Bethesda Learned the Wrong Lesson

[@P-Bean]

*WARNING: This is a video* This video was a shower thought that I indulged before deciding to make a bit of a rant video out of it. Sorry for the audio quality in this one. Haven't properly set up the new place I'm at, or the new PC I'm working with, I still hope you enjoy and Merry Christmas!

[@Godwooper99]

The audio is great thanks

[@TrixterTheFemboy]

I didn't notice any issue with the audio tbh

[@9rh9]

Really liked it. You had a point and made it clear and concise.

[@TerTeramus]

this truly is a video

[@christian_gamer_guy6447]

WAIT.... This is a video?!! :o

[@ShakerSilver]

It's incredibly disheartening how they began padding out your time with the radial nonsense, on top of the lack of care their hand-crafted quests take. However the motivations are clear - it's simply easier to have endless fetch quests without consequence rather than create more hand-crafted content with meaningful consequences. And those consequences are often what best immerses us in the worlds to begin with.

[@Foogi9000]

I find it fascinating how Bethesda somehow looped back to Daggerfall's world design but they lost the passion and player freedom that game had. I've been playing the Unity version recently, there's no way they would ever allow you to fuck yourself over like in DF. Everything has consequences in that game despite a good chunk of it being procedurally generated. Factions are actually factions and they don't treat you like god incarnate, because you weren't. You were simply an agent and friend of the emperor who has to figure out why the king of Daggerfall is an undead vengeful spirit now. Only in Daggerfall can you get a loan from a bank, or plead your innocence in court.

[@brent8491]

The truly sad part is hand crafted, interesting destinations with environmental storytelling exist in Starfield. It wasn't until I started achievement hunting and used the wiki to locate all the skill books that I found six or seven of them. There is nothing in the game to point out some of the ( relatively) best content. I sank far more hours into starfield than I should have, but it was a time sink while I recovered from surgery and maybe being medicated had something to do with it.

[@Universal-lv3mq]

If only it was nautical nonsense😔

[@Foogi9000]

@Universal-lv3mq The be something you wish 😔

[@arkgaharandan5881]

the sad thing is every game is a repettive grind these days, i miss half life and system shock 2.

[@LilFeralGangrel]

One of my core issues with modern bethesda games is how terrified they are of saying no, how they absolutely refuse to have any kind of meaningful consequences for the decisions a player makes. They make RPGs where you can join any faction regardless of your build or stats, where you can become an Archmage without knowing much magic? Where you can become the leader of a guild around fighting without being a fighter. They only ever rarely gate content behind choice. Which means the NPCs and world rarely ever reacts to you which to me is deeply unsatisfying. They're a studio that specializes in RPGs that forgot the core thing that makes RPGs satisfying, it isn't stats, it's reactivity. Remember Fallout 4? And how the most beloved DLC for it was Far Harbor because it had i dunno role playing? And consequences?

[@jaykelley103]

All of the pre oblivion es games have consequences for joining factions. In morrowind, even if just playing as a mage one has to choose between the mages guild and the telvanni great house, because even though they are two magic focused groups they hate each other. Advance one quest line past a certain point and the other wont talk to you. Its very immersive. Oblivion started the "one character can do every quest" bs. I agree that its bogus.

[@SissypheanCatboy]

counterpoint: the videos of people becoming archmage without knowing any magic are absolutely hysterical, and thats worth way more than its weight in gold.

[@SendarSlayer]

@@SissypheanCatboy Agreed, but I would like it to be a challenge and not "So I got this shield, annnnnd I'm archmage. And leader of X, Y and Z still."

[@arkgaharandan5881]

i miss morrowind.

[@wintermute5974]

​@@SendarSlayer It doesn't even need to be a very complex challenge. Even just making it so that a character without any magic skill needed to meet persuasion checks to progress would be a big improvement. (Shame that any meaningful persuasion system was also cut out).

[@Flamme-Sanabi]

When people disliked radiant quests in Fallout, they thought they needed more.

[@P-Bean]

"Wow people sure are talking about the radiant quests a lot!"

[@utes5532]

I feel like someone over at Bethesda got the idea for radiant quests and is too proud to let that idea just die. It's come to the point where I play a Bethesda game, am excited to do a new quest and have my entire mood dunked when I realize it's radiant slop. It's like you message someone you like and they had an AI automatically respond to you

[@TwiliPaladin]

​@@utes5532Probably the same guy who was so obsessed with the idea of self-sacrifice that Fallout 3 forces the player to chose between throwing their life away for a cause that has better options and being remembered as a coward.

[@missilecarrier]

When they tripled down on the radiant quest system I knew it was over.

[@TrlDMC.1]

@@utes5532 Funnily enough, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. had some semblance of "infinite tasks to do" way back in 2007, where the traders would give you simple "Kill this guy" or "Find this artifact" quests.

[@BlueBD]

Bethesda Completly misinterpreting what we mean is exactly how Fallout 76 was made "We love Fallout 4 but we would also love to play it with friends" Bethesda: OK we will make 16 times the game in a MMO-lite structure No... Todd. Just fallout 4 with at most 2 other people is fine

[@dannmcdan2185]

When big game companies like Bethesda are like "our next game is going to be bigger than ever before" Im there thinking "will it be better". Who actually cares if a game has a bigger map and more quests and more stuff and more mechanics if its not more fun. Honestly to me the ideal Skyrim sequel would have a map around the same size but just more polished everything. I want to swim in a deep pool and not in a lake sized puddle

[@utes5532]

See that mountain? You can climb it and 4000 near identical mountains we procedurally generated that may or may not have a random encounter on them in The Elder Scrolls 6, now with a map that's somehow bigger and more empty than that of Daggerfall's!

[@mackeylibrande216]

As my grandmother always told me. One of life most well enjoyed experiences is soaking in a hot tub. But one of life's most overwhelming fears is drowning in an ocean.

[@arkgaharandan5881]

the fact morrowind has more actual content in that starfield despite it was made by 40-60 people in 3 years is mindblowing to me, we are going backwards.

[@kaschey6145]

Disco Elysium is a good example of how wrong this approach is. The game's map is freaking tiny: just a couple of small streets and a small village but... holy s-, this world just sucks you in for 50-80 hours. The characters are incredibly deep and have a lot to say, the protagonist is a whole mental world within himself. The lore is ridiculously detailed and profound, everything is full of mystery, surprises, emotions... we don't need big scale to feel grand.

[@arkgaharandan5881]

@@kaschey6145 gothic 1 was like that too.

[@HangOnThereSlick]

Never watched this channel before, so you could imagine the shock on my face seeing patrick Star talking to me at the start

[@EnejJohhem]

The thing with Skyrim is that the world is interesting. Yeah the RPG and overall story was less fleshed out, but the map and the world is calls for exploration.

[@diablo.the.cheater]

I also like that the combat in Skyrim is easy. I like to play RPGs more like doll games than hand dexterity tests. I like to talk to NPCs and imagine what they respond. Use specific attacks even if they are very suboptimal because of the spectacle and other stuff that you simply can't do in a game with any kind of difficulty. Skyrim is just easy enough that I can fool around without cheats and do some improv acting.

[@pigpuke]

It wasn't that interesting though - it was a pretty standard and bland fantasy setting with absolutely nothing to distinguish itself from any other fantasy setting. Magic? Check. Each city/region has a theme? Check. Dragons? Check. Zombies? Check. Vampires? Check. Werewolves? Check. Dungeons to crawl? Check. It was the most paint-by-numbers video game of theirs to date.

[@tzaphkielconficturus7136]

@@pigpuke TES is not a "pretty standard and bland fantasy setting..." Yes, it has all of those things, but the manner of those things distinguishes it. Magic is done, primarily, by gathering pure, metaphysical potential and limiting it to become Something instead of merely Everything. There are other ways to do "magic," many of which relate somehow to that concept of Potential (Anu) and Limitation (Padomai) which underlies the actually interesting metaphysics. "dragons" are not flying, fire breathing reptiles; they are shards of the time-god's fractured Self, whose "magic" works through an inverted process of grabbing that which IS NOT from behind the barrier which separates it from that which IS, which we call "Time." None of that is generic fantasy... Granted, one would be hard pressed to get most of that from the game, unless you go around reading the in-game books, because Bethesda hates being interesting.

