Quantity over Quality

[The Seraph of Tomorrow]

While the rest of the games industry since 2016 has gone the direction of neither Quality or Quantity, it seems Bethesda plans to stick to the tried and true Quantity and no Quality method.

Just going to say it, I would rather have half or 1/4th the content if twice the effort was put into the quality of that content. As it isn't even that long ago, (a decade), when games companies lived or died on the quality of their stories. At the time it was only the MMO space that was notorious for delivering a vast amount of meaningless content to keep players busy.

I feel like I don't ask for much, a good story, good character progression, and meaningful content. Not a million different random gen points of interest as well as factions who exist as re-skins of enemies to be shot at.

[The Seraph of Tomorrow]

RPG use to be synonymous with memorable storytelling, now it's basically a forgotten concept by young guys like me.

[M]

I dont think like you. procedural generation does not equal random generation. maybe you should look it up and learn.

[Roaming Zombie]

Why don't you just wait untill the reviews are our or people have experienced it for themselves.

Assumptions man. Rarely a good thing.

[Mastah]

Originally posted by Tech-Priest:

RPG use to be synonymous with memorable storytelling, now it's basically a forgotten concept by young guys like me.

RPG is a catch all term that has no strict definition in today's gaming.

Some RPG are story heavy, more comparable to a "Choose your own adventure" style of RPG, with all the heavy lifting done by the storytelling.

Bethesda RPGs were never that. Bethesda RPG are like that DM that allows you to have fun with all the manuals and obscure builds in D&D, allowing you to play a broken character that makes no sense.

They were never about the story, one of the most downloaded Skyrim mods is the Alternative Start one, that allows you to skip the main quest until you visit Helgen. Bethesda style of RPG is more sandbox and driven by the gameplay mechanics, not by the storytelling.
BSG isn't good at epic stories, they're good at crafting lore and environmental storytelling, all of their best stories are in the side content, guild quests, DLCs, small random stories that appear when you enter a cave about a group of archaeologists that hired a junkie as a guard and they were ambushed by the Falmer while studying an old Dwarven ruin. That kind of stuff.
If you ask any player with 1000+ hours on Skyrim you'll find out that most of them finished the game only once or twice. I have a similar amount of hours on both Skyrim and Oblivion, I never finished Oblivion and I saw Skyrim ending only once. Never even started the civil war quest.

Quality doesn't mean a big heavy story on rails that constantly gets in the way of all the fun stuff, they tried that with Fallout 4 and that's why I didn't like it. Too story-driven. I don't care about the MC's son that got kidnapped, I wanna explore, build stuff, find what happened to that abandoned Vault. I don't want every faction to be an exclusive way to an ending. I want different, parallel stories I can play independently from each other.

They seem to have understood that with Starfield, the story this time around doesn't sound as cumbersome "save the world" as in some of their past games, and the trait/background stuff seem to have been designed with replayability in mind.

The main story for Starfield sounds like:

• "Artifact you find mining does weird thing, you faint, wake up, character creation!"
  
• "WOW It spoke to you, you should totally go to Constellation, this is not an excuse to give you a tutorial about space ships and space travel!"
  
• "This artifacts seem to be part of some sort of ancient alien machine! You should keep an eye open if you see more of them!"

And then the main story is going to progress only as you find more artifacts, if you search for them, no ticking clock, no time constraint, no feeling like you shouldn't be doing this cooking contest side-quest in Akila city because the universe and the space-time is collapsing if you don't finish the main quest.

To finish, Bethesda RPGs are the only games in which I can really roleplay a character.
I already have in mind a build for a character, maybe the long-hauler background, the spaced trait. Someone living their lives on mostly on their ship and not down in a gravity well, probably alligned with the free colonies. Starfield equivalent of a Belter from The Expanse.
That's going to give a ton of maluses when then I'll spend most of my time on the surface of planets, exploring and fighting, but it's not about picking the most effective build or the strongest weapons, it's about picking what would make sense for the character I'm choosing to play.

That's what I like about BGS RPGs, they give me the world, the lore, the sandbox, I bring the roleplay and the character.

[Jack Greedy]

Exactly like Mastah said. Bethesda's rpgs gives us unique freedom how do we like to play them, it's like empty canvas and they give us a paint and brush, i love them.
We can actually roleplay in their games no matter what style i want, it's simply great and it has been like that since Arena and Daggerfall.

[kdodds]

It continues to amaze me why people who don't understand BGS RPGs continually bash them as not being RPGs and then go on to suggest that an on rails, multi-pathed AA is an RPG as long as it has some tacked in skills and stats. I mean, why don't you guys just move on to the games you like? Why keep coming back to whine about things you don't understand decade after decade?

[D_A_Rcz]

@Mastah - well said good sir, well said indeed....

[HeyYou]

Originally posted by kdodds:

It continues to amaze me why people who don't understand BGS RPGs continually bash them as not being RPGs and then go on to suggest that an on rails, multi-pathed AA is an RPG as long as it has some tacked in skills and stats. I mean, why don't you guys just move on to the games you like? Why keep coming back to whine about things you don't understand decade after decade?

They aren't really RPG's..... They are action/adventure games with some RPG elements. Sure, by the broadest definition of RPG, they do qualify, but, some of us are a bit more 'purist' than that. :D Don't get me wrong, I love my Beth games, but, I think Oblivion was the last 'quasi-real' RPG. Fallout games are more RPG than the TES series these days....

