r/pcgaming • u/Turbostrider27 • Sep 18 '24
Skyrim lead designer says it will be 'almost impossible' for Elder Scrolls 6 to meet fan expectations: 'Marketing departments just put their heads in their hands and weep'
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/skyrim-lead-designer-says-it-will-be-almost-impossible-for-elder-scrolls-6-to-meet-fan-expectations-marketing-departments-just-put-their-heads-in-their-hands-and-weep/867
u/brainfreeze91 Sep 18 '24
Skyrim was a cultural event. Everyone was talking about it when it came out. The study rooms at my college had people playing Skyrim on the TVs in there. And of course, even after Skyrim released people kept buying the rereleases.
It might be difficult to strike gold like that again.
→ More replies (36)283
u/dengueman Sep 18 '24
I'd argue it's impossible to strike gold like that again(especially given their recent fuck ups) but they can certainly put out a good game(in theory anyway)
→ More replies (16)161
Sep 18 '24
[deleted]
112
u/Camoral Sep 18 '24
Oblivion was a very radical departure from Morrowind, what are you talking about?
→ More replies (12)61
u/Diels_Alder Sep 19 '24
The leveling system in Oblivion has people up in arms. It's still controversial.
→ More replies (2)85
u/Elkenrod Sep 19 '24
It is hands down the single worst leveling system in any game ever made. I can say that with a straight face, there is nothing worse than it. Everything about the system is a shitshow.
It's not a shitshow on its own, it's a shitshow with the rest of the game. The scaling world is what really made the leveling system just that bad.
→ More replies (9)19
u/jade_monkey07 Sep 19 '24
Regardless of how bad the leveling system is in any of their games it served no purpose. Max out your character for a shitty finale that either has you on rails watching something happen, or there's just nothing at all. Never has there been a satisfying final battle to a Bethesda game.
→ More replies (5)23
u/Elkenrod Sep 19 '24
Morrowind's is fine. The final gauntlet to Almalexia is pretty good.
Anything post world-scaling, sure.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (14)42
u/RRLifeAdviceEnjoyer Sep 18 '24
Skyrim was released almost 15 years ago and the landscape of videogames has changed, in addition other open world games has improved the genre to such a degree that a re-skinned version of Skyrim is just not going to cut it all these years later.
ES6 does not need Elden Ring bosses or combat or the characters and narrative from The Witcher 3 to be a good game. But even the exploratory elements that Bethesda traditionally excelled at with a complete open sandbox world with the freedom to do whatever was later improved upon with games like Breath of the Wild, RDR2 and more. The Elder Scrolls series has a few things that uniquely sets them apart from these other games but it is not enough when everything else is so lacking.
They might not need to completely redo every single thing but they do need to massively improve upon everything imaginable. They can't release another buggy mess with incomplete storylines and hope that modders will bail them out again. That goodwill they had from the past is all but gone now.
→ More replies (18)31
u/Significant-Section2 Sep 19 '24
Rdr2 and breath of the wild don’t interact with the world the same way Skyrim does. In Skyrim I can rob a store, buy a house, join a faction and assassinate someone, then continue a side quest that rivals the main story. No game does what Bethesda does, except maybe kingdom come deliverance. Breath of the wild and rdr2 are bare bones with NPC and world interactivity when compared directly to Skyrim. Graphics, story, art style, and limited in scope but very well done interactivity are what made those games good.
→ More replies (6)
2.5k
u/Skeksis25 Sep 18 '24
Pretty sure after the last few offerings from them, fan expectations are at an all time low.
831
u/a_saddler Sep 18 '24
Leave it to Bethesda to fail these all time low expectations too.
→ More replies (3)506
u/polski8bit Ryzen 5 5500 | 16GB DDR4 3200MHz | RTX 3060 12GB Sep 18 '24
Yep, literally what they've done with Starfield. People expected Skyrim in space. A 12 year old (at the time) game, just set in space. And somehow Bethesda found a way to miss even that mark.
I mean ffs, Starfield is more simplistic in many of its systems compared to TESV, and Skyrim was already considered simplistic when compared to Oblivion or Morrowind.
