Norzan
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
This makes no sense. People are asking for a game that specifically doesn't target these idiots, and yet they make a game targeted at those same idiots just for money? This is exactly what Bethesda does and whatever company that tries to appeal to the same audience is no better than Bethesda.
And if they are trying to win that audience (why do you want to do that, they are the reason the Bethesda Fallouts are even popular) by having marketing that makes the game sound cool instead of just showing what the game actually is, that's just deceiving marketing. The audience that plays Bethesda Fallouts will notice that it has stuff that the Bethesda Fallouts lack, like being gated from content based on choices. And they hate that.
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TheHouseAlwaysWins
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
Yes because in real life the gaming industry has gotten so big with things like marketing that the number one goal is to appeal to as large of an audience as possible. "those idiots" make up the majority of people who are going to shell out 50 to 60 dollars on your product.
It was always like this but in the 90's and previous times, the industry was smaller and so there was room for more demographic audiences. You see patterns and trends for things like isometric RPG's in the 90's just as you see trends like pixel art indie games or battle royale today.
The audience that actually gives a shit about the gameplay of Fallout 1 and 2 is tiny but we've successfully deconstructed Bethesda Fallout in combination with Bethesda's decline that New Vegas is memed as the best Fallout, so making a clone of that with surface level imitations generally will be enough to satisfy most of the audience.
You have to realize that it isn't just Bethesda as a company to blame for Fallout's decline but the whole systematic game industry as our current economic system which incentives horrible shit decays the gameplay behind vidya
Gizmojunk
Antediluvian as Feck
I know artists (visual & musical) that are amazingly skilled at their craft... and yet they paint & play touristy crap —because that's what sells; and at the end of the day, that's what pays for their dinner, and their rent; they have little choice. 
Norzan
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
Yes, they are solely to blame for Fallout's decline. The industry has shown that RPGs with actual depth can be sucessful and Bethesda going out of their way to dumb down the series to the extreme for max profit is just for pure greed.
I may have my issues with Witcher 3, but that game has a ton more depth than much of the nonsense Bethesda has puked since 2006.
So no, they don't have to appeal to the idiots that comprise a large chunk of the Bethesda Fallouts fanbase. This is actually becoming a meme, that companies have to somehow appeal to these people and they somehow are the majority.
New Vegas isn't "memed" as the best Fallout game, because it's not considered as such. That goes to Fallout 1.
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Jabberwok
Mildly Dipped
I dislike the term reactive RPG, but in their defense, almost every AAA game gets tagged as an RPG these days. Guess they have to set themselves apart somehow.
If anything, The Witcher should prove that you can do both. I don't think Bethesda sells more copies by having half-baked mechanics or bad writing, or removing all traces of player agency (Mass Effect did the opposite of that last one, and was immensely popular). Even people with poor taste don't choose a game based on that. They just don't notice when that stuff is there. Unless their only goal is to produce shovelware for minimal expense and coast on their existing audience, there's no reason Bethesda couldn't keep all of the stuff that made the Elder Scrolls popular while still making it a better RPG.
But to do that, they'd first have to understand their own medium.
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Gizmojunk
Antediluvian as Feck
I believe that Todd Howard himself is the reason—or he's good at hiding mandates from higher up.
I get the impression that he doesn't like RPGs, and prefers costume sims instead—and that he assumes everyone else does too... or at least those that matter to them; the mainstream market.
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R.Graves
Confirmed Retard
Nah because new Vegas took most of what I loved about fallout 1 and cranked it to 11.
mef
Where'd That 6th Toe Come From?
well at least we don't have impossible expectations that the game will fail to live up to
Norzan
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
Pete Hines himself said on Twitter that if a game has to be dumbed down to get more sales, he has no problem doing that.
TheHouseAlwaysWins
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
You're comparing a studio from a culture that is more anti consumerist compared to America due to its decades of isolation through socialism and now its ultra conservative culture to a country where giant companies run rampant. Every business, if given the power to do it will sell out an IP for money if it is possible.
I never played it but I doubt it has more depth compared to Fallout 1 or 2.
Those people are the majority and even if fallout 76 has had people turned away from it, the majority of these people would be happy if another Fallout 3 or even another Fallout 4 came out.
The meta narrative behind a business is that it has to grow as big as possible to employ more people and create work in the economy.
I am not saying that bethesda hasn't done anything bad to the IP, I am saying you need to look at this holistically and giving the IP to Obsidian, or Valve, or Nintendo, or any other AAA game company isn't going to fix anything.
TheGM
The voice of reason
Norzan
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
And? That has nothing to do with what i said. It still has actual depth, something completely gone from the Bethesda games.
And if you haven't played it, you have no right to do blind assumptions based on nothing. I can also name several other RPGs in recent memory that sold extremely well and weren't dumbed down, made for fucking babies RPGs.
Yes, it would. All of those companies actually care for good game design and not utter nonsense that completely removes the point of game design, which is what Bethesda does. Anything that any of those companies would produce would be far better than any nonsense Bethesda has produced. Because Bethesda's design is literally the bottom of the barrel.
I mean, Obsidian did a much better Fallout game than Bethesda has ever done with limited time and a trash version of Gamebryo.
Until i see actual proof of this (this is specifically for Bethesda Fallouts fans only, not casuals in general), they are not. Number of sales doesn't equal number of satisfied customers. Plus Bethesda markets the fuck out of their games, everybody and their mom knows what they are. A lot of people buy games out of curiosity, not because they actually like the company, or that they liked their previous games.
