I love Elder Scrolls to death. I've been playing since Daggerfall. Recently one of my favorite LPers has just announced he was boycotting Elder Scrolls games because of how "disgusted" he was with the "dumbing down of the series." Its not just him. All across the interwebs I've seen comments and videos and posts of people fed up with Bethesda for one reason or another. Some due to the Dawnguard PS3 fiasco, some due to the 'dumbing down' of the series and some due to the glitches. I never like hearing stuff like that; especially about my favorite franchise. First of all if one buys a Bethesda game they can't complain about glitches. It's like not liking tomatos and then complaining about the quality of the tomato soup at a restaurant. Yes, I would agree the dialogue has since been limited or that the quest arrow can make things a bit too easy or that factions are not as special as they previously were. Skyrim isn't the most complex RPG around but it still has so many redeeming qualities. Developers who are not money grubbers, huge expansive open world environments, and the combat is at its best its ever been. I hate seeing people leave the fan base. I know Elder Scrolls Six will happen but I'm worried about how well it might do. Am I too worried? I just hate the thought of losing my favorite game series while games like Call of Duty keep on going strong.

I'm sure the series will survive. A handful of disgruntled 'hardcoe' players (the idea of which I find laughable) boycotting the series won't even make Bethesda flinch. I'd wager those boycotting the series will be back as soon as the next title is released.

I honestly don't see a point in being like those milk drinkers, whining and crying over something they know nothing about. We don't know anything of the future TES yet.

While some are giving up, that many more are joining. Gaming is only going to to get bigger in my eyes. I think we are safe, plus you will find a better LP video on Youtube. There are tons.

The people telling us that the PS3 will never get DLC are proof of that

would preffer if alot of people left and bethesda games studios became a small company and did more TES like Morrowind, Daggerfall, Arena. BTW i do love SKYRIM AND OBLIVION!

Forced WWE smackdown style 3rd person finishers were the death of this series.

Might I ask who the LPer was?

Yes, you are too worried. Sales are merely a reflection of the quantity and quality of the marketting, rather than the merchandise.

The PS3 issue is simply something that comes from cross-porting with platforms, and hopefully will be corrected when console platforms improve, and hopefully the console makers shorten the lifespan of each generation (in development terms, not actual hardware failure time).

Glitches and bugs are avoidable, and I do believe that Beth could do a lot more in this regard, but regardless of how little respect there is for their quality control and glitch support, their games will still sell and we will still sigh and bear it...unless of course, effective progamme content consumer laws come in, in which case they will have to have largely bug free releases, and effective and timely bug fixing.

"Dumbing down"...Well, that's simply a generic catch cry for 'I don't like change'. It seems that a lot of players who didn't see Morrowind or Oblivion simply updated and repeated in Skyrim use this term. It doesn't mean anything because new players, those who keep the series alive and bring in other players (or rather, purchasers) don't know wtf those people are talking about, and perhaps more to the point, don't care.

TES is probably the least suited game imaginable for consoles. Trying to fit so much into a pc game was one thing, but on a console with 1/10th the memory, graphics, cpu etc has led to console players with endless resource related bugs and pc players with a deliberately gimped experience. Net result is far more whining than previous versions had.

I find it amusing that "h4rdc0r3" TES fans that love to point at the influence of CoD when discussing the "dumbing down" of Skyrim, when in reality those two games have almost nothing in common with one another in any aspect whatsoever. They clearly have not played CoD.

However, I suspect that these "fans" like to blame the troubles on CoD because the combat system is (in my opinion of course) without a doubt superior to the those of the previous games and lacks the [solid waste excretions of male cattle] that plagued the previous games.

Now, before I get flamed, I am not writing that Skyrim is the pinnacle of the TES series. TESV excels above the others in certain areas, whereas other games (ie. Morrowind) excels in many other aspects.

And lastly, CoD has no future. The franchise is beginning to die because of Activision's treatment of IW and 3arc, not to mention that the success of other games in recent years has shifted the preferences of the gaming community.


^Oh, and this.

I am giving Bethesda a last chance.. Conveniently it will fall with Fallout, I always liked Fallout more than Elder scrolls since fallout 3..

for what i realize this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JweTAhyR4o0 or see my thread i did today about it http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1444154-the-elder-scrolls-the-dumbing-down/

Another one of these?....

Every game that releases in every franchise is considered to have been "dumbed down" in order to attract more casual gamers. I think that's nonsense. Change comes with every game and Bethesda is one of the few companies to actually make a lot of the changes completely optional.

It's funny because most of the things that are complained about are all options that a player can choose to not use. Fast travel is a big complaint for people. It's in the game solely as an option and someone can spend over 300+ hours into the game and never even used fast travel once. Another big complaint being the compass and directional arrows pointing you towards the next objective. Once again, nothing but an option. The compass can be entirely diabled in the menu, and if you don't want to be pointed in the correct direction, don't select the quest from your in-game journal. Real simple stuff to work around.

As for bugs and glitches, there's not one game that never had glitches. It's a common side effect of gaming and one that'll probably be around forever. Skyrim's bugs and glitches are more frequent because of the sheer size and mangnitude of the game itself. The larger and more vast the game, the more bugs you're going to have. The Grand Theft Auto games are another good example of this. I agree that they certainly do svck and are quite annoying. But using the save feature is a great way to prevent and avoid the big game-breaking bugs as well as a solid majority of the smallr ones. That's why we always do our best to tell people here on the forums to save early and save often. It's a small nuissance and minor inconvenience but it only takes 10-15 seconds overall.

Oh, it's just him? I don't remember him saying he was boycotting the entire series, but it has been a while since I last saw that video.
Thanks!

Skyrim was issued over a year ago and currently has the fourth highest player count on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/stats/

I don't think we have cause to worry about losing the franchise any time soon.

I don't get it. Why is everyone complaining about the series being "dumbed down" now? I mean the game has been out for a year and a quarter...

I honestly don't think Bethesda could win either way in this regard. When ever a new game releases, you have loads of people who are immediately complaining because of how "dumbed-down" the game is.

Yet if Bethesda didn't make any real changes, or change anything worth noting, those people will complain that the game is exactly the same and Bethesda didn't change a damn thing. They'd go on about how the series has become repetitive and they're just banking on all their old successes with the previous installments.

Either way it's a lose-lose situation.