Fallout 4! In like 4 1/2 months, its real.

[ElectricSheep]

You are asking for the game to impose restriction to somehow satisfy the player's own narrative, you are trading in freedom of the player for an artificial sense of satisfaction. It might work if the game is tighter when it comes to narrative/story/characters, but I don't think the TES/FO series are that kind of games. This is especially troubling when you consider that you actually want to see all the content, but need to reroll a new character to do so.

 

Can you explain the difference between an artificial sense of satisfaction and a non-artificial one? Because to me something either is satisfying or not. It's the freedom that you speak of that is artificial; a freedom of making empty choices.

 

From the design perspective, you can either impose certain rules and restrictions that in turn allow you to go more in-depth with the design, or you can go with something more shallow that every kind of character can perform (but not necessarily enjoy). For example, you can design a guild of assassins that is completely open to everyone from a rogue to a knight, or make it so that it fully utilizes certain skills (your ability to deceit, walk in the shadows, poison your victims, kill silently etc.). Why the second one has a bigger potential is obvious: because the designer can focus on making the content more suitable and/or challenging for a certain group of characters, rather than trying to fit there a knight in full plate armor. And it's not even a subject of question which option the player will find more rewarding in terms of his decision to become an assassin. Hence ironically, restrictions may give you a deeper sense of freedom than the lack of thereof. Last but not least, not everyone likes being treated like an idiot who needs to be protected from his own decisions; "Oh, so you decided to go with the barbarian type with two handed axe and fur pants, but now that you think of it, the mages guild is kind of cool? Don't worry bro! You can easily learn a bunch of noob spells and become the archmage because FREEDOM!" Fuck this. Fuck this from the bottom of my heart.

 

 

Which brings us to access of information in 2015. The "easy" thing to do is to google mass effect wiki and have a full list of choices, conditions, and outcome that you can view at a glance, now you know exactly what to do to see everything. Are you using this info to make the "correct" choices and get the outcome you want? or do you use it to plan your playthroughs to see everything? But is that really what choices in a game is? Following a guide that tells you exactly what to do? Are you really the one making the choices anymore? Also if all you want is to see a scene/dialog plays out there's Youtube. Now are we even playing a game? Is there a reason to play it anymore?

 

For the record, I'm not a fan of Mass Effect. I liked the first game, the second was a bit retarded in the story department, the third one was utter shit (even without the godawful endings).

 

The questions you ask are all valid, however you're barking at the wrong tree. The reason why the player wants to pick the best course of action, is because there is the best curse of action to begin with - the best as in the most rewarding. Game devs tend to implement the retarded black and white morality system, where you can either play Jesus and help everyone, or do something nasty and get less XP, gold, recognition etc. You can conduct a simple thought experiment in your head and think of some cliche quest, in which you can a) help someone, receive 1000 EXP and positive karma or  kill the person, loot his or her corpse for some mid-range items, get 400 XP, see less content and become less popular. Most players will choose a) not only because it's more rewarding, but also because they will get the feeling that this is what the devs expected them to pick - and rightfully so. Now, let's say that when you pick  something different happens: someone notices you were such a mean son of a bitch and has an interesting job offer for the likes of you, or simply by killing the person you can get some very unique item that is unobtainable otherwise. By balancing the content and rewards you can render even a simple choice an interesting dilemma for the player.

 

Access to information. You can always spoil yourself the fun if you want to, even if the game is completely linear. However, there's a subtle difference between watching something on yt and doing it with your very own character that you grow attached to. Besides, one day you may feel like playing a kind hearted knight, some other day you want to be a necromancer and feast upon innocent souls. Everything is a matter of execution; as long as the optional content is good, there's always replay value in it.

[Guest endgameaddiction]

The moral of the story behind that is, we don't want Fallout 4 to be like Skyrim where joining every faction is okay. Basically taking the role of everything which isn't really roleplaying as one.

 

And since some people forget that the Skyrim team also had some development with this game, for some of us who think Skyrim is not an RPG because of said reasons above and a page back, it does raise concerns. We have no idea what they came in to do. And if it was the quests, yeah... not looking forward to being a limitless character.

 

 

 

Warning: The Pitt spoiler ending. Read at your own risk.

 

Now, if they introduce you to a way to betray the current faction you pertain to, and join the other, I'm perfectly okay with that as long as it has some negative impact on the faction you used to be in. NPCs calling me a traitor etc.. The reason why The Pitt was my favorite DLC was for that reason. I had a decision to make. Save and free the slaves, or not kidnap a new born that was the cure to their sickness. Of course it was a very tough decision and I ended up betraying Werhner instead because I couldn't find it in me to steal a child from her own mother. Just wasn't right to me. And those are the consequences and actions that make a real RPG. The role of who and how you will be. The reputation you hold on both ends because lets face it, you can't please everyone. It just doesn't work that way, but it did in Skyrim.

 

 

 

It's unknown if Fallout 4 will have positive/negative impact on faction armor as it did in New Vegas. I don't recall seeing or hearing anything about that. Doesn't matter to me either way. I never wore NCR or Legion armor. I did wear Great Khan armor because it looked cool to me. And I don't think Raider armor was included as faction armor.

[Guest]

 

The moral of the story behind that is, we don't want Fallout 4 to be like Skyrim where joining every faction is okay. Basically taking the role of everything which isn't really roleplaying as one.