I honestly see your argument and it's really flawed. You are trying to remove most of the blame from Bethesda and place it on the industry. Which is just flat out wrong. Is industry responsible for a lot of bad shit? True, but some companies are responsible for a lot that shit in the first place. It wasn't taught to them by the gaming industry, they basically taught it themselves, or took it from an outside industry.
Like Bethesda has done by dumbing down their games to the extreme for max profit. This was a calculated choice, to see how much they could get away from it. This is not specific to the gaming industry, this is specific to humanity. Some people will always try to get max profit with the lowest amount of effort. But some companies have shown that RPGs can have depth and still sell extremely well. There's absolutely no excuse for the nonsense Bethesda is doing.
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Jabberwok
Mildly Dipped
This. There's a reason they felt the need to apologize for 76.
TheHouseAlwaysWins
Look, Ma! Two Heads!
No they do not lol, Valve hasn't made a game in years beyond Artifact which was a bad clone of Hearthstone, Nintendo has been rehashing their shit forever and making their main projects gimmicks, and Obsidian has just been making retro isometric RPG's that don't really do anything new in gameplay for the past few years.
in 2010 back in a console generation that wasn't as monetized thanks to both smaller demographics and the smaller size of the internet.
Bethesda's entire history from Daggerfall up to Fallout 76 was a sales incline (ignoring both redguard and battlespire) despite the fact the vision behind Daggerfall was a completely different one from later Bethesda. The majority of fallout and elder scrolls fans want the series to return to the standards of Oblivion and Fallout 3.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_II:_Daggerfall#Sales
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_III:_Morrowind#Reception
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_IV:_Oblivion#Reception
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_V:_Skyrim#Sales
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_4#Sales
You're putting words in my mouth and seem to be thinking on a tribal level. A company like Obsidian which is out for money as any other business is not "better" than Bethesda is. Their business just has less financial opportunity than Bethesda, remember all the drama relating to Chris Avellone?
Any company if given the opportunity will be as anti consumer as possible, and they all share these ideas with each other. Bethesda invented a lot of horrible shit like horse armor, but other companies like Valve have come up with stuff like lootboxes or Nintendo's physical action figure dlc and these ideas circulate around and decay the industry.
So where did you get the idea I was excusing it
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Gizmojunk
Antediluvian as Feck
Sure they did. Pillars was pushed on the nostalgia of the Infinity engine... and so it looks & behaves like a souped up Infinity game; but it has new mechanics as well. Tyranny is similar.
D
Deleted member 98605
Guest
Due to the rushed timeframe, they famously gutted the Legion, had a very constrained map, and couldn't or didn't want to expand on secondary or tertiary quests for regions and towns you pass through and thus forget unless you run around them for supplies (and often it's just Novac-I-88-Hoover Dam-Gun Runners-Boomers for ammo/supplies). It's above average but could had been better.
Norzan
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
To be fair, they did had a strict development time to make New Vegas (as you mentioned). The actual criticism that should be done here in my opinion is that they were too ambitious and because of the limited time given to them, they had to cut content. If they just had worked with things that they knew there would be enough time to turn into something fantastic, that didn't feel like nothing was cut, i think this issue of cut content or that something was just missing could have been avoided.
Still sucks about the cut Legion content, which is honestly something that would have benefited the game greatly.
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I'm not sure about the majority of Fallout fans wanting the series to return to the standards of Fallout 3. Fallout 3 is the second least liked Fallout in the main series (only Fallout 4 has a lower rate given by the players).
Fallout main series are rated by the players like this, on Metacritic User Rates (from highest to lowest):
- Fallout 2 - 9.1
- Fallout - 8.8
- Fallout New Vegas UE - 8.8
- Fallout New Vegas - 8.7
- Fallout 3 GOTY - 8.6
- Fallout 3 - 7.8
- Fallout 4 GOTY - 5.6
- Fallout 4 - 5.5
- Fallout 4 VR - 5.0
- Morrowind - 8.9
- Morrowind GOTY - 8.8
- Oblivion GOTY - 8.8
- Daggerfall - 8.3
- Skyrim - 8.2
- Oblivion - 8.1
- Skyrim VR - 6.8
- Skyrim SE - 5.9
Norzan
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
Don't know why you linked receptions from critics of all things, when they should be properly ignored. Most of their "reviews" are brief, hardly touch anything and flat out ignore major issues. And this applies to games i like, i don't give a shit about the reception of the games i like.
From what Risewild posted, it clearly shows that the reception from players has been on the decline. And again, a sale is not the same as a satisfied customer.
To bring up Fallout 76, Bethesda doesn't even know what makes their games popular. Fallout 76 is literally comprised of what Bethesda players seemingly like: exploring empty worlds, shooting, looting and doing quests that don't require much thought to be completed. And yet, Fallout 76 flopped and it was lambasted by players. So it's not even a guarrantee that going back to Fallout 3 and Oblivion will make them popular again.
You can blame it on being multiplayer only, but the fact Fallout 4 sold worse and got worse reviews than Skyrim just shows they were starting to go on a downward trajectory. But instead of a being somewhat steady downwards decline, they just dropped like a rock in the very next game.
So no, Obsidian shouldn't make the game targeted at Bethesda fans or even try to just market to them. At this point is not even a guarantee of success.
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