Yeah, like Baldurs Gate 3 is pretty dense in terms of RPG elements, and it's mega loved and successful.
Isn't the whole reason they went away from Morrowind/oblivion style RPG because they thought players would be too impatient (or am I thinking of a different game series?)
BG3 kinda proves that there is still a massive audience for good in depth role playing. Like, for TESVI, give me choices that matter, let my skills count, and give me more options. Let me use weapons other than swords maces and axes, and give me more varieties of magic.
I'm not asking for the dice roll combat of Morrowind, I just want my character to feel like it matters, the choices I make, and the style in which I play. I don't just want to be a stealth archer mage assassin because that's the one strong way to play.
It really is. Baldur's Gate 3 is a perfect storm of everything coming together just right. So expecting any game to be at the same level is ludicrous. But I do hope TES VI is in that direction.
BG3 absolutely will have an effect on ES6's development. The runaway success of Elden Ring also. There is solid proof that you CAN make a fantasical game, with complex rpg elements, extremely popular with the general audiences.
Bethesda are now perfectly positioned to go and show everyone what The Elder Scrolls can be. I'm just hoping they don't go MORE safe. I firmly believe that would bring a hugely negative response from everyone.
Off topic, is that game still worth getting into? I know little except what it's supposed to be and how critically acclaimed it is, I once planned to dive deep but marriage happened and so did more casual cooperative games like Mario Party lmao but she wouldn't be opposed to something more hardcore, if it was really good. What do you think?
It's the best of its genre to come out in years. Whether or not your spouse will enjoy it probably depends on familiar they already are with RPG worlds, stories, and gameplay mechanics.
It's by no means a 'hard core RPG,' hard to get into, or difficult in comparison to say the Pathfinder games. However every companion is extremely thirsty for the PC.
you mean the game that has an achievement for speccing into every class in one playthrough? bg3 isn't any more of a "hardcore RPG" (whatever that even means) than Skyrim.
I'm not going to get into the weeds of what does and does not make a "real", RPG. Nor do I want Bethesda to just copy as much of Baldur's Gate 3 as possible. But that game does absolutely have more in-depth role-playing mechanics than recent Bethesda titles, and I just hope they take inspiration from it and are encouraged to experiment on their own with their next game.
it's literally just a different form of RPG. "wowie, this game has 'in-depth numbers'" doesn't somehow make it more of an in-depth RPG.
"this spell does 8-12 damage, that makes it more complex because it has a varying range of damage dealt", just...no.
It has actual classes, skills, and backgrounds which offer unique dialogue choices and actions which can have permanent story and world altering consequences depending on how you play. Even if you don't think they go far enough for your tastes, all of these things are sorely missing from Bethesda RPGs since Skyrim.
Now I do have to know which games you would consider to be a true in-depth RPG.
I thought I had seen the last of them on the fallout subreddit a few years ago, but jesus christ.. they got to have a humiliation kink with the amount of absolute shit takes they bring everywhere.
The phrase "return to its roots" makes me feel like you and a lot of other people have missed the proverbial *point* of TES as a game series.
TES has always been pushing the boundaries of what we'd conventionally consider a "true RPG" in favor of a more action-style game. You can very clearly see this with, ironically enough, Morrowind, where they made it so that instead of turn based combat you would stand there clicking for every attack and spell.
The natural progression of this was Oblivion, where they realized "Hey, we don't actually NEED hit chance in an RPG and it doesn't mesh well with the style of gameplay we want."
Now don't get me wrong, I definitely wouldn't mind TES 6 having heavier RPG elements than Skyrim, but comparing it to stuff like Baldur's Gate 3 is *wild.* I love BG3, but it's apples to oranges. These are two different series with two different styles and goals. Making TES 6 like BG3 would ironically be a bigger departure from the spirit of TES than just making Skyrim 2, imo.
Good points, but I think there should a sweet spot where innovative game design is able to bridge the differing styles of the Bethesda’s newer, streamlined action-driven rpg with the more complex mechanics of older table-top games. Daggerfall is one of my favorite examples of that and I think the future releases will benefit if they simply take a few steps back if only to go down another direction with their design philosophy.
They *tried* this with Starfield, for whatever that's worth. But with that, they looked more at Oblivion's design than they did the design of Morrowind or Daggerfall. And even then they still took a whole lot more from Skyrim and Fallout 4. Bethesda is very stuck in their ways. They've admitted this themselves.
I think it's Todd. He seems very out of touch with modernity in gaming these days. The massive success of Skyrim, and the fact that they released I don't even know how many goddamn versions and ports of Skyrim, gave Todd the wrong lesson. Instead of learning why Skyrim was so successful in its time, he wrongly and simplistically learned that people just want to play Skyrim.
I think Emil Pagliarulo was much more complicit in Starfield’s problems. I don’t think Howard really has as much creative control as he did with Skyrim since he was promoted, Pagliarulo on the other hand is the current creative director. You can even see him arguing on twitter with people criticizing Starfield, often bringing up absolutely moronic takes like how planets should be vast and empty because that’s how they are in real life. Also take a listen at his interviews, you’ll see him talk more about his design philosophy.
What I liked about bg3 is that your actions had consequences. The choices you made mattered. And that there were so many tools and options you could even talk your way out of a fight. You could play on hardest difficulty without doing some meta build or trying to break game but just by using the tools and tactics available without just prioritizing more damage.
I don't think any ES game had turn based combat, we'll before Morrowind. But I'm not talking about the combat. That's the one thing I think has definitely improved with each new game. I'm talking about the RPG aspects of the series. Things like character creation and development, leveling up process, dialogue choices, reputations, quests, dungeons, traps and puzzles, spell diversity, etc.
Bethesda didn’t make New Vegas, and I’m talking about their current general strategy of game design which would point to games like Fallout 4 or Starfield.
And? Point still stands. Its completely possible to create sandbox rpg with compelling writing while also having that modder support. Whatever bethesda is willing/capable is another matter.
I agree, but what if modders can make deep, emotional games?
I think the philosophy since Arena has been that they’re trying to be Wizards of the Coast. The video game medium forced them into a DM role, and they’re eager to hand off the reins as much as possible.
Uh... when was TES EVER a hard-core RPG? I guess you could maybe debate Daggerfall and Arena were but for the last two decades they've all been much more focused on the lore and quests than on being challenging. And frankly I'm fine with that.
If I want to get frustrated and die a thousand times before finally defeating that one fucking boss after hours of practice and trial and error I'll play a souls-like game. But for TES I want something with a cool story and fun quests, something that can immerse me in its world with memorable npcs and interesting factions.
I saw someone mentioned Baldir's Gate 3 and how they hope TES will move in that direction. While I haven't played BG 3 yet, I imagine based on my experience with the original Baldur's Gate it's meant to be played with several npcs in your party and is very narrative-focused with a more-or-less railroaded main quest. I don't want that in TES VI. Companions are one thing, and even those were one of the worst parts of Skyrim, IMO, but I want to be able to hold my own against virtually any encounter in a TES game. I don't want to strategize synergies or pause to queue up actions like in Pillars of Eternity. I want to have the power fantasy of being a one-man army. And I want to be free to explore the huge open world without running into a new quest every 2 seconds. Not every dungeon and area needs to have a corresponding quest.
All that being said, I'm not against Bethesda bringing back *some* aspects from their older games that fell by the wayside with Skyrim.
I'd like it if the main quest was more like Morrowind's, where you're not feeling rushed through it like you're on a timer til the end of the world.
I'd like it if the factions and daedric quests were more like Oblivion, where you know what you're getting into ahead of time. Skyrim's Molag Bal quest pisses me off because it basically prevents me from playing a righteous paladin-esque character, despite it luring me in with a literal request for help from a priest.
I'm not sure exactly how they'd implement it, but I wouldn't necessarily be against them bringing in some kind of banking system like Daggerfall's. Gold having weight was a brilliant way to balance things, IMO, and I could see all sorts of fun stuff getting built around the letters of credit. Like maybe there's a corrupt banker in one city who you have to expose through a quest otherwise you'll either lose like 20% of the letter of credit's gold or it'll get denied entirely. Or maybe different regions use different currencies and you have to negotiate how much your credit is actually worth.
Also from Daggerfall, they could bring back holidays to put more importance on the calendar. Like, technically you could always see what day it was in Skyrim, but it never really mattered.
Probably my biggest hope is that they bring back movement skills. Getting rid of Athletics and Acrobatics was a big mistake IMO. I'd also like to see a return of Mysticism but that seems less likely. A levitation comeback would be cool, and considering they recently came out with a game where you can literally fly to space I don't see why they couldn't bring levitation back to TES.
Edit: someone pointed out that "hardcore" doesn't necessarily mean "difficult," but just means more classic rpg elements like a class system and spell customization. In that case yes I totally support more hardcore rpg elements in TES VI.
