Skyrim: DLC Discussion - The Something Awful Forums

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Games > 3rd Street Skyrims: Elder Saints The Fifth > Skyrim: DLC Discussion

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

SheepNameKiller posted:

I doubt Skyrim's DLC will have problems selling, it is a lot more popular than Oblivion ever was. What I don't get though is why Microsoft locks their own PC customers out of content via their 360 exclusives.

I've heard the games department at Microsoft has a lot of political muscle, being rather profitable compared to just about anything else they got, so they (the games guys) probably negotiated that deal without giving two fucks about the effect it might have on Windows. Good for them I guess?

At least it's only for a month. I just have to accept I'm never going to play Red Dead Redemption

# ¿ Mar 7, 2012 16:16

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 22, 2013 10:51

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Burns posted:

Generally speaking there will be a popup saying "Oh go here for new content" even if you are just out of the starting dungeon. Never change Bethesada.

Nah, it'll be a courier. Not too bad, really.

edit: Hmmm, they'd need to tie that to some other event though, or you'll just get a courier running up to you and interrupting while Hadvar or Ralof give their "come visit my sister/uncle" speech. So it may still suck balls after all. Time shall tell.

# ¿ May 1, 2012 12:48

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

And after the second and third DLCs, three or more couriers all rushing you after you get out of the tutorial dungeon, delivering some bullshit letter "from a friend" about a strange portal to Hammerfell that has suddenly appeared in a toilet in Windhelm.

Good God, this is going to suck, isn't it?

# ¿ May 1, 2012 12:53

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

tirinal posted:

I don't understand this exclusivity thing at all. I mean, I do in the sense that I'm sure somebody at Microsoft wrote a check while wearing a tophat, but this isn't a standalone title. Nobody is going run out and buy a different version of Skyrim just to play the DLC early. Nobody owns Skyrim on multiple platforms and is unsure of which DLC to get. What's the point, aside from aggravating people?

I'm not up in arms or anything, but I'm a little bitter because 90% of the issues I had with Skyrim stemmed from its console prioritization (bad optimization, glitchy graphics, worst UI I've handled in recent memory) and it's sad to see it continue.

That's because you didn't study business in college (i.e. you aren't a loving idiot). And you don't have an MBA (i.e. you aren't a total loving idiot).

# ¿ May 2, 2012 05:42

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Junkenstein posted:

http://www.imgnook.com/TmAuho.gif

This is great.

# ¿ May 2, 2012 05:42

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

just making sure this is on page four where it belongs

should update the OP as well

# ¿ May 3, 2012 11:10

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Blast Fantasto posted:

Seriously? The exclusivity isn't meant to sell consoles. It's meant to sway people with the option to buy Skyrim on multiple platforms towards buying it on 360.

I don't understand what is so hard to get about this from a business standpoint.

They are making back on sales percentages the barest fraction of what they throw around to secure deals like this.

At the price-point they set, if past deals like this are anything to go by, and especially given the fact that they are partly shooting themselves in the foot anyway (PC gaming is a Microsoft platform after all), it doesn't make any sense at all from a business standpoint. They do not make back what they pay publishers to do this, by a long shot.

They probably tried to get full exclusivity for the title first, and when Bethesda turned that down, they offered this instead. And in the end what they get is almost nothing. An extra month? Big loving deal.

All it is, is the consequence of MS literally giving the XBox division a blank check. In spite of stupid moves like this, they are one of their biggest money-makers.

# ¿ May 4, 2012 06:30

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Blast Fantasto posted:

It's not like they just announced the monthlong exclusivity right now. This was publicized before the game's release.

Edit: Seriously, here is the scenario:

Bob owns both a ps3 and 360. He's super excited for skyrim and plans to buy one of the (seemingly) identical versions on 11-11-11.

He reads, well before the game is out, that 360 will get all DLC first. So why not get that version?

It's that simple. For all people knew there could have been DLC two weeks after release. The point of this is not to get people to rebuy the game for earlier DLC access and I don't know how anyone could think that.

