Elder scrolls- two steps forward, two steps back?

[freakonaleash]

By bad back story do you mean the whole dragonborn Alduin thing? Because I thought the civil war back drop was a really good story piece.

 

[Ron Mexico]

There have been maaaaany threads on this topic going back to 2006, if not earlier. Aside from the very pressing issue of self-definition involved, I suppose the reason for that is that there's some truth to what nearly everyone says about this issue. Bethesda have never claimed that the games are the same, take the same approach, etc., and have been reasonably open that they were pursuing 4-5 million copies sold and wanted to make changes they believed were needed to get there. I also agree that *in general* quest lines are less interesting from Morrowind->Oblivion->Skyrim, although I like Skyrim's main quest more than Oblivion's, and like both V and IV's Thieves' Guild better than III. I'm not sure there is a Mage's Guild quest line in Skyrim, but people say there is and I guess I believe them. But I prefer Skyrim's level-up system to both III and IV, esp. IV, because it by an large gets out of your way: you play, and pick perks as they seem useful to you, and don't spend a bunch of energy controlling your level-up like Gene, the Anal Retentive Gamer. And I'm pretty sure no one wants to go back to the 24-hour convenience store model of NPCs from Morrowind. I *would* like richer lore somewhere in the quest lines, preferably in the main quest. But it seems to me like we can, you know, tell Bethesda people what we want and hope they listen, rather than, say, hold our breath until we turn blue and buy ES VI anyway. And to be clear, saying that RPGs no longer exist and that RPG gamers have been hopelessly sold out and that anyone who enjoyed playing game X more than game X-2 is totally not an RPG gamer is the equivalent of holding your breath until you turn blue.

 

[Innocent Flower]

Because I thought the civil war back drop was a really good story piece.

Not at all. you'd have all these stupid pricks shouting out their opinions on a controversial war. Some characters don't even do anything OTHER than support part of the war.

The portrayal of the thalmore is so one sided and pathetic. Evil voices and evil looking clothes. Im sure the Nords could still worship talos and have the imperials turn a blind eye to it all. every now and then a thalmor agent could go missing too. But it's just so... why would the altmer care about a sparsely populated country on the other side of a continent?

 

[Jynthor]

Sounds like he likes action/adventure games more than RPGs. This pic tells all you need to know about what happened to the ES series.

Sigh, I miss that journal, finding everything on your own had its own sense of reward which made the experience that much better.

 

[Joccaren]

Yeah, console player here. That's not changing anytime soon, I'm afraid, so modding is sadly not an option. At least not until the glorious PC-gaming master race can figure out how to create downloadable mods for consoles, which just between the two of us I don't think they're smart enough to do.

Hehe, there have been discussions as to how it could be done, but consoles wouldn't be able to run many mods, and you'd have to find a way to get it past Microsoft's Certification process, and you'd likely have to have Skyrim installed to the harddrive as well.
Biggest blockade of all is Microsoft. If you could download mods easily onto a console, there are already automated installers that could be modified to send the files to the right place, you'd just need a way to get them onto the consoles, and MS will be wanting money for that =/

-Going PC only would just the ES franchise would have to end entirely, there is no way for them to recoup the cost of making a game even half of Skyrim's size from the PC alone.

Says our resident economist right here. Look, we have no idea whether TES could survive on purely PC or not. The cost of making TES games would drop a lot if it moved to PC only, however their target audience would also drop. Considering the success of Skyrim on all platforms, they could probably make it. I agree going PC only would be a bad idea, though it is the one thing with a chance of effectively fixing the problem we were talking about.

-Not really, because if you replace the bleed/critical damage/armor piercing perks with something else you end up with "warriors/mages/thief having bleed/critical damage/armor piercing damage, and warrior getting +one bonus power", from a previous system of "warriors/mages/thief having nothing, and warrior getting +one bonus power".

We go from everyone having the same thing, but warriors having one bonus power, to....... everyone having the same thing, but warrior have one bonus power, how does that solve anything again?

