As I've said, I also believe that criticisms should strive to be constructive, but when you get to the point where you're demanding that posters observe the rules of grammar, then sorry, you're just being an ass.

I think the term is an appropriate reaction to the cutting/consolidation of features that have no clear reason to be cut or consolidated, other than to appeal to the widespread gaming community who may not "have" the patience/intellegence to master these features, in the eyes of the Exes.

Example: FO3 to FO:NV- cutting of Big Guns and putting in Survival isn't "dumbing down." Heavy Weapons was a catch-all for various weapons that were not rifle or pistol-like in nature, despite having skills for various types of weapon damage. And Survival added a new feature, basically cooking, to the game that wasn't there beforehand, which enchanced the roleplay aspects of the game.

However, in Morrowind there was at least 5 melee weapon types. In Oblivion, this was cut down to two, removing one branch (Spears) and consoldating four skills into two (Blade and Blunt, previously Long blades, Short blades, Blunt, and Axes.) Furthermore, Skyrim switchess this to One-handed and two-handed weaponry. There is no clear reason for this consolidation, and there can be no explanation as to why someone who is profiecient with a dagger is equally proficient with an Axe or a longsword- unlike with our heavy weapons example above, these skills were previously clearly defined and made sense in terms of damage type, and the "new" skilltypes do not bring much to the game. In this case, the term "Dumbing Down" is appropriate- we can only reason that the exes made the decision to "simplfy" skills to appeal to the masses, rather than the reason of "this skill doesn't make sense, logically speaking. Why are we using it?"

Here is a post I put up in a thread on a different forum about the subject.

There are the causes.


"The single biggest cause of the "dumbing down" everyone always complains about comes from graphics.

The problem is DVD space hasn't increased in the years, but graphics have. As graphics get better they take up more space, the most space the graphics take up the less room there is on the disk, the less room there is on the disk because of graphics the less complexity there will be in games.

It wouldn't be hard for Bethesda to make a game as expansive or deep as Morrowind, its just that it would have to look like ???? to do so.


It also doesn't help that when companies bring up the idea of multiple disks, allowing for greater depth in their games people tend to flip out and claim its unreasonable. For all their claims of wanting depth most people simply refuse having to switch disks throughout the game.


Beyond that it also doesn't help that most people in the industrialized world still have CRAPTASTIC internet connections. If everyone had 5MB/s download speeds with no download caps it would allow game devs to make larger games that just download directly onto your PC.


BEYOND THAT, yes consoles are to blame slightly. They don't have the same storage space as the PC, however this is somewhat negated by the fact that they do sell increasingly large Hard Drive for the Xbox. But then we run into the the same problem as multiple disks.


The final cause I will list here IS PEOPLE. Most People just don't give a ???? about these super complex and deep games anymore. They want something they can pick up and play and have fun without having to do a lot of thinking."

Abolish: "To do away with, to put an end to"
Censor: "To examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable"
Do you understand the difference? In addition, shorthand is fine in my opinion, I often use it. And I understand that you can't always perfectly articulate your thoughts. However, for such a terribly "dumb" statement to become so pervasive is, in my opinion, a bad reflection on the forum. I am not saying that people who are not eloquent should not be allowed to post, I am saying that we should attempt to back our arguments rather than just calling aspects of the game we don't enjoy "dumb."

I agree with the people comment, but the Xbox 360 is not the plural "consoles". The PS3 utilizes Blu-Ray... a disc format that completely negates any claim of the plural "consoles" being to blame for an outdated disc format that the Sony side of console gaming had already surpassed 5 years ago. The 360 is one console, not a representative of "consoles" and the generalization is just so irritatingly uninformed.

This.

If grammar nazis bother you, ignore them. "you're just being an ass" isn't anymore constructive than "this is dumbed down."

Hmm

embarrassingly enough for me, I did have a ps3 section in that post that didn't copy over correctly

You are right the PS3 does have bluray but the problem with that is its terribly underused and multiplatform games are still constricted to the DVD limitations of the Xbox.

Beyond that the concept of disks themselves are terribly outdated, could the industrialized world get decent internet connections we could do away with disks entirely.

This post is wrong, Minecraft is more challenging then Skyrim PS3 has blue ray so that is not the issue 360 has improved its sized on their disks and with good compression by developers can pack MORE everything into it so no that quote is wrong. Complexity and Challenges does not revloved around graphics they revlove around what the developer puts in games that offers such Skyrim does not have either compared to its predecessors or other games.

Actually, whenever I say `dumbing- down` which much of Skyrim is I always give a detailed explanation why. In fact most of us do.

