David Lamb <
dal...@cs.queensu.ca> looked up from reading the entrails of
the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:
I never thought Bethesda would fix them.
Since Morrowind they seem to be getting lazier and lazier in this
regard, not just expecting the mod community to step up and fix bugs,
but relying on it.
That's kinda my point, they aren't doing the simplest _design_ stuff for
the quest stories - making sure they actually make sense and stay
consistent.
It's getting to the "shove it out the door, the community will fix it,
get to work on DLCs we can sell" stage for them.
Elder Scrolls games have always been must-buy games for me, ever since
Arena. If they keep this up, I won't be buying the next one.
I have grave doubts about what the online MMO is going to be like if
this is the stuff they do in a single player game. I shudder to think
how many broken quests there will be in the MMO and of course the
community WON'T be helping them there; they'll have to fix their own
shit.
Had another one last night - that Redguard woman quest. Talk to the
alik'r who is in jail - he won't help unless I spring him from jail.
Except the guards are all dead and his cell door is open, but he won't
do anything unless I pay off his fine to one of the guards who is dead,
so they'll release him.
The writer simply assumed you would be low level and law abiding when
you go there and would have no recourse but to pay off the guards to
release the prisoner - they never considered anything else.
From the prisoner's point of view, he just watched me slaughter the
guards, yet he's being stubborn and won't help - if ever there was a
"let the wookie win" situation, this would be it.
He could have just walked right out of town, _all_ the guards were dead
(I had no choice, they just wouldn't stop attacking me)
I really have to wonder about their statistic functions too.
I looked at them last night and according to it my favorite weapon is a
sword I've used _once_, not the bow I've used hundreds of times.
Apparently I'm also sleep deprived, having slept only 20 times in 195
game days. (or maybe that was 20 hours in 195 days.) No wonder I've
never gotten the dark brotherhood quest.
Kind of annoying that it counts self defense vs aggressive guards and
other NPCs as "murder" too. Yeah maybe the guards were doing their
duty, but when a shopkeeper or random NPC I've never done anything to
attacks me on sight, it's not murder, it's self defense.
Immersion destroying too - when Jesse James comes into town, townfolk
send for the sheriff, they don't grab their own guns, bats and shovels
and attack him.
That "By order of the Jarl" script is getting very annoying, with guards
last night detecting me and starting this script while several rooms
away behind closed doors - it's *really* destroying immersion when they
do this and then _can't_ finish it because they can't detect you and
never could.
I really wish there was a UI checkbox somewhere to select "No I'm not
ever going to surrender, don't bother asking" because frankly it's
getting really annoying being repeatedly forced into a dialog by things
that couldn't detect me in the first place.
It's like whoever coded this proximity thing never, ever, even for a
picosecond, considered that there might be doors and walls between them
or powers or skills in action that would stop the guard from being able
to detect the "criminal" in the first place, just "criminal within range
X, start arrest script."
That's an old failing though, since they did the same thing in
Daggerfall - "You are unable to rest with enemies nearby", when the
actual enemy is several _miles_ of tunnel travel away, just the tunnels
loop back and it's within the exclusion radius.
If you never played it, Daggerfall had _*HUGE*_ sprawling, convoluted
dungeons.
Had another broken quest last night - thieves guild arc - breaking into
mercer's place. I did the optional clear Vald's debt with Maven portion
and when I went to talk to Vald, he attacked me.
And very strangely another named NPC (and his wife) came running and
attacked him for no apparent reason.
Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr