I've heard and seen arguments a million times suggesting that oblivion was terrible compared to morrowind, skyrim was terrible compared to whatever...etc...

I'm not supporting or putting down any side of the argument. I'm just confused on what all these hardcoe elder scrolls fans mean exactly when they hate on skyrim and oblivion for not being true hardcoe rpg's.

I understand that the skill and attribute system was streamlined and some would say "dumbed down". I think they just made it simpler to appeal to a wider audience. I'm not convinced that's a terrible thing or just a money grab. I just want to know what these hardcoe people think is so much worse about skyrim and oblivion compared to previous elder scrolls games.

I don't think there is such a thing as a "true RPG" since what is and isn't an RPG differs from person to person.

Excatly this


theres countless diffrent version of RPGs from tabletop to MMO each having diffrent mechanics and gameplay types.

I see what you mean, but i've seen people bashing gamers that are new to TES because they think morrowind was vastly superior to oblivion and skryrim and that it was so immensely deeper and more "true rpg" than the sequels. I'm not saying that i believe in a "true rpg". I'm just tired of seeing people get so wound up about it without myself ever seeing any evidence of why it was so superior or more "hardcoe"...

I've been playing since morrowind and i played through it and oblivion before i bought skyrim. I love all three of them. Skyrim is my favorite.

I think the lack of numbers and stats will make people think Skyrim is less of an RPG than MW and OB. Nothing more, nothing less.

Well here's my take on what attribute constitute a "pure" RPG

Deep story with branching quests.

Choice and consequences for that action you take in those quests.

character skill over player skill.

good characters that respond to your actions.

A good set of base mechanics and rules that everyone has to follow.

I should have made more of an obvious title. I'm really only interested in people's opinions on why morrowind was so superior to it's sequels. Why those people consider it to be so much RPG-ier....ha....than the rest. Why was it so much better.

The reaons I have heard are becuase of the dice-roll mechanics, the fatc you could wear like 30 peices of enchanted armor, and corssbows.

I mean, if you want to get technical about it, any "game" that allows you to "play" a "role" is a "role playing game".

I think a lot of flak that comes at Skyrim and Oblivion from people from the Morrowind (and I suppose the Daggerfall games) is the lack of diversification.

For instance, in Morrowind, if you were a fighter and wanted to use a healing spell, you couldn't just buy a spell and suddenly cast it all the time. It'd probably only work 10-30% of the time, AND it'd drain all of your magicka to boot!

Some people might say "oh that's lame, I can't use a healing spell when I need to restore my health". But, if you think of it from a role playing perspective, the magic arts are, uh, magic. There are entire universities dedicated to the craft. Can any warrior off the street REALLY come in and just be able to magically perform the job of a healer as good as a healer?

So you had to put the time into leveling up your skills, whether through practice or paying for training, until you got to the point where you could use it competently.

Conversely, if you were a mage, if you wanted to wear heavy armor you actually had to develop your heavy armor skill, yes, but you ALSO had to increase your endurance, because health in Morrowind was a function of your endurance. You might have a really good heavy armor skill, sure, but if your endurance wasn't high after a couple of levels, you wouldn't have that much health. You wouldn't be a squishy mage... just a crunchy one.


Fast forward to games like Oblivion and Skyrim. Need to damage a dragon? Pick up a bow, hit it every time. Wanna get some awesome armor? Make some daggers. Want to buff your stats? Enchant some stuff. Fighter, mage, thief, whatever, doesn't make a difference, you can do it all!

In some respects it makes it more accessible. You don't have to go through the frustration of the lower levels, and constantly failing and getting you butt kicked by little bugs......

In other respects, it makes the game, um.... TOO accessible? When you can do everything with no real difficulty.... um, then why doesn't everyone in Skyrim enchant their armor and run around like a bunch of badasses?


I guess you could say it's balanced out by the perk system, so that even though you have a certain skill, you can only devote your skill points to specific things.


At least, that's how I understand the argument.

Oh well for me, the story flowed better, was deeper, and had some good characters. Plus it generally made more sense, in that you where locked out of some paths because you took other ones. IE houses, and guild requierments and so forth. charcters skill mattered much more, you could actually Fail.


Fairly well put. *thumbs up*

Every game is an RPG to a certain extent, grossly oversimplified generalization I know.

I believe the traditional explanation revolves around options. Choice and consequence, with an engrossing story to provide an overarching narrative to one's travels. More often than not these choices are made by traditional archetypes. Its when games break from tradition that people start questioning the monicker.

To that extent, discussions on this forum have driven me back to MUDs.

Good times.

I'd have to say that the defining feature of an RPG is "character interaction". How much does your interaction with other characters mean?

By that criteria, Bethesda doesn't make RPGs, they make adventure games. And I'm fine with that. Fallout 3 was the most RPG-ish Bethesda game, in my opinion. That doesn't mean Oblivion or Skyrim or Morrowind are bad... just that they're not really big on the whole meaningful interaction part the way BioWare is. Then again, there's a lot more adventures to be had in TES than there are in other games. It isn't RPG = good, adventure = bad. It's RPG = character interactions, adventure = go places and adventure.

