To you, it's a poor design choice. You can't universalize your opinion.

Well if it isn't a poor design choice than you must be a fan of it. You can't dislike it and say it isn't a poor design choice. If you dislike it than what is it?

No.

See, when you just put the adjective "poor" or "bad" before something, it sounds as though you're passing a universal, objective judgment on it. I think it was a design choice that I would have liked to see done differently, but I can't say that I care all that much about it. Especially not enough to think that everyone could agree it was a bad choice.

IGN: Will the PC version support DirectX 11?

Todd Howard: Yes, but I guess the real question here is do we take advantage of DX11's big new features and the answer is 'not specifically'. Our graphics work centers around doing things that will look the same regardless of platform, and sometimes that implementation will be different on the 360, PS3, and PC.

(a year ago)


...


My question is: WHEN the PC version will support DirectX 11 ? http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?&app=forums&module=extras§ion=legends#

I'd like to know something about the process used to ensure that NPC comments are appropriate based on your status in the game at any given time.

Obviously there are some weaknesses in this regard that have been noted by many players.

It would be one thing if this was was consistent throughout the game however, it isn't as in some cases an NPC's comment does recognize your actions, e.g., "thanks for helping with that East Empire thing" and in others, as many forum members have indicated, there seems to be no recognition of your major "accomplishments", e.g., after becoming Harbinger, you still hear the "fetch the mead" thing; after becoming "Arch Mage" some NPCs still advise you to visit Winterhold if you want to learn more about magic, etc.

Same with apparent weakness in game logic, e.g., why do Vigilants of Stendarr not attack you if you're running around with a daedric artifact in plain view, why can you still wander into the "opposing side" HQ without being confronted if you've already joined the other side in the civil war ... or even as Joe Blow off the street, why can you just wander into an HQ and hear the leader's "plans"?

Would be nice to know what process is followed to avoid this type of stuff and why, from a player's perspective, does it not seem to have been followed through some blatantly obvious cases?

It would be nice to know why they offer strong support for the modding community, yet still have problems supporting proper dialogue for racial variances, including custom races. For example, it's pretty silly to be playing a Breton but have NPCs refer to you as a Nord. Likewise, if you make a custom race, the game doesn't seem to have the ability to offer dialogue that does not match the default races. Offering such dialogue is fairly simple and the community has done so in past Beth games, so there's no reason for Beth not to include it.

More importantly... it would be nice to know why they do not demonstrate recognition that the majority of the feedback on their character aesthetics is that the visuals are terrible, just as the feedback on the environment aesthetics is that the visuals are stunningly gorgeous. This has been true since Morrowind, so continuing to claim that players can choose who they play but only offer extremely unappealing character aesthetic choices just does not make sense, and could be argued to be false advertising. This is even more damaging since Beth has managed to become a successful global company rather than only success in specific global markets. Offering players the choice of how their characters look (and sound, for that matter) only helps Beth sell more copies. In an RPG, this is a requirement, so it really doesn't make sense to refuse to allow players to choose their preferences.

Isn't that extremely subjective? I think the aesthetics are fine (The feet could be better, that's for sure).

Also, to the thread in general... The questions have more chances of being answered if they aren't asked in a accusatory way. >_>

It is, and it's exactly the reason that I hate fan interviews. They inevitably end up being a series of answers to relatively uninteresting questions, because no one is able to phrase a decent question in a way that doesn't sound like they're verbally assaulting the developers.

About the PS3 issues being experienced by a minority of players: sure there's no evidence that a majority of players were affected by it, but what evidence is there that there wasn't? All you have is Todd Howard's word that only a "minority" experienced it, when in all actuality we have no idea what the numbers are. What about all the people that experienced issues with it that don't comment on forums? Again, there is no way of knowing, so you can't support yourself any more than those who are saying it is a majority.

I can support myself with the official word on the matter from Bethesda. So unless you assume that they lied in public statements (which you would have to back up), then you have to accept that they're telling the truth.

