So...20 years later, can you finally climb ladders in this Bethesda game?

[Amplifier]

If you think Valve being unable to count to 3 is bad, here's a shocker for you.

It's been over 20 years of Bethesda's existence and yet they have been unable to fix the elusive problem of CLIMBING LADDERS. Ever realized this? From Morrowind to FO4 and yet we cant climb a single ladder. A mere simple function you can even find in 1990s video games.

Heck, even modders in Skyrim finally solved this damn issue. https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/63232

I'd be more sad than shocked if I boot up Starfield and find out the player character still doesn't know how to climb a freaking ladder.

[Trec]

Originally posted by Iratus Machina:

Originally posted by Tenoshii:

Imagine being concerned about ladders in a game where you have a jetpack that turns the player into a flying drone.

Now, I know it sounds ridiculous and I'm about to make even more ridiculous points to back it up, but hear me out. And yes, I'm about to make a comparison to Star Citizen to back up my claims. So, here we go.

If there's one thing I believe Star Citizen does right, it's the overall interactivity you have with your spaceships. Your spaceships aren't just pretty window dressing you can get in and out of with the press of a button. Take the Hornet for example. You've got ramps sliding out of compartments, ladders descending into view, windshields popping open and when you enter the ship, you're not just appearing inside like magic. No, you watch yourself climb in and out of said ship, adjust yourself into your seat, grab the controls while the windshield seals back in...

This isn't just about the ladders. No, no, no. This...this right here is about making the whole experience of boarding and interacting with the ship feel alive, like it's your new home or your own car to do what you want with it. And to feel immersed throughout not just the boarding and leaving, but going through the ship and interacting with every single minor detail? *chefs kiss*

Really hoping Todd Howard learned a few lessons from Chris Roberts on spaceship interaction and immersion to make the whole starship crew experience feel alive and fun. If there's one little immersion thing Bethesda usually gets right in their games, you can usually sit in just about any chair you can see. All I want is that, but not just with ladders, but with the rest of the spaceship, too.

And to add another unrelated point just on ladders alone which ties into the whole thing, Half-Life 1 and 2 and just about every other Valve game has intractable ladders (even if they're rather simplified), so why can't Bethesda games?

tl;dr Here's why I wish for intractable ladders and so much more.

Ok, you actually raised a good point there. Inside the ships, the jetpack is unlikely to be of much use. And yes, ladders would be an advantage here. Rumor has it that the snapmap editor from Doom 2016 is used in Shipcreator – allegedly. Maybe that will have been solved quite comfortably after all? :-)

[Iratus Machina]

I just got an idea. What if that's part of the reason the ships are modular? You see, animations take time. If you've got a large number of different-looking ships, you're going to need a lot of time and effort to make each animation work for the way each ship is built. If your ships are modular and share similar elements in their designs, you don't need multiple different animations for each ship. The modules share similar animations between their layouts because it's a time and cost-saving measure which would've only gotten longer to take if Bethesda didn't take the modular route. Which is why Bethesda has this big ship game with possible spaceship interactions with all of these different modules which is almost complete, but CIG has this big spaceship game with highly interactive ships which is taking forever because every one of their ships they keep selling is unique and they have to make new animations for each ship so they don't feel so repetitive...

What if I'm overthinking this? What if none of what I just theorized didn't matter? But I think I'm on to something here, I just know it...

[katzenkrimis]

Originally posted by Tenoshii:

Imagine being concerned about la...

Say no more.

I've played enough Creed games to be sick of ladders.

The first game to ever introduce the sliding down of ladders was cool.

But even the novelty of that mechanic has worn off.

[The Seraph of Tomorrow]

It's never been that they can't add it in, it's that Bethesda learned they can get away with not adding it to their games.

[Cy]

Is this really something that bothers you people? Like, do you actually go into games and say "boy oh boy I sure do hope I can climb a ladder!"? This has to be the silliest complaint I've seen on this board, and that's saying something. Personally, until this topic I never noticed that you can't climb ladders in Bethesda games. It's such an unimportant part of the wider experience. You guys really do nitpick things to death when you've already decided you don't want to like the, huh?

[Tenoshii]

Originally posted by Cy:

Is this really something that bothers you people? Like, do you actually go into games and say "boy oh boy I sure do hope I can climb a ladder!"? This has to be the silliest complaint I've seen on this board, and that's saying something. Personally, until this topic I never noticed that you can't climb ladders in Bethesda games. It's such an unimportant part of the wider experience. You guys really do nitpick things to death when you've already decided you don't want to like the, huh?

Good chance it's just roleplay to fuel the opportunity to engage in Forum PvP despite the claims that people who engage in PvP in games are trolls and griefers. Epic illustration of irony.

[A. Silvermane]

Why would we need ladders? We have jetpacks.