So... TES is an adventure gaming series and always has been. I'm OK with that.

Spell-making being taken out.
The number of gear slots reduced.
Environments becoming less exotic.
Skill count being reduced.
Attributes completely killed off.

I'm sure the list goes on, and on.

-Attributes have not been killed off they have been merged into the skills and or health/magicka/stamina bars they modified.
-The skill count being reduced isnt a bad thing as Skyrim skills still cover everything Oblivions did.
-In my personal Opnion Oblivion < Skyrim in terms of exotic environs.
-Number of gear slots =/= effictiveness of the gear. You can still make similarly overpowered gear in Skyrim as you could in Oblivion and Morrowind

THIS.

makes perfect sense. i don't disagree really.
i understand what you mean about it being TOO accessible. But i guess that's just a flaw of video games where developers can't make games intelligent enough to be really accessible and option plentiful, but challenging in the character building aspect.

It just seems to be a question of, do you want really realistic character builds where you, in a sense, MUST specialize and be a less general use character, but then trade the accessibility and ease of use for realism....

OR do you want a much simpler character building mechanic which is less strict in terms of realistic character builds and the trade-offs required to play a certain character role, but lets you almost do anything with any type of character.

It's a hard choice. I like being able to change my mind halfway through playing a character in skyrim and be able to turn my char into a completely different build because i decided i wanted to walk a different path without having to restart the game and invest in a totally different class to be able to play it. But the realism and restriction is more immersive, although it lacks the possibility to be so dynamic.

WHY CAN"T WE HAVE BOTH!??

The line between deep and too casual is excedingly fine, Bethesda, bioware and other game companies have been trying to find it for ages but not matter what they do people are always pissed one way or the other.

Skyrim

I'm not really sure what you mean about "less exotic"....

Skyrim has more variety in landscape than most if not all other elder scrolls games. Yeah it's not alice in wonderland morrowind...but that's because it's region is affixed and restricted to its elder scrolls lore and position on the continent of tamriel. Look at oblvion...copy pasted green field over and over. Tiny bit of snow and swamp.

Everything that the attributes in oblivion represent has been allotted to other areas of either skill or H/S/M attributes or racial specifics.

I'm not really sure what you mean by gearslots...but i'm much happier with the favorites menu, albeit hard to read, than the clunky, hope i pressed the right direction and equip it in time to make a difference, system in oblivion.

I wouldn't call it "true" RPG.

Traditional RPG rather, meaning pretty much everything you do is based on your character's stats rather than individual player skill.
Comparing combat and lockpicking is probably the best way to show what I mean:

In morrowind, if you actually hit a target or not was determined by your characters stats, while in oblivion and skyrim, it's blatant "click until one of you drops dead".
Same with lockpicking, in morrowind, it was a simple skill check with a percentage determining if you succeeded or failed, in oblivion and skyrim it's down to figuring out how the lockpicking minigame works.

For me the most important aspects are the storyline and characters and of course the lore.I have said it before Skyrim has no side characters of value none.Skyrim would be so much better if it had a Morrigan a Alistair or a Vernon Roche instead the characters are hollow shells.The open world is nice but without any people that matter it makes it feel empty but that is just me.

Basically all the categories of equipment you could put on your character.
Your last post before I started posting was asking about Morrowind, so I was responding to that one. My posts have been about Morrowind so far.

Character skill over player skill.
As soon as something is player skill rather than character skill (Like Skyrim lockpicking) it is not RPG.

A knotty question OP. Ask 5 different RPGers this and you'll probably get 8 different answers. I'm going to suggest the basics are even more simple than Andaius has put forward. Levelling, looting, and the base ability to define your character.


I was idly considering this today on my way home from work, and, pondering, I feel the numbers are a hangover from "ye olden pen-n-paper" days, when the numbers were your only connection to a character. As technology has advanced, we went to CRPGs, but still, there was a 16 colour palette and the pixels were as big as my thumbnail!

As we've travelled down the CRPG route, we've become more "connected" with our character in ways other than a set of numbers. Our primary connection now is via a detailed simulacra on screen and our controllers, which give us free roam access to an entire world, thus making some of the numbers seem a little superfluous. It's a visual experience and connection as much as anything else now.

I think many of the people here think that Morrowind is better than Skyrim because they're wearing the nostalgia goggles, and I would suggest that for a lot of them, it was probably their first CRPG. Ah, you never forget your first time....

Completely agree! Of course, that doesn't mean I enjoy Skyrim any less. Just want to make that clear.


A wee bit OT: the Drakensang game-series (Drakensang: The Dark Eye, Drakensang: The River of Time, and Drakensang: Phileassons Secret(EXP)) are, for me, a true RPG adventure, even more so than Morrowind is, and I highly recommend them to anyone who wants a taste of the "old school" stuff.

I just wanted to add to my comment on the gear slots.
It was nicer in morrowind that there were so many. It gave me the ability to make some cool looking dudes.
There was a slot for left and right of things. Like the pauldrons and gauntlets.
So you could for example make a cool gladiator looking guy. Like using a big left pauldron and gauntlet.
For me it was more about defining the looks, that aspect of morrowind.