GAMES!

Well, Jojo has convinced me to give Skyrim another try when the remaster comes out.

Hopefully I won't get trapped in mods and give up when I get bored of it like last time. The things I liked about the game were cool (the setting, the story, the sidequests that weren't procedurally generated), but the shallow systems surrounding them turned me off.

 

I think even if the mechanics were a little shallow, that you could literally make a crap tonne of different builds means that there was enough complexity inherent in the system to give you options (see here for more builds than you can shake a stick at). I also thought the "learn as you do" skill system was pretty logical, compared to most rpgs where you stab a monster in the face and then put points into being a great blacksmith.

While the game itself isn't as reactive as it could be in terms of your actions having far reaching consequences, you really are never short of things to do in terms of adventuring which a high fantasy game should be. When I've played the game extensively, I've never come close to a completionist playthough where you do all the main quests and side quests - it'd easy be several hundred hours. It's one of those games where you're limited only by your own interest in the material.

 

Way of the Samurai 4. Help the Shogunate thrive. Or overthrow it. Have sex with unsuspecting Japanese girls. It's not rape. Honest.

Master swordfighting. Open your own dojo. Perfect your sword. If you've ever played Yakuza, it's a little like that, but in late Edo period Japan.

 

Quite. Spent a total of 45 minutes with it.

 

On the whole I prefer a good setting to a good story - though obviously both are preferred. Skyrim does offer an interesting setting with lots of lore to dig into, even if its stories are sometimes weaker. Further Skyrim is a rare game where you have almost ultimate agency as the player character, there's no reason to even pursue the main quest if you so choose (and plenty of people don't, and don't even become a Dragonborn) - and the game doesn't feel narratively punishing if that's what you want to do. I think that was more or less its appeal to me - it's one of those games where if you think, "I want to do this, so I'm going to," you can. Apart from killing children or "essential" NPCs, naturally.

 

I expected that at some point, No Man's Sky would become disappointing. I just didn't think it would be so soon. Compare with Elite: Dangerous, or X3, which took many more hours before the realization sets in that you've seen everything you're going to see.

Oh well. It kept me entertained for a 4-day weekend. Maybe they'll keep working on it and patch it into something more interesting.

 

I found it to be the opposite of my experience with Elite: Dangerous. With Elite: Dangerous I was amused for about a day, but with No Man's Sky there's at least a tiny bit of something to make me want to sorta maybe keep going. Maybe. Kinda.....a little. Just a bit.

Don't get me wrong though. Both games are hot garbage.

 

If somebody would just make a game with the great cockpit and spaceflight of Elite: Dangerous, the trade logistics and fleet management of X3, the planetary exploration of NMS (but better, less samey planets), and the FPS mechanics of a great shooter, I'd probably never leave my room.

Also, your mom is hot garbage.

 

I had thought that if somebody had combined Elite: Dangerous with EvE it would be a potent combination. I'm not sure if it needs a fleet management aspect if it has a focus on the individual that those two games had.

I feel like No Man's Sky would have done better if it had reduced it's own scope by a significant factor and made the same-ness less prevalent. I mean, 18 quintilion planets seems like a bit much. Maybe reduce it by a factor of, say, A MILLION and even out the pattern a little.

Also, your mom never leaves my room.

 

First of all, I apologize for smugly mocking Skyrim and then ignoring your valiant attempt to continue with a civil discussion. It was very common of me, wasn't it? A typical example of the sort of behavior that is taking this forum down the drain.
With that out of the way...

I can't argue with this. The Elder Scrolls is nothing if not rich in lore and while I tried to grasp as much of it as possible during my attempts with Morrowind and Oblivion (and to a (much) lesser extent, Skyrim) I realize that I've only scratched the surface. A lot isn't necessarily the same as good, and I often found some of the material (in particular the different cultures) a bit bland. But to each his own.

This is a much applauded feature in Skyrim, and most other Bethesda games, but it's my biggest gripe. This freedom, this so called player agency, is great on paper and would be great if the devs could pull off the whole consequence bit. But we end up in a situation where nothing you do matter since you can do so many different things that, if they were to have an actual effect on the world, the game would likely shatter in thousands of little pieces. This is why there are essential NPCs in the first place. I remember following one questline in Oblivion were I stole some sort of sacred document (which apparently was a really big deal according to the lore) and it doesn't have an effect on the story whatsoever. It isn't even mentioned again. New Vegas, for example, gives you a similar amount of agency but is much more proficient with handling the effects (you piss of a faction and it'll affect other quests given by said faction) whereas there are loads of examples of murders committed that no one cares of or incredible reputations earned that apparently aren't considered impressive that you come across in Bethesda's games. Suffice it to say that if you can't handle the second bit of "actions and consequences", you should leave player agency alone.

