I have said before, and I will say so again because I really mean it:
RPG's are dead.
Proof?
People seriously insist Mass Effect is an RPG.

'Seemless and cohesive perks', are you kidding me?
Most of them are flat-out damage enhancers, very few of them are actually 'perky' and they get in the way of gameplay more than anything else.
So suddenly because I pick some perk my sword causes bleeding damage? Come on.
In my opinion these perks are just about the worst change made to the series. I dont care for them one bit, especially not the ones that just do what skills and attributes are supposed to take care of.

What's the difference between features and gameplay mechanics? Stats aren't neccessarily roleplaying.

Cutting things instead of fixing/changing them is not acceptable.

Just edited that for you, since you miss the part where these games are played in the same way...you know, like I said, run, jump, bump and shoot/slash using your CONTROLS...what's the difference?

That made me laugh irl
Thanks for the humour, its a good idea to keep things light now and then.

Seriously though, a few major differences are: The ability to fail, a realised world with interacting guilds and factions, NPC's with actual disposition that can be influenced a myriad of ways, about 100 times the customisation of Skyrim, about 100 times the possible character builds of Skyrim, about 100 times the lore, an engaging storyline, much better loot due to a: its not all inexplicably leveled to match your level, b: handplaced loot, c: unique loot with enchantments that are better than those you can make. The freedom to utilise the mechanics of the world as I see fit instead of being boxed in by arbitrary hardcaps and restrictions, much more rewarding due to it takes time to figure out how stuff works instead of being hand-held every step of the way, RPG mechanics used in combat, lockpicking, NPC disposition etcetera instead of minigames that have no place in an RPG..

Now these things may or may not make it a better RPG, as weve seen thats debatable.
However they sure make it a lot better game.

In my opinion. Of course.

+1
Great post, I agree.

Well TES has always been more about the skills and pretty much everything else was just to modify or enhance the skills. For the most part all of the different attributes just enhanced the different skills you had. Your character level was because of leveling your skills. You had to use your skills to level up to get point to put into your attributes that enhanced the skills. And in Perks now fill that role in Skyrim. It seems to me that it's more your skills that define who you are in TES than the other stuff, and that the individual skills are pretty much at the very center of everything in the games. Progressing has was always been brought about by the skills.

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They're probably defending "less" because of how blunt, harsh, and antagonistic the opposition is in trying to push that "more is always better in everything" and that "less is always worse". And then of course these people also act like those defending "less game" are somehow not intelligent or something of that nature. So of course there would be lots of defending "less game" if not just to be in opposition, because that's the kind of response that attitude breeds. If people on both sides were more civil there would be more understanding and people would probably find that they actually share a sort of middle ground instead of just subscribing to either extreme.

Many of those aspects (story, interaction, reputation, dialogue) are things that Skyrim could improve upon yes. But when it comes to mechanics, I don't think earlier TES games did them better, all in all I found them worse and to me the clumsy character creation and development mechanics hurt the games so much that I couldn't get past them and experience the good parts (the stories and development within different factions etc. from which all I hear and understand seem to be really well done).

What makes a real rpg? Well that horse has been beaten so much it's hamburger by now...personally if someone said they are developing a true turn-based rpg-strategy game, I would be so excited that I would need new pants...as far as I'm concerned all other forms of rpg belong in the lesser, fun-for-what-it-is category of games.

The modern players don't want dice rolls. They have spoken. Which is so sad for RPG.

You're not alone.

agreed, while some perks are interesting the majority of them should either be standard traits for everyone or a funtion of the skill it self.

For example, why do we need a perk for shields to block arrows? should be standard.

This is true, actually.
Imo, they should release a more linear, but polished Fable-like action-adventure based on TES universe, and a TES MMO.
These two would bring them a lot of money and would keep causals happy, while they can focus on TES game and make a proper RPG out of it.

And that's why they will fail.
It's OK to like money, but money shouldn't be your goal.
People who set money to be their goal are actually people who are hurting the world.

This has to be the only gaming community that equates math and spreadsheets with "immersive role-playing experience".

Imagine a Redguard or Battlespire with todays technology..
It would be awesome.

Well, a few more thoughts about the removals and changes to the system.

The system used in Oblivion was definitely flawed. Attribute gains were based upon how much you raised your skills. As such, it was easy to gimp yourself if you were not careful about how your raised your skills. The system actually rewarded you for picking major skills that did NOT match your play style. Doing so gave you better control over when you leveled and hence your attribute gains. It was also beneficial to pick major skills that didn't match your racial skills, because the lower skills allowed you reach a higher level overall.

Now, back when I played 2nd Edition AD&D, there were distinct differences between the classes. If I chose a fighter, I could not use magic. If I chose a mage, I could use magic, but not armor. Nor could I use clerical spells. A cleric could use clerical spells and wear armor, but couldn't use the heavy weaponry of the fighters. And so on. Classes in TES games didn't have that kind of distinction. Any character could do anything and the only real affect classes had was on when you leveled. In addition, as I stated before, it was often beneficial to choose a class that did not match your play style. So I view their removal as a good change. Now your character is defined by what they do. Your play style affects your character.