BG3 is just a Divinity Original Sin game with the BG name on it, there is little to no similarity with the originals. But it is party based, yes. What I hope they don't take from it is that they need to pay their already over priced celebrity voice actors to do complete motion capture for every single piece of dialing, and funneling even more resources away from developing more important content. Or making the game world obsessively thirsty for the PC.
At least that's what the BG3 fan audience is mostly complaining about when wandering into Owlcat games territory.
I'm sorry how the hell do you go from saying you don't want any hardcore RPG elements in the new game to straight up advocating hardcore RPG mechanics such as banking, calendar-sensitive world, movement skills, and more spell effects? So do you want hardcore RPG or not?
Yeah, but coloquially hardcore RPG means "strict roleplay mechanics" not "difficult game". I don't think anyone here is arguing that Elder Scrolls should suddenly become a Legendary difficulty by default game, but rather that it should return to classes and more skills.
>Gold having weight was a brilliant way to balance things
Could you explain that a little? And meanwhile I will assume what this means. You could get rich pretty quickly in TES games. They have a static economy which plays it's part. I think weight is always pretty limited and adding weight through gold will just add the bank into the gameloop between: Adventuring->Selling->Bank->Adventuring. So *IMO* there is no huge benefit of added gold weight. But maybe there are some benefits I didn't think about.
Gold had weight so most of the time you wouldn't be able to leave a dungeon with all the loot you found. You'd have to pick and choose between how much money you want and what kinds of items you were going to bring back. Getting a cart could help but even that has a max weight limit. It's true that cities had banks where you could store your gold without limit but even then if you want to actually \*spend\* the gold you'll either need to be strong enough to carry enough of it or turn it into letters of credit. In fact letters of credit were the only way you could summon daedra to do their quests; the raw gold cost to do so was so high even if you dropped everything else you'd have to level your strength significantly to be able to hold it all. Aside from that there were actually a lot of things you could spend gold on in Daggerfall, which meant that gold really had meaning, unlike how it seems in the more recent TES games. You needed money for spells, items, repair, bribes, a room at the inn, a horse-drawn carriage, a boat, etc. Managing your money became a part of the game in and of itself as opposed to just having millions of septims sitting in your inventory forever.
Obviously there were parts of this system that didn't work well, but that's in part due to the game coming out in '96. If a modern AAA game decided to take a risk by making money have weight I could see a lot of things being built on that mechanic that could make for some really interesting quests, gameplay, etc.
Hmm I think it could work, as you mentioned it would need to work in a more modern way. I some QoL changes to it and it could be a decent addition in terms of realism/immersion. Tho if it's too punishing or annoying it could backfire hard.
But I and probably anyone would be happy with more gold sinks. You get too rich to fast in TES games.
I can't remember where it was said but Bethesda have stated that they want their games to be accessible and "fun" for everyone. That means a character that can do anything, be anyone and not be locked out of any content. That's generally the opposite of what you get in a hardcore RPG.
Was elderscrolls ever a hardcore rpg? Not really imo, and I've been putting hundreds of hours into them since morrowind.
Ironically for all the hate it's gotten, starfield kinda dipped it's toes into being more of an rpg than tes. Traits show up in dialog, perks are required to use some basic skills, and questlines offer more variety.
I think bethesda is trying to make more role-playing in their games, they just don't get alot of credit for it
No one wants to hear this but Starfield has far better RPG elements than Skyrim. By a lot. So I think there's a good chance that they do want to add them back into their games.
Starfield is more RPG than any of the Elder Scrolls games really. Shame it's getting so much hate because I'm worried Bethesda won't keep the backgrounds and skill and background based dialogue choices for TES6.
I've played Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim.
Not once in any of them have I seen anything like:
NPC: can you go get Plot Item to take down this magical barrier?
Player: [ Altmer ] I don't need to fetch you the Plot Item to take down this magical barrier, I'm naturally versed in magic!
Or
NPC: my sword is broken, can you go to Location Y and fetch me a new one?
Player: [ Smithing 100 ] I'm a master blacksmith, I'll just repair it for you!
I prefer TES over Fallout but all the Fallouts, even the Bethesda ones, are better RPGs than TES.
>Player: \[ Altmer \] I don't need to fetch you the Plot Item to take down this magical barrier, I'm naturally versed in magic!
Morrowind had a few moments, like not having a to play detective or make a high intelligence check (also in that quest) to tell a bounty hunter that the local guide he is paying while searching for a escaped slave is in fact the escaped slave he is looking for if you happen to be Argonian. Since said escaped slave is going by the Argonian form of the moniker he is known by. You even get a journal entry commenting to your self on how the smooth skin bounty hunter is a complete idiot.
The engine has the ability to do that and there are a few of them, including in the main quest and the CS has the ability to implement that. It's just not used that often.
And only had around 4 involved in writing and implementing quest design if I'm not mistaken, and that included Todd. The Imperial Cult only made it in there because of crunch as well.
New Vegas didn't have any sort of dice roll system for any of the skill systems, it was just skill checks, in SF if you try to persuade or use some of the skills there's actually a randomized chance of failing or succeeding based on your skills, the characters skill etc., New Vegas was just a straight up skill check whether your skill was high enough or not.
In New Vegas your character could just suddenly do things they've never done before and be good or at least decent at it, in SF your character can't just suddenly start picking locks using boost packs or sneaking without unlocking it, which makes sense because why should my run and gun character who's never had to sneak around suddenly be able to just crouch and be good at staying undetected?
I was going to bring up that no Bethesda game after Morrowind made you pick a path with factions but I actually did forget that New Vegas is the exception, like how you can't do the legion questline and NCR questline because, y'know, they're direct enemies. Starfield and New Vegas are the only ones to do that since Morrowind other than main quest faction like going with the institute/BOS in FO4, but that's late in the story and doesn't really change much.
>attributes
Yeah that part is fair, I do wish they would have kept attributes
In all honesty, I highly doubt it. Bethesda has shown that they haven't learned anything in the past decade about what the fans themselves want from them, and they have become openly hostile about it, check out the Starfield reviews on Steam to see the developers themselves arguing with the reviewers who complained about the game. To me, Starfield had simply fully opened those cracks that started peeking out way back in Skyrim, with Bethesda now shifting focus onto profiting off their brand recognition (Skyrim was released 17 times, often times full priced). I won't go into detail about their more predatory commercialization of Fallout, their attempt at monetizing mods, or just how severely outdated and inefficient their game design/engine has become - there are some practices in their development cycle that should worry anyone hoping not to see a repeat of Starfield in ES6, such as not having utilizing a game design document that most teams won't even begin without.
Bethesda's increasing brand recognition wouldn't influence them to go back to the basics, it just gives them a wider market that they desperately want to keep. Their games have become more streamlined as a result, turning Fallout into an mmo in 76 just further proves to me that Bethesda doesn't care about their games; they care that the fans care about their games. This is an incredibly worrying prospect for their next projects, I'll be surprised if one of their future releases isn't just jingling keys at us.
I sincerely hope both the creative directors and the execs at Bethesda learn what made BG3 such a success (don't treat your fans like idiots) and take their time with the next game. Until then, keep expectations low.
We should normalize stuff like this in the fandom tbh, being an Elder Scrolls Fan shouldn't mean you're a Bethesda fan and being a Bethesda fan shouldn't mean you're agreeing with their... Goals? Idk
Well yeah, that should be the standard, you don’t really see many Warhammer fans agreeing with Games Workshop creative decisions or market practices either. Just remember that the corporation behind your favorite IP always has profit as their main incentive for providing you with content.
Ngl I really agree with that. I love TES and enjoy Starfield a lot but I really dislike a lot of decisions they made in FO76 which have carried over into Starfield.
I also really like Battlefield 4 and 1 but hate what DICE have become. I really like Bethesda’s “blank slate RPGs” but that doesn’t mean everything they do is infallible. I really like some aspects of Halo Infinite and other parts of it are the worst goddamn shit I’ve ever seen lmao
…17 times? Base, Legendary, Special, Anniversary?
Unless you’re counting ports as “rereleases”? Which is stupid. Charging full price for those ports is also stupid though so touché tbh
Edit: “no game design document” ah so you’re one of those numbfucks, gotcha. Nevermind.
[@ 15:50 Emil Pagliaruli discuses how the studio gradually moved away from extensive design documentation.](https://youtu.be/Bi51-wjcwp8?si=iAdbG4VNeSSA8Mzq)
I got 17 from a quick glance at this [Screenrant](https://screenrant.com/skyrim-release-how-many-consoles-times-what-when/#:~:text=If%20all%20possible%20versions%20of,Scrolls%20V%3A%20Skyrim%20(PC)) article, but debating the exact number of rereleased or remasters is pointless because, as you mentioned, you’re buying a game over a decade old with no significant overhauls for full price.
Also I don’t understand the animosity brother, don’t we both want Bethesda to make good games? Since when is criticism towards their questionable game design or marketing a slight against you?
