What exactly has been changed besides the graphics? Sounds like they tweaked the melee combat to more resemble Skyrims.
Imo Oblivions two biggest problems were level scaling and how barren the world was between cities and dungeons.
Edit: I got it after watching more of the gameplay. It still feels like Oblivion, but there’s a lot of little tweaks that improve the experience. Combat and movement has more weight to it, so while the systems all effectively function the same it feels a lot less floaty then the original game. There’s a lot of small tweaks and QOL improvements, like the UI is reminiscent of the original but much more fluid. Cant comment on if they fixed level-scaling or not, as I’m only at level 3.
Make no mistake, this is 100% Oblivion. Its just a lot prettier and with a lot of small improvements. So far it seems like a rare modern Bethesda W.
I haven’t see how the level scaling works, but I’m assuming it works exactly like OG Oblivion for two reasons. First is that the underlying game logic is OG Oblivion and second, whether you liked it not, the level scaling was very much in the DNA of Oblivion so it kinda has to be there to feel like Oblivion. That said, the new leveling system looks like it might make the level scaling less horrid.
And so far from what I watched others play, the world is still as barren and boring as OG Oblivion. Personally I’m going wait for Skyblivion because the barren world was the main reason I didn’t enjoy Oblivion.
Mods of the era largely fixed the scaling and the modern day best practices largely are based on that. Mortismal did a good video on Oblivion last year-ish where they talked about it but it mostly boils down to:
Just stop leveling in (if memory serves) the mid-late 20s. That more or less is what you will get with 60-70% of your levels coming from combat skills and is around where your DPS levels out. The mods of the time basically just tweak the leveled lists to plateau out similarly.
There was other more stylistic choices (stopping bandits from getting full daedric and glass gear) but that prevented the very common problem of “I didn’t optimize my build and now I can’t clear oblivion gates”
I just eventually got comfortable moving the difficulty slider whenever I needed. Any other game it feels like cheating, in OG Oblivion it felt required to not drive myself insane minmaxing
They changed leveling, locomotion, added new voice lines to make all the races sound more unique, added more feedback to combat (hit animations, blood effects, sparks, and sounds; the actual combat mechanics look entirely unchanged)… And that’s just what they point out in the trailer.
Yep, was the case in all TES games before Oblivion as well, typically more strength in starting male characters but more intelligence in female characters varying depending on the character’s race. Only went away in Skyrim as they’d simplified the stats so much that starting stats were more uniform.
high elves start with more spells, magicka, and more skill points in some of the magic skill trees. they also can disguise themselves as a thalmor guard at the embassy and bypass the combat
Obviously main idea for this movie was just to have some minecraft stylistic and to be a cash grab. Creating interesting story was last on the priorities list.
As much of a joke as all the re-releases are, I’m super happy Skyrim VR exists. It’s one of the best VR experiences with the right mods that make it an actual VR game instead of a cheap cash-grab…
Quest 3, no doubt. The Index is old and overpriced at this point. HP Reverb G2 has great picture quality, but the controller tracking isn’t great and the cable is super thick. Plus Microsoft stopped supporting its mixed reality stuff. Vision Pro is not for gaming, just forget about it even if you can afford it. PSVR 2 might be a choice now that it supports PCVR, but I dunno. Its future support is kinda in doubt.
The only real downside of Q3 is being owned by Meta, which is obviously blech, but it’s an amazing piece of technology otherwise, and the price is a steal, since it’s heavily subsidized to grow the market.
A cheaper version is expected to be announced soon, so that might be an alternative. But otherwise there isn’t much competition unless you’re looking into a very particular niche.
why are so many people absent mindedly pushing this buggy mess narrative? starfield was their least buggy release ever (i personally only encountered one terrible bug that was easily fixed with reloading a save)
its not like bethesda ever released a game as buggy as fallout new vegas or cyberpunk, besides 76 but, like new vegas and cyberpunk, it got fixed
This trailer is really bringing out the bigots, especially in the YouTube comments. It sucks that the gaming community, literally based on having fun, can be so toxic
It’s a woman main character in the trailer. Some loud, annoying gamers have a problem with that. Also that she isn’t super conventionally sexy, and is a representation of an average woman. And some people are calling her trans and not in a pro LGBT way.