Weapon diversity. Start a new game. Pick up a mace, a sword and an axe. Swing them. Other than a slight [0.1 a piece] difference in speed, and a slight difference in damage, is there any difference between them?
No. Now, if the mace had even a 15% chance to pierce armour, sword had a 7% chance to critical and the axe did a somewhat scaled version of what it does [Bleed damage I think], there would be a fair difference between them. Again, remember what this discussion was about at the start, as it will generally continue along those lines.

-That still lessons overall character diversity, and since mages and thieves dont use those weapons anyway, why should they care if they have those powers or not?

Early game warriors now have weapon diversity. Early game all 1 handed weapons are basically the same, same with all 2 handed weapons. There are slight differences, but its similar to a character who starts off with 100 stamina and one who starts off with 110 stamina being compared. There really isn't much difference.
This also starts a slight counter system off at the start of the game. Armoured enemies are weaker to maces, unarmoured are weaker to swords/axes overall.

As it stands now, a warrior goes from getting zero armor piercing damage, to 75% armor piercing damage. With your system they would go from a base 25% to 75%. That lessons character diversity for no real reasons when mages and thieves wouldn't use those weapons anyways, and warriors will pick the one weapon they do like and take the perks in that part of the tree ignoring the other two meaning that they aren't really, if ever, affected by the lack of special pwoers on those weapons to begin with since they were never using them.

I wouldn't say that lessens character diversity. It merely lessens the overall effect of that diversity. You still have your characters with high armour piercing vs ones with low armour piercing. The difference between them is slightly less, of course, however it can be slightly increase too without much lost [Not by increasing late armour penetration, but by decreasing base for each weapon].

-Most people dont make it to 50, steam achievement stats put it at 21%, let alone find way to roleplay to advance skills past 50. Its frankly a moot point.

Most people never finish any given game *shrugs*
Most people are irrelevant to this discussion as we can only talk about personal experiences with any sense of authority.

-A system based on that would destroy the unique stagger ratios different item classes has.

Could you please explain exactly what you mean by this?
If you mean the difference in stagger, as a %, between axes, swords and maces, that should be preserved unless the item weights aren't balanced in vanilla. Moving up a tier, everything should change by a percentage. I'm not going to bother doing the math, but that percentage should effect both maces, axes and swords equally in the weight/damage department. Because of this, it will also scale the stagger, which is based off the weight, appropriately. All it will end up meaning is that your iron mace won't stagger as much as a much heavier Daedric Sword, though a Daedric mace should still stagger x% more than a Daedric Sword, much like the iron mace staggers x% more than an iron sword.

-Enemy mages, with their crazy +2X damage perks, can do a ton of damage quickly, even if you try to get out of the way, and arrow have a auto-aim function to them.

And I still manage to dodge 95% of arrows [Only times I get hit is when blocking with a shield to grab the arrow it drops, or when trying to shoot them with my own arrow], and the only spells that hit are the ones that do negligible damage because they travel instantly. Granted spells like Frost Storm leave a trail that is very dangerous behind them, but jumping over them is possible and an effective strategy to avoid the damage they would deal.

-Even with 400 stamina, I can get maybe 3-4 power attacks off with my dragonbone sword before my stamina is entirely drained, and when dealing with enemies with 800+ HP, that makes combat tediously long because of the waiting.

Stamina potions. Believe it or not, they are in the game for a reason, even if you rarely ever end up using them. Going for a massive spree of power attacks they are a godsend, and when combined with slow down time they really are amazingly helpful.

-And then slow time ends and your back to where you started, it doesn't help that enemy NPCs almost never use power attacks either. Ive only ever seen boos bandits use them.

You're back where you started, minus some health on your enemy thanks to them completing their power attack whilst you attack them. Also, you're rather lucky/unlucky if enemies never power attack you on master difficulty - they do it all the time against me,

-Paralysis only has 15% chance to apply, it can sometimes take upwards of 10 arrows before I get one, and ive gone through entire battles with 10 opponents only getting it once, its hardly reliable.