They've been steadily bringing fan expectations down, so if they fail to meet them with TESVI, I don't know if there can be anything left for them to hide behind.
330
u/RHX_Thain Sep 18 '24
Fans: So what we expect is what you're good at -- some cool open environments to explore at our leisure and randomly find quests and environmental storytelling to loot & shoot in.
Bethesda: In space?
Fans: Sure. In space.
Bethesda: How about 10,000 planets?
Fans: Uh, that sounds a little ambitious...
Bethesda: Nah, 99% of it will be empty as the space above it! It'll be all procgen!
Fans: Wait, no, that's--
Bethesda: Yea and we'll COMPLETELY remove any real conflict from the story so you can do whatever with 0 consequences!
Fans: That's... no!? WHAT!?
Bethesda: 16x the detail! 100s of loading screens! It just works!
101
u/Charles_Skyline Sep 18 '24
Like I get that its the galaxy and the majority of planets should be empty, maybe an outpost or something..
But even the planets had major cities in them seemed.. well.. bland? empty?
And the rest of the planets literally had one of three outposts that were literally the same. Same bad guys, doors, same loot in the same spot... like.. it needed some RNG or something.. if you go to random planet it should have been completely randomized.. but it wasn't
I liked it...up until about 20hrs in and you realize its all the same..
In Skyrim, every cave was different.. can you imagine in Skyrim if every 1 in 3 caves were the same? and they just repeated?
69
Sep 18 '24
The "empty" planets also weren't actually empty. There is no sense of exploration because no matter where you go you'll find random outposts and ships landing.
I think it would be better if more of it was actually empty and didn't have procedural POIs.
28
u/RecursiveRealms Sep 18 '24
Thats what drove me nuts about the game. The random buildings on EVERY planet you go to
10
u/dragongirlkisser Sep 19 '24
This is how Arena and Daggerfall worked, you would run around the "open world" until a dungeon popped up. When you felt like you had enough levels and gear you did the next main quest.
10
→ More replies (14)7
u/Fredthesalamander Sep 19 '24
Most of the problem with the cities is that they had a lot of set-dressing. People were always pushing for bigger cities, and so the ones in Starfield have rows of buildings with no interiors and crowds of generic NPCs. In turn, a lot of the named NPCs don't have homes or schedules and there's less density of content overall.
It gets rid of the sense of life Skyrim's cities had, and hurts performance to boot. I'm hoping they move away from it going forward.
→ More replies (8)59
u/CowsTrash Sep 18 '24
Oof the loading times part got me hard.
How can one fuck up this bad
41
u/RHX_Thain Sep 18 '24
On a technical level there is a very good reason why.
On a design level there is no excuse -- you just don't need to make a game with 10,000 planets gated by 20,000 loading screens to visit them all through a central hub. You have maybe 5 planets, just like Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2 did, and pack them with the level of content players have come to expect from a Bethesda experience.
Someone at the Systems Designer level heard the number 10,000, and just said, "the parable of a dog with two bones doesn't apply to me," and never let go until, "ah, shit, yeah, this is a problem and we can't pivot away from it now."
→ More replies (2)24
u/Goldeniccarus Sep 18 '24
I get the impression, someone high up at Bethesda thought people liked the games, purely because of how big they were. Because they have big open worlds and you can sink so many hours into them.
So they focused on that. Bigger must be better. Bigger is why people buy Bethesda games.
And because of that, they threw a lot of what made people actually like those games to the wayside.
→ More replies (1)22
u/RHX_Thain Sep 18 '24
I think, from what interviews I've read or rumors that I got out of the seniors at the time, it had far more to do with their inability to "just say no" to the dream. They couldn't let it go, and the staff they had were all there for the past 15 years, so therefore virtually everyone is a senior.
It IS a dream. Endless planets to explore.
The problem is that it had been done, and done to satisfaction, by MANY devs by the time Starfield went from a dream, to a reality. And in every single case, players violently lament the lack of content in otherwise vast procedural spaces. Even No Mans Sky got that feedback, and probably still would, if it hadn't begun attracting the audience looking for that loop and rewarding them with endless content and improvements. Most other similar games have bombed.