 

 

I am not sure about this.

More the game is open and not constrained, more you can do mods to create new experience and pleasure.

 

But I am a modder, maybe a normal player will disagree.

[GrimReaper]

I'd also like to point out that some quests, especially some of the quests you receive from the daedric princes do have choices involved. If there's a choice to be made, the typical good choice will yield less desirable results than the evil one. I also found Mephala's quest pretty ingenious. There's pretty much no real dialogue involved, you get the ebony blade but to unlock it's full potential, you'll have to betray people who like you and kill them. So once you get the weapons, there's at least always the thought in the back of your head that maybe you should unlock the weapon's true potential, much like how Mephala corrupts the minds of mortals. It's pretty meta yet fits extremely well.

[M1917]

the mod tools will come out later, i need to see how to install the mods and how they work on xbox one (which will be after pc) otherwise i have to get it for my laptop even though mine is crap and it has standard laptop graphics with 8G of RAM( its lying it has 4GB) and a i3-2350 2.30GHz (this processor doesnt even exist).

 

The guy had to choose freakin the non existing processor type when he should of chose i5. GODammit!

[Arhon]

Here's hoping they wont focus on PS4 and XboX One and give us PC users a crappy port like Skyrim..... which the modders fixed and still are fixing....

 

I can safely imagine millions of people going nuts if that happens.

[Guest]

 

Here's hoping they wont focus on PS4 and XboX One and give us PC users a crappy port like Skyrim..... which the modders fixed and still are fixing....

 

 

The latest consoles (by a commercial reason, not a technical one), can accept mods and extensions.

 

But they will always have their unique interface system (pads, joysticks, lightsabers with motion control, etc.)

 

A game software company will have no problems in supporting the extension of a game (read: DLCs), but for sure the PC-version-of-the-game will suffer for a really poor interface or limited possible controls if compared to a full keyboard+mouse.

Pretty much the whole story of SkyUI.

[Arhon]

 

A game software company will have no problems in supporting the extension of a game (read: DLCs), but for sure the PC-version-of-the-game will suffer for a really poor interface or limited possible controls if compared to a full keyboard+mouse.

Pretty much the whole story of SkyUI.

 

 

Pretty much This.

 

If anything they should make Fallout 4 with FOCUS on PC Version and then port it to xbox/ps4.

 

Plus the port from consoles to PC of Skyrim wasn't just about SkyUI, if you remember it gave us a lot of engine limitations. Think what Skyrim would have been if it was made for PC and ported to consoles....

[Guest]

 

Pretty much This.

 

If anything they should make Fallout 4 with FOCUS on PC Version and then port it to xbox/ps4.

 

Plus the port from consoles to PC of Skyrim wasn't just about SkyUI, if you remember it gave us a lot of engine limitations. Think what Skyrim would have been if it was made for PC and ported to consoles....

 

 

That is pretty much impossible.

Games are no more a few dozen of KiloBytes. We are no more in the 80s.

 

And a game development cannot last for too long. (Game companies are not a charitable organization, they need to earn and pay the employees.)

 

So they focus on the main limitations (mainly the interface) and set the bar really low. (As the minimum console to be supported.)

Then for the graphics (media) the do pretty much a single game for every target (today it is done in high res always to support future changes/expansion/etc. by reducing the development costs.)

For the engine, usually it is global, except for some parts that are specific to the targets. Here pretty much each target gets its own version.

 

With the previous consideration: the development can't last forever.

So an "acceptable" game will be out. For sure not 100% specific for each target.

And the PC will always suffer a little.

 

Doing first PC and then "downgrade" for consoles? Not acceptable. It will be a waste of money. Also because it should support pretty much all normal/average PCs the possible buyers have. Not everybody has a i7 9999 5Gh, 64GB memory, and a GTX 999 overclocked. Many players will have just a little bit more than a standard console.

[Gameplayer]

 

 

Doing first PC and then "downgrade" for consoles? Not acceptable. It will be a waste of money. Also because it should support pretty much all normal/average PCs the possible buyers have. Not everybody has a i7 9999 5Gh, 64GB memory, and a GTX 999 overclocked. Many players will have just a little bit more than a standard console.

 

 

Its hard for me to understand why there seems to be a very vocal minority that seem to think they alone can support an industry.

[Guest]

 

 

 

Its hard for me to understand why there seems to be a very vocal minority that seem to think they alone can support an industry.

 

 

I don't want to be rude. Not at all.

I apologize if I did.

 

I am not "defending" an industry. Because I work pretty much in the same area, I was just giving some point of view form a Product Management perspective.

 

I will not post more in this thread. Sorry if I've been vocal.

[Gameplayer]

 

 

 

 

Its hard for me to understand why there seems to be a very vocal minority that seem to think they alone can support an industry.

 

 

I don't want to be rude. Not at all.

I apologize if I did.

 

I am not "defending" an industry. Because I work pretty much in the same area, I was just giving some point of view form a Product Management perspective.

 

I will not post more in this thread. Sorry if I've been vocal.

 

 

I think you mis-understood what I said.

 

I'm saying there is in fact an leet group that is vocal like they alone can support the entire industry. 

In no way was I trying to suggest that you yourself were in that category.