It is an apt and straight to the point term that`s easy for all to understand.

You`re just another one of those people making pointless self-centered posts about a term you personally don`t like and expect us all to say, `Yes, Sir!` and follow you.

Not happening.

That is true, but I'm mostly just being an OCD grammar nazi on account of the plural "consoles" being used to just describe the 360. In any case, things don't need to be "dumbed-down" for a limited disk format. The numbers behind a reputation system, for example, surely don't take up much space.

Once again, you are free to abuse grammar as much as you want. However, a phrase that has become so overused should at least mean SOMETHING according to the rules of grammar. However, it is only my opinion, you are free to use the expression as much as you want. I, and numerous others it seems, won't take your argument as seriously however, especially if the rest of it is as silly as its blanket term.

(Just a bit of fun, lower your fire spells)


The Elder Scrolls VI: *whatever*

Health, Magicka, and Fatique are all one bar, and together represent the single attribute 'Tryhardery'

Skills consist of
- Stuff you do with your hands
- Stuff you don't do with your hands
- Stuff you don't really do, just know in your head

Game starts off Tod Howard giving you a sword and telling you 'This is a video game. You use your thumbs on your 'controller' and stuff happens.

You are rewarded a single septim every time you press a button, and as a much simpler game you know you'll get rich fast with all the hack-and-slash monotony.

Main quest ends with you slaying a giant mudcrab, which you are given an hour-long tutorial about the weaknesses of mudcrabs beforehand.

The people of *wherever* hail your name as the legendary Stuffdoer of Tryhardery, foretold by the newest of the Elder Scrolls, which was a last-minute scribbling by a prophet named Bethesda who had run completely out of ideas by that point.

Did you miss the part where i clearly typed "BETHESDA COULD MAKE GAMES AS COMPLEX AS MORROWIND THEY WOULD JUST HAVE TO LOOK LIKE [censored] TO DO SO"?


Minecraft is complex, and it looks like [censored]. it falls direly into the perimeters of what I typed. Minecraft can be complex because it doesn't spend so much of its space on graphics and thus they have more room to put in deep and complex features.

My apologies. So you don't actually want to supress the use of a certain phrase. You want to outright do away with it altogether. Well, that's much better.


You certainly did imply that people who aren't as grammatically accurate as you'd like them to be really ought to shape up. Your words: "adherence to grammar." This in spite of the fact that not every registered member of this forum speaks English as a first-language, and we all have varying degrees of education.

It's pretentious, and someone actually lobbying for this sort of thing speaks worse of the forum than any of the arguments made about the game.

I am making an appeal to the forum to come up with a more articulate way of expressing itself. What is "self centered" about that? And when did I force you to do anything? You see, you're just "another one of those people" who comes into a topic and insults the OP with a generalization that doesn't even fit. If you back your arguments, more power to you, but that does not change the fact that many people use the term in place of a valid argument and this use of it besmirches the forum.

No, we should ban the term "Toon" instead.
Its a [censored] character not a "toon"!

no I did not miss it, graphics as no say whatsoever the graphics of TES has not improved at all since Oblivion the only thing is art style has changed that's it.

There's a difference between holding an opinon on something and actively lobbying for a community to adopt your own personal standards as to what should or shouldn't be argued or how it should be argued. Something tells me that if you were sitting on the other side of the argument (i.e. if you also held the opinion that TES has become over-simplified) you wouldn't have posted anything of this sort. It's just an argument you don't agree with, and you don't like it, and you want to stomp on it, and this is how you're doing it.

Take your own advice, and combat the argument with a well-reasoned argument of your own instead of trying to actively abolish how the argument is being leveled.

Its slang. If there's been cutting and added hand holding, there's a chance that the slang term can apply. Do people try to argue the semantics of every slang term? Would you rather we use idiot proof? Its more descriptive and accurate, I guess.

Just for the sake of the argument: to "Dumb Down" is not a statement invented on these boards.
It's an actual phrase, having been in use since the 1930's.
It's original meaning are to "revise so as to appeal to those of little education or intelligence", and was first used about movies.

Everytime I press a button something awesome happens.

Skyrim's graphics are multitudes better then that of Oblivion's.

Dont even try to say they are not because it would be an outright lie.

did someone take your sweet roll?

My friend, if I led you to believe I have any disrespect towards uneducated or foreign individuals I apologize. I am not challenging them at all. I am challenging the usefulness of one single term, nothing more. It is overused to an extreme, and does not even make sense from a grammatical perspective. That is all I was saying. Yes, I would like to do away with the term completely, but by appealing to others, not as something forced upon them.