[@This-Was-Sparta]

I remember hearing the promise of "1000 planets" and immediately predicting Starfield would have these problems tbh. Reminded me a lot of Starbound. Sure, every planet might technically be distinct with proc gen, but if every planet is generated in the same way, using the same elements, you'll end up with every desert planet being virtually indistinguishable. Proc gen is not a substitute for putting effort into how your environments are created/presented.

[@aralornwolf3140]

... Maybe. I think the issue is Bugsthesda used it as a lazy substitute for substance, just like they did with their radiant quest design. However, I'll get back to you later with more details on how to use both "correctly"... or at least not lazily.

[@pigpuke]

The exact same 17 dungeons with a different color palette is beyond lazy. How did it take them more than a year to bang this trash out? This is the quality of work one expects of interns who are trying to qualify for a permanent position in the company, certainly not a product you charge money for or ever let the public see.

[@PGtheVRguy]

Factorio has a new space dlc where they could've just procedurally generated slightly different planets, but chose to make only 4 new planets with very unique elements of gameplay, art style, and rewards.

[@PGtheVRguy]

Focusing purely on the gameplay while still having the perks of being in space with space exploration and stuff.

[@jho7659]

And nobody has ever heard of that game...is it like a 5 dollar indie garbo with pretty 2d graphics?

[@sethb124]

@@jho7659 It's actually a very popular indie game about building factories and production lines. It has the same amount of active players as Skyrim SE does

[@Alpha_GameDev-wq5cc]

@@sethb124 you’re engaging with a restarted troll who doesn’t even know how to troll and has the intelligence of a pre-chatGPT bot… don’t bother lmao

[@TakaD20]

At the price of the base game, it should be stand alone though. Paradoxination...

[@yumyum366]

0:55 You are the exact target audience for the game. Everyone I've talked to who was like "I played it an hour or two each night", seems to have enjoyed it immensely more than everyone else.

[@sgtsaltstick2729]

They always learn the wrong lesson. For example. Fallout 76 didn't get critique because it was multiplayer, it was critiqued because it wasn't finished. That and the microtransactions. But no, because the ones in charge like to bash their skulls into their tables on cocaine binges, they take it as "Multiplayer fucking sucks, i hate being able to play with my friends. You're an idiot for thinking we want to share our experience with more immersion!". Like, no. I just want a good Fallout game with optional co-op. Is that too much to ask?

[@utes5532]

Yep. If Fallout 5 has online co-op it will sell a morbillion copies. Then again that would require Bethesda to make games that barely function in singleplayer to take multiple players doing different things in different places into account, so even if they were competent enough to pull it off, Fallout 5 would release in 2044

[@Eramidas]

Elder scrolls and Fallout with just 2 player co-op would be amazing

[@somdudewillson]

Fallout 76 was critiqued because it got people Internet clout. As someone who was there in the Beta, there were _so many_ people fabricating 'problems' outright.

[@mups4016]

​@@somdudewillsonokay, sure thing buddy.

[@sgtsaltstick2729]

@@somdudewillson Nice ragebait.

[@PenumbranWolf]

The entire Todd Era of Bethesda has been them just repeatedly learning all the wrong lessons from their previous games.

[@HiAgainTheNameIsStillAyle]

Truer words have never been stated before 💀

[@klaykid117]

It's kind of insane to watch how they just consistently take the wrong lessons from all of their games

[@powerbeard5653]

procedural content still has a looong way to go to catch up with good handcrafted level design.

[@Ghorda9]

it works really well in rogue likes and sand box survival games, just not story driven RPGs

[@henryfleischer404]

That's pretty much why I didn't like Hades, but did like Bastion and Transistor.

[@diablo.the.cheater]

@@Ghorda9 It could work in a story driven RPG, but you would need lots of other systems to keep track of all types of stuff like the internal economy of the region, needs, wants, migrations of bandits, monsters, ecology and all sort of stuff AND also take into account player action to be able to create interesting quests less randomly and more automatically depending on these things so they make some kind of sense. Then you would need the kind of IA we have now but a bit better to create the text for the dialogue and a bit of flair, then you would need a pretty good TTS AI trained with the same voice actors as all the npcs in the game to be able to voice these auto-quest dialogue. It would also need to integrate into the hand crafted quests, which would need to be many in number. For example, there is a bit famine in X place because of the simulated economy and you retrieve an artifact that is related to protection in some kind of handcrafted quest. Then an auto quest would be generated to solve the famine which now has been made worse as the artifact you retrieved was kind of making it bereable, but now it is unbearable. You'll need a very complex tagging system and tag items and hand crafted quest appropriately so that interesting quests are generated depending on circunstances. You'll also need to simulate virtual adventurers of some kind to solve these auto quests in case the player doesn't do it for long enough time. Essentially, you'll need a super complex simulation that is able to take into account stuff from the main story and random stuff that the player does so it can detect lacks in this simulation that could be solved by an "adventurer" and create quests based on that. That would be kind of fun, but only for about 20% of the quests of a full normal playthrough? I don't think it would even be worth it.

[@hi-i-am-atan]

@@henryfleischer404 hades isn't procedurally generated

[@SimuLord]

AI-generated "handcrafted" imitation will never catch up because the people who push that tech completely fail to understand that there is a "spark" to human creativity that is fundamentally beautiful (and, as a religious person, I believe given to us by the gods) that no machine can ever possess. And deep down, we as humans know when something isn't right. Some people are just better at suppressing that urge to question the glitches in the matrix than others, and other people are being willfully ignorant in the name of escapism. But in the spirit of the ghost of Roger Ebert, nothing generated by an AI can ever be art.

[@Saved-by-Grace]

Look, Im 45, been a BGS player since Daggerfall all the way back in '96. There was a magic lost after Skyrin released. It truly was Bethesda's Magnum Opus and they just haven't captured that same feeling since.

[@yewcookies]

I have put well over 1000 hours in Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim each. Every time I've listened to someone trying to define "what made Bethesda games work" they always fall short. Those games are magic, something about them clicks into my brain like a Lego piece. Is it the exploration... yep, the freedom.... yep, the stories.... yep, the customization... yep. But it's more than all that. And whatever that hidden gem is, I'm afraid they've lost it for good and nobody will be able to recapture it again. 😶

[@WackyIraqi777]

Hard disagree. Skyrim was a sad replacement for Oblivion.

[@Majima_Nowhere]

I think a big problem (not exclusive to this video) is the assumption that game studios listen to their players _at all._ They don't. They listen to investors and market trends. Small teams and solo developers might take community feedback, but giant corps do not. Listen to any interview with Todd before the skyrim launch, he was fully behind the dumbing down of every gameplay element from Morrowind to Oblivion, then again to Skyrim. Magic was made into the slog it is because he found spellcrafting "too spreadsheety" and that having raw numbers on screen "took the magic out of magic."(Both quotes from the game informer podcast, Feb 3 2011) Because of that, you can now get through the entire game by just dualcasting firebolt for 15 hours. Fun! After Starfield, there is no hope for TES 6.

[@Blowtorch87]

Morrowind spell crafting was great, you really feel like a wizard in that game after mastering a chosen school, in skyrim its just not the same. Destruction just plain sucks, Alteration is alright but its mostly just to buff yourself in the most boring way possible, Conjuration gameplay can be summed up like this: summon dremora lord, Restoration is far from perfectly valid school of magic and Illusion is almost fun untill you fight your first dragon and find out your primary magical skill has no spell that affects the game's arguably most important enemy type. Thanks Todd

[@wintermute5974]

Bethesda objectively does listen to player feedback, every single Bethesda game does things that were clearly driven by player responses to the previous games. The problem is that Bethesda is incredibly good at either picking up on the wrong issues or going way to far with their fixes.

[@xenn4985]

Do uh... do you not know who drives market trends?

