I like your mods; you do really good work. But I have to call a spade a spade. When I agree with you, I agree. When I disagree, I do that too

"the game was stripped of rpg elements". Hardly. It's not the way you fondly remember the previous TES titles. That doesn't mean it's stripped of RPG elements.

"streamlined to please a widier dumbier audience". I'm dumb now because I like Skyrim? This is baloney. Can you please tell me how the "less streamlined" way of doing thigns automatically makes it "smarter"? Complexity does not equal intelligence. In fact, the opposite is true in a lot of other arenas. Micro-managment minutae are DETAILS not a level of "smarts". Take Morrowind for example. Lots of little itty bits. The quests were broken down into little bits so players could follow along without forgetting what they were doing. It's ironic to me that a classic like MW is not called out for having this blatant and dumbed-down hand-holding tecnhique, but it's devotees claim it's not present. Bull, I played it enough to know. The quests take you by the hand and lead you around. That's "smart"? Forgetting all the "go get my shirts, I left them over that hill" quests, the quests in MW are "go and fetch" quests that add up to a larger whole. if MW had a quest system that ws in actuality made for "more intelligent" people, it would have had intricate, complex quest goals. It plainly doesn't. I'm so bored with the "dumbed down" nonsense. In Skytim, the game design is intended to remove things that intrude on gameplay. It's a different system. You may not like it, but you can't claim "dumned down" based on your preferences without me asking you point-blank if your preferences equal "smarts", or do they just equal the way you prefer it. I don't care if ten billion people share your opinion- what makes the other systems so damn "smart"? Explain yourself, and don't hide behind "dumbing down". It's a convenient cop-out. Either explain it, or don't

"I hope they understand the lesson and start fixing it back to what shoudl be like a ES game" Like what? Morrowind? Oblivion? You miss attributes and paper dolls that much? They already made MW and OB. To you, the lesson is "don't change the way you make games". Really? Doing the same thing over and over is cool with you? Then why do you come up with new mods? Why don't you make mods the way you did when you first started? Why don;t you just keep on offering the same mods over and over? people like them, right? I wouldn't download your mods if you were making them that way, and I wouldn't buy the new TES game if it was a copy of the last one, either

"not listening to all those false praises from the blog Reviewers" In other words, they can't have a valid opinion because you disagree with them, and since you "know" they are biased, their opinions aren't really opinions either. And you're not biased either, right?


I do not blame Skyrim for not being any of the other TES titles. It is flawed and has issues; it is part of a genrally flawed and problematic series! I can't really understand how otherwise rational and intelligent people DO blame Skyrim for not being other TES games, though. It's illogical

I seem to recall it involved a lot of burial chambers and vaults with undead, and they weren't too keen on giving you the quest items you needed just because you were a charmy fellow (but it has been 8 years so my memory might be a bit fuzzy).

absolutely. Although skyrim is a great game, it never felt like a masterpiece. I'm currently playing Kingdoms of Amalur, and i think the game is a real breathe of fresh air, especially for console gamers. Well lets hope Fallout 4 is amazing.

You talking about me, or are you talking about you? You're cavalierly declaring that? Really? You're much more articulate than this. What you're saying in other terms is: I don't like it so it svcks for everyone

To use your own terminology: Oh, phooey!

I probably played Morrowind the most, though I'm not finshed with Skyrim yet. But I can say, that I already played Skyrim more than Oblivion (inlcuding KotK+SI). Oblivion simply didn't engage me that much.
I didn't play any Elder Scrolls game before Morrowind.

You should note that you completely misinterpretted the statement.

Dumb people like food too. Doesn't mean only dumb people eat it. Making something more generic makes it easier to have a common denominator that more people can get entertainment from.

No, not hardly. You should note that this was merely the introduction to my reply on the subject. Quote my whole passage or comment so that I am in context next time instead of cutting out the rest, just to suit your purposes. It mis-represents what I posted; I clearly interepreted the idea correctly. But I'm sure you realize that cutting just that part out makes me look as if I misunderstood!

You sure are hostile. Perhaps you could quote a few of these hand-holding examples you were talking about. Because it's hard to refute something when there's nothing to even base a refutation on.

I already did. You read about my coments on the quest sysyem in MW above...unless you declined to read all of my post before commenting on it. And incidentally, you're quite a sorceror if you can determine my level of agression from that reply. if you think I'm a doormat, guess again. telling you to cease the monkey business doesn;t make me "hostile" It means I stick up for myself- I don't expect you to do it for me, now do I

I can claim skyrim has no interaction. But you know if I try to provide proof for it I'll come up empty. You made a general claim without evidence.

Again, hardly. I said that the quest system in MW breaks up the tasks into tiny bits as a hand-holding technique and that if it was a 'smart' system, it would have complex quest goals. In this instance, I mean each quest stage. You disagree. I accept that. Explain to me why the quests were broken up that way then, and also refute my position that this is a hand-holding technique. if you could explain why this is a system for 'smarter' gameplay that would be a bonus

10000h in morrowind
1000h in oblivion
Xh in skyrim---> ooh.. i'm bored.

Have you ever thought that maybe you are tired of the same kind of game?

I coundn't play neither morrowind or oblivion that much.... people say.... 1000h!!!! Maybe this is why is so difficult to please bethesda's hardcoe fans.... They are so... hardcoe...

By the way,
Great post.

