you or not) and swinging a sword when within range. It always looked stupid when you jumped on top of a rock and it just kept running into it slashing it's sword while I sat on top of the rock casting spells at it. It should back away and find some cover until you drop down again or pull out a bow to attack you at range.
 
I'd be nice if they had some more advanced AI for attacking too. Rather than just running at you (whether they can reach you or not) and swinging a sword when within range. It always looked stupid when you jumped on top of a rock and it just kept running into it slashing it's sword while I sat on top of the rock casting spells at it. It should back away and find some cover until you drop down again or pull out a bow to attack you at range.

Man, are you crazy!?

You want them to remove the best tactic in the game!?

:LOL:
 
Didn't the GI article say something about enemies having different AI behaviors?
 
I never said I was optimistic. And don't forget its bastard child Radiant Storytelling, I'm not expecting anything revolutionary on that front. I'm still keeping tabs on the game, though.
 
Here's the transcript of a Game Informer engine discussion with Todd Howard:

Creation Engine

Though Skyrim's Nordic setting is a more rugged environment than the Renaissance festival feel of Oblivion's Cyrodiil, the new setting isn't lacking in breathtaking views. To create a diverse country filled with steep mountain passes and dense forests, babbling brooks and violent waterfalls, glacier coastlines and snowy tundras, Bethesda went back to the drawing board and rewrote every major system powering the gameplay experience. The result is the newly dubbed Creation Engine and Kit.

“The big things for us were to draw a lot of stuff in the distance so we have a really sophisticated level of detail, more so than what we've had in the past for how things stream in and how detail gets added to them as they get closer to the camera,” explains Bethesda Studios creative director Todd Howard.

Draw distances are great for creating those postcard-worthy landscapes, but the players eyes aren't always fixed on the horizon. To give the immediate surrounding a more believable look and feel, Bethesda increased the emphasis on the play between light and shadow on the entire world.“Because our worlds are so big all of the lighting has to be dynamic,” Howard says. “That's something we had a little bit of in the past with shadowing, but not on everything. Now we have it on everything. It just makes the whole thing a lot more believable when you're there.”

A lot of the environments are dominated by the untamed wilderness, which look great thanks to Bethesda's overhauled foliage system. In previous games the team licensed the SpeedTree middleware to render the forests. For Skyrim, they've created their own platform that allows artists to build whatever kind of trees they want and to dictate how they animate. Artists can alter the weight of the branches to adjust how much they move in the wind, which is an effective way of, for instance, actualizing the danger of traversing steep mountain passes with howling winds violently shaking branches.

Given its northern location and extreme elevations, Skyrim's climate is more prone to snowfall than Cyrodiil. To create realistic precipitation effects, Bethesda originally tried to use shaders and adjust their opacity and rim lighting, but once the artists built the models and populated the world the snow appeared to fall too evenly. To work around this problem, they built a new precipitation system that allows artists to define how much snow will hit particular objects. The program scans the geography, then calculates where the snow should fall to make sure it accumulates properly on the trees, rocks, and bushes.

Bethesda has another ten months before Skyrim releases, but thanks to the Creation Engine the world already looks much more stunning than its predecessors. The non-player characters also seem to be more intelligent thanks to alterations the team made to the Radiant AI technology.


Radiant AI

The Radiant AI technology introduced in Oblivion went a long way toward making the NPCs act in realistic ways. If you followed a citizen through his daily activities, you would likely witness him or her eating breakfast, setting out to work the land, stopping by the pub for a pint after work, and then returning home to hit the sack.

In reality, the technology driving NPC behavior wasn't overly sophisticated. Bethesda could only assign five or six types of tasks to the townspeople, and there wasn't a lot of nuance to their actions. In Skyrim, the characters have much more defined individual personalities.

You won't find townspeople loitering aimlessly in town squares anymore. Each denizen performs tasks that make sense in their environment. To impart the towns and cities with a greater sense of life, Bethesda has populated them with mills, farms, and mines that give the NPCs believable tasks to occupy their day. In the forest village we visited during the demo, most of the citizens were hard at work chopping wood, running logs through the mill, and carrying goods through the town.

The improved Radiant AI technology is also more aware of how a citizen should react to your actions. As you perform tasks for them or terrorize them by ransacking their home, the NPCs develop feelings about you. If you're good friends with a particular NPC and barge into his house during the middle of the night, he may offer you lodging rather than demand you leave the premises. “Your friend would let you eat the apple in his house,” Howard says. If you swing your weapon near an NPC, knock items off their dinner table, or try to steal something of value, they'll react with an appropriate level of hostility given their prior relationship to you.


Havok Behavior

The expansive Oblivion and Fallout 3 settings created a wonderful sense of place, but the robotic and unrealistic character animations sometimes betrayed the sense of immersion the environments imparted. Aware of the disconnect, Bethesda has enlisted Havok's new Behavior technology to endow Skyrim's characters and creatures with a proper sense of movement.

“We looked at a bunch of [animation solutions], and this is about the tippy-top state-of-the-art stuff out there,” Howard says. “I think we're the first real big game to use it.”

