Looks at Daggerfall's 37 skills, eight attributes, advantage/disadvantage system, background questions that modify things from skills to starting equipment to reputation, and the precision with which you can set each of these stats...

I still don't know why I can't defend myself when dual wielding. I can't block or parry. Until I can, I must consider it broken, sadly.

The perk system is a welcome addition to TES. And it does allow character specialization. But that is the only way to "build" a character in Skyrim. We can no longer customize the type of character we want to play from the beginning and only make them stronger during the game. Starting out, EVERY character is equal parts warrior/mage/thief. It's the same as Fable.

As for the quality of combat, that is a personal opinion. I do prefer the "action" combat of Skyrim and Oblivion over the "dice" combat of Morrowind and Daggerfall. That's not to say it's better, but only different. I also fear that the combat in Skyrim, whether or not it's the best in TES, has a LONG way to go before it is anywhere near complete. Again, why does dual wielding feel like a kamikaze attack? Either hit hard enough and fast enough to kill your opponent or die by getting hit. No defense WHATSOEVER.

The way Oblivion forced perks is actually more realistic. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but is more realistic. The better you got at something, you got perks for doing so. I would actually prefer Oblivion's perk system over Skyrim's. Of course, I would rather have numerous skills and sub-skills that acted as perks. The more you do a spin attack, the better you get at a spin attack, for example. The stronger you hit, the faster you spin, the less dizzy, etc. The "perk sub-skill" would be completely optional, of course, and it would be related to your particular weapon skill such as long blade.




Indeed, Daggerfall had the right idea. No other TES can touch it as far as character customization goes. Nothing even comes close... unless you count the endless appearance sliders

No, it's not.

You can do more with the skills in Skyrim than you can with the skills in Morrowind. Perks provide more character building opportunities than Attributes. Skyrim actually forces you to specialize. Morrowind allows you to become a jack of all trades, master of all.

Morrowind may have more spell effects, but Skyrim has a better spell casting system with more types of casting that you can do. A few extra spell effects don't make a game better. FACT.

Skyrim has more complex dungeons. It has more complex quests. It has a much more detailed world, that gives you much greater exploration experiences.

maybe it is because this is how the world looks today,A lot of people are not satisfied with how life comes..They don't take it as it is and be thankfull for what they get.
You know what i mean.If the sun shines all day and there is rain for ten minutes they will say : today was bad , it was raining soooo hard.
The game is just the game what you make of it.For me im very happy.Have they learned nothing ? dont think so.

I don't necessarily agree with your first sentence, but I agree with the rest of this post x1000.

This sentence is so wrong on so many levels I don't even. Maybe someone else will bother, but I'm getting out of here.

This is actually what I'd like to see as well. Perks don't work for me. TES has always been about improve-through-use and perks act far more like that of an XP based RPG. The effects of perks can just as easily be handled through the improve-through-use system simply by adding additional variables. As you described, skills and sub-skills. Attack normally, and the speed of your attacks increase. Use power attacks and damage-per-strike increases. Implement a system of locational damage and you can even tie decapitation potential into the system.

It's a far more elegant and cohesive system than the stilted perk system Beth has implemented in Skyrim.

It hits a lot notes that have the potential to divide people.

It is the latest game in a rather long running series, so you will have old fans, new fans and in between fans all seeking ownership of what they like. Woe to anyone or anything that interferes with what they love (or their own personal concept of what they love).

It has changed certain mechanical formulas from the older games so instantly you' have the potential for traditionalist and staunch fans of the older games to become angry, whether or not the changes work. Of course even people who have never played a TES game might not like the new system, or they might not have liked the old system

It crosses platforms, again people will go on about console vs console, console vs PC etc again whether the game is good or bad.

The game does have some problems, but they differ from person to person, those worst affected and with sufficient motivation will take to the forums. Those not and who like the game will either be playing it or defending it if sufficiently motivated.

It is a game. A creation like a movie or song or book. Tastes, preference, likes, dislikes etc - they vary hugely amongst people.

If you don't like Skyrim get off the SKYRIM forums its annoying.

One of the game series greatest flaws is the lack of specialization.

...

Imagine yourself coming from D&D.

You played a pure warrior (soldier type; non-diplomat non-thief), focusing on dual-wielding axes through weapon-master prestige, with focuses on combat with axes.