[@Majima_Nowhere]

@@xenn4985 Yes, the kind of idiot who will pre-order the $120 TES6 special edition because it says "TES" on the cover. The people who buy Skyrim for the 8th time because this time it has more paid mods in it, making it the best selling TES despite being mid at best. You're mistaken if you think any big game corp is browsing Reddit and watching what their players think, lol.

[@xenn4985]

@Majima_Nowhere "bethesda doesnt listen to its players, they just follow market trends" "Who makes market trends, people who buy the game obviously, duh." So basically, bethesda listens to its players. Got it. Lmao what are you being so cocky for.

[@ethangnasher3848]

The thing with procedurally generated missions is that they lack connectivity with the rest of the world, natural bandit camps should be taken in account, growing and waning hostile activity and whatnot, but Bethesda thinks "just add this basic bitch level radiant questing system" is enough. Well, nope, there should be a lot of handcrafted variables that affect the way these radiant missions should go. That's just my two cents about that system, is not inherently bad, just underdeveloped and stretched too thin in Bethesda's case.

[@Ghorda9]

the radiant system should be for regular jobs and not quests

[@utes5532]

What, you're not tired of killing faceless evil bandit #4025 in a nondescript cave because some guy in a town told you to do it in vague enough dialogue so you can earn yourself 30 Bethesdabucks and buy a shiny new randomly generated weapon that has 4% more damage than your previous one?

[@SimuLord]

The Mount&Blade games (Warband especially) handle the idea of hostile activity well. When a faction is at peace and the player is actively hunting bandits and camps in that faction's territory, the towns and villages tend to be prosperous. When the player's not keeping things clean, things tend to be OK. And when wars break out, everything goes to hell in a dumpster. The economy is on a feedback loop, partially player-driven, partially driven by the natural ebbs and flows of the way the game's NPCs and campaign AI are programmed. There are some genuine valuable lessons in there that apply outside of the scope of a Mount&Blade game.

[@ethangnasher3848]

@@SimuLord THIS. Thanks for the example.

[@iloshwdgac9213]

Starfield can be summed up with "missed opportunity." With every quest, gun, feature, I had a feeling like I was missing something. Gun perks are not needed for combat, yet core gameplay features are locked behind perks like the jump pack. Bases only used to mass produce resources for a few missions or exp grinds. Ships are little more than fast travel boxes. The game is focused on exploration, yet you can not boldly go where no one has gone before. There is always a bandit camp, an AI corrupted research base, cyro lab, and an outpost with a bad generator. I broke when I found a stick of butter on Venus, outside!

[@Fulgrymm]

I broke when I landed on Venus and wasn't immediately crushed by the atmospheric pressure.

[@PseudoNym13]

By “live in their worlds” I mean having tangible consequences to my choices Not endless ai generated radiant quests just to have to repeat them ad nauseum unless I just ignore them and get disparaging messages about neglecting settlements.

[@HiAgainTheNameIsStillAyle]

I actually think Radiant Quests can be good if done right, quests to fill in between faction major quests so you don't just become an archmage or a leader of a guild by sneezing and blinking twice, what makes the Skyrim radiant quests bad is that they are all the same instead of puzzles of many connectable pieces and they are literally 70% of the game instead of parts of a major quest. Companions should do more than just killing things There should be study quests and research in the college for combinations of enchantments, magic and exploring ruins Thieves Guild did do the radiant quests right but since they are all pretty much optional you just don't feel like doing them. Radiant quests can be done great, all it's necessary is someone with actual creativity making the template and variations of them rather than whatever Bathesda did.

[@seeinred]

@@HiAgainTheNameIsStillAyle Let me just stop you: They can't. By the very nature, these are just MMO-tier quests. I.e., they are sh*t narratively, and actually take away from the experience of a player who cares about the world and these kinds of thing. Even if you pour resources required (i.e., too much) into the system, you still won't fix the issue. Because for the system to work against the intended goal, it need to fail only once. If the player NOTICES that they're doing radiant quest, and not hand-crafted one - it's all over. Proc-gen content can be good, where - as a concept - it fits. Such as the whole "generate a map, and then fill it manually" that video mentioned. The issue is, the instrument just doesn't fit quests, it's like attempting an open heart surgery with a hammer. There's a time and place for hammer. But when hammer is cheap, and your company is all about profit... That hammer starts to look very appealing. And so we get Starfailed.

[@HiAgainTheNameIsStillAyle]

@@seeinred Except that most quests in the Elder Scrolls series feel very much radiant and that's probably why the system was idealized to begin with, I could agree if we were talking about another series, but this is Elder Scrolls, bloat is the backbone of the series since forever, and I would rather have this bloat be focused on something more interesting and refined because this does make things feel more alive, and even if it does fail, which it's bound to happen, it still will be better than random handcrafted quests to bloat questlines, at least it would make the experience less repetitive. I am not saying that every quest should be radiant, just the bloat quests for faction questlines, only them, nothing else. The problem of radiant quests is that they are all the same and everything is radiant, if they were just faction quests with unique themes they would be a lot better and smoother to the game.

[@seeinred]

@@HiAgainTheNameIsStillAyle At that point, you might just drop the bloat-quests and commit resources to the game design pillar that matter, such as exploration, combat, hand-crafted stuff. Lack of focus is too a staple of recent Bethesda games.

[@HiAgainTheNameIsStillAyle]

@@seeinred The bloat quests are necessary to factions, you know what happens without the bloat quests? The Winterhold College questline happens, you want that? To sneeze and become the president of the Wizard fan club? Not every quest needs to be grandiose, only a research, learn a spell and go into caves to find enchantments and things like that are enough to make so you actually earn your progress into the questline, that's how it was in Morrowind and to an lesser extent Oblivion. Small things are good, that's what makes an RPG like Elder Scrolls what it is, we need better smaller things to bloat faction and let the resources for bigger things go to actual quests and big faction quests.

[@DarthShadow25]

What's funny is that I have found Daggerfall to be more fun and interesting than Starfield. I don't think the "giant life scaled procedural worlds" is a problem. The problem is what you populate them with, and the systems you have in place to interact with it. If Starfield had procedurally generated settlements and NPCs and quests and dungeons, I think the game would have fared much better, because now the world would be populated with things worth experiencing and exploring. I also think they really should have emphasized time as a mechanic, like in Daggerfall. When quests have a (clearly communicated to the player) time limit, it not only adds urgency and believability to the quest, but allows you to appreciate and engage in the scale of the world as a mechanic. Without it, the world feels small, because time is meaningless, so when you fast travel, the implications of how much time that took are completely moot.

[@P-Bean]

I agree. Despite the scale it never felt like you were meant to explore in Starfield like previous games.

[@alphagarg859]

Precisely. Not to mention that unlike Daggerfall, the world in Starfield is completely static. You can commit a mass murder in New Atlantis and after you get arrested and maybe forced into the Sysdef/Crimson questline, you can walk those streets again as if nothing happened. The factions that supposedly hate one another and went to war recently never actually show it outside of a few dialogue lines. The actions you take in quests or especially outside of them have no effect on the world. It's all just completely static. In Daggerfall if you commit a mass murder in, say, Aldcroft, the royal family of that kingdom will like you less, you'll be harassed by guards, like, you'll actually feel the consequences of your action. If the Knights of the Dragon are declared as enemies by the kingdom of Daggerfall, either you leave that faction, or you're gonna be harassed whenever you're in Daggerfall territory. Imagine if in Starfield you being an official member of the UC's military made you unable to talk to FC high ranking officers, or made the guards harass you, even if just verbally. At the very least you should probably not be able to join the FC through official means. Instead you can do anything, at any time, and no one will ever hold you accountable for neither your actions nor those of your affiliates. It's why the game is so boring. Nothing ever happens.

[@DarthShadow25]

@alphagarg859 Bethesda has an extreme aversion to players missing content. This leaves them with very little ability to make the player's actions having meaningful impact, because meaning comes from sacrifice and making a decision. If you can just do everything, then your choices weren't meaningful, because they didn't change anything. But from a more practical standpoint, I get it. Most of the time, I only want to play a game through once, then move on. I'd like to be able to experience the whole game in that single playthrough, rather than having to retread 95% of the same ground to get to the other 5% I locked myself out of in my first run. Unfortunately, that provides a much more shallow experience.

