Skyblivion, the fan remake of Oblivion in Skyrim's engine, nears completion
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You're not wrong, they are absolutely within their rights, and Skyblivion shouldn't preclude others from Oblivion projects (especially not the IP holders). But it still rubs me and others the wrong way. Bethesda doesn't need to do this; they aren't hurting for cash. It feels petty to jump on the Oblivion remaster train right as this public (free) project is nearing the end of its production. It's just slimy behaviour from Bethesda IMO, but I will definitely give them kudos for not issuing a cease and desist.
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I don’t see Bethesda has doing anything about this project.
Like TESNexus did take down my Morroblivion main quest implementation back in 2010 (although someone else had already uploaded a half done version which was allowed to stay up? maybe they had sucked Arthmoor off or something.)
But you’ve been able to complete basically of Morrowind in Oblivion for more than ten years ago, and I don’t think Bethesda has done anything. I think they threatened/scared the French guy who made the executable that converted everything.
Tbh, I could see them giving Morrowind away for free at some point - just like Daggerfall and Arena.
The way they might fuck people over is the endless Skyrim and Fallout updates I guess that break fucking everything. But not legally I don’t think.
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an update which was specifically designed to break the mod.
[Citation Needed]
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Scaling in Morrowind wasn’t really a problem because almost every enemy was hand placed. You don’t have hordes of generic “Bandits” (in glass fucking armor at end game) - you have Tunipy Sharmirbasour, who has a reason for being where she is and a set level. Barring like guards and some of the humanoid enemies in Tribunal and Bloodmoon - everyone has a name.
Leveling only really comes into play when it comes to some of the generic loot that can be rolled, what some shopkeepers might have, and generic creature enemies. Even then, the scaling isn’t ridiculous - going from rats to Kagouti doesn’t feel uneven. Unlike Oblivion, you also will continue to see lower level enemies generated.
Oblivion even levels the quest rewards - so your Daedric artifacts and faction completion rewards will be useless once you level.
Leveling in Oblivion also affects enemy stats, and a lot of time it’s a flat bonus. Late game ogres and Minotaurs are not fun to fight, because they’re just massive health pools.
Morrowind has the same “inefficient” leveling problem (like, endurance is something you want to upgrade as early as possible, because it effects how much health you get every level up) - but in Morrowind you aren’t permanently fucked because you spent your first ten levels training acrobatics and speech craft or something.
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Don’t run everywhere (keep fatigue bar at least half full). Don’t use weapon skills that are less than 40 (train them - there aren’t restrictions like in the later games).
It’s closer to D&D than an action RPG. Your swing is like a “to hit” roll. The game cares about your character’s skill - not yours.
I like Morrowind a lot mechanically - I like that the game will happily allow you to kill anyone you want (and with Taunt - you can do it legally!) You can complete the main quest after slaughtering everyone on Vvardenfell bar one person (the thread of prophecy might be broken - but a larger theme in ES lore is that we make prophecies happen).
I like that the game is designed around the lack of fast travel. When I complain about fast travel in Oblivion and Skyrim, I hear “just don’t use it” but it isn’t really feasible (playing a Survival run in Skyrim and life just sucks if I have to go to Morthal).
Morrowind’s world is just real and thought out in a way that I haven’t seen in a game since. The towns are designed around food sources, there’s a lot of thought into to the economies of plantation slavery, and it’s all used to enhance the world building.
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Exactly! I hate when people keep saying Bethesda "screwed over" mod devs, as if making a free mod takes precedence over someone who actually works for the game studio being told by their boss to make this update happen.
There's too much going on at the company for someone to try to track down mod authors to "get their permission"
It would be like you offering me a place to stay and asking if I'm okay with you doing housework. Like I have no say, it's your house, you need to do regular maintenance.
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How are you even getting upvoted? You're clearly just talking out of your ass.
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How did they screw over Fallout London devs?
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Oblivion'd scaling was so wonky. Especially compared with what I really believe to be one of the worst leveling systems of all time. Anyone defending the leveling in Oblivion is nostalgic or thinks things are good just because they're complicated. Being able to both under AND over level was such weird design.
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Couldn't you just kill primary quest givers and be locked out of the game?
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How? I don't care how long a game takes to make, I want it to be good.
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The level up system was bad. The thrust/chop/slash system for weapons is awkward. Every attack costing stamina is bad for early characters. The excessive number of weapon categories, combined with short and long blades being the only ones that were common. The persuasion system was just bribe people to get what you want, or taunt them for free murder. Run speed being a skill, jumping being faster than running and being a skill as well (combined with the level system this can cause problems). Item durability in general. The encumbrance system, and containers having weight limits. The spell making and enchantment system had some cool things, but it was also trivial to break the game in multiple ways. The quest tracking and journaling was garbage. Alchemy was undercooked. Merchants had way too little gold so selling became annoying by mid level. The haggling quickly got annoying as you could sell at extreme markup or buy for nothing fairly easy. Magicka didn't regenerate, so being a mage was annoying at early levels until you had sufficient potion access.
There's also some things that are more bugs I think than bad mechanics. Stealing from a merchant flagged every copy of an item as stolen from them. I once managed to make every redoran guard hostile to me on sight, which got really annoying.
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Both very soon after release by an update which was specifically designed to break the mod.
I'm now curious about this from a technical perspective - how did the update specifically break their mod in particular? Were they doing a bunch of custom DLL hooks or something?
I know with Skyrim SE modding it's usually that any update breaks SKSE and a tiny handful of other mods that directly hook DLLs or the executable (these mods are usually scripting engine extensions and are a dependency for a variety of other mods), and depending on the update sometimes it takes longer than average to get a new version of those running (the AE update was one of those because they switched compiler version and that broke the method SKSE was using to find hooks). But in general that only breaks 1) mods using those (think SkyUI) until a new version comes out, after which most of those mods start working again without the individual mods needing an update and 2) mods that include their own plugin DLL, (think SkyClimb) which have to wait on an update and then compile a new version of the DLL for the new version of both the game and the other mod, because addresses and functions they are hooking may have changed. Mods not using SKSE or similar generally run just fine between versions of SSE (including AE).
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The fact you have to start your comment with multiple don't do X things proves my point. As a story it's great, but as a game it's got a lot of problems.
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The tippy part is they go off the OG lore so Cyrodiil is a more tropical/Mediterranean climate which is fun.
Fucking Thalmor denying the power of Talos of Atmora.
Seriously though, the canon explanation for Cyrodiil being the way it is now as opposed to original lore is that when Talos achieved CHIM he changed it, because that's a thing you can do with the secret syllable of royalty. All part of the path to mantling Shor/Lorkhan via one of the Walking Ways and forging an empire.
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Bethesda released (announced, maybe?) a mod-beeaking patch 24 hours before the mod was to be released.
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The game tells you these things though. You have to pay attention.
It’s an RPG before it is an action game. The mechanics align with that - you just might not like traditional CRPGs - which is fine, most don’t which is why Bethesda basically dropped the pretense of their games being RPGs by Skyrim.
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You think they intentionally released a patch just to screw over some mod devs?
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I honestly don't know - I have no evidence one way or the other.
However, FO:London was in development for a long time (years?), and Bethesda decided to release a patch right before its release, b/c the TV show got popular and they wanted to say the game was still in development?
Maybe it wasn't specifically to "screw over some mod devs," but it didn't help the community one bit.
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You're not wrong honestly. Some how they spend so long making games and they still seem like they need another 2 years in the oven.
