Did Bethesda miss the boat?

[nufndash]

I am starting to wonder if by waiting so long to make the next "Skyrim", Bethesda shot themselves in the foot.  I purchased the Oculus Rift with the Touch controllers and I must say even with the limited amount of games and media, I was still blown away for lack of another term.  I have been trying them out on all kinds of games, even some adult featured ones, and its pretty incredible.  I have torn myself away from my Skyrim game for about a week and tried to come back today, and I must say it was hard to get excited about it, and I even got tired of it after about 30 min.  So I wonder, if VR takes off like everyone is saying it will, is Bethesda going to pay for waiting so long to bring out ES6.  I know that for myself, going back to a 2D game is going to be very hard.  The only hope I have now for ES6, is if it was VR, and that aint happening.  It would be easier to send a man to the moon than to make a Skyrim VR.

[spoonsinger]

So are you tired of standard Skyrim SE after about a week, or tired of a modded Skyrim SE after a week? Because I seem to remember from when I got Skyrim original I had to start modding it sometime between Helgen and Riverwood because it just needed modding to make it a game I wanted to play, (and obviously still play). Anyway ES6 will be sub FO4 - probably touch finger friendly with a 'tight' storyline and voiced protagonist concerned about the fate of their lost chicken. Also you won't have the trouble of having to look at stuff to loot, you'll just have to wander past it for it to be added to your inventory.

[Kimy]

VR is probably the most overhyped thing of 2016. It's not -nearly- there where its makers claim it would be. For starters, they are super expensive and will remain for a while. And there is not a single compelling use case for the things yet. They have yet to create one single application (not only game but ANY application) that would truly benefit from VR. Next, these goggles are about as comfortable as being locked in a pillory. Nobody in their right mind would want to wear one for an extended period of time. And last but not least, people get seasick faster than from riding a rowboat through a hurricane. They can't even let you walk in VR without making you belch your guts out.

 

Honestly? Unless they solve all above problems really fast, I wouldn't be surprised if nobody would even talk about VR at the end of 2017 anymore. The very last thing on the mind of Beth is probably betting on a technology the vast majority of gamers have no plans adopting anytime soon.

[atrix]

VR is probably the most overhyped thing of 2016. It's not -nearly- there where its makers claim it would be. For starters, they are super expensive and will remain for a while. And there is not a single compelling use case for the things yet. They have yet to create one single application (not only game but ANY application) that would truly benefit from VR. Next, these goggles are about as comfortable as being locked in a pillory. Nobody in their right mind would want to wear one for an extended period of time. And last but not least, people get seasick faster than from riding a rowboat through a hurricane. They can't even let you walk in VR without making you belch your guts out.

 

Honestly? Unless they solve all above problems really fast, I wouldn't be surprised if nobody would even talk about VR at the end of 2017 anymore. The very last thing on the mind of Beth is probably betting on a technology the vast majority of gamers have no plans adopting anytime soon.

 

It's regrettable that I have to agree with you.  The problem is largely one of how you interface with the game.  The only type of interface that would feel natural with VR is some type of brain computer interface, and it doesn't seem like commercial versions of those are remotely close.

 

Using controllers, even the Wii-mote like things the Valve version has - loses it's novelty fast.  Like playing Wii with a monitor strapped to your head.

 

Until we solve the user interface problem AR probably has a much brighter future.

[jordisslave]

A smaller boat they definitely missed:

 

Skyrim publicity featured heavily 11.11.11

 

SSE arrived 26.10.16, why not 11.11.16? I know that date was reserved for Dishonoured 2, but how did that not happen?

 

Weird one.

 

-

 

Also, yeah, VR. Wavey vague and touch controllers just don't do the job, even a full-featured gamepad isn't enough apart from the vanilla game (barely).

It just about works in Elite Dangerous with a control panel, stick etc that looks on screens almost identical to the real thing but am I supposed to look down and see a keyboard strapped around me, like the character models in Typing Of The Dead?

 

VR visuals are a good idea, just need to stop with the arranged marriage to crappy control systems for games that need precision. Yahtzee has been saying this for a while too.

 

-

 

I tired of Skyrim the other day. 4 hours of Darius Burst Chronicle Saviours and some Kerbal Space Program later I was back.

 

 

 

...haven't had any nausea from the headsets and ghetto headsets I've used but none of them are comfortable.

