» Mon Jun 18, 2012 7:52 pm
Ok so Ill just paste what I wrote previously...
In the past, Bethesda has always had some great flaws in its dlcs, and these tend to be small things that drastically impact the whole, and would have been very easy to fix.
1. Integration in the gameworld: One of the most immersion breaking things for me is when a journal entry just pops up and tells me I've "heard rumors" right when I get out of the Tutorial Dungeon.
Example- Almost all dlc's except perhaps Knights of the Nine (which had the mistake of killing off an important master trainer of restoration skill. As well as the chapel was destroyed form the very beginning)
Fix- Add some dialogue that you may hear when you go to a certain region or certain circumstances are met.
2. Game Balance: Oftentimes in advertising in a Dlc, one of the selling points is powerful new weapons and armor, as well as new enemies to fight. Oftentimes, these are incredibly overpowered and that impacts the game drastically, for it removes any need to aquire new gear and makes you invincible. The thing with overpowered enemies is that in skyrim the difficulty doesn't really make the game more challenging as much as it makes it tedious.
This has the effect of making the game become very stale as the challenge and its related satisfaction is nonexistent, and it turns into a chore simulator.
Example: All of them except perhaps the Orrery, Spell Tomes, perhaps Zeta. (The Orrery actually broke a certain quest in the mages guild, as well as directly contradicting it.) The worst example was probably fallout 3 dlc: Anchorage gave you an unbreakable version of the best and hardest to find armor in the game, Pitt gave you an overpowered melee weapon, Broken Steel pretty much destroyed any balance from the perks, and has too many game breaking features for me to mention. Point lookout's enemies were insanely tedious to kill, having huge health bars and an insane amount of extra unblockable damage per hit.
Fix- Why not introduce new weapons, armor, and enemies that actually harness new gameplay, instead of being overpowered.
3. Game Design: In ES/Fallout 3, what makes the game fun is how you have freedom, in the past, especially fallout 3, the dlcs force you to do one thing, usually combat, which by itself is not very well designed in the first place, the most succesful dlc's have been the ones where they give you an open world and allow you to explore it, with the choice of how you approach different situations, be it stealth, magick, melee, or archery. Those linear combat dlc's that bethesda seems so fond of completely defy the open-endedness of such a game. A good Dlc should stick to the games strengths, not its weaknesses.
Examples: Anchorage, Zeta, Broken Steel, Kotn to an extent.
Fix- Play to the game's strengths, with an open world where you have exploration, choice, and freedom.