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Skyrim : No Further DLC Planned, Team "Moving On"

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Trimble Bracegirdle

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Apr 18, 2013, 12:30:12 PM4/18/13
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Report here:
http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/04/15/no-further-skyrim-dlc-planned-team-moving-on
(\__/)
(='.'=) This is Bunny. Copy and paste Bunny into your
(")_(") signature to help him gain world domination.

David Lamb

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Apr 18, 2013, 3:44:53 PM4/18/13
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On 18/04/2013 12:30 PM, Trimble Bracegirdle wrote:
> Report here:
> http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/04/15/no-further-skyrim-dlc-planned-team-moving-on

I guess that means Xoccyl's list of annoyances will never get fixed.

Rin Stowleigh

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Apr 18, 2013, 4:55:40 PM4/18/13
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On Thu, 18 Apr 2013 15:44:53 -0400, David Lamb <dal...@cs.queensu.ca>
wrote:
This would be the understatement of the year, even outside the context
of Skyrim ;)

Xocyll

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Apr 19, 2013, 10:32:46 AM4/19/13
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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

Trimble Bracegirdle

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Apr 19, 2013, 10:43:56 AM4/19/13
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All the attacks your receiving.
Perhaps you've built up a big bad reputation that needs to be resolved /paid
for.

May be one way to vent out frustration is to go to some smallish settlement
& mindlessly kill every body there - steal everything then go give your
Hero up
to the Law.
I've not tried this but I suspect the sentence for mass slaughter n theft
is much the same as a petty theft.
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(") mouse (Such Murky Thoughts!)

Xocyll

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Apr 19, 2013, 4:41:17 PM4/19/13
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"Trimble Bracegirdle" <no-...@never.spam> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

>All the attacks your receiving.
>Perhaps you've built up a big bad reputation that needs to be resolved /paid
>for.
>
>May be one way to vent out frustration is to go to some smallish settlement
>& mindlessly kill every body there - steal everything then go give your
>Hero up
>to the Law.
>I've not tried this but I suspect the sentence for mass slaughter n theft
>is much the same as a petty theft.

Dude, I'm a _vampire_. Under what circumstances would a vampire ever
surrender themselves to be locked up away from "food" and possibly left
in the sun somewhere.

Which is why Whiterun no longer has _any_ guards and is missing a few
other npcs. I came to shop, they attacked me and died.
I wasn't attacking them, I was just there to sell loot.

Why isn't there a stop point in there somewhere that after a certain
amount of kills/bounty they stop asking you to surrender?

"The last 72 people who asked you to surrender were told no, then killed
mercilessly, I guess I'll ask you to surrender to" - Soon to be dead
Guard.

It wouldn't be quite as bad if the guards actually had to detect you in
order to start their surrender script, but apparently you just have to
come in range of one of them for it to go off, then they flounder around
blindly and give up when you refuse because they can't detect you at
all.
Totally fucks immersion.

What really gets me is that this is all "By order of the Jarl" - the
same Jarl who know's I'm the dragonborn and the only hope of saving the
world from the dragons much less his towns - so WTF is he having his
guards try to kill me?

"That person is the only one who can save us, so lets arrest and/or kill
them so they can't." Doesn't make a whole lot of sense does it?

That's the kind of thing I mean by the writers not thinking this stuff
through.

If I'm rotting in jail, I'm not fighting and perma-killing the dragons
ravaging your cities and towns - where's your friggen priorities, Jarl?

Hell, one of those people attacking me at one point was whatsername of
the Blades - the bunch that _serve and protect_ the dragonborn, yet
she's laying into me with a sword while all I was trying to do was shop.

Even when my response is to paralyze them and then ignore them, as soon
as they unfreeze they attack again, _knowing_ that I can paralyze and
kill them at will.

No friggen logic at all.

Trimble Bracegirdle

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Apr 19, 2013, 4:17:23 PM4/19/13
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Hi Xocyll ;)
So your a Vampire...a killed n killing lots Chars sort of Hungry Vampire.
Getting arrested & killing them some more.
And then expect to go casually shopping with out attracting any attention.

Doesn't seem tooo irrational at Skyim's response.

Maybe you are just playing the wrong type of Character for you wanted game
response,

Bethesda's future plans may suit more;

http://www.inentertainment.co.uk/20130419/new-bethesda-game-isnt-fallout-4/
another post-apocalyptic survival horror game?

"New Bethesda game isn’t Fallout 4"
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(") mouse (Bim...Sniffle,,& Wimple !)

