every studio was too busy chasing monetization trends

>>734126827
>with a ton of build/character freedom
The freedom to go to a POI and kill bandits for the 500th time, thrilling. Thank god /v/ died so you could make a hundred threads like this here every day, and even on every video game splinter board, so there's absolutely no place for people to discuss video games.

Well it's a pretty big risk/reward. To pull it off you need a big open world with handcrafted locations with their own subtle story, puzzles, gimicks, setups etc. Costs a lot of resources & time to make.There are some devs trying out similar scope projects like Wayward Realms...some games coming close like Tainted Grail. While some like Avowed try and miss the mark.
It's hard to do right.

>>734126827
Money
it takes a lot of money time and talent
they could be spent on some live service slop

>>734126827
Despite all the ridicule against Bethesda, these games are hard to make. With all its flaws, Bethesda had an early start with all the foundations laid out and iterated throughout the years.

>>734127449
>live service slop
How in the world is live service slop worse than bethesda games? Do... do you think you're not the reason games are awful now? You're the one who ruined games. Like morrowind is 1000x more cancerous than fortnite.

>>734126827
Because it's really expensive and you need many experienced designers. The Tainted Grail guys all worked on those games before and it took them over a decade to make a poor imitation.

>>734127532
Bait used to believable

>>734127690
How is morrowind better than fornite? You killed games. Games being for retards like you is why everything is bad now. Every new AAA game is morrowind. It's all bland open world maps with POIs that are just lazy copypasted content. Every game is an elder scrolls clone. How retarded can you be?

>>734126827
Because open world is just a level select with more padding.
If you actually make the hundreds of levels that a game like this demands in the kind of quality that you and most others think is warranted, then you will have spent years on making and integrating maybe a handful of levels that would be barely good enough to include in a competent game and also hundreds of filler levels that wouldn't be.
You would need to streamline the process of making levels and at that point you are likely to have just streamlined the process of making procedural slop that no one wants to play.
Your preproduction would have to be compelling story produced by a raving madman on a drug trip that can be consistently integrated into the game and dripfed to the player by experiencing it, and then the open world is just low-effort, maximum payoff filler for the drug trip worldbuilding and it doesn't matter if the player breaks anything along the way.
The focus on making sure everything is balanced and design by committee just makes this approach impossible, so no large studio wants to do it, and any smaller creatives just get swamped by work and not having a dedicated drug trip madman and also a dedicated sober man.

>>734126827
it's hard

>waah it's hard
hard for big studios to make a high fidelity version maybe. There are plenty of examples of solo or small dev teams making similar games at a smaller scale.

>>734126827
To put it simply, it's a lot of work. There are games like various slavcore RPGs of the 2000s or Tainted Grail more recently that put their own spin on the formula but they tend to not have anywhere near as much content.

>>734128130
>There are plenty of examples of solo or small dev teams making similar games at a smaller scale.
Name 5

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>>734126827
There are a lot of excuses
>too much work and money to make open world RPGs
>it's "dated" and doesn't "appeal to modern audiences"
>"RPG mechanics are too complicated, adventure slops without levels and with barely any RPG mechanics like Zelda are better nowadays"
The same studios complaining about these will then make a $300mil live service slop game that will flop or spend $100 mil on voice acting and hyper realistic movement tracking in a storyslop game.
Meanwhile, some small studio made pic related, and it sold well with positive reviews

>>734128792
But it didn't sell Fortnite numbers. And that's all the big studio heads care about.

>>734128585
Gedonia
Ardenfall
Devil Spire Falls
Dread Delusion
Yar Forgotten Throne

>>734126827
Because its almost impossible to do well as well as bethesda

>>734128792
It was fun, but you could also tell the studio started to run out of money in the later parts of the game.

>>734129150
Bethesda RPGs are known for being janky and full of bugs tho. They released Skyrim like fucking 10 times, and all the bugs are still in each version with you having to add the Skyrim Unofficial Patch mod.

>>734126827
Unironically there's a huge issue with having a good engine for it, and creating an open world game that isn't low poly/using old looking graphics is very resource intensive.
Think about it, you need
>items with physics and interactions
>serviceable RPG mechanics
>A-Life like system to make NPCs more than just menus
>fluid combat and movement
>moddability
>decent world design that isn't too small or too big
>you need to fill out the world with content, scripted, quests and so on and so forth
>ontop of that you probably need a good story and writing for the characters (though bethesda often fails on this too)
If you can halfway accomplish all of this, most of which relies on having a decent engine and resources, then you might be able to create a framework for a TES clone.
Kingdom Come Deliverance kind of achieved it but it being a medieval game focusing entirely on realism holds it back from doing exactly what TES does and the Engine is not as capable for modding as Gamebryo/CE