Implement him into Skyrim.

Main skills:

One-handed
Heavy Armor

... and that is it.

In D&D, that would have been a full-fledged class, with lots and lots of different leveling options -- as many as an archer-thief who sneaks a lot and uses alchemy.

Now.
How do you improve this character?

Really, you cannot.
Once one-handed and heavy armor reaches 100, he will only become weaker and weaker if you level up other skills.
And what other skills?

Smithing comes naturally. Your character grows weaker compared to enemies, but at least your weapons and armor become stronger.

Then you've got enchanting to make your smithed weapons and armor become more viable. Gotta love them resistances!

Suddenly you're wearing +120% one-handed damage full daedric plate armor and wonder what the heck happened.

I would hate to be a jerk but this is quite the [censored] statement.

Mass effect 2 allows you to pick multiple story threads yet you are upset that they are telling you the story instead of you telling the story?

role playing game................ ROLE PLAYING............... What is your role? whatever the damn stories character's role is.

If you want to make the whole story there is a genre for that. It is called sims.

For instance, skyrim is a mix between a sim and an rpg.

The reason is because rpgs have structure so that regardless of what you do, you will have experienced the full story of the game as it was intended to be told.

Sims however do not restrict you to the story and if you completely miss the story all together, that is just fine. So long as you are doing your own thing.


So rpgs are more restrictive and have an emphasism on dynamic story telling while sims have less story and more content.

Pick your poison. I feel skyrim is a decent mix of both but there are way too many blatantly broken things that can not be overlooked in beta testing.

I'm flat out pissed at this piece of junk game. I stop playing since the new patch came out. I can't fight any dragons, they all fly backwards. I'm so outraged that they didn't test out their Patch. That's right, they DIDN'T test it, otherwise I'd be able to kill a dragon, something I did 5 times pre patch.

I feel ripped off that I paid $66 for an incomplete game on launch day. I feel that this company wanted to release this game on a catchy deadline (11-11-11) more than anything else.

Bugs aside -

The combat is such a piece of boring garbage. They have yet to evolve the combat in this game. It was great in MW and Oblivion, but it is now dated. Some say that combat isn't a major part of this game. Combat is a HUGE part of this game.

The game is so pretty that I often find myself just riding around my horse and decorating my house. That's what this game has going for itself, amazing immersion. But I can't fathom how people are crowning this GOTY. It is a FAR CRY from GOTY.

Play Batman, that is a polished and complete game. Play Dark Souls, that is a fresh game that isn't made for casual gamers.

I honestly used to love Betheseda. Now, however, I wouldn't trust them with any future games. This game is broken. Period. Fix the damn game, and have some sort of quality control.

Its a strange thing.

Ive heard the band anology before where artists make the next album different for the sake of being different.

After all, there have been some yawns over Forza Motorsport 4 due to it being Forza 3 with all the DLC now standard out of the box...not so good if youve already played out 3 and bought all the DLC.

While I understand the need to make "The Next" different enough from "The Last" to warrant buying/upgrading...by the same token you dont take out everything that people liked about the last one.

Thats where its coming from!

People liked Daggerfall and Morrowind lost some of the stuff people grew to love, and so too with Oblivion...and now Skyrim.

The precedent it sets is dont get too attached to any of the gameplay phenomenon you like in Skyrim cause it will just get turned around bass ackwards or axed alltogether by TES6!

You can't be serious. Dual Wielding in Skyrim amounts to "Bored of swinging one sword? Swing two!" and nothing more. You can't block or parry, the fluidity of dual wielding is completely MIA, and what is left is swinging 2 weapons around like an idiot that has no idea what they are doing and is more likely to kill themselves than others.

If you honestly think Dual Wielding in Skyrim is implemented brilliantly, you've never seen the beauty, fluidity, and lethality of it. Not to mention it can be far more effective defensively in melee situations than sword & shield.

Indeed, Tolkien was mentioned before, so let me use another book anology.

You have Lord of the Rings. Middle Earth was very deep and detailed. It was a very mature setting.

Then you have The Chronicles of Narnia. It was written as a children's story book. Things are much simpler and light-hearted.

Both series are wonderful! But that is because they each stayed true to themselves.

