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[Column] Elder Scrolls Online: Bad as I Want to Be

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  • bcbullybcbully Member EpicPosts: 11,838

    Made my wicked necro in GW2, and the first thing I see past creation is "help me" and my wicked necro says "OK fair lady!" It was almost gg at that point.

     

    On the other hand, Age of Wushu has the best norailty system I've seen. The thing is, AoW is not a quest centric game. You get good and evil based on you interactions with..(wait for it..) PEOPLE. 

     

    Morality in our standard western quest based mmos may never work. Swtor may be as good as you get.

    "We see fundamentals and we ape in"
  • karat76karat76 Member UncommonPosts: 1,000
    Not sure how total freedom would work in a game. I never bought the whole community will police itself as in all my years on mmos I have never saw it work. Just remember even a sandbox needs walls to hold the sand in.
  • bcbullybcbully Member EpicPosts: 11,838
    Originally posted by karat76
    Not sure how total freedom would work in a game. I never bought the whole community will police itself as in all my years on mmos I have never saw it work. Just remember even a sandbox needs walls to hold the sand in.
     

    Me either until AoW it works with out question. It takes original thought though. That's something our western dev have been lacking. 

     

    I saw a post this post the other day talking about how all engins do basic task. The trouble is making the engin do what you want. It made me think that possibly our programmers just aren't up to snuff.

     

    I kinda have a feel for what I think ESO will be. A deep, virtual world may not be there. I think it's gonna all come down to the combat and itemization.

    "We see fundamentals and we ape in"
  • SandonasSandonas Member Posts: 5
    First of all u guys keep forgetting a game called "fable" where you got to choose to be good bad or neutral so just saying and you guys are all morons cause you be bad in one town and be good in another part for skyrim and for oblivion if you wanted to be bad you just put a mask on and be a bad as you wanted to be and morrowind was just insane and the guards were ridicously hard to kill probably need to go bad to the aspect which I really played Oblivion just to find out the NPCS are weaker and easier and dumber and then Skyrim got the biggest "nerf" of them all except when it came to dragons and what I didn't like about Skyrim is in Oblivion there were skill increased items lying just all the place the loot was better and just a funner in all aspects and that's all i got to say about this debacle.
  • DistopiaDistopia Member EpicPosts: 21,183
    Originally posted by jtcgs

    "we’ve known that the game won’t be a “sandbox”, but rather a theme park with large amounts of character building freedom. This is, quite honestly, right on par with the other Elder Scrolls games.":

    Enough already, if you like ducks, say you like ducks and stop calling ducks something else. The only people that say TES games are themepark games are those being PAID to do so and those willing to go to any length to get a DaoC remake. No amount of lies is going to change the minds of those that either never played DaoC, never liked DaoC and already know that an MMO can be made like a TES game and dont want just another freaking themepark based MMO...sure not going to change the minds of the people flooding every single TES site about how bad a move it was to make a TES game with closed factions, closed races and PvP behind an invisible wall while trying to make a game where the entire world is at war with each other...

    I guess if you consider a sandbox a game that offers free roaming, TES would be a sandbox  (some describe/categorize GTA in such a way); however, if you feel a true sandbox involves more, you may feel differently. I fall into the latter of the two, I couldn't care less about DAOC, I also wish I was being paid to say this.

    For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson


  • jtcgsjtcgs Member Posts: 1,777
    Originally posted by Distopia

    I guess if you consider a sandbox a game that offers free roaming, TES would be a sandbox  (some describe/categorize GTA in such a way); however, if you feel a true sandbox involves more, you may feel differently. I fall into the latter of the two, I couldn't care less about DAOC, I also wish I was being paid to say this.

     There is more to TES sandbox than just roaming. You can play the character as you like, there is no race/faction lock, you can be bad or good, you can go in and just kill everyone in town, kill the quest giver. Go where you want, when you want. You can raise ALL CRAFTING skils to max, make anything in the game. Its almost 100% sandbox.

