What is it with Elder Scrolls games?

[maninahat]

You forgot to say "in your opinion." Because in my opinion Skyrim is fantastic at facilitating player expression, more so than other RPG's. You aren't making an objective observation. You are making a subjective one.

In any of these discussions, it goes without saying that everything said is a subjective opinion, and therefore there is no need to prefix your statements with "I feel that...", "It is my opinion that...", or "I think...". They are redundant when everyone knows the score.

In Skyrim I can completely ignore the quests and do whatever you like. How much more flexible do you want?

That's a bit like saying Sudoku is the most flexible RPG ever made, because I can just put the puzzle down and go play outside. It's a standard feature of RPGs to let you pick whether to do the quests. It's not an alternative to coding in actual choices beyond Hobson's.

 

[starbear]

You forgot to say "in your opinion." Because in my opinion Skyrim is fantastic at facilitating player expression, more so than other RPG's. You aren't making an objective observation. You are making a subjective one.

In any of these discussions, it goes without saying that everything said is a subjective opinion, and therefore there is no need to prefix your statements with "I feel that...", "It is my opinion that...", or "I think...". They are redundant when everyone knows the score.

You told me that "I'm not saying you can't like Skyrim or that Skyrim is objectively a bad game" and then followed it up with "I'm simply saying Skyrim isn't anywhere near as good at facilitating player expression as other RPGs." In context: the last sentence is most certainly not expressed as your personal opinion but reads as a statement of objective fact. We've had this discussion all thread. I understand the difference between an expression of opinion and expression of fact. And "I'm simply saying Skyrim isn't anywhere near as good at facilitating player expression as other RPGs" in reply to "Am I objectively wrong for loving video games that provide a blank slate for me to play however I like?" is an expression of fact IMHO. If you would like to clarify your statement please feel free to do so.

In Skyrim I can completely ignore the quests and do whatever you like. How much more flexible do you want?

That's a bit like saying Sudoku is the most flexible RPG ever made, because I can just put the puzzle down and go play outside. It's a standard feature of RPGs to let you pick whether to do the quests. It's not an alternative to coding in actual choices beyond Hobson's.

If I decide that I want to spend hours in the wilderness of Skyrim, exploring ancient ruins, hunting down exotic beasts, climbing previously unclimbed mountains, I am playing Skyrim exactly as designed. I'm making actual choices in the game. The equivalent of your Sudoku example would be turning off Skyrim and going to play outside. Your analogy doesn't work at all.

 

[starbear]

And I get that. But to me it doesn't explain 30 MILLION [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games].

Of course it could. Why couldn't it?

In my experience, the majority of gamers are empty-headed and shallow with varying degrees of attention deficits.

I would suggest this says a lot about the company you choose to keep, and nothing at all about gamers in general.

Most are not sophisticated enough to BOTH think up an elaborate story AND suspend reality enough to play it out in their head, without any direction from the game itself. Even with table top D&D, you didn't have to do that. You could buy modules with pre-rendered stories and play those.

Table top Dungeons and Dragons was a ROLE PLAYING GAME. Players invented characters. Stats were random. But they picked what race, what character class, what alignment they chose to inhabit. They created names, invented elaborate back-stories. Suspending reality was the point. Describing a story as "pre-rendered" is simply bizarre. All stories are "pre-rendered." The dungeon master may have known what was in those "pre-rendered stories" but the players most certainly did not.

Now I could be way wrong on the statistics, but my guess is that the percentage of people who hard-core role play Skyrim like y'all do is less than 5%. So what are the other 95% doing? My guess is wandering around aimlessly doing fetch quests and looking at scenery. And many probably do it in short stretches as they hop around among the 500 games in their Steam library.

I would just guess you are way wrong on the statistics.

 

[laggyteabag]

Skyrim doesn't do it for me, neither does Fallout, or whatever else Bethesda's in-house dev team churns out.

Most of the time I find their games to be bland, boring, and broken. "Size of an ocean, depth of a puddle". That kind of thing.

The game is big, and you can go where you want, and do whatever you want. Want to go around breaking into everybody's houses and steal everything? Go for it. Want to join an international guild of murderers? Be my guest. Want to join in a fight between 2 warring factions? You do you. The game is moddable to hell, too. Wanna play as Darth Vader and fight a dragon that looks like Macho Man Randy Savage, then go home and do some weirdly elaborate sexy NSFW things with a bunch of naked NPC's. The world is your oyster.

I can certainly see the appeal, and me from 2011 was all over that game. I have spent 250 hours playing it, so I must've had some fun. Looking back at it, though, and it really isn't my kind of game.

The mechanics are shallow, the quests are boring, the world isn't that pretty to look at, there are no real consequences to your actions, and most locations that you come across are rehashes of others that you have already explored.

The game is approachable, and in many cases, it is baby's first RPG. Hell, my nan plays Skyrim (which really caught me off guard).

