Bay 12 Games Forum

I have got new (old) problems. Dwarves deconstruct floors, and let the blocks fall into the ocean. How do I deconstruct a floor, to not fall down. Can the dwarves grab them some way?

Quote from: towerdude on August 22, 2012, 03:37:09 pm

Quote from: Frumple on August 22, 2012, 08:17:22 am

Quote from: Rex_Nex on August 22, 2012, 07:54:39 am

We really didn't need another thread... :[.

Yeah. Is there anything more to be said that hasn't already been said? Can't we just leave TES to its individual threads and leave the cross game conflict to die? Folks on b12 apparently can't keep the vitriol down when it comes to th'elder scrolls games being considered in bulk, and there's no reason to give Toady more work if we don't have to

What I can hardly understand here, is that people tend to avoid arguments like the plague. We have to accept that we are not robots, or a unified hive, to see everybody agreeing in everything. Why don't we welcome this as an opportunity to exchange ideas, and enrich our knowledge about others? We could find certain aspects of the discussion, what is harder to reach in a "fluffy" environment.

Of course that doesn't mean Argumentum Ad Hominem or the like.

Mostly cause quite a few arguments here have been argued to the point that everyone is just repeating themselves over and over and all that can be said has already been said. It gets really tiring, specially when you factor in that said arguments also occur endlessly outside of Bay12. And then there's some (me included) who just want to enjoy the games and prefer to discuss their good points instead of their failings. Also arguments are just kinda unpleasant to see happen, specially on the internet.

Could be, but I don't think that "There is nothing new under the sun" is true. A lot of people said in history that we know everything, what is knowable, and we discovered everything what is out there, they were all wrong.

Also the last thread brough me a little joy, since I never knew the existence of the Methaphysics.

Hello!

I don't see any current thread going on about these games so I make a continuation to the last one, what Toady closed. Hopefully no personal vendettas will undo this one (including mine).

Here is where the older discussion took place:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=113136.0

Quote from: towerdude on August 10, 2012, 10:17:09 am

Hey CaptainArchmage,

Hows your progress going?

I'll probably have to skip this one, sorry.

Probably? Doy you have a save? Or continue from the last one?

Daggerfall vs Morrowind

I've played both Daggerafll and Morrowind. Both had similar strengths and weaknesses. Large worlds, interestign game mechanics, highly customizeble characters and magic/enchantment systems, lots of interesting sidequests that could easily keep a player entertained for weeks...and awful main quests that weren't nearly as fun as the rest of the game.

Daggerfall's main quest was arguably better written than Morrowind's. I don't recall ever staring at the screen in shock at how stupid it was. I did occassionally do that while playing Morrowind. But Morrowind's main plot was far more interesting overall, however head-on-desk-banging stupid it was at some points.

Morrowind suffered from a slight lack of replayability compred to Daggerfall. Daggerfall had a lot of dynamically generated content. And some of that content was comparable in complexity to some of Morrowind's guild questlines, and with less railroading. Daggerfall's quest had far more flexlibilty in how they were completed, and with multiple possible endings. But, Daggerfall's dynamic content while sometimes very good, was sometimes irrelevant for how similar things were. Some of the random-joe-nobody-in-a-tavern questgivers spawned quests that were far more interesting than some of the guild quests, some of which were notoriously bad. Mage guild kill quests, for example, were amongst the most tedious affairs in the history of gaming.

...which brings us to Daggerfall's dungeons. Daggerfall had dungeons bigger than most games. Completely and entirely literally...you could go to a random crypt of no consequences in the middle of nowhere, and sometimes it would be a 4-hour long affair. And not because of combat, but because the things were so huge. Individual Daggerfall dungeons were like 3-4 levels of Descent combined. Morrowind dungeons were generally entirely liner affairs. Go in one end, maybe make one or two redundant choices, possibly follow a circle, then reach the end turn around and go back. Daggerfall dungeons were labyrinthine extremely three dimensional mazes, and some individual dungeons (Castle Necromoghan comes to mind) were quite possibly bigger than every dungeon in the entirety of Morrowind combined.

Impressive. But...honestly Daggerfall's dungeons went beyond what could possibly be considered fun. They were too much. And their 3d layout was so honeycombed and complicated that sometimes even something s simple as navigating an inch up on the map visualizer involved several minutes of zooming and rotating to find a path.

Daggerfall also failed in its world map. Yes, it was notoriously big, possibly the largest computer generated game world ever made, without thousands of cities and dungeons and an overland map that would probably takes days or weeks of real time to traverse. In fact, it was so big that most players didn't even realize it was possible to travel from one town to another without automated fast travel. But...there wasn't really much reason to because it was all the same. And there wasn't much reason to visit any of those thousands of cities and dungeons because they were also all the same. And with the way quests were dynamically created, there wasn't really much reason to go anywhere at all. You could easily pick one city with each of the various guilds you cared about and spawn random quests all day long and never have to leave. In fact, as large as many cities were, that was kind of the only reasonable way to play. A medium-sized town in Daggerfall might have several hundred buildings, and spaced out enough that even with magically enchanted speed and flying it could take a couple minutes to travel from one end to another. Larger towns tended to take so long just to get from point A to point B that it was unpleasant. The capital in Daggerfall was big enough that flying from one end to another was a feat of similar magnitude as flying the entire overland gameworld in Morrowind. And it probably had more individual buildings than the whole of Morrowind, too. That's...one city.