The reason people aren't satisfied with Skyrim is because it is like going from Middle Earth to Narnia. People bought Return of the King expecting it to resemble Fellowship of the Ring. If it read like Prince Caspian, they would have been utterly irate!

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE both book series. But they both have their own style. They should stay that way. The future Elder Scrolls games should honor their past games... and the fans of those past games. By changing the core, it loses its own essence.

Why? To the OP...

Because a game like this, (not an RPG), which offers exploration, action, adventure, drama, entertainment, fantasy, requires little thinking to play but gives the ability for deep thinkers to dig in, and offers hours and hours of game-time... are pulling in a wide variety of people.

If this was just a shooter. It would pull in only shooter fans. Fans with heavy opinions and expectations about ONLY SHOOTERS.
If this was an RPG. It would pull in only RPG fans. Fans with heavy opinions and expectations about ONLY RPG.

Etc... Repeat for each type of person the game is designed to include...

In the end... The game is neither a shooter, or an RPG, or an action, or an adventure, or a sport, or a one-way entertainment medium... It can not be the best at everything, so it can only be OK at everything. The more the game grows, the more non RPG followers it picks-up, which is what the game started as. (The "fan-boys", of the good-old-days, not the "fan-boys", of the last game, or the one before that... Each is a new breed of fan...)

The game seems to have reached an apex. It can no longer please everyone it was designed for... because now it is actually designed for everyone, not just specific few groups of people.

Like "Windows", the "Do it all PC OS computer {no master, jack of all trades}"... Fan-boys of the original "Amiga 1000 {sound/video-master}", "Commodore 64 {game-master}", "Apple-Mac {typecast-master}", and "IBM's 386 {DB/word-processing}"... this game will end-up being one of the new standards, as they pass on the tools to the public, for the next gen games. (As long as those tools are not difficult to use, for the majority they cater to.)

You have to love it, to hate it... and there is something here for everyone to hate... Oh, and love...

I've completed almost every single quest in the game... i must say the lack of choices/outcomes of the quests is quite painful

Morrowind didn't have any more choice.

Who cares? You can't justify every shortcoming by saying, "Yeah, well this ten year old game didn't do that either."

Progression. That's what a series ought to do.

fortunately opinions are diverse : it is the warp and weft of life, and it would be boring otherwise

What differing views. A majority of the people who bought it LOVE it. Some dislike it. that's an opinion.

Really? Let's see, first quest for the Imperial Legion, you could either kill the widow, steal the deed, or find out that her husband was murdered and bring the culprit to justice, leading her to keep the land and the Legion donating to her for her loss. That's 3 ways to solve one quest (not to mention, your choices carry weight, guilt, accomplishment and effect the world), which is more choice than Skyrim has in it's entirety, quest wise. There are also many other quests with multiple ways both good and evil to complete them. So please, drop the "Morrowind didn't have any more choice" mentality, when you don't know what you're talking about.

Sure, Morrowind had it's fair share of generic and boring quests, just like Skyrim, but it had it's fair share of excellent multi-solution quests, which Skyrim does not (outside of optional objectives that don't effect the quests outside of better rewards sometimes).

Here, let me get the definition of a word for you:

o·pin·ion (-pnyn)
1. A belief or conclusion held with confidence but not substantiated by positive knowledge or proof.


And just to give you an example of negative criticism of Skyrim:

1. It's map is too blurry and filled with clouds, I can't see [censored] on it, if it weren't for the actual markers I wouldn't be able to navigate at all.
2. The inventory system on the PC is horrible, one misclick and it shuts down, it gets so frustratinhly annoying that I stopped using the mouse at all in dialogue or in menu's.
3. This is a minor thing but, if I sneak into water then my character keeps bopping up and down once I submerge.
4. Dragons are too easy, they need to fly around less and attack more.
5. The combat becomes repetitive, cause gee I wonder what I'll face today, bandits, forsworn or necromancers, gee I wonder.
6. Combat types have not been properly tested and balanced with the scaling system. (I was forced to go Smithing and Enchanting on my archer at lvl 49 because enemies simply took too many [censored] arrows to die.

You think these things are fine?

Some people think that too much is shrinking - the Guild questlines have gotten smaller, the cities have gotten smaller, amount of skills have gotten smaller, many spells removed, spellmaking removed, attributes/birthsigns removed etc.