Trimble Bracegirdle

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Apr 19, 2013, 4:37:15 PM4/19/13
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The next Bethesda Game;

http://screeninvasion.com/2013/04/bethesda-announces-survival-horror-game-the-evil-within/

Not for me...Despite the definite official news re. No more Skyrim DLC
I see a some news items around in recent weeks re. a new one for June.

Xocyll

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Apr 19, 2013, 8:39:48 PM4/19/13
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"Trimble Bracegirdle" <no-...@never.spam> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

>Hi Xocyll ;)
>So your a Vampire...a killed n killing lots Chars sort of Hungry Vampire.
>Getting arrested & killing them some more.
>And then expect to go casually shopping with out attracting any attention.

I wasn't eating townies after all, I'd head off and eat a bandit
stronghold or necromancer or vampire lair when I got hungry.

>Doesn't seem tooo irrational at Skyim's response.

Trying to arrest a vampire doesn't seem irrational to you?
Kill I could understand, but arrest?

>Maybe you are just playing the wrong type of Character for you wanted game
>response,

This character got infected and turned, kinda by accident. Since I
don't have a cure, and the mod I'm using is pretty relentless about
requiring that you feed (and you get hungry fast) I'm acting the part.
Bethesda's vampires are a pale imitation with very little limitations in
game.

>Bethesda's future plans may suit more;
>
>http://www.inentertainment.co.uk/20130419/new-bethesda-game-isnt-fallout-4/
>another post-apocalyptic survival horror game?

Might be worth a look, but if it suffers from the same lack of testing
and bad writing as Skyrim, I think I'll pass.

They've been going downhill for some time now, skipping a lot of core
content and testing so they can get to making and selling DLCs fast,
fast, fast.

I blame, in part, consoles. Each ES game since they started putting
them on consoles has gotten simplified and reduced - less spells, less
skills, less stats, less, well, depth.
Since the console types also can't use mods they're panting to buy DLCs.

Where's the custom character creator of days gone by?
Where's the spell maker, the item maker (and no this "you have to
disenchant an item to be able to make it and a bunch of the items CAN'T
be disenchanted" so some things can never be self enchanted, half-assed
one doesn't count)
Where's the HUGE number of things you used to be able to enchant on an
item depending on the soul used.
Where's the soul used actually having inherent effects?

It's a shallow mockery compared to the previous chapters.

Tim O

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Apr 19, 2013, 8:43:22 PM4/19/13
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On Fri, 19 Apr 2013 19:39:48 -0500, Xocyll <Xoc...@kingston.net>
wrote:
Vampirism is treated as a disease, not a character path. Find Falion
in Morthal. If you want to play as a vampire with a separate and
proper skill tree, get Dawnguard.

Gerry Quinn

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Apr 20, 2013, 7:32:38 AM4/20/13
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In article <6ti2n8psd9536tm4t...@4ax.com>,
Xoc...@kingston.net says...
> 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:
>
> >On 18/04/2013 12:30 PM, Trimble Bracegirdle wrote:
> >> Report here:
> >> http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/04/15/no-further-skyrim-dlc-planned-team-moving-on
> >
> >I guess that means Xoccyl's list of annoyances will never get fixed.
>
> 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.

I'm not sure they would consider these true bugs, though. They are
mostly system failures owing to AI/scripting limitations. Changing some
things would likely unravel others.

It's not a problem that comes up when you have to kill ten rats for an
otherwise non-interactive NPC. Go beyond that, and things get
difficult, and the tech is not fully there to solve it in any game IMO.

PS: it seems Bethesda's new project is some kind of genetically
engineered zombie horror game, not the next ES or Fallout.

- Gerry Quinn

Gerry Quinn

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Apr 20, 2013, 7:36:29 AM4/20/13
to
In article <f8o3n8l03sev6uvrn...@4ax.com>,
Xoc...@kingston.net says...

> This character got infected and turned, kinda by accident. Since I
> don't have a cure, and the mod I'm using is pretty relentless about
> requiring that you feed (and you get hungry fast) I'm acting the part.
> Bethesda's vampires are a pale imitation with very little limitations in
> game.

Wait, so these problems are largely due to a mod? Why blame Bethesda,
then? Surely the mod writer is responsible for not altering guard
behaviour to suit his desperate vampires?

- Gerry Quinn

Xocyll

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Apr 20, 2013, 10:10:22 AM4/20/13
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Gerry Quinn <ger...@gmail.com> looked up from reading the entrails of
the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:

The guards behave exactly the same with Bethesda's version of vampirism
in game, they try to arrest them, not kill them, even when they catch
them in the act of feeding on someone.