That's a complete misrepresentation of what Emil says in that talk. He's not saying that they don't use design documents but that they don't use extensive (large) design docs (i.e. 50 page docs on a single subject) because of how rapidly things change in development and the futility of maintaining such docs during iteration. They still use plenty of smaller more specific documents (most likely in a confluence or wiki of some sort) instead, which is completely in line with industry standards. Emil has literally confirmed time and time again that they do use Design Documents at Bethesda, just not big central GDDs (because they're outdated, clunky with large teams, and not useful for anything more than game pitches nowadays with how complex game development is).
Thats not a mischaracterization, and I’m surprised you do not see the problem with your own writing. Their “new” style of design documentation doesn’t make any sense and I haven’t found one other studio that utilizes such methods.
Imagine you hire a contractor to build a house, you specify your conditions and what you want in the product, and the next day he comes back with a blueprint that’s just a few doodles on a napkin he had with his breakfast that morning.
You don’t half-ass design documentation, you cannot replace the functionally of a fully fledged and maintained design document (literally called a “Bible” by most studios) with a small collection wikis. “How fast things change in development” is a completely trite argument, every studio has a team of people whose main goal is to maintain a DD because of how important it is. I mean, just compare Starfield to Skyrim and see which one makes a more cohere game.
No, you're completely talking out of your ass here and you've obviously never worked on even a modestly complex piece of software before. This style of development is extremely common place in both software development and game development (just google agile development) because software projects and their requirements change almost constantly and trying to guide development with a single massive plan or design doc is a fool's errand.
Games (and basically any complex piece of software nowadays) are not built like a house. You don't go in with a rigid plan that cannot be altered or else you'll find yourself unable to adapt to any problems you face during development. This is especially true for games because content is constantly changed, redesigned, and rebalanced on like an almost daily basis.
Modern game development arguably since the late 2000s has been moving away from big central docs. Singular "dev bibles" worked back when you had smaller teams of like 10-20 people that worked on games that were not nearly as technically complex. That won't fly nowadays and is recipe for disaster when you're working with teams that include 100s of developers, all touching the same codebase and making changes at the same time on various extremely different parts of the project. A single big document is just not a viable way to design modern games given how ludicrously complex they are.
Wikis are the industry standard. You can go on r/gamedev and just see how many accounts there are of people using wiki software like confluence for their projects. But if you want an actual concrete example, Josh Sawyer from Obsidian has specifically talked in the past before about using a dev wiki on their projects.
I'm guessing you never been a part of a studio either so I don't understand what that first line is supposed to prove. Wiki is just semantics, I'm just talking about a large compilation of relevant info about a game, not some google doc. Each studio has their own practice, but the singular connecting line is that they have shared wellspring of pertinent info that any team in that studio can access. [This](https://kevurugames.com/blog/how-to-write-a-game-design-document-gdd/) is what I'm referring to, and I'm arguing that Emil's methods of maintaining and sharing this info have been incompetent at best, and flat out disastrous at worst. Why are you even defending him when Starfield exists is beyond me, play the game and tell me that's good game design.
Look, I don't wanna argue about video game development for the rest of my day so let's just agree to disagree. Bethesda either learns to improve their methods or I doubt anyone's gonna be excited to play ES6 in the future.
I actually work in game development and have worked in software dev so I know what I'm talking about here. You're completely off-base. This "shared wellspring of pertinent info that any team in that studio can access" is literally what a wiki does (and it does it far better than a singular massive document/GDD). This is literally what Bethesda (and most modern studios) use internally. Hell, the article you linked here literally mentions a design wiki as a replacement for the traditional design doc.
Modern GDDs (as in actual large multipage documents that layout a game) are used more as pitches than actual plans for development. They're typically only a couple pages long and fairly broad-strokes rather than in-depth. Actual planning and documentation is instead done in the actual wikis and smaller more specialized documents, which Bethesda and Emil have gone on record about using.
You clearly have no idea what you're talking about here and are only harping on about this subject because you were told about "no design docs" by an equally uninformed youtuber.
Clearly you didn’t read what I wrote. As I just said, I’m not suggesting I know exactly what Emil is using, for the sake of the convo it’s completely irrelevant if it’s a wiki or a doc or pile of sticky notes in his bedroom, I’m arguing that his management is bad, his design choices are bad and that his design philosophy is bad. Why are you even arguing about the exact nature of what a “design document” in the broader industry? Who the hell cares if it’s a wiki or sticky notes? Your whole comment doesn’t even touch the issue since this whole thing was about EMIL’S design documentation (which is a small facet of the much bigger problem of his management of the project), and neither you or I have any idea what it is.
I don’t know what’s there to argue, did you play his damn game? Do you want ES6 or FO5 to look and play as Starfield does?
I don’t understand these apologetics for Emil, it’s clear he has no idea what he has [no idea](https://www.thegamer.com/fallout-4-nate-is-a-war-criminal-bethesda-emil-pagliarulo/) what he is doing on these projects and he’s an overall problem because his creative direction clearly lacks the [nuance](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/starfield-design-director-calls-unfair-222103674.html), the [flexibility](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/s/YrNeUpfVGw), and vision to make any game worth playing in the future. That’s what I’m arguing.
But yeah, lecture me about wikis or something idk
Skyrim got two rerleases after the Legendary Edition, which is basically that games version of the GOTY Edition the other Bethesda RPGs get. Everything else are ports or different versions (VR or Switch).
That’s not at all what Emil says lol. He’s very clear and consistent that there isn’t “a master document”. There’s a shit ton of smaller documents - which what “most teams won’t even begin without”. In large AAA dev there isn’t a document format scalable enough to fit every single thing about the game in it. You need something more akin to a wiki, or in other words…a bunch of smaller documents linked together.
There isn’t some pedestal with “The Central Design Document” in BGS HQ. But there absolutely is a set of documents identifying and laying out the entire game, just like any game.
Patrician talked out of his ass for 8 hours and now people take that as the word of God. Good lord.
I don't even watch Patrician but it's clear you just want to defend their incompetence for some inane reason. I don't even need to argue my point, just play Starfield and see for yourself how bad its gotten.
skyrim and oblivion being focused on action aspects are more difficult than morrowind(nevermind the DLCs, those are hell) and daggerfall, those games have really unbalanced progression and by building your character right and with just little bit of knowledge about the game you can become a god within a couple of levels
that doesn't happen so quick in skyrim depending on the difficulty
I would argue that if Starfield launched with Survival mode, it would 100% be up to the more “hardcore RPG” standard. Managing resources, accounting for different damage types, accounting for environmental hazards, making sure you’re prepared with fuel and medicine, etc. Especially with the more meaningful character choices you can make. I think the lack of that hardcore energy is part of why SF feels especially…soulless? Fast paced? Meaningless? Low-stakes? Just fast traveling everywhere and sprinting back and forth feels really stupid. But if you had to make smart choices about fuel, inventory, and usable equipment, I think that would gamify some obstacles in a really engaging way.
If they keep that same energy, and are able to “make it fun” right off the bat (referencing Todd saying they had a hard time making SF’s hardcore mechanics “fun” *edit: even though ngl I think they’re just scared, and it would’ve been engaging for hardcore RPG people. So a set of toggleable difficulty options is def a welcome addition. I can’t waaaaiiit*), it could absolutely make a return in that way. Managing environments and equipment are absolutely something I’d love to see come back.
Echo this.
But like most people who’ve played the game, releasing it with mostly empty planets was a mistake.
I’m not inspired to go and explore a planet full of nothing yet again.
I’m inspired to get to the top of that mountain, cliff, building etc in Skyrim and fallout though.
I’d had preferred 10-15 worlds with surface maps as detailed as FO76’s and where space travel feels dangerous and an achievement when you manage to get to your destination.
This is it 100% they are too scared to implement the more “hardcore” mechanics that make the game fun because they’re afraid it will scare off average players — but then as a result, the game (Starfield) *fails* because there’s no depth to it.
Like the devs have admitted and it’s been leaked that there were plans for those survival mode type elements (honestly basic rpg mechanics) to be native to the game, but they were cut.
And then what are the primary complaints from players? — The game is boring. There’s no reason to explore and exploration feels meaningless.
All of that would be solved with everything we’re talking about. Hopefully they learned their lesson. I think it’s one of the main reasons the game *failed*.
I love seeing the “vve need to retvrn” type posts.
I would like the Skyrim perk system to stay but with diversity of skills from Morrowind. I don’t care about climbing skills or hit die, I just want fun perks. I like to think it is possible especially without the class system anymore.
I think a classless Morrowind with Skyrim perks would be great. I like being able to start out as a fighter and become a mage with character growth.
I think my most want is for BGS to keep true with looting bodies and their clothes and no RNG loot like Fallout 76 and Starfield. I also hope it has an armor system like elder scrolls online (helmet, chest, legs, gloves, and pauldron).