[@luckygrunt]

When it comes to base building in Fallout 4, I usually just cheat resources if my project is going to be medium or large scale. Small scale is usually fine, as small scale for me is just an outpost or shack for my player, and I can usually find everything I need nearby. I like to design as I go and don't stick too rigidly to any designs I've created beforehand. I don't cheat resources for weapon modding, though.

[@Kaiserin_Emmeline]

Same, I think a lot of the materials required for certain builds are arbitrary. One that comes to mind iirc is when I was like "why does the radio tower require nuclear material??". Unless I'm misremembering that; it's been about half a year since I've played

[@wintermute5974]

Bethesda games are simply too systemically shallow for the elaborate resource-gathering and base-building systems Fallout 4 moved towards to be interesting on repeat playthroughs. On the other hand it's also a system that fails to achieve what people seemed to want from player housing in Skyrim (more opportunities for creative expression + more options to display and celebrate things they've done over the game), since it has so many arbitrary restrictions.

[@Foogi9000]

Didn't used to be so shallow. Daggerfall and to a lesser extent Morrowind allowed a ton of player freedom and expression, these games were closer to being dnd than shallow action games. They actually wanted you to be immersed, this was also before they got obsessed with the whole chosen one trope. You were an agent of the emperor but outside of that you were a nobody who had to earn their status and do the msq. I think the biggest loss is that there's no longer any consequences for failure in their modern games, no time limits on quests, if you absolutely mess up a guild like the Thieves Guild in Daggerfall they do regularly send out assassins and rogues and if you try reporting back after messing up several times they basically spawn 15 enemies and you're expected to either die or escape.

[@diablo.the.cheater]

@@Foogi9000 TES games are built around the idea of you being "the chosen one" since Arena, it's just that "the chosen one" can vary from a veritable dragonborn to the agent of the emperor. In fact, the protagonists being choose ones is kind of part of the lore itself.

[@Foogi9000]

@diablo.the.cheater That's a fair point, however if you compare early TES protagonists to later ones a trend of power creep has set in. This applies to not just TES but Starfield as well. You didn't have op powers in the older games until you were at the endgame. It was more about player freedom and creating a fantasy sim sandbox.

[@whitehawk4099]

​​​@@diablo.the.cheaterIn Morrowind you don't start the game as the chosen one. You become the Nerevarine throughout the game. Yes you were chosen by Azura, but there have been many before like you. The prophecy is not that any particular person will overthrow the Tribunal, but rather than eventually Azura will have the last laugh over the Dunmer demiurge. It is a note coming from Kirkbride's innate esotericism drawing from Aleister Crowley's Thelema, and Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, among other things. This is the theme of prophesied determinism versus will to power, and will to power comes out ahead in Morrowind.

[@Hello-lf1xs]

@@Foogi9000do you mean in-universe OP powers? Because it is very much easy to become very OP in Daggerfall and Morrowind at least pretty quick if you know how

[@EmberSet]

Hello! Base building enjoyer here. Just gonna ramble a bit about my three favourite mods for Skyrim: LC_Build Your Noble House Heljarchen Farm Windstad Mine These mods do base building right. These are handcrafted, highly detailed environments that do the one thing Fallout 4 base building could not: Feel natural, expansive, and like they belong in the world. With modern Bethesda games, base-building feels like it's separate from the world-an isolated bubble or tiny sandbox for making sandcastles. The farm and noble house (slightly less for the mine) feel like they are part of the world. Preset buildings fit perfectly in the scenery, with lively characters who don't need to generate a path but can follow a designed one. All three allow the player to either use crafted/gathered resources or pay obscene amounts of money, making it either a time investment or a status symbol the player can earn. I went around Skyrim questing until I had enough to buy the mine. Then, I used said mine to get iron, forged that iron into nails, hinges, etc., to level my smithing, and started the farm. Once the farm was up and running, I started selling the ore (manually) to both level up speechcraft and make enough money to get the town around the noble house set up. And then I started adventuring, exploring, forgetting about the taxes I was making, the ores and the crops. So when I finally was done with the main quest, I could go back to the houses gather all the stockpiled resources, power leveled my smithing, alchemy, and speechcraft and then one run around the DLC and I was DONE. Everything was interconnected, and I had fun with it, it allowed my Dragonborn to take a unique rise to power and I went on my merry way. Compare that with my Fallout 4 bases: I built a concrete room and tried to get into the automation and machines. Made a single automatic scrapping system using a mod. And then get bored with the base building. I wanted to use the customisable sentries and machines to build a robot-base where they scavenged stuff that gets put on a conveyor belt and then scrapped, but once I did that I just- could not care. It felt too gamey to be immersive. Too much like a bubble to enjoy. So I left that base and went through the story without even really selling,buying or making stuff. Just carrying some modded guns, had some firefights and then I quit. I didn't even finish the story. Making the player's home a part of the world is vitally important to immersion. And a lesson I feel Bethesda did not learn. I do not want to use an unintuitive system to micromanage the guards of my settlement. Let me pick from a selection of in-universe arms and armours for all of the guards. Have it cost money to change if you want it to be balanced. TL: DR Let me change the clothes and banners. Don't make me build the entire foundation, because immersion breaks the second a game busts out the world editor.

[@P-Bean]

Good points. I've personally always preferred my bases to feel more like achievements and trophy rooms than sandboxes.

[@Bathion]

Going back through Skyrim and building a house with the supplies you harvest or find on your own is great. WHILE you are enjoying the handcrafted stories! But yes legit, how did they do proceduralcentral, realize it was boring, make some of the best games we have ever seen THEN decide to go back to boring procedural.

[@LukasJampen]

The thing they advertised skyrim with is that more of the dungeons aren't boring small linear tunnels anymore and that they have more diversity and handcrafted content in them compared to Oblivion. They knew it was one of the flaws in that game. You have 7 versions of oblivion gates and 70 or more gates on the map so you'll go in every version a lot. Then you have caves, ruins and that's most of the variations. Skyrim still could have used more but at least they had some more unique touches to them. And then they went full reverse mode in Starfield. Daggerfalls size was mindblowing sure but you chose 1 corner you like do stuff there until bored then do some main missions and that's it.

[@Bathion]

@LukasJampen Glad to see this sentiment is felt by others. It is just infuriating that they could watch game after game come out with lived in worlds, and FNV's cloths/ uniform system and go "That isn't what players want. They want Dagger Fall with better graphics."

[@WhitelistedUsername]

I don't know why they don't do what older games did back in the day and give the illusion of larger settlements with the smaller interactable section accessible to the player.

[@FunkyPsycho]

Whenever I play fallout 4 I always end up with one really good and nice looking settlement, and then 20+ that are just yards

[@klaykid117]

Exactly this. They got way too excited with player locations. They should have given us a few buildable locations in unique and interesting places.

[@unoriginalperson72]

Hangman's Alley should not have been a settlement

[@isaacpeachey8609]

As a Daggerfall enjoyer, I don’t really mind the radiant quests so long as they feel more integrated into the world. This starts by changing the whole philosophy of what guilds are and what their function/standing in society is. In the older games, they were much bigger and served a social niche. Major guilds had halls in every major city and would perform a wide variety of tasks that served public interests (killing rats/goblins, security details, finding artifacts, etc). Working in guilds felt more like an opportunity to improve your skills, increase your social standing, and make money. As you worked your way up the ranks of the guilds, you would sort of unlock overarching guild quests that dealt with more important issues. By the time you became the guild master, you really felt like you did something. This allowed the radiant quests to feel more seamlessly integrated into the game whereas the later BGS games slaps them on the tail end of a cinematic quest line or generates the same exact quest a million times.