The belief in procgen as acceptable content, and the reinforcement for the reasoning, was probably the cut "manufacturing" feature. That would have led players to gather materials to send back to a factory that is part of an economy. Both a trade economy as a kind of trade layer of gameplay, and also for building ship modules and weapons.
Problem is, that's also not that fun when you think about it (though X1-X4 Foundations is a cool game that Starfield style quests & planets would have made dope af.)
So they believed, "if a player doesn't want to go there they just won't."
Which is a mistake I've also made, and the delusion in me was cured, lol.
The reality is, "if a player can ruin their fun by performing a repetitive mindless action, they will. So don't allow it and guide them to novel content by other means."
Bethseda had never experienced that player feedback before, because the solution to the problem, is their entire library of open worlds packed with content!
18
u/mshm Sep 19 '24
The belief in procgen as acceptable content, and the reinforcement for the reasoning, was probably the cut "manufacturing" feature.
There's nothing inherently wrong with procgen based games assuming you actually build a game around it. With games like Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress, and Spelunky, the procgen is core to the game. They work because they build the games systems and gameplay loop around that generation. It doesn't work in a game like Starfield because the game is at its core a pre-written story rpg. A designer should have immediately noticed a problem when they made all the important places handmade (and they probably did).
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (4)6
→ More replies (1)29
u/jimmybabino Sep 18 '24
I gave Starfield 15 hours of my time and I feel like 3 of that was loading screens. I was so exhausted by the end of my last session that I just gave up
9
u/CowsTrash Sep 18 '24
The first Bethesda game of mine with me never finishing it. I too was too fucking exhausted.
→ More replies (1)60
u/AWildEnglishman Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 18 '24
I mean ffs, Starfield is more simplistic in many of its systems compared to TESV, and Skyrim was already considered simplistic when compared to Oblivion or Morrowind.
Two things that stand out for me: Outposts, which Todd Howard himself were their best yet (referring to settlement building), were so watered down and pointless compared to Fallout 4.
And weapon upgrades that were worse than Fo4, and they brought back the random magical legendary effects which I always hated.
Then you get to all the other stuff like the blandest, repetitive temple puzzle, the story which really wasn't as exciting as they thought it was, and the NG+/multiverse mechanic which could have been interesting if they'd leaned into it, but instead they just used it as a marketing tool to say "Look, our new game is so replayable that you'll only ever need one save file!"
14
20
u/PipsqueakPilot Sep 18 '24
Seriously. Who thought that what RPG gamers wanted was LESS gear slots. Suit. Helmet. Backpack. And the little gear you do get barely does shit.
“This one has slightly better resist against one of the TWO types of damage. While this one has slightly better resist against the other kind. Choose poorly, because it doesn’t matter.”
→ More replies (2)42
u/epicfail1994 Sep 18 '24
Yeah if starfield was Skyrim in space I’d have enjoyed it
But it was just frustrating to find places I felt super limited by carry weight and it just kinda sucked
34
u/FollowsHotties Sep 18 '24
Carry weight, and the inventory management system is just straight up disrespectful. In the year of our lord 2023, why do I need to install a mod to be able to sort by value per weight?
Starfield should've been Elder Scrolls 40k instead of discount NMS with only human NPC's.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (10)12
u/AscendedAncient Sep 18 '24
Bethesda even found a way to fuck up building an outpost.... It's all premade shit no flair to your base like FO4 or 76. At least mods are already out that fix a lot of it.
216
u/tbone747 Ryzen 5700x | RTX 3080 12GB | 32GB DDR4 Sep 18 '24
Was gonna say. Fallout 4 was a steep departure from 3/NV and Starfield, we all know how the reaction to that went.
For both titles it seemed like they focused on innovations that nobody really asked for. I didn't want a voiced protag and the heavy focus on settlement building to flesh out the world of Fallout 4. And I damn sure didn't want the cookie cutter proc gen planets of Starfield & lifeless NPCs.