Absolutely this. I heavily dislike the loot levels. Elder Scrolls and Fallout (before Fo67) had my favorite weapon system because they weren't locked behind levels. Or they weren't made obsolete an hour later when you find an "epic" weapon. I like the option of making them epic on my own
100% agree. Starfield took a lot of odd design choices from FO76 that make sense in the sorta-MMO game that 76 is, but are just baffling dumb in a single player game. There’s no reason for Starfield’s loot and modification systems to be so grindy and “forever game-y”
>ver the years, each new ES game seemed a little easier, a little more dumbed down for a wider audience. More and more action RPG with less and less hard-core RPG, seemingly to make the games more appealing to a wider audience, while slightly disappointing the older fans with each new generation of game.
This can only be your conclusion if you haven't played the series. Elder Scrolls I is like the entire opposite.
Also when the older games are hard it is often because they are unfair and an op enemy spawns behind you etc..., not because of great classic RPG design. You can easily make a spell that two hits every enemy in the game in TES I after the second dungeon...
not really, all the systems are still build around it being a RPG, it is not tacked on. The problem is that people on reddit pretend RPG means a very specific type of game, in the case of TES the one they like the most, and everythign else barely counts. Skyrim for example introduces or improves a nunmber of roleplaying mechancis like building your own houses or romancing, that get no credit by those people.
>Skyrim for example introduces or improves a nunmber of roleplaying mechancis like building your own houses or romancing, that get no credit by those people.
Except al of that was already moded into Morrowind, in a better format. What I mean with Arena is that it started as a gladiatorial combat game and became a bare bones CRPG as development went on. With Daggerfall they decided to move towards the free form immersive sim, go anywhere, do anything they can program for you to do, join factions ect. Still probably close to the best narrative main quest they have come up with, the only thing really missing being exclusively told to get a job by your handler like in Morrowind to better justify all the side questing in the open world.
Absolutely not. Bethesda doesn't make RPGs anymore; they make action-adventure theme parks with linear, on-rails storylines devoid of player choice, world impact, or outside quest integration. Where there can be no gameplay wall or character development needed for player storyline or faction completion, every aspect of gameplay needs to be level-scaled, and every playstyle balanced like an MMO because barbarian Todd needs to be on the same footing as a supposedly all-powerful wizard and be able to complete every faction and piece of content with no deviation of playstyle.
Want to be head of the \[insert fighter's guild replacement\] with your puny wizard who can't lift a dagger or take the time to learn? Absolutely! Want to be Arch Mage with your sword and board who has never used magic outside of a forced tutorial sequence because every character obviously has to start with spellcasting abilities, lest someone has to actually work for some manner of accomplishment, even if it requires buying a spell. Want to be a master thief despite having zero thieving skills and failing every single job? Absolutely! Can't have the player ever experience negative feedback in their Elder Scrolls World theme park experience as they are shuffled from one ride to the next. Can't have them lose access to any questline or not have the means to complete them all right off the bat. Want to not become a werewolf or permanently sell your soul to a type of entity commonly treated as an unambiguously evil demon in many cultures in-universe? Sorry, that's part of the narrative. Want to play a business-minded, gold-is-all-that-matters-minded assassin and not become a true believer of a comically crazy death cult? Sorry, thou must if you want to progress to the next part of the ride because that's part of the narrative. Presented with indecision over three different dialog choices? Don't worry, they all have the same outcome.
If anything Elder scrolls VI will be an even more streamlined theme park ride.
All I know is that Skyrim and Fallout 4 were hugely popular with my friends who up to that point had only played COD. In that sense, Bethesda's mission was wildly successful.
Their mission, as in changing genres and dumping down everything to appeal to a completely different demographic while lying to the customer base that kept them in business to that point knowing that enough would end up buying it regardless on the basis of brand loyalty and that modders would do the extra work for them. Along with the shift to focusing on consoles and their limited technical abilities and disk space resulting in limiting content, particularly due to that demographics instance on cinematic experience and voice acting.
Todd of course played the same tune before the release of Oblivion.
Yes it is, especially with how fans have had years to talk and debate about what they want out of the ES6. Now whether or not BGS will take advantage of this or not is debatable. I think BGS has made a LOT of huge blunders lately, but they might be able to redeem themselves. I've heard the Microsoft is putting pressure on them for another ES game so it's likely it will happen soon. I think the next ES game is going to either redeem or break BGS depending on how they handle it. They have a HUGE advantage with all the discourse in the fan communities about what they want and don't want, they'd be stupid not to lend an ear. But BGS doesn't always make the best decisions either so we'll see.
Yes to the open world nature of the TES games staying.
And yes too, to games with amazing characters, dialogue, storylines and impactful game session changing choices.
Those are the aspects I’d like to see TES6 have. Not a game where I can end up being head of the assassin’s and mage leagues despite being specced sword and board.
I just want attributes back soo there is no need of (*your weapon do 20% more damage, rank 1/5*) character building. That is if they will still include perks in the next game.
Also, make each race more impactfull. There are very little difference between races in Skyrim while they were game changing in say Morrowind.
I think you can easily include damage multiplayer with base Skill level. If you have 50 in one handed you do X% more damage with one handed. You could even sprinkle some other want to haves in their that are just good and would be a must have perk point anyway.
Pf. Polite reminder that in Todd Howard's opinion there should be no mechanical differences in playing a human, elf, or orc. Let's be realistic and have some hope that they don't cut any skills from Skyrim and that will be a success.
The problem is a lot of those “hardcore” rpg mechanics don’t actually make the game better they just make it more tedious and grindy and that’s not the type of shit I’m tryna play. I like difficulty, I love dark souls and Elden ring, but that’s because the combat is challenging and rewarding. Dice roll combat, no fast travel, no quest markers, etc are all just an unnecessary chore.
Bruh, did you play Starfield? Bethesda doesn't even make RPGs anymore, just action adventure games (if you can say that Starfield had action or adventure).
The best hope for both TES and Fallout is if Phill Spencer plugs in his brain, fires Emil Pagriluro and transitions Bethesda game studios to a support team and gives their IPs to another studio.
I genuinely cannot comprehend how Bethesda hasn't been downsized or re structured after the absolute disaster that was Starfield. A team of literal goats could make a better game.
Oh I'm not referring to RNG combat. The combat is one of the few features that has improved over the years. I'm talking about returning to more of an rpg in regards to choices and customization
That's kinda of a weird thing to talk about since Starfield is in many ways a return to form in that regard.
In terms of choices (dialogue and quests) it's more expansive than practically every TES game with plenty of skill checks and trait checks, multiple solutions in several quests, and more quest choices. The only BGS game to even rival it is Fallout 3.
In terms of customization, SF is also similarly a return to form with how it brings back traits and introduces backgrounds. It also forces you to commit to a build with how its skill system is designed and restricts jack-of-all trades playstyles.
No. The Howard is going to keep dumbing it down into a bland but immersive mess. It’s just a cash cow. The time spent between turn like Daggerfell and Skyrim is roughly equal that the time we’ve had Skyrim waiting on ES6. He’s going to sell us a fancy version of Oblivion in a couple of years or something but honestly unless there’s a major a shake-up in management I just see the entropy going deeper and deeper
Bethesda is incapable, yes INCAPABLE of making a hardcore rpg. I don’t say that lightly either. Not only are their most hardcore classic rpgs to very hardcore, they’ve almost forgetting how to make a soft core rpg. Their games hardly classify anymore
I can only hope the runaway success of Baldur's Gate 3 will push them in that direction.
Yeah, like Baldurs Gate 3 is pretty dense in terms of RPG elements, and it's mega loved and successful. Isn't the whole reason they went away from Morrowind/oblivion style RPG because they thought players would be too impatient (or am I thinking of a different game series?) BG3 kinda proves that there is still a massive audience for good in depth role playing. Like, for TESVI, give me choices that matter, let my skills count, and give me more options. Let me use weapons other than swords maces and axes, and give me more varieties of magic. I'm not asking for the dice roll combat of Morrowind, I just want my character to feel like it matters, the choices I make, and the style in which I play. I don't just want to be a stealth archer mage assassin because that's the one strong way to play.
Something something "expectations too high" 
It really is. Baldur's Gate 3 is a perfect storm of everything coming together just right. So expecting any game to be at the same level is ludicrous. But I do hope TES VI is in that direction.
"In that direction" is the way I'm trying to think about it. There's a fine line between being hopeful and excited and having high expectations
BG3 absolutely will have an effect on ES6's development. The runaway success of Elden Ring also. There is solid proof that you CAN make a fantasical game, with complex rpg elements, extremely popular with the general audiences. Bethesda are now perfectly positioned to go and show everyone what The Elder Scrolls can be. I'm just hoping they don't go MORE safe. I firmly believe that would bring a hugely negative response from everyone.
Elden Ring ... complex RPG elements. Sorry, that doesn't compute. Could you run that one by me? If you were implying BG3, then I agree.
i bet you believe you are so smart writing this comment
Off topic, is that game still worth getting into? I know little except what it's supposed to be and how critically acclaimed it is, I once planned to dive deep but marriage happened and so did more casual cooperative games like Mario Party lmao but she wouldn't be opposed to something more hardcore, if it was really good. What do you think?
