Because that's just the stereotype of "casual gamers" that gets thrown around on "hardcoe" forums.

This is true. I don't exactly think casual gamers are the problem, so much as what a developer/person thinks a casual gamer is. The result is that at times, games are developed to pander not to casual gamers really, but terrible gamers all around.

in my opinion, they show a serious lack in ambition, and it shows(tear).

Skyrim clearly has a lack of depth, you'll get bored a lot quicker with it then Morrowind/Oblivion.

In my opinion, I don't think Bethesda has enough contestation in the open world rpg area. They pretty much have their niche covered, and have no real reason to compete, or try harder because they know that they have no competition, no reason to one up everyone else. They seem to have grown complacent, and it shows....compared to a game like Morrowind which was made out of desperation, where they put forth everything into it.

At this point they're milking the fame they earned from Daggerfall and Morrowind to put out unimpressive games in the same series, so yes. They're exchanging reputation for easy money.

Activision and Bethesda are competing for fans in general yes, but they release very different games and are not competing in the same genre. Unlike BF3 and CoD. What I'm talking about is the remark about Bethesda making CoD clones. They will not beat out Activision even if they tried. Thus, that's where my comment comes in. Activision is the top dog in the fps genre, and one of the top in action in general. If you don't believe me then look at their sales. BF3 did well against them, but still lost in sales.

That doesn't make any sense. If YOU can only get 40 hours out of COD but 200 out of Skyrim, fine.
But it doesn't mean COD is "worth" only 40 hours.
I don't really like MW3 myself, but my friend got over 300 hours with it, while he played Skyrim for about 50 hours.

I'm not gonna say that Beth sold out b/c they actually think that the game they shipped out was fine and just as good as Morrowind and Oblivion. To some it is and to some its not.

In my eyes I believe that Skyrim was a huge letdown from what Morrowind and Oblivion were.

Pure awesome!

You see let me explain it to you. When a game company starts; they're usually are in deep [censored]. Or in other words, have to start with indie like tittles that gets popular. (Atleast in Underground.) As theier fame and games increases, they have no choice but to appeal to the masses. Otherwise they will go under. So what bethesda is doing is pretty similar to most of the other big shot companies like Bioware.

However they may be appealing to the majority; but compare to most other companies that milk the crap out of the consumers: ( :gun:EA, Activision, and many more.) Bethesda still cares about the community. They widely support modding. *cough* EA *Cough* they so far have released a new feature for free. (It may be Xbox Exclusive but atleast there will surely be more free stuff coming that will surely be for all platforms.) Besides if they were really sellout, they'd be like Activision and release a new game every year that's the same as it's predecessor.

Having only read the first page to this entire thread, I wanted to pose a different view:

It isn't Bethesda -- at least, not directly, or in whole.

It's NVidia, and to a slightly lesser degree, ATI/AMD. It's also Game Informer, and other organizations of their ilk which are seen as front-runners in the gaming review process. It's Electronic Arts and Blizzard, which are the powering forces behind "industrialized game development", and its the education system that has monopolized on it. (I'm sure most of you have noticed the explosion of "game degrees" in the past 5-8 years. Those didn't come out of nowhere.)

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, computers were capable of some pretty impressive stuff when it came to crunching numbers, but they weren't all that great at rendering at breakneck speeds. As a result, the focus was put on design, story, and gameplay, because these were what drew people to play the games. Then, some turd figured out that a computer's video didn't have to be on the motherboard and that it could have its own memory and cooling and boom -- just like that -- modern gaming was born (along with the necessity for consoles and 'gaming rigs').

Meanwhile, major corporations like EA and Blizzard collectively began to hire thousands on thousands of people who have extremely high burn-out rates (thank you, 80-hour-a-week crunch periods). People had to become specialized, because of all this new tech. There was no such thing as "our programmer" and "our art guy." No, now you have a scripter, an script engine developer, a network developer, a rendering engine developer, a texture artist, an animator, and a concept artist. You have people whose sole purpose is to make the UI not svck. These companies needed human fodder for their great machines, so schools adopted programs to make sure that they'd get it. And these programs typically teach new game developers to conform and be as simple as possible, because simplicity is cheaper.

So did Bethesda sell out? Maybe. But they're doing what a game company does that doesn't want to be bought out or go bankrupt. If you don't like that, I recommend that you stop supporting game development that occurs in this particular universe, and instead financially support developers who work outside of it: people like Bay 12, for example, who make Dwarf Fortress, or Notch from Minecraft (pre-sellout-to-XBox-and-start-charging-30-bucks-a-pop-like-a-big-boy era). Go play some MUDs made by enthusiasts or hobbyists rather than lawyers and businessmen. Don't be scared, a lot of them are going graphical these days.

Oh, okay, thanks for telling me how quickly I got bored with Skyrim compared to Morrowind and Oblivion...

I guess the fact that I haven't gotten bored with Skyrim is just my imagination.

Thanks for setting me straight.

Really?

Cuz last I saw, Skyrim was actually adding to their already good reputation in the industry, and I for one, have been incredibly impressed with Skyrim...

A mate of mine recently told me he had downloaded morrowind goty with a 1.6gb graphics enhancement mod as well as many other simple, elegant and great mods. I went over to play it (both of us are big TES and Skyrim fans) and i sat down, turned it on and started a new game and... OMG!!! It is hands down the much better game, I played it for an hour and thought to myself, who the hell needs skyrim. The fact that I thought this makes me sad as I do (did) enjoy skyrim a lot, but, I mean, the above statement says it all.