These days, I prefer my games to be a lot more linear. I'd rather have a 6-hour long experience that is finely tuned, well put together, and will blow my socks off, than a 100 hour one that - as you say - tells me to make my own fun. I guess im just growing old.

 

[Mad World]

The vast majority of people that posted had no trouble understanding it was an opinion.

Doesn't matter; it's still a dumb way to get a point across. It may make sense with friends or family, but this is a forum.

It's not always obvious that something relayed is meant to be an opinion (as opposed to the OP just being a dick who only thinks his view is correct).

 

[Kerg3927]

And I get that. But to me it doesn't explain 30 MILLION [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games].

Of course it could. Why couldn't it?

In my experience, the majority of gamers are empty-headed and shallow with varying degrees of attention deficits.

I would suggest this says a lot about the company you choose to keep, and nothing at all about gamers in general.

Most are not sophisticated enough to BOTH think up an elaborate story AND suspend reality enough to play it out in their head, without any direction from the game itself. Even with table top D&D, you didn't have to do that. You could buy modules with pre-rendered stories and play those.

Table top Dungeons and Dragons was a ROLE PLAYING GAME. Players invented characters. Stats were random. But they picked what race, what character class, what alignment they chose to inhabit. They created names, invented elaborate back-stories. Suspending reality was the point. Describing a story as "pre-rendered" is simply bizarre. All stories are "pre-rendered." The dungeon master may have known what was in those "pre-rendered stories" but the players most certainly did not.

Now I could be way wrong on the statistics, but my guess is that the percentage of people who hard-core role play Skyrim like y'all do is less than 5%. So what are the other 95% doing? My guess is wandering around aimlessly doing fetch quests and looking at scenery. And many probably do it in short stretches as they hop around among the 500 games in their Steam library.

I would just guess you are way wrong on the statistics.

Just quickly googling around... according to one survey, in 2000, there were an estimated 5.5 million people in the U.S. that regularly played table top role playing games. (LINK [http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/life/entertainment/story/2013/jul/29/after-40-years-popularity-tabletop-gaming-ri/114446]) The U.S. census of 2000 shows a population of 281 million in 2000, so about 2% of the general population were regular role players.

Now I'm sure the percentage is larger among people who own Skyrim. And there's the European and Asian populations, etc., but I still doubt the numbers are 30 million, or even 15 million. People are playing Skyrim for other reasons, IMO. I could very well be wrong, of course.

As far as "the company I keep", I admit that I don't know many other serious gamers in real life. And I mostly play solo games. But I did play WoW for about 8 years, and ran a raiding guild, etc. So that's where my opinion of the average gamer is derived from. I even played on a "Role Playing" server, but in 8 years, I rarely saw anyone doing what you describe. It was all about grinding quests, running instances/raids, and farming for fat loots. Every once in a while I'd get in a group (PUG) with someone who would play "in-character," and then they would typically get pissed if someone mentioned real life stuff in chat, e.g. hey, did you see that Cowboys game yesterday? Sometimes they would quit the group in frustration. Maybe they mostly did their role playing in secret seclusion from the rest of the server, I don't know.

Anyway, when I signed up for WoW, I looked at the 3 server types... PvP, PvE, and RP. I didn't like PvP, so that was out. RP was described as, "Do you like being immersed in a story?" And I was like, f*ck yeah, I do. I had been playing CRPG's like Baldur's Gate and Wizardry and the D&D gold box games my whole life... so yeah, if this version has a better story than the others, that's what I want. This was my first MMORPG, so the whole concept was new to me. I didn't realize they expected people to make up their own story in their head. And many people I ran across laughed that they "accidentally" joined an RP server for much the same reason. They didn't realize what was meant by RP. Pretending to be in-character and stuff.

Like I said, maybe there are 30 million people out there who play Skyrim like you do. But I just find it hard to believe, based upon my limited experience with the general gamer population.

 

[starbear]

And I get that. But to me it doesn't explain 30 MILLION [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games].

Of course it could. Why couldn't it?

In my experience, the majority of gamers are empty-headed and shallow with varying degrees of attention deficits.

I would suggest this says a lot about the company you choose to keep, and nothing at all about gamers in general.

Most are not sophisticated enough to BOTH think up an elaborate story AND suspend reality enough to play it out in their head, without any direction from the game itself. Even with table top D&D, you didn't have to do that. You could buy modules with pre-rendered stories and play those.

Table top Dungeons and Dragons was a ROLE PLAYING GAME. Players invented characters. Stats were random. But they picked what race, what character class, what alignment they chose to inhabit. They created names, invented elaborate back-stories. Suspending reality was the point. Describing a story as "pre-rendered" is simply bizarre. All stories are "pre-rendered." The dungeon master may have known what was in those "pre-rendered stories" but the players most certainly did not.

Now I could be way wrong on the statistics, but my guess is that the percentage of people who hard-core role play Skyrim like y'all do is less than 5%. So what are the other 95% doing? My guess is wandering around aimlessly doing fetch quests and looking at scenery. And many probably do it in short stretches as they hop around among the 500 games in their Steam library.