For now 3 bezel-less monitors arranged in a slight arc with FOV high to give you peripheral vision would probably be better.

[Guest]

^hey thats my gimmick #GimmickInfringement

 

and erm yeah they dropped the fuckin ball on many things

lately, tbh VR is very gimmicky and I dont believe it will be a household

thing until 2025- and vr controls fuckin suck

[peculiaris]

I find VR

 

EXTREMELY INFURIATING

 

To play.

 

I found myself sick for 3 hours after I first tried the Oculus rift... and the Vive was exactly the same.

And I'm getting tired of being spammed to death by tech companies trying to sell me their new "Virtual Reality" product.

 

Lucky me  EXDEDEDE

[CarmelPop12]

I don't think so I'm waiting for 6 I like platformers

[ToJKa]

The very last thing on the mind of Beth is probably betting on a technology the vast majority of gamers have no plans adopting anytime soon.

Well, at least in Sueinmax Media is interested, since they have a court case that part of Oculus software belongs to them since Carmack worked for on it on his free time while still employed by id.

 

But Disconnectus Rift is pretty awesome, though yes, it is cumbersome, and not fit for long time use. Still, pretty cool to play something like Elite, Redout or Thumper with. Until it disconnects

[Kaz Aanh]

Too early for VR and what we got are just tech demos with the AAA price, they are mostly technology showcases.

 

Its too expensive, and requires too much setup & room to run. Unless you sit on the chair fapping to the MMD miku riding your dick 24/7

 

also Bethesda and technology advancement lol

[Myst42]

A lovecraftian horror - like entity like Bethesda missing the boat, considering they dominate the market already... ppppfffft!

 

They made Skyrim SE just to get more money from people

And that's not even considering SE is as i've heard, the exact same thing as Skyrim but with better shaders and crap

Oh wait... Didn't mods do that already?

It wasnt even friendly to ENBs...

Yet fanboys and obedient consumers still ran to the shops in hype like it was black friday shop madness...

 

By the moment they release Elder Scrolls VI, the gaming world will definitely go nuts again and their pockets will be as full and profuse as ever and more.

[deathparade]

Pretty sure they miss the boat every time they release q game without any co-op mode.

I mean who cares for one of the THE MOST requested features?

[Chaos63]

Pretty sure they miss the boat every time they release q game without any co-op mode.

 

I mean who cares for one of the THE MOST requested features?

 

People also tend to like stable games that won't crash every 10 minutes. Or games that don't use 10 voiceactors to play 100+ characters. Or games where the main storyline isn't an extended fetch quest.

All these statements are true.

Skyrim still made a killing.

[Captain Cobra]

Pretty sure they miss the boat every time they release q game without any co-op mode.

 

Are you sure you want to play a game with Bethesda tier netcode?

[pinky6225]

I am starting to wonder if by waiting so long to make the next "Skyrim", Bethesda shot themselves in the foot.  I purchased the Oculus Rift with the Touch controllers and I must say even with the limited amount of games and media, I was still blown away for lack of another term.  I have been trying them out on all kinds of games, even some adult featured ones, and its pretty incredible.  I have torn myself away from my Skyrim game for about a week and tried to come back today, and I must say it was hard to get excited about it, and I even got tired of it after about 30 min.  So I wonder, if VR takes off like everyone is saying it will, is Bethesda going to pay for waiting so long to bring out ES6.  I know that for myself, going back to a 2D game is going to be very hard.  The only hope I have now for ES6, is if it was VR, and that aint happening.  It would be easier to send a man to the moon than to make a Skyrim VR.

 

I don't think the boat has actually sailed yet as the people with VR equipment and the relevant hardware to support it are not the masses they are the enthusiast and while you may be enthusiastic about it there aren't enough of you for it to scale up enough for it to start becoming cheap enough for the "average" pc owner to use

 

You also need a fairly recent/meaty GPU for it to work - my R9 270X 4GB got a resounding fail from steams VR benchmark yet that card is far more powerful than anything you would get in a off the shelf PC so until off the shelf PC's start having GPU's that can do VR the VR hardware makers are going to have a very restricted target audience when it comes to PC users

 

[RapidWaterOver]

A lovecraftian horror - like entity like Bethesda missing the boat, considering they dominate the market already... ppppfffft!