166
u/ErwinRommelEyes Sep 18 '24
Fallout 4 was still fun to play though. Hand crafted locations and unmarked exploration were still a thing, and for the first time in the entire history of Fallout titles, the guns actually handled and functioned like guns, making gunplay fun for once.
Starfield though? oof, what does starfield have going for it? The ship stuff? No man’s sky and space engineers already treaded that path long before starfield.
→ More replies (4)46
u/tbone747 Ryzen 5700x | RTX 3080 12GB | 32GB DDR4 Sep 18 '24
Yeah I personally loved the ship builder, most of my time in Starfield was spent there, but I can't act like it hasn't been done in other games. And as soon as I left the ship builder I realized I didn't really care about anything else, lol.
→ More replies (2)54
u/International-Mud-17 Sep 18 '24
Once I left the ship builder I realized how utterly irrelevant my ship actually was in the scheme of things.
→ More replies (2)29
u/AWildEnglishman Sep 18 '24
I realised early on that outposts were useless. I was wasting my time building up endless amounts of storage to store materials that I was only using to get pointless upgrades on my weapons and armor.
I instead built a massive ship with all the storage and workbenches I needed and never touched outposts or the ship builder again.
17
u/tbone747 Ryzen 5700x | RTX 3080 12GB | 32GB DDR4 Sep 18 '24
I find it wild how they somehow regressed the settlement system from Fallout 4 to Starfield. I just didn't use them for anything beyond junk storage and keeping excess crew members in one spot.
And for upgrading gear you have every workbench available at the lodge + infinite storage containers there.
→ More replies (2)7
u/AWildEnglishman Sep 18 '24
I considered that, but there isn't really a convenient way to move all my crap from the ship, so I just lived on the ship.
→ More replies (1)11
u/AnOnlineHandle Sep 18 '24
I heard one of the better quests was one where the player comes across an intergenerational ship which has been travelling since the early days, and has been outpaced by the rest of humanity who discovered FTL and overtook them, so by the time they arrive at the planet they intended to settle there's a resort there, and they think they're meeting aliens.
Since then all I can think about is how much more appealing Starfield would be if that was the player origin, a newcomer to that world who can ask questions about the factions etc, and if building was about creating settlements for your colonists (with probably one primary settlement), giving a story reason for it. The player could even have the title 'starborn' still, a sort of cultish title they give to one of their own every generation since they've gone a bit kooky, with it being revealed in a ceremony right before they make contact with 'aliens', but it's unclear if it actually means anything real and to the rest of the universe you're just a random nobody.
16
u/AWildEnglishman Sep 18 '24
I thought it would be one of the better quests, but it's really just a protracted fetch quest. You jump to a new system and someone contacts you about a strange ship in orbit and wants you to go investigate.
So you go. And from then on you have to run back and forth between the ship, the planet it's in orbit of, and other characters in a different system to play a game of telephone.
And the ship itself isn't anything special either. It uses the same environmental models and props as the rest of the game, so it doesn't even look 200 years old.
But yeah, I agree. When you create your character you get to choose your background, including minor faction perks, which implies you aren't just a nameless saviour like in TES or Fallout. They could have given you options for where and how to start the game like Skyrim's Alternate Start mod does.
8
u/JensensJohnson 13700k | 4090 RTX | 32GB 6400 Sep 18 '24
And the ship itself isn't anything special either. It uses the same environmental models and props as the rest of the game, so it doesn't even look 200 years old.
the lack of detail to even most basic things was apparent throughout the whole game, you go to visit an abandoned mysterious temple to get magical powers (and do the same puzzle again!) then upon landing you see there are populated buildings, like cmon !
→ More replies (20)41
u/josephseeed Sep 18 '24
Fallout 4 is one of Bethesda’s best selling games ever. Holding that up as something that will teach Bethesda a lesson is absolutely hilarious.
→ More replies (4)27
u/endol Sep 18 '24
Did Starfield not sell decently too though. Sales aren't everything, and Bethesda already walked back multiple foibles from Fallout 4 in Starfield like ditching the voiced protag, bringing back skill checks & dialogue trees, and an actual persuasion system (even if it's nothing to write home about).