Someone here made a comment about sweet baby inc, which is a company that works with game studios to help encourage diversity, which is apparently the end of the world for the people who call everything new “woke” unironically
Yeah the bigots didn’t ask me why I called them bigots. But I asked you. If they did ask, I’d tell them it’s because of how they make fun of women and trans people for existing. But you didn’t really care about that, you just wanted to start something. Not worth my time tho, goodbye.
I figured the game was abandoned, to be honest. Their updates have been unreasonably slow and what little they did release was insultingly barebones. With how much money they made during their unexpected COVID success, you’d think your first order of business would be hiring a top notch PM and experienced devs to keep your development on track.
Edit: I want to add that Enshrouded, in my opinion, seems like what I had hoped Valheim would develop into with more time.
I love valheim but there are things that keep me from putting serious time into it that i just cant figure out. Its probably a bunch of little nitpicky things. Mods help for sure with that. Saying that i have about 70 hours in enshrouded and am about 2/3 “complete”. And am loving every minute. Its gets out of its own way and pretty much lets you do what you want. Im an old fart gamer and prefer a slower casual pace in this genre. Enshrouded ticks that for me
It’s a matter of taste. I got bored of Enshrouded after 20 hours (which is decent, and worth its money), but Valheim is easily one of my all time favourites. I find it a lot more rewarding.
I played solo deep into mistlands and now I’m rediscovering it together with a friend.
I think the devs have a pretty healthy attitude, really. Sure, they take their sweet time, but I prefer that over half-assed rush jobs and selling out. The last updates were also absolutely great and the game gets better and better. It’s in early access since forever, but it is more balanced, polished and refined than 90% of fully released games out there. And it doesn’t feel hollow after twenty hours either. It will keep fucking you up, even after hundreds of hours. It’s an absolute gem and I don’t really care if it takes them three more years to finish it…
If you consider taking 4+ years for 1 biome expansion and a few other smaller content updates to be a reasonable development cadence, you are definitely welcome to have that opinion.
To me that’s reasonable if it means the devs get to have a life and get to make something they really love. And it’s definitely reasonable given the fact that I paid fifteen euro’s for hundreds of hours of fun. They definitely do not owe me more, quite the opposite, really.
Okay but I don’t think you can just assert that this is a binary without much more information. Would hiring more devs and a PM with the gobs of money they made cause any additional crunch? Obviously at extreme ends, it would, but I don’t think anyone is suggesting that. For what it’s worth, I like Valheim too, but they absolutely did not end up maintaining the huge amount of hype they had. That may have been intentional, but it cost them.
They made the game with a small team and apparently they want to finish it with a small team. I kind of respect the fact that they didn’t want to go (much) bigger, just because there was a lot of hype and money. And I also respect the fact that they don’t seem to care that it “cost them”.
If you want game development to be less about money, this is a pretty good example of what that could look like. It’s not the most efficient way of doing things, you are definitely right about that, but it’s great. And given what they have delivered so far, I think it’s hard to complain. There is a ridiculous amount of gameplay, for a low price. And everyone who bought it knows that it is unfinished.
Oh for sure, I don’t disagree. If this is what they want, power to them! I’m also a developer, so I completely understand it. As a consumer though, I am not obligated to like their game more for it, and Valheim looks to me like a lot of potential I would have otherwise consumed left nonexistent and money/hours I would have spent on their game not happening. That’s all I’m saying. It’s totally fine if they read that and say “that’s okay!”.
and what little they did release was insultingly barebones
I mean OTOH for those who bought it, the content there at the time was worth the money asked. Sure it was somewhat barebones but the game is also cheap-ish and if you get a bunch of cool hours out of it with friends, well worth.
In an age where everyone rags on live service games that will inevitably lose support, a cheap, fun, well made, feature complete game (and was that way on release) that gets infrequent updates is “abandoned” and “insultingly barebones”. Classic 2024 gamer moment right there
It’s not feature complete, though? The store page literally says Early Access, and within that description the devs explain what is missing and their rough estimate for how much time is left before version 1.0…
Sorry, should say I mean feature complete in a relative sense. Ie, some EA games are essentially tech demos, and you’re funding a theoretical game when you buy. If those games stopped getting updates, you’re left with a mostly empty unreal engine project, not a full video game.
