Bay 12 Games Forum

-No spears. Just the expected one-handed weapon, two-handed weapon and bow skills. Grouped around playstyles rather than actual styles of combat.

Remains to be seen how this will go. I assume crossbows and throwing weapons are still out...

-Something vague about wanting to make Enchanting feel magical rather than something you can statistically gauge. Went on to describe different ways fire magic could be used - as a fireball, a flamethrower, as a kind of fire trap when cast over a rune on the ground, as a wall that can be spread over the ground or ceiling.

Both of these could be cool. Enchanting...well, anything's an improvement.

-Alchemy described as the most magicky of the stealth skills...

Interesting. I wonder if they'll fix how broken potions are...mainly the fact that you can pause the game to pick one, drink it in an instant and have its effects hit you instantly. I've always thought it would be cooler to do potions as something that takes time to drink. So higher alchemy skill would produce more concentrated potions that you can down instantly, like a shot, whereas a poorer potion would have the same effects but take time to drink. Then the effects would be ongoing instead of instant. Instead of a shot of health, you'd bet a constant healing effect over some period, or protection or what have you. If you want to heal instantly, you already have spells and items, so why not have potions be a different mechanic?

-No confirmation on werewolves/shapeshifting into other animals.

I wouldn't be hugely surprised if werewolves were (again) an expansion.

-Horses/mounts should differ from Oblivion in how they feel to be controlled - less like tanks, apparently. Dragons will not be mounts.

Just lift the system from Mount and Blade, tbh.

-Characters will start out as more or less a blank slate, since character creation will be mostly aesthetic. Choice of race will make certain attributes higher than others to start out with, and grant different racial abilities.

Very interesting. No idea if this'll be good or not.

-Less choice when making faces (i.e. pick from different types of features and then tweak them rather than messing with a lot of individual sliders) but they will look better; there was an example of this on the podcast page but the image (originally a female Nord) seems to have been replaced.

Thank baby Jesus. All those sliders in Oblivion were a headache.

-The level of each skill will matter less, with the emphasis placed on perks spent when you level to define your character.

If they're going in the direction of leaning it towards player skill more, this could be a really interesting way to it. I'm interested.

-There will be around 280 perks in the game. Each skill has its own perk tree, which will allow for further specialisation, e.g. one-handed weapons has perks for swords, axes and maces.

Ahh, so it looks like they're making up for the loss and condensation of skills in an innovative way. I like.

-Faster levelling than in Oblivion, because of the perk system. No hard cap on levels - designed for up to level 50, but if planned out beforehand a character could perhaps reach level 75.

I assume raising skills still raises your level?

-Dragons have special AI that dictates how they act when two or more dragons meet each other (presumably won't happen normally but can be modded to happen). They can attack from the air, dive bombing and breathing fire, or from the ground. There will be variation among the dragons.

Awesome. Fighting dragons has a lot of potential...to be good or to be disappointing.

-Played down Radiant Story - simply a tool used to tailor parts of random events and quests to each specific character, e.g. rescuing an NPC with a good relationship to the character from a cave they haven't already explored, along with a quest reward to suit the character.

I dunno how I feel about a quest reward to suit the character...I think knowing you'll get a good item every time reduces the fun of the game. People are more likely to keep doing something (i.e., it's presumably more fun to do) when they're rewarded unpredictably and sporadically; when you know every time that you'll get something good, the fun wears out a lot quicker.

-From the sounds of it, the player's character will start in a prison once again. They will then discover that they are one of the dragonborn, and be summoned to High Hrothgar by the Greybeards. Nothing else said on the plot for obvious reasons.

I was kind of hoping this game's plot would involve any kind of predestination - no ancient prophecies or people marked at birth to fulfill some role. I mean, when I heard about "this one guy who fights dragons" I figured it would be cool if he was just that, not some reincarnated hero, but just a badass dude, and the main quest involved not your character fulfilling a prophecy, but just deciding you want to be badass too and going to learn from him or something.

-In addition to snow and mountains, expect tundra, volcanic tundra, glaciers and pine forests too.

As long as there are alien and unearthly landscapes like in Morrowind I'll be happy.

-Area of the world around the same size of Oblivion, but mountainous terrain should increase the time taken to travel around it.

That's good. Morrowind used mountains to create the illusion of size, to great effect. The thing is, MW also "used" lack of view distance to that same effect. Once computers got good enough to use graphics extenders, suddenly everything felt much smaller. I hope this game feels large.

