Jdrez wrote on Dec 13, 2010, 18:03:

not going the console/mainstream way

You're kidding right?

Come on. You know it's over. This game won't be the Morrowind successor that us old school PC people want. I don't know what it will be, but I'll bet my kidneys and anything else you want that it will, in fact, be 100% directed at console.

The reason games as we once knew them went away is it became a socially acceptable hobby, and now all the "normal" people play. And the hardcore are a serious minority.

Our wallets don't speak loudly enough for AAA devs to worry about our wants when they know that Halo/Gears of War nation will buy three million copies of their 360 game.

Sorry.

Jerykk wrote on Dec 14, 2010, 02:47:
Morrowind was lacking most of the fundamental RPG tenets. There were no moral choices and the vast majority of quests were completely linear.

finga wrote on Dec 14, 2010, 06:19:
With regard to the quests, that's what I meant - you could do them all. Your choice was what order to do them in.

As far as the skill checks go, no, it didn't have them in your narrow definition of the term, but it most certainly did "check" your skill when casting spells, fighting tougher enemies, and yes, performing stealth moves. Persuasion skill did something, and I'll leave it to you to try and recall how it affected your persuasion attempts. (Hint: these games did what you're alleging they didn't, but they did it in a way that you didn't want or expect.)

Morrowind and Oblivion are action-RPGs, as much action as they are RPG. If you disagree, well, take a look at something like Borderlands to see the kind of game you're actually trying to describe.

(Why do people think that forcing players to make mutually exclusive choices is some keystone, vitally important element to RPGs? For me, the key element is in making meaningful choices for your avatar(s) in the world, and Bethesda's games most certainly did that, through gear, skills, and the missions you chose to complete. The simple fact that these games mostly didn't close off one path of advancement just because you chose another does not automatically make them not-an-RPG.)

Both of those games have real-time combat, which is already a pretty big concession towards the same accessibility I'm talking about. Also, Dragon Age had four characters instead of Baldur's Gate's six, and New Vegas still had things like VATS. These games are compromises on the old days of RPGs as well.

Oblivion and Morrowind both also had everything you're talking about, except maybe choice and consequence in that there was generally only one solution to almost every quest, and your choice was more in the multiple quest lines you could advance at any given time, letting you choose which to advance next.

Jdrez wrote on Dec 13, 2010, 18:03:
Our wallets don't speak loudly enough for AAA devs to worry about our wants when they know that Halo/Gears of War nation will buy three million copies of their 360 game.

Jdrez wrote on Dec 13, 2010, 18:03:
Our wallets don't speak loudly enough for AAA devs to worry about our wants when they know that Halo/Gears of War nation will buy three million copies of their 360 game.

not going the console/mainstream way

Jerykk wrote on Dec 13, 2010, 12:12:
You do realize that there have been successful, big-budget RPGs right? Dragon Age and Fallout: New Vegas come to mind. Both games retain traditional RPG elements like stats-based gameplay, skill checks, choice & consequence, etc. Adding these things to the Elder Scrolls series wouldn't hurt sales at all. If anything, it would improve them.

Rhuantavan wrote on Dec 13, 2010, 08:32:
You should try playing Nehrim, a TC mod for Oblivion. This is what Oblivion should have been in the first place.

Creston wrote on Dec 13, 2010, 13:44:
You mean Jorge Oscuro? Sotobrastos? I believe he was hired by Obsidian and worked on FO:NV. Unless he was a loaner from Bethesda or something.

Mashiki Amiketo wrote on Dec 12, 2010, 18:57:

Slashman wrote on Dec 12, 2010, 18:46:
Actually, I'd just like for them to revamp the spell system so all fire spells don't look the same and work the same as all ice spells etc. etc.

Why the hell couldn't we have wall of fire type spells and large AoE spells without resorting to mods?

I'm sure you'll be happy to know that the guy who did OOO got hired on by Bethesda and is working as part of the team doing the spell system.

Jerykk wrote on Dec 13, 2010, 12:12:
You do realize that there have been successful, big-budget RPGs right? Dragon Age and Fallout: New Vegas come to mind. Both games retain traditional RPG elements like stats-based gameplay, skill checks, choice & consequence, etc. Adding these things to the Elder Scrolls series wouldn't hurt sales at all. If anything, it would improve them.

There is no developer out there that can make money by spending tens of millions on a game with huge production budgets and then give it trudging turn-based combat and RPG systems only an autistic person can decode. If you want the game to be bigger than life, you're going to have to "deal" with accessibility. And if you have to have your sperged-out RPG ridiculousness, then I hear there are a lot of indie RPG developers out there making your game (Dwarf Fortress, Avernum, etc). Go enjoy those for what they are, and then enjoy a game like Oblivion (and probably TESV) for what it is. You can't have both in the same game. The perfect game for you is a retail failure, and these creative minds *do* have mouths to feed.

http://twitter.com/#!/nickbreckon/status/14015054991069184

Mashiki Amiketo wrote on Dec 12, 2010, 20:58:
Animations are handled by the engine but are limited to the person writing the animation files. Just to burst your bubble, of course you could use a mod where the animation runs have been increased.

Or you could use the infamous bsa manager(don't forget to edit the hexblock), and extract the meshes folder, then modify the animations on your own using niftool along with nifskope and make them as detailed as you want.