I have only played Oblivion, but what I miss most is the little changes to make it less immersive, such as:
-Regenerating health
-Replacing strength, edurance, etc with just health, magica, stamina, (I know the system in oblivion needed to be reworked, but they went too far, I don't like how you can't increase your speed or the amount you carry), as well as the different stats races and genders had
-Getting rid of hand to hand and acrobatics
-Armour doesn't degrade anymore
-Fewer armour/weapon types (no silver or mithril, in addition to the fact that you no longer need a silver weapon to harm spirits)
-Combining longsword and short sword into just sword
-Fewer spells, diseases, and enemy types.
-No more dark dungeons (underground caves are one of the two places in the world with absolute darkness, the other being the bottom of the ocean, they shouldn't be well lit, even with numorous torches on the wall)
-No reason to sleep (I know the whole you-need-to rest-to-level system was bad, but I find it funny how my man character has spent almost an in game year and only has one hour of sleep)
-Intros to Thieves and Dark Brotherhood in Oblivion were better
-No ranking within guilds (seriously, in the college of winterhold, I immediatly go from student to arch mage in a matter of in game days)
-Everyone in the cities spouting the same one line to you if you get within 10 feet (this is even worse than when the npcs have really disjoineted conversations in Oblivion)
-removal of disposition and morality systems (again, these were bad, but shouldn't have been taken out entirely)
-All horses have the same health and cost (exception being Shadowmere)
-removal of arena
-no one comments on your actions (the Black Horse corrier was something I kinda liked)
-the removal of enchanted arrows (I know this is a balancing issue, but I would like at least a small fire/ice bonus to my arrows)


I know a lot of these were added to make the gameplay smoother, but I still think they should have done a different approach

Well, this is going back to Morrowind, but I miss Spears. I know you have to be a bit of a history wonk to care but spears were far more common weapons than swords in pretty much every time a place through history.

Another thing I miss from Morrowind was ability to craft what I called the "Penny Dreadful" spells that only cost one point of mana and could be cast with even the lowest skill level. Things like levitate for 11 seconds to get up to a remote ledge or wter walking for 11 seconds to get past the slaughterfish.

The things I like that they've added in Skyrim is the active blocking system with shields and weapons and the change to the enchanting system were you have to disenchant a weapon to learn the effect.

The option to fail.

Guild ranks.
Attributes.
Quality questlines.

And as Shagsbeard said, the option to fail.

Yeah, I was going to mention spears from Morrowind, but considering I haven't played it, I thought I better just stick to what I know from Oblivion. Also, I have a feeling that spears is going to come up a lot. And I do care and know that they were the most common weapon in history, I mean, they fight like swords with a longer range, (swords were mainly used for stabbing, not slashing)

That penny dreadful thing does sound like a cool idea, but I bet they took it out because it was too easy to exploit.

Yeah, there are a couple things that Skryim did better, my favorite being the ability to duel wield weapons and spells, dispite the fact that it was rarely used in history.

Great Houses (Morrowind)
Different types of horses (Oblivion)
Some really high priced items to buy so that money would be worth saving (Dragon Age 2!)

Seasons, attributes, reputation, and again option to fail.

There were seasons in Oblivion? I didnt notice. I do remember the ability to fail quests in oblivion, but you had to screw up pretty badly, so it wasn't intrusive for people who wanted to finish the quest

Guild Ranks to a degree, atleast have somekind of meaning of why a non dragonborn warrior can be the arch mage, even if its a line of dialogue

Morrowind gave me a funny feeling that not game, other thank skyrim in its first week, gave me. It is hard to recreate a simple feeling, so to pin point what i miss.. well, it impossible.

I guess i miss the abundance of factions, with long quest lines (they may feel longer simply because how travel works in morrowind)

Daedric Ruins, aeylied ruins even

i never got the whole "this country has these kinds of ruins, and this country has these..."

Skyrim should have atleast one aylied ruin, and maybe a daedric one that borders morrowind, but meh

i think seasons were in daggerfall

Yeah, I never played morrowind, but from what I read, it sounds a lot cooler than the stormcloak imperial conflict

The lack of dungeons is definatly a bad thing, and the feeling you got may have been from increased realism in Morrowind compared to Oblivion/skyrim

This. Back in then eighies you had to work hard to succeed, now you have to work hard to fail, when it even is possible.

And magic.

i think the #1 thing would be the guilds and associated politics of MW.

everything they took out basically. The only improvement in my mind are the graphics and the npc conversations with eachother (actually the atmosphere of the world is great as well)

longer questlines
more factions
more interesting main quest
more attributes
spellcrafting
reputation
npcs with more to say
unique loot
much less level scaling

yeah they really stripped it down to the bare bones with this one. Sad to say but I probably wont even follow the future development of the series - its strayed to far from what I orginally liked about the games. Really sad, as following the development of the series has really been fun, but I am constantly let down by the things they decide to change/remove

For all the critisims I am giving this game, I still liked it a little more than Oblivion. I just think the world itself is much better done, as well as the dialoge and combat (although they could make improvements iwth the last two). Also, what beth does really well is making a world that is just fun to explore, so as long as they nail that, I'll still buy the next game

I miss what made TES, into TES. Such as the Spell Creation, attributes, longer guildlines, etc. Skyrim just feels like another game, still great but not up to the standards of a TES game.