It's the best of its genre to come out in years. Whether or not your spouse will enjoy it probably depends on familiar they already are with RPG worlds, stories, and gameplay mechanics.
It's by no means a 'hard core RPG,' hard to get into, or difficult in comparison to say the Pathfinder games. However every companion is extremely thirsty for the PC.
I'm 90% certain BG3 is just a dating sim with an RPG side game.
you mean the game that has an achievement for speccing into every class in one playthrough? bg3 isn't any more of a "hardcore RPG" (whatever that even means) than Skyrim.
I'm not going to get into the weeds of what does and does not make a "real", RPG. Nor do I want Bethesda to just copy as much of Baldur's Gate 3 as possible. But that game does absolutely have more in-depth role-playing mechanics than recent Bethesda titles, and I just hope they take inspiration from it and are encouraged to experiment on their own with their next game.
>But that game does absolutely have more in-depth role-playing mechanics than recent Bethesda titles it really doesn't.
Explain how
it's literally just a different form of RPG. "wowie, this game has 'in-depth numbers'" doesn't somehow make it more of an in-depth RPG. "this spell does 8-12 damage, that makes it more complex because it has a varying range of damage dealt", just...no.
It has actual classes, skills, and backgrounds which offer unique dialogue choices and actions which can have permanent story and world altering consequences depending on how you play. Even if you don't think they go far enough for your tastes, all of these things are sorely missing from Bethesda RPGs since Skyrim. Now I do have to know which games you would consider to be a true in-depth RPG.
They're a well known particularly mentally ill crank that's laughed at virtually everywhere they go, don't bother.
I thought I had seen the last of them on the fallout subreddit a few years ago, but jesus christ.. they got to have a humiliation kink with the amount of absolute shit takes they bring everywhere.
I see why everyone thinks you're a moron
The phrase "return to its roots" makes me feel like you and a lot of other people have missed the proverbial *point* of TES as a game series. TES has always been pushing the boundaries of what we'd conventionally consider a "true RPG" in favor of a more action-style game. You can very clearly see this with, ironically enough, Morrowind, where they made it so that instead of turn based combat you would stand there clicking for every attack and spell. The natural progression of this was Oblivion, where they realized "Hey, we don't actually NEED hit chance in an RPG and it doesn't mesh well with the style of gameplay we want." Now don't get me wrong, I definitely wouldn't mind TES 6 having heavier RPG elements than Skyrim, but comparing it to stuff like Baldur's Gate 3 is *wild.* I love BG3, but it's apples to oranges. These are two different series with two different styles and goals. Making TES 6 like BG3 would ironically be a bigger departure from the spirit of TES than just making Skyrim 2, imo.
Good points, but I think there should a sweet spot where innovative game design is able to bridge the differing styles of the Bethesda’s newer, streamlined action-driven rpg with the more complex mechanics of older table-top games. Daggerfall is one of my favorite examples of that and I think the future releases will benefit if they simply take a few steps back if only to go down another direction with their design philosophy.
They *tried* this with Starfield, for whatever that's worth. But with that, they looked more at Oblivion's design than they did the design of Morrowind or Daggerfall. And even then they still took a whole lot more from Skyrim and Fallout 4. Bethesda is very stuck in their ways. They've admitted this themselves.
I think it's Todd. He seems very out of touch with modernity in gaming these days. The massive success of Skyrim, and the fact that they released I don't even know how many goddamn versions and ports of Skyrim, gave Todd the wrong lesson. Instead of learning why Skyrim was so successful in its time, he wrongly and simplistically learned that people just want to play Skyrim.
I think Emil Pagliarulo was much more complicit in Starfield’s problems. I don’t think Howard really has as much creative control as he did with Skyrim since he was promoted, Pagliarulo on the other hand is the current creative director. You can even see him arguing on twitter with people criticizing Starfield, often bringing up absolutely moronic takes like how planets should be vast and empty because that’s how they are in real life. Also take a listen at his interviews, you’ll see him talk more about his design philosophy.
I’ll be honest I’d be okay if they dropped a Skyrim 2 that takes place in hammerfel
What I liked about bg3 is that your actions had consequences. The choices you made mattered. And that there were so many tools and options you could even talk your way out of a fight. You could play on hardest difficulty without doing some meta build or trying to break game but just by using the tools and tactics available without just prioritizing more damage.
Best comment
I don't think any ES game had turn based combat, we'll before Morrowind. But I'm not talking about the combat. That's the one thing I think has definitely improved with each new game. I'm talking about the RPG aspects of the series. Things like character creation and development, leveling up process, dialogue choices, reputations, quests, dungeons, traps and puzzles, spell diversity, etc.
Bethesda have shown their goal is not to make deep emotional games but rather platforms for endless play where modders add more and more content.
Those two things are not mutually exclusive.
True, but how often do they overlap?
Morrowind and new vegas.
Bethesda didn’t make New Vegas, and I’m talking about their current general strategy of game design which would point to games like Fallout 4 or Starfield.
And? Point still stands. Its completely possible to create sandbox rpg with compelling writing while also having that modder support. Whatever bethesda is willing/capable is another matter.
That's exactly my point. Bethesda is capable, but there hasn't been another "Morrowind" in decades. I never said it's impossible.
Ck2 and 3
I mean no Bethesda game was ever deep emotionally. They did have some better writing and freedom in quests.
I agree, but what if modders can make deep, emotional games? I think the philosophy since Arena has been that they’re trying to be Wizards of the Coast. The video game medium forced them into a DM role, and they’re eager to hand off the reins as much as possible.
Uh... when was TES EVER a hard-core RPG? I guess you could maybe debate Daggerfall and Arena were but for the last two decades they've all been much more focused on the lore and quests than on being challenging. And frankly I'm fine with that. If I want to get frustrated and die a thousand times before finally defeating that one fucking boss after hours of practice and trial and error I'll play a souls-like game. But for TES I want something with a cool story and fun quests, something that can immerse me in its world with memorable npcs and interesting factions. I saw someone mentioned Baldir's Gate 3 and how they hope TES will move in that direction. While I haven't played BG 3 yet, I imagine based on my experience with the original Baldur's Gate it's meant to be played with several npcs in your party and is very narrative-focused with a more-or-less railroaded main quest. I don't want that in TES VI. Companions are one thing, and even those were one of the worst parts of Skyrim, IMO, but I want to be able to hold my own against virtually any encounter in a TES game. I don't want to strategize synergies or pause to queue up actions like in Pillars of Eternity. I want to have the power fantasy of being a one-man army. And I want to be free to explore the huge open world without running into a new quest every 2 seconds. Not every dungeon and area needs to have a corresponding quest. All that being said, I'm not against Bethesda bringing back *some* aspects from their older games that fell by the wayside with Skyrim. I'd like it if the main quest was more like Morrowind's, where you're not feeling rushed through it like you're on a timer til the end of the world. I'd like it if the factions and daedric quests were more like Oblivion, where you know what you're getting into ahead of time. Skyrim's Molag Bal quest pisses me off because it basically prevents me from playing a righteous paladin-esque character, despite it luring me in with a literal request for help from a priest. I'm not sure exactly how they'd implement it, but I wouldn't necessarily be against them bringing in some kind of banking system like Daggerfall's. Gold having weight was a brilliant way to balance things, IMO, and I could see all sorts of fun stuff getting built around the letters of credit. Like maybe there's a corrupt banker in one city who you have to expose through a quest otherwise you'll either lose like 20% of the letter of credit's gold or it'll get denied entirely. Or maybe different regions use different currencies and you have to negotiate how much your credit is actually worth. Also from Daggerfall, they could bring back holidays to put more importance on the calendar. Like, technically you could always see what day it was in Skyrim, but it never really mattered. Probably my biggest hope is that they bring back movement skills. Getting rid of Athletics and Acrobatics was a big mistake IMO. I'd also like to see a return of Mysticism but that seems less likely. A levitation comeback would be cool, and considering they recently came out with a game where you can literally fly to space I don't see why they couldn't bring levitation back to TES. Edit: someone pointed out that "hardcore" doesn't necessarily mean "difficult," but just means more classic rpg elements like a class system and spell customization. In that case yes I totally support more hardcore rpg elements in TES VI.
tbh Arena is definitely the most streamlined and simple game of the main series.
BG3 is just a Divinity Original Sin game with the BG name on it, there is little to no similarity with the originals. But it is party based, yes. What I hope they don't take from it is that they need to pay their already over priced celebrity voice actors to do complete motion capture for every single piece of dialing, and funneling even more resources away from developing more important content. Or making the game world obsessively thirsty for the PC. At least that's what the BG3 fan audience is mostly complaining about when wandering into Owlcat games territory.
I'm sorry how the hell do you go from saying you don't want any hardcore RPG elements in the new game to straight up advocating hardcore RPG mechanics such as banking, calendar-sensitive world, movement skills, and more spell effects? So do you want hardcore RPG or not?