>>734129150
One reason Bethesda games are so beloved is nostalgia. Even if you made a game that was objectively better than The Skyrim, people would still stick with Skyrim because it’s their comfort game. They already know everything about it, so they don’t have to stress about learning anything new

>>734126827
Other than The Wayward Realms, here's literally the only other game that has tried to emulate Daggerfall in anyway.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3646460/Devil_Spire_Falls/

>>734129412
KCD is only held back by the whole realism thing
otherwise they are pretty close except for mods and physics

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>>734129412
Something I don't understand why smaller devs don't attempt is something like an instanced world.
STALKER is a good example again. Not only does it have A-Life to simulate the NPC behaviors, personalities, their inventories and so on, but the maps are separated by instances which means things can happen online and offline.
If the world was instanced like in STALKER, the problem of open world games where the world is too big is much less of a problem, especially as you can just introduce new sections of the world as you create more maps. And I'd say STALKER is even more immersive than Skyrim so it's not like the instanced maps can be held against it.
>>734129541
Well I'd also say that CryEngine has a lot of problems that Creation Engine doesn't. I recall they have an unfixable lighting issue in regard to the water in the game among other things.

>>734129412
>lists a bunch of things no elder scrolls game has

>>734129873
Avowed, an attempt at a TES clone, has even less of that stuff than TES does

>>734128936
I don't think anon expected an actual list

>>734128936
>Gedonia
Designed like an MMO
>Ardenfall
Not even released
>Devil Spire Falls
Proc-gen slop, early access
>Dread Delusion
Being a first-person game doesn't mean it's like TES. The game's structure is completely different.
>Yar Forgotten Throne
Another early access game. Call me when it's done

>>734129949
>Designed like an MMO
what exactly is the difference? TES plays like an MMO too.

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You have to understand that people who like elder scrolls are fucking retarded. Like when Oblivion came out you'd turn on the TV and there'd be a bunch of dudebros with backwards baseball caps and goatees yelling "YOOOOOOOO THIS AINT VVARDENFELL". Like you have to understand it's the same phenomena as Halo where it's an absolutely huge piece of shit for retards who have never played a video game before, and they were just given it with a coupon for a jumbo bag of doritos and told it's the best thing ever. That's the feeling these people are chasing after. They just want to be cattle. Now the algorithm has learned its easier to extract money from cattle when they are upset, so now they are miserable all them. But just like dumping a live lobster into a boiling pot of water, their ability to feel and interpret their surroundings is largely instinctual and superficial so their suffering is not important.

>>734129903
Avowed is a bioshock clone and it's roughly the same quality as bioshock, which is to say bad.

>>734126827
It takes a pretty back-breaking amount of effort to commit to, and too many cooks spoil the broth instead of making things go faster.

>>734130212
Ain't reading your gay ass essay nigga

>>734130287
>It takes a pretty back-breaking amount of effort to commit to
90% of the content in elder scrolls is just an excel spreadsheet of canned responses and objects and the games are made up of like 15 rooms copy pasted over and over.

>>734130160
No it doesn't. TES plays like a janky first-person RPG. Gedonia has hotbar combat with CD, enemy highlight circles and those red aoe circles. The UI is also ass and looks like it came from a cheap MMO.

>>734129803
STALKER doesn't nearly appeal as much to normgroids as cookie cutter Ubisoft-style open world schlock. Keep in mind that it was a very niche franchise outside of the post-Soviet bloc until Ecelebs got their fans into modpacks like Anomaly and GAMMA which, at this point, are probably more popular than the original games and mods similar to them (Oblivion Lost Remake, True STALKER, etc).

>>734130212
>But just like dumping a live lobster into a boiling pot of water, their ability to feel and interpret their surroundings is largely instinctual and superficial so their suffering is not important.
Only subhumans have such a mindset.

>>734130212
Nope, it's discount Dark Messiah which is an even worse game than Bioshock.

>>734126827
what the fuck are you talking about dude?

>>734132384
TES existed before both of those games, in fact I'd bet TES is older than you.

>>734132384
Meant for>>734130269
>>734132552
My bad.
>I'd bet TES is older than you.
It is, I was born in 2007.

>>734130212
I played Morrowind on XBOX HUGE and then Oblivion on 360 and I enjoyed both games immensely, for their own merits of course. Two different games really.
But I also enjoy many, many games that people find to be untenable. Clunky interfaces. Silly levelling systems. None of this really bothers me.
Video games are fun. :^)

Can someone post a lengthy list of games that can realistically compare to Bethesda games in terms of scope & open world exploration quality?