[@CheMatthews]

It sucks that the made guilds shallow and meaningless. It's ridiculous that I can be the head mage at the collage of Winterhold without even being a mage

[@olwiz]

I disagree on some points. 'That was not what we meant' - i dont like it but i have a friend that spent insane amount of times customizing house in skyrim and later mods and such. Its easy to point at the many flaws of big companies games and call it clueless but id wager they have quite a bit more insight into their userbase (wich is extremely broad)- and that continuation hints that theres a sizeable player base that love that. But absolutely it sucks for us who dont like it only getting yet more base resources- id say the flaw isnt making that feature(that some like) but lazily padding the game with that. Theres proper rpg loot but it misses a lot of ground to the very easy padding of resources. I agree with most points, i love rpgs not playing house, i like crafted experiences not empty worlds and i wont even touch Starfield... That said i think the video misses the mark as to what is the cause of those issues. Skyrim nor fallout 4 or 76 have any of that procedural 'infinite' boring and empty slop... i dont think bethesda wants to do that on the basis of their previous games or players saying they want to live in the games... ITS A GENRE PROBLEM. Bethesda wanted to change things up with a different ip and eyed a very popular genre that have this huge issue at its core. They like money and no mans sky was a huge hype(before it flopped) and star citizen made millions without even finishing the damn game for over a decade i think- theres aparently a HUGE public that dreams of great space simulators, some more about the flying others just the idea of space, scifi and the possibilities... also a bunch of that crowd SAY they want more grounded realist scifi, and gaming is full of fantastical space opera, from indies to big titles, not to mention the titanic giant ip called Star Wars. PROBLEM IS SPACE SUCKS. Most of space is just freaking space; Most planets are just barren land. Even No Mans Sky with its explicit non-realism crazy space suffered (and still suffers) from planets that are mostly looks and just procedural generation with resources. I like a lot of things about NMS aproach but it creates many oddities too- in trying to make said procedural more fun every planet is full of alien life (and very similar), same resources, same robot enemies... All that is fixable by narrative, contained- a story taking the player from interesting planet to interesting planet... But theres a lot of people that dream about that kind of freedom in space. Heck just look at the hype NMS had and the hype over Starfield as well. Theres a concept in design that claims users really dont 'know' what they want- it may sound bad but its more like how people most of the time cant put in the right words or mistake what they actually want when they say things. In this case i believe many mean the freedom of space and landing everywhere, but they also want a fun game- but consumers when they say that dont bridge the abyssal gap between both, since such open and endless space is contradictory to a game being fun (in regards to landing and exploring then, 4x games have that but the fun is strategy) The genre is cursed for gaming in that regard. Easy way out is not being actual space- NMS fantasy land, the insane mini planets of the Outer Wilds... The reason why most space games are all about spaceships, space stations, copy-pasted bases/cities in different toned deserts... the planets thenselves suck in every space game like that, because they suck IRL

[@nairocamilo]

You are on the money with that observation I might add an opinion that although the genre (sci-fi, realistic/hard sci-fi) isn't incompatible with games, it is demanding on the simulation genre. Hence... all of this

[@arkgaharandan5881]

its not a space problem, aside from procedural generation fallout 4 had those problems too.

[@alphagarg859]

The problem isn't that space sucks, or none of those games you just mentioned are popular would be. Look at Elite Dangerous for example, a game that Bethesda clearly took inspiration from, given how the spaceship combat and controls look. It's all about depth of gameplay and world reactivity/dynamism. Earlier TES games had both, Morrowind had depth, Oblivion had a bit of both, and Skyrim had some of the latter with the random encounters and dragons and such (while old and boring now, they were cool on launch when you didn't know what to expect). Even FO76 has gameplay depth, even if the world is mostly static. Starfield doesn't have either. That's its main problem. Not setting, not procgen, but how much depth there is to the gameplay, and how dynamic the world is.

[@Aze-Aze]

vidya essay man, you made a yet another good vidya essay!

[@nigeladams8321]

I never once did any of the settlement building in fallout 4. But I did like having random bullshit in drawers. It's a lot more interesting to find a drawer full of nails and glue and a few coins then just a few coins That was one of the problems I had with the outer worlds, every single container had exclusively ammo and maybe healing items. There wasn't just random stuff in there it felt like people had gone through and specifically filled it with stuff that would be useful for you

[@lamichka]

F:New Vegas 0:34 into the video "I like Bethesda games.... " ..... are you sure about that?

[@jxpd7898]

One of the reasons Bethesda games are so good is the stories especially in the world itself, starfield lacked that

[@P-Bean]

Good point.

[@pira707]

specifically side stories. Their main plots are always so simplified

[@jxpd7898]

@@pira707 the main stories tell us to care for a character the side stories give us the choice to which is why they're always nicer and memorable

[@monody]

I'm still impressed how the Imperial City still feels larger than Jemison. Also quite disappointing that Bethesda has progressively cut back more on the sim elements and game world complexity that made the worlds immersive.

[@jaredcullum117]

I think the way Bethesda handled base building in the Hearthfire dlc actually worked pretty well. It was quick, didn't get in the way of the rest of the experience and gave you more reasons to visit certain NPCs (buying lumber from mills). I hope that in ES6 they take a similar approach, so the game doesn't just become Fallout 4 but fantasy.

[@MadastheHatter13]

Red Dead 2 set the bar for immersion for me. I'd leave the camp and spend like a in game week hunting and fishing in Ambarino not even touching a single mission. That's what I call living in a game world.

[@ZiggityZeke]

Warframe does randomly-generated content really well, how they stitch together tilesets really does trick the brain into thinking you are in a new map

[@watchout5508]

Im quite sure that the massive dip in quality from FO4 to Starfield shows that the best devs at Bethesda left either during or after FO4. Left behind are inexperienced yes men only there for the paycheck. I say this as someone whose spent countless hours jst exploring their previous maps. Loving the world and stories it could tell. I remember playing Starfield and wandering around feeling...cold? The world(s) are sterile and lifeless. Felt zero point in even interacting with it. What a damn shame they've seemed to lose the one trump card they had left. Welldone Todd, you played urself.

[@MousaThe14]

Yeah, if you walk into any Elder Scrolls lore video or anything talking about the decline of Bethesda you’ll know that their most creative and inventive writers left the company some time ago and obviously all the people that made New Vegas great are still with Obsidian. All they have left are people who have to put up with whatever milquetoast “vision” Todd and Emil have, and that includes scrubbing away anything interesting or definition to be less alienating and attract a broader audience.

[@roojackaroo8517]

​@@MousaThe14That's hilarious because everyone that made new vegas great has left Obsidian

[@MousaThe14]

@@roojackaroo8517 Ah, so we are completely devoid of hope for both entities are less than shells of their former selves

[@wintermute5974]

They probably did. Developing Fallout 76 was apparently an absolute nightmare from start to finish, wouldn't be surprising if there was a lot of turnover during those years. IIRC the guy who headed the Far Harbour DLC and was set to head the next TES game left during that time.

[@pira707]

@@MousaThe14 at this point microsoft should hire all OG new vegas creators as well as tim cain and have them make a fallout

[@RJ_6]

I didn't knew the term "over-scope" (I'm from france) but that's what the last Enshrouded update feel like

[@karmickatastrophe7864]

My Gods, this is extremely apt and accurate. Isn’t it amazing how sh*t and shower thoughts are usually meta?

[@DuckDando1066]

I think an issue i have found in the bethesda games, is the adding a new feature to dumb down. as an example, the settlement system, I think the building within skyrim is great, it allows you to build houses in specific spots from a workbench, fallout 4 increased this to a town rather than a house, but the system itself feels simpler overall, and then in starfield you have it so there is litterally no reason to build outposts. I was motivated in Skyrim because i could adopt children, maybe have a small farm plot for alchemy ingredients, in fallout i could build a town and defend it from attackers. But in starfield... it feels like I have no frills for my outposts and i can really make more than a small mining outfit, it never feels like a town, it never feels like an accomplishment to make a, outpost, i dont have to buy them, i dont have to clear out a horde of enemies before hand, i can just make a set amount, and i can only have like five people at any base.

