🚀 go-pugleaf

Mike S. <Mik...@nowhere.com> looked up from reading the entrails of the
porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs say:

>On Mon, 20 Mar 2017 07:34:35 -0400, Xocyll <Xoc...@gmx.com> wrote:
>
>>You could *walk* across the entire region in a very short time - a
>>region, that if you look at a map of Tamriel, is supposed to be the same
>>size as that covered in Daggerfall.
>>Daggerfall was the size of Turkey,) and Skyrim was 4km by 4km box.
>>[Ok yes a great deal of that was empty space and boringly randomized
>>stuff, but it was there, and you could walk across it.
>
>This is a big deal to me. A very big deal. I want my game worlds
>created by human beings, not by programming algorithms. I do not place
>the same priority on game world size that you do. Not in single player
>games anyway. 

It's not the size exactly, it's the complexity and the feeling that the
world does NOT revolve around you.
Most of the world will never even hear of the nameless hero who did the
quest, and almost all RPGs do it the opposite way - where everyone knows
who you are even though you've never been there before.

Daggerfall's size made you feel like you were in a world, and
insignificant to that world.

Compare that to Skyrim, where you are damn near instantly THE HERO,
getting aid and quests from everyone as you stride through the world 10
league tall (virtually).

"Oh look, the hero has come and will save us from the horrible foozle,
we can tell this from their incredibly heroic visage that shines through
the mists even though they're dressed like a common beggar who has
apparently been swimming in a sewer."

Vs the more realistic "who is this guy that's dressed like a beggar?
Chase him off he stinks and looks like he might steal something."


Dunno about you, but I'd rather play the random guy who got dragooned
into this hero business then the Legendary Hero Prophesied to Save The
World!   There's far more opportunity for ME to define my character when
I'm not being written into a pre-defined role someone else dreamed up -
and wrote dialog for - and wrote predefined responses for my character
that suite THEIR play style, - and wrote predefined scenarios that force
me to do things that MY CHARACTER would not do, but theirs would etc.


The size also made travel times important - you could fast travel (in
two different ways - fastest travel with the chance of getting attacked,
and via safe trade routes, staying overnight in Inns, etc, which took
considerably longer.)

At one point you have a meeting, and if you miss that meeting, the main
quest is over.  
Not the usual way these days where they will put their life on hold
indefinitely until you show up, they set the meeting and if you don't
show up, that's it.
I exploit this in fallout4, when Preston Garvey sends you off to help
some group somewhere - if you never go eventually it will fail, but
there's no actual consequence.  If you go an help, you then have to go
back and report that you helped them - but there is no time limit, you
can wait years before reporting back and there is no blowback at all.

Become a werewolf or a vampire (actually there's 9 bloodlines) or get
cured when you find out you are infected.)
Probably the coolest way ever to tell you you are infected to - no popup
dialog on screen telling you you are infected (and how would you
instantly know anyway?) but instead a dream the first time you sleep
after getting infected - 3 days from infection to change, so if you plan
to get cured, head to a temple, and OH LOOK, travel times and the sheer
size of the world are suddenly very important again - can you get to a
temple in time?

Vampire/werewolf hunters that WILL come after you - giving you a quest
to get cured, but if you don't they will come after you in waves.

Oh and as a vampire you technically died, so all your guild affiliations
and reputations with various groups reset back to neutral/zero.


If you want one bit of advice - join the mages guild and work up to the
rank where you get access to the guild teleporter (he will send you
wherever you want to go.)
Learn the mark and return spells.
Set a mark at his location (you can use the return spell to return to
your marked location.)
You can then get a quest from anyone, anywhere, recall to your mark in
front of the guild teleporter, get the teleporter to send you to where
the quest destination is, do it, hunt the guy, explore the dungeon,
whatever, then recall back and get the teleporter to send you back to
the quest giver's location (or at least the same city.)

This also makes it easier to not get infected with lycanthropy or
vampirism since you can always get to a temple in time, and/or so you
can join the bloodline of choice if you choose to become a vampire (the
info on the wiki says it's determined by the location you get infected
in, but unless there has been a patch after .213, it's actually
determined by the location you die in.

Note you cannot fast travel in the daytime when a vampire, even if you
have health regen items that will keep you alive standing in the sun -
it does not count them while doing the fast travel calculation so you
would always die.   Similarly the guild teleporter won't send you
anywhere in daytime, nor can you wait to quickly pass time while you are
in sunlight.

>With that said, I already know without having even played it yet, that
>Daggerfall is a better game then Arena. How much so, remains to be
>seen. For me, it will depend entirely on how much depth Daggerfall has
>to go along with its breadth. It's that simple.

Everything Arena had, Daggerfall has more of.

More items to equip and possibly enchant.
More ways to enchant something, IE health or mana regeneration that only
happens at night, or during a certain phase of the moon or ...
The more powerful souls you capture and use to power enchantments having
their own inherent advantages and disadvantages. (IE use a Daedra
Seducer soul and whatever else you enchant on the item it also boosts
your reputation with everyone, but the item also degrades in sunlight,
gives you bad reactions from animals and you take damage if you enter
holy places, and if you don't actually use the item at least once a
week, it will start leeching health from you.)

Get to a walled city after dark when the gates are closed, wait until
daytime, or climb the walls if your skill is high enough or levitate
over them.

Got caught stealing, get up on a roof and run away jumping from roof to
roof and no silly nonsense making the guards immune to damage because
it's not fair that you have a ranged weapon and they don't so you're not
allowed to hit them (Elder Scrolls Online does that - in the set piece
fights of quests, if the baddie cannot reach you the fight resets.)

I would absolutely love a modern remake.
Hrm and with the landscape generation that No Man's Sky has - if
something like that were used the procedurally generated landscape would
be more interesting.   Daggerfall's was very flat - but then it was a
DOS game.

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