The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[deanb]

http://www.g4tv.com/videos/54813/the-elder-scrolls-5-skyrim-hands-on-preview/

HD version of video posted the other day. Should be much cleaner and clearer.

[Waldorf and Statler]

I feel that when Skyrim comes out, my friends will go completely ignored for a whole weekend. I don't think I've been this excited over something since my good friend Judas asked me if I wanted to take a stroll in the night.

[RockyRan]

So I just heard that your health will "regenerate" when out of combat.

 

FUCKING WHY??

[deanb]

Your weapons and armour don't degenerate either. Though I do agree with their reasoning of allowing you to concentrate more on improving and upgrading the weapon than getting it back to it's original state.

 

Just sent em a message seeing on chances of a "hardcore" mode that requires potions/health spells and weapon degradation.

[Mr W Phallus]

So I just heard that your health will "regenerate" when out of combat.

 

FUCKING WHY??

[RockyRan]

So I just heard that your health will "regenerate" when out of combat.

 

FUCKING WHY??

 

Yes. Indeed.

 

Your weapons and armour don't degenerate either. Though I do agree with their reasoning of allowing you to concentrate more on improving and upgrading the weapon than getting it back to it's original state.

 

Just sent em a message seeing on chances of a "hardcore" mode that requires potions/health spells and weapon degradation.

 

 

That would be FANTASTIC, seeing as it's my most loved feature of New Vegas.

 

But then again, it's clear from the mainstream hype and Bethesda's most recent game decisions that they want this to be as mainstream and "accessible" as possible. Including even an OPTION for a "hardcore" mode sounds very unlikely.

 

Fortunately, I'm pretty sure modders will fix whatever bullshit game decisions Bethesda pulls.

Edited August 28, 2011 by RockyRan

[Mr W Phallus]

I very much doubt my laptop will be able to run Skyrim, so I'm probably going to be stuck with the unmodded 360 version. D:

[Johnny]

Because having your health regenerate is so much worse than the oblivion style of "okay, you're out of combat, spam your heal spell until you're full on health again."

[Mr W Phallus]

Well yes actually, it is worse. Apart form anything, at least the spamming heal spell makes sense contextually.

[Johnny]

And was a boring waste of my time. If getting my health up between combat is not actually gonna be a challenge, or require me to do any interesting choices, I'd rather not have to do some repetitious "press C 10 times to heal up" exercise.

 

To clarify, I'd rather they take a few notes from roguelikes and actually make combat a challenge in regards to using my resources well. But that's not likely to happen, and I'd rather have regenerative health than "Restore Wounds X10"

[Luftwaffles]

Honestly, I prefer that over the Fallout-style "fast travel to a bed and sleep for one hour to regain health" strategy that I've always employed.

[Johnny]

I tend to use mods to disable limit fast travel in these games, or I will overuse them.

[Mr W Phallus]

And was a boring waste of my time. If getting my health up between combat is not actually gonna be a challenge, or require me to do any interesting choices, I'd rather not have to do some repetitious "press C 10 times to heal up" exercise.

 

To clarify, I'd rather they take a few notes from roguelikes and actually make combat a challenge in regards to using my resources well. But that's not likely to happen, and I'd rather have regenerative health than "Restore Wounds X10"

I just think there are better ways to solve the spell spamming problem then make health regenerate - which just seems to me to completely go against RPG gameplay. They could alter how much magicka health spells require, or make magicka regenerate slower. The best option I can think of off the top of my head would be to allow you to hold down the spell button, rather than 'Minor Healing Spell' x 10 - just have 'Heal', hold the spell until you have healed as much as you want, or run out of magicka, higher skill levels increase the heal rate or decrease the rate that magicka is used up. Even just have healing spells heal you fully outside of combat.

 

You mention spamming healing spells as being boring. It's much more boring to stand around waiting for health to regen. With healing spells you can affect how quickly you heal by giving yourself a higher skill level and using things like potions to increase magicka - with regenerating health you're stuck waiting for it to regen (obviously you're not going to want to waste healing potions or magicka that you may need in a combat situation), if you're faced with a room full of enemies and low health, you're forced to just stand around until it regenerates. how is that not boring?

[Johnny]

Assuming of course that it regens way too slowly.

[Mr W Phallus]

Well yeh I don't know where this information came from so I've no idea about the ins and outs of the mechanics. But even if the waiting around thing doesn't factor into it, I still think it's a horrible, lazy, uncreative solution to a problem which I never even saw as a problem in Oblivion. Apart from anything I remember my character sucking at magic, I could hardly spam heal spells because I could only do about 3 in a row.

[SixTwoSixFour]

I tend to use mods to disable fast travel in these games, or I will overuse them.

And was a boring waste of my time. If getting my health up between combat is not actually gonna be a challenge, or require me to do any interesting choices, I'd rather not have to do some repetitious "press C 10 times to heal up" exercise.

 

Sooooo... you're against systems that waste your time with no challenge, but you use mods to force yourself to take long, empty walks through unpopulated countrysides. Okay. What?

[Johnny]

I tend to use mods to disable fast travel in these games, or I will overuse them.