Just quickly googling around... according to one survey, in 2000, there were an estimated 5.5 million people in the U.S. that regularly played table top role playing games. (LINK [http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/life/entertainment/story/2013/jul/29/after-40-years-popularity-tabletop-gaming-ri/114446]) The U.S. census of 2000 shows a population of 281 million in 2000, so about 2% of the general population were regular role players.

These statistics are irrelevant. I only ever played Dungeons and Dragons once. Because as I said before: I didn't have that many friends back when I was younger. I loved the genre though. I read what I could about D & D, and I read and played the fighting fantasy game-books instead. Video game RPGs opened up a whole new world for not only me, but for many many others who were in the same boat.

Now I'm sure the percentage is larger among people who own Skyrim. And there's the European and Asian populations, etc., but I still doubt the numbers are 30 million, or even 15 million. People are playing Skyrim for other reasons, IMO. I could very well be wrong, of course.

Your statistics are based on personal anecdote. So yeah you are guessing, and yeah, I think you could be well wrong.

As far as "the company I keep", I admit that I don't know many other serious gamers in real life. And I mostly play solo games. But I did play WoW for about 8 years, and ran a raiding guild, etc. So that's where my opinion of the average gamer is derived from.

Are you calling me and the rest of the people posting here empty-headed and shallow with varying degrees of attention deficits? Because that is really insulting. We are all average gamers. And we aren't empty-headed and shallow. If the people you played with fit that description: then you are talking about the people you played with, and not everyone else.

I even played on a "Role Playing" server, but in 8 years, I rarely saw anyone doing what you describe. It was all about grinding quests, running instances/raids, and farming for fat loots. Every once in a while I'd get in a group (PUG) with someone who would play "in-character," and then they would typically get pissed if someone mentioned real life stuff in chat, e.g. hey, did you see that Cowboys game yesterday? Sometimes they would quit the group in frustration. Maybe they mostly did their role playing in secret seclusion from the rest of the server, I don't know.

Or perhaps they went and played single player Skyrim instead.

I had a friend who tried to get me to play Diablo. When I said I was going to play as a Paladin, he said "what build? You should build a Hammerdin." But I didn't want to play a Hammerdin. I wanted to play Stamm. So I played Diablo for a week with my friend, doing raids and doing complicated things to my stats to get my character to be a certain way so that I "wouldn't let the team down" and I hated every minute of it, so I stopped playing.

As I said: your views on gamers are a reflection on the company that you kept. I don't enjoy playing games the way you do: so you would never encounter someone like me.

Anyway, when I signed up for WoW, I looked at the 3 server types... PvP, PvE, and RP. I didn't like PvP, so that was out. RP was described as, "Do you like being immersed in a story?" And I was like, f*ck yeah, I do. I had been playing CRPG's like Baldur's Gate and Wizardry and the D&D gold box games my whole life... so yeah, if this version has a better story than the others, that's what I want. This was my first MMORPG, so the whole concept was new to me. I didn't realize they expected people to make up their own story in their head. And many people I ran across laughed that they "accidentally" joined an RP server for much the same reason. They didn't realize what was meant by RP. Pretending to be in-character and stuff.

Well there you go. Role Play is so popular they devoted a server to it. So would it be unreasonable to suggest that at the very least maybe a third of Skyrim players might be role-playing the game?

Like I said, maybe there are 30 million people out there who play Skyrim like you do. But I just find it hard to believe, based upon my limited experience with the general gamer population.

Arguments from incredulity are rarely convincing.

 

[Kerg3927]

Are you calling me and the rest of the people posting here empty-headed and shallow with varying degrees of attention deficits? Because that is really insulting. We are all average gamers. And we aren't empty-headed and shallow. If the people you played with fit that description: then you are talking about the people you played with, and not everyone else.

I don't think the average casual gamer frequents gaming forums. I think most of the people who do are more passionate and serious about their hobby, enough to spend hours upon hours reading about and discussing and researching the games they play, in addition to the many hours they spend playing. I think it's the casuals who drive the market, but the hard cores who drive the forum discussion.

 

[starbear]

Are you calling me and the rest of the people posting here empty-headed and shallow with varying degrees of attention deficits? Because that is really insulting. We are all average gamers. And we aren't empty-headed and shallow. If the people you played with fit that description: then you are talking about the people you played with, and not everyone else.

I don't think the average casual gamer frequents gaming forums.

And I'm assuming you came to that conclusion the same way you determined that only a handful of people play Skyrim to roleplay?

I think most of the people who do are more passionate and serious about their hobby, enough to spend hours upon hours reading about and discussing and researching the games they play, in addition to the many hours they spend playing. I think it's the casuals who drive the market, but the hard cores who drive the forum discussion.

155 million people in America alone regularly play video games. Are you stating that most of those people are empty-headed and shallow with varying degrees of attention deficits?

https://www.polygon.com/2015/4/14/8415611/gaming-stats-2015