[jerrypocalypse]

What's with people getting up in arms about things before the game is even released? Most of these "complaints" are about things that need to be experienced first to form an actual educated option on. A lot of people setting themselves up to hate it before they even play. It's just a self fulfilling prophecy.

[Tenoshii]

Originally posted by Tech-Priest:

While the rest of the games industry since 2016 has gone the direction of neither Quality or Quantity

False. Imagine pretending there have been no good games since 2016.

Originally posted by Tech-Priest:

it seems Bethesda plans to stick to the tried and true Quantity and no Quality method.

False. Bethesda provides a quality sandbox experience with meaningful RPG elements.

Originally posted by Tech-Priest:

Just going to say it, I would rather have half or 1/4th the content if twice the effort was put into the quality of that content.

No you wouldn't. Based on what you've already said, the games industry apparently can't produce quality. Applying more effort towards failing to produce something doesn't force it to come into creation.

Originally posted by Tech-Priest:

As it isn't even that long ago, (a decade), when games companies lived or died on the quality of their stories.

False. If you think storyline determined the success of most gaming companies, you are misinformed.

Originally posted by Tech-Priest:

At the time it was only the MMO space that was notorious for delivering a vast amount of meaningless content to keep players busy.

It is the purpose of a game to keep players busy. It's easy to call something meaningless when you make no effort to describe in detail what isn't.

Originally posted by Tech-Priest:

I feel like I don't ask for much, a good story, good character progression, and meaningful content. Not a million different random gen points of interest as well as factions who exist as re-skins of enemies to be shot at.

It's easy to pretend your expectations are reasonable when they are dripping with fallacies and oversimplification.

[-OrLoK- Слава Україн]

as the game isn't released
yet we simply don't know the quality vs quantity values

[charming clown]

Originally posted by Tenoshii:

"Handsome man stuff was said"

Always enjoy seeing you reply to people here on the forums. Kisses <3

[Mastah]

Originally posted by HeyYou:

Originally posted by kdodds:

It continues to amaze me why people who don't understand BGS RPGs continually bash them as not being RPGs and then go on to suggest that an on rails, multi-pathed AA is an RPG as long as it has some tacked in skills and stats. I mean, why don't you guys just move on to the games you like? Why keep coming back to whine about things you don't understand decade after decade?

They aren't really RPG's..... They are action/adventure games with some RPG elements. Sure, by the broadest definition of RPG, they do qualify, but, some of us are a bit more 'purist' than that. :D Don't get me wrong, I love my Beth games, but, I think Oblivion was the last 'quasi-real' RPG. Fallout games are more RPG than the TES series these days....

There's no such thing as a "real RPG".
Whatever your strict definition is you're going to leave behind some critically acclaimed RPGs.

In my definition of RPG, what I'm meaning when I say "RPG", the kind of freedom and the sandbox nature of Bethesda games are really essential elements. But I know my personal definition is biased and more related to the pen and paper concept and sandbox nature of what an RPG is.

Every time a discussion about what a "real RPG" is for gamers starts it looks to me that it's not a genre but a shape shifting label applied to some games that the community really like, as an honorific more than a description.

Sometimes it's Skyrim, sometimes it's TW3, other times it's not an RPG if is not story-driven. Sometimes is the character creation, others the turn based combat, or the isometric view.

Every time it changes requirement and definition to fit with the game you're putting on a pedestal or look as far as possible from the game you're ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on.

What's an RPG? I don't know.

Are Bethesda RPGs "true" RPGs?
Is that band I like true Metal, or it's more like melodic Scottish pirate alternative punk Caribbean space rock served with a cute little paper umbrella in the glass? I don't care.

What I want? I want to create my character and explore a new lore, a new universe, a new story. Like I did in Skyrim, in Fallout 3 and 4, in Oblivion, and, yes, even in Fallout 76.

Am I going to find that in Starfield? Well that's what Bethesda is good at, so I'm betting that yes, Starfield is just going to be another Bethesda game with incremental upgrades that come from the lesson learned with the previous titles.


Also, every game is children of the era it released in. Back when Skyrim released, but also Fallout 4, the market was steering away from more in-depth gameplay mechanics and more toward the more streamlined action-adventure kind of games, not on rails but almost. Nowadays the trend is the opposite and people want, again, deeper systems and complex games and even more typical action adventure titles are including more complex (""RPG like"") gameplay systems.

The steps they've taken in that direction, and away from the direction Fallout 4 was heading towards, are clear in what was shown in the direct. The background, skill and trait systems are good examples of that, but even the persuasion system reminds me more of Oblivion than the simple skill checks of later games.

[Tenoshii]

Originally posted by ME charming clown:

Originally posted by Tenoshii:

"Handsome man stuff was said"

Always enjoy seeing you reply to people here on the forums. Kisses <3

Can't play the game, might as well play the forums

[S☯wn-Lﺤuꁅhtǝr]

If you dont know what was said about how the land will generate and how late game you can lock those RNG aspects then you really should look into what building a base will mean to retain lore .. you can visit an area later on lock the place explored with a base then travel to your base .. then you can also make a new character and travel to the same planet and have a different loading of creatures places etc.

If you think that wont keep the consumer invested in this game with Multiple saves going on per day .. Shoot, my mood will dictate Universes & worlds, and when mods come in a 3rd universe will be separate and load differently.

the only thing consistent is the main story options

Game will be goty
story might be flat but as far as replay ability Cyber punk 2077 better hope that DLC turns Night city into GTA 6