    Its simple, the base game design is sandbox. Go anywhere, do anything with any type of character you want, the way you want with any race or faction, even switch and betray them.

    TESO is themepark in its base design with the developers telling you what faction/race you can play, how you are going to play it and the way you are going to play it as they hold your hand every step of the way down the funnel to PvP neverland where there is ever more hand holding. There is no freedom, the exact opposite of TES.

    “I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson

  • jbombardjbombard Member UncommonPosts: 598

    It seems like each individual person has a different "if it doesn't have x then it isn't TES".

     

    I agree that you have always had quite a bit of freedom in how you tackle the story.  However I have never considered TES to really be exceptional when it comes to providing a gray story.  Mostly the story is the one you decide it is in your head.(reasons for your actions etc...)  So for me TES has been about freedom, but never really about morally tough choices in the context of the story presented through the game.  

     

    Most games give you the option to not take on quests you don't agree with, however people want to see the content so generally it is left up to the player as to finding a reason as to why perhaps their character would do it.  Or not do it, if that is the case.  I can remember plenty of instances of quests where I would have no problem of doing the quest in the context of my imagined character but, not for any of the reasons provided by dialog choices.

     

    The one thing TES games have allowed you to do is kill anybody, even if you can kill anybody in TESO I doubt they will stay dead as it is an MMO and other people need to interact with the NPCs.  I suppose they could use phasing but it really isn't that big of a deal to me as one option is just as immersion breaking as the other.(players suddenly disappering or talking to  NPCs that are not there is just as bad or worse than not being able to kill every NPC IMHO.)

     

     

  • DistopiaDistopia Member EpicPosts: 21,183
    Originally posted by jtcgs
    Originally posted by Distopia

    I guess if you consider a sandbox a game that offers free roaming, TES would be a sandbox  (some describe/categorize GTA in such a way); however, if you feel a true sandbox involves more, you may feel differently. I fall into the latter of the two, I couldn't care less about DAOC, I also wish I was being paid to say this.

     There is more to TES sandbox than just roaming. You can play the character as you like, there is no race/faction lock, you can be bad or good, you can go in and just kill everyone in town, kill the quest giver. Go where you want, when you want. You can raise ALL CRAFTING skils to max, make anything in the game. Its almost 100% sandbox.

    Its simple, the base game design is sandbox. Go anywhere, do anything with any type of character you want, the way you want with any race or faction, even switch and betray them.

    TESO is themepark in its base design with the developers telling you what faction/race you can play, how you are going to play it and the way you are going to play it as they hold your hand every step of the way down the funnel to PvP neverland where there is ever more hand holding. There is no freedom, the exact opposite of TES.

    It's in how you look at it, as an example TSW has an open skill system, but that doesn't make the game sandbox focused IMO.

    Elder scrolls in the past used a similar method to what TESO is doing with it's class suggestion system, rather than force you down a linear class path you are able to make any combination of skills available. Skill is based on loadout very similar to TES, it could be argued its in a generic way, but it's there. That doesn't make it a sandbox  in my eyes though.

    I look at what the core of a game is to decide such a descriptor, as there are many systems that come together to form a sandbox game and the gameplay that term describes; otherwise it's simply role-playing in my eyes, as you have no real control other than arbitrary exceptions (killing someone or stealing something). Look at housing for instance it's incredibly static, even the so called building offered in Hearth Fire. <----A mod for FalloutNV did far more to make that game a sandbox, RTS ( real time settler) Combined with a few other mods that gave you jobs to do and things to interact with (TV's Radios etc...)...--.> .

    In the end this is how I look at it , many games have elements of sandboxes, but at their core they're still story/lore content based, not unlike Themeparks, they simply have a lot in common. Story/quest based, with tact on things like exploration (open worldish) where your main options of alternate content are killing and collecting. Sandbox focused games allow you to manipulate a world through numerous outlets, you don't need to role-play in the sense that it's all there simulating life and control over it. A good example where TEs fails in that is guilds, they really have no use/impact when the questline is over.

