So are TES games about to change fundamentally?

[metaphorset]

@Mudran - as I wrote in another thread already: The old fans aren't important. They will either stay or leave and the quality of a game is only one reason for that. I am 50 years old and can afford the luxury of being passionate about gaming. Not because I'm rich and more due to some unfortunate health reasons. The passionate 50 yr old gamers don't show up in any statistics of any game company out there, because there are very few of us.

 

Compared to other Studios/Distributors with big franchises, Bethesda/Zenimax has time on their side. Imagine what happens if Ubisoft would introduce major changes to the next installment of Assassins Creed that would make the game less appealing to "old" fans. They release a new title at least every two years or so thus they might loose a big chunk of their entire fanbase.

TES on the other hand... It took five years from Oblivion to Skyrim. That's a long time for a complete new fanbase to grow. The average 6 year old console gamer on sugar rush surely won't remember, right? (Insert Skyrim 2 meme here...)

 

 

@CosmicArrow - about the gaming industry treading dangerous ground because of price tags... well, I don't think so. At least not entirely. Compare a game like Fallout 4 to a new Tomb Raider title, take the average play time an average player spends in it, then take the average price for a cinema ticket and you know that there are still enough people out there who are more than willing to spend maybe even 150 Dollar/Euro/Whatever for an AAA title + all dlcs. And quite a few of them are even happy to spend even money on such ridiculous things like "rare" CSGO skins.

 

About 80% of the profit from Skyrim and Fallout 4 was due to console sales. If you have the guts, go watch some of the longplays on youtube that were uploaded by the biggest Console gamers there and you know exactly where the priority for future gaming titles lies. Less reading, less exploring, more map markers, more micro transactions - with the occasional so-called "hard" game for which gaming journalists introduced the term "souls like".

 

Recently I visited some gaming forum and stumbled over a thread where someone asked about how much time he would have to spend for Fallout New Vegas + DLCs. The reason he gave for the question was that he was somewhat in a hurry and needed "to plough through some other games this month". This might not be the "average gamer" but allow me one question: How does a person like him even exist?

Edited October 11, 2017 by metaphorset

[Mudran]

I don't think console users are so different. If you look at PS4 exclusives, they are a lot about RPG open worlds, even they say themself how all the praised PC RPG games were sold more for consoles. The fight for console market is over, they claim themself how succesful they are, so why they continue with this: look how consoles have high sales? Shouldn't then they be creating high quality RPG games then, according to their own argument?

But just look at their order fitting for example Mafia III and Dragon Age Inquisition: create a game which could be finished in 8 hours and make the rest filler because console users are in a hurry - doesn't it sound more like cheaper and faster developed?

[metaphorset]

@Mudran - I never said that console gamers don't like open world RPG games, only that the majority has a different approach on them. As I said, go watch any of the Top 10 Console gamer youtubers and compare them and their play styles to someone like Gopher. They don't give any attention to Books, terminal entries or any other details in the games. If it doesn't produce a new entry in the quest log it's not worth to spend a second on it. Yet they won't stop ranting about how much "deep lore" Dark Souls has.

 

In the end it's all about how modern entertainment works. "Books" like Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey become bestsellers - hey, great! Let's make some movie adaptations! The same goes for games. Look at what "Gaming Journalists" tend to write these days. "Wow, the Final Crapfest 15 world map is ten times bigger than Skyrim! Must be a heck of a great game then!" and "Oh noes, the Fallout 4 map is smaller in size and the game has less quests than Skyrim, so it might be not as good!". Quality is measured by sizes and the most important size is sales, the better it sells, the better it must be, right? Therefore - don't try something new and take out what casual gamers complain about or tend to ignore anyway. Boom! 85% on Metacritic - YAY!

 

So yes, in the end game development will get cheaper - or at least not more expensive - if you cut out "unnecessary" content or even good content and sell it later as dlc. It might also get faster if you hire more employees who demand less money, because working in the game industry is such a great joy.

Edited October 11, 2017 by metaphorset

[Mudran]

I don't know Gopher is not really known. I mean between modders, yes, but I was watching some youtubers and even PC youtubers were more like that. I think it is also about what is fun on youtube. I mean if you talk too much, it is less fun than screaming, focused play less fun than actions. A good youtuber is more like an actor. I know that some people prefer information over acting, but still it can be popular.

 

Truth is I'm not really an expert, but I saw some game reworked for console market so I was interested in how console users feel about the reworked game - if they would have the same feelings or if it will be trully for them. And I have to say, they had the same feelings, some of them were highly intelligent. So even this reworked version for console market failed. And durin that playthrough 13 years old boy was talking about how Mafia III sucks and how he will be going to Mafia II again because it was so good game... He actually brought me to playing Mafia II because I was really interested to see what he was talking about.