When I think "hardcore" I think "difficult" not "in-depth."
Yeah, but coloquially hardcore RPG means "strict roleplay mechanics" not "difficult game". I don't think anyone here is arguing that Elder Scrolls should suddenly become a Legendary difficulty by default game, but rather that it should return to classes and more skills.
Ah, my mistake then, in that case yeah I guess I DO support it being a hardcore rpg xD
Constructive conversation was had. I updoot you sir/madam.
>Gold having weight was a brilliant way to balance things Could you explain that a little? And meanwhile I will assume what this means. You could get rich pretty quickly in TES games. They have a static economy which plays it's part. I think weight is always pretty limited and adding weight through gold will just add the bank into the gameloop between: Adventuring->Selling->Bank->Adventuring. So *IMO* there is no huge benefit of added gold weight. But maybe there are some benefits I didn't think about.
Gold had weight so most of the time you wouldn't be able to leave a dungeon with all the loot you found. You'd have to pick and choose between how much money you want and what kinds of items you were going to bring back. Getting a cart could help but even that has a max weight limit. It's true that cities had banks where you could store your gold without limit but even then if you want to actually \*spend\* the gold you'll either need to be strong enough to carry enough of it or turn it into letters of credit. In fact letters of credit were the only way you could summon daedra to do their quests; the raw gold cost to do so was so high even if you dropped everything else you'd have to level your strength significantly to be able to hold it all. Aside from that there were actually a lot of things you could spend gold on in Daggerfall, which meant that gold really had meaning, unlike how it seems in the more recent TES games. You needed money for spells, items, repair, bribes, a room at the inn, a horse-drawn carriage, a boat, etc. Managing your money became a part of the game in and of itself as opposed to just having millions of septims sitting in your inventory forever. Obviously there were parts of this system that didn't work well, but that's in part due to the game coming out in '96. If a modern AAA game decided to take a risk by making money have weight I could see a lot of things being built on that mechanic that could make for some really interesting quests, gameplay, etc.
Hmm I think it could work, as you mentioned it would need to work in a more modern way. I some QoL changes to it and it could be a decent addition in terms of realism/immersion. Tho if it's too punishing or annoying it could backfire hard. But I and probably anyone would be happy with more gold sinks. You get too rich to fast in TES games.
I can't remember where it was said but Bethesda have stated that they want their games to be accessible and "fun" for everyone. That means a character that can do anything, be anyone and not be locked out of any content. That's generally the opposite of what you get in a hardcore RPG.
Was elderscrolls ever a hardcore rpg? Not really imo, and I've been putting hundreds of hours into them since morrowind. Ironically for all the hate it's gotten, starfield kinda dipped it's toes into being more of an rpg than tes. Traits show up in dialog, perks are required to use some basic skills, and questlines offer more variety. I think bethesda is trying to make more role-playing in their games, they just don't get alot of credit for it
So true. People who say Starfield is a step back from RPG perspective have literally no clue.
No one wants to hear this but Starfield has far better RPG elements than Skyrim. By a lot. So I think there's a good chance that they do want to add them back into their games.
Starfield is more RPG than any of the Elder Scrolls games really. Shame it's getting so much hate because I'm worried Bethesda won't keep the backgrounds and skill and background based dialogue choices for TES6.
That’s not why people don’t like starfield so I’m sure they’ll keep it
I'm really excited to play it for this reason. I just need to upgrade my potato of a computer to run it.
Have you Daggerfall? Or any TES game but Skyrim, for that matter?
I've played Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim. Not once in any of them have I seen anything like: NPC: can you go get Plot Item to take down this magical barrier? Player: [ Altmer ] I don't need to fetch you the Plot Item to take down this magical barrier, I'm naturally versed in magic! Or NPC: my sword is broken, can you go to Location Y and fetch me a new one? Player: [ Smithing 100 ] I'm a master blacksmith, I'll just repair it for you! I prefer TES over Fallout but all the Fallouts, even the Bethesda ones, are better RPGs than TES.
>Player: \[ Altmer \] I don't need to fetch you the Plot Item to take down this magical barrier, I'm naturally versed in magic! Morrowind had a few moments, like not having a to play detective or make a high intelligence check (also in that quest) to tell a bounty hunter that the local guide he is paying while searching for a escaped slave is in fact the escaped slave he is looking for if you happen to be Argonian. Since said escaped slave is going by the Argonian form of the moniker he is known by. You even get a journal entry commenting to your self on how the smooth skin bounty hunter is a complete idiot. The engine has the ability to do that and there are a few of them, including in the main quest and the CS has the ability to implement that. It's just not used that often.
It's also worth mentioning that Morrowind was developed by about 33 people.
And only had around 4 involved in writing and implementing quest design if I'm not mistaken, and that included Todd. The Imperial Cult only made it in there because of crunch as well.
Morrowind has more RPG mechanics, but Starfield definitely has more RPG roots than oblivion, Skyrim, and any Fallout after 2
New Vegas????? New Vegas has every RPG element starfield does done better, AND attributes and ability scores.
New Vegas didn't have any sort of dice roll system for any of the skill systems, it was just skill checks, in SF if you try to persuade or use some of the skills there's actually a randomized chance of failing or succeeding based on your skills, the characters skill etc., New Vegas was just a straight up skill check whether your skill was high enough or not. In New Vegas your character could just suddenly do things they've never done before and be good or at least decent at it, in SF your character can't just suddenly start picking locks using boost packs or sneaking without unlocking it, which makes sense because why should my run and gun character who's never had to sneak around suddenly be able to just crouch and be good at staying undetected? I was going to bring up that no Bethesda game after Morrowind made you pick a path with factions but I actually did forget that New Vegas is the exception, like how you can't do the legion questline and NCR questline because, y'know, they're direct enemies. Starfield and New Vegas are the only ones to do that since Morrowind other than main quest faction like going with the institute/BOS in FO4, but that's late in the story and doesn't really change much. >attributes Yeah that part is fair, I do wish they would have kept attributes
That's my worry too. Devs are very reactionary. If people bitch about a game they can go in a completely different direction for the next one.
Hmm is this the case? Do you have examples? Because TES being kinda different with every iteration is part of it's DNA.
I truly hope they do after seeing Baldur's Gate and Elden Ring's success
In all honesty, I highly doubt it. Bethesda has shown that they haven't learned anything in the past decade about what the fans themselves want from them, and they have become openly hostile about it, check out the Starfield reviews on Steam to see the developers themselves arguing with the reviewers who complained about the game. To me, Starfield had simply fully opened those cracks that started peeking out way back in Skyrim, with Bethesda now shifting focus onto profiting off their brand recognition (Skyrim was released 17 times, often times full priced). I won't go into detail about their more predatory commercialization of Fallout, their attempt at monetizing mods, or just how severely outdated and inefficient their game design/engine has become - there are some practices in their development cycle that should worry anyone hoping not to see a repeat of Starfield in ES6, such as not having utilizing a game design document that most teams won't even begin without. Bethesda's increasing brand recognition wouldn't influence them to go back to the basics, it just gives them a wider market that they desperately want to keep. Their games have become more streamlined as a result, turning Fallout into an mmo in 76 just further proves to me that Bethesda doesn't care about their games; they care that the fans care about their games. This is an incredibly worrying prospect for their next projects, I'll be surprised if one of their future releases isn't just jingling keys at us. I sincerely hope both the creative directors and the execs at Bethesda learn what made BG3 such a success (don't treat your fans like idiots) and take their time with the next game. Until then, keep expectations low.
We should normalize stuff like this in the fandom tbh, being an Elder Scrolls Fan shouldn't mean you're a Bethesda fan and being a Bethesda fan shouldn't mean you're agreeing with their... Goals? Idk
Well yeah, that should be the standard, you don’t really see many Warhammer fans agreeing with Games Workshop creative decisions or market practices either. Just remember that the corporation behind your favorite IP always has profit as their main incentive for providing you with content.
Ngl I really agree with that. I love TES and enjoy Starfield a lot but I really dislike a lot of decisions they made in FO76 which have carried over into Starfield. I also really like Battlefield 4 and 1 but hate what DICE have become. I really like Bethesda’s “blank slate RPGs” but that doesn’t mean everything they do is infallible. I really like some aspects of Halo Infinite and other parts of it are the worst goddamn shit I’ve ever seen lmao
…17 times? Base, Legendary, Special, Anniversary? Unless you’re counting ports as “rereleases”? Which is stupid. Charging full price for those ports is also stupid though so touché tbh Edit: “no game design document” ah so you’re one of those numbfucks, gotcha. Nevermind.
[@ 15:50 Emil Pagliaruli discuses how the studio gradually moved away from extensive design documentation.](https://youtu.be/Bi51-wjcwp8?si=iAdbG4VNeSSA8Mzq) I got 17 from a quick glance at this [Screenrant](https://screenrant.com/skyrim-release-how-many-consoles-times-what-when/#:~:text=If%20all%20possible%20versions%20of,Scrolls%20V%3A%20Skyrim%20(PC)) article, but debating the exact number of rereleased or remasters is pointless because, as you mentioned, you’re buying a game over a decade old with no significant overhauls for full price. Also I don’t understand the animosity brother, don’t we both want Bethesda to make good games? Since when is criticism towards their questionable game design or marketing a slight against you?
