Skip to last paragraph you Skip want to avoid the tl;dr.

Honest question, I couldn't help but wonder. I'm playing my 4th Skyrim character now and noticed how many more elements they added(and subtracted) to appeal more to the casual gamer.

The obvious first is the removal of attributes. It makes character creation, choice of race and skill far more simple. I recall when I played Oblivion, I looked at each of the races about 10x before making my choice. I ended up choosing a Redguard and was warned it was a very poor choice for a mage. I did try the mage's way and ended up paying the price. Same thing happened when I chose a High Elf as a warrior. Races in Oblivion and games before weren't just preferential, they were extremely important factors in character building. It seems like Bethesda simplified this part to make things easier for the casual gamer. Hell, even running speed has been standardized.

Second is magic. Spell creation has been removed. Although I feel this part was necessary as I like the system in Skyrim more than in Oblivion. Sure, there were choices in games before Skyrim but the effects were pretty boring and most spells ended up looking like the same, save for a few variations. I think this was subtracted to have quality over quantity. I may be wrong though.

Third is romance. There was an uproar when Bethesda announced you would be able to have a lover in Skyrim. The hardcoe RPG'ers thought it would be a horrible idea because it risked being poorly executed. The casual gamers were overjoyed. My little sister wanted to play it only for the romance factor. hardcoe RPG'ers ended up being right. The romance is Skyrim is pretty bad, courtship is shallow and there is almost no point in doing it. It's not rewarding, realistic and has no depth at all. They dropped the ball on that one and I do feel they included that solely to please to the masses.

On the third place you have the fact that building a character is FAR easier than before and you can pretty much play as anything you want, long as you pick perks in the right threes. Redguards even have a bonus in magic(Alteration or Destruction, maybe both), correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't that contradict the lore of The Elder Scrolls? Again, the main thing that separates RPG's from other games is the fact that in Role Playing Games you build your own character. You choose what your character will be good at, you choose what you will focus on and you level him up accordingly. Skyrim character building system is much less complex than its predecessors. I personally don't care whether a system is complex or not, I simply care if it allows us to play many different builds without ending up taking the same things over and over again. In that part Skyrim kind of fails. Again, it seems Bethesda chose the easy route to make the game more appealing to everybody rather than their loyal fans.

Now fellas I'm asking YOUR opinion. Bethesda is a company and obviously, their goal is to make money. Nobody can blame them if they choose the way that will reward them the most. I somewhat feel that Bethesda is letting us, their loyal fans down to make the game more mainstream and more accessible to the casual market. An example of a developer that does the exact opposite is FROM software(Dark and Demon's Soul). Their sequel is everything the first game was, except more extreme, more complex and even more unforgiving. I don't think anybody here could even think that FROM software has sold out with Dark Souls. That game is pretty unpopular for casualer gamers(mainly to its high difficulty level). Most things in Skyrim have been simplified and to me, it looks like it was purely to sell more copies. Skyrim is a game mostly oriented on the action rather than the character building.

What are your thoughts?

Edit: Don't get me wrong, I love Skyrim, I simply feel some elements that were really good were removed for no good reason.

another of these topics? sigh

its common knowledge the games get more and more simplified and thats not likely to change by anything we can do

Well to be honest, i'm one of the asses who don't read it all but i can see that you are complaining about a 'Company/Business'.

Well, i'm not one to rant but my thoughts are;
In my opinion, Bethesda does care about what people want but they have to select a majority over the minority, to please 'Most' of us to make the most money.
They do listen to us because if they make [censored] things we won't buy it, let your opinions be heard as they most likely read em and try make it more appealing for us.
My views on Skyrim was awesome, but i havn't even played the previous TES so i don't have much of a opinion. Although Skyrim was excellent to me, a newbie to say, it may have dis-pleased others and Bethesday will see this, and they'll correct their wrong doings to the best of their abillities. (They might not however if it means a lower outcome.)

But why do they get more simplified though? Simply to add more quality content(let's face it, armor, graphics and characters look much better than they ever did, previous games ALWAYS had horrible characters even for their time), or is it simply to sell more copies?