Daggerfall did some things very much better than Morrowind: Daggerfall's character paper doll was better. It was pretty much a playfkiss doll game. Hundreds of different possible outfits with lots of cosmetic accessories. Morrowind did this as well, but Daggerfall's was better. Even individual shirts had multiple graphics sets so you could wear a shirt tucked in or loose. Daggerfall's quest generation was better than Morrowind's entirely static quest set. Daggerfall's spell and enchantment system was (debateable, but probably) a bit better too. But other things Morrowind did better. Alchemy in Morrowind was vastly better than the potion maker system in Daggerfall. Morrowind was prettier. Morrowind's world was more well fleshed out and full. Morrowind's dialogue system was much better. And some things they did about the same. Both had lots of ingame books to read. Both had optional quests that could keep one entertained for days or weeks.

Overall I'd say Daggerfall was bigger, more complicated in some ways, and vastly more ambitious. But Morrowind, while smaller, was more well refined. Morrowind was lacking in some ways, a bit simple at times, but overall it gave a better presentation, it was more "fun" and the world more memorable.

Finally, no discussion of Daggerfall would be complete without mentioning it's largest and most complete failling: It was broken. The game was so bug ridden that it was difficult to play to the end without running into some fatal problem that was irrecoverably destroy your savefile. To have any chance of playing you had to make regular backups, or at least cycle through the available saveslots. And sometimes even if you did you'd end up having to revert back hours of gameplay because irrecoverable crashes weren't immediately obvious. Daggerfall also had issues that would render the game unbeatable even without visibly breaking. The most obvious being that if you didn't meet one particular meeting deadline in the early game, it would become impossible to engage the main questline. It would be like in Morrowind, if you didn't report to Caius Cosades in Balmora within the first half hour of play...both he and all other relevant main quest npcs would vanish and it would be impossible to beat the game. And you wouldn't even know it.

Ultimately, I want to like Daggerfall more. It was a multi-level stone castle with a dungeon, moat and flying guards at a time when most other games were tents. But as impressive as it was, it was also unfinished. Tough to live in a castle when it's missing floors and chunks of loosely masonry occasionally fall from the ceiling on your head. Morrowind only seems small and simple in comparison to Daggerfall. It's still more open and more well developed than most other games of its genre. And it has enough refinements and improvements while retaining enough of the spirit of Daggerfall that regardless of the smaller scope, the fact is that Morrowind is more playable and more fun than Daggerfall. Morrowind was good. Daggerfall can best be summarized with "So, awesome! If only..."

So, Morrowind gets my vote.

Mostly that was the way I felt about it, but sometimes, I couldn't help it, but saw the world of Daggerfall as a bit empty, despite its wasteness. In my first post of this thread, I have summed up the good parts of one game, what another lacks, there are even a few parts in Arena which we could use today. This all time wish list is not even though, since some games have more standing qualities than the others.

My would drew the leading line between Morrowind and Daggerfall. On quality the former, on complexity the latter (I am not just referring to its hugeness, but subtleties like your assassin story), lastly spiced with good ideas from the other 3 games.

@towerdude, this time you didn't even bother. Just one ad-hom after another after ignoring my post. So I'm not going to bother anymore either.

I have gave you detailed answer why I judge RPG environments differently than you, I even made a simple, but effective image to illustrate this. I have respected your opinion (the part when you talked about the games and not about personal issues with me) as a different argument that enrich the discussion, even if I don't agree with it.

Let's repeat myself (this goes to forsaken1111 too), even if there is a minimal limit in game design to NPC numbers, and territorial size, Morrowind stand up to that challange with quality. And by quality I mean gameplay, if I can play in a world that only contain 3000 NPCs, but during play I entirely forgot to think or grumble about this fact, then the developers made a good job to counterweight this fact, to such extent to not break immersion (your role play, what every RPG is really about, or should be).

However when I walk on space station what supposed to spread over half of the planet, and I can only visit 15 areas, than it is more lame than having a space station what size (in the lore or the videos) actually reflect these 15 areas (an exterior that support these).

Supposed size:

Actual size: (I moved the part togeather so it wouldn't be that large, in game however they are supposed to be more distant from each other)

You could say the designers did this to make a larger city, while actually not making it large, but what is the point of that, other than some false sense of grandioze? I know from Morrowind that they doesn't wanted to be larger than it is, but it actually manages to be, with quality content. Also Earth's population grew exponentially, that means one time our world had only a few million inhabitants, I can simply imagine the TES worlds with not that much population density. In a world where there are only a few people, an empire can consist of a few thousands of people.

Should I report this thread for all the arguing, double/triple-posts and derailment? :v

Arguments bring the world forward, if we wouldn't have arguments, we would never have invented the things we have today. Arguments create bring new ideas we have never encountered, and this enriches our perception, so we won't remain in our own closed world.

For instance, despite not agreeing with Sergius, his different views give me a better overall vision.

Also why is bad to have double posts, when I answer to two different people or comments? I can only think of memory conserving reasons for the servers, but that isn't really an issue, in regard of the amount conserved (percentage of overall power).