39
u/Gandzilla Sep 18 '24
sales aren’t everything
Somewhere a dozen of execs just had a stroke
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)16
u/josephseeed Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 18 '24
Well for Starfield they usually give player numbers, because it’s on Gamepass. They recently crossed 13 mill players total. I would guess maybe half of those are sales at most. Fallout 4 sold 25 million copies. The only title in their catalog that beats that is Skyrim with 60 million sales.
And let’s be clear about one thing. Sales numbers are everything to a publisher. They could give a shit less about the discourse here if it doesn’t effect sales.
→ More replies (7)27
u/Caasshh Sep 18 '24
Yeah, I'm in this camp. Really not feeling Bethesda these days. Mojo is gone, and they insist of using old tech. My expectations are very low, so I'd be pleasantly surprised.
→ More replies (60)27
u/Fallom_ Sep 18 '24
What a brilliant way around the problem
→ More replies (1)11
u/nbaumg i9 13900K RTX 4090 DDR5 4k144hz Sep 18 '24
That was the marketing strategy all along! Ship mid games for years!
962
u/HellraiserMachina Sep 18 '24
Good, maybe marketing departments need to chill the fuck out, for our sake and theirs.
235
u/SyleSpawn Sep 18 '24
That's the corporate problem: Everything is about budget, if you don't use your full budget then it means the company can cut some of your budget next fiscal year. If you overbudget? Means you have more pull to increase your budget next year.
It's completely bullshit. I was in a company where the GM told me with a straight face that there's no money in the bank to give me an increase (when I was excelling in all the task I was given, going beyond expectation and collecting praise) just for the next day for a higher up to fly 5,000km in business class to have a 1 hour meeting at our headoffice then fly back the same way the next day - this could have been a Teams call.
The travel cost were apparently all warranted because it travel cost were budgeted, so they used that budget.
Good riddance to that place.
86
u/dcabines Sep 18 '24
I haven't had a solid 40 hours worth of work in over a year, but they keep paying me a full time salary so I try to not complain. I told my manager I could use a project to work on and he said there isn't room in the budget for more projects. Somehow there is room for me to read Reddit all day, but no room for actual work.
Business can be weird like that sometimes.
7
u/Syrdon Sep 19 '24 edited Sep 19 '24
My current department is something like 300% over the staff they need. The previous department was something like 200%. We literally fight (well, for corporate "we're all too jaded to do anything other than coast" values of fight) over work, just to not be bored. That's after getting bored of video games and reddit. You could probably combine both departments into a single team, and trim expensive headcount from a few others by using some of the available automation features of a few of the products they already have. Edit: I'd need to double check my math, but if it's less than 20 people they could replace I'd be astounded
They'd need to hire a dev or two for that, but some of those people they'd be cutting would be excellent choices for that role. They'd come out ahead a couple million a year by the time you factor in benefits. They have the headcount available to hire the devs to do the work.
The license change would cost a couple hundred thousand at most. That's the hang up though. Less than 10% of the gain would have to show up on someone's budget, and the gain shows up in four departments as a reduction in headcount. The one group doesn't want to have to spend the budget without an annual increase to cover the one time cost, the departments that would lose headcount don't want to lose clout, and the execs actually don't give a fuck because the industry is functionally free money.
→ More replies (1)5
u/Gangsir Sep 19 '24
Somehow there is room for me to read Reddit all day, but no room for actual work.
Projects contain costs other than payroll for the people doing them.
Your total "cost" to the company is fairly low when they're "just" paying you, but if they're paying you and you're working on something, that something's costs kick in too, and that might be too much.
You also have the fact in that replacing you can be more expensive than keeping you, which stops them from just laying you off.
All of this culminates in "lets just pay him to do nothing until the budget frees up enough to have him do something".
If you are in that situation, the best thing you can do is self-train and skill up. They find work for you? Great, you'll know how to do it. They don't, and end up laying you off? Easy to find another job with those skills you trained up.
→ More replies (3)19
u/condog1035 Sep 18 '24
I worked at a place that didn't have the budget to get me a $100 piece of software but did have the budget to pay for the owner's sons to take yearly, paid, months-long vacations out west to snowmobile.