[@DuskoftheTwilight]

8:20 well when it comes to Starfield, as someone who was quite hyped for the base building, I can guarantee you're not missing out on anything by avoiding it. The base building enables you to make pretty bases and that's it, there's essentially zero payoff, and what little payoff there is is more easily accomplished through other means. My biggest complaint with the base building is that there's just no point to it. At least in Fallout 4 there were parameters you had to balance and one of the main fractions cared about you engaging. In Starfield you can assign crew members to stand around a "base" that's nothing but an unsheltered landing pad and there's no consequences, they won't even acknowledge that they're clearly lacking livable facilities.

[@Incog-e1z]

As the head of a small studio I love watching videos like this while working on our next title.

[@P-Bean]

Hey that's awesome! Good luck to you!

[@Incog-e1z]

@@P-Bean Thank you. It’s hard since we’re just starting out, but we’re doing what we can to get the word out.

[@P-Bean]

@Incog-e1z Let me know if you ever put out an early access build.

[@Incog-e1z]

@@P-Bean We have a demo coming out in the next few weeks. You’re welcome to a key if you want to try it a little early.

[@P-Bean]

@Incog-e1z You can send a comment when the demo goes live, I'll check it out then, I read every comment I get.

[@AxolotlBaiken]

Love the video but the real lesson I wish Bethesda would learn is that you aren't supposed to make loading screens somehow longer with new games but shorter. Tried playing Starfield with an SSD and after loading fast in older bethesda games I just couldn't stare at that loading screen anymore.

[@elden_lord22]

To me the issue was simple There is nothing that made people want to continue the game The loot is very non critical look at BL2 why do people like loot farming because they want that sweet sweet +5 to reaper The exploration they have all of these dozens and dozens of planets with no reason to go to them beyond it looks neat and has a zinc deposit but no poi's, no quests, no gear The story i think only one sentence is needed here RPG's are to put yourself into a Role that role is molded by you, so when you can't carry out the role that is desired because even the evilest cruelest options make the npc's go "well...actually your right the child was a demon must have been i mean how could you be wrong"

[@jessegauthier6985]

Yeah, for all its strengths Skyrim really suffered from this.

[@elden_lord22]

@jessegauthier6985 it's a sad reality to acknowledge but you are right i think bethesda needs a reset go back to their roots for a bit like morrowind and oblivion and i want to believe they realized that hence the oblivion remake

[@chilbiyito]

I could not bring myself to listen to this on the background because i want to see sfm patrick

[@aapocalypseArisen]

"distracted by complex combat mechanics" g0d h0w i wish i c0uld change the perspective 0f gamers they say "take the game 0ut 0f my game" and then lament when everything is a fucking walking simulat0r

[@mememaster9703]

Yep, and look what these people did to kcd2. They dumbed down the combat to appeal to these people. I hope warhorse doesn’t go on a downward spiral dumbing down games like Bethesda has

[@jatelitherius9842]

@@mememaster9703i’m still reeling from that, kcd’s combat was really good when it worked. If it was ever going bad or unfun i would just cheese by pointing away from the enemy, thrusting, & turning towards them

[@pira707]

@@mememaster9703 there's still like 4 or 5(?) attack directions. KCD1 combat was pretty easy anyways

[@Tom-ahawk]

My experience playing starfield: 200hrs making cool starships, 1hr feeling empty 😄

[@dunrossb]

To be fair, I actually enjoy "living" in Skyrim in the base-building sense. When I see a nice location with running water or a quaint meadow, first I think of is "I wish I could build a house here, the no loading door kind."

[@jtyranus]

What's bad is when they try using that as a replacement for building existing settlements to interact with. Fallout 4 feels much emptier and interesting than even Fallout 3 and especially New Vegas.

[@dunrossb]

@@jtyranus I haven't played fallout yet, but tell me what you mean when you say replacement for building existing settlements?

[@Godwooper99]

Its a shame because the dishonerd games were all great

[@P-Bean]

Agreed, they were really good

[@MoustachioFurioso83]

Those were not developed by Bethesda, only published. The same goes for Fallout New Vegas.

[@P-Bean]

It's worth noting Arkane Studios had a dramatic change in its staff in 2017 after the release of Prey.

[@MoustachioFurioso83]

@@P-Bean And that the main studio behind Prey and later titles like Deathloop and Redfall was the now defunct Arkane Austin, while Arkane Lyon, responsible for the Dishonored series, is currently still developing games.

[@MoustachioFurioso83]

@lamlelamatsiliza8550 They're currently making a Blade game.

[@DefaultFlame]

0:34 Calling Fallout: New Vegas a Bethesda game is an insult.

[@unoriginalperson72]

It's a half truth

[@ummerfarooq5383]

Your linear content map is what I found in Skyrim to be the 'River Ecosystem' that people find in it making the game feel so alive. In starfield, there aren't many rivers on planets. Content is spotty. Consider the difference in a petri dish, two types of organisms. One is clustered around points and seperated by gaps. While the other is mycelium in it's nature, feeding at cluster centres with chains and paths and flow between the centre. In starfield, you got movement between poi only in rare occasions, when a travelling band of npcs would want to land or move from its poi to attack another poi. Or in the case of fauna, they would exist in waves and clumps and then another fauna would further increase the clumping by attacking it. And differences in a biome elsewhere on the planet. Without any river flow system of ecology on the living planets, like what we see along large rivers on earth, a gradual change in ecology as it stretches longitudinal/latitudinal and in altitude as well as where it doesn't reach beyond it's flood plane. It's really taxing to develop such water (liquid of any type) flow of ecology in games, they're primarily the centre piece. And for the genre of game that Starfield is based upon, which is about living in a space era, where you yourself could explore the maximum theoretical number of star systems in an average human lifetime. That local group of star cluster, the 100 or so star systems. To develop large scale linear (ecological, geological, environmental) flows for 100 systems of multiple massive maps, star citizen with $700m hasn't been able to do it. Have they? No mans sky barely has biomes, they haven't been able to do it. Asking for that level of detail, is like literally telling me that I shouldn't have a game of Starfield's genre until computational technology and hand crafting such procedural generation exists. That's mean and cruel. You could say starfield took away the focus from the river to the space ship. In travelling through space, there is no river ecology. You are alone. Surrounded by death. Wallahi prophet Moses as a baby being thrown in the river had oxygen to breath and a bank to come upon. In space, astronauts don't have that, they have to take their own oxygen. They're life is spotty like that bacteria in a petri dish trying to survive penicillin. And I remind you that there are two astronauts in the International Space Station right now that have been stuck there many months more than they were supposed to be up there. They are cut off like the drop of water shooting up when you see slap a body of water (like in a bottle of water).

[@Duskraven67]

This probably wasn't on purpose as you were just talking about the fallout series as a whole; but I found it hilarious that every time you talked about immersion, good story telling, well crafted characters, and the like, you would show footage of fallout:new vegas. Which isn't a Bethesda game.

[@Mabra51]

I don't like the base building in Fo4 and 76, but i like the ability to build your own ship in Starfield. Now, if only the rest of the game wasn't so shit...

[@Zeebsz]

wtf RotMG jumpscare, wasn't expecting that

[@Ph33NIXx]

I remember discussing with a person that i would rather have a sci-fi game set in our solar system... than 1000 procedual planets. The person did not agree... i wonder what they think now 😅 Another fun thing is i never bothered to get heartfire (or what the dlc was called) for Skyrim.. because base building did not speak to me xD

[@SorieI]

Honestly I liked the settlement creation system of fallout 4. It was buggy, and getting it to do what you want sometimes felt like you had to fight the mechanics, but aside from a single short quest it didn't take away from the story at all. It was just something genuinely fun to do if you wanted to in your down time. It made every piece of junk feel important, and as a kid and teenager I actually really enjoyed the level design. My biggest gripes were that 1) my character build had a heavy impact on gameplay, but practically no effect on the story And 2) two of the endings put you in full control over a faction but introduces no mechanics or perks to reflect this. Sure I can download the F-com mod, but I feel like if I am now the leader of the institute I should be able to enact some less evil protocols, or at least be able to summon more than a single gen 1 synth to help in combat.