If you're up against 10 opponents you've installed a mod or done something wrong to kite a large number of enemies into one area. Also, thanks to power shot which has a 50% chance of activating, you don't need the paralyse to stop enemies from getting to you - its just an addition on the side that takes an enemy out of the game for 5-10 seconds, rather than 1-2.

-Enemy archers, who have the highest +damage perks, can shoot you from a farther distance then you can hit them with spells, and their melee protects body blocking makes getting to them difficult, so go ahead, stagger that nelee dude, that archer will pick you off in the meantime.

Which is why you learn to dodge. Its really not that hard, unless you're standing still.

-Playing the game the way the developers let you does not mean the game was designed to be balanced in that way. Bethesda lets you do whatever you want, including potion spam, and enchanting powerups, but that doesn't mean they designed all the systems in the game to fit potion chuggers. It is an exploit becuase the game wasnt designed to be able to counter it.

Where is your evidence that they didn't intend potion chugging?
The way that potions are designed, they are meant to disappear from your inventory quickly when you need health. Just because its OP doesn't mean the developers didn't design it with that in mind. They didn't have to design it to be OP, they just had to not think about the implications of what skilled players who didn't need to use a lot of potions, or who were willing to spend time making a lot of potions, would get out of the system.
There is a clear difference between potion chugging and the enchanting loop. The former is something the game was designed to allow you to do, but was poorly balanced, whilst the later was something the game wasn't designed to allow you to do, though you are able to thanks to the way multiple systems play together.

-When you said +weapon damage, I thought you mean the actual +weapon damage perks. and even with 188% damage, that would take a 75 damage dragonbone sword up to 144, and considering that high level enemies have 800+ HP, that still means its gonna take several hit for you to take them down.

Not 188% damage, +188% damage - I.E: The perks in the One handed tree give you +100% damage at maximum level. Hence 75+75*1.88=216.
That takes you from 11 hits to kill to 4 hits to kill.

-Enemies do crazy damage with those spells because most NPC enemies in the game have hidden +damage perks that multiplies their damage by 2, and even 2.5, times what it should be. It was done on higher level enemies especially to try to negate the crazy high 80% damage reduction you get from armor. That's why Draugr death overlords with ebony bows and arrows can rape your health bar in a matter of 3 hits, even at 80% damage reduction.

Indeed, yet it doesn't explain the peculiar behaviour of the damage application for Frost Storm. Even on the lowest difficulty levels you can get instagibbed by it with high health, and you can instagib enemies with it on Master at times. A direct hit from the spell under the right conditions seems to apply ungodly amounts of damage within the space of a tenth of a second. I can understand seeing my healthbar go from 400-0 in a second or two with that spell being cast on Master and direct hitting me whilst I'm blocking with 300 or so armour and an extra 20% damage resist, but to not even have my health bar pop up, just a death screen, is a little odd.

-I couldn't get far at 300 weight at high levels, glass and ebony weapons weight anything from 14-26, on top of everything else, such as potions, I would be maxed halfway through most dungeons. I have 435 carry wieght and frequnly find myself needing saint jiubs locket in order to not get over-encumbered because of all the valuable crap.

You are, IMO, over looting then. An Elven sword sells for something like 120 gold. Glass maybe 140, dependent on how much you've been putting into your speech skill. That is nothing compared to what you can loot from dungeons, such as an Iron sword of +10 flame damage that sells for 300, or things even better than that. Early game, sure, pick up Glass and Elven weapons to sell. Once you're able to use the equipment yourself, however, stop, because its not valuable any more, and trying to sell it all will just waste your time as all merchants become broke after 1 moderate class enchanted weapon is sold to them, and trying to sell a bunch of normal weapons on top of that will take days thanks to how little money merchants have. Picking up all sorts of weapons like that is asking to be encumbered, and later in the game is pretty much the same as picking up all the bowls and stuff in a given dungeon. Save your loot space for the actually valuable stuff, and you'll earn riches fast without over encumberancing yourself.