-Dungeons/caves will look better, as will the architecture of towns (i.e. won't look as if all built at the same time). Think Howard mentioned Skyrim having a more primitive feel to the world.

I don't care about dungeons looking better, I care about having more variety in them. As for towns, yeah, I hope there's some variety and creativity there. I like the idea of a more primitive world.

Did you seriously type out "sucksbox" all three times?

Wow. What about going out with class? And not digging your own grave?

While you're at it, how are dwarves setting up those workshops anyway? A mason's shop needs chisels, a carpenter needs saws, nails and hammers, a kitchen needs pots and pans and a stove, etc. etc. etc.

I dunno, I just think some things are meant to be abstracted because it's too much of a headache otherwise. I sure don't want to get the error message "Urist cancels build Kitchen: No metal forge or hematite, which is needed to forge cookware, or ceramic for serving food, or wood to make kitchen utensils, or running water, etc."

Essentially two major things, that I've noted at least.  I haven't played 40d, but I've been hearing about it.  The big differences are

1) Everything kills you.  Always.  Elephants in 40d would massacre whole civilizations, dragons would eat elephants as snacks, and carp would kill dragons on accident!  You think skeletal giant tigers are tough now, go fight a 40d goat.

2) Economy was in place.  Economy is much like capitalist economy, once you get a manager and a bookkeeper, economy is activated, where dwarves get paid according to their work, and they use that payment to rent their living space and other such.  You had to mint coins for them, so you could control the economy much like the government simply by minting more coins, and different jobs get different payments.  A legendary armorsmith could make a suit of armor and rent the best room in the fort for a year, or a plant processor could make some thread and he wouldn't have to sleep on the ground.

Neither of these are true. Elephants and carp used to be overpowered in way older versions, but were toned down. There's nothing that especially tough in 40d from what I can remember.

As for the economy, it was completely broken; that's why Toady just took it out. You didn't have to mint coins, and nobody did since as soon as you did, dwarves would spend all their time hauling individual coins from place to place. Otherwise the system worked on credit, but given the level of chronic unemployment in any fort, and how messed up the "prices" were, most dwarves couldn't afford a room (even though it was never clear who they were paying for their room) and would be thrown out (even though nobody threw them out, they just stopped sleeping in their old room). And nobles would CONSTANTLY "change the prices of goods" and spam you with messages about it. Basically, a few small fragments of an economy were implemented in a really half-assed way, and since Toady isn't developing that part of the game right now and nobody played with it on anyway, he just took it out for the time being.

I've only been to like half of the states so far. Planning to hit all but Hawaii on my planned road odyssey. Of the ones I've been to, either New Jersey or Indiana is my least favorite...probably Jersey, because I have some happy memories of Indiana what with family and all. Jersey is just a shithole. Really, Jersey is a shoe-in.

If I'd been to all of them, I have a feeling Kansas might top Jersey, although that's hard.

As far as leveled monsters/items are concerned, I don't think any of that should be necessary, even by Morrowind standards. In my opinion, having to scale things to the character's level means that you've failed to provide an interesting world with varied and workable challenges in it. Granted, in Morrowind it was fairly unobtrusive, but you still had things like leveled loot, which I hate; if I have a character who (for an example) specializes in taking high risks at low levels and using illusions, cunning, and sneaky skills in order to infiltrate difficult areas, why shouldn't he be rewarded with amazing stuff instead of punished for it with lousier stuff than he'd get when that area is a cakewalk? The answer, of course, is that game design is haaaaaaard and that would require areas that aren't easy to get into and loot even at low level due to balance and AI issues.

I don't think Morrowind really had a problem in that respect. Plenty of good loot was hand-placed and was always there. More of it would appear randomly once you hit a certain level, sure, but if your level 3 thief wanted to be badass and sneak into some lair and pick up some phat lute, there was never a problem with that. The fact that you weren't guaranteed to find good stuff, if anything, is what makes it worth raiding caves over and over. If you know every time you sneak into some mine shaft that you're coming out with a sick item, pretty soon it gets old, and there's no pleasure in finding cool stuff anymore. Once you're high enough level, enemies are getting tougher and the game supplies you for that by having more powerful stuff show up in more places, sure, but it's still a crapshoot every time. I think that's a fine system.

Keep in mind that bronze isn't half bad, either. Not as good as steel, sure, but view it as somewhat of a challenge.