 

In fact it wasn't meant to be rude merely agreeing.

 

[Guest]

 

I think you mis-understood what I said.

 

I'm saying there is in fact an leet group that is vocal like they alone can support the entire industry. 

In no way was I trying to suggest that you yourself were in that category.

 

In fact it wasn't meant to be rude merely agreeing.

 

 

Thanks for explaining.

[Gameplayer]

Sorry I guess I'm pushing myself tonight, I did some exercise earlier and I'm pretty wiped out atm.

Also working on the computer trying to get my mods list transferred has been unfruitful all evening long D:

[afa]

 

Skyrim forces you to do all the guild quests, it was not only designed to allow you to do it, you pretty much have to, or your char will be gimped and several features of the game won't activate.

 

 

How you might ask? I'll spoiler it since this is going to drag on a bit..

 

 

 

Well first up two of the guilds are forced on you durring the main quest (to find Esbern you are directed to speak with Brynjolf, who won't help you unless you join the Thievesguild, and to get the scroll you must speak with Urag at the Collage, but Feralda won't let you pass without force-enducting you into the College). So that's not giving the player much choice there, now is it?

 

Second, you are the Dragonborn, learning shouts is a pretty big deal in the game, but you can never learn them all unless you join and beat every guild's questline, because each of them involves quest-locked dungeons that have wordwalls in them. There is no good reason for this, none of these dungeons HAD to involve a wordwall, they could have put those anywhere else, but no, they made it nessesary to join all the guilds to learn these shouts.

 

And then there's the other unlockables tied to guilds, NPC's not doing their routines untill you join up, Werewolves not spawning in the world unless you become a Companion, and so forth.

 

 

 

Now here's why this is a problem: 

 

Problem 1: They made no effort to justify this. It makes absolutely, positively, no sense what so ever within the games own established narrative and rules that this is possible. The Companions especially, always banging on about honour, how magic is for pussies, and that warrior pride demands they face problems head on, yadda yadda.. why would these people allow a mage/thief/assassin into their guild? It makes no sense at all.

If they were going to make us do all these questlines, then they should have made the effort to tie them togeather, and have it make some semblence of logical sense.

 

Problem 2: Beeing forced to do all these quests also forces the player to play as a jack-of-all-trades non-class, so they can survive these things, or the quests themselves have to be completely gutted to ensure that any class-build can get through them. In Skyrim we got a mix of both. Try getting through the Companions questline som day with a char that has all their perks in stealth and magic... it sucks! Hard! If you set out to play a stealth-mage, then you don't have enough health, most of your perks are rendered worthless by the quest design, and your forced followers will give you crap for trying to use the weapons you've put stats into, the whole thing is just broken (which is why an Arcane-Rogue shoulden't be expected to join the warriors guild in the first place!). But on the flipside, we also have the College-questline, where you can not only join, but become the Archmage whilst having only cast two novice-level spells your entire life, and beating the entire questline relying only on heavy-armor and a war-hammer. This questline is completely and utterly gutted of any meaning, narrative or purpose so that warrior classes can play through it without having to spend their points on magica.

 

 

Bad storries told badly, that's where this leads us.

 

Hey let's have a Thieves guild in the game! But uhh.. we can't really have it's quest involve any theft, because we can't be sure that players joining the guild spend any points in sneak, pickpocket or lockpicking, so uhmm.. let's just have it be a revenge story where the player stabs things a lot.

 

And a mages guild! Except we can't really expect every player to invest into magic, so let's just not have magic play any part in the questline. We'll just have the player fight some more Draugr, that'll do!

 

Assassins are cool, so we need those! Except that might require sneak skills... nah we'll just ensure there's no real failure states for getting caught or anything, aslong as the player stabs things dead that'll do.

 

We gotta have a bards college too! Except speech skills.. and it would require effort.. pile on more Draugr!

 

And a warriors guild, of course! Only that would require... ohh sod it, more draugr, more bandits, lets just cram them in there.

 

 

Guild questing! It all boils down to stabbing things, since we can't expect anything more from the player. Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

You are even greedier than me What you are saying is you want to have access to everything without doing any guild quest...or any quest? You want all the shout, all the services guilds provides, all the content that's a decision that you made, but at the same time you want to get all that by not doing anything that you don't want to. While it isn't exactly something I am against, but at the same time I can say I want to do all the quests, I want to get shout without doing the main quest, I want to have a character that can do everything...you get the idea.

 

And as mentioned by someone earlier you don't have to do all of the guild quests to get through the main quest, isn't showing the player a little bit of what's available for pursuit reasonable?

If we want to put Skyrim, nay, the entire TES/FO series under a microscope and criticize it, I would say that none of them really have a great storyline nor narrative, if you want to say that the storying telling is bad, the quest design are poor, sure I am with you 100%, but at the same time I don't really care about that aspect of these games. For me it is more about the open world the wide variety of options to do different things. Gameplay wise the ability to be a jack of all trade character is the only way to satisfy all those requirements.

 

 

Can you explain the difference between an artificial sense of satisfaction and a non-artificial one? Because to me something either is satisfying or not. It's the freedom that you speak of that is artificial; a freedom of making empty choices.