>>734132775
Sure, here it is:
[
]

>>734132384
What's wrong with Bioshock?
It's a very competent game.
Dark Messiah is notably much simpler than the Elder Scrolls, sort of hard to compare the two games when one is much more linear.
Maybe Gothic is a more apt comparison.
Maybe Two Worlds? Loved me some Two Worlds. In Two Worlds II you could find the main villian in five minutes and challenge him to a fight before playing the entire game. Fun.
Risen. Elex. Half decent games.

>>734132915
I'll add Dragon's Dogma
that one game where you play as one of the four Horsemen? more of a button masher IIRC
I remember Bound by Flame being like a 6/10
Oh yeah the Divinity games

>>734132178
Nevertheless, the instanced "open world" format is much easier for indie devs to replicate. It should be more common.

Because because Bethesda games are unironically a technological miracle, despite all the reddit tard memes about the creation engine. There's a reason we don't have any other games where you can pick up an item like a fork (that has physics applied to it and collides with the environment) right from the table, drop it into a corner somewhere and then come back X hours later and still have it be there. That type of persistence is a nightmare to implement.
Then combine that with how retardedly resource intensive these games are in terms of assets, quests, voice acting, items, mechanics, etc.
It's one of those things that seems like nothing special on the surface, but if you actually tally up what you need to do to fully recreate a game like Skyrim (and not some vaguely similar facsimile) you realize how hard it is. It's the same reason there has never been a Sims competitor too for that matter.

>>734133523
This. No way a game sells 60mil copies and ZERO copycats show up. Souls selling a couple million was enough to start the soulslike genre, yet TES selling tens of millions produced no TESlikes at all.

>>734126827
It takes a deal of tism to do the world building necessary for these games.

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>>734126827
What >>734127398 said
The market is saturated (your advertising won't even reach the client) and it's not cost-efficient unless you make absolute crap like Bethesda does.
Plus nowadays freedom is a bad word. You need to monetize everything the player want, including player-made mods.

>>734129150
I agree that reaching the level of incompetence of Bethesda is almost impossible.
You could do it much better easily tho.

>>734133523
A lot of studios can do all that but not the object permanence
But what bothers me is that they didn't design the game around that
also of things are more gamey than they should be in a game with such physics and systems

>>734134053
Making something like lies of P is a lot cheaper than making cookier cutter rpg with classes

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>>734129803
>If the world was instanced like in STALKER, the problem of open world games where the world is too big is much less of a problem
Instance is only useful for multiplayer game and nowadays computing power isn't that much of a problem since you'll need notable distance anyway.

If you go back to hub map, every map you make will require arbitrary boundaries.
Every feature will be limited by the method by which you exit/enter an area.
Every AI will still need to respawn/despawn, but you'll have to deal with what happen when exiting/entering area, even if you used "seamless corridors" that let you sneakily unload/reload map.

STALKER is immersive because it's a GOOD GAME that has seamless transition between place that matter and put a lot of effort handcrafting everyone of them.
Unlike Skyrim which teleport you in and out of copypasted houses because it cannot transition smoothly and is forced to make interiors super wide for its broken NPC.

That said, not everyone can do both like Star Engine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWm_OhIKms8

The problem smaller devs face is content production. Making area one by one don't fix that problem, it only hide it.
I'll rather take a game that has waste area procedurally generated (to acceptable level) waiting until the dev(s) can fill those area.

>>734138315
>I'll rather take a game that has waste area procedurally generated (to acceptable level) waiting until the dev(s) can fill those area.
All fully open world games are essentially this already. They have the plot specific and hamdmade sections like a semi-open map then fill the gaps with procgen. But retards don't realize this and think the whole thing is procgen for some reason, or they claim they would prefer the semi-open model instead of more optional content in a more believable world.

>>734132915
>It's a very competent game.
This is precisely what I disagree with. Bioshock abandoned the depth of System Shock 2 in favour of appealing to the console audience by becoming an action-FPS with minor RPG elements, but it's not even good at that. At least Bioshock 2 (mostly) fixed that.

>>734141727
There is no one on /v/ I hate more than RPG depthfags. BioShock is more fun that System Shock 2. Oblivion is more fun than Morrowind. More spreadsheet shit is not better.

>>734126827
Becuase no other studio will get the same mod support that actually makes Bethesda games good. Vanilla Bethesda games are utter trash, yet mods makes them some of the best games ever.

>>734142329
this is what retards believe, as if the millions of console players are modding their half dozen copies of Skyrim too.

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>>734132915
>What's wrong with Bioshock?
>It's a very competent game.

>>734142594
NTA but we were talking about Bioshock 1 specifically.