     

     

    For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson


  • ego13ego13 Member Posts: 267
    Originally posted by bcbully
    Originally posted by karat76
    Not sure how total freedom would work in a game. I never bought the whole community will police itself as in all my years on mmos I have never saw it work. Just remember even a sandbox needs walls to hold the sand in.
     

    Me either until AoW it works with out question. It takes original thought though. That's something our western dev have been lacking. 

     

    I saw a post this post the other day talking about how all engins do basic task. The trouble is making the engin do what you want. It made me think that possibly our programmers just aren't up to snuff.

     

    I kinda have a feel for what I think ESO will be. A deep, virtual world may not be there. I think it's gonna all come down to the combat and itemization.

    It's hilarious how this racism is easily tolerated, and pitiful.

     

    No game will ever, EVER, be able to pull this off completely.  Why?  Because most people have severe sociological problems that they choose to act out through their characters in games.  This is also why most online games the community is so bad, invariably you have to deal with these ingrates and waste your time either avoiding them or helping them.

    Just because every car has similar features doesn't mean that Ferraris are copies of Model Ts. Progress requires failure and refining.

    image

  • jbombardjbombard Member UncommonPosts: 598
    Originally posted by Cirin
    Originally posted by bcbully
    Originally posted by karat76
    Not sure how total freedom would work in a game. I never bought the whole community will police itself as in all my years on mmos I have never saw it work. Just remember even a sandbox needs walls to hold the sand in.
     

    Me either until AoW it works with out question. It takes original thought though. That's something our western dev have been lacking. 

     

    I saw a post this post the other day talking about how all engins do basic task. The trouble is making the engin do what you want. It made me think that possibly our programmers just aren't up to snuff.

     

    I kinda have a feel for what I think ESO will be. A deep, virtual world may not be there. I think it's gonna all come down to the combat and itemization.

    It's hilarious how this racism is easily tolerated, and pitiful.

     

    No game will ever, EVER, be able to pull this off completely.  Why?  Because most people have severe sociological problems that they choose to act out through their characters in games.  This is also why most online games the community is so bad, invariably you have to deal with these ingrates and waste your time either avoiding them or helping them.

     

    Really, it is a tough problem.  It has nothing to do with the engine though, it has to do with creating systems and environments that encourage the kind of behavior we want in the community.  It isn't that it isn't technological possible, it is more that developers don't know how to design those environments.  Making swinging a hammer feel weighty enough to make combat feel real and fun is the kind of problem they are used to.  What you need is people with degrees in psychology and understand how people interact with society(environments) and can transfer that and understand the difference between real world communities and online communities.   It isn't a very common skill set.  I just think every MMO development teem should have behavioral science experts and psychologists on the team helping developers make decisions that encourage the kind of the behavior they want, or at a minimum at least to make sure the developers aren't making decisions that encourage the kind of behavior they DON'T want.

     

  • ZikariZikari Member Posts: 78

    The Fallout and Elder Scroll Games are the only ones at the moment that allow a neutral play or undecicive play like the older Baldurs Gate titles. There are are lot of quests and choices in Skyrim where you can't really guess where what decision and will lead you and it is perfectly fine to not do some quests for people you don't like. You are not incentivised by playing either all out good or all out evil and make decisions along the way. Best example from Skyrim is the Stormcloak vs. Empire conflict, both sides has good points and they tried hard to make both valid choices without one being abviously right, wrong, good or evil.

    I dislike the Bioware system with the clear, red is though, blue is saintly system, it is very watered down most of the time and though decisions, like the final Geth vs. Quarians choice in ME3 are far and in between. I hope an MMO will finally allow this open morale system...