135 hours in and getting slightly bored. But don't get me wrong, it's a great game, no doubt about that. It's in many ways a better version of Oblivion; better combat, better graphics, more varied environments and so on. Where it's lacking is depth. Your actions don't really affect the world. Most NPC:s just go about their business, more or less oblivious to the dragon threat. The faction quest lines are too short and uninvolving. For DLC:s I want more story driven content and added depth to the already existing game world. I thought Knights of the Nine for Oblivion was quite fun. Shivering Isles on the other hand was just too outlandish and depressing and your actions there really didn't affect the world of Tamriel.

Yep. I didn't even finish the main quest. Pretty boring game tbh.

These are both sadly true

Sure. Lets examine http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Mysterious_Killings_in_Vivec. An ordinator remarks that several murders have happened in the Foreign, Hlaalu, and Arena Districts. The best lead they have is of a dunmer woman with a netch skirt and a dagger threatening someone, and that lead makes you think that the murderer lives in the Hlaalu district. You are not told where to go after that. You can try to ask around about this dunmer with a dagger to little effect. Seems like the best place to go would be to check the cantons where the murder happens. You can check with people in Hlaalu and Arena, but they don't recall anyone in the area with a description like that. Eventually you'll come across someone in the foreign quarter who recalls a friend of their's seeing someone matching the description head into the sewers. Once I get in the sewers, there's no arrow telling me "She's over here!" There's a couple others down there that will confirm they've seen someone like that. Eventually you'll find someone fitting the description. She's not hostile though. At least not until you talk to her about it.

Cue to Skyrim. I appear to need a dragonstone. Or the golden claw. Good thing the arrow points me straight to the dark elf that stole it. Or straight to the draugr that carries the dragonstone.

Is Farengar drawing a detailed map of the barrow for me before I set out?

That is handholding. It could've been easily mitigated with Clairvoyance, but since the quest marker does its job for it, it's fairly useless.

I seriously want to facepalm at this, but I wont.
Is it so hard to understand that things I print are my opinion?
Must I seriously with every post I print put a disclaimer at the bottom warning you that this is only how I see things and that your mileage may vary?
Im sorry, but I will not do that.
Either accept that I write the way I do, unapologetic and to-the-point or dont, but please, please do not print things that gloss over the fact that by definition and unless specifically sourced things people write are there opinion.

Skyrim is awesome. I'm slowing down now, but I've finished the main quest, civil war, companions, a ton of side quests, and I've explored most of the map. I've got about 112 hours in right now.

It took me a year and a half to put 200 hours into Oblivion and finish just about everything. I'll most likely do all that in Skyrim in a quarter of the time. Not because Oblivion was longer but because the level scaling turned me off and I kept switching to other games and coming back.

No, I think you're articulate enough to stay away from the way you said it the first time and post it the way you did the second though. From your posts, the common thread I get is that you take issues like gameplay in Skyrim, or argument and reply on a message board, and transfer that from a gameplay problem or a debate problem, and turn it into a personal problem

In this, we are in 100% agreement

Yeah, unsuprising really. I only care about Fallout now anyway.

Umm... It does last for ever... Theres infinite quests.

Oh I know I am articulate enough to write any which way the billpayer wants, but since this is my time I shall write how I want, and I have my very own style.
There is no such thing as a personal problem for me in this but if you want to relegate it to that so that you at least have some sort of leg to stand on when trying to refute my posts, go right ahead.

You're a nut today

So you get to make a single decision in Skyrim that changes the world? I haven't found it. Every quest has the same boring single path. The only thing you can do is ignore the quests you don't like. If you do the civil war quests, the civil war doesn't end, you still get the same dialog as if the civil war is still going on. At least in Oblivion if I did something major, the townsfolk might realize it. I close the Kvatch gate in Oblivion, and people notice, I kill major players in politics in Skyrim and it's like nothing happened I got a bit of that from Morrowind even. Convince a guy that he's doing bad, he gives you his stuff and says he's joining the temple, and you can talk to him IN THE TEMPLE, not only that, he'll thank you for showing him the error of his ways. In skyrim, nothing you do matters.


Yeah following the quest arrow makes it so much more difficult. Every quest in Skyrim, even the ones where you are supposed to find something, literally points you directly to the answer. And even if it's too hard to follow the quest arrows, you can cast clairvoyance which points you directly to the correct path. In oblivion, you had to play the character -- if he was a theif you weren't going to be able to hit baddies over the head with a giant warhammer and live very long, at least not at normal difficulty. If you were a crappy fighter, you had to try to sneak or magic your way, instead of pulling a Leroy Jenkins. Now, I agree that micromanaging isn't fun, but neither is being a sort of jack of all trades who doesn't have to worry about getting killed by enemies that outclass him.


You're right, why give consumers what they want? people started playing rpgs becuase they like to role play. If I wanted an action game, there are hunreds that do it better. What we have here is an action game with a few poorly implemented rpg elements. If people read the box and assumed that the RPG label on the box was serious, they were fooled for the most part. I don't mind new content, but when you change a game from an RPG game to an action game, yeah, that's not just new content, it's a different game with only the title and lore remaining the same.


Well, I don't think any game company should spend a lot of time on blog reviewers. Most reviewers don't play for more than 10 hours or so. If it holds their attention for 10 hours, it's a five-star game. And those are the ones that aren't directly or indirectly paid off by the developers themselves.