Attributes, while flawed, still had a distinct purpose. I would have preferred to see them fixed rather than removed. They were part of a multi-tiered system. Attributes occupied a general level with broad affects across multiple aspects of game play. Skills occupied another level and affected specific tasks. The interplay between these two levels allow for a much more varied and nuanced system. It allows for a greater level of character customization. It certainly is true that their affects are still there, but to say that it's the same thing just seems silly to me. They're not. Now, instead of altering one item and having multiple affects, you're required to manipulate those affects on an individual basis. It takes more to do the same thing.

I do like the the addition of perks, in theory. In practice, I find their implementation to be a bit lackluster and flawed. They could have been an interesting third tier in the system. You could have had attributes affecting things in a broad, general level, skills could have affected more specific tasks, and perks could have affected how you perform those tasks. For example:

I could have a character that focuses on strength. She'd be better at all tasks involving strength, such as one-handed, two-handed, unarmed, etc. From those, I decide to have her focus on two-handed. Then I could use the perks to specialize her in two-handed swords.

Instead we got a system that was simpler and provided less options or variability. Instead, attributes were thrown out the window and skills were stripped of most of their functionality. They retained their influence on overall level, but the rest of their functions were mostly shifted to perks. Many of the perks, as a result, are very lackluster and do little more than what the skills themselves use to do.

With their current trends, it worries me for the next TES game. I'm being perfectly honest when I say this. I would not be surprised if skills themselves were the next casualty. Instead we might get a system more akin to an EXP system that allows us to put perks into any tree at level up, regardless of which ones we actually use. It would make for a simpler, smoother, more streamlined system.

I'm glad you posted that Mitheledh. I share exactly the same opinions on all the issues that you covered.

I think that because Attributes were removed at the same time as Perks were added, discussions have tended to take the form of Attributes vs Perks even though the two are not mutually exclusive. I would loved to have seen Attributes, Skills and Perks all working together in one system because they each help to define your character in different ways.

In my opinion, the character development system in Skyrim is rather too Perk heavy. It was predictable there would be a lot of mundane Perks to make up for the removal of Attributes. The thing that surprised me is that even skills seem less important than they used to and it does make me wonder if they will someday be seen as surplus to requirements.

Sensible remarks...it isn't bad by default to have attributes. Working attributes into the system requires some careful design as to how they develop and interact with the game simulation. But, chosing between having them poorly implemented as before and removing them, I believe the designers made the right choice. I find the mechanics in Skyrim provide sufficient variety, with six different characters I have experienced very distinct and characterized play-styles, in the previous games I found they ended up much more similar (look, it's another flying, sword-wielding stealth mage...).

Attributes have always been a way to represent human characteristics without the tools to do so visually. This started in D&D and found its way into video games. Despite the ability to constantly represent your character visually, videos games lacked the ability to represent this growth visually over time. The player needed some way to chart, or see a progression of growth over time, otherwise it never felt like they were achieving anything, or that their character was developing. The same idea is present with luck, agility, or intelligence.

Video games have that ability to represent the character on a much more visual level. I'm not saying Skyrim does this perfectly as your character never gets bigger, or seems more intelligent, instead you focus your efforts on your skill tree that represents your progression is a nice form (that being percentages). While I understand the want for attributes, as I find creating characters in Morrowind addicting, I tend to prefer this new system as I actually enjoy playing my character for long periods of time now.

The characters are represented better visually, and for me that creates a level of interest that attributes ever could alone. I popped up torchlight real quick to see how the character was represented and it had 4 attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Defense, and Magic). Most of your power comes from the skill trees. The system in Skyrim is such that you do have attributes, they're just severely reduced, which started in Oblivion.

I don't think you'll see the game become anymore simplified. You'll see expansions on this core idea, but the idea that the game will be reduced to a shell of its former self is a little pessimistic.

lol MY spear fetish? MY spear fetish? Shooting down others' is what I tend to be so irresistibly drawn to. You'll note from my previous posts in this thread that I don't have any objection to spears being added to the game if they are added as a unique weapon class, with distinct advantages and disadvantages. I think swords, axes and maces should all work somewhat similarly, as weapons you swing rather than jab with, while spears work fundamentally differently and so should be fundamentally different in their game mechanics. They should be a separate skill with an associated perk tree. But I have little to no interest to see them added as simple cosmetic addition. I can go get mods for the cosmetic stuff, for the most part. I'd rather have Bethesda spend their finite and limited post-release development resources on something modders can't do, like adding seasonal foliage, mounted combat, and so forth.

All the same things apply to crossbows. If they make them work significantly differently than bows, fine, add them in. If they're quick-firing and they just look like crossbows, then again - Beth's time can be better applied elsewhere.


