Appreciation for 'crafted' worlds

[cmdr_silverbolt]

What's really important is stressing that no, making dungeons and geographical areas graphically more diverse wouldn't make them good, it would make them prettier but every bit as dull as part of the gaming experience.

This is a very good point, thanks for articulating it- it's also very important what occurs in the environment besides what it looks like or what it contains. Yeah, at the end of the day we're playing a game, and not screening a virtual museum.

 

[Agent_Blue]

Let me be clear about making this distinction.

I care a LOT about stressing this point, because the main reason I'm debating these topics at all instead of keeping my opinion to myself is this small, remote hope someone on CD Projekt could read some of our arguments and take few notes from them.
Or to put it in simpler terms, I argue about good game design because I hope it will make TW3 better if developers are going to take notes about the relevant points we make.

Now, this premise to point the problem: if CDPR's developers were going to listen just to pointless complaints like "The story in Skyrim sucks, be better", or "the textures in Skyrim are repeated, more graphics please" they could be fooled by their fans' feedback into thinking that copying Skyrim and solving these problems would be fine enough.

It wouldn't. Solving these "problems" wouldn't "solve" nothing.
Skryim with the better story ever told and ten times as much textures would be a terrible game anyway, because it sucks for a lot more reasons than those two. It sucks because dungeons are just paths to follow slaying stuff; it sucks because the whole ruleset is broken, unbalanced and exploitable to ridiculous degrees; it sucks because level scaling and loot scaling take away any sense of progression and reward; it sucks because the world looks pretty but feels dull to interact with; it sucks because quests are dull and unimaginative.
And I could go on for a lot more, but I don't see the point.

What's really important is stressing that no, making dungeons and geographical areas graphically more diverse wouldn't make them good, it would make them prettier but every bit as dull as part of the gaming experience.

Yes, there is a lot of common ground.
We have the same goal, to help make TW3 the best it can be, and the same method, we both come here and spend time debating in the hopes devs will take notes.

While this discussion transcends Skyrim, the game is relevant to it. Elder Scrolls V is the closest example we have of a vast open world RPG. Obviously, since CDProjekt itself drew comparisons to it, the team has the game in mind. So I am hoping moderators will cut us some slack and allow for a civil discussion on SKyrim to continue.

Let's address the distinction you've made.

You say there's a level of cosmetic repetition which doesn't bother you that much. What does bother you is that, paraphrasing, dungeons are repetitive and boring, both layout wise and gameplay wise. It's already been established the cosmetic repetition is the by-product of a design decision to overcrowd the world with POIs. The case I'm presenting is that the fact that "dungeons are just paths to follow slaying stuff" and the fact that "the world [...] feels dull to interact with" are also by-products of the same design decision. I think it's a fairly straightforward point to make:

If you had a team of 10 designers in charge of 300 dungeons, how much time and care do you think they'd be going to spend on each one of them, as opposed to 30 dungeons? If the game director had them come up with 300 dungeons by early October 2011, how probable would it be they'd run out of ideas or out of time and just copy paste layouts, borrow unimaginative solutions and generally rush through the whole process in order to get it done?

It's a straightforward point. Like I said, two different levels of problems, same root cause.


CDProjekt, please make a right instead of a left at that crossroad.

 

[Fandango9641]

nvm

 

[Stiler]

A claim I think we can all reject on its face. I mean, whatever else Skyrim does wrong (and there’s plenty), I think it’s entirely fair to say that the game offers up a good variety of very different environments. Christ, one need only bash ‘Skyrim environments’ into Google images to understand as much. Right?

I never said Skyrim had no variety, I said it had little but there wasn't a lot of UNIQUE area's that felt completely and utterly differently in terms of the artstic design, etc.

The overworld of skyrim had some different environments yes, but as a whole there wasn't parts that felt utterly unique to themselves, imo.

I'm talking vanilla skyrim here, no mods, no DLCs.

 

[Fandango9641]

Sorry Stiler, but I see no reason to amend my earlier statement.