 

Also even ESO itself is a prove that Microsoft can be wrong with their numbers - I have heard that they were told that console market don't like openworlds and they don't like MMOs, but they did it anyway and they proved them wrong. So what if all the other proclaimed numbers are not saying truth? Only they are the reason for companies to create cheap games?

 

I know objectively it is true, that console market is more for kids - parents prefer to buy console over PC, it feel like less possible to break, so less money invested into repairs, kind of toy.

But once the kids grew up it doesn't mean they are stupid... They are used to consoles and that is the reason why there is such huge market now, because they are used to it. Only I fear what kind of other "features" can be implemented this way - kids get used to it...

 

Now I was referring not to you, but Zenimax, where I have heard very aggressive PR not only about how console users are better over PC users, how they are saving games and how they are going to make games only for them (and even on Skyrim reddit you can see icons for console users and PC users), but even more aggressive approach, where technical support answered question I think about mouse acceleration, that PC users are not market for them, so they are not going to adress any issues.

Really? So paying doesn't matter to Bethesda if you are not console user, you are not a customer, so what you are? so they don't stop - not even create, but stop having some feature which is damaging smooth PC gameplay? Or creating UI - that is template, right? they create it once. So why is it such a problem? Customer is a customer, and Zenimax acts very arrogantly...

 

So that is kind of behaviour I don't understand...

 

I'm not saying that I'm against consoles - I realised that it is the publishers that are the reason for all the grudge between PC and console users, because how many franchises were reworked with explanation that it is what console users want? Or even with damaged textures because consoles couldn't look so much worse?

 

And I also hope for cheaper development, I think gaming industry have similar problems like movies with Hollywood monopol, where they also proclaimed that low quality movies is something people wants and independent rich producents had to prove them wrong.

Edited October 12, 2017 by Mudran

[metaphorset]

Well, Gopher has a slowly but steadily growing fanbase. For every game he plays you find some comments in the comment section where new people post that they like his playstyle. Many of them have watched other youtubers' channels before and commented about how they would rush through a game. In any case, it's good that he has "only" 445 000 subs, because these people like quality over quantity.

 

The whole Microsoft Openworld prediction is hilarious, because it proves once again, that they are quite oblivious about what people want - not only with their console customers. But that's another story...

 

Take a random industry and you will find two kinds of people. There are the ones who create stuff and then there are the others who want to make as much money as possible out of it. That's why we rarely see a movie in the cinemas that hasn't been "reworked" by some money people (hey, they can sell the Director's cut later, anyway) and we rarely see AAA Games that don't have cut content or some other "creative" way to produce more money than they deserve.

 

As for Skyrim, it's quite easy to see how rushed the game has been in some cases, while in other cases there were redesigns that feel quite forced. It's not only the cut content that got reactivated by the Cutting Room Floor, there are tons of Indications that it wasn't the game Bethesda wanted to create. Backdoors to the College of Winterhold and also to Riften jail (which at one point might have been even connected to the Ratways) to indicate that they originally didn't intend to involve the Mages and the Thieves into the main quest.

 

These two don't feel like they were made by anyone who has any idea about what the RP in RPG stands for. It almost seems like some of the money people felt that there is too less of content for the main quest for the people who want to "plough through three other games this month", so they incorporated all the main guilds in some far-fetched way to "show all the cool places we created" they otherwise might not see (there's an interview with Good Guy Todd somewhere containing the "cool places" part).

 

As for "cheaper development": There is no way AAA gaming development especially in the RPG segment will get cheaper ever again by just using technical measures. Even if they would use the most advanced tools and start involving some of the highly talented 3D artists China has to offer, Companies are stuck with the errors of the past. Evolving graphics towards realism without evolving the gameplay possibilities first is one of them.

 

Anyway, going back to the beginning and the original question:

 

I believe that TES and Fallout games are about to change fundamentally and not only in a good way. The modding possibilities might get limited to what's possible on consoles, they might even introduce some sort of DRM to prevent mods from other sources than the microtransaction club. This means on the other side, that they wouldn't be able to rely on the community to fix the bugs anymore.

 

The voiced protagonist will stay, as well as the bad pseudo industry standard for choosing dialogue options. We definitely won't see any improvement in the UI sector and the skill tree in the next TES game might not even be tied to the birth signs anymore.

 

Microtransactions will be amped up, because they are "industry standard" as well as the "games cost 60 Dollars" thing. DLCs might become more expensive, because paying 8 Dollars for some armor and maybe an additional weapon clearly says so, if you compare it to the the original 5 Dollars of Hearthfire and its value.

 

Bethesda games might even vanish from Steam because, you know, money. This might also help to keep the raging fans and their bad reviews at bay, if they decide to introduce even more BS. Besides... Fallout 4 already requires some obscure client software that needs to be launched and logged into for being able to play the game. Sounds a little bit like Origin to me...