i don't know why.. but bethesda always does something WORSE in a new game than in a predecessor. I mean... oblivion should have been better in every way compared to morrowind. Skyrim should have been better in every possible way in comparison to oblivion. But yet people still complain. Not everything can be done without comprimise and i am sure we all know that- (like making Morrowind daggerfall sized) but it's still "two steps forward, two steps back"


For instance...


morrowind had a better story than it's successors
Morrowind had proper dumner voices whilst oblivion and skyrim deal harsh injustice to it
Skyrim's quests weren't half as good as some of the oblivion ones.
Oblivion did not have as good an art direction as morrowind had. Some (the Ones who are smart) would also argue that morrowind often did better in art direction than skyrim.
Skyrim has broken the armourer skill.
Skyrim has a crippled skill system and the perk trees are broken. (perks are ment to add a small twist to gameplay- Not control the whole thing.. *glares angrily at the 0/5 perks* )
Skyrim had the weakest array of spells and weapons for the player out of ANY elder scrolls game.
Skyrim had the worst Ui. horrid on all playforms.
Least imaginative dwemer award goes to skyrim. The orcs are less interesting. The nords and imperials are less unique.
Skyrim had the worst enemy variety of any tes game. the player adopts two or three strategies for everyone (depending on their build and how powerful an attacker is)
Skyrim had the worst social interaction.

Skills were not Completely better. for instance I could never get into enchanting in morrowind, however skyrim solved this problem by making enchanting boring and limited.


skyrim also added the weakest selection of books. i quite enjoyed "a tragedy in black" However.. I also considered the laziness of "advances in lockpicking" as that would suggest that some lunatic went into every burrow and dwarven ruin to change the locks!!



Clearly- Skyrim DOES do things better than the other games: it's combat is almost not terrible. Skyrim's races look more unique (although the bretons did loose their elven features that they were supposed to have. I do not know why although lazyness comes to mind) skyrim also has better graphics and a weight slider.

Financialy- Skyrim did better than the last two games because of the increased market size and company power. Plus the name. I don't think bethesda are benefiting from stupidity. There are ways to make the game accessible and complex- Why havent bethesda done them?

Shouldn't each Tes game build upon What could be better and strive to keep all forms of quality?

Oh gods, please, no. Not another "Bethesda did everything better in the old days" thread.

I tell you what. Bethesda needs to open a special forum just for curmudgeons, a virtual old folks home where veteran players can sit in their rocking chairs and talk about how perfect Morrowind and Daggerfall were as they spit into a spittoon at their feet and shake their canes as the console players and yell at them to get off their lawns.

Heres an interesting view from the 'Ruined Forever' Page from TV Tropes.


I don't agree with all of it, but it does raise some fair points.

Yep. All we need is optimism and certainly no criticism.

If the op is criticism, it certainly isn't the constructive sort. "The orcs are less interesting"?

Ok. Scratch that one. The rest does not need much explanation I think, they kind of speak for themselves.

The OP has brought up many of the right issues(kind of) but failed to back any of them up. Some are off though. An example of one of his good ones that I will elaborate in is below.

There are fewer vanilla creatures and less variety as well in the games. Even the spawn rates make it feel like all you fight are Dwemer constructs, Falmer, bandits, draugr, dragons and disparate wildlife like wolves and bears. Trolls and wisp mothers and real monsters feel like they are nowhere to be seen in Skyrim. In oblivion and Morrowind the monsters were fairly diverse and it never really felt, for me anyways, that I was fighting the same monsters again and again. Even Ayleid ruins had variety with undead, ogres, animals, Daedra or bandits being present in various ruins. The ruins in Skyrim have Falmer, Dwemer constructs, Draugr or bandits. Nothing else for the most part unless you count retextured people with a ghostly look to be variety. Simple reskins are what make up most of the variety in Skyrim. Most of the Daedra are missing and that really shows IMO.

Morrowind also did politics AND choices and consequences much better than Skyrim did. That was without a civil war going on. Quest lines could conflict like the thieves and fighters guild. You could complete either one great house or another great houses questlines but not the other two. The way the politics of the game worked out made sense and felt real as well as having a good pace for the way events unfolded. You also did not know what the point of the main quest would be until much later in the main quest. Not like the opening scene where enemy número uno is revealed right off the back and you knew the basic plot before even starting the game.

Skyrim does worse in many areas that I won't elaborate further on ATM. It does do many things better than Morrowind, Arena, Oblivion and

World building. The world is much more in depth than previous games. There are harvestable insects, little creatures like rabbits and fish as well as birds. The rivers and water in the game are much better than in previous titles. Snowfall can change how certain terrains look to a small extent. Dungeons, in appearance at least, have greater variety and art direction IMO. The only downside is the stupid and convenient quick exit at the back of every single one and the lack of monster variety. Weather is done much better than previous games as well. I could go on for awhile here.

To me the worst feature of Skyrim was its quests. The quest arrows and quest journal are a piece of [censored] and there is no way around that. Quest arrows are a lazy and boring design decision IMO. They make the quests into something with no mystery or very little mystery. I hate this feature. I want to play with the markers off but there is no alternative to doing so because the quest journal has very little if any useful information in it.