[@billwilliamson1506]

Procedurally generated quests and dungeons are not inherently bad. They fall short as you mentioned when there is no structure to them. Giving a sense of progression and consequence imbues meaning to your actions. This fetch quest becomes a whole investigation and sneak mission and your actions with that quest should prompt the NPCs to respond to you differently. When we live in their worlds we love having this emergent gameplay. As you move from one place of interest to another, you can easily find yourself in an entire arc of combat, exploration, and decision making which adds value. Starfield however gives you no other option than to jump from one POI to another. Effectively making the locations just levels but with no sense of progression. Gameplay needs that dynamic aspect of stumbling upon something unimportant but dynamic to make the world feel alive.

[@GladstnJones]

Small nitpick, Fallout New Vegas wasn't made by Bethesda. It was developed by Obsidian studios, and published by Bethesda.

[@theninjaguy2]

Skyrim is probably the only BGS game that actually uses their procedural quest system correctly. Most BGS RPGs had this problem where large swaths of hand-crafted content would be missed because there was no quest pointing them there. Handcrafting quests for every location in the game wasn't feasible for a number of reasons, namely the acrual technical debt and development time restrictions, but you also run the risk of the Quest potentially overshadow the content it's meant to lead you towards. BGS needed a large quantity of small scale misc quests that served to point the player towards the content the devs wanted them to play. Radiant quests serve this purpose perfectly, and do a great job of getting the player to explore the various dungeons and encampments throughout skyrim. The problems arise in Fallout 4, which often used Radiant Quests as a replacement for hand-crafted content, rather than a supplement to it (You can also somewhat see this in Skyrim with the Companions side quests). When there's no handcrafted content for the radiant quests to lead you to, the game world feels shallow.

[@Backbone420]

74d 0h 56m sailing the blackest sea as of writing this. I have a long list of stuff that SF needs. But the one thing at the core, that all my issues orbit, is atmospheric flight. Starfield taps into the magic of spaceflight, but removes flight. Despite what little it was addressed prior to release, we all held hope we could fly our ships. And when we found out we couldn’t, it broke all our hearts a little bit. Whether we want to admit it or not. Catch a smile out there. o7

[@xXYannuschXx]

Overmanaging the developers of a game more than often doesnt work. Meanwhile letting the devs actually do their stuff often results in absolutely great games. Sadly this mindset is seemingly lost in big corporations.

[@brownbear992]

With the resource management and base building, I would love if the base building was more like the ship building in starfield (that's the one thing in that game I really loved), so you don't have to place every little piece, you just snap a pre built section onto the whole and boom you have a workshop.

[@sandllc1361]

I like building a house, getting married, having kids, and adventuring

[@MrRaki72]

Great analysis!

[@muppet3901]

It is the "what's that" experience of wandering around. There is no "what's that" in Starfield. My first outpost was a biolab and I thought it was pretty great. By chance, my second outpost was also... a Biolab. It was the same with a slightly different route. My heart sank. I had basically unlocked the biolab experience and all biolabs would fall into the same small box with the same lack of variety of content and enemies.

[@pdexBigTeacher]

I absolutely love shipbuilding in Starfield. My first playthough I built several bases, but realized I spent so little time at them on my second playthough I've built none, and continue to enjoy the game. If the purpose of the game is exploring/quests/missions, a 'base to come home to' I don't need.

[@WSWC_]

Hoooly, hes onto somethin here

[@variablevaries1228]

A patricksona is definitely a first Even better that the vid’s peak

[@AdmiralSpaceballs]

Yes most people will see the sniper background or DeGroot Keep or the soldier rocket launcher , but the real pro will notice the fuzzy Dustbowl wallpaper on the laptop .

[@justsomeguywithlasereyes9920]

Seen you showcasing New Vegas Gameplay when talking about Beth Gameplay and New Vegas was made By Obsidian (when that studio had a lot of the Fallout franchise creators), which includes the changes made from FO3 and not by Bethesda. Just another reason ppl dunk on Bethesda for, imagine having 1st person gun combat and you can't actually Aim Down Sights, that's Bethesda's FO3. @3:17 ok at least you acknowledge it which is fine, but making things clear cuz ppl want to cling to New Vegas when its convenient to them, but they never want to admit that the ppl bashing Beth by pointing to NV are right.

[@androsh9039]

As you mentioned, the craziest part is Bethesda regressing in design, using procedural generation to make 1 million planets.

[@ManiacX1999]

So... Another Skyrim re-release? Because let's be real, I'm starting to believe Skyrim was Bethesda's last good game

[@unoriginalperson72]

It clearly was, considering they keep re-releasing it

[@doodleEeto]

Quoting Willits knowing his 'accomplishments' is crazy. But the quote is good.

[@seamusfinnegan1164]

If anyone wants a fun way to immerse with radial content without it spoiling things as well as just in general for a game you might have played to death already. A. No more fast travel and stick purely to the roads or other similar in game infrastructure (You can use the carts in Skyrim for example just fine) B. Assuming this is a game where every location if it does not come up in a main or side quest comes up in a radial quest then dont go to places not directly part of a main roads path unless a quest sends you there, pretend that not every cave, fort, or camp under the sun has a bandit and they are only moving in sometime prior to you getting the quest unless they have good story reason to be their longer. C. If the game has a food crafting system make use of that, hunting for such would also be a good except to the A rule if you stumble on something while hunting down a deer or whatever. D. Whatever the dialogue the game has, maybe expand on it in your head, you would be surprised how good this is for roleplay. E. Overall have fun, this is just some ideas/suggestions that have helped me, they wont necessarily work for you.

[@Amadeone]

2:52 i'm sorry, but settlement building was the thing that ate half my playtime of fallout 4, because it was so fun, i can say without hesitation that it was a game changer for me and would REALLY miss it if they got rid of it in future releases, so I don't agree here

[@OCinneide]

It didn't feel like Fallout to me, the base building. It is inherently a different game to Fallout 3/NV and so the people who became fans of the series from these two games do not enjoy it. Since more people became fans of Fallout through Fallout 4 though that has become the default standard for Fallout games for them, so there is some disonance in the community where you have people who came up on 3/NV who might enjoy the base building but don't see it as a thing needed for a Fallout game, vs the people who are fans of 4 and see it now as a requirement for any future Fallout games. Personally I really like Fallout 4 when I separate it from 3/NV, but as a Fallout game it just makes me depressed (and thankful it wasn't set on the west coast)

[@MarylandResident]

I see where you're coming from. But I think a very small minority of Fallout 4 players would agree with your sentiment. For me the settlement building was something I touched for maybe 20 minutes before moving on to the rest of the quests.

[@usedhalfcart]

@@MarylandResidenti have to agree, and even i loved settlement building for a couple hundred hours. it was nice, but also incredibly buggy, inconsistent and pretty much only offered radiant quests and SOME unique NPCs. other than that there really was no real incentive to build settlements. i love the shit outta settlement building, but man was it hard to get into. i cant blame others for not finding it very engaging.

[@OCinneide]

@@MarylandResident A lot of the top mods for F4 are settlement mods. Sim Settlements is a massive mod with a gigantic following as well. Settlement building is also a part of Fallout 4 youtube that garners A TON of views.

[@P-Bean]

I'm not against it being in the games, just that they aren't what made the games livable, and I fear that Bethesda is more and more putting their work towards these systems instead of making the worlds themselves livable. Settlement building specifically is something you either like or you don't, and it felt like in Fallout 4 such a large emphasis was placed on it even outside of the activity itself with things like materials and quests, that if you weren't interested you were missing out. I feel like a better balance was necessary, I'm not saying it shouldn't have been there at all. And imporantly it feels like Bethesda is moving in a more unbalanced direction with that sort of thing, notably in Starfield with ship building, the extremely expansive settlement building, weapons mods, etc. These are all fine on their own, I liked weapon modding a lot in Starfield, but they crept into every part of the game and polluted the core identity.