  • NL-RikkertNL-Rikkert Member UncommonPosts: 134

    Wish games would give proper choice once again, nowadays players get herded through a game and everything is simplified.

    It used to be like (and should always be in RPG games, unless you're actually trying to tell a proper story):

     

    Man A wants you to murder Madam B, next you have a few options:

    - Kill madam B

    - Kill Man A

    - Ignore Man A / Madam B

    - Bribe/intimidate Man A (to leave Madam B alone)

    - Kill both Man A and Madam B

    - Tell Madam B about Man A's plan (make her dissapear)?

    - Let Madam B bribe you in to killing Man A instead

     

     

    STOOPID
    When someone does something so utterly moronic that it kills your brain cells at the very thought of it.

  • jbombardjbombard Member UncommonPosts: 598
    Originally posted by Zikari

    The Fallout and Elder Scroll Games are the only ones at the moment that allow a neutral play or undecicive play like the older Baldurs Gate titles. There are are lot of quests and choices in Skyrim where you can't really guess where what decision and will lead you and it is perfectly fine to not do some quests for people you don't like. You are not incentivised by playing either all out good or all out evil and make decisions along the way. Best example from Skyrim is the Stormcloak vs. Empire conflict, both sides has good points and they tried hard to make both valid choices without one being abviously right, wrong, good or evil.

    I dislike the Bioware system with the clear, red is though, blue is saintly system, it is very watered down most of the time and though decisions, like the final Geth vs. Quarians choice in ME3 are far and in between. I hope an MMO will finally allow this open morale system...

    I don't even know why we need a system.  Having intresting choices is great, but why does that need to be tied to some big meter in the sky telling you how moral character your charcter is without understanding the reasons behind why the player does the things they do.

     

    Intresting choices aren't good vs. evil, intresting choices are often on the same side of the scale justice vs. compassion, greed vs. pride, etc...  When a choice is clearly good vs. evil it isn't very interesting because the player is going to just choose whichever they feel fits their character and it requires very little thought.

     

    I don't need some complex reward system tied to how moral I am, or some changes to the game world based on my morality.  All we need is for choices to have repercussions, it need not matter why we choose what we did to the game, simply that doing so caused other things to happen.

     

     

  • allendale5allendale5 Member Posts: 124
    No MMO truly offers the option to be 'bad' and advance in skill or level, without penalty in either challenge or reward. 
  • AlBQuirkyAlBQuirky Member EpicPosts: 7,432

    Good points, Bill. I think that this is another mark that TES:O will fall short on, for me.

    - Al

    Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.
    - FARGIN_WAR


  • spydermr2spydermr2 Member Posts: 336

    How far we've come from the array of choices in Daggerfall, with families, many many guilds, and such... or Morrowind, with many guilds, vampire clans, and the families-as-guilds?   So now we face the ongoing elimination of player choice in ESO:  two guilds only.

    I want Daggerfall's array of choices, thank you.  Not 2.  Lots. 

    Very little in ESO makes me think of Elder Scrolls.  Then again, nothing since Morrowind has felt like Elder Scrolls to me, so... then again, again, I've missed Passwall and the freedom it offered since the original game. 

     

  • AddersAdders Member Posts: 28
    Originally posted by BadSpock
    Originally posted by Cirin
    Originally posted by rygard49
    Originally posted by Cirin
    Originally posted by azzamasin
    Same here, really hoping I can play that Chaotic Neutral I always envisioned my characters to be.  Looking out for Numero uno!

    Sadly, one more RP'er that doesn't understand that Chaotic Neutral is actually a clinically insane psychopath.  

     

    Sorry for the tangent just a big pet peave.

    You're thinking Chaotic Evil...