The reason I stopped playing Skyrim is that I wasn't tossed into a story I cared of. Execution, dragon, apparent choice of side ("wow", I naively thought, "a choice this early"), only to end up in a town with "Go seek out our faction if you can be bothered and hey, loot my house while you're at it". Plus, I found the leveling ill conceived and the space carousel atrocious.

 

Your mother's meatloaf is ill conceived and atrocious.

Where Skyrim really shines is in the thick of the quest, not in the aftermath. But yes, the leveling system and scaling enemies are a real pain in the ass.

 

I think it's as Japes said, the actual gameplay during the quests themselves (in terms of spectacle and boss fights, etc.) is quite a draw to the game, even if consequences are kept to a minimum (though they are there occasionally, with different jarls being instated during the civil war, extra quests becoming available in the thieves guild through common thievery missions, the vampires stopping eating everyone at the end of Dawnguard, etc.). You're right though, Fallout: New Vegas was much better at both agency and consequences on the whole. A simple reputation system wouldn't have gone amiss in Skyrim and would have under-scored consequences pretty trivially.

Unfortunately as FO4 was such a rip-roaring success, I don't see any AAA RPG developer focusing on consequential gameplay any time soon.

For the most part, I really enjoyed the levelling. As I mentioned above, "learn as you do" makes much more sense than "I stabbed a dragon in the face and got some experience, now I'm a master pickpocket because that's how I spent the experience". Having that direct correlation between in game action and skill improvement I think was a good idea, even if some skills are a lot easier to level than others.

In terms of the space carousel, I found it to be a whimsical delight. Not really, I had no opinion on the space carousel.

 

"Learn as you do" is a great concept. The problem is that while you were picking a thousand pockets to become a master pickpocket, everybody else in the world was honing their axe-murdering skills and becoming master axe-murderers.

 

Exactly. It's the world scaling to your level that is the real problem, it directly counteracts their system of leveling. I remember trying to avoid jumping as much as possible, as acrobatics was a useless skill and didn't help you fight the superpowered rodents that now roamed the wilderness.

It's a UI nightmare, really. You can select one skill at a time which you also have to open if you want to spend points in it and close before moving one step in either direction at a time rather than having all skills available at one time. One or possibly two click turn into fifteen to twenty if you want to compare two different perks. It's atrocious and consolized like a motherfucker.

 

Seems like there would be simple ways to counter that...... like have combat and non-combat oriented skills that won't affect enemy level. And skills that partially affect it could have a percentage modifier or something, say acrobatics would only count towards to scale at 20%.

Any other large problems I can solve from my armchair while zero actual insight and perspective? World hunger? Wars?

 

I never played Oblivion so I've never really felt the acrobatics pinch. For Skyrim most skills are combat orientated barring some of the stealth skills (as in, even smithing, enchanting and alchemy will you better gear which in turn makes you better able to fight the enemy), and for the stealth skills like pickpocket you can choose to the level them as you please - so you can easily avoid over levelling. While their scaling system is inelegant, I found in terms of difficulty it does actually work to provide challenge throughout the game so I don't really have any problem with it.

Well being a filthy console player, I didn't really mind it. To be honest after having a bit of a play around on the game, I normally go online to work out what perks and skills I want to be taking so I never really care for a decent UI overly much. Skyrim's system is still better than Pillars', where there's no way in game to look at the abilities you get at higher levels until you're at that level.

 

Do other people usually look ahead to the future skills they're going to get at higher levels? I don't do that, because I like the feeling of discovery as the game goes along.

 

But what happens if you put some perk points in a certain tree, and then by the time you start on levelling another tree you've run out of perk points even though the perks in the new tree look much better? Did you ever even think of that Smuel? Did you?!?!?

 

More reasons why I tend to replay the first part of RPGs so often.

 

Yes, I do sometimes get buyer's remorse. But then on the other hand you don't always know whether a particular development path will be any good or not until you've tried it. Like with a certain game I could mention, whose name rhymes with "Arcanum: Your Mom Works Where Many Men Do Her", where when you first see the possibilities you're like "Dwarves with guns! So cool!" and you plan out an awesome pistol-wielding old-west style sharpshooter called "Smuel Smithers" with an elaborate background, and then the first time you encounter an enemy you find that guns are relatively ineffective and the ammo is expensive and rare and your character is useless, and so you end up completing the entire game with a magic returning boomerang because throwing is the only thing you're any good at.

Knowing the skill trees in advance doesn't always help, is what I'm saying.