>>734142481
Anon, even console players play with some amount of limited mod support since SE. I get that console players are complete shit eaters, but do you really think the people praising TES games on /v/, a primarily PC board, play Vanilla Skyrim and have not played it with a shit ton of mods?

>>734142745
All three are the same themepark shit

>>734142965
>themepark shit
Never thought of the "themepark" aspect as a problem desu.

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>>734129448
>>734130212
These.

>>734132915
>What's wrong with Bioshock?
>It's a very competent game.
No, it isn't. It is a polished turd.

>>734129873
Bethesdrones are the worst.

>>734143439
You're easily amused I guess

>>734126827
Because it's difficult to make complex gameplay systems. Every new addition has unknown costs and potential issues.
Why do you think the real reason for every game becoming a "movie game" is? It's because it's cheap and predictable. Adding content is linear and if it doesn't work it doesn't take down the whole game with it.
Hell nowadays even just offering real time movement is apparently becoming rare... soon you'll get a 200h cutscene where occasionally you choose between 2-3 box prompts on screen like a fucking VN.

>>734142787
Skyrimtards on /v/ are just trolls and coomers, they do not represent the majority of players.

>>734144040
>Hell nowadays even just offering real time movement is apparently becoming rare... soon you'll get a 200h cutscene where occasionally you choose between 2-3 box prompts on screen like a fucking VN.
this is what happens when "your choices matter" is the main selling point of games instead of being fun to play

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>>734126827
My guess is the dynamic systems like physics combined with strict state management is prone to a lot of bugs.

>>734141389
Indeed, procedural generation have always been best at producing sceneries for handcrafted content.
But as you say, retards pretend every square meter they roam without caring should be up to silly level of quality, and when they learn it's fundamentally unfeasible they just try to find a culprit.

>>734129448
>One reason Bethesda games are so beloved is nostalgia
More like a captive mainstream audience who are not big into video games and believe "Skyrim must be representative of the best" limited to its superficial appearance

>>734132775
RDR2
Elden Ring

>>734132872
Anon, I fear the cheer size of your list accidentally made it vanish. Weird bug.

>>734144415
Multiple engines can do that reliably and seamlessly, some even multiplayer.
Bethesda has slowly lost all employee capable of fixing, improving or remaking their engine. Now they just subcontract all the works outside.
I'm told they don't even have clean reference document to tell the subcontractors what level of quality they expect.

As someone who now work in making maintenance document, it's critically important to give no way to subcontractor to wiggle out of their jobs by saying "not our fault, you didn't tell that".

>>734145729
>Multiple engines can do that reliably and seamlessly
Then why don't they?

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>>734132775
There are literally none. I think Todd secretly has a patent for TES formula games, like how Warner Bros has a patent for the nemesis system.

>>734145941
That's the question everyone is asking.
It's a lot of money and efforts to win a captive playerbase who clearly don't care that much since they boughted Bethesda.

>>734141389
>>734144658
Tons of games have very playable procgen content, typically survival crafting, roguelike, or strategy games. The frustrating thing about 90% of AAA open world games is that none of that procgen content is designed to be playable; it only exists so the game seems bigger than it is. I would much rather hit an invisible wall than waste half-an-hour of time trudging through boring sections of the map the devs never wanted me to visit any way.

>>734132775
The Ultima games, but that's only because Elder Scrolls is directly inspired by them.

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>>734146023
>like how Warner Bros has a patent for the nemesis system.
don't remind me anon

>>734146513
>Tons of games have very playable procgen content,
>90% of AAA open world games is that none of that procgen content is designed to be playable
I often prefer the later to the former.
Why?
Because "procedural content" is slang for "we did absolutely no effort in the gameplay, but still expect you to pretend every single square meter is adventure waiting for you".
Whereas games that use procedural generation only as a backdrop do not waste your time and actually put effort where it matters.

So
>only exists so the game seems bigger than it is.
Do not apply to the same for me.

Not saying of course that in a vehicular game the vaste area shouldn't in fact, be fun to travel through.

>>734146513
>I would much rather hit an invisible wall than waste half-an-hour of time trudging through boring sections of the map the devs never wanted me to visit any
the opposite for me. If I'm in a fantasy grand adventure world, I don't want to be taken out of immersion by am invisible wall in the middle of the map. I would much rather trudge through empty terrain because that's what a globetrotting adventure is actually like.

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>>734126827
It's kinda crazy how they've pretty much made the same game this many times
like the quests between Arena and Skyrim haven't gotten much more complicated

>>734146513
>I would much rather hit an invisible wall than waste half-an-hour of time trudging through boring sections of the map the devs never wanted me to visit any way.
I would much rather roam freely in a car through procedurally generated wilderness, than waste half-an-hour of time trudging through forced section the devs railroad me in.