[Hot Topic #1: The dumbing down of Oblivion]

Can anyone give an idea on how would you structure a project to make sure you don't end up short upon release?

Your quoting is a bit off...

 

Yes, it does sound rather strange...I blame the early morning...

 

Anyhow, there are really two easy ways to make sure this doesn't happen. First is secure a budget 2-3 times what you think you need to reduce the chances of going over budget and being forced to cut back on things in order to make up the losses*. Second is build the game backwards, start with the ending and work toward the beginning. This way you can't release anything until you've finished, unfortunately this causes its own difficulties (technical and otherwise), but can make things a bit more interesting since you're essentially just explaining how that particular ending happened, rather than starting with a beginning and having some idea where you want to go. Really though, only with proper planning and a team which is productive and capable can anything complete be finished. Without proper planning, you end up spending too much time on one part that you really like, but not enough time on all those other areas (DB quests anyone (dozens of unique items, scripts and dialogues which are cool, but aren't needed)).

 

*Continued from above*Does that strategy ever really work? You'd think that releasing a game before it's finished would do more to hurt sales than setting back release dates another month. People are more willng to wait a month or two (Or years in the case of Duke Nukem fans) more for that game they've seen mentioned everywhere than to deal with the month or two of a broken game that needs some serious bug fixes. Sure, you still get the group of people who just rush out and buy it on release day, but you lose the sales from people who bother to wait till the smoke clears to see if all the hype was worth it.

 

Well, for a company the size of Bethesda, and with the background they have, I think it's expected of them to be able to plan things down to the last detail. The only logical explanation for some of the areas where the game is lacking is the fact that it wasn't finished when shipped.

Securing a budget that size I imagine would be pretty hard. I mean, you're going to have to convince that publisher to give you a rather substantial sum of money for a game that might, or might not sell. Sure, if you do have a solid background and a fan base the size of TES, that does help, but the budget for Oblivion was pretty high to start with. Then there is the problem of the deadline. You can push it, until you can't push it. I think the publisher is the one that has the biggest say in this matter as well - and when they say we release it next month, and the contract backs them up, you just have to oblige. It's what happened to Gothic 3, and I think it's what happened to Oblivion (to a much lesser extent, indeed).

If you can postpone the release date, then all experience says to do so, rather than ship a bugged game. After all, you only get the reviews from the initial release and losing that chance hurts the overall sales pretty hard.

 

cc

[Hot Topic #1: The dumbing down of Oblivion]

What would I do if I was a chief dev at Bethsoft...Fire the publisher? No, really - games like this should be modular. You buy the game and it's "game world" is like the size of Vivec - in Oblivion's case - some sort of Imperial City with the sewers and the imperial isle.

Most serious gamers would probable tear through that in a single night. Not to mention that they would charge you another twenty bucks(mabey more) for every expansion, so youd probly end up paying close to one or two hundred dollars for something the size of vanilla Oblivion. A modular game does sound like a good idea, but the best way to do that is probably through mods.

That sort of modular concept really doesn't work well when you're trying to do something free roaming like TES. Even doing a mod like a series of several steps just wouldn't work too well until it was all completed. Such a design only makes sense when you have a linear or semi-linear base where one step can be built on the previous, but there isn't much jumping back and forth between them. It just wouldn't be TES without the open world to explore, something which cannot exist in modular form (like NWN). In modular form, the exterior worlds would be dozens of small world spaces linked by doors of some kind along borders, like most MMOs that use the same system, movement across many of these spaces can become annoying as you have to find the right place to cross and there are bound to be invisible walls keeping you from entering areas which are added by a future module. It just doesn't work... There's a reason most MMO's are moving away from that style, it just doesn't play well as there's this sudden border which only the player can cross.

 

Yeah, well you're right. The whole idea of TES is, indeed, the freedom it gives you. But I was trying to find a solution to making sure one finishes all one planned before the bell strikes. Would you sacrifice the sheer size of the world to a more detailed one?

I agree that adding to the world could be possible, the way it is right now, only if you add something in the existing game-space - much like KoTN was structured. But this does assume that certain areas of the world would be rather plain at release.

As I stated before, I think that the devs didn't finish all that they intended on doing - some of the ambitions for the game mechanics were too high I guess, and some were just poor decisions (such as the simplification of the whole thing for TES III fans, or good - for the new crowd they've drawn in with TES IV), I think they spent too much time on "decorating" the world and the secondary quests, and didn't manage to create as much content as was expected. In the end, I think it should be a lesson learned.

Can anyone give an idea on how would you structure a project to make sure you don't end up short upon release?