    Chaotic neutrals are completely random and unpredictable. They may shift allegiances at a moment's notice, or remain with a leader for years. The chaotic neutral character feels that there is no plan at all for the universe. Things just happen. They tend to believe in luck and chance, rather than fate or destiny. They don't care what happens to others, yet will not necessarily go out of their way to harm others. If someone stands in the way of their happiness, they may kill that individual or move on to something else. Their priorities tend to change as they experience new things in life. They may even appear to adhere to another alignment for some length of time, only to switch at an inappropriate moment. They can be the worst tricksters, conning people, not for gain, but for sheer amusement. The chaotic neutral may not be driven by fame or wealth, but may only take actions just to see what happens.

    I always reference-

    http://0-media-cdn.foolz.us/ffuuka/board/tg/image/1343/59/1343595701711.jpg

     

    Sorry about the long quote, but I love the half of this alignment chart I can see. Where's the rest? Got a link for this one? There are tons out there but not as good.

  • BeansnBreadBeansnBread Member EpicPosts: 7,254
    Originally posted by Adders

    Sorry about the long quote, but I love the half of this alignment chart I can see. Where's the rest? Got a link for this one? There are tons out there but not as good.

    Assuming I understand your problem correctly, you should be able to see a scrollbar at the bottom of the post that has the picture with the side cut off. Scroll right.

     

    Edit: You should also be able to right click and save to desktop as well if you want to keep it.

  • BadSpockBadSpock Member UncommonPosts: 7,979
    Originally posted by colddog04
    Originally posted by Adders

    Sorry about the long quote, but I love the half of this alignment chart I can see. Where's the rest? Got a link for this one? There are tons out there but not as good.

    Assuming I understand your problem correctly, you should be able to see a scrollbar at the bottom of the post that has the picture with the side cut off. Scroll right.

     

    Edit: You should also be able to right click and save to desktop as well if you want to keep it.

    Yup - that.

    I couldn't figure out how to resize it.

    You can just do a google search for "D&D morality chart" and it'll pop up too (under images.)

  • PsycospankPsycospank Member UncommonPosts: 36
    Originally posted by Xepo

     The author of the post hit on something I feel we focus too much on in gaming and especially in MMOs...

    "One of the parts of the Elder Scrolls series that’s become so great at letting players lead their own noble or murky lives are the “Guilds”.  At launch, ESO will have the Fighters Guild and Mages Guild.  But what we’ll all be waiting to see enter the game is the Dark Brotherhood. But these sorts of content additions are pretty much either good or bad.  There’s little in between. Being an Assassin in the DB (ha!) isn’t exactly a fine moral line to walk. You kill your assigned targets and that’s that.  The key to ESO’s moral ambiguity will be in allowing players to decide to help or harm someone (or to ignore their request entirely) and to not be punished in terms of progression for doing so."

      We as developers, consumers, and players of MMOs have become so addicted to PROGRESSION (xp) that we forget there is other ways to reward players for playing a game. Honestly in some of my rpg games like Skyrim, Dragon Age, and (at times) GW2 leveling becomes a back seat to many other things in the game. In GW2 I stop and listen to random NPC voice conversations and explore the beautiful land around me. Skyrim and especially Morrowind I get lost in the world... I am not hunting for the next (!) to carry on my leveling fix. 

       I believe Zenimax/Bethesda or any other gaming company has a great chance to rewrite this part of gaming if they do it right. I for one am sick of my leveling and how fast or slow it goes determining whether a game is worth playing. I would love to see a game where the xp bar is not part of your main hud/ui of the game. 

    This idea that your progression is based on your investment of the story is something that I discovered in SWTOR, though its decisions are very set and your end results are very pathed, I did find for the most part that I was steaming through the story not so much concerned with leveling. To be fair it wasnt always like that but I still found myself craving to know what was going to happen next as I journeyed to my next major story update(quest). GW2 also does this (as stated above), or though for me sometimes I didnt feel as in touch with the story I think the interface, and how the characters converse takes away from the story sometimes in GW2. I still found myself enjoying the story more than leveling which is important to me. 

    Hopefully this can be expanded upon and the idea of true decision making can be add to give varity to the way your character is developed. 