 

 

 

From the design perspective, you can either impose certain rules and restrictions that in turn allow you to go more in-depth with the design, or you can go with something more shallow that every kind of character can perform (but not necessarily enjoy). For example, you can design a guild of assassins that is completely open to everyone from a rogue to a knight, or make it so that it fully utilizes certain skills (your ability to deceit, walk in the shadows, poison your victims, kill silently etc.). Why the second one has a bigger potential is obvious: because the designer can focus on making the content more suitable and/or challenging for a certain group of characters, rather than trying to fit there a knight in full plate armor. And it's not even a subject of question which option the player will find more rewarding in terms of his decision to become an assassin. Hence ironically, restrictions may give you a deeper sense of freedom than the lack of thereof. Last but not least, not everyone likes being treated like an idiot who needs to be protected from his own decisions; "Oh, so you decided to go with the barbarian type with two handed axe and fur pants, but now that you think of it, the mages guild is kind of cool? Don't worry bro! You can easily learn a bunch of noob spells and become the archmage because FREEDOM!" Fuck this. Fuck this from the bottom of my heart.

 

For the record, I'm not a fan of Mass Effect. I liked the first game, the second was a bit retarded in the story department, the third one was utter shit (even without the godawful endings).

 

The questions you ask are all valid, however you're barking at the wrong tree. The reason why the player wants to pick the best course of action, is because there is the best curse of action to begin with - the best as in the most rewarding. Game devs tend to implement the retarded black and white morality system, where you can either play Jesus and help everyone, or do something nasty and get less XP, gold, recognition etc. You can conduct a simple thought experiment in your head and think of some cliche quest, in which you can a) help someone, receive 1000 EXP and positive karma or  kill the person, loot his or her corpse for some mid-range items, get 400 XP, see less content and become less popular. Most players will choose a) not only because it's more rewarding, but also because they will get the feeling that this is what the devs expected them to pick - and rightfully so. Now, let's say that when you pick  something different happens: someone notices you were such a mean son of a bitch and has an interesting job offer for the likes of you, or simply by killing the person you can get some very unique item that is unobtainable otherwise. By balancing the content and rewards you can render even a simple choice an interesting dilemma for the player.

 

Access to information. You can always spoil yourself the fun if you want to, even if the game is completely linear. However, there's a subtle difference between watching something on yt and doing it with your very own character that you grow attached to. Besides, one day you may feel like playing a kind hearted knight, some other day you want to be a necromancer and feast upon innocent souls. Everything is a matter of execution; as long as the optional content is good, there's always replay value in it.

 

It is artificial because Skyrim already let player pick seemingly contradictory choices, that is set in stone, you have the ability to pick to do something or not to do something to fit whatever narrative you want to create, but you can't get the thought of always being able to go back and pick up the other route out of your head, you feel that it devalue your "empty choice", you want the game to step in and effectively cut out part of the game for you to feel vindicated.

That's the precisely the problem with choices in games sometimes it is created to make the player feel like they did something of value, it devolved into something of a gimmick. Some games handle it better than others, and quite frankly I don't have enough faith in Bethesda to it pull off well.

I feel like Mass Effect did it ok, Walking Dead is basically pick between the shitty choices and see how it plays out worse than you thought it would which might or might not work for depending on what the player is after.

 

Funny enough base on what I have seen, what player wants from TES/FO games are often contradictory. They want a good story and narrative, but these are things that linear game excel at because they have typically have more control on pacing, progression, and characters. Yet god help us if dev puts a lid on open world exploration, take control of who the main character is stint character progression and focus player down a particular path.

[zzz72w3r]

 

 

The moral of the story behind that is, we don't want Fallout 4 to be like Skyrim where joining every faction is okay. Basically taking the role of everything which isn't really roleplaying as one.

 

 

I am not sure about this.

More the game is open and not constrained, more you can do mods to create new experience and pleasure.

 

But I am a modder, maybe a normal player will disagree.

 

 

I think this depends on how developers frame the narrative in its story engine.  If the play through is developmental/stackable then locking quests/factions out of the player's story tree makes sense.  On the other hand, if the narrative mechanic is designed with assemblage in mind then every quest/faction should be available. 

 

What we don't want is a world where doing quests, having relationships don't have deep meanings like in MMO/FPS or the Mass Effect trilogy where very well constructed story arc/forks got wiped out in the very end.

[Jexsam]

 

Skyrim forces you to do all the guild quests, it was not only designed to allow you to do it, you pretty much have to, or your char will be gimped and several features of the game won't activate.

 

 

How you might ask? I'll spoiler it since this is going to drag on a bit..

 

 

 

Well first up two of the guilds are forced on you durring the main quest (to find Esbern you are directed to speak with Brynjolf, who won't help you unless you join the Thievesguild, and to get the scroll you must speak with Urag at the Collage, but Feralda won't let you pass without force-enducting you into the College). So that's not giving the player much choice there, now is it?

 

Second, you are the Dragonborn, learning shouts is a pretty big deal in the game, but you can never learn them all unless you join and beat every guild's questline, because each of them involves quest-locked dungeons that have wordwalls in them. There is no good reason for this, none of these dungeons HAD to involve a wordwall, they could have put those anywhere else, but no, they made it nessesary to join all the guilds to learn these shouts.

 

And then there's the other unlockables tied to guilds, NPC's not doing their routines untill you join up, Werewolves not spawning in the world unless you become a Companion, and so forth.

