TESVI, what Bethesda Learn from Modders

[ElvenHeroine]

The one thing they should do is incorporate what they can incorporate without ruining the console edition from the mods. Then make sure the engine is powerful enough and flexible enough to enjoy for the modding community. They really don't have to put much in except what will make a decent console game. They know it will look like s#*! before the pc modded up version become practical. Therefore adding things in that help improve the modding existence, make modding easier but also more in depth, allow it to be easier to merge mods, allow players to upload more mods (more than 255 mods),

 

Other things they could consider aside from from making the console version more enjoyable and making the PC port easier to mod with more room to mod in greater depth as well upload more mods is to also increase the scope of the game and differentiate where the game will start and how it will be played.

 

Lets face it. Going from province to province is dull. We all want to adventure throughout all of Tamriel, but making a game that big just isn't doable with their budget.

 

So instead, they need to focus on a game that can start in one location and eventually expand throughout all of Tamriel and eventually throughout all of Nirn. But why stop there? We always forget what the main focus of the game should be and that is lore. And this is what would satisfy the lore goers the most, allow you to use the scrolls to go back in time. What is better than that? You can visit the Dovahkiin, the Neverine, the Champion of Kvatch, or even Tiber Septim. You can visit the world like you never could before.

 

However... this won't satisfy everyone. Lets face it... Lore Goers (as I like to call you guys) only make up about 33% of all Elder Scroll Games buyers. The other 33% are those who just want a good experience, not a lore enrich one (these people are who you would call your moderates and the Lore Goers are the conservatives) and most of the guys who just want a game tend to be those who buy it on console. And then you have people like me, the liberal game player, the inventive gamer. We do appreciate lore and just having an easy game to play is appreciated as well, but what we strive for are new experiences, depth, and differences. We enjoy things like the various mods that expand Skyrim such as Falskaar.

 

It is easier to differentiate these gamers.

 

Gamers A prefer mods like frostfall the most, that increase immersion as well mods like Lore Weapon Expansion which entices more towards the lore of the game. They tend to also be more driving towards nostalgia and as such enjoy Morrowind to a considerable degree.

Gamers B prefer mods that just make the game easier to play like No NPC Greetings or maybe no mods at all, since they tend to play the console version, which has no mods available.

Gamers C prefer mods that expand the game's depth and increase the experiences and differences the game offers, Mods like Falskaar, Alternate Start, Playable Giant Race, Mannekin Race, or the various quest mods that exist that just simply add quests to the game.

 

In truth, you cannot satisfy everyone and all of them can be worked around along as there is something in there aimed towards them.

 

So even though you may have a game that is good by its self for console and is geered up with another modding material, functions, and structures that any modder will be satisfy with adding in whatever lore they want in addition to gearing the game towards those who love the lore of this series, you may also want to step back so you can really get in that third crowd as well and that is by adding stuff.

 

The problem with adding or removing stuff is that there is always the potential of it going sour. So instead... the best option is to add material that compliments each other the most. And what compliments the most to a region, culture. So adding more culture, diversity of culture, more races, diversity of races, that will make the game more enjoyable.

 

Plus if you can go back in time, it is plausible to remove any changes as well if the player doesn't like them instead of making consequential occurrences added to the game that the player may not like. So for instance, lets add in a race that never had existed before and lets call them, the Kyndmer or Sky Elves. But they easily be replaced by using an elder scroll to go back to when the Dwemer and Aldmer had separated and simply wipe out the few Dwemer who had interest in flying into the sky. Wipe them out and the game plays very differently. No more Kindmer. Or if you wipe out all the Dwemer, that will fundamentally change the game. No Dunmer. All the Chimer are still around. Stuff like that is easy to do given you add the depth to allow it to happen, which can be done using the elder scrolls.

[kleinstaff]

what bethesda learned and probably already knew is that

is rgat while the console version pays fthe bills and future development it is the pc version and the modding community that made these games such succes stories , not only TES III, IV and V but also fallout 3

oy is what the modding community has done with these games that makes these fames so great and guarantees future succes

and bethesda knows this all too well

 

Even the ext generation of consoles have their limits so i am not expecting a very deep and very immersive vanilla version but a game that will have plenty of space to expand on by the modding community probably even more so than skyrim

I hope so anyway

i think we will know when fallout 4 comes out sometime next year

 

i wouldn't be suprised they already included alot of what they learned from TES V into that game

 

[OliverWBR]

If you go and watch what Todd Howard says about the development of the TES games, it's a mix between what they want out of the game at release or what's fun. Is it fun to back back in time with zany adventures in the lands of the past and alter the timeline and established lore or is it fun to play out a part of the developing history? Consider that the player character has always been the most monumental person in the entire continent (more on this later) for what, the 250 years that the story has been going on (excluding Online but I see that game as playing in an instance of established history, much like the games however it is removed from the linearity of the TES SP series), to have some purveyor of time arbitrarily deciding the fate of all history doesn't make for a fun game.