[@martiananomaly]

Skyrim had me so immersed, I played almost all day, slept 5 hrs for some 10 days. I legitimately tried to quick save in real life during that time. Also tried to whirlwind sprint through a straight open corridor once irl lmao (thankfully i just said the shout in my mind not with my mouth). The game will always be a part of me.

[@dotcomgamingd5564]

Great video!

[@trist10]

6:35 *Insert ”Hop off the goat…” wolf gif*

[@jsraadt]

The hand-crafted world was what they missed. You couldn't even go back to the same spot on the same planet and the same trees and hills would be there

[@Rockport1911]

With Starfield Bethesda actually improved greatly in combat, its Ok for what it is. I also had a very bug- free launch which got me kinda worried :) I also spend hours designing my ship, just to " fly" it around in a hollow box with 2d textures :( 1000 planets was a mistake, I still want a mod that deletes all planets that dont have handcrafted content or a mission on them, also an easier Starmap would be nice :) Star Citizen has about 300 plantes that you can actually fly too, which is almost more than I want, but a 1000 without content is just silly...

[@RexusprimeIX]

I have 81 hours in starfield, and I've never even touched the base building aspect. In fact, I forgot that was even an option until I was watching this video and saw you move furniture around. It is SO unimportant to the game that they don't even really tell you that you can do that.

[@crafterofdoom]

i do believe i said it when FO4 released: Workshop mode wouldve been absolutely amazing if theyd limited it to decorating a house or interior.

[@dragonriderabens9761]

As far as procedural generation goes, Warframe has an interesting solution Every time you load up a mission, the game randomly pulls from a series of hand crafted tiles and slaps them together with procedural generation So doing the same mission feels somewhat different every time because the maps are never exactly the same

[@willvanauger3273]

I feel you are giving Bethesda more credit than they are due. They have always made immsersive but ultimately not especially great games. They got away with it because when Daggerfall or Morrowind came out there was no game like them and a lot of standards didnt exist. I have done this a lot lately but compare how the weapons in Starfield are to the weapons from Helldivers. Arrowhead included small touches that make their world feel real that I never noticed till it was pointed out to me. Bethesda cares so little about their games they have guns firing round bullets out of square barrels. Fallout 3 still doesnt work on steam without doing work myself, and for all the good story elements Bethesda have they balls it up with their lazy work. Fallout 4 has a whole "who is a sinth" subplot, and some characters have sinth componants, some who think they are sinths dont, but then they are so lazy they forgot to add them to actual sinth characters and break the whole mystery. Does this character only think they are sinths? or did Bethesda forget to add their sinth componant like for Rodger Warwick? Please dont give Bethsda an easy out. They have been releasing Skyrim for 10 years now and making slowly worse and worse products.

[@HaseOster]

Daggerfall is actually great (yes, I know the footage is from The Arena). Daggerfall creates a world in realistic scale and bizarre, horrendous mazes it calls "dungeons". Its character creation system is amazing. Yes, the game was released in a raw, unfinished state, but now we have all sorts of mods for the DFUnity that enhance player's experience. Bethesda hasn't "returned" to its old design principles, it actually tried to improve upon the principles they've been using since Oblivion.

[@ElectricAvenue12Ga]

Essentially Willits is saying less is more, the golden rule of design.

[@7thsealord888]

Interesting video, good points made. For the record, I play Fallouts 3 and 4 with a cr#pton of mods, enjoy base-building, and also play NMS. Haven't gone near Starfield, and am very glad of it. My own feeling as regards Bethesda is that they can have brilliant ideas, but also clearly think that indie modders exist to fix their games.

[@SimuLord]

On the bright side, Bethesda just created a blueprint for an entire new subgenre of indie game now that the technology has caught up the indie devs' ambitions. I'm looking forward to seeing "Scrolls-likes" from people who understand better than Bethesda does what Bethesda used to do so well.

[@P-Bean]

Agreed, honestly the biggest problem is we probably won't have enough time to play them all.

[@RasakBlood]

Doubt that. Bethesda style games take a long time to develop. Even shallow as they have become. The art alone is very intensive. Just having someone build the handcrafted stuff with finished assets is also time intensive on that scale. Look how long starfield was in development. Anyone that can afford that i would not really call indie. Even if they technically can fit the description.

[@IzraelGraves]

To quote a wise man by the name of P-Bean... No, shut up, yes I do like the house and settlement building. Its the primary way I feel connected to the world itself in these latest games.

[@dashy9482]

Now I am firmly addicted to base building in Fallout games. But like you said thats supposed to be icing on the cake. Not the whole game.

[@erwinbogumil207]

To be entirely honest right off the bat: I liked the basic idea of settlement building and crafting in FO4. In an apocalypse, it's nice to have safeones and contested areas. That said, that is exactly the problem: FO4 has no contested areas. And now zones taht arent safe. Most things even on Survival are barely a threat unless you are already terrible at videogames. It's a theme with FO4 too: the entire game in retrospective feels like they were too scared to commit to any ideas. They didn't want to make it like FNV, so they went a completely different direction. They didn't want to add too much content in terms of weapons, but they did add a crafting system that ties into leveling and needs minmaxing and farming items to get the most out of it. THey wanted to add uniques, none of them have a unique effect and I think there's only one that actually has a unique look. and well, they wanted you to conquer this wasteland, so you go places, build a turret that defends nothing and then get a continuous stream of mutfruit, a consumable that really has no use either.

[@mogscugg2639]

Just take a look at how the Skywind team is treating their FREE FAN PROJECT: bringing everything up to Morrowind parity in Skyrim's engine, while filling out the dialogue ON THEIR OWN. Bethesda's audience deserves the care they're giving their project, and they deserve the salaries they'd earn from Bethesda hiring THEM to work on retail games.

[@LemonsGrabbed]

you can tell you added the love Great video C:

[@P-Bean]

Thank you :D

[@LemonsGrabbed]

@ ;) Je t'aime

[@P-Bean]

je t'aime!

[@YisYtruth]

Base building would be better in their games if there was a fun base defense mechanic at its core.

[@affegpus4195]

Bold of you assuming they listened to people rather than making a plataform where they can sell mtx forever

[@LukasJampen]

Honestly you saying one solar system with 5 planets would have been better, is so validating because I have been saying the same thing i played 50h of Starfield until I realized 45 of those hours I was bored af. I've been making the comparison to outer wilds which plays on 5 planets in a single solar system and it was the most fullfilling exploration I ever had in a game and while the game with dlc is around 15-25 hours long it was a better game and experience than starfield ever could hope to be. And the planets there are tiny. You can walk around them in 10 minutes and fly through the entire solar system in 2-3 minutes seamlessly without a single loading screen GASP.

[@Tir33nts343]

Let’s be honest, Bethesda has not be destroyed, they are making money and are creating new games

[@subjectdelta17]

They've been destroyed critically though. Even with fallout 4, most people still liked that game despite a lot of older fans hating it. With 76 and starfield though? Even the most common "normie" gamers now hate bethesda and think they suck. We don't have solid sales numbers for starfield but if you go by player count, its bad. Yeah day one sales for the game were good. But I'd imagine sales nose dived after the first few weeks.

[@mariogarcia7445]

The tragedy is that the leads at Bethesda may never even bother watching the videos that pinpoint their flaws as they can't face criticism. Which means that they may never change.

[@TakaD20]

When I think of Bethesda now, 'half assed' is more of the friendly expressions that come to my mind. They do the bare minimum (or less) and expect fans to fix and expand their broken and unfinished games. Fallout 4 VR and Skyrim VR are next to unplayable without mods... but look at the price tag. Version after version of Skyrim, but no bugfixes, next to no new content... expect for paid (!) mods. 'Procedural' in that context abbreviates to 'cheap', not only for Bethesda. So no, I don't think Bethesda misheard us... they just think they found a new way to put even less effort into their games.

[@themagnus2919]

I just don't have the patience to explore the same location on a "different" planet over and over and over.

[@ummerfarooq5383]

Think about the two International Space Station astronauts still stuck there. Though technically speaking, you go back to your home every single day over and over again. Yours enjoy the same chain market shop, every single day over and over. Your towns are all looking the same, over and the next one.