 

 

 

Now here's why this is a problem: 

 

Problem 1: They made no effort to justify this. It makes absolutely, positively, no sense what so ever within the games own established narrative and rules that this is possible. The Companions especially, always banging on about honour, how magic is for pussies, and that warrior pride demands they face problems head on, yadda yadda.. why would these people allow a mage/thief/assassin into their guild? It makes no sense at all.

If they were going to make us do all these questlines, then they should have made the effort to tie them togeather, and have it make some semblence of logical sense.

 

Problem 2: Beeing forced to do all these quests also forces the player to play as a jack-of-all-trades non-class, so they can survive these things, or the quests themselves have to be completely gutted to ensure that any class-build can get through them. In Skyrim we got a mix of both. Try getting through the Companions questline som day with a char that has all their perks in stealth and magic... it sucks! Hard! If you set out to play a stealth-mage, then you don't have enough health, most of your perks are rendered worthless by the quest design, and your forced followers will give you crap for trying to use the weapons you've put stats into, the whole thing is just broken (which is why an Arcane-Rogue shoulden't be expected to join the warriors guild in the first place!). But on the flipside, we also have the College-questline, where you can not only join, but become the Archmage whilst having only cast two novice-level spells your entire life, and beating the entire questline relying only on heavy-armor and a war-hammer. This questline is completely and utterly gutted of any meaning, narrative or purpose so that warrior classes can play through it without having to spend their points on magica.

 

 

Bad storries told badly, that's where this leads us.

 

Hey let's have a Thieves guild in the game! But uhh.. we can't really have it's quest involve any theft, because we can't be sure that players joining the guild spend any points in sneak, pickpocket or lockpicking, so uhmm.. let's just have it be a revenge story where the player stabs things a lot.

 

And a mages guild! Except we can't really expect every player to invest into magic, so let's just not have magic play any part in the questline. We'll just have the player fight some more Draugr, that'll do!

 

Assassins are cool, so we need those! Except that might require sneak skills... nah we'll just ensure there's no real failure states for getting caught or anything, aslong as the player stabs things dead that'll do.

 

We gotta have a bards college too! Except speech skills.. and it would require effort.. pile on more Draugr!

 

And a warriors guild, of course! Only that would require... ohh sod it, more draugr, more bandits, lets just cram them in there.

 

 

Guild questing! It all boils down to stabbing things, since we can't expect anything more from the player. Enjoy!

 

 

 

You are even greedier than me What you are saying is you want to have access to everything without doing any guild quest...or any quest? You want all the shout, all the services guilds provides, all the content that's a decision that you made, but at the same time you want to get all that by not doing anything that you don't want to. While it isn't exactly something I am against, but at the same time I can say I want to do all the quests, I want to get shout without doing the main quest, I want to have a character that can do everything...you get the idea.

 

And as mentioned by someone earlier you don't have to do all of the guild quests to get through the main quest, isn't showing the player a little bit of what's available for pursuit reasonable?

If we want to put Skyrim, nay, the entire TES/FO series under a microscope and criticize it, I would say that none of them really have a great storyline nor narrative, if you want to say that the storying telling is bad, the quest design are poor, sure I am with you 100%, but at the same time I don't really care about that aspect of these games. For me it is more about the open world the wide variety of options to do different things. Gameplay wise the ability to be a jack of all trade character is the only way to satisfy all those requirements.

 

I read it less as "I want it all and I want it now" than "they did a shit job with this and it could be done a lot better". Silly restrictions or lack thereof in silly places. Blocked access content is all well and good, if it's done right. Blocking off a guild because of lack of skill in that guild's primary skill set? Great implementation! Items or locations blocked off by things that actually require skills you lack? Great! But there's no reason werewolves should be locked out behind joining the Companions, and there's no reason certain doors with certain word walls should be locked just because you haven't progressed that far in a quest line without a sensible explanation beyond "this lock requires a certain key to unlock". Say, you have to use a super spell to move a boulder to get to a word wall within, but that event is only triggered a certain way through the mages' guild. It's perfectly plausible why a warrior or thief couldn't move the ten-ton boulder. But just locking the door, as is most often the case in Skyrim, is lazy and stupid.

[zzz72w3r]

 

 

 

 

 

Skyrim forces you to do all the guild quests, it was not only designed to allow you to do it, you pretty much have to, or your char will be gimped and several features of the game won't activate.

 

 

How you might ask? I'll spoiler it since this is going to drag on a bit..

 

 

 

Well first up two of the guilds are forced on you durring the main quest (to find Esbern you are directed to speak with Brynjolf, who won't help you unless you join the Thievesguild, and to get the scroll you must speak with Urag at the Collage, but Feralda won't let you pass without force-enducting you into the College). So that's not giving the player much choice there, now is it?

 

Second, you are the Dragonborn, learning shouts is a pretty big deal in the game, but you can never learn them all unless you join and beat every guild's questline, because each of them involves quest-locked dungeons that have wordwalls in them. There is no good reason for this, none of these dungeons HAD to involve a wordwall, they could have put those anywhere else, but no, they made it nessesary to join all the guilds to learn these shouts.

 

And then there's the other unlockables tied to guilds, NPC's not doing their routines untill you join up, Werewolves not spawning in the world unless you become a Companion, and so forth.