 

They made Skyrim SE just to get more money from people

And that's not even considering SE is as i've heard, the exact same thing as Skyrim but with better shaders and crap

Oh wait... Didn't mods do that already?

It wasnt even friendly to ENBs...

Yet fanboys and obedient consumers still ran to the shops in hype like it was black friday shop madness...

 

By the moment they release Elder Scrolls VI, the gaming world will definitely go nuts again and their pockets will be as full and profuse as ever and more.

Skyrim Special Edition was free if you already had the base game plus DLC's, which is the majority of people. Really the only ones who didn't get it for free were console users. There are a few benefits of SE to the regular game too - I've heard that it has far better performance (haven't really bothered playing it yet to see if this is true, I'm waiting for SKSE64 before I do), you can alt-tab out of the game without it freezing/crashing, it's 64 bit instead of 32 bit, and it has support for Bethesda's gimmicky online modding thing.

[Zor2k13]

I remember reading they are gonna take a while to make something else because the technology is not there yet as toady said during the release of fallout 4 so it might be a while. I think their real problems are #1 LAZY devs and then everything else comes down to cost or arguing over pay with voice over actors but their real problems are things like how do they render a whole lot of npcs on the screen at once at 60fps or better? Drop in too many npcs right now and the game slows to a crawl so they have to change things a lot and also consumer market has to be already on the hardware needed to run the new game etc. so we are still stuck waiting for some shitty console market to improve hardware before they or any other company will make a really demanding game. No dev these days is gonna go PC first for anything they are gonna chase after console money every time.

 

Thanks to their track record we know we will ALWAYS get the same problems from their games...

 

BUGS

 

MORE BUGS

 

did I forget to mention bugs?

 

annoying buggy AI

 

broken quests until they patch it a lot

 

everything feels kinda half assed

 

 

So even if we get some super duper bad ass tech in the next ten years that can get us a beer and a bj and make us a sammich we still won't be able to just play the game and use mods and once the unofficial patch guys get sick of this shit and retire we are screwed until we all make individual fixes ourselves and yeah that won't work out so well. I think at some point all the things these devs are doing will hit diminishing returns if it hasn't already and they will just stop making games for a while or crash etc.

[ToJKa]

Too early for VR and what we got are just tech demos with the AAA price, they are mostly technology showcases.

 

Its too expensive, and requires too much setup & room to run.

Well i wouldn't say just tech demos. Then again, i have made it a point to only buy games that are playable without VR too 

But i would agree that the technology isn't quite there yet. Close, but not ready for the mass market yet. Time will tell if current offerings attract enough buyers so that it'll reach that level of maturity.

But the tech has promise of something quite awesome. Few more years of deveploment and less steep price, and it'll sell like hotcakes.

 

PSVR is the thing to look at for popularity, affordable and (will be) supported by real games.

[Lady Horus]

Hmmmm well I haven't personally used VR so I guess I don't have a huge say in this. Honestly like others have said already, it's way too expensive right now for anyone to consider going full VR, probably. Plus I've heard it's very bad for your eyes if you use it for more than 30 minutes at a time or something like that (not to mention nausea for some). With as much and as long as I tend to game at any sit down, VR probably would be a bad idea for me lol. I have a tendency to play at least two hours at a time, VR just wouldn't fit well into that unless it's a game that can be played without it.

 

VR doesn't quite seem to be there yet, though. And honestly I can live without it. For me it looks to be a gimmick especially with how it tends to be advertised (especially phone VR lol). I've no problems waiting another some odd years for it to be refined more and less "clunky" (as in the size of the device worn). While 3D graphics in games has come a long way, what's required is still a pretty large expense for the average person right now.

[Zor2k13]

VR should have been done right in the mid to late 90s when people still had money to buy it. We just don't have money right now and paying bills is more important plus finding cheaper rent because the rent is too dam high and all that.

[deathparade]

 

Pretty sure they miss the boat every time they release q game without any co-op mode.

 

Are you sure you want to play a game with Bethesda tier netcode?

 

 

Well if they had someone else develop the netcode (not DOOM style where things like deathmatch are left out at release)

I think a borderlands type co-op would be really cool.

 

 

Pretty sure they miss the boat every time they release q game without any co-op mode.

 

I mean who cares for one of the THE MOST requested features?

 

People also tend to like stable games that won't crash every 10 minutes. Or games that don't use 10 voiceactors to play 100+ characters. Or games where the main storyline isn't an extended fetch quest.