-Your skill does very,very little to actually influence your damage, I thing going from a base of like 20 to 100 raising your damage by like 5. skill in Skyrim is nearly a null factor, and I dont count it because it provides almost nothing, furthermore, perks are part of your skill. your theory that the inverse of my hypothesis is the thing that is actually right is only true because you count a null factor as a real factor.

Each skill point grants a 0.5% bonus to damage, so at level 100 you deal 50% more damage thanks to the skill itself. That is half the bonus given by the perks, and a fair amount overall.

-It isn't an excuse, its how the damn game works.

Really?
Your evidence to back this up?
In the Creation Kit Augmented Flames is a "Modify Spell Magnitude" effect of multiplying original magnitude by 1.25 to get the new magnitude.
Intense Flames and the stagger set a boolean to true, telling values which are ALREADY IN THE BASE SPELL to start doing something. Its not a matter of replacing a blank effect with a new one, its a matter of telling an effect it can now activate. If you have the Creation Kit, check the Fireball spell. It has three effects: Fireball: Health, Perk Impact Stagger and Intense Flames Route: Confidence.
Neither of our comparisons were accurate in the end, and a car comparison doesn't hold up at all in this case. If anything it'd be more better fuel being added into the car and tire boots being taken off the wheels, but even that doesn't quite work.
Don't make claims about knowing how the game works without backing them up.

-potential spells =/= vanilla spells. There is a large difference between the two, do not confuse them.

And yet when talking about overall spell variety, both must be counted for it to be a true comparison.

Spell making is not the same as perk adding in Skyrim, that is terribly disingenuous. Spell making allows for the creation of custom spells with any effects you could choose mashed together. Perks allow for pre-determiend upgrades to be added to spells. Skyrim's perk system is the equivalent of buying Flash Bolt, to replace your flare spell. It is not in any way, shape or form, like spell making.

I'll cover this later on where you repeat this.

You are purposefully tipping the scales in your favor.

As are you.

-Which was the point I was trying to make, Oblivion only seemed to have more spells because it had tons of copies of the same spell. the original point that started this was that Skyrim supposedly had fewer spell then Oblivion, which it really doesn't.

Fewer spells... IDK, I'd have to actually check the spells in Oblivion and Skyrim to know.
Spell variety though, from the way the spell making system is described, has been dropped down some in Skyrim because there is no longer the potential for a player to have the spells that could be made therein with different effects to the ones Bethesda made, and not just in the magnitude department.

-Spellmaking =/= perks.

Spellmaking = adding spell effects together
Perks = activating spell effects
If we count one of them as more legitimate of being a new spell, its spell making. If you want to insist that Perks are replacing or adding new effects, then both are equally deserving of being legitimately counted as new spells, as they are both just playing around with spell effects rather than actually being their own, independent, Bethesda designed spell. I don't care how they mechanically work towards playing around with those spell effects, at the base they both play around with spell effects rather than anything else.

 

[6_Qubed]

Yeah, console player here. That's not changing anytime soon, I'm afraid, so modding is sadly not an option. At least not until the glorious PC-gaming master race can figure out how to create downloadable mods for consoles, which just between the two of us I don't think they're smart enough to do.

Hehe, there have been discussions as to how it could be done, but consoles wouldn't be able to run many mods, and you'd have to find a way to get it past Microsoft's Certification process, and you'd likely have to have Skyrim installed to the harddrive as well.
Biggest blockade of all is Microsoft. If you could download mods easily onto a console, there are already automated installers that could be modified to send the files to the right place, you'd just need a way to get them onto the consoles, and MS will be wanting money for that =/

I have a phrase in mind. It just occurred to me, and I don't know if it's brilliant or soul-damning, so I'm just going to put it out on the metaphorical table to be judged by itself:

Fan-created Micro-DLC

-Going PC only would just the ES franchise would have to end entirely, there is no way for them to recoup the cost of making a game even half of Skyrim's size from the PC alone.