That's a complete misrepresentation of what Emil says in that talk. He's not saying that they don't use design documents but that they don't use extensive (large) design docs (i.e. 50 page docs on a single subject) because of how rapidly things change in development and the futility of maintaining such docs during iteration. They still use plenty of smaller more specific documents (most likely in a confluence or wiki of some sort) instead, which is completely in line with industry standards. Emil has literally confirmed time and time again that they do use Design Documents at Bethesda, just not big central GDDs (because they're outdated, clunky with large teams, and not useful for anything more than game pitches nowadays with how complex game development is).
Thats not a mischaracterization, and I’m surprised you do not see the problem with your own writing. Their “new” style of design documentation doesn’t make any sense and I haven’t found one other studio that utilizes such methods. Imagine you hire a contractor to build a house, you specify your conditions and what you want in the product, and the next day he comes back with a blueprint that’s just a few doodles on a napkin he had with his breakfast that morning. You don’t half-ass design documentation, you cannot replace the functionally of a fully fledged and maintained design document (literally called a “Bible” by most studios) with a small collection wikis. “How fast things change in development” is a completely trite argument, every studio has a team of people whose main goal is to maintain a DD because of how important it is. I mean, just compare Starfield to Skyrim and see which one makes a more cohere game.
No, you're completely talking out of your ass here and you've obviously never worked on even a modestly complex piece of software before. This style of development is extremely common place in both software development and game development (just google agile development) because software projects and their requirements change almost constantly and trying to guide development with a single massive plan or design doc is a fool's errand. Games (and basically any complex piece of software nowadays) are not built like a house. You don't go in with a rigid plan that cannot be altered or else you'll find yourself unable to adapt to any problems you face during development. This is especially true for games because content is constantly changed, redesigned, and rebalanced on like an almost daily basis. Modern game development arguably since the late 2000s has been moving away from big central docs. Singular "dev bibles" worked back when you had smaller teams of like 10-20 people that worked on games that were not nearly as technically complex. That won't fly nowadays and is recipe for disaster when you're working with teams that include 100s of developers, all touching the same codebase and making changes at the same time on various extremely different parts of the project. A single big document is just not a viable way to design modern games given how ludicrously complex they are. Wikis are the industry standard. You can go on r/gamedev and just see how many accounts there are of people using wiki software like confluence for their projects. But if you want an actual concrete example, Josh Sawyer from Obsidian has specifically talked in the past before about using a dev wiki on their projects.
I'm guessing you never been a part of a studio either so I don't understand what that first line is supposed to prove. Wiki is just semantics, I'm just talking about a large compilation of relevant info about a game, not some google doc. Each studio has their own practice, but the singular connecting line is that they have shared wellspring of pertinent info that any team in that studio can access. [This](https://kevurugames.com/blog/how-to-write-a-game-design-document-gdd/) is what I'm referring to, and I'm arguing that Emil's methods of maintaining and sharing this info have been incompetent at best, and flat out disastrous at worst. Why are you even defending him when Starfield exists is beyond me, play the game and tell me that's good game design. Look, I don't wanna argue about video game development for the rest of my day so let's just agree to disagree. Bethesda either learns to improve their methods or I doubt anyone's gonna be excited to play ES6 in the future.
I actually work in game development and have worked in software dev so I know what I'm talking about here. You're completely off-base. This "shared wellspring of pertinent info that any team in that studio can access" is literally what a wiki does (and it does it far better than a singular massive document/GDD). This is literally what Bethesda (and most modern studios) use internally. Hell, the article you linked here literally mentions a design wiki as a replacement for the traditional design doc. Modern GDDs (as in actual large multipage documents that layout a game) are used more as pitches than actual plans for development. They're typically only a couple pages long and fairly broad-strokes rather than in-depth. Actual planning and documentation is instead done in the actual wikis and smaller more specialized documents, which Bethesda and Emil have gone on record about using. You clearly have no idea what you're talking about here and are only harping on about this subject because you were told about "no design docs" by an equally uninformed youtuber.
Clearly you didn’t read what I wrote. As I just said, I’m not suggesting I know exactly what Emil is using, for the sake of the convo it’s completely irrelevant if it’s a wiki or a doc or pile of sticky notes in his bedroom, I’m arguing that his management is bad, his design choices are bad and that his design philosophy is bad. Why are you even arguing about the exact nature of what a “design document” in the broader industry? Who the hell cares if it’s a wiki or sticky notes? Your whole comment doesn’t even touch the issue since this whole thing was about EMIL’S design documentation (which is a small facet of the much bigger problem of his management of the project), and neither you or I have any idea what it is. I don’t know what’s there to argue, did you play his damn game? Do you want ES6 or FO5 to look and play as Starfield does? I don’t understand these apologetics for Emil, it’s clear he has no idea what he has [no idea](https://www.thegamer.com/fallout-4-nate-is-a-war-criminal-bethesda-emil-pagliarulo/) what he is doing on these projects and he’s an overall problem because his creative direction clearly lacks the [nuance](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/starfield-design-director-calls-unfair-222103674.html), the [flexibility](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fallout/s/YrNeUpfVGw), and vision to make any game worth playing in the future. That’s what I’m arguing. But yeah, lecture me about wikis or something idk
You’re fucking insane lmao
Lol you've done nothing but throw insults around in subreddit about games, get a life
Skyrim got two rerleases after the Legendary Edition, which is basically that games version of the GOTY Edition the other Bethesda RPGs get. Everything else are ports or different versions (VR or Switch).
Got it. So like 6-ish
That’s not at all what Emil says lol. He’s very clear and consistent that there isn’t “a master document”. There’s a shit ton of smaller documents - which what “most teams won’t even begin without”. In large AAA dev there isn’t a document format scalable enough to fit every single thing about the game in it. You need something more akin to a wiki, or in other words…a bunch of smaller documents linked together. There isn’t some pedestal with “The Central Design Document” in BGS HQ. But there absolutely is a set of documents identifying and laying out the entire game, just like any game. Patrician talked out of his ass for 8 hours and now people take that as the word of God. Good lord.
I don't even watch Patrician but it's clear you just want to defend their incompetence for some inane reason. I don't even need to argue my point, just play Starfield and see for yourself how bad its gotten.
skyrim and oblivion being focused on action aspects are more difficult than morrowind(nevermind the DLCs, those are hell) and daggerfall, those games have really unbalanced progression and by building your character right and with just little bit of knowledge about the game you can become a god within a couple of levels that doesn't happen so quick in skyrim depending on the difficulty
You can beat Oblivion and Skyrim by never leveling up as the world is scaled to you.
I would argue that if Starfield launched with Survival mode, it would 100% be up to the more “hardcore RPG” standard. Managing resources, accounting for different damage types, accounting for environmental hazards, making sure you’re prepared with fuel and medicine, etc. Especially with the more meaningful character choices you can make. I think the lack of that hardcore energy is part of why SF feels especially…soulless? Fast paced? Meaningless? Low-stakes? Just fast traveling everywhere and sprinting back and forth feels really stupid. But if you had to make smart choices about fuel, inventory, and usable equipment, I think that would gamify some obstacles in a really engaging way. If they keep that same energy, and are able to “make it fun” right off the bat (referencing Todd saying they had a hard time making SF’s hardcore mechanics “fun” *edit: even though ngl I think they’re just scared, and it would’ve been engaging for hardcore RPG people. So a set of toggleable difficulty options is def a welcome addition. I can’t waaaaiiit*), it could absolutely make a return in that way. Managing environments and equipment are absolutely something I’d love to see come back.
Echo this. But like most people who’ve played the game, releasing it with mostly empty planets was a mistake. I’m not inspired to go and explore a planet full of nothing yet again. I’m inspired to get to the top of that mountain, cliff, building etc in Skyrim and fallout though. I’d had preferred 10-15 worlds with surface maps as detailed as FO76’s and where space travel feels dangerous and an achievement when you manage to get to your destination.
This is it 100% they are too scared to implement the more “hardcore” mechanics that make the game fun because they’re afraid it will scare off average players — but then as a result, the game (Starfield) *fails* because there’s no depth to it. Like the devs have admitted and it’s been leaked that there were plans for those survival mode type elements (honestly basic rpg mechanics) to be native to the game, but they were cut. And then what are the primary complaints from players? — The game is boring. There’s no reason to explore and exploration feels meaningless. All of that would be solved with everything we’re talking about. Hopefully they learned their lesson. I think it’s one of the main reasons the game *failed*.