 

I'm sure any physicist will point out the mechanical flaw of going back in time to change future A to more favourable conditions as that would then diminish the requirement to go back in time in the first place, if you did go back in time you would have to be there so that the history played out as it did so that you were able to go back in time to influence history so that the events transpired as it did and so forth. I understand that the physics of the TES universe works differently to how this universe works however as the principal god is a god of time which allows contradictions to exist but that doesn't necessarily mean a web of histories.

 

The issue with the heartfelt limits on the game engine of Skyrim is a significant one, it seems more like a magnifying glass into the world (where are these hundreds of stormcloaks dying when all I ever see are about twenty at the same time). All it would do is take a professional who works with the engine to fix the problems in their own time but maybe there isn't anyone passionate about the flaws internally as there are externally. I understand that this is an inherent issue with the platform they chose to market it on rather than an incapability of production (do you honestly think that people who've studied the subject to a much higher level than most people here are incapable of making a game that would blow you away?).

 

I haven't played Dragonborn DLC but I am blown away by what I have seen. Ultimately, the people who make the decisions are not Todd Howard or the crew, it's the management of the management who don't know anything but make the decisions. After all, the game would have gotten ripped to pieces if it featured murderous children or the ability to kill them. I can imagine the implementation of various things that they didn't before is a coding issue, you have to understand the capability of a coder is limited by the platform they are coding on (and maybe you do) or who they are. It is entirely possible for someone to be a master coder and not part of Bethesda, take for instance a theoretical physicist not being a teacher even though they would be far superior to most others in their subject area whatever they decide to teach but instead going for research positions. Bethesda has to attract that kind of talent, they aren't the most talented computer programmers in the world not to diminish their expertise.

 

I disagree with the suggestion of going back in time to change player decisions, the point about the Elder Scrolls is that they are historical accounts of the future. I could make a prophecy about how the tyranny of the sun may end but that doesn't mean if I blot out the sun for a period of time that the prophecy has been fulfilled - I could be talking about an ultimate curing of all vampires thus satisfying the prophecy all the same and removing one of the Daedra Prince's influences over Tamriel. They're not a super-zany wacky wavy inflatable arm-waving flailing go-back-in-time-lol device. Alduin was sent forth in time to fulfil the prophecy that the Elder Scroll presented. All the events of Nirn revolve around these elder scrolls and especially the prophecy of Alduin's return, the events so far as the Elder Scrolls are concerned have already transpired and that is why they are pivotal to the events of the games, they have to happen as they have already done.

 

I would like to see more absolute consequences, in DG, if you choose to fire the arrow into the sun it ends the tyranny rather than making a gimmick event. Real consequences are more satisfying than anything which was a problem with Oblivion, there were not a lot of decisions where you were excluded from anything. Morrowind and you may baulk at the nostalgia goggles but it is superb storytelling when you limit the player's choices after they have made a decision. A plethora of choices doesn't have to mean every choice. Do you join one of the great three houses? Do you murder the Fighter's Guild head or do you fight the conspirators? Do you destroy what is left of the Tribunal and avenge the past Nerevar and work out for yourself how to defeat Dagoth Ur? I think to those who see the games as tools for life lessons, it's very poor teaching that in life you can have everything to desire. In Bloodmoon, you were either a werewolf or a normal man, mer or beast and that had an effect on gameplay and how you experience the game.

 

I agree that Skyrim was left somewhat half-baked and not really fleshed out but there are designers in the world who don't care about what they're doing beyond that they do it for a job and they therefore put as much effort in as necessary to complete the objectives and satisfy their job description. It's expected that the game will contain bugs and oversights that won't be fixed, again understand that if you have twenty different things to fix and you don't work outside of work then you can only get so much done in an 8 hour day. TES VI will be very interesting to see if they've taken the pitfalls from Skyrim and filled them in.

Edited March 31, 2014 by OliverWBR

[Rockmassif]

They probably learned that we don't want that default console type of UI. It's disgusting.

And I hope that they also learned that it's not that hard to make good looking High-Resolution textures and stuff.

And the shadows are awful.

[chanchan05]

The only thing I want them to really do is make a 64bit version. That allows more RAM (theoretically more stable) and more plugins. The rest, like UI and stuff, meh, modders usually do better. LOL.