This might be Microsoft's reasoning but it's loving stupid. Anyone defending it as a solid business decision is also loving stupid. You're talking about a small fraction of people (who hear about it in time if at all), who also own two consoles, which is itself a small fraction of the console market.

It is Microsoft blowing through money trying to drive Sony's market share down. If in a year their market share relative to Microsoft's has decreased, this will be considered a success. If it has not, it will be used as rationale for spending more money to do more of the same thing (or close to it).

# ¿ May 4, 2012 16:30

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Fuzz posted:

The emphasis to my point was the one month lag, which is nothing at all. If you can't patiently wait another month after waiting >6 for the thing in the first place, you've got problems. I say that unironically. This is not some Rockstar game that may or may not (RDR) come out on PC sometime in the next 3 years... it's a month. There is very little reason to get butthurt, yet I consistently see people lose their poo poo over the wait. Hell, I regularly see posts from people in game threads talking about how they ate some extra cost at the last minute or even ended up paying >10 bucks extra just to get a game on release day or even just 1 day early, which I really do not comprehend and have always been confused by. I chalk it up to impatience, boredom, and poor impulse control, but that's a way off topic discussion.

Point is, 1 month exclusivity is a minor hindrance, and it does objectively get the studio more money for literally zero extra work at a minimal cost to end user satisfaction. And yeah, I am saying that unironically.

FWIW, I mostly agree with this, although based on your last post it seems you think I don't.

Microsoft is stupid for offering the money in the first place. Zenimax is not stupid for taking it, as where Microsoft is giving up a lot of cash for virtually nothing, Zenimax is receiving a lot of cash for virtually nothing.

It's greedy and shows a slight contempt for their customers, but it's still a good business decision.

# ¿ May 7, 2012 15:24

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

FortMan posted:

The only conflict I have with USKP and Hearthfire is CTD when you enter/load save in Breezehome. If you can live without Breezehome, you should be fine.

On a related note, I posted in the Nexus thread pointing out that it's really easy to remove the offending Navmesh edit from the patch with TESVSnip, and it will work fine from that point on (this was before the beta fix was out). Deleted within an hour.

Arthmoor really needs to just let. it. go.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2012 02:20

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Rose Wreck posted:

My steward just attacked a placid Mjoll because I tried to put some dragon's claws in a display case and they both wanted them.

Clearly they're both just using you for the gear.

Anyway, doesn't the unofficial patch take care of the Aerin problem?

# ¿ Oct 13, 2012 01:12

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Gonkish posted:

The best part: Hearthfire was used as a loophole to get them out of the Xbox exclusivity agreement, so they can theoretically release this across all platforms simultaneously.

Go on...

# ¿ Oct 16, 2012 10:18

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Ah, spears. I still remember the games thread for Oblivion pre-release. I pointed out that spears were conspicuously absent from all of the pre-release stuff, and conjectured that perhaps they wouldn't be in the game. Followed by about five pages of "you're a god-damned moron, Kilroy, of course they'll include spears... get hosed".

Oh, and then after they clearly would not be in: "well spears are for gays anyway because they're shaped like dicks amirite guys

I hate Games.

Kilroy fucked around with this message at Oct 18, 2012 around 11:06

# ¿ Oct 18, 2012 11:04

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Alasyre posted:

1) Obsidian will probably never work with Bethesda again after the Metacritic deal.

If they're butthurt over that to the point that they won't do business, then gently caress them. A deal is a deal, even a stupid deal (which it was).

But, I don't think they're butthurt over it, either.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2012 16:25

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Space Racist posted:

Terms are terms, but that's still a little harsh (to me) on Bethesda's part. I can't remember exactly but I think Obsidian had to let some people go as a result.

If you're an executive at a company and you stake the financial health of your enterprise on some Metacritic scores then kill yourself. Or at least quit so someone who isn't a stupid rear end in a top hat can run your company and people don't have to lose their jobs.

# ¿ Nov 18, 2012 08:57

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

DoctorJon posted:

Other than the poorly coded nature of dawnguard in general, the master vampires in towns are by far the most annoying part of that DLC. I lost count of the number of times I've reloaded because I came out of such and such building to find a master vampire murdering the town blacksmith YET AGAIN.