Havok Behavior is a flexible animation tool that allows the developers to rapidly prototype and preview new animations and blend them together seamlessly with a few mouse clicks and minimal code support. Bethesda is using it to create more nuance in character and creature movement, govern special effects, and even to control how characters struggle to move when trapped in environmental hazards like spider webs. Characters now transition more realistically between walking, jogging, and running, and the increased nuance between animations has allowed Bethesda to better balance the combat in both first- and third-person perspective by adjusting the timing values for swings and blocks depending on your perspective. “We definitely have made a significant jump in how it plays [in third person perspective],” Howard proclaims.

The increased animation fidelity and diversity has enabled Bethesda to ditch the awkward dialogue camera perspective that paused the game and presented you with an extreme closeup of the person with whom you were speaking. Now camera stays in the same perspective used during combat and exploration, and players are free to look around while engaging in conversation. Rather than drop their activities to give you their undivided attention, the NPCs continue to go about their business while in discussion. For instance, a barkeep may continue to clean cups while talking, and even move from behind the counter to a seat. A mill worker chopping wood may engage in conversation without turning away from his duties, only occasionally glancing toward you during the exchange.

Perhaps the most impressive use of the Behavior technology is how Bethesda is using it to create the dragon animations. Bethesda has worked meticulously to make sure the beasts look powerful and menacing when banking, flapping their wings, gaining altitude before making another strafing run, and breathing fire on their hapless victims. None of the dragons' actions are scripted, and Behavior helps make the movements look non-mechanical, even when the dragons are speaking/shouting.

With all this technology at its fingertips, surely Bethesda could put players on the back of a woolly mammoth or a fire-breathing dragon, right? When we ask, for the first time during our visit Howard clams up. “We're not talking about mounts yet,” he says coyly.


Radiant Story

Before they started planning missions for Skyrim, Howard and his team reflected on what they liked about their older projects. They kept returning to the randomized encounters in Fallout 3 and Daggerfall. To build off the success of those models and improve the experience so the random encounters feel less forced or arbitrary, Bethesda undertook the ambitious task of constructing a new story management system dubbed Radiant Story. Many quests are still completely governed by Bethesda, but the Radiant Story system helps randomize and relate the side quests to players to make the experience as dynamic and reactive as possible. Rather than inundate you with a string of unrelated and mundane tasks, it tailors missions based on who your character is, where you're at, what you've done in the past, and what you're currently doing.

“Traditionally in an assassination quest, we would pick someone of interest and have you assassinate them,” Howard says. “Now there is a template for an assassination mission and the game can conditionalize all the roles – where it happens, under what conditions does it take place, who wants someone assassinated, and who they want assassinated. All this can be generated based on where the character is, who he's met. They can conditionalize that someone who you've done a quest for before wants someone assassinated, and the target could be someone with whom you've spent a lot of time before.”

The Radiant Story system also helps deal with untimely deaths. Predicting player behavior in an open world is tough, as many often stray from the main quests and get into trouble by murdering quest givers. In Skyrim, if you kill a shop owner who had a few quests to offer if you spend the time to get to know him, his sister may take over the shop and offer the quest that was formerly ascribed to him. The quest logic automatically picks up with pre-recorded voice work because Bethesda already assigned her that contingency role. Tread lightly though, because she's not oblivious to your dastardly actions. She will still recognize you killed her brother and perhaps even try to exact revenge later in the game.

Radiant Story is also smart enough to know which caves and dungeons you've already visited and thus conditionalize where, for instance, a kidnapped person is being held to direct you toward a specific place you haven't been to before, populated with a specific level of enemy. This helps Bethesda avoid repetition and usher the player into areas the team wants you to explore.

The story manager is always watching you, which can leads to strange random encounters as well. If you drop a sword in the middle of town, someone may pick it up and return it to you, or two guys may get into a fight over who gets to take it. If you're really good at a particular skill, like one-handed weapons or destruction spells, a stranger who knows of your reputation may ask for training, challenge you to a duel, or beg you for a favor that will require you to show off your skill.

Skyrim also tracks your friendships and grudges to generate missions. Do a small favor for a farmer and it may eventually lead to a larger quest. Some NPCs will even agree to be your companion to help you out in specific situations.

Radiant Story doesn't limit these new missions to encounters in towns. Like in Fallout 3 and Red Dead Redemption, a lot of random events occur while you're exploring the wilderness as well. "There are a wide variety of these random encounters," says design director Bruce Nesmith. "Many of them are things the player can interact with, some are not. You might save a priest who then tells you about a dungeon where there are people trapped that need saving. You might run across mammoth beset by a pack of wolves."

Some open world games go overboard with these side activities and stray too far from the main storyline. Bethesda is aware of this pitfall and is actively engaged in preventing the feeling of being overwhelmed by the Radiant Story missions.

Skyrim still has several months of development left, but after seeing the technology in action it looks like Bethesda's on track to set a new high bar for open world role-playing games.

Sounds extremely ambitious. I really hope Bethesda has refined their bug testing process extensively. QA needs to be on the ball with this one.
 
I wouldn't keep my hopes up. Oblivion previews were exactly the same.

And I was right - this is still Gamebryo, except rewritten. Again.
 
A very ambitious project, indeed. Now I'm dreaming about a Fallout 4...
 
A very ambitious project, indeed. Now I'm dreaming about a Fallout 4...

Dear M'Atra, no.

Radiant Story in Fallout 4:

"Oh, I saw a deathclaw the other day. Dreadful creatures. Can you kill him for me?"
5 minutes later:
"Oh, I saw a deathclaw the other day. Dreadful creatures. Can you kill him for me?"
*game crashes*
 
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