Thread:Deathstalker666/@comment-26005008-20160407215658/@comment-3547390-20160819005237

Haha, sweet indeed. I shall of course lure you on the path of temptation with a new Doom video!

Daggerfall certainly is big... but it also is pretty pointless. Everything is randomly generated, so there is no real sense of meaning or purpose to anything, and of course every place looks identical. At least Arena's provinces each had their own identity, Daggerfall just feels like the same thing over and over until you get sick of it. You also didn't pay attention to my Daggerfall video apparently, I actually proved that you cannot walk from town to town. We made it to the same location as another town, but the town did not exist, and we still had to fast travel to get there (though no time would pass if you were right next to it). It is a sense of exploration I guess, but it is still pretty much fast-travel. Combine that with the fact that there is no real reason to walk to place to place, plus the stupidity of trying to do such, and it basically is that you will fast-travel where you need to go (as the game was designed). Unlike Arena, which had a large collection of cities, Daggerfall tries to feature a ridiculous number to the point that the entire map screen is crammed and nothing is actually selectable by hand. Instead, you basically need to remember the name of every place you want to travel to. This is one of the systems that I feel was made worse from Arena. Of course Morrowind trumps both by allowing me to actually walk from place to place, I actually intentionally do such and go off the beaten path constantly in that game.

Daggerfall does have a more complex plot, especially since there are two threads going on at once and a bunch of lore going on in the background. We could talk about Aubuk-i and her "capture" by the city of Daggerfall even though in her heart she is still part of Sentinel. Or how about Morgiah's alliance with the King of Worms? The only problem is that none of it really feels like it has any point, I haven't gained much progress at all in the story since the beginning of the game. That was the same for Arena, but at least I knew what I was doing in Arena. I knew about Jagar Tharn and what I had to do to stop him. Here? Lysandus had a wife. That is really all I have gotten, otherwise it is just messages to return to places I just came from or do this in X number of days.

Simpler GUI is indeed a strength of Arena. The map is horrible in Daggerfall, it is near-unusable, while in Arena I could systematically explore. Main map I have ranted about. The picking up of items now requires you to click remove, which is an annoying extra step. Most things about the GUI is worse, with the only real strength being that I can mouselook, so no more spending five minutes trying to pick up a key on the ground. Still, it is overall a disaster.

Complicated gameplay. Ugh, that is Daggerfall in a nutshell. Want to sell your stuff? Arena; go to the weapons store and sell everything. Daggerfall; go to the pawn store to sell jewelry, go to the general store to sell useless things, go to the weapon store to sell weapons, go to the armor store to sell armor, and the only place that will accept crafting items is the apothecary. Hope you like walking around town to sell everything. This also translates to a complicated asking system for finding stuff. Climbing went from going against a wall to hoping you are exactly 90 degrees and not moving. Swimming went from having endurance to having endurance and the adequate swimming skill. Dungeons have turned into lengthy puzzles with levers. Books are totally broken and unformatted. Stealth exists, but seems totally useless, especially as you avert getting XP.

Combat is one thing I think Daggerfall did better. Arena basically made it so that everything was a game of wack-a-mole with the goal being to hit the enemy before you died. Now you can dodge and weave around melee opponents, while magic casters are even more deadly with explosive charges that can kill anything in the same room as them. Luckily magic users are a lot more rare than in Arena... at least so far. I can't move my sword as fast, no, but more stuff is actually happening.

On the other hand, Daggerfall's terrain is one of the things I really hate about the game in comparison to Arena. There is zero variation in 95% of what you see. Get used to seeing the same exact dungeon textures and even the same geometry, as it is reused over and over (as I have said, it is the Flintstones all over again). I don't know where you are in Arena, but I can say that most of the early dungeons used their own texture sets and felt totally unique. Even near the end game, when we got a bit of monotony, it wasn't too bad and the geometry was always different enough to be unique. This might as well be the same exact dungeon over and over. At least cities have two styles. You have buildings and you have buildings with a wall around it (capital city like Daggerfall). Amazing, right? But at least there are themes in the game, we get normal like Daggerfall but also desert themed like Sentinel. It allows for some variety, but overall I just feel like I am doing the same thing over and over. I miss Arena simply because everything at least had some differences.

Yes you could potentially do this as far as I could see. Arena was also like this, there are side-quests, but they are totally pointless and the main quest is quite visible. Daggerfall throws these side quests more in your face and blends everything together in a confusing way to the point where you could be literally making no progress. My main goal is to finish the game, with the only other focus being to get the weapons needed for it, specifically an Ebony Dai-Katana or better. Now if the RNG would be nice to me...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCFVkqoektU - This video makes me sad. Poachers aren't using giraffes correctly :(