Hasn't anybody fixed this yet? It's a really small change to get normal, leveled vampires showing up instead. And you can easily give the guards a bonus against vampires as well, decrease the frequency with which they appear, etc. I haven't put it up because I figured it's already been done. Should I?

# ¿ Nov 19, 2012 15:28

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Alasyre posted:

I'd say put it up. The only other mod I've seen that addresses it forces you to wear an amulet which eliminates the attacks altogether. Fodder vampires would be better, in my opinion, since you can still get the "OH MY GOD VAMPIRES JOIN THE DAWNGUARD" effect.

Too bad no one's modded the story yet.

Edit: Pretty sure a Vampire killed Belethor without me knowing, because his shop closed for a while and Ysolda took over later. Best thing that ever happened to me in this game.

Ask and ye shall receive:

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/27216

quote:

Decreases the lethality and frequency of vampire attacks on towns. Rather than spawning Master Vampires for town attacks, will spawn from the leveled list for regular vampires. Decreases by 95% the chance of encountering a vampire in a town normally, and by half the chance of encountering a vampire in a town during an eclipse. Note also that the new spawns might not take effect until after the next vampire attack, *after* loading this mod. That is, possibly you can install this plugin and see one more attack on a town by a Master Vampire, and *then* only after that with regular vampires. Also, the decreased chance for spawning in towns will not drop until after the first attack, after loading this mod. Don't spam the comments section with messages about this. IF YOU DO I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN AND CUT OUT YOUR HEART AND DRINK YOUR BLOOD. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.

It also gives guards an attack bonus against vampires, allowing them to dispatch vampires more quickly.

Finally, it lowers the frost damage dealt by Death Hounds, as if a few of them got near an NPC it was pretty much an insta-kill, especially if the NPC wasn't a Nord.

# ¿ Nov 21, 2012 10:44

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

"Early next year" eh? IIRC for the Creation Kit that meant "March". Wrap it up, Bethesdailures

# ¿ Dec 4, 2012 13:24

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Lawman 0 posted:

The setting of the TES series is early modern/Renaissance rather than medieval.

I don't know about "early modern". There isn't any gunpowder. They've got carracks but nothing more advanced than that, and the Nords are apparently still rocking the long boats. They can't reliably make it to Akavir and back, and most expeditions are never heard from again. If you could pin down a historical era (and you can't) I'd guess high middle ages - around 1350 or so.

The Dwemer don't count.

Kilroy fucked around with this message at Dec 4, 2012 around 15:46

# ¿ Dec 4, 2012 15:43

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Incoming Chinchilla posted:

Look man, Skyrims a brutal place. It can't all be butterflys and lakes. Sometimes people run about zaping bunnys with a master level lightening spells, some people marry based on fear of dying alone at 22 and sometimes your favourite blacksmith will be murdered, reanimated, remurdered and turned into ash. This ash will then be looted and the contents sold to your second favourite blacksmith and the circle of life continues on.

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/27216

And if you're playing Skyrim on a console, well, let that be a lesson to you

# ¿ Dec 14, 2012 12:06

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Cream-of-Plenty posted:

I'm really torn on whether or not the books and lore in TES are the product of masterful and deliberate obfuscation, or just disoriented incompetence...

It's both, just like a real mythology!

(Seriously, this is the main reason the TES lore is so compelling.)

quote:

Maybe now they just pitch ideas and, if they conflict with earlier material, chalk it up to "conflicting viewpoints and stuff."

And this

# ¿ Dec 16, 2012 02:19

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Raygereio posted:

There's no information yet. All we have is a "early next year" for both PC and PS3.

The Creation Kit was "early 2012" which ended up being March

# ¿ Jan 5, 2013 07:39

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

I can wait. I'm not going to get it right away since I'm assuming it does not integrate into the rest of the game well, much the same as with Dawnguard. I'll wait until that's fixed with a mod.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2013 16:26

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

BAILOUT MCQUACK! posted:

What do you mean by modding to integrate better?

