Each weapon has changed. Morrowind had no bleeding damage, or bludgeon damage, or sword damage. You get very real options with Skyrim combat. And again, they wanted to make each weapon different and unique, and have less of them, rather than having more weapons just to have them, without them being different. Wakizashis fall into this category.

I don't listen to any threads made about perk trees being uselses. Frankly, I highly disagree with that. None of them are useless. Even lockpicking is useful if you want to easily pick Master locks. I see viable options with each tree and consider them superbly balanced, and good.

And I prefer the combat. :shrug: ~specifically... I prefer RPGs where the combat is totally (or near totally) PC dependent ; and the skills too. Naturally this influences my attitude and opinion toward RPGs like TES.

* I would honestly rather be able to select a target and have them attack to the best of their ability; or cast spells as best they can (and with the risk of failing to cast them if they are not that proficient). :shrug:

Eh... I feel that its most likely the way it is with Fallout. Anyone who professes liking the older games of the series (over the new ones), likely has them still installed and has likely played them in the last few months.

By the way, why do I sound angry? Because the devs know what I know. They don't limit the game because they had to, they limit it because of choice. Or rather I should say that the gamesas executive management does. Most of the employees would probably love more freedom, but unless it's related to selling more copies, it's presumably an expense that isn't needed. Makes sense from a cold business perspective, but it is somewhat infuriating from a gamer-perspective to see them piss all over your segment because the casuals are so much more profitable and predictable.

Even so, I would love for anyone to mention a game for casual gamers that has survived for nine and a half years? Morrowind was released May 1, 2002. Almost a decade AND PEOPLE STILL PLAY THAT GAME! That's amazing customer loyalty, amazing love for a game, and some stupidly strong emotions that gamesas are taking serious care not to repay or cater to in any way. Does anyone here really believe they'll be playing Skyrim ten years from now? If I thought any gamesas employee ever bothered to read these forums, I'd ask them to tell the world how they feel about Skyrim and whether they think it's going to last ten years. Of course, I'm guessing that even if some gamesas employee wanted to respond, he'd be tied by contract clauses and company policies and being the least bit critical about the current direction might well get him sacked. Can't have "lowly grunts" talking strategy with the great unwashed, can we?

So even if it did happen, and of course it won't, it would presumably just be the usual marketing spiel about how we're getting more features (by hollowing out existing features and sacrificing any kind of depth), how the world is getting bigger (and massively emptier), and how the graphics pwn that in the previous games. Oh, and how we have fully voiced over NPCs, which makes it next to impossible for modders to add any non-generic NPCs to the game that won't stand out like a pink Trabant at a Ferrari convention. It's silly but it's the way of the world, the way of the market, and the way of business.

Now, some quotes, since it's late and I'm in the mood for it.

@ Fluent

Say what? You think, just because some people (myself included) think gamesas sold out, that we want them to fail? Nothing is further from the truth. We don't want them to fail, we want them to use their massive resources to make a game that actually has the depth and quality we know they can put into a game. Why the heck else would we bother writing essays on this forum? Just to troll the fans? Come on. Just about any of the so-called haters will be more than happy to provide a long and detailed description of the shortcomings they're complaining about. And they (we) do. And every so often, the moderators consider it flame-bait and take it away just to avoid incidents and keep the peace, at which point peopel such as yourself get to pretend there aren't any flaws in the game. That it's "perfect".

Fact is, gamesas did sell out. They had an initial vision for what TES should be, easily depicted in their earlier TES games. Those games didn't sell so much until Morrowind, so gamesas changed the formula to appeal to a different target audience with their existing franchise, and in doing so they upped their profits considerably. From the perspective of the fans of those earlier TES games, that is the textbook definition of "selling out". That you like the new style better than the old is completely irrelevant. They abandoned their TES vision in order to make money. They changed target segment in order to make money.


Personally, I don't care about the company name, I care about the product they release. I bring valid (I think) arguments, valid complaints, and I have *never* seen them actually refuted by you or any other "Bethesda lover". I say depth, you say it's intact, I ask what skill you need with magic to become arch-mage, you say what exactly? You don't need to cast spells to be arch-mage, do you? Surely a mage guild would be happy to let some archer or swordsman lead them, right? Yeah, no, not happening. Just like it's a cold day in Oblivion before warriors will let a mage lead them or thieves will let a paladin lead them, and so on.

By the way, for all the bashing the Morrowind dialogue system took, I could at least ask your average townsman about this or that. I can't in Oblivion or Skyrim. Sure, the Morrowind answers were carbon copies, but at least I could ask people about stuff, and modders eventually took it upon themselves to make NPCs less generic. In Skyrim NPCs are more different, but they can't say more than three different lines ever, and modders can't bloody change it. Doesn't matter if you're only ever going to spend 50-60 hours on the game but it svcks badly if you're the "let's play for 300+ hours" kind of nerd. Guess what, I am. Therefore, I ask where the depth is and you'll never be able to do anything but try and dodge the bullet by calling me an unrealistic hater.