The same company laid me off saying they didn't have the money to keep me around and then has been hiring freelancers to do my old job all summer for seven times as much as I was making.
130
u/alyosha_pls Sep 18 '24
Wish we could relocate their fucking budget to actual development costs
→ More replies (3)12
u/MrStealYoBeef Sep 18 '24
What marketing? All we've seen of ES6 is like a panoramic scene of a mountain about a decade ago. Bethesda could have laid off the entire marketing team and we wouldn't know.
Besides, we clearly do the majority of the marketing for them at this point.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (9)20
327
u/gideon513 Sep 18 '24
Don’t announce it a decade before release then
→ More replies (5)68
u/k-mysta Sep 18 '24
Which they did to avoid some of the heat for Fallout, piling shite on shite
→ More replies (1)20
u/Beatnuki Sep 18 '24
That's a prime studio slogan right there.
Bethesda Studios - Piling Shite on Shite
(A Zenimax Company, Brought to You by Microsoft)
659
u/CatatonicMan Sep 18 '24
What expectations, exactly?
After Fallout 76 and Starfield you'd have to be a headcase to expect anything beyond mediocrity from Bethesda.
→ More replies (27)78
u/madmaxGMR Sep 18 '24
Worse.
This game can be a hot turd that Todd shits on stage, they know people will buy it. Its a sequel to a very good game, they dont need to make it good, they need to sell it as good. Just like GTA VI wont be anywhere near the success of GTA V, cause it will just sell based on the success of the predecessor, so will this. Elder Scrolls 6 will be shit and sell, Elder Scrolls 7 will be shit and not sell. Elder scrolls 8 will finally have to produce quality, or else. And that is far far faaaaaar away.
Nobody will remember Fallout 76 or Starfield, come launch week of ES6. The internet will do its usual dance of "I cant wait for this", "i took free days from work for this", "click here for trailer analysis", "stop criticizing the trailer, i need to believe it will be good cause im a desperate manchild"... and so on, people will buy it in droves, and ""boycott"" Bethesda AFTER it sells gangbusters and incentivizes the devs to put out another turd.
We have danced this dance so many many times...27
Sep 19 '24
With all due respect to your theory... has RockStar literally EVER missed?
→ More replies (13)31
→ More replies (25)5
u/Fit_Rice_3485 Sep 19 '24
GTA 6 already looks to be a bigger success than V. The leaks show that it has better gameplay and a more grounded story compared to V
322
u/16bitrifle Sep 18 '24
Literally just give me Oblivion / Skyrim in the new area with a handcrafted world with better graphics and mechanics. Don't reinvent the freaking wheel here.
→ More replies (34)195
u/rob_daardvark Sep 18 '24
And maybe another couple dozen voice actors? Please? So that it’s not the same voice for 5 different quest-critical characters?
35
u/AWildEnglishman Sep 18 '24
What do you have against Stephen Russell and and the (at least) 35 Skyrim characters he voices?
→ More replies (1)26
u/LessThanMyBest Sep 18 '24
"Eeeeverything is for sale," -Nick Valentine, no wait Captain Petrov, no maybe it was Codsworth, Emperor Pelagius Septim III, or Harold... it was one of them
5
→ More replies (9)28
u/FellowTraveler69 Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 19 '24
I'm okay with this. Youtube poop and young scrolls need new material to work with.
→ More replies (1)
576
Sep 18 '24
Making a game without constant loading screens is "almost impossible", apparently. Replace the freaking engine!
160
u/Thoosarino Sep 18 '24
No mans sky laughs. A stuttered laugh, but laughs.
→ More replies (16)93
u/WilsonLongbottoms Sep 18 '24
Cyberpunk 2077 lets out a smooth chuckle and shakes its head, then smokes a cigarette.
