Except they didn't have to do everything from scratch. That would have meant a new engine. Which Skyrim doesn't have. It's the same engine tarted up. And they had years to do that in. And AFAIK a bigger budget with a bigger team. Whichever way you look at it, Bethesda do not deliver when you factor in the time and resources they have available.

Actually only about 3 years. Fallout 3 was released in 2008, Skyrim came out in 2011, which is why I think they should have spent a bit more time on Skyrim, three years doesn't seem like a long enough time to develop such a large and complex game.

Yeah, that's not how development works...

All that we can hope for is a DLC made by Obsidian


PLEASE

But New Vegas still expanded on it. It has new textures, new animations, new art assets, new objects (OWB and Dead Money in particular have tons of new objects) etc.

And Oblivion was made 4 years after Morrowind. They had to do all of that again and we still saw improvements to everything (not including story and such, as many people disagree, but I mean improvements to graphics etc). Oblivion allowed for companions, it had totally new graphics and textures, they had to make all the world objects etc. How do you explain Oblivion making wide strives in several categories (NPC AI and scheduling) and yet Skyrim only made wide strives in....well, the graphics.

I think the point is the time feels wasted. It was 5 years they worked on Skyrim but the companion mechanics are EXACTLY the same as FO3. A lot is exactly the same as it was 4-6 years ago. There's no reason why that should be the case, they had plenty of time.

They only worked on Skyrim for 3 years, not 5.

Oh right. I must have imagined stuff like the .357 loading animation. Or maybe I forgot F3 had those too.

And I guess having iron sights that tried to reflect to some degree your guns skill, strength and recoil was a really bad idea. Thogh I don't recall 'not being able to fire' - there was that bug linked to the new loading animations they apparently didn't have but I thought that was fixed.

If the companion wheel took 'five minutes', why d'you suppose it was apparently beyond the ability of Bethesda to utilise something so functional? Surely one of their devs had a spare five minutes?

I guess I'm missing the superiority of F3 and Skyrim quests where you have to follow a set of rails with basically no deviation at all. It was so much better to decide to help President Eden yet still be an enemy of the Enclave no matter how much you might actually want to join them. I guess I'm not apprecating the wonder of people dressed as super heros and an underground city full of annoying children. You're right - factions are rubbish. It's great to fight alongside the BoS in your Enclave hellfire armour cos they all know you're their friend and the Enclave all know you're their enemy despite being dressed exactly like them and possibly really wanting to be their friend. I feel so immersed fighting alongside Ulfric in my Imperial legion get-up. Or I can have legion soldiers totally ignore me in my Stormcloak uniform as they march their prisoner towards the main strongjold of their enemy. I must cocede the inherent superiority of such game design.

How can they look exactly the same when:

-Fallout 3 had like two lever-action rifles, and the lever-action rifles in New Vegas don't have the same animations as those in FO3.
-Fallout 3 didn't have any guns that loaded one bullet at a time. Every revolver, rifle and shotgun that loads one bullet at a time? That's an original FO:NV creation.
-There's dozens of new guns. ALL the shotgun types are new, every revolver except the .44 magnum is new, the marksman carbine, the assault carbine, the service rifle, the 9mm, every DLC weapon (cept the Yao Guai and Deathclaw guantlets), all lever action rifles except MAYBE the La Lounge Carbine (I never use it so I forget if it's the same animation as the Lincoln repeater). And that's just guns. Explosives and melee have several new weapons too, with unarmed having several new animations.

How the [censored] were the factions not meaningful? Missions they offered, Caesar and NCR look quite different, as does Indy in general. The missions were somewhat similar, yes, but the dialog, rewards, the way people react to your decision, the reputation consequences, the path you take on those same missions etc. were all quite different.

I dunno how the hell you think the iron sights are broken.

And I dunno if you realize, but practically EVERY misc item in Fallout New Vegas has a use. In FO3 you want pre-war books, parts for the crafted weapons and scrap metal. Everything else? Forget it. In New Vegas? Basically you don't need the vacuum cleaner, the motorbike parts (two of them), that one part that was used in the railway rifle....and that's it. Everything else has a use. Yes, even the burned books.