Says our resident economist right here. Look, we have no idea whether TES could survive on purely PC or not. The cost of making TES games would drop a lot if it moved to PC only, however their target audience would also drop. Considering the success of Skyrim on all platforms, they could probably make it. I agree going PC only would be a bad idea, though it is the one thing with a chance of effectively fixing the problem we were talking about.

I disagree with your fix, and not simply because my shitty laptop can't play Skyrim, while my XBox can. (I hunted down what was being fixed, to make sure I was on the same page.) Why would the publisher go the "create an entire vast city full of beautiful NPC snowflakes to fill the void of one's passing" route, a feat which requires the vast computing power of a dedicated PC, when "flag the shopkeepers as essential" would solve the same problem without cutting away 2/3 of the consumer market? (I'm dividing along PC/XBox/PS3 lines, because good luck getting any two of those groups to commiserate.) Simply put, a fix that fixes one problem while creating more problems is not a good fix. And the fix you're suggesting would go totally unnoticed by PC gamers who, being gamers of any stripe worth their salt, would just find something else to ***** about, like bears not being dangerous enough or something. The console kids, on the other hand, will take umbrage with the large looming shadow of the giant middle finger being pointed in their direction, and "Fuck Literally All Of Bethesda's Shit" shall become the trendy economic model of the day.

However in fairness, this is largely my opinion, supplemented by exactly one semester of Microeconomics.

On a completely unrelated note, fuck this advert-captcha bullshit. I will go out of my way to never buy any of these things, just because they mildly inconvenienced my forum experience. I am very petty.

 

[Joccaren]

I have a phrase in mind. It just occurred to me, and I don't know if it's brilliant or soul-damning, so I'm just going to put it out on the metaphorical table to be judged by itself:

Fan-created Micro-DLC

Yeah, but as said, MS is going to want money for that. Putting anything on XBL and likely PSN costs money. Updates for indie games rarely happen because MS tries to milk money out of that, DLC has to pass through Microsoft's certification process or W/E, and they'll charge money to let that happen. If MS/Sony were willing to host fan made DLC for free on the XBL/PSN drives, and allow people to freely download and install it, modding could work on consoles to a limited extent. Sadly, I get the feeling that's never going to happen.

I disagree with your fix, and not simply because my shitty laptop can't play Skyrim, while my XBox can. (I hunted down what was being fixed, to make sure I was on the same page.) Why would the publisher go the "create an entire vast city full of beautiful NPC snowflakes to fill the void of one's passing" route, a feat which requires the vast computing power of a dedicated PC, when "flag the shopkeepers as essential" would solve the same problem without cutting away 2/3 of the consumer market? (I'm dividing along PC/XBox/PS3 lines, because good luck getting any two of those groups to commiserate.) Simply put, a fix that fixes one problem while creating more problems is not a good fix. And the fix you're suggesting would go totally unnoticed by PC gamers who, being gamers of any stripe worth their salt, would just find something else to ***** about, like bears not being dangerous enough or something. The console kids, on the other hand, will take umbrage with the large looming shadow of the giant middle finger being pointed in their direction, and "Fuck Literally All Of Bethesda's Shit" shall become the trendy economic model of the day.

However in fairness, this is largely my opinion, supplemented by exactly one semester of Microeconomics.

On a completely unrelated note, fuck this advert-captcha bullshit. I will go out of my way to never buy any of these things, just because they mildly inconvenienced my forum experience. I am very petty.

A couple of things first, though I do fundamentally agree with you.