 

 

 

Now here's why this is a problem: 

 

Problem 1: They made no effort to justify this. It makes absolutely, positively, no sense what so ever within the games own established narrative and rules that this is possible. The Companions especially, always banging on about honour, how magic is for pussies, and that warrior pride demands they face problems head on, yadda yadda.. why would these people allow a mage/thief/assassin into their guild? It makes no sense at all.

If they were going to make us do all these questlines, then they should have made the effort to tie them togeather, and have it make some semblence of logical sense.

 

Problem 2: Beeing forced to do all these quests also forces the player to play as a jack-of-all-trades non-class, so they can survive these things, or the quests themselves have to be completely gutted to ensure that any class-build can get through them. In Skyrim we got a mix of both. Try getting through the Companions questline som day with a char that has all their perks in stealth and magic... it sucks! Hard! If you set out to play a stealth-mage, then you don't have enough health, most of your perks are rendered worthless by the quest design, and your forced followers will give you crap for trying to use the weapons you've put stats into, the whole thing is just broken (which is why an Arcane-Rogue shoulden't be expected to join the warriors guild in the first place!). But on the flipside, we also have the College-questline, where you can not only join, but become the Archmage whilst having only cast two novice-level spells your entire life, and beating the entire questline relying only on heavy-armor and a war-hammer. This questline is completely and utterly gutted of any meaning, narrative or purpose so that warrior classes can play through it without having to spend their points on magica.

 

 

Bad storries told badly, that's where this leads us.

 

Hey let's have a Thieves guild in the game! But uhh.. we can't really have it's quest involve any theft, because we can't be sure that players joining the guild spend any points in sneak, pickpocket or lockpicking, so uhmm.. let's just have it be a revenge story where the player stabs things a lot.

 

And a mages guild! Except we can't really expect every player to invest into magic, so let's just not have magic play any part in the questline. We'll just have the player fight some more Draugr, that'll do!

 

Assassins are cool, so we need those! Except that might require sneak skills... nah we'll just ensure there's no real failure states for getting caught or anything, aslong as the player stabs things dead that'll do.

 

We gotta have a bards college too! Except speech skills.. and it would require effort.. pile on more Draugr!

 

And a warriors guild, of course! Only that would require... ohh sod it, more draugr, more bandits, lets just cram them in there.

 

 

Guild questing! It all boils down to stabbing things, since we can't expect anything more from the player. Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

You are even greedier than me What you are saying is you want to have access to everything without doing any guild quest...or any quest? You want all the shout, all the services guilds provides, all the content that's a decision that you made, but at the same time you want to get all that by not doing anything that you don't want to. While it isn't exactly something I am against, but at the same time I can say I want to do all the quests, I want to get shout without doing the main quest, I want to have a character that can do everything...you get the idea.

 

And as mentioned by someone earlier you don't have to do all of the guild quests to get through the main quest, isn't showing the player a little bit of what's available for pursuit reasonable?

If we want to put Skyrim, nay, the entire TES/FO series under a microscope and criticize it, I would say that none of them really have a great storyline nor narrative, if you want to say that the storying telling is bad, the quest design are poor, sure I am with you 100%, but at the same time I don't really care about that aspect of these games. For me it is more about the open world the wide variety of options to do different things. Gameplay wise the ability to be a jack of all trade character is the only way to satisfy all those requirements.

 

 

Can you explain the difference between an artificial sense of satisfaction and a non-artificial one? Because to me something either is satisfying or not. It's the freedom that you speak of that is artificial; a freedom of making empty choices.

 

 

 

From the design perspective, you can either impose certain rules and restrictions that in turn allow you to go more in-depth with the design, or you can go with something more shallow that every kind of character can perform (but not necessarily enjoy). For example, you can design a guild of assassins that is completely open to everyone from a rogue to a knight, or make it so that it fully utilizes certain skills (your ability to deceit, walk in the shadows, poison your victims, kill silently etc.). Why the second one has a bigger potential is obvious: because the designer can focus on making the content more suitable and/or challenging for a certain group of characters, rather than trying to fit there a knight in full plate armor. And it's not even a subject of question which option the player will find more rewarding in terms of his decision to become an assassin. Hence ironically, restrictions may give you a deeper sense of freedom than the lack of thereof. Last but not least, not everyone likes being treated like an idiot who needs to be protected from his own decisions; "Oh, so you decided to go with the barbarian type with two handed axe and fur pants, but now that you think of it, the mages guild is kind of cool? Don't worry bro! You can easily learn a bunch of noob spells and become the archmage because FREEDOM!" Fuck this. Fuck this from the bottom of my heart.

 

For the record, I'm not a fan of Mass Effect. I liked the first game, the second was a bit retarded in the story department, the third one was utter shit (even without the godawful endings).

 

The questions you ask are all valid, however you're barking at the wrong tree. The reason why the player wants to pick the best course of action, is because there is the best curse of action to begin with - the best as in the most rewarding. Game devs tend to implement the retarded black and white morality system, where you can either play Jesus and help everyone, or do something nasty and get less XP, gold, recognition etc. You can conduct a simple thought experiment in your head and think of some cliche quest, in which you can a) help someone, receive 1000 EXP and positive karma or  kill the person, loot his or her corpse for some mid-range items, get 400 XP, see less content and become less popular. Most players will choose a) not only because it's more rewarding, but also because they will get the feeling that this is what the devs expected them to pick - and rightfully so. Now, let's say that when you pick  something different happens: someone notices you were such a mean son of a bitch and has an interesting job offer for the likes of you, or simply by killing the person you can get some very unique item that is unobtainable otherwise. By balancing the content and rewards you can render even a simple choice an interesting dilemma for the player.

