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Comment on Skyrim Is 13 Years Old, But Elder Scrolls 6 Is Nowhere in Sight While Bethesda’s First Four Games Took Only 12 Years

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Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

Well before Starfield came out they said they couldn’t make TES6 yet because the technology didn’t exist. Starfield’s development, I assume, was partially about building this technology. That makes me assume it’s the procedural generation or the ships. If the former, I doubt it’s the main game world or TES6 is fucked. I would suspect maybe something like plains of oblivion that are proc-gen or something.

To me, one of the biggest things that make Starfield feel so bad is the planets are so boring, specifically because there’s too much to do (and it’s all meaningless). Every location is surrounded by the exact same amount of points of interest. There’s no barren areas and more habituated areas. It’s all this bland uniform container of “content” with nothing making any of it stand out. Proc-gen only works when it can be used to make a lot of boring empty space with a few interesting unique things to find. I don’t think they’ve figured that out yet.

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ICastFist@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

It’s all this bland uniform container of “content” with nothing making any of it stand out.

The big irony here is that they could damn well make weights for the procgen to create spots with dense “habitation” and others with zero points of interest. But nope, just generate a map, plop down 5-8 POI, call it a day. The “big cities” like New Atlantis stand out in the worst way possible, a small square of buildings surrounded by absolutely fucking nothing. They effectively copied the worst aspects of No Man’s Sky

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- Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Yep. It isn’t even a new thing for proc gen. That’s how it’s almost always done. You use perlin noise (usually multiple layers) to create different areas with different types of content. They just didn’t do this, except for resource patches which are the least important thing to worry about.
  
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BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I found it extremely funny that todd said that planets are empty and boring, because irl, planets would be boring and and empty wastelands. Why do you make a boring game then todd? Are you stupid? Is that your dream game? Imagine you can make any videogame that you want and you go: i want it to be set in the middle desert.

Oh so there are gonna be pyramids, bandits and other points of interest?

No the desert is pretty empty and boring.

Oh, sounds pretty good.

I do not understand why Bethesda fans even deal with that shit. They must laugh their asses off every time someone doesn’t refund starfield.

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- Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Honestly, I mostly agree they should be mostly empty and boring. They aren’t though. They’re absolutely full (of really boring stuff). There are no empty spaces. If there were then finding something would feel special. However, anywhere you land it shows you at least like ten points of interest nearby. I don’t think there’s anywhere on any planet that isn’t inhabited despite supposedly no one colonizing most of the planets. Every location is generic, so none of its unique and you never find anything special.
  
  Excitement and fun is built on the juxtaposition of the opposite. If everything is equally interesting, nothing is interesting. For example, in some space games finding life on other planets is exciting, because it’s rare. In other games there’s life on nearly every planet and it’s boring because it’s not different than anywhere else. To use loot drops as an example, if every drop was a legendary, legendary drop would be boring. You need most drops to be bland common items so the legendary drop stands out.
  
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