Firstly, it needn't be too much effort be put in to make such a system work. If you have played Spore you'll likely remember that every creature in the Tribal Stage received its own generated name for each tribe, and there was a name generator in naming your creatures that would provide you with a name if you could come up with none. There are also "Randomise" features in games like the Sims which will randomise the appearance and traits of a character. Combining these 2 systems you now have a way to make an infinite number of NPCs whenever you want. Set it to run off the same seed every game and each and every NPC generated will be the same for each playthrough, and each game bought. The devs need to put in little work for this, and it can deliver an infinite number of results.
Of course, there is the issue of voicing and dialogue, which would likely run off a few lists that would be given to a generated NPC based off their job, gender and race, though like the Oblivion issue people would quickly become tired of hearing the same voice given to every person in Skyrim. This could be avoided by hand crafting each NPC, but as pointed out that is prohibitive in the time and cost department for the devs.

Secondly, it wouldn't be too hard to run. Consoles couldn't manage because they are some seriously outdated tech that struggles to get Skyrim at 30FPS at sub-HD resolutions [Generally 980*716 or lower instead of 1024*720. Small difference, but I know someone is going to try and call me up on that], and who have little enough RAM as is - the PS3 has been having numerous problems with Skyrim in general thanks to this. Really, a PC of decent calibre built in the last 3-4 years could handle it if properly optimised. Much like how Skyrim has 128*96 or something chunks that it will load in a 7*7 grid around the player normally [3 chunks in all directions from the player are loaded, can be modded on the PC stable up to a 19*19 area - 9 chunks on all sides of the player are loaded] so that the large amount of NPCs, buildings, terrain ect. aren't all loaded at once, you could do a similar thing for a city. Dependent on how cramped and active it was would depend on what level of system would be able to run it - a highly populated city with high population density would take a good PC to run, but a highly populated city with low population density could be run on much weaker builds thanks to not everything having to be loaded at once. The a similar sort of thing is done for rendering what you can see in dungeons that could act as another form of optimisation to allow it to run on more systems.

As said, however, I do fundamentally agree with you. It is not an action that Bethesda should take, either from a business perspective or from a respect of fans perspective. Its too risky for the former, and too dicky for the latter. It is, however, a solution that would likely stop people complaining about all the NPCs dying/being essential and unable to be killed, though they would, of course, then move onto one of the many other things that is already being complained about.

 

[6_Qubed]

word-pruning

And yet I have heard things about a game on PS3 called Little Big Planet, with fan-created levels being most of the selling point. Yes, the game is specifically built around this, but to my understanding the only thing motivating a potential level-builder is love of the game, and also bragging rights to a degree. Makes a fellow think...

more word-pruning

I don't think I made something clear earlier. Before I got it, my laptop had been sitting for months in the back of my former boss's pickup truck (in the box, thankfully, but it was still back there.) The native keyboard is thrashed (physically. Device Manager says it's fine) and I have a USB one equipped right now. One corner is literally being held closed with Gorilla Tape. It chugs when I have VLC, Firefox, and Skype running at the same time. I do not PC game.

(Though I have played Spelunky, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, and I tried my hand at the Project Zomboid demo before the slowness and soundlessness got to me.)

Which is not to say I wouldn't if I had the resources available. As it is, the only reason I even have a computer of my own is because the damn thing was free. (I call it "Wreck-Gar".) I dream of having two computers, one for regular computering (SHUT IT'S A WORD NOW) and one for dedicated PC gaming. Though aside from PC-only titles, the only incentive I've seen for playing a game on PC instead of console is bikini mods and pornstar implants and child murdering.

...I've gone off on a tangent.

Your fix does sound possible from a hardware perspective, what little of it I could understand. My experience with fiddling around with the insides of PCs is largely restricted to blindly adding hard-drives, RAM, and wireless modems, and then praying to the ELDRITCH GODS OF COMPUTERS to make my horrid abomination work. Taking college courses though, so maybe I'll get better.

...Tangent again.

POINT IS the whole "randomized citizens" thing poses the problem of not being able to connect with the characters outside of the one game. Myself, I married Ysolda the merchant girl from Whiterun both times I had the opportunity, not because I liked the random collection of features that had assembled itself into a unique character, but because I liked Ysolda.

Though I wouldn't mind seeing her in a bikini and pornstar implants after a long day of child murdering.