While I could fill a small book with things I miss from (Particularly) Morrowind, Oblivion and even Daggerfall, I'll try to limit myself.

-Discovery. Preemptive Map Markers may have been necessary when the draw distance was 20ft, now it's just patronizing. There's plenty of visual cues to give away locations without the need of obnoxious compass markers. What happens now, is people tend to pay attention less to Skyrim, and more to that tiny 1/64th of the screen that tells them where everything is, and that it's totally okay to turn off your brain.

-Intentionally ambiguous writing. Let us define our character, don't force us into a certain frame of mind. Maybe I didn't want to pledge myself to that [censored] Nocturnal, or maybe I didn't want to become some kind of beast, but still wanted to perform mercenary work for the local mercenary faction.

-Attributes. Yes, they are functionally pointless as an ends, but another layer of character depth is just that. I think Bethesda really underestimates how alluring "Arbitrary" stats are. Just look at the popularity of crap like Fantasy Football.

-Believable inconvenience. This is a fairly broad thing. But Equipment Degradation, factions forcing a conflict of interest, diseases, encumbrance... A lot of that stuff helps lend an air of legitimacy to the world. It's a delicate balancing act though. Too much is tedious (waiting for your weapons to repair overnight in Daggerfall) but too little can actually break other segments of the game (No degradation causing inflation which lessens the value of many rewards in Skyrim)

-True Freedom. In Morrowind, you're free to pretty much do and discover anything. Oblivion and Skyrim are so terrified of people breaking the game, they idiot proof it. Immortal NPCs I can actually deal with, especially in Skyrim, as Ancient Dragons would eventually depopulate the entire world, but so many unique items, so many dungeons, so many characters limited to a specific quest. It makes me enraged just thinking about it.

Yeah, the thing I miss most about weapon degredation is those moments when your ultra powerful weapon breaks and you have to fight with a crappy dagger, I like improvising. Also, with out armour degregation, withing 20 hours, you aquire better armour than 99% of the game world, and because it doesn't break, you rarely change it, only when you find a piece of better armour, which is increadibly rare at high levels

+1

Somewhere between Fallout 3 and Skyrim, Bethesda stopped taking risks.

I'd say it started in Oblivion, then Fallout 3 seemed like they were making progress, then Skyrim repeated blunders, but yes... I do miss being able to fail. IM SORRY I OPENED THE PACKAGE CAIUS PLZ DONT HATE ME ANYMORE /crycry

Well, Fallout was more about surviving, so things like managing health, rad, and limb damage made more sense in that game, but still, in Skyrim they went too far in simplifiying it

"Exploit" shouldnt mean anything when it comes to games like these.
Youre not competing with anyone else. Youre supposed to have fun.
Removing options equals removing gameplay equals removing fun.
"Balancing" in this case, means removing fun, as it means there are less possible builds and less possible ways to play the game.

The removal of spellmaking means that mages are now lame. They can only do very limited things in a very limited way, whereas before the sky was the limit.

Managing resources is generally a part of every RPG I can remember. From Final Fantasy's Potions and Gil, to Mass Effect's credits and Palladium. RPG's are usually designed in a way that you can "Resource" your way through almost every fight if you need to.

One example of "Doing it Right" in that regard, is actually Mass Effect 3. I don't know who came up with their Health system, but it was virtually flawless. 5 Blocks of health, individual blocks regenerate, but already depleted blocks do not, without Medi-gel. GENIUS I SAY!



While exploits I kind of agree. They're cheats, but they're usually obscure enough to just avoid.

Balance on the other hand... playing the game naturally means everything needs to be viable, though not everything needs to be equal. An extreme power discrepancy in something or other creates that lame sense of "Gimping yourself just to gimp yourself". For example, say all bows in Skyrim did 1damage, but you really wanted to be an Archer... That upset in balance kind of ruins that doesn't it? Or say you wanted to be a mage with the same variety and options as the combat classes, and then they remove spellcasting... Kind of lame huh?

No. Balance is important for a single player game. I mean, I hate when people complain that master is too easy when you craft and enchant a full set of daedric armour right out of helgan. Of course the game is going to be easy? If you were going to do that, why did you set it to master difficulty. Anyway, I hate exploits for this reason. Also, general balance is important too. I mean, what if a chest at helgan had a really powerful weapon, (I don't consider this an exploit. Sure, players could make it difficult by not picking up the weapon, nut 99% of people will and then the game will get really boring.