 

Access to information. You can always spoil yourself the fun if you want to, even if the game is completely linear. However, there's a subtle difference between watching something on yt and doing it with your very own character that you grow attached to. Besides, one day you may feel like playing a kind hearted knight, some other day you want to be a necromancer and feast upon innocent souls. Everything is a matter of execution; as long as the optional content is good, there's always replay value in it.

 

It is artificial because Skyrim already let player pick seemingly contradictory choices, that is set in stone, you have the ability to pick to do something or not to do something to fit whatever narrative you want to create, but you can't get the thought of always being able to go back and pick up the other route out of your head, you feel that it devalue your "empty choice", you want the game to step in and effectively cut out part of the game for you to feel vindicated.

That's the precisely the problem with choices in games sometimes it is created to make the player feel like they did something of value, it devolved into something of a gimmick. Some games handle it better than others, and quite frankly I don't have enough faith in Bethesda to it pull off well.

I feel like Mass Effect did it ok, Walking Dead is basically pick between the shitty choices and see how it plays out worse than you thought it would which might or might not work for depending on what the player is after.

 

 

 

Funny enough base on what I have seen, what player wants from TES/FO games are often contradictory. They want a good story and narrative, but these are things that linear game excel at because they have typically have more control on pacing, progression, and characters. Yet god help us if dev puts a lid on open world exploration, take control of who the main character is stint character progression and focus player down a particular path.

 

 

I don't think it's contradictory, it's just that technology hasn't reached the point where we can have a big open world that seamlessly reshapes itself to how we decide to play the game.  It's human nature that we see the flaws between linear and sandbox RPG and don't see the improvements each new generation made in trying to get us there.  Hopefully soon and computer RPG will finally evolve into a true art form.
 

[afa]

Again, I won't disagree with criticism on Skyrim's poor quest design and progression, but ultimately it does boils down to each individual's wants and needs from the game and how easy or hard time they want to have access to each of the content. The fact that we are having this discussion is already showing how we are trained by this type of open world game differently than from the typical non sand box games. And yes I agree that it is natural we are seeing the seams and flaws of current generation the longer and more we stare at it. However I honestly don't know if it is a solvable problem at a large scale even with man power and technology.

 

You can have the most decked out intrinsic narrative with multiple exclusive path and choices, but you would have to expect some common thread between all of them or else you are better off playing a completely different game. And with the hate on Dawnguard and the Civil war I am guessing people are starting to sour on to the "good" vs "bad", A vs B morally grey binary choice. They want interplay between decisions and path divergent which once again we are faced with the question is the interests in the actual choices and outcomes themselves or is the interests purely on knowing the fact that multiple choices exist therefore giving us the illusion of worth, and if that is ok.

This is amplified when you consider these games are long seemingly never ending there are people who might only have one save, one character through out their time with it, and replaying it could means hundreds if not thousand hours of investment.

[Coopervane]

I read it less as "I want it all and I want it now" than "they did a shit job with this and it could be done a lot better". Silly restrictions or lack thereof in silly places. Blocked access content is all well and good, if it's done right. Blocking off a guild because of lack of skill in that guild's primary skill set? Great implementation! Items or locations blocked off by things that actually require skills you lack? Great! But there's no reason werewolves should be locked out behind joining the Companions, and there's no reason certain doors with certain word walls should be locked just because you haven't progressed that far in a quest line without a sensible explanation beyond "this lock requires a certain key to unlock". Say, you have to use a super spell to move a boulder to get to a word wall within, but that event is only triggered a certain way through the mages' guild. It's perfectly plausible why a warrior or thief couldn't move the ten-ton boulder. But just locking the door, as is most often the case in Skyrim, is lazy and stupid.

 

That, and also i just plain want to abillity to say "no".

 

No i don't want to join the Companions in this save game, my Char is an Elf, a mage and a thief, she woulden't want to join them, she has no need for heavy-armor training because she never ever wears the stuff, she never uses two-handed weapons, she steals stuff, she sets things on fire, she hides in shadows, she is everything that the Companions hate, and she in turn does not like them, and certainly doesen't want to be given a 2-handed axe that specifically hurts Elves, she would find that very offensive!

 

But.. that means that from the moment i leave Riverwood to go to Whiterun, i will have "JOIN THE COMPANIONS, BITCH!" stabled to my quest journal, sitting there every single time i open the bloody thing for the rest of the game, and i can never get rid of that entry. I will never encounter a Werewolf, I will never get the fire-breath shout (because you know, the Companions are so into magic that it makes tons of sense that they gate off that content), and i'll never be able to do the Stones of Barenziah quest despite beeing a thief, because one of the stones are only avalible by joining the Companions. To resolve any of these issues, which have no reason to exist in the first place and could easilly have been prevented, i will be forced to join the Companions.