And was a boring waste of my time. If getting my health up between combat is not actually gonna be a challenge, or require me to do any interesting choices, I'd rather not have to do some repetitious "press C 10 times to heal up" exercise.

 

Sooooo... you're against systems that waste your time with no challenge, but you use mods to force yourself to take long, empty walks through unpopulated countrysides. Okay. What?

 

There's a few things I'd like to point out.

 

Free fast travel from any outdoor location completely breaks immersion for me. The world starts feeling EXTREMELY small. So it's not a waste of my time. It forces me to think more about where I'm going.

I know some people will say the same about regenerative health, but I already feel the magicka system in oblivion is boring and unimmersive. It's a practically unlimited resource if you just wait a bit.

 

I also tend to add in alternative fast travel systems like morrowind-style "taxi" mods, making travel from city to city less of a pain. For some reason they don't break immersion for me in the same way.

 

Yes, taking out fast travel is a time investment, but it actually adds something I like to the game. Having to spam "cast spell" between battles does not.

[Mr W Phallus]

Six makes a good point. Just like you prefer not to use fast travel systems, but admit if it weren't for the mod that takes it out then you'd probably use it. I'm sure I'd get used to having regenerating health, and sure it's pretty convenient, but I'd rather perform a healing spell several times, and sure - it does pretty much the same thing, and it's kinda silly the idea of just casting the same spell ten times in a row, but like the 'taxi' fast travel in Morrowind it somehow manages not to break the immersion as much for me.

 

Oh, also if regen health means red/blood-splashed low health screen, then that is a big annoyance.

[Johnny]

I agree about the blood-splashed screen shit. But let's not jump to conclusions.

 

To add to my previous post, when I have fast-travel enabled I miss so much cool stuff because I keep just jumping between locations. Not using/Disabling fast travel, I encounter much more stuff worth exploring.

[RockyRan]

Because having your health regenerate is so much worse than the oblivion style of "okay, you're out of combat, spam your heal spell until you're full on health again."

 

You're completely ignoring the character builds that disable restoring magicka (yes, I have one, and yes, it provides a very different kind of experience), and the fact that there were multiple "healing spells" and potions that would have different effects from instant recovery to a constant one over several seconds. By making health regenerate not only does it make absolutely no sense lore-wise (although I can already smell the "he's dragonborn. He has magical regenerating abilities WOOoooOoOOoo" BS plot device from Bethesda a mile away), it also removes every mechanic centering around the preservation and management of health. I would understand it if there was a perk that would let you do this, but to have every single character build regardless of what it is automatically regenerate health is to remove choice in an allegedly open-ended sandbox RPG.

 

You're oversimplifying things if you think non-regenerating health solely exists to "waste your time".

 

Free fast travel from any outdoor location completely breaks immersion for me.

 

Regenerating health does the exact same thing for me, but I wouldn't call a no-fast-travel mechanic a "waste of time".

Edited August 28, 2011 by RockyRan

[Johnny]

I did not think about the Atronach builds.

 

On the other hand, that's the only case where I think you have a valid point. The (out of combat) health regeneration mechanics in Oblivion were really just a waste of time. If you went back to the earlier games it was a bit more complicated, but still not that much.

[RockyRan]

It's ultimately going to depend on how it's implemented. If it's one of those "it only regenerates REALLY SLOWLY after standing still for 10 seconds" it's not really going to affect much, making it quite trivial to just remove that mechanic through modding. If, however, it's an integral part of the game where your health is always being destroyed that anything that breathes and without regeneration you'd be dead in five seconds, that'd be such a drastic (and lame, IMO) departure from the usual ES mechanics that it'd just turn me off completely. Modders would probably make one of those giant overhaul mods to get rid of that anyway.

 

At any rate, I'm getting too worked up over nothing. There's gonna be a mod to remove it either way, it just depends on how big a mod it'll be.

[deanb]

Yeah I'm gonna say it's a tad hypocritical to say you dislike having to manually heal your self (which I'm still hoping is possible, cos regen doesn't always completely cover your ass) but will mod the game to disable fast travel so you manually walk around everywhere. I quite like manually healing because it means I have more control, and cos if it's pure regen it's going to feel more like a shooter with the whole fight, retreat, heal, fight some more. And Skyrim doesn't look like it has many handy chest high walls.

 

Still as Rocky said give it a couple of months and a large amount of mods will most likely be created and ported over. It's still Gamebryo under the hood so making mods shouldn't be too hard.

[Mr W Phallus]

At any rate, I'm getting too worked up over nothing. There's gonna be a mod to remove it either way, it just depends on how big a mod it'll be.

Still as Rocky said give it a couple of months and a large amount of mods will most likely be created and ported over. It's still Gamebryo under the hood so making mods shouldn't be too hard.

*looks at laptop specs*

*weeps*

[ZakMckracken]

Still as Rocky said give it a couple of months and a large amount of mods will most likely be created and ported over. It's still Gamebryo under the hood so making mods shouldn't be too hard.

 

Maybe I missed this earlier, but does this mean the "Creation Engine" (Skyrim's engine) is just an updated Gamebryo? I thought Bethesda created an all new engine for Skyrim.