^Agreed. Morrowind's journal, as cumbersome as it was, is better than Skyrim's because it's actually, y'know, a real journal. I have trouble immersing myself in a world where every NPC has a fetch quest for me, complete with accurate GPS directions. Seriously, give me real directions to locations, don't throw a quest marker at me and send me on my way.

As I've said before, quest markers are helpful to me as a player because I only get about 2-3 hours of downtime a day and I would rather get something accomplished in that time (do a few quests, raid a dungeon, learn a new shout, whatever) than spend that time wandering lost in the wilderness because an npc told me to turn right at the fallen tree instead of left.

That's why both systems should be in place. Not like quest markers are hard to implement.

That's all well and good, I'm just saying that they exist for a completely valid reason. It isn't just laziness on the part of Bethesda or even the player, and I'd be furious if the next game took them out. Ditto for fast travelling, another supposedly "casual gamer" feature.

Their purpose for existence is not the problem. I want them in as a fail safe. Just don't want the fail safe to be the front line of defense against failing the quest. Gives you a chance to solve it by thinking first then falling back on the quest markers so can try to solve the quest yourself before needing them. Like collecting clues first before automatically getting the final clue right away and cutting it short. I get that you are strapped for time and just want to complete it. That's what I do too sometimes. However sometimes I do have the time, and that's when I really want to just collect some clues before having the quest end and begin with the final clue right there..

Re: quest compass vs. directions

There is a very obvious NEED for both, with in-between stages as well.

with quest markers alone, I just follow the arrow, and never really need to care what I'm doing or why. This is a real problem for me, in that when I have a few days I don't play a game, reading my quest diary is the only way I "get back into it". Needless to say, Skyrim gives me OBJECTIVES. Once I forget what a quest is about, I never really "get back into it", even to complete it.

That's not a problem with quest markers per se. It's a second-order effect of it: you no longer need the history of the quest, so why spend development resources on it?

With just the quest history, you get the Dwemer Puzzle Box, and the numerous times in Morrowind where, when confronted by a fork in the road, my quest history says to follow the road north, and I have a north fork and an east fork... and you have to take the EAST fork, because the north one turns west (out of sight). If a developer uses crow-fly directions where it requires a substantially unintuitive choice on the road, that's really hard to fix in a modern AAA title. A Quest marker gives players an easy means to see that they're on the wrong road.

Now, ideally, "fixing" the problems Morrowind and Skyrim each had is simple:

1. quest markers need multiple states: off, map only, and always on.
2. NPCs you are escorting need to both keep pace, and have lines that tell you to slow down, or that you took a wrong turn, etc.
3. The game needs to be designed in such a way that all quests are easily completed based solely on a lack of quest markers.
4. Every NPC needs a dialogue option for "where is this place?", and they should be able to give you some sort of answer. (even if it's intentionally wrong).

It'd take a lot of extra effort to accomplish these tasks, but it would make the game a better package (because players could find themselves migrating towards using markers less and less... or more and more). And that's what we all want, right?

That's not the best excuse really. I generally only play TES games for a few hours at most per day, and do just fine without markers (or fast-travel). The way I see it, markers and fast-travel are more there as a convenience for players who insist on getting straight to the action and completing every major questline in under 100 hours, rather than a convenience for players who can only play for an hour or so a day (unless you rented it, the game isn't going anywhere). And I would argue that the kind of players who insist on rushing have bought the wrong game and should probably stick to more linear, 30 hour story-driven action-RPGs.

But anyway, the problem I have with markers isn't so much that they're in the game as an option for players... it's that they're built into the game by default. What I mean by that is, not only are they on by default - it also becomes fairly apparent that a lot of quests are designed with the specific assumption that every player will be using them.

It's been said many times... but the simple solution is for Bethesda to design TES games under the assumption that noone will be using markers or fast-travel, then have both features included as an option in the game settings that can be switched on if the player so desires.

In short, if there's no other viable choice, it's NOT "optional".

Quest markers are a necessary evil. Some players forget that, to other players, they ARE necessary. Other players forget that, to other players, they are EVIL. If you have a functional set of directions, the players who find "quest markers" evil will enjoy their search, and the players who don't want to (or can't) spend the time searching will turn on the big arrow or marker. When your "functional set of directions" is "Follow the Big anti-immersive Arrow", the players who WANT to actually do a "quest" instead of take the easy shortcut to the next fight, have no option but to activate the marker and simplistically and mind-numbingly follow the "dummy arrow"; at that point, there's precious little "game" left in the game. Too many of the quests in the later games were written using that latter approach, with NO other alternative. THAT's simply bad, and lazy, quest writing.

HavyMetalArchmage and a host of other posters in topic after topic have tried to hammer home this point, that some combination or option is needed, since one or the other will not satisfy half of the market. Despite that, we STILL have short-sighted posts saying "It's OPTIONAL", and others equally mindless that say "Remove ALL the markers".

Sheogorath-No, you misunderstand. Not 2-3 hours for Skyrim a day, 2-3 total hours of break time in my day. I love TES, but I'm not gonna spend that entire time period playing skyrim.

So, to make the game more playable for you, you're asking them to ruin it for me? Gee, thanks.

If you're committed to this notion that quest markers ruin the game, then yeah, I guess I am. If only one of us can enjoy the game, I'd rather it be me. No offense.