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[Allandor]

Well, too many loading screens is it. You enter a building -> loading screens, ho into another room -> loading screen -> go to the room left -> ....
At least it should be one loading screen per building max. That should be possible with their physics etc.

Going to the Bruma prison is such a negative example.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Wasn't this thing already discussed - one of the main reasons they stick with that engine (it's the same one since ES3 just refined) is modding, which is the bedrock of their business model and long term profitability.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

So you are saying that a game with open world like oblivion, where WHOLE WORLD OUTSIDE the cities and building is permanent and you can drop an item ANYWEHERE in the green but adding the red spots (cities/buildings) is too much? Will it overload a memory or what?
What is the interior vs exterior area of this game 60 to 40?
So I can place an item seamless anywhere in the 60% and that's ok and it will stay there but add interiors to this and it's too much?
Sounds like a streaming problem from pcs 25 years ago that had 512mb of ram

They wont have to check all the time if they load save state of the location.

Frees up system resources and increase performance, something they really need as well.

 

[geary]

My opinion is that the item persistence barely add anything of value in the end to keep this archaic loadings.

The dropped to ground items don't even persist more than (iirc) 3 game days. What's the point.

CIG's Star Citizen managed true item persistence for tens of thousands of daily players on a solar scale with no loading screens, its even imo too much and excessive. Bottles of water dropped by players remain there. I think recently they are making "scrubbers" to wipe out the random junk but still the idea is there and surely easy to be done to the scale of 1 player on a relatively small map (compared to a solar system).

So its a questionable feature but also truely a limit of their current engine, tech has been proven to be able to bypass loading screens for that.

But without persistence, their games will be just the 100th other open work rpg on the market. I prefer loading screen for persistance, if thats what to trade for this type of rpg…i can get the open world without persistance from the next UE5 game this year.

 

[Raven117]

Whatever you say…. Duder.

Lots of games are better graphically, have more going on, and can do it.

So….

 

[RoadHazard]

It's 2025. By the time TES6 comes out it will be 2028 or whatever. It can be done. Maybe not by Betashed, but it can be done. I don't see any reason why this memory management couldn't be done on the fly instead of during load screens. As the player gets closer to a certain location, start loading the positions of items (and start unloading them in locations the player is moving away from), etc. The problem is simply that the Creation Engine can't stream data for shit.

 

[Balducci30]

I feel like kingdom come 2 has a lot of the Bethesda depth of world without resorting to loading screens - but maybe the object thing is impossible without cells? Idk

 

[Peroroncino]

Ok, but is there another game on that scale where on top of being able to mod it to hell, I'm able to basically interact with virtually every object in the room, or have it all flying when using an explosion/magic?

Avowed could have all the graphics and no loadings in the world, but if I feel like the world is artificial as fuck, I'll take frequent loading screens and choose to play Skyrim again.

I mean... I don't see a lot of games doing what they do with TES. Graphics intensive is probably not what I would use (even tho Skyrim was a looker at his time), it probably has more to do with the physics of every object and how you can actually lift them etc... Also drop an arrow on your first hour, it will still be there 150 hours later.

Again, I don't know a lot of game able to do this.

Exactly.

Memeing about some faces is missing the forest for the trees I feel like.

 

[Balducci30]

For all the complaining about their engine, I can't think of any other games that does persistence in the same way. It's a core part of what makes Bethesda games what they are, and there aren't any other truly "TES-like" games in the industry.

Maybe something like DayZ is comparable but it's not doing anything close in terms of the numbers of interiors and NPCs. I know there was a Red Dead Redemption 2 mod for persistence but even that was a ring around the player and so anything that went outside of it would despawn. The only other game with potential is Star Citizen and that's taken 12 years and $800 million to make... and it's still in alpha.

People's problem with Bethesda games lie with the graphics rendering (see all the memes about the NPC faces) and not the underlying game logic. The Oblivion remaster proves that if you slap a nicer coat of paint on TES6, making it look about as good, then all of the complaining about the engine underneath would vanish overnight.

Isn't it okay for the objects to respawn and then respawn when you're close? As long as it keeps track of their position?

 

[Soodanim]

If Open Cities was the default, it would have taken twice as long to debug and QA. What would stop an essential NPC from wandering off into the wilderness and get killed by wild animals if some unforeseen event clashed with their pathfinding?

Open Cities being a mod is inconsequential to the fact that having one large map without cells to divide the various parts would result in far more interactions and bugs.

Essential NPCs are flagged to not die. Cities already have things like vampire and dragon attack random events, and NPCS have dispositions for what to do in combat e.g. flee to their home. Some won't die in NPC combat, only to the player hand. (IIRC)

You also have smaller towns that are entirely in the Skyrim/main world space and are subject to the same things you say should be an issue, so whatever design they already use works. NPCs can chase you through doors but like to return home already, too. Whether they're leash points or something else, the answer to what would stop that exists already and is already used.

The game is already in cells that are loaded and unloaded based on which cell the player is in. Open Cities doesn't change that, it just places the previously locked away worlds paces back in the main world space and moves NPC data over to the new version of the cities.

If you just run Open Cities and not other conflicting mods it works just fine. I had an OC centric mod list and even had it working with Legacy of the Dragonborn. It works just fine with regards to the main game, and any issues are from it being a mod and not because of NPC issues it causes.