Valheim was a full video game on day one. A buddy and I played many hours when it first came out and thoroughly enjoyed it. If no updates came out, I might have felt like there was some unmet potential, but I certainly wouldn’t have been insulted. Bottom line, take away the roadmap, I still see a great game with enough going for it to stand on its own.
What is the current state of the Early Access version?
“Most planned core features of the game have been implemented. Single-player and multiplayer modes are fully functional and we have a separate dedicated server tool if you want a server running 24/7. There are currently six fully developed biomes out of a planned total of eight (plus the Ocean). There are hundreds of different items (weapons, materials, armor etc) in the game, to be found or crafted by the player. We have over 200 building pieces, and about 50 different types of creatures including monsters, animals and bosses.”
It sounds like the game’s getting Ashlands plus one more biome, but not much for new features. So depending on your definition of feature complete it’s at least pretty close anyways. From this point on it’s theoretically more of the same.
I’m pretty much on the same page as you, although I started playing a couple months ago with a couple friends. The game is obviously not abandoned, and it’s a pretty full game even with more to come. We finally built a hot tub on the weekend and I don’t know how I’m supposed to expect more from this game than chilling in a tub with your naked viking bros.
This is literally the first major update since Mistlands was on the docket at the time it blew up. To call the updates merely infrequent is an understatement. They were going fairly strong until they made an unexpected butt load of money and they themselves said they didn’t know how to handle the success.
What? It’s literally an Early Access game, of course we expect them to add more to the game when the devs themselves have said numerous times that the game is incomplete. I’m done responding to replies though, as it appears some folks are beginning to take personal offense and insulting me for criticizing a god damn videogame.
In all honesty I’m shocked. Jirard is one of the few YouTubers I have (well, had) a tonne of respect for.
Part of me wants to hope there’s a rational explanation for why he and his foundation sat on viewer donations for a whole decade whilst knowingly misleading donors that their funds were going to a charitable cause, but I really think this is going to end his career. Just wait until every other YouTuber picks this story up, or when it goes viral on Reddit…
Either the OHF have been incompetent with filing their annual returns, have been incompetent with actually ensuring the money goes to the right people, or there’s some embezzlement going on.
Well, Jirard admitted on the call in the video that he knew almost two years ago that the charity had never donated to anything. So strike those options off your list.
Same with feeling shocked. He always seemed so wholesome and I like his videos. If this is a bad at it seems, then yeah. His channel is going to start hemorrhaging subscribers.
Even that transcript was a bit too long, so here’s a < 150 word summary by ChatGPT:
Unity Technologies, known for its Unity game engine, has been facing severe backlash for its recent decisions. Unity adjusted its fee structure, now charging game developers per install with retroactive terms of service changes. This move is expected to negatively impact numerous game projects. In addition, Unity removed their transparency GitHub repo and reversed previous community-centric commitments, leading to widespread industry anger. The CEO’s past decisions to maximize revenue raise eyebrows. Unity rejected a $20 billion acquisition offer from AppLovin in favor of a $4.4 billion merger with Iron Source, a mobile game development monetization company. Tomar Bar Ziv, CEO of Iron Source and a Unity board member, has notably sold around $20 million in Unity stock following the merger. Recent aggressive pricing models seem to mirror those adopted by Twitter and Reddit. Unity’s shift seems aimed at promoting Iron Source’s Level Play service and could significantly harm developers, especially in the mobile sector. Companies like Azur, Voodoo, and Century Games have retaliated by disabling Unity and Iron Source ad monetization. Unity’s recent closure of two offices due to threats from its own employee underscores the depth of its internal and external crises.
They’ve been all in for about half a decade. If you don’t work in mobile, or play a lot of mobile games, you might not have noticed - but basically the most played games on planet earth are made in Unity, and are on mobile.
It’s sad to say this, but their actions this past week have kind of shown us that the folk at Unity don’t even seem to care about other platforms anymore; to the point that they did not even consider them on a basic level while working on their new pricing policies.
They should just either rebrand to a mobile first company, or at least split their products such that those making pc/console games can argue for their own price points and features.
Ridiculous to lump indie devs and mobile companies like hyper casual devs (who can have 5 million+ installs a game, thanks to their low CPIs and marketing optimizations) into the same category.
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