All the mod does is give actual powers and skill trees to the vampire
and rigidly enforce feeding or you get MAJOR side effects and
complications (like having your spacecraft skill totally screwed and
massive damage from the sun)
It also, thankfully, supports bottling, so you can "feed" and bottle
blood instead to carry for emergencies, since there's loads of areas
where you can't feed.


What I'm blaming Bethesda for is the total illogic of various actions.
Guards starting their arrest sequence when they can't actually detect me
and have no in-game way of knowing I was even in the area.
Guards trying to arrest a Vampire in the first place.

Or for another example: last night a courier showed up and delivered a
note and money to me - an inheritance.

The note was from the Jarl, the same Jarl that has this huge bounty on
my head and has guards trying to kill me, just sent me money and a
condolence letter.

In any kind of real world situation, the money would have been
confiscated to pay the outstanding fines, it would be now and it
certainly would have been in that kind of society.

Makes as much sense as you owing several years back taxes to the IRS and
them sending you this years tax refund - not gonna happen.

Bethesda never considered the interactions, where the inheritance
routine would conflict with you being a wanted criminal.

It's like every script was written as though it happened in complete
isolation from everything else - only that's not how worlds work, it's
how laboratory's work.

Player in range of guard and has a bounty?
Start arrest speech/routine
Even when you're behind a locked door, sneaking, muffled and invisible
and there's no way the guard could know you're there and no one else
does either.


The Jarl's men trying to kill the dragonborn, the only hope they have of
saving the damn world.
In any logical sequence the Jarl would have ordered that you MUST be
taken alive. They NEED you alive to save them after all.
It's all done by script, so why don't they beat you down and capture you
at 5% health instead of killing you?

The Blades chick trying to kill the dragonborn when her organization
serves and protects the dragonborn.

Major storyline plot holes.
That's all on Bethesda.
Basic logic checks that never happened.


Think for a second:
Mad scientist serial killer type on death row.
Only now a plague is ravaging the USA, and he's the one guy who has any
hope of finding a cure in time.
Do they go ahead and execute him, or does he get a pardon/commutation in
exchange for his help in saving the whole damn country/world?

In Bethesda's reality, they execute him and the country and maybe the
world dies with him.

That make any kind of sense to you?

Xocyll

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Apr 20, 2013, 10:34:05 AM4/20/13
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Gerry Quinn <ger...@gmail.com> looked up from reading the entrails of
the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs say:

>In article <6ti2n8psd9536tm4t...@4ax.com>,
>Xoc...@kingston.net says...
>> 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:
>>
>> >On 18/04/2013 12:30 PM, Trimble Bracegirdle wrote:
>> >> Report here:
>> >> http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/04/15/no-further-skyrim-dlc-planned-team-moving-on
>> >
>> >I guess that means Xoccyl's list of annoyances will never get fixed.
>>
>> 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.
>
>I'm not sure they would consider these true bugs, though. They are
>mostly system failures owing to AI/scripting limitations. Changing some
>things would likely unravel others.

When I said bugs I'm talking about all the actual bugs that got stomped
by the unofficial community patch _instead_ of by Bethesda.

>It's not a problem that comes up when you have to kill ten rats for an
>otherwise non-interactive NPC. Go beyond that, and things get
>difficult, and the tech is not fully there to solve it in any game IMO.

A lot of the scripting problems in Skyrim are the result of them not
thinking things through in the first place and the use of scripts to do
things that should have been done in-game (like the skeleton key)
In previous games in the series the skeleton key actually worked as it
was described in the lore when in the player's hands.
In Skyrim it's nothing more then an unbreakable pick, and all it's
functions are handled by scripts when it's in an NPC's hands.

Now that might have been OK if this was something they dreamed up for
Skyrim, but it's not, it's been in every game in the series.
It has a defined lore and defined powers which it DOES NOT HAVE in
Skyrim.
This is supposed to be one of the 16 most powerful items on the friggen
planet, but it's junk in Skyrim.

They got lazy and wanted to use Key-required doors to keep the player
out of certain areas until they wanted them in. They could have
obscured the doors so you couldn't reach them, magically blocked them,
etc, but they took the lazy route and just flagged them unopenable and
then destroyed the lore on an artifact to stop you using it to get in
those doors.

For that matter there are 2 barred doors that are nailed shut so they
can't ever be opened.
_Wooden_ Doors that you can't open because they're barred/nailed shut
despite having fire spells at your command, big fucking axes, etc.

Zero logic there.

>PS: it seems Bethesda's new project is some kind of genetically
>engineered zombie horror game, not the next ES or Fallout.

Could be interesting.
Guess it'll depend on the zombies and weapons and skills they give.