Very well said. Very concisely said as well. Skyrim represents a true step forward in game mechanics.


No, it's like the Papercut Ninja said - less clunky, pointless game mechanics and fewer meaningless reskins of weapons that are really the same under the hood is better.


What's so great about armor coming in more pieces rather than fewer? Did you really like walking around wearing a mixture of Daedric, glass and fur armor? Did you really? Because that combination would have looked like you woke up colorblind one morning before dressing yourself.


I'd be fine with the re-addition of spellmaking, so long as they add in some balancing factors to make it impossible for custom spells to break the game.


And thank God they are. They were a clunky system that didn't work seamlessly. They were a holdover from AD&D simply out of institutional inertia. They certainly aren't required to be an RPG - there's more than one way to skin a cat. They were clumsily implemented, because it's just silly to have people sitting around staring at a sheet of numbers picking stats to boost. I like the new system because there's no need to bother about numbers hardly at all. You simply do what you want, level skills by using them like always, and periodically you level up and decide whether you want your health, magic or endurance to go up. Nice and easy, but with no loss of complexity.


Thank God for both of them being gone. Classes were stupid - it was ignorant to have your character permanently committed to one profession for the rest of his natural life. Armor degradation was nothing more than a pain in the ass. At best they should have damped down its rate to maybe 5% of what it used to be. Removing it altogether was fine, and we have smithing in its place.

Because some people just can't convince themselves they're warrior unless they have a character sheet somewhere that says "warrior". Weird, I know. It's like they're looking to be licensed or something.


Oops! Cat's out of the bag with that one.


Why would I want dice roll combat? What's fun about that? Or is there something more important than fun? If you're referring to the need to have character skill affect combat as opposed to player skill, I think Skyrim's compromise between the two is fairly adept. From everything I've heard about Morrowind's combat system, even the fans admit it largely svcked.


Ugh. Narrow-minded fanatics and their purist fetishes.


You know, if I were a stockholder in Bethesda and they said "We're going to do the game this way even though it won't make as much money", I'd be pissed unless it was for some unmistakable moral factor. Yeah, sure, don't use slave labor in order to make more money, but we're talking about making a game here. People who refuse to make what the public wants will go out of business, and rightly so.


Hear hear. My current Nord warrior feels very much more like a Nord warrior than the one I played in Oblivion, who was running around in full Daedric, summoning Dremora Lords, shooting fireballs from his hands and sneaking for damage multipliers.

Where do I start? Leveling is ridiculously simplified. The attributes from previous Elder Scrolls games (i.e., Strength, Intelligence, etc.) do not exist in Skyrim - only Health, Magick, Stamina. Of course, too complex system would require this horrible thing called thinking. Almost everything in game has less complexity and depth. Morrowind was simplified in comparison to daggerfall, maybe because of the technical difficulties. Oblivion was more primitive than morrowind. And Skyrim takes this to another level. So in the next game what? You press X to auto-win and O to see next cutscene? That said, I will probably still enjoy this game as an epic adventure. But The Elder Scrolls series is more dead than alive.

Magic has been completely gutted. I'm not going to pick a lock if I'm a mage. I'm supposed to use my magic to open locks. But now it's impossible. . It never was before, and it makes no sense to remove open lock spells.

No silence.

No chameleon.

No open lock.

No attributes, so now I can't cast fortify attribute or drain attribute.

No weapon/armour durability, so now I can't cast damage armour/weapon.

No nighteye.

No cure disease

No jump spell.

No water walking.

Definitely no mark/recall.

Definitely no levitation.

And those are just the ones off the top of my head.

They ruined magic.

And weapons? Well, they dumbed those down too. Now we have "one-handed" and "two-handed" nonsense.

I miss the old days where you actually had to specialize in certain weapons, and axes were not the same as swords. And daggers were not the same as maces.

And don't tell me "oh but you can specialize still! it's in the perk tree!". Because that's a load of crap. The specializations for each sub-set of weapons is beyond shallow. If they had devoted a seperate perk tree for short blades, long blades, axes, and blunt weapons, the game would be so much more satisfying but noooo, they had to choose money and greed over quality and complexity. Buncha sellouts. Vanilla Skyrim is a failure as far as TES games are concerned.

The Elder Scrolls has become very mainstream with the success of Oblivion and Skyrim, but yes they have alienated some longtime fans which is bad buisness. But my point is now that the series has hit the limelight they should now start ad

Dude, does the term "broken record" mean anything to you?

God, what I wouldn't give to have a spell like that for the Skyrim forums right now...

Since my thread was closed because of people attacking me, I reposted my thoughts here.

I believe it is probably the most succesful TES game to date(I may be wrong though .it does happen)

Well this has reached post limit and as someone ignored forum rules and reposted a locked topic in this thread, it is a good thing we have reached the end.