The 5 years time is quoted from Bethesda themselves. Your statement is just speculation.They've confirmed otherwise.

It doesn't work like that. They were already started on their next as yet unannouced project (probably F4) before finishing Skyrim. Skyrim was in development for 5 years.

Really ? I was pretty sure I heard Todd Howard say in an interview they started work on Skyrim immediately after Fallout 3 was released.

Wow that changes my views on Skyrim a bit then.

Because graphics are not "just graphics".

It includes the physics, the animation, the weather, the lightning, the textures, the snow, the effects and all of these working together. And they are just as key element to the game's feel as "more new weapons".

And apparently you seemengly missed some of the main differences in Skyrim, like the dialog system, the dragons, the two-handed equipping system, shouts and other new spell effects. Frankly saying the main improvements are only the graphics is highly ignorant.

And they haven't changed the follower mechanic (actually, they did, but nevermind that), probably because the TES games never really focused on team based gameplay.

He probably meant that they could then give it full focus instead of having to divide time between both. Or maybe during the time that FO3 was also in production, only SOME of the team was working on Skyrim, like graphic designers, but no writers. Things like that.


I don't know if you've noticed, but the physics are exactly the same.
Hell, that glitch where you enter a cell and a dead body might randomly be catapulted upwards? The one from FO3?
Still there. Pretty obvious sign it's the same.


Care to elaborate? Especially on the bolded? The only difference is you're not locked in place.
The dragons are nothing but a mob type. Implying those are hard to develop is like saying mudcrabs take 5 months of development alone.


NEW spell effects? Are you serious? We lost like 14+ types and gained....Uhhh....Clairyvoyance.



Same exact system with FO3. The main change being "I need you to do something for me."
But the point of this thread isn't saying "they haven't improved," it's that the improvements are minimal. It's that some design choices are odd. It's that yes, they DID consider companion improvements, as evidenced by that new order system, and yet they neglected simple additions like companions being able to calculate fall damage, or a companion wheel. Or the rep system.

EDIT: Merv's first post below this? That explains it.

The question is....why?

I probably mix it up with ragdoll physics, as it is definitely improved (no more exploding people turning UFOs for example)

I think the other thing people are missing is that different people are doing different things. The people working on the engine are not the people designing the gameplay. If we're talking about factions, factions already exist in thegame - it's how they're used. We're not just talking about dev time, we're talking about conscious design decisions. For example, Beth have a cavalier attitude to random encounters - it wouldn't be difficult to limit where legion/stormcloak soldiers spawn. It wouldn't be difficult to have faction armour. This thread is really about the game design which is frankly lazy and barely thought out.

Beth have said that was a very late addition. Which is probably why you don't see both weapons on your character.

Actually, what you said was "if New Vegas could do it, why couldn't Skyrim". Then it was pointed out that it didn't work in New Vegas. At that point you said, "well they could have improved on it". So, sounds like you're just starting up a "why isn't Skyrim like New Vegas" thread again.

How the HELL did it not work in New Vegas?

It works PERFECTLY.

No, the idea was always there, with equipable spells, weapons, shields and staves.
The idea that this system can be used to wield two weapons came later.

^ This ^

Except maybe Oh noes! I want to fight for Caesar dressed as an NCR trooper for some reason! No fair!

Sorry, that's what I meant and thought you were referring to.

You know what I think is a huge problem with Bethesda's design philosophy?

Bethesda doesn't know how to tell the customer "no." It's a "the customer's always right" philosophy when they design the game, but the result is that it heavily breaks immersion, because sometimes the customer wants something that....well, is entirely different from your own product or ffs just makes no freaking sense. I mean if a customer says "your Coca Cola should have hunks cheese in it," that might be a case where the customer is wrong.

What ends up happening is Bethesda is afraid to expand on existing mechanics. Someone suggests faction armor and then it's this "what if what if" scenario where Bethesda actually ends up producing NOTHING because they're afraid of stepping on someone's toes.

You know that scene from Evangelion where Shinji is told "ok here's a blank slate, you can make whatever (world) you want." Shinji doesn't know what he wants and makes nothing. The voice then makes suggestions of POSSIBLE things he could make to help him decide. The voice creates a ground for Shinji, then proceeds to explain that now he has something to work with as an advantage, but as a disadvantage, the ground also provides a limit: Shinji can't just effortlessly move down anymore because a ground exists.