Skyrim is a good game, its fun and the world is definitely amazing and while there are some minor graphical problems, the game looks fantastic, but its plagued by problems with quests and game mechanics, and its not that deep; the quest lines aren't that unique or long and a lot of things have been half assed.

beth have made skyrim a really good and fun game, but it is definitely not an amazing game, or one that blows my mind, the thing that upsets me though is that it very easily could have been a brilliant game, even with the removal of many classical RPG elements, and have easily been the best of the year. Alas, it is not. And for the people who play on consoles it never will be.

EDIT: Fixed spelling errors.

Spot on there.

???

Minecraft's the price that's been planned since the beginning. In Alpha, you could get it for 10 euros. In Beta, 15 euros. Full release, 20 euros. Knew this from the beginning (I got it in Alpha. ~$14). Just checked their website.... US$26. Which is 20 euros at current conversion rates.

I play it on console.

It is easily the best game of the year for me. Hell, it's quite possibly the best game of all time in my book. Worst case scenario, it's a top 3 all time.

Sorry you didn't get the same enjoyment out of it, but don't make blanket statements about howeveryone else feels about the game.

If you consider including fewer enhanceable skills as selling out, then yes.

Bethesda isn't a machine. It is a company of humans. I defiantly think newer technology has switched their focus toward visuals and design and away from writing and game mechanics. Is that selling out? It all depends on your interpretation.

That would be the case if the graphics were actually improved over the older games. But sadly no its still running DX9 just with a new coat IE art style.

All three Oblivion, Fallout 3, Skyrim have been built based upon the same hardware/software. Skyrim is lacking in depth then even Oblivion while some improvements have been made such as dungeons they are not enough to cover up the things missing or removed from previous iterations.

But again does that make BGS a sell out? No but it does prove the point that dev teams that are owned by their publisher are rushed or forced to do certain things because the publisher pays the bills.

is bethesda selling out?...no comment, but, i woudl like to just drop this quote in here, "at first glance the logic [of targeting everyone] makes sense...but in reality, if you are making a making a game for no one. the hit-based mentallity takes you away from making a game that has soul or is fresh."- Nathan Vella

Bethesda is getting rid of things to make way for different things. If the new things work, great, if they don't, then they will add them again unless there is a good reason not to.
If the newer things work, then they keep them. If not, they scrap them and learn from their mistakes.

This is what all companies do. It isn't selling out.

I really don't understand why there is so much hate for Skyrim. I'll be the first to say that I wasn't a huge fan of some of the changes, such as the removal of Attributes, but honestly the skill/attribute system was never that great of a system to begin with. In my opinion, Skyrim is a huge step up from Oblivion. Oblivion had a slew of issues, such as level scaling (which was handled much better in Skyrim). Cyrodiil was also an extremely boring and generic province in Oblivion, and if you read through some of the older books in the series you'd know that Cyrodiil could have been so much better. Oblivion had a slew of cookie cutter dungeons, boring NPCs, and there was really nothing unique about any locations in the game.

The world design is so much better in Skyrim. I think that is what the Elder Scrolls series has always been about: engaging the player in an interesting and exciting fantasy world. In that regard, Skyrim was a success. Would it be nice to go back to more complex RPG mechanics like in Morrowind? I think it would be nice, but there just isn't as big a market for such a game nowadays. People have been complaining that Bethesda "sold out" for years. Daggerfall fans complained that Morrowind was dumbed down junk. Morrowind fans complained that Oblivion was dumbed down junk. And now Oblivion fans are complaining that Skyrim was dumbed down junk. I'm just happy to see that Bethesda is doing what they think is right for the series, and not caving in to the requests of fans who just don't seem to like change.

Bethesda sell out? Thats like asking if the Devil is looking for salvation.

As for removing things as if that makes Skyrim more simple i actually think Skyrim is just as detailed as previous Elderscrolls rpgs i've been playing since 1994. I think whats happening is by removing certain things it allows the player to merge with the world and vice versa much more strongly to create a very immersive experiance. The whole point of stats was to create a believable experiance with Skyrim it does this without needing the stats anymore. Its sort of like needing to roll a dice to see an enemy through fog when actually the graphics power is so great you can do that with your own two eyes with what is being presented to you visually by the game world. So bye bye dice and hello virtual world.

Looking back through my experiences with TES games, at the start, you could start with a set premade character type and play or answer a set of morals questions and be asked to be what Bethesda generated out of your answers. i thought this was good, but I always chose a Dark Elf Battle Mage.

With the advent of the Character Building system , where you chose major disciplines of skills and rose levels when you practiced sufficiently in those skills, i thought this even more railroading of how you should play your character.

I miss knowing the Intelligence, Strength, the attributes that your character has, but I feel it was an excellent move to do away with the major and minor skills. Why you may ask? I feel that it allows a greater freedom of exploring your character. You can amke what you want out of any race. You can make an Altmer Warrior person, you can make a Nord pure mage, you can make an Imperial burglar.

The taking away of the defined skills made it harder on the levelling as all skills now go into the level raising system. This may be difficult to accept as sometimes you do things you feel necessary and you gain skills in paths you may not feel necessary. You gain skills in the things you actually do. Is this not a better way of choosing th Path of your character?

This game is not a sellout IMHO, but the ultimate evolution of freedom of how you want to play and how you want to Build your You in the game. Drop the preconceived notions of what you think an open game should be and play.

I am still trying to play a Dark Elf (Dunmer) Battlemage, just in Skyrim, it is easiest to use the magic system to make very fine weapons and mellee / archer you way through. Alchemy and Enchanting are valid Magic paths IMHO.

Get over the lack of railroad on your development of You and enjoy the freedom. I thought the Major/ Minor skills system allowed too much nerf character development, where you could chose skill sets so that what you did , did not count in your character levelling.