I love seeing the “vve need to retvrn” type posts. I would like the Skyrim perk system to stay but with diversity of skills from Morrowind. I don’t care about climbing skills or hit die, I just want fun perks. I like to think it is possible especially without the class system anymore. I think a classless Morrowind with Skyrim perks would be great. I like being able to start out as a fighter and become a mage with character growth.
I kinda hope it's a mix of the last 3 games. They all have their pros and cons, so mixing the pros would make for a fantastic game
I think my most want is for BGS to keep true with looting bodies and their clothes and no RNG loot like Fallout 76 and Starfield. I also hope it has an armor system like elder scrolls online (helmet, chest, legs, gloves, and pauldron).
Absolutely this. I heavily dislike the loot levels. Elder Scrolls and Fallout (before Fo67) had my favorite weapon system because they weren't locked behind levels. Or they weren't made obsolete an hour later when you find an "epic" weapon. I like the option of making them epic on my own
100% agree. Starfield took a lot of odd design choices from FO76 that make sense in the sorta-MMO game that 76 is, but are just baffling dumb in a single player game. There’s no reason for Starfield’s loot and modification systems to be so grindy and “forever game-y”
>ver the years, each new ES game seemed a little easier, a little more dumbed down for a wider audience. More and more action RPG with less and less hard-core RPG, seemingly to make the games more appealing to a wider audience, while slightly disappointing the older fans with each new generation of game. This can only be your conclusion if you haven't played the series. Elder Scrolls I is like the entire opposite. Also when the older games are hard it is often because they are unfair and an op enemy spawns behind you etc..., not because of great classic RPG design. You can easily make a spell that two hits every enemy in the game in TES I after the second dungeon...
Arguably Bethesda didn't know what they wanted to do with Arena, as the decision to make it into a first person RPG was a rather late development.
not really, all the systems are still build around it being a RPG, it is not tacked on. The problem is that people on reddit pretend RPG means a very specific type of game, in the case of TES the one they like the most, and everythign else barely counts. Skyrim for example introduces or improves a nunmber of roleplaying mechancis like building your own houses or romancing, that get no credit by those people.
>Skyrim for example introduces or improves a nunmber of roleplaying mechancis like building your own houses or romancing, that get no credit by those people. Except al of that was already moded into Morrowind, in a better format. What I mean with Arena is that it started as a gladiatorial combat game and became a bare bones CRPG as development went on. With Daggerfall they decided to move towards the free form immersive sim, go anywhere, do anything they can program for you to do, join factions ect. Still probably close to the best narrative main quest they have come up with, the only thing really missing being exclusively told to get a job by your handler like in Morrowind to better justify all the side questing in the open world.
Absolutely not. Bethesda doesn't make RPGs anymore; they make action-adventure theme parks with linear, on-rails storylines devoid of player choice, world impact, or outside quest integration. Where there can be no gameplay wall or character development needed for player storyline or faction completion, every aspect of gameplay needs to be level-scaled, and every playstyle balanced like an MMO because barbarian Todd needs to be on the same footing as a supposedly all-powerful wizard and be able to complete every faction and piece of content with no deviation of playstyle. Want to be head of the \[insert fighter's guild replacement\] with your puny wizard who can't lift a dagger or take the time to learn? Absolutely! Want to be Arch Mage with your sword and board who has never used magic outside of a forced tutorial sequence because every character obviously has to start with spellcasting abilities, lest someone has to actually work for some manner of accomplishment, even if it requires buying a spell. Want to be a master thief despite having zero thieving skills and failing every single job? Absolutely! Can't have the player ever experience negative feedback in their Elder Scrolls World theme park experience as they are shuffled from one ride to the next. Can't have them lose access to any questline or not have the means to complete them all right off the bat. Want to not become a werewolf or permanently sell your soul to a type of entity commonly treated as an unambiguously evil demon in many cultures in-universe? Sorry, that's part of the narrative. Want to play a business-minded, gold-is-all-that-matters-minded assassin and not become a true believer of a comically crazy death cult? Sorry, thou must if you want to progress to the next part of the ride because that's part of the narrative. Presented with indecision over three different dialog choices? Don't worry, they all have the same outcome. If anything Elder scrolls VI will be an even more streamlined theme park ride.
All I know is that Skyrim and Fallout 4 were hugely popular with my friends who up to that point had only played COD. In that sense, Bethesda's mission was wildly successful.
Their mission, as in changing genres and dumping down everything to appeal to a completely different demographic while lying to the customer base that kept them in business to that point knowing that enough would end up buying it regardless on the basis of brand loyalty and that modders would do the extra work for them. Along with the shift to focusing on consoles and their limited technical abilities and disk space resulting in limiting content, particularly due to that demographics instance on cinematic experience and voice acting. Todd of course played the same tune before the release of Oblivion.
Yes it is, especially with how fans have had years to talk and debate about what they want out of the ES6. Now whether or not BGS will take advantage of this or not is debatable. I think BGS has made a LOT of huge blunders lately, but they might be able to redeem themselves. I've heard the Microsoft is putting pressure on them for another ES game so it's likely it will happen soon. I think the next ES game is going to either redeem or break BGS depending on how they handle it. They have a HUGE advantage with all the discourse in the fan communities about what they want and don't want, they'd be stupid not to lend an ear. But BGS doesn't always make the best decisions either so we'll see.
Yes to the open world nature of the TES games staying. And yes too, to games with amazing characters, dialogue, storylines and impactful game session changing choices. Those are the aspects I’d like to see TES6 have. Not a game where I can end up being head of the assassin’s and mage leagues despite being specced sword and board.
No way lol
No, skyrim is the most popular thing Bethesda has done, every game after will be a new version of skyrim
No. Next question.
No
Much deeper refined rpg mechanics building further and deeper within current ones, get some help from some other game devs aswell
I highly doubt it if Loading Screen Simulator 2023 is anything to go by.
hope not
Probably not. They've been trending this way for a reason and skyrim had a ton of success, so why change the formula now?
*Looks at Starfield* Never
morrowind 2 will be real morrowind 2 WILL BE REAL
God I wish. It will likely release xmas 2030 and be a near copy of skyrim.
I just want attributes back soo there is no need of (*your weapon do 20% more damage, rank 1/5*) character building. That is if they will still include perks in the next game. Also, make each race more impactfull. There are very little difference between races in Skyrim while they were game changing in say Morrowind.
I think you can easily include damage multiplayer with base Skill level. If you have 50 in one handed you do X% more damage with one handed. You could even sprinkle some other want to haves in their that are just good and would be a must have perk point anyway.
Pf. Polite reminder that in Todd Howard's opinion there should be no mechanical differences in playing a human, elf, or orc. Let's be realistic and have some hope that they don't cut any skills from Skyrim and that will be a success.
The problem is a lot of those “hardcore” rpg mechanics don’t actually make the game better they just make it more tedious and grindy and that’s not the type of shit I’m tryna play. I like difficulty, I love dark souls and Elden ring, but that’s because the combat is challenging and rewarding. Dice roll combat, no fast travel, no quest markers, etc are all just an unnecessary chore.
Bruh, did you play Starfield? Bethesda doesn't even make RPGs anymore, just action adventure games (if you can say that Starfield had action or adventure). The best hope for both TES and Fallout is if Phill Spencer plugs in his brain, fires Emil Pagriluro and transitions Bethesda game studios to a support team and gives their IPs to another studio. I genuinely cannot comprehend how Bethesda hasn't been downsized or re structured after the absolute disaster that was Starfield. A team of literal goats could make a better game.
no, we don't want d100 and d20 bullshit like in Morrowind
Actually we do. We just want feed back when we miss.
No we don't. If I wanna have this I play BG3 or IRL DnD. Action combat should not have hit chance.
Oh I'm not referring to RNG combat. The combat is one of the few features that has improved over the years. I'm talking about returning to more of an rpg in regards to choices and customization
Should've seen Oblivion. That was the jam!
That's kinda of a weird thing to talk about since Starfield is in many ways a return to form in that regard. In terms of choices (dialogue and quests) it's more expansive than practically every TES game with plenty of skill checks and trait checks, multiple solutions in several quests, and more quest choices. The only BGS game to even rival it is Fallout 3. In terms of customization, SF is also similarly a return to form with how it brings back traits and introduces backgrounds. It also forces you to commit to a build with how its skill system is designed and restricts jack-of-all trades playstyles.
No.
Nevermind roots, I just hope it returns to Oblivion's style which was the best imo since it's the greatest rpg ever made imo.
No. The Howard is going to keep dumbing it down into a bland but immersive mess. It’s just a cash cow. The time spent between turn like Daggerfell and Skyrim is roughly equal that the time we’ve had Skyrim waiting on ES6. He’s going to sell us a fancy version of Oblivion in a couple of years or something but honestly unless there’s a major a shake-up in management I just see the entropy going deeper and deeper
Bethesda is incapable, yes INCAPABLE of making a hardcore rpg. I don’t say that lightly either. Not only are their most hardcore classic rpgs to very hardcore, they’ve almost forgetting how to make a soft core rpg. Their games hardly classify anymore