I'm not convinced it would have led to substantially more bugs and testing. All of the affected cities are already designed to function in the world space, they're just cut and pasted into separate ones. They all have large walls to stop outside interference and guards along the long run up to the main gate. Beth already did the work.

I still see no good reason beyond technical limitations of the time that Skyrim (e.g. PS3 RAM) didn't have all cities in the main world space. As for why they didn't change that for F4 or SF is not something I can answer and I haven't played SF, but I know they if aren't changing it it for TES6 they're in trouble. Let's hope Starfield was enough of a kick up the arse.

If you haven't played Skyrim with OC, it's brilliant. It fits perfectly to open Whiterun's door for the first time and have the city just be there. If it was compatible with more mods I'd have been running it forever.

 

[ShadowkillXNA]

Agreed since Oblivion and Fallout 3, Bethesda use radiant A.I which are way more advance and immersive than every other open world or RPG game. They aren't just randomly generated like what most other world game uses. So it's a good tradeoff. Makes the game feel more alive in both cities and in the wilderness.

 

[Roufianos]

5 games later I'm still wondering what the item persistence adds to the experience.

 

[Loboxxx]

 

[The Cockatrice]

BS

 

[Mister Wolf]

5 games later I'm still wondering what the item persistence adds to the experience.

You can dick and fart around filling a room full of trash. Kind of like the people that drive around running from the cops in GTA and never engage with the actual story campaign. Smooth brain activity.

 

[DarthPutin]

The hell I need some crap I've dropped hours ago for? Instead I have to stare at the loading screens every time I enter and exit freaking inn. Very immersive!
If it was just for leaving cities then fine, understandable, but almost every shack and sometimes rooms or floors requiring waste of couple of minutes of my time is supremely annoying. All while looking like trash and running like trash (though cutting off Lumen trick helped, thanks modders).
I'd much rather have less empty cities and less loading screens.

 

[nemiroff]

But without persistence, their games will be just the 100th other open work rpg on the market. I prefer loading screen for persistance, if thats what to trade for this type of rpg…i can get the open world without persistance from the next UE5 game this year.

The point is that other developers already solved the issue, having both seamless loading and perceived infinite persistence in their games, thus there should be no need to "choose" only one.

 

[Ar¢tos]

The point is that other developers already solved the issue, having both seamless loading and perceived infinite persistence in their games, thus there should be no need to "choose" only one.

I'm sure we already have the RAM, processing speed and transfer speed for this, Bethesda just needs to move on from their prehistoric game engine.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

They should simply reduce loading time to a bare minimum.

Thats all. I would like to have all interactivity they can put in there.

Then add some more and bring the system to there knees.

 

[JohnnyTropics]

Item persistence was something I thought I cared about in these games, but I kinda don't.

Right.
That's the thing.
If I left a block of cheese in the middle of a store parking lot at 9am, and came back 3 days later, it would likely be gone.
Whether animals ate it, a homeless person took it, a kid kicked it down a sewer, or a bunch of cars ran over it and flattened it and then rain washed it away.
In many (most?) ways, item impermanance can be facilitated by the observers imagination.
Playing the Fallout 3 DLC for me on the back in the day became a nearly impossible task because of this feature, and it killed my love for that world.

 

[Roufianos]

You can dick and fart around filling a room full of trash. Kind of like the people that drive around running from the cops in GTA and never engage with the actual story campaign. Smooth brain activity.

I mean, I did enjoy severing Three Dog's head and leaving it in the trash but I just don't think it's worth the trade off. Especially in Starfield.

 

[GymWolf]

Bethesda can't have their head more stuck in their ass if they try.

Any other studio would be laughed out of the industry.

 

[KungFucius]

so how come I can enter every single building in ac shadows and there are people doing stuff inside ?

Do those people interactive objects around and are the positions of all of those objects saved? The design is completely different. AC Shadows resets the whole world every season too. Not remotely similar to what this guy is talking about.

 

[rofif]

Do those people interactive objects around and are the positions of all of those objects saved? The design is completely different. AC Shadows resets the whole world every season too. Not remotely similar to what this guy is talking about.

So save those items. We have gigabytes of memory more than we had in oblivion days. Nobody asks the. To load it all at the same time

 

[Audiophile]

sounds like a skill issue

 

[DanielG165]

Kdc2 is doing a lot of advanced shit with a seamless open world so there's that.

Is it doing the same things as Bethesda games are doing, using the same engine and technologies?

 

[Three]

From the perusing of this thread, most of us don't know how game engines inherently work lol. The lead designer didn't say anything here that was incorrect. Bethesda games have systems in place that other open world games simply… Don't. That doesn't make those other games bad nor inferior whatsoever, it's simply a different in design principles and goals. In a Bethesda game, let's take Starfield, I can go up to a book, pick it up, drop it on the floor or on a table and leave, travel to a myriad of different locales across the "galaxy", come back 20 hours later… And the book will still be right where I left it.

Other games simply don't have that level of persistence, nor do most of them have the level of NPC scheduling and agency that Bethesda games do, outside of stuff that comes from Rockstar. So, for the lead developer to state that their games are graphically intensive… They're correct. Graphics are far more complex than just the pretty moving picture you see onscreen.

This is mainly an excuse though. Object persistence can and should be streamed from a HDD too where you can avoid ingame loading screens. In Minecraft it's a persistent open world. It's just coordinates for objects. It's not graphically intensive, that would be the wrong word to use.