 

[Joccaren]

Though aside from PC-only titles, the only incentive I've seen for playing a game on PC instead of console is bikini mods and pornstar implants and child murdering.

To be fair there are a lot more mods for Skyrim than just that set. Those are just the ones controversial enough to get mentioned on forums often, whereas combat improvement mods, levelling improvement mods, weapon balancing mods, graphics mods, more player homes, extra followers - ect. make up the vast majority of mods out there.

My experience with fiddling around with the insides of PCs is largely restricted to blindly adding hard-drives, RAM, and wireless modems, and then praying to the ELDRITCH GODS OF COMPUTERS to make my horrid abomination work. Taking college courses though, so maybe I'll get better.

To be honest that is the extent of physical toying around with computers these days. Open it up, take the old thing that looks like what you're holding out, put the new one in, close, turn on. Picking what to get is a little more difficult, but that's only if you're upgrading the Motherboard/CPU, in which case you just need to match a couple of letters and numbers in the names of each to be sure they'll work, but things like graphics cards you just pick the highest number you can and buy that one. Computers are nowhere near as hard as the used to be, though it does still require some time and effort to learn what you're actually doing, rather than just following some basic common sense and hoping for the best.

POINT IS the whole "randomized citizens" thing poses the problem of not being able to connect with the characters outside of the one game. Myself, I married Ysolda the merchant girl from Whiterun both times I had the opportunity, not because I liked the random collection of features that had assembled itself into a unique character, but because I liked Ysolda.

I'm pretty sure I touched on this, but it may have gone over your head a little. Either that or I'm missing the point of this.
Every NPC generated in one playthrough of the game would be the exact same as its counterpart generated in the next. There would be a 0% chance of the character you married not appearing in the next playthrough, or in someone else's playthrough. Every single time anyone played the game, the exact same characters would be generated.
This is done by fixing the seed that is used to generate these characters to a set number, rather than doing a "Random Seed" which takes various ever-changing facts [I.E: Time to the milli/nano second] and adds/multiplies/subtracts/divides by other ever-changing features [Amount of time the game has been running to the milli/nano second] to get a relatively unique number every time it generates something.
Every 'random' generation that a computer does is pulled from this seed. Consider it like a deck of playing cards. The values you can get are written on the card, and every time you pull a card out you get one. In this analogy, the seed is the equivalent of how the cards are shuffled. If we have a seed that changes after every hand, or after every generation of a character, we will have a consistently randomly shuffled deck, which will lead to different cards in your hand each time you draw from the deck. If you shuffle the deck so that the cards are in the exact same order they were for that hand, or keep the seed the same, you will draw the exact same hand next time. In this way you can ensure that every character generated by the system will be the same in every playthrough.
In this case the best way to think of it is as a different method of storing NPCs. Normally you'll save some file with all the features of that NPC in the file, and you'll save one for each NPC, which stacks up quite quickly in both space and the amount of time it takes for you to design and make the NPCs. This way you just save a number, and have every NPC generated by the game using this number. Of course, this would require more processing power, and the generated NPCs would need to be saved somewhere - likely saved to the Harddrive during install, or in the .esp files for the game whilst in development which would solve the issue of processing power at the cost of maybe needing another disk. There could be an option to enable completely random NPCs, but if you so wished every playthrough would have the same NPCs.

 

[endtherapture]

snop

Nah cos you could have different enemies/armour types being vulnerable to different types of physical damage. That would be vastly more realistic and interesting than keeping this illogical perk system which promote the myth you call "diversity in Skyrim".

 

[Auron]

At least not until the glorious PC-gaming master race can figure out how to create downloadable mods for consoles, which just between the two of us I don't think they're smart enough to do.

Surely that has nothing to do with how closed the platform is? Or how Microsoft and Sony guys wouldn't miss a chance to capitalize on their mothers if it happened?

 

[Zagzag]

Shame about Stalker though.