Gerry Quinn

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Apr 20, 2013, 4:18:41 PM4/20/13
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In article <u175n8hmtfodvc8u4...@4ax.com>,
Xoc...@kingston.net says...

> Bethesda never considered the interactions, where the inheritance
> routine would conflict with you being a wanted criminal.
>
> It's like every script was written as though it happened in complete
> isolation from everything else - only that's not how worlds work, it's
> how laboratory's work.

I know where you're coming from - but to do this is pretty hard unless,
as I said, you have basically non-interactive quest-givers who require
specific objects.

- Gerry Quinn

David Lamb

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Apr 20, 2013, 6:54:48 PM4/20/13
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On 20/04/2013 10:10 AM, Xocyll wrote:
> Bethesda never considered the interactions, where the inheritance
> routine would conflict with you being a wanted criminal.
>
> It's like every script was written as though it happened in complete
> isolation from everything else - only that's not how worlds work, it's
> how laboratory's work.

"Feature interactions" is a really hard problem. It was a significant
research field back in the 1990s just for telephone switching systems.
It's easy enough to pick four or five things and make sure they don't
interfere with each other, but the number of interactions goes up at
least as the square of the number of features -- and sometimes you get
more interactions than that, when feature A causes feature B to do
something that interferes with feature C.

The specific things you mention sound particularly egregious, though.

David Lamb

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Apr 20, 2013, 6:56:42 PM4/20/13
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On 20/04/2013 10:34 AM, Xocyll wrote:
> For that matter there are 2 barred doors that are nailed shut so they
> can't ever be opened.
> _Wooden_ Doors that you can't open because they're barred/nailed shut
> despite having fire spells at your command, big fucking axes, etc.

How much of a physics engine do you expect them to implement?

Rin Stowleigh

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Apr 20, 2013, 7:12:22 PM4/20/13
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On Sat, 20 Apr 2013 18:54:48 -0400, David Lamb <dal...@cs.queensu.ca>
wrote:
Not only that, but in software engineering (as well in manufacturing
tangible items like electronics, machinery and robotics), the cost of
implementing and testing the features can rise exponentially with the
number of possible combinations of optional features.

This is why for example most car manufacturers offer such a fixed
array of options. Sure, you might have a choice of a dozen paint
colors, but that's a feature that typically doesn't interact (except
with regard to coordinating with interior color). For example,
usually one or two audio system options are offered, and often one is
not available without a more complete package that also specifies
installation a nav system or similar option that puts a finite
definition on the feature set. It's because if they offered a dozen
different car stereo options, and a dozen different nav systems, and a
dozen different types of climate control systems, even the smallest
economy cars would cost a few hundred grand each to produce once every
possible combination/permutation of feature was tested to properly
work together.

I doubt consumers would be willing to pay several thousand dollars for
a game like Skyrim, but that's what Bethesda would have to charge if
they tried to implement every feature in a way that's perfectly
logical. Persnickety gamers should be careful what they wish for.

Trimble Bracegirdle

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Apr 21, 2013, 12:28:19 PM4/21/13
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Xocyll

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Apr 21, 2013, 5:56:03 PM4/21/13
to
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:

The thing is they did account for this basic stuff in previous chapters
of the series, that's what's so annoying.

If they'd never done it it would be a bit annoying, but them stopping
doing this stuff is very annoying indeed.

>The specific things you mention sound particularly egregious, though.

Yeah, basic stuff, it's like they're not even trying anymore.

It's either a side effect of them dumbing things down for the consoles,
or they're assuming that fans are going to buy it no matter what so they
no longer need to tie everything up neatly.

Xocyll

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Apr 21, 2013, 6:06:48 PM4/21/13
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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:

Doesn't have to be too involved, but destructible objects have been done
before.

Hell, spells in game already pick up and move items including dead
bodies.

That's what makes it so odd, a can hurl a spell and toss a friggen 200lb
body 100 feet or more away, (or in other areas light the floor on fire),
but I can't break through a wooden door?
Ice storm has in fact tossed bodies a huge amount of distance away at
times, sometimes around several corners - I've had trouble finding some
bodies after fights on hills since the body can end up several hundred
feet from the fight site.


Metal doors being impervious, sure not problem, but wood can be chopped
through and can be burned - and hell they have chopping and mining
animations, why not a door chopping animation?
They don't have to show it splintering any more than they show rock
chipping away when you swing the pickaxe at an ore vein.
You start, animation plays, door replaced with chopped door that is now
usable.

Come to think of it they do something sort of similar on one quest
already where you have to clear a door of ice using a fire spell and a
fire warded door with ice, so chopping through a barred wooden door is
not much of a stretch.
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