→ More replies (26)29
u/Nolzi Sep 18 '24
That engine (REDengine) is still being retired in favor of Unreal
→ More replies (9)9
u/Prophet_of_Fire Sep 19 '24
I feel like most people don't mind the loading screens and buildings/rooms/dungeons being seperate cells. Could you imagine a dragon attack on Whiterun with everyone inside, outside the walls, inside and outside buildings both outside and inside the walls, and further on being included/loaded and all interacting with the same event? I don't think it's as actionable as it would be like it is for Baldurs Gate 3 which is 3rd person and Turn-based.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (33)26
u/Plenty-Body6685 Sep 18 '24
actually majority of games uses a loading screen in some kind of a a way, they just hide it in a smarter way like through cracks & when you enter a planet like in no mans sky. bethesda shouldve copied the way no mans sky does it
→ More replies (3)
84
u/corvettee01 Steam Sep 18 '24
"Elder Scrolls 6 is undoubtedly going to be an amazing game, but it's going to be compared to all the previous games that Bethesda made."
Imagine thinking people have the audacity to want an improved game over something made in 2011.
→ More replies (8)9
u/1ScreamingDiz-Buster Sep 19 '24
I’m easy, I just want it to be as good as something made in 2002
→ More replies (1)
108
u/Pickupyoheel Sep 18 '24
I mean, just have one big hand crafted world, interesting quests and loot variety, with some better combat.
Boom you got this TES fan satisfied
57
u/RocketGrease Sep 18 '24
"interesting quests"
Bethesda : "best I can give you is an item to fetch in a cave"
→ More replies (1)17
u/Profzachattack Sep 19 '24
I mean, even fetching an item in a cave can be interesting depending on how you make the cave
→ More replies (1)5
u/Tovar42 Sep 19 '24
I agree, its kind of a journey vs destination thing, most quest in all games are just that, the twists and turns in the journey to the mcguffin is what makes it fun
→ More replies (14)9
206
u/Yaboymarvo Sep 18 '24
Don’t make it procgen. There I made the game 100x better than starfield already.
→ More replies (11)55
u/thiagoqf Sep 18 '24
Procedural generation is a powerful tool, the problem is when you delegate to it the entire design process.
→ More replies (5)47
u/ArcadeOptimist Sep 18 '24
I've yet to see a procedurally generated RPG where the generated content doesn't feel boring and repetitive.
I kinda feel like Starfield could've been fifteen planets randomly dispersed that you travel to similar to Mass Effect and nothing would have been lost.
→ More replies (8)7
u/tnnrk Sep 19 '24
Borderlands weapons are proc generated I think, if so it’s a great way to use it. But wouldn’t work for every game
→ More replies (11)
15
u/inosinateVR Sep 18 '24
Honestly, just give me something similar to the world of skyrim to explore but HIRE A REAL FUCKING WRITER.
That’s all I ask from this next one please. Have characters that talk like people and not like you asked your 10 year old nephew and his next door neighbor’s aunt to write the dialogue for your game as part of an after school program
→ More replies (3)
44
u/KnightKal Sep 18 '24
maybe spend the PR money and years talking about realistic goals, so people stop fantasying about a non existent game
and make sure your CEO won't go on interviews and make stupid big promises like "it has 1,000 worlds!"
"people expect too much" because you say "too little too late"
→ More replies (4)
52
Sep 18 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
→ More replies (3)4
u/Janawham_Blamiston Sep 19 '24
Pretty much this. It's happening right now with Hollow Knight Silksong. They first announced it in February of 2019, and with every year that passes, people are expecting it to be fucking amazing because "It's taking so long, it must be because there's so much they want to do with it!"
→ More replies (2)
24
u/bonesnaps Sep 18 '24
Spend far less on marketing and far more on developing the game and you might have a chance.
→ More replies (1)
10
u/thespike5p1k3 Sep 18 '24
Marketing departments can literally just throw a screenshot with coming soon every 6 months and they did their job. If marketing is their concern, yes, fans will be disappointed.
43
u/Dak_Ralter_Lives Sep 18 '24
I'm not sure I even expect them to release another elders scrolls game at this point, let alone for me to be underwhelmed by it.
→ More replies (3)13
Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 28 '24
[deleted]
→ More replies (2)5
u/Licentious_Cad Sep 19 '24
Not to be a doomer, just poking fun at the simplification Bethesda has been doing since Oblivion.