 

 

Well, obviously i've got mods installed the resolves most of these problems (though not all), but i shoulden't have to, the questline should be optional. And yes, that is all that i am saying, these questlines should be optional, you should be given the option to say "nah, i don't want to do that on this save" and remove it from your quest journal if you so desire. And a quest that belongs to the Thievesguild (the Stones of Barenziah) shoulden't have been deseigned in such a way that it forces you into other guilds (you should have been able to get those stones via.. you know, thievery! As would make sense for a thief!).

 

 

You lads talk about freedom of choice, but what about the simple freedom to say "Nops, does not want"? That's all i'm asking for here.

 

 

Well that, and also these guild quests could all have been waaaay better designed if they just had a skill requirement to join. Because Bethesda made it so any Level-1 player could just stumble in the door and be accepted into the guild, they painted themselves into a corner. We have a mages guild, buuut.. we don't know if the player can actually cast any useful spells, so we can't make magic play any important part of the quests. We have a Thievesguild, but since just any idiot can join, we have no idea if they can pick a pocket or sneak, so we can't make that a focus of the questline..

 

 

So have skill checks, tell the player "Nope, sorry, you suck at sneaking so you can't join the Thieves guild yet, you can go train your skills with this bloke over here, and then come back to me when you don't suck", and we could have quests that actually involve guild appropriate content, making those questlines way better and more fun to play. That would be nice.

[ElectricSheep]

 

It is artificial because Skyrim already let player pick seemingly contradictory choices, that is set in stone, you have the ability to pick to do something or not to do something to fit whatever narrative you want to create, but you can't get the thought of always being able to go back and pick up the other route out of your head, you feel that it devalue your "empty choice", you want the game to step in and effectively cut out part of the game for you to feel vindicated.

You misunderstood me completely. I don't want restrictions for the sake of them being there, I want restrictions because they allow more in-depth content. There's a saying in my native, "If something is for everyone, it's for no one". You can't have, say, an epic magic duel between two masters of magic at the end of the mages guild questline, because the guild imposes no real requirements, hence the designer has to make it so that any character can pull it off.

 

And by restrictions I don't mean only conditions of entry, but requirements in order to progress further in the guild ladder as well. It's stupid when you can do all the quests in a row; when you finish the mages questline or the DB one, you should really have the skills of a master mage or master assassin.

 

 

I totally agree with you guys though, that locking certain content (like werewolves) behind guilds/organizations is retarded.

[Sacremas]

This is a bit why the Mage's Guild questline is my favorite questline in Skyrim other than DB, it's well thought-out, and the quest-locked doors actually make sense. Okay Fellglow Keep's Stone of Barenziah does not, but the Galudur Amulet and the shout in Sarthaal is sealed behind a magical barrier with a big old tingabog at the end, and of course Labyrinthian is magically sealed up so you need a quest item (the Torq) to enter it, and you see ghostly reflections of the past exactly why this is. This is the most famous dungeon in all of Skyrim so it makes sense to both have a dragon priest and a shout in there, it's the sort of place you'd expect it to be something like that. And the rest of the questline isn't too bad, it's short (four dungeons, some mucking at the College and that's it) to the point, pretty epic with a end of the world thing at stake, got believable and even likable characters in it, etc. There's evidence in the game files (lines Faralda can speak that was cut) that indicate that originally Bethesda wanted to do it exactly like you say, she was supposed to be able to actually tell you at the bridge that no, you're just not good enough a mage and you can't enter. But of course that would have cut the causals off from the shouts, Galudur Amulet and Khonarik without investing their character deep in magic, which is probably why the dropped it.

 

As was pointed out a few times, the Dawnguard and Civil War storylines are the most disliked storylines, and those allow exactly the same choice and cut-off point that you guys are asking for. I don't think there will be many of these type of quests other than alternate endings to some quests like the end of the Pitt in Fallout 4 based on this reception of the quests that actually worked like the quests in Morrowind did.

 

EDIT: Okay one thing in the Mages Guild does not make sense the whole Galdur amulet, why the hell is the Galdur Brother the final guardian of the Eye of Magnus? I mean that thing got sealed away around Ysgramor's days, and Galdur was way later, and the other brothers are in much more accessible dungeons, and more to the fact actually in coffins when you find them, rather than sitting there guarding some artifact. Stupid decision to put him there, should have been in another dungeon then put a Death Overlord or the like protecting the Eye instead.

[ElectricSheep]

 

As was pointed out a few times, the Dawnguard and Civil War storylines are the most disliked storylines, and those allow exactly the same choice and cut-off point that you guys are asking for. 

I barely touched the main quest in Skyrim (I didn't want to trigger the dragons), so I have no idea what Civil War is all about, but from what I've read people hate it due to how poorly implemented and content lacking it is. I did, however, finish Dawnguard and it's NOTHING how I imagine properly executed choices and consequences. The whole questline is insanely retarded and whack-a-mole, hence it's no wonder why people tend to dislike it. Serana and her juvenile dialogue lines is enough to facepalm on regular basis.

[Sacremas]

The OP should probably rename the thread to "Hate on Skyrim" since that's what it has turned into. but then most threads would need renaming.

 

Well if you give us tangible new Fallout info we'd be happy to discuss that instead.

[ElectricSheep]

What's really productive, is complaining about complaining.