    I also liked the survey styled Q and A in elder scrolls that assisted you in deciding what type of character you are, almost like a myers-briggs for RPG :) that was a nice touch.

    image
  • killahhkillahh Member UncommonPosts: 445
    In skyrim, you could get some awesome armor, only if you led an innocent follower to a certain area and killed them.
    skyrim has hard choices, but they should have been felt more in the world

    over 20 years of mmorpg's and counting...

  • TelgethTelgeth Member Posts: 2

        If I recall correctly DAoC did have a morality system in place.  It was not as extensive as I would like to see things, but honestly, seemed logical on most levels.

        The system that I remember was that if you killed monster a, who likes monster b, your rating with b would go down.  Alternatively if Monster A and B were enemies, your standings with B would increase.  Kill enough of monster As and eventually you were friends with monster B.  Most monsters/factions etc. would not be linked or have interactions. Or killing monster A would not affect standings with Monster B.  

     

         One tricky part, under this system is coming up with quests/situations that allow enough latitude to feel immersive, or allow enough player freedom.  My idea would be to have a range up to 12 options, the top options or bottom options would only be available if you hold enough trust or distrust to allow access to them.  If someone hates you enough, they might set up an ambush.  Or maybe they love you, allowing the option to start negotiations for peace with their minor enemies, maybe cast a vote for such allowing players to inflence npc guilds.  

         Maybe every player could have a faction standing with each guild based on trust, and on alignment (if they like you or not).  If you start making promises and not completing them, or taking forever to complete anything (doing 15 quests between accepting and completing their quest)  the trust value will depreciate, leaving fewer options.

         I don't know what ESO will choose.  I somewhat doubt that they can overcomplicate the process too much so long as whatever they do, it is deep.

     
     
  • SovrathSovrath Member LegendaryPosts: 31,937
    Originally posted by BadSpock
     

    I always reference-

    http://0-media-cdn.foolz.us/ffuuka/board/tg/image/1343/59/1343595701711.jpg

     

    As a point of note this is now my favorite thing ever.

    Though I kind of question the picard rating.

    Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb." 

    Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w


    Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547

    Try the "Special Edition." 'Cause it's "Special." https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/64878/?tab=description

    Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo 
  • deakondeakon Member Posts: 583
    Originally posted by jtcgs

    "we’ve known that the game won’t be a “sandbox”, but rather a theme park with large amounts of character building freedom. This is, quite honestly, right on par with the other Elder Scrolls games.":

    Enough already, if you like ducks, say you like ducks and stop calling ducks something else. The only people that say TES games are themepark games are those being PAID to do so and those willing to go to any length to get a DaoC remake. No amount of lies is going to change the minds of those that either never played DaoC, never liked DaoC and already know that an MMO can be made like a TES game and dont want just another freaking themepark based MMO...sure not going to change the minds of the people flooding every single TES site about how bad a move it was to make a TES game with closed factions, closed races and PvP behind an invisible wall while trying to make a game where the entire world is at war with each other...

     

    The only thing sandbox using the mmo meaning about tes is player housing, otherwise its very themepark, you go around the park (map) playing on the different rides (quests) as you go through it.

    Granted it has mobs that scale, but that doesn't magically make it sand box either, otherwise gw2 is a sandbox once you hit 80
  • simmihisimmihi Member UncommonPosts: 709

    I'm with you Bill. I'd even say that lack of choice is what makes today's games so bland and boring. Unfortunately, the only real choice we have in today's games takes place right at the start, when we select our class / race / role. That's it. From that point on, everything you do is leading inevitably to the same point, even if the "idea" of choice is somehow there. For example, in GW2, no matter what you choose to do on the way, you end up in the same point and the story is the same at the end. I want different alignments, different "friends" and "enemies" based on the choices i make, different accomplishments etc. I want to benefit from the choices i make, and also to fear them somehow.

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