Really, you bring up Stalker in a thread about RPGs? I love those games to bits, but Stalker is the exact epitome of an RPG with all the RPG elements gutted out of it, which seems to be exactly what you were complaining about Bethesda doing to The Elder Scrolls.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Sounds like he likes action/adventure games more than RPGs. This pic tells all you need to know about what happened to the ES series.

Good old selective memory manipulation.

How do I get to Whiterun from here?
Cross the river and then head north. You'll see it, just past the falls. When you get to Whiterun just keep going up. When you get to the top of the hill, you're at Dragonsreach, the Jarl's palace.

How much farther do I have to walk?
Well, it's a winding road up the mountain just ahead. You'll know you're in the right place once you spot the old watchtower. Once you get to the tower, head north. Bleak Falls Barrow should be just around the corner further up.

How do I get to Kynesgrove from here?
We'll cross to the White River and follow it to Windhelm. Then we can swing south to Kynesgrove. Not too much farther now. Kynesgrove is just down the road to the southeast of here.

What's the best way to get there?
From Riverwood? The road south through Falkreath is the most direct route. Or you could catch the carriage from Whiterun to Markarth and then approach from the west. Either way, the Reach is wild country these days. The Forsworn are everywhere. Best be careful.

What use is that?
The ceremony you so rudely interrupted was the Exalted Protocol of the Dibellan Sybil. I don't expect you to know what that means. Suffice to say that our Sybil was recently lost to us. Through the Protocol, we have seen the home of the next Sybil, to the north, in a small village pressed against the stone. If you can travel there, and retrieve our young Sybil, your transgression will be forgiven.

Just to name a few of the many instances in Skyrim where they give you directions, but, since most people skip as much of the dialog as the possibly can, it doesn't surprise me people dont get the directions given to them.

You can turn off the quest markers entirely, and still do everything in the game with little to no more effort then Morrowind required, simply by LISTENING to the NPCs.

But it's just so... why would the altmer care about a sparsely populated country on the other side of a continent?

This is lore 101, The Elven religions state that Lorkhan, also known as Shor to the Nords, tricked the original spirits into making Mundus, the mortal plane, and in doing so robbed them of their power. They believe that so long as Lorkhan lives they will be forever trapped, and they seek to kill Lorkhan so they can unmake Mundus and free themselves.

However, as long as people believe in the gods, they can never truly die. The Thalmor seek to kill the worship of Talos, Talos being Lorkhan reincarnated, so that Talos himself will die, and the support to Mundus that he gives by living will also die, and then they can unmake the world.

Skyrim, being the most prevalent province of Talos worship, is a key target for The Thalmor, because until mankind is eliminated, they can never unmake Mundus and free themselves.

http://www.imperial-library.info/content/forum-archives-michael-kirkbride

What appears to be an Altmeri commentary on Talos:

To kill Man is to reach Heaven, from where we came before the Doom Drum's iniquity. When we accomplish this, we can escape the mockery and long shame of the Material Prison.

To achieve this goal, we must:
1) Erase the Upstart Talos from the mythic. His presence fortifies the Wheel of the Convention, and binds our souls to this plane.
2) Remove Man not just from the world, but from the Pattern of Possibility, so that the very idea of them can be forgotten and thereby never again repeated.
3) With Talos and the Sons of Talos removed, the Dragon will become ours to unbind. The world of mortals will be over. The Dragon will uncoil his hold on the stagnancy of linear time and move as Free Serpent again, moving through the Aether without measure or burden, spilling time along the innumerable roads we once travelled. And with that we will regain the mantle of the imperishable spirit.

 

[TrevHead]

Shame about Stalker though.

Really, you bring up Stalker in a thread about RPGs? I love those games to bits, but Stalker is the exact epitome of an RPG with all the RPG elements gutted out of it, which seems to be exactly what you were complaining about Bethesda doing to The Elder Scrolls.

I wasn't implying that Stalker is a full on RPG, it just sucks that the original devs have been bought out by Bethesda