Arrogant assumptions and generalizations are just that, arrogant, don't you think? Most of the people I've seen that aren't head over heels in love with Skyrim are simply suggesting that console gamers and action gamers generally aren't hardcoe RPG fans. That doesn't imply any negative qualities, any more than suggesting that fans of red nuances aren't generally fans of blue. It would be really nice if you'd be kind enough to not imply, suggest, or promote any negative generalizations based simply on the fact that one doesn't think Skyrim is perfect. Believe it or not, I'm literate in two languages, I'm academically well educated by almost any standard, and my IQ is not below 90. I'm much too anolytical to sustain a purely emotional belief, and yet I don't love Skyrim.

And yes, there are plenty of logical reasons to not like the change involved with Skyrim, though i suppose it requries certain premises which you don't meet. If you don't have a thing for meta-gaming then of course you're going to fancy simpler games and like a move away from having to plan anything in advance. If meta-gaming is part of what you love about games, you're of course not going to be thrilled when one of your favorite franchises is simplified to the point of ridiculousness. It really is that simple. You and I don't want the same. That doesn't make either of us stupid. You alleging that I'm dumb or a hater or irrational for not wanting what you want, well... Quite a different story, I would think.

Even so, I would love for anyone to mention a game for casual gamers that has survived for nine and a half years?

You people with your Morrowind love amuse me.

You have NO IDEA what Bethesda stripped away from Fallout when they made Fallout 3.

Does Counter Strike count for you?

Haha, I was thinking about Counter-Strike. Of course, we must remember that Counster-Strike itself was a player-made mod for Half-Life.

You people with your Morrowind love amuse me.

You have NO IDEA what Bethesda stripped away from Fallout when they made Fallout 3.

I honestly don't know why people who enjoyed morrowind, thought oblivion was okay, but then they don't like this game feel that way. have they played other rpgs? example: risen, it was nice, not as good at TES game. example: the witcher 2, it was fun. not half as fun as a TES game.

Tom Clancy or Tolkien?

It's not that members of the same segment are playing two different games, it's that two different segments are evaluating the same game. One segment wants flashy action and a world that is speedy, somewhat easy to navigate, and which looks awesome. The other segment wants to sit on their asses and ponder about how they might use their pyromantic abilities to simply melt the lever in a lock or how one could perhaps do a Bruce Lee-style kick in the throat on an enemy mage through telekinesis, while they're being very careful to apply the right spells to the right enemy, knowing that failure todo so could mean death. That segment is incidentally also filled with warriors who can't help wondering why their mace-master who has sworn to never use bladed weapons is in fact just as lethal with axes as he is with maces, or how you can learn to make a 60 lb suit of armor feel lighter than a 6 lb suit of leather?

Those two segments don't match well. The former segment are considered intellectually lightweight, console kiddies, casual clowns, insincere in their gaming, surface scratchers, and so on by the latter. The latter are considered haters, whiners, hysterical nutjobs, nostalgic fools, or simply nay-sayers by the former.

This leads us back to the question I opened up with. Do you prefer Clancy or Tolkien? Clancy tells good enough stories with a lot of fast paced action and then to hell with the tedious details that might ruin his good idea for a story. Tolkien draws his own world maps and designs his own freaking language, just to provide background lore for his fictional universe. As it happens, I like both. I've read all the Ryan / Kelly books I've come across, many of them multiple times, and I've read The Hobbit and LOTR a couple of times too. They're both good authors in the sense that they tell stories that entertain me. They just don't do it the same way.

To bring the anology into perspective, there really are a lot of authors like Tom Clancy. There are many authors who can write good, action-paced stories. There's only ever been one Tolkien, as far as I know. Imagine if Tolkien had decided, after the Fellowship went big, to expand his target segment and had started dumbing down how magic worked and who (or rather what) Sauron is? Imagine if he'd shortened Frodo's trek through Mordor to make it less repetitive and stressful on younger readers? Imagine if Frodo and Bilbo could simply live happily ever after in the Shire to the end of their days? It would ruin LORT and we'd have nothing else in its place.

Similarly, there really are a ton of action games out there. There's no need to ruin one of the last RPG franchises to create yet another action game that the action game segment will have forgotten all about in a year or so. And so I see the half-emtpy glass (all the hollowed out or flat-out missing RPG elements) rather than the half-full glass (how it's actually a great action game), because I'm not looking for what gamesas wants to provide when I play a TES game.

dual weilding system was poorly implemented

perk system is worthless fluff, the only thing new it offers is more restriction(perks were in previous es games)

lolcombat is more like it. combat could have been good if they implemented the stuff they said they were going to, but instead its just oblivion combat

lol you really don't know what your talking about. perks have always been in the elderscrolls games, the current perk system is just fluff and more restrictions. the level up system is horrible. a good level up system doesn't force you to play a certain way to avoid breaking the game. that is sign of failure. meaningful differences between weapons? are you kidding?

I like Skyrim because I feel it has the depth and complexity of Morrowind, and in some ways, more. I don't like it because it's a simple action game. I like it because it's a deep, complex RPG with loads of detail.