Gatt9 wrote...
Radiant AI was a marketing ploy, it's a scheduling system, it's not really complex. I know the classes those guys took, since I know the school many of them went to, this was not something difficult for them. Assign each NPC a path in nodes, and a probability of moving from one node to any of the next ones, it's really lower level CS work, it's a weighted graph with the weights representing probability. A second year could implement it in code pretty reliably. I'm 100% certain the Bethseda team could handle it.
As released, I agree. While it improved Morrowind's static AI, it was hardly game-changing. However, what RAI had originally been commissioned to do is more impressive. Originally, RAI's programming was alot more expansive than what was actually released. It was pretty hyped at the time. Unfortunately, Bethesda deemed the system 'too unpredictable' so they confined it to basic scheduling commands.
As far as Skyrim goes...
...The Perks system isn't a replacement for the lost skills and stats, especially since it demonstrates they don't understand what the purpose of the stats were in the first place. "Do 25% more damage to dogs on Sunday" isn't really a big deal. It works best in parallel with a fully developed Stats/Skills system, on it's own, it's much less effective.
It's a supplementary system meant to augment the other systems in user chosen ways that adapts to their playstyle more fully than the stats/skills systems alone can, essentially it's a renamed implementation of D&D's feat system, except truth is Fallout did it earlier. I'm pretty convinced the system will not work as a standalone as I think my way through it.
In any role-playing system, players are always choosing abilities that augment their particular playstyle, but it always begins with the choice: what character concept am I trying to make? And from their, the perk system becomes more interesting. It's also not quite as random as fallout's system; in Skyrim, perks are actively tied to your skills. In terms of design, it's seems like they took Oblivion's limited perk-system and expanded it into something worthwhile.
And while I enjoyed the attribute system, I'm actually not upset about the lost skills in Skyrim (Hand-to-Hand, Mysticism, Athletics, Acrobatics). Especially with regards to the last two, which had been notorious for being spammable. Mysticism I might have missed, if it still had mark/recall and levitation. Unfortunately, those went out a while ago.
Dragonshouts and Dual Wielding aren't improving the game either. Dragonshouts is a universal magic system, one that everyone uses, which I would expect will make the actual magic system redundant. Why play a Mage if the fighter gets spells and the benefits of being a fighter? class distinctions exist for a reason, because when you give someone the best of both worlds, being just a part of the best isn't worth doing.
While this is true on the surface-level, it doesn't quite take into account the details of the new Dragonshout system. For one, there are limited number of Dragonshouts available (~20) and their effects, from what I've seen, have not really been reproducible with spells. Ex: slow down time/summon storm. Some, like Dragon's Breath, are more basic. But we also haven't seen what limitations each ability has (Ex: cooldowns). If, like greater powers, they are useable once per day, I hardly think that breaks the system.
You could also argue that the new Storm shout makes Wizard lightning superfluous, but I'd say no more than it makes swinging a sword useless, especially when you consider that in Morrowind enchantments could be designed allowing warriors to cast insanely powerful spells. For many reasons, casting from enchantments was always preferred to actual spell-casting because the player didn't have to deal with spell failure.
Modifié par Il Divo, 22 juin 2011 - 12:25 .
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