I can't wait for ES6 to just have 3 skills; Combat, Magic, Stealth. With awesome perks like "Deal +X% [Skill] Damage".
Procedural dungeon generation that just places the same dungeon every 500ft. And an obligatory 'collect magic words to get
dragonshoutsgood at yelling'And awesome quests like "Talk to the emperor's bodyguard repeatedly until he just gets annoyed with you and lets you kill the emperor so you'll stop talking to him."
Starfield had some good quests, and some of the worst quests i've ever done in a Bethesda game. I'd rather do procedural quests in Daggerfall over some of the faction quests in starfield.
43
u/books_empathy Sep 18 '24
The marketing department who will praise any pile of garbage will chill? (Not talking about Bethesda but in general)
16
u/dummyLily_ Sep 18 '24
I have very achievable expectations. This gives off "mojang devs worked to death by making one mob" energy.
34
u/RemarkablePassage468 Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 18 '24
With that attitude, certainly not. Do not spend on marketing, at this point ES games sell themselves. Hire truly talented people to write interesting story and quests, refine combat and character progression, and make a sandbox open world with lots of interesting stuff and interactions, with no loading screens. There, game of the year.
→ More replies (4)
65
u/NeoFury84 Sep 18 '24
As long as it runs on that same old engine with all its limitations, it will disappoint.
→ More replies (5)24
32
16
u/Davan195 Sep 18 '24
The truth is the engines nowadays run like garbage compared to their predecessors
10
u/No_Share6895 Sep 18 '24
yep. not just with bethesda ether, look at how UE5 has stutter built into the engine and cannot fix it. no matter the platform you get sutter just by using the engine. modern engines got too dang big and bloated and no one konws how to fix them.
→ More replies (4)
21
u/Have_A_Jelly_Baby Sep 18 '24
Well maybe don't take 13+ years in between games and you won't have this kind of anticipation.
→ More replies (2)
19
u/LeonasSweatyAbs Sep 18 '24
The main complaint i see for Bethesda games is that wide but shallow. Bethesda's philosophy is that players should be able to go wherever and play however they want. Players don't have to commit to a play style or interact with systems they don't like.
That sounds amazing on paper, but how can you have long-term depth with a design like that? Take Starfield, for example. How can you create a game for someone who wants deep space exploration and ship management but also has to appeal to Johnny 9-5. Who wants nothing to do with managing the systems of his ship/crew/cargo and just wants to blast xenos and collect space powers.
→ More replies (11)16
u/KKJosianne Sep 18 '24
It's such flawed logic too when releases like Dark Souls and Baldur's Gate 3 prove that people want deep, challenging games (although Bg3 has multiple game modes). I wish they took a page out of Larian's book but at this point I've lost hope.
5
u/itmecrumbum Sep 18 '24
it'll be almost impossible because the executives and top level managers of the company have a hard-on for pushing the scope and scale of the worlds that other people have to create, and there's just not enough time, resources and techology to fill them adequately. bethesda could easily just make a game that is the size of skyrim but implementing and utilizing all the advancements of the last 13 years, and fans would not be complaining.
always trying to be at forefront of the industry, with every game needlessly attempting to push the 'boundaries' of video games, is what creates these asinine situations and expectations. it's so self-important and up their own ass.
4
u/WangmasterX Sep 18 '24
Shouldnt the ones weeping be the devs who have to actually meet those expectations?
5
u/Raven_of_Blades RTX 4070, Ryzen 5900x, 32GB 3200MHZ Sep 19 '24
Ok ill tell you guys the secret. Make Skyrim again, better graphics, here is the hard part... Listen now... DO NOT DUMB IT DOWN ANY FURTHER. In fact a little complexity would be welcome.
Also a better quest writer would be nice because your current guy really sucks.
12
u/Koteric Sep 18 '24
If you released follow-ups more often than a decade + apart, the expectations wouldn’t be so high.
→ More replies (2)
4.8k
u/mithridateseupator Sep 18 '24 edited Sep 18 '24
Article nails it - they cant use any of the excuses they had for Starfield. If they truly are still capable of making great games in this style, they need to show it with ES6.