Installing Dawnguard is pretty much a death sentence for many NPCs, even some rather important ones, without mods. I assume there will be some fuckery with Dragonborn as well, because Bethesda. I read something about some rear end in a top hat is going to steal every Dragon soul I try to collect until I finish the primary quest in Dragonborn? I'll wait.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2013 16:38

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Sedisp posted:

That sadly may have some merit.

At the end of the day it's unlikely that any PC people will decide not to buy it for holding off and it runs damage control in terms of the PS3.

It's more likely they aren't going to devote a single man-hour toward the PC release until the PS3 version is ready.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2013 11:02

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

They're not going to release anything this soon after the holiday shopping season. They did the same with the Creation Kit (although that was free so WTF) where they said 'early 2012' and then it came out in March. Brace yourselves.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2013 08:11

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Synastren posted:

Completely different engines, for one thing. Consider that WoW has no loading screens unless you fast travel or go into an instance; Skyrim loads into any new segmented environment (i.e., cities, dungeons, houses; from those into the world).

I don't know if they used the same cell system they used from Morrowind and built up and around that or not, actually. I would be surprised if they started over on that from. I would imagine that it just loads cells when the player gets close to the boundary to the next cell or something.

There is code from Daggerfall lurking in Skyrim.

# ¿ Jan 24, 2013 00:16

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Sky Shadowing posted:

It is a confusing thing, but PS3 users have to wait longer anyways. Bethesda has only specified "February, ALL DLC will be released", no set dates.

As for preloading, don't they usually hold back a few essential files? If they hold back the ESM file, which I would estimate to be around 25-50 megabytes, even if you break the encryption, all you could do would be poke around at the BSA file, look at the assets, but the content itself wouldn't even be there.

Unless they're using ROT13 to encrypt the file, there isn't really much to be gained by doing that. Anyone who wanted to get Dragonborne on PC early would find it a much better use of their time to try to get the XBox copy somehow (kinda surprised no one has?) than they would cracking AES.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2013 15:21

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

ymgve posted:

Where?

They began development on Morrowind right after releasing Daggerfall, took a break to make Redguard (parts of which they also certainly reused in later titles), then scrapped XnGine in favor of NetImmerse/Gamebyro. That doesn't mean they threw away all the work they did before that, though. They've probably touched nearly every line of code since then, but the underlying architecture of Skyrim's programming would almost certainly look familiar in parts, to someone who knew Daggerfall's codebase.

They've invested a lot of resources into building what they've got, over the past 15 or so years. Why wouldn't they use it? Hopefully though, now that Skyrim has made all the loving money, they are working a bit more on getting rid of some of the cruft before Fallout 4/TES 6/whatever. Seems to be the case, anyway.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2013 15:37

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Hughlander posted:

Not necessarily. Some projects I were just working on that was released last in November have 0 game code in common with a game that was released 6 years before despite the engine and game code base being in continuous development since then. (The engine has a lot of low level code in common, but in TES case that part is already replaced by going from XnGine to Gamebyro.) Even the architecture is radically different other than places where it directly touches the engine API. (New object model, new Animation system, new Networking code, etc...) Of course some of that might have to do with going from a corridor FPS to a MOBA.

I am guessing, but I get the feeling Bethesda doesn't like to throw away old code. Bugs in Morrowind reappearing in Oblivion, bugs in Oblivion reappearing in Skyrim (cf navmesh). It could be an upper-management thing, or not. I've read that they learned a lot building Redguard that they applied to Morrowind (which to me is just another way of saying "we reused a lot of poo poo"), and that's XnGine, so...

But yeah, it's just speculation.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2013 15:53

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

I just hope that doesn't mean they're done with patches. That lip sync issue is going to get really irritating if left in for good.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2013 22:23

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

edit: not going to make a habit of posting something already posted 10 times

# ¿ Apr 17, 2013 13:52

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 22, 2013 10:51

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

They need to make a single-player game covering the entire continent again. It's the only way to do the Thalmor conflict justice anyhow. That or go to Akavir. Enough of this single-province bullshit.

# ¿ Apr 19, 2013 13:42

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Games > 3rd Street Skyrims: Elder Saints The Fifth > Skyrim: DLC Discussion