[Hot Topic #1: The dumbing down of Oblivion]

Wow...where to start...

 

First, great idea on the topic Dark0ne, it sure is a Hot topic.

 

Now, some of you made several fair comments, but others I find harsh or plainly exaggerated. I don't mean to offend anyone, and I make this post stating my personal opinions and views.

 

That being said, Oblivion is a "commercial"-ised version of Morrowind. Sadly, partly by the fact that it was ported for console users, partly because it was meant to draw a new "audience" and partly due to sheer time spent TES IV took a hit in several chapters. There were several improvements regarding the combat system, the visual part of the game, the quests - and perhaps others I'm missing now.

 

Yes, quests - Oblivion's main quest may be predictable and boring or whatnot, but the secondary quests are great. Some of them are indeed the best ones I've seen in games on the past few years. If you ask me, Bethesda started with a grand concept in mind, and started working on it. I think these secondary quests were part of that plan, and I also think that they didn't release this game as they pictured it. Don't blame the developers for all these issues - for one, they proved they can do better in Morrowind, and secondly, you can still see the sparks of originality amongst the breathtaking landscapes of Cyrodiil.

 

Someone said that modders make such a great job because they do it out of passion, they do it at their own pace, and they don't do it for money. Developers have a publisher, developers have a deadline, developers need to eat. These are the reasons this game came out "unfinished". The whole world breathes under the sign of the Dollar, and that is something we're going to have to get used to.

 

I didn't mod anything yet, some of you say that Oblivion isn't easy to mod, and yet it has one of the largest modding communities I've seen in a game. They did offer support for mods - perhaps they didn't grant us as much freedom as some of us would have liked, but the core is there, and with tools such as OBSE, more and more things become possible. If they didn't manage to make this game all it could have been in the time given, it's up to the community to bring it as close to perfection as possible. And you have to admit that releasing a game that is perfect for everyone is impossible, and only mods offer that degree of individual customisation.

 

Dungeons and caves - you say there is no reason to enter these in Oblivion. Morrowind had a whole lot more dungeons and caves than this one does and, granted, there were more unique items worth looking for. But don't tell me that hundreds of those caves weren't filled with just some clutter or leveled loot. And dungeons in Morrowind looked a lot more the same than Oblivion's dungeons. I feel that by reducing the size of the "game world" the devs aimed at increasing the detail of the world. And I think they managed at doing that - to me, Oblivion is a lot more diverse than Morrowind was. It may not have just as many different landscapes, it may not have just as many types of dungeons, but the ones that are here, are made pretty well. Add to that the Unique Landscapes and you've got a perfect "exterior".

 

I'm not saying that vanilla Oblivion is the game I expected it to be, and the reasons it's not are pretty clear to me. I too miss the skill system from Morrowind, I too miss the dunmer voices, I too think that it was a bad idea adding spoken dialog all over the place (I'll get back to this in a jiffy), I think the alchemy system could have been better, as well as the enchanting one. Every one of us had her/his own idea of how this game was supposed to be. And there is no way this game could have been perfect for everyone - not in even 5 years of development. Morrowind players want something, new players want something else - in order to expand the market you have to compromise. And don't forget that as PC users, we still have the CS to play with. If the game had to be tailored to fit a console version, at least we can build onto it and make it...well...perfect.

 

The dialogs - spoken - I think this was an attempt to add more immersion to the game. I have to admit that it was good to hear the people in the towns speak with each other when I first stepped through the gates of the Imperial City. Sadly, it does get rather repetitive after a while, and it does hamper the choices of dialog. I guess a solution would be either a much bigger pool of audio files, or text-to-speech implementation of great quality :)

 

What would I do if I was a chief dev at Bethsoft...Fire the publisher? No, really - games like this should be modular. You buy the game and it's "game world" is like the size of Vivec - in Oblivion's case - some sort of Imperial City with the sewers and the imperial isle. This way, for such a small place to create, the deadline would me much easier to respect and the quality would be as intended - or expected. Then each add-on (a whole lot of them), would add to this original area, as all that there was to do was add new locations, npcs, quests and, eventually, items. But the code for the behaviour, the main engine - the biggest "chunk" of the game would be done by the first release. I do ask, however, who would pay 30$ or so for a game of this size? If made right, it could offer you few good hours of gameplay, but not the same freedom it now offers. Buy that, then wait for a few months for another town. Hmmm...maybe the initial size ought to be a tad-bit bigger :) The idea I'm making here is I have no problem with a smaller game-world as long as you can meet the deadline, and add to it all that you planned or promised.

 

Cheers!

 

cc