This is Bethesda's issue. They know they COULD make the ground, but they're afraid to because they know someone out there somewhere might hate having a limit imposed upon them. Bethesda can't say no.
The bitter irony is that it's IMPOSSIBLE to create a world and not have limits. FFS, you HAVE to become a werewolf to continue a certain quest chain that has nothing to do with werewolves. So why fight it? Why be phobic of limitations if they're a fact of life and an inevitability? Why don't we have logical limitations (faction armor meaning something) and instead we have random illogical ones (becoming a werewolf to complete a major quest chain that has jack to do with werewolves)?

All Bethesda's phobia of limits and of saying "no" is doing is....well, limiting their own creations.

I got killed in Solitude for wearing Stormcloak armour. Does that count?

I would buy a Skyrim expansion from Obsidian before you could blink
I'll think about it if it's made from bethesda and if it's like Shivering isles in scope I'l buy it.
Dlcs are out of the question.

I think that is totally spot on. It really sums up bethesda's attitude to game design.

And I'll go you one further - by doing this, they ironically impose limits

So with factions they limit the player's ability to make choices about their alignment. In NV you could meaningfully ally yourself with, say, the NCR. You could put on the armour and be treated differently. Legion soldiers recognised an enemy - they didn't let you stroll into their camp in NCR armour and give you quests. By trying not to offend people who want to be all things at all times, they render huge chunks of gameplay meaningless and severely limit the experience. And design the entire game around the assumption everybody wants to be everything and they'll have a tantrum if they have to make choices. Which means the people who like to have to think about what they're doing get nothing. This feeds into they way they actively railroad you towards all the guilds - they assume every player wants to be boss of every giuld and needs multiple sledgehammer prompts to join them just in case they're wandering round in some kind of daze. In essence, they seem to think their core demographic is spoiled morons.

You can't built yourself a reputation because the game won't let you. You can upset whoever you like - they'll still deal with you. Being the head of the thieves guild is meaningless because nobody sees you as this crime boss and the jarl still makes you thane - this limits your experience as you can't play out being different people from different angles without the old well you use your imagination - because in 2012 we're apparently still playing pen and paper D'n'D to make up for Bethesda's fear of limiting anybody from doing anything.

With werewolves, they simply see it as a super power, assume you want it as it's a super power and impose a really insignificant 'penalty' you'll likely not even notice. So they limit your gameplay (what if you don't want to be a werewolf, particularly for RP reasons?) because they assume they've made it simply desirable. Vampires were IMO much better as they had definite downsides that really made you consider if it's a good ide. People complain vampires are underdeveloped, so what happens? Now it's going to be an uber super power. Rather than make them more interesting, they decide to turn them into super vampires.
And there's factions again - I've never played a vampire, but knowing Bethesda I'm guessing other vampires in dungeons or random encounters still attack on sight. If vampires were a sub faction, a benefit of being one could have been other vampires leave you alone unless they have a situational reason to attack.

When you first play Skyrim it looks like it's a complex game. With a few hours under your belt, you realise it's absurdly simplistic and totally unsophisticated in its design. Because, like you say, they just want to pander to possibility someone will e.g. moan they dressed up as someone and incredibly got treated like they're a member of the faction they're dressed up as.

Perfectly? I'm beginning to think that you're an Obsidian developer. Aside from the obvious flaws with faction armor, that game is probably the most buggy in history (speaking of critical defects). If I had never played the game in my life and only gathered information about it from your posts, I would think that it's the best game ever created. Then, I'd purchase it, pop it in, and be swiftly disappointed.

I'm guessing that you must have played it on the PC. I play it on the Xbox (still really try hard to play it... though some critical bug, be it a system crash, corrupted saves, or a quest-breaking bug, will always inevitably appear within a few hours of playing it forcing me to quit for another few months). I'd imagine with the PC there are mods and unofficial patches that take care of the many bugs that console players were just abandoned with by Obsidian/Bethesda after they decided not to support the piece of junk any longer.