[Tex]

Ask yourself, save for the regular tradesman and hobbyist, how often do you use a ladder? Most people, maybe a couple times a year.

[anynamewilldo]

Donkey Kong should have had a jetpack.

[Freak4Leeks]

To be fair from what i've seen and hear it's not that they can't let the player do it, it's that it breaks the AI or something of that nature, i can't say i've tried making a ladder mod so i don't know the ins and outs

[HeyYou]

Originally posted by Freak4Leeks:

To be fair from what i've seen and hear it's not that they can't let the player do it, it's that it breaks the AI or something of that nature, i can't say i've tried making a ladder mod so i don't know the ins and outs

There are climbable ladders in FO4, made by modders..... Way back when, I seem to remember this being mentioned on the forums..... that they had trouble making the animations work properly..... Not sure how accurate that is. But, in one of the vids, they show a guy climbing a ladder..... Now, whether that was just a staged scene, or not, is open for debate. Regardless, the animation for it DOES exist.

[Amplifier]

Originally posted by HeyYou:

Originally posted by Freak4Leeks:

To be fair from what i've seen and hear it's not that they can't let the player do it, it's that it breaks the AI or something of that nature, i can't say i've tried making a ladder mod so i don't know the ins and outs

There are climbable ladders in FO4, made by modders..... Way back when, I seem to remember this being mentioned on the forums..... that they had trouble making the animations work properly..... Not sure how accurate that is. But, in one of the vids, they show a guy climbing a ladder..... Now, whether that was just a staged scene, or not, is open for debate. Regardless, the animation for it DOES exist.

Yes... there already ARE both a FO4 climbing and Skyrim mod created. The Skyrim mod, called SkyClimb, is even more revolutionary. It lets you climb up any ledge, wherever, whatever... in the world.

These modders are seriously putting Bethesda to shame.

[Freak4Leeks]

Originally posted by reignworld:

Yes... there already ARE both a FO4 climbing and Skyrim mod created. The Skyrim mod, called SkyClimb, is even more revolutionary. It lets you climb up any ledge, wherever, whatever... in the world.

These modders are seriously putting Bethesda to shame.

Do NPC's use these things? because as i said in the post both of you responded to but didn't seem to acknowledge is that the problem isn't with the player being able to do these things, it's with the NPC's

[Nexussfire]

Ladder climbing from a technical side requires a programmer to wrap their head around enter state, and an exit state at any point the player decides they dont wanna ladder. And they also need a way to tell AI there is a ladder and which way is bottom / top.

Then the animator has to create something to work with the enter state and then 3 somethings for the enter state. 1 for getting on the ladder, 1 for getting off the ladder normally and 1 for getting off the ladder mid travel. Bonus round : 1 for entering the ladder mid air.

None of that is actually very complicated. The actual problem was 2-fold. Laziness and immersion breaking.

Immersion breaking in 1st person because a pair of body-less arms traversing a ladder just looks bad and to make that not suck would've required full first person body which isn't seemingly too hard since modders figured it out by just moving the 3rd person camera.


Which comes down to Laziness in trouble shooting whats required for a ladder. I considered maybe it's a performance problem with first person but for a game that lets you go 3rd at any moment, its not a big deal. AI seems like a complicated issue with their way of AI pathing but there's a very simple solution using markers or a navigation volume on the ladders with NavMesh connections defined as top / bottom and or a proverbial middle somewhere if needed and daisy chaining for really long climbs possible.

So really just down to "We can do it without ladders." And they did.

[HeyYou]

Originally posted by Nexussfire:

Ladder climbing from a technical side requires a programmer to wrap their head around enter state, and an exit state at any point the player decides they dont wanna ladder. And they also need a way to tell AI there is a ladder and which way is bottom / top.

Then the animator has to create something to work with the enter state and then 3 somethings for the enter state. 1 for getting on the ladder, 1 for getting off the ladder normally and 1 for getting off the ladder mid travel. Bonus round : 1 for entering the ladder mid air.

None of that is actually very complicated. The actual problem was 2-fold. Laziness and immersion breaking.

Immersion breaking in 1st person because a pair of body-less arms traversing a ladder just looks bad and to make that not suck would've required full first person body which isn't seemingly too hard since modders figured it out by just moving the 3rd person camera.


Which comes down to Laziness in trouble shooting whats required for a ladder. I considered maybe it's a performance problem with first person but for a game that lets you go 3rd at any moment, its not a big deal. AI seems like a complicated issue with their way of AI pathing but there's a very simple solution using markers or a navigation volume on the ladders with NavMesh connections defined as top / bottom and or a proverbial middle somewhere if needed and daisy chaining for really long climbs possible.

So really just down to "We can do it without ladders." And they did.

Yet in SF, ladders seem to be the way between levels on the ship. Stairs are just impractical... Rather curious how that is going to be handled.