And I did this on another thread, but here it is again. There were 500,000 pre-order copies of Skyrim alone. That means that at least 5,000 people would need to be experiencing the problem for it to affect 1% of the PS3 playerbase. Even if we assume that the support forum only represents a small portion of the people experiencing any given issue, it would be difficult to dredge up even 1,000 unique user posts on that topic. And remember, that number represents a percentage of pre-orders alone. I'm assuming that the numbers are even higher for actual sales, so we're talking about way, way more people needing to experience the issue before it can be considered more than a tiny fraction of the PS3 playerbase.

Wait, what? How could you possibly know that they're telling the truth? Are you assuming now that everything Todd Howard says is truth? Because as I've said, there's no feasible way of knowing exactly how many players are experiencing issues. Even Bethesda can't know this. Sure, some people have sent in their save files, but even if they are making those statements based on those save files, it's still only a very small sample.

Where is our DLC...?

Reactions are based on factions. Each NPC and creature is grouped under a faction and there are global settings that controls the AI behaviour when two actors from different factions are placed within sight. The reaction can be assertive (ie help someone fight), neutral (don't care) or negative (will attack on sight). There's nothing really new under the sun.

Back on topic, as I explained in the first post the purpose of this interview is not to ask punctual questions about bug and glitches... you wouldn't get past a generic answer and I can perfectly understand why. I am more interested in discussing design, how things changed at Bethesda before and after and some anecdotes. So far, I think only half of the people understood this and try to come up with interesting questions that go beyond the usual "why this/that doesn't work".

While I understand the frustration with missing features and glitches, this isn't in the spirit of a "post mortem".

I would like to know why Bethesda isn't out trying to hire some of these mods to help improve the quality in Skyrim? I want to know why the civil war was such a drag? It seemed heavily rush. Why didn't they hire more voice actors? Hearing the same voice actors on different NPC becoming irritating after a while.

Since this isn't in the spoiler category I'm unable to say the rest as it may upset a lot of people ;/

Hear, hear!

1) To answer the first one, there is at least one known case of a mod-maker being hired by Bethesda. But there are a number of reasons that they wouldn't hire every single mod-maker who makes a popular mod for the game.

2) Are you actually interested in an answer from the developers? Because rudely phrased questions rarely inspire people to answer them.

3) Due to the size and scope of any Elder Scrolls game, you're going to hear the same voices for NPCs at a certain point. Skyrim was head and shoulders above Oblivion, and they had a very good variety of voice actors, all things considered. They have to make the balance between quality and quantity, and the designers seem to have found it.

Last time I checked, my character has two hands.

Why can I wear only one ring?

For the same reason you had 10 fingers in Oblivion but could only wear 2 rings

Yeah, it's all about "Balance". GOD FORBID someone actually find a way to exploit THEIR SINGLE PLAYER EXPERIENCE.

Another question:

"Skyrim's engine allows better graphics, and this allows better visual mods. What do you think of the popular visual mods out there?" (like, say... IDK, PureWaters? Something like that)

Added a couple of misc questions... This weekend I'll try to submit the idea to a couple of administrators of the site and see if they can get through directly to someone at Bethesda who can decide the fate of this interview.

I'm afraid I fell a bit out of the loop regarding the people who work there. Is there a community PR manager to whom I could ask directly?

Oh, another one.

3. Has the development team been inspired by any mods out there? And would they consider implementing similiar features to those mods in future FO or TES games?

Another question:
"Is there anyone from dev team that submitted a mod?"

Because to be honest, IDK.

And another one:
"Who is the model of Tullius and Ulfric?"

This question was already included, albeit in a slightly different form, in part I
For general Tullius it's obvioulsy Julius Caesar; look at this roman bust carved when Caesar was still alive: http://www.thehistoryblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Buste_cesar.jpg Caesar is incidentally also the military general who conquered most of northern Europe and brought it under Latin rule. It was sent there officially to 'pacify' the region helping some Celtic tribes which were allied to the Romans. See the parallelism?

Nothing in Skyrim can possibly be about "balance". It is as if Bethesda's only concern when it comes to "balance" was to avoid it to one extreme or the other.