All these statements are true.

Skyrim still made a killing.

 

Yea maybe Bethesda should really look into fixing those 10 years later and these are still there bugs and glitches... like not rendering terrain properly from time to time

[Derp McDerp]

The way I feel Bethesda missed the boat, and maybe me saying this is dumb (I'm not techy enough to know why it wouldn't be possible) is in not having the script extender ready to go around launch of SSE. Obviously they don't make it, but there's no reason they couldn't have, or at least provided resources to speed up its development. There are many intricate mods that rely on it in some form or another and I feel like Skyrim in particular has done as well as it has for Bethesda because of modding. I kind of assumed when the game was announced that there would be some official coordinated effort to fast track anything that could bottleneck mod development and transitioning for Oldrim.

 

As it is, I still haven't started playing SSE, because I want it to be much nearer to the Skyrim I left behind, and that's not gonna happen for quite some time.

[Shadowheart328]

The way I feel Bethesda missed the boat, and maybe me saying this is dumb (I'm not techy enough to know why it wouldn't be possible) is in not having the script extender ready to go around launch of SSE. Obviously they don't make it, but there's no reason they couldn't have, or at least provided resources to speed up its development. There are many intricate mods that rely on it in some form or another and I feel like Skyrim in particular has done as well as it has for Bethesda because of modding. I kind of assumed when the game was announced that there would be some official coordinated effort to fast track anything that could bottleneck mod development and transitioning for Oldrim.

 

As it is, I still haven't started playing SSE, because I want it to be much nearer to the Skyrim I left behind, and that's not gonna happen for quite some time.

As a software engineer I can explain why they did not do this, and no, you are not dumb for saying this (no such thing as dumb questions, just dumb answers).  Basically when you build software, you are given tight time constraints by managers and let's be frank the entitlement of gamers doesn't help the situation much. So when they are creating the functions that the quest scripters or other programmers will use in the engine, they will only be creating the functions they need to use, as to not waste time. The SKSE, while wonderful for modders, is not necessary and unfortunately a waste of time for the developers. The reason being that they will have to spend a lot of extra time creating functions that they themselves will never use, so it ends up being wasted development time, and can slow down the release of the game. 

[Zor2k13]

Maybe they only focus on what they are doing next and don't care about what they have just made? Primary goal for them is to make more money and to oblivion with what they already made they have to focus on what they will do next and how they can control it from release to DLC to get the max amount of money possible. Their latest focus on fallout 4 is to get it working with ps4 and mods thats it. The only boat the want to be on is the next one sailing to profits. I would like to have hope that people will try to rock their boat and remind them they are making a form of entertainment that should be well done not medium rare but buyers of their games are all lemmings they will always have smooth sailing unless the market dries up for a while. They certainly deserve to get their boat rocked though since they are supposed to care about what they are doing and what we are doing with it.

[Shadowheart328]

A lovecraftian horror - like entity like Bethesda missing the boat, considering they dominate the market already... ppppfffft!

 

They made Skyrim SE just to get more money from people

And that's not even considering SE is as i've heard, the exact same thing as Skyrim but with better shaders and crap

Oh wait... Didn't mods do that already?

It wasnt even friendly to ENBs...

Yet fanboys and obedient consumers still ran to the shops in hype like it was black friday shop madness...

 

By the moment they release Elder Scrolls VI, the gaming world will definitely go nuts again and their pockets will be as full and profuse as ever and more.

Of course they made Skyrim SE to make money, but you seem to be making it much more nefarious than it is. Bethesda was not originally going to release the game at all as it was just a test of the updated engine on their old game, however, new generation console gamers wanted that, and so Bethesda obliged, and gave us pc gamers the game for free (not exactly the most greedy move), basically Skyim SE was targeting the PS4 and XBOX One as their audience, not pc gamers, but the upgrade was still great for us. 

 

And no mods didn't do that, yeah ENBs look great, but they also kill performance, SSE added a few features from ENBs and improved the performance of the game, so it not only looks better than Oldrim, it also plays much, much better.

 

It can't be friendly to ENBs (yet, just wait for the ENBs to upgrade to 64bit) because it is now 64bit not 32bit, and unless you expect Bethesda to go through and change the ENB binaries of a third-party themselves, it won't be friendly until the owners upgrade it.