I know it's not very deep, but..... as someone who's been playing games (computer, console, tabletop, etc) for thirty years, I find this continual campaign against "the casuals" to be somewhat silly.

Yes, games have evolved over time. Yes, they don't necessarily make games like they did a couple decades ago. Of course, that also means that the games they make now have new and unique features as well. Yes, there can be some nostalgia for old game mechanics (I, in particular, miss when RPGs were more turnbased and less action). But that doesn't mean that "new" is automatically "bad".


And yes, one has to admit that "gaming" is now a major industry, rather than a geek niche. As with all things that become major industries, the biggest players will tend to play it safe. Because there's huge cash on the line. But just like in the movies, there's still small "indie" groups doing unsafe things. Or nostalgic things.


So, no. I don't see some big plague of "OMG casuals".

So-called "casual" gamers make up the vast majority of the market.

This isn't just about money, it's about an audience. What makes more sense: developing a game for the curmudgeonly minority who are going to complain and rattle their sabers no matter what you do, or developing a game that the actual public wants to play?

As an anology, I'll refer to the theatre. Theatres are currently experiencing a pretty tumultuous time, mainly due to the fact that their subscriber bases are literally dying out. How does this relate? Because those theatres ignored the "casual" theatre-goer in favor of their season subscribers. They continued to produce plays that kept their subscribers content, while ignoring the fact that their subscribers were getting older and older. At this point, many well established theaters haven't been cultivating a younger audience, and their faced with the problem of a dying subscriber ("hardcoe", if you will) base and a complete lack of appeal among "casuals".

Producing any art form for the "elite" few is never a successful strategy. Ever.

Both you guys are right. Sometimes it does feel like hardcoe gamers can only be pleased by the first game of a series(the game that made them like the series in the first place) and it seems after that, you only get complaining from that niche. I like your theatre anology. Though I feel some elements were unnecessarily subtracted from Skyrim. Attributes could have stayed, they made the game deeper and more enjoyable to me. Building a character is one of the best part in TES games and it seems half of it is gone now.

Stopped reading after I realized you're just another poster running a campaign against "the casuals."

Read the whole thing. I'm not running any sort of campaign. I'm simply asking a question which is ''do you think Skyrim is more simple because Bethesda chose to focus on other type of content(graphics, environment etc), or do you think it is to appeal to a broader market?''

Bethesda has been a mainstream games publisher and developer for over 10 years now. The CEO and Chairman of Zenimax is a lawyer, not a gamer. If they sold out it was a long time ago.

I still disagree with the races bit. I guess I just never thought about it though, I went for lore-accuracy to class and looks when choosing a race, and the differences were very slight, so by about level 10 all races were the same, aside from those with certain resistances, which they've kept.

On spell creation, eh, I didn't use it much, I think I maybe used it to make one decent paralyze spell and that's it. I can see why people miss it though.

Romance seems like it was thrown in as an afterthought, maybe they thought it'd be an interesting diversion after they made the Temple Of Mara?

Builds is a very subjective territory, I'm still making new ones (A one handed unarmoured warrior who relies solely on summoned weapons for instance)

This thread: 1/10

coz the majority of gamers nowadays are idiots and making games that doesnt play itself and all you gotta is press a button now and then, will hurt sell rates

so commercially its more profitable to disappoint the minority of gamers who prefer something complicated, instead focussing on the majority resulting in easy simplified games everyone can play

everyone meaning everyone

you can play it, your girlfriend can play it, your parents and grandparents can play it and even a [censored] cow and a random pumpkin in some field can play it

and thats where most games are heading to

Here, have a cookie.

Now repeat after me: "I will not rage against people for having lives away from their gaming systems."

This is the natural cycle of things. New companies create some sort of "niche" product that earns them some fame, and then market it for appeal to a broader audience. Bioware is going through the same thing right now.

This.

It's fairly undeniable that appealing to a broader audience was one of the main goals during Skyrim's development process. Even the developers would admit this (remember how many times the word 'accessibility' came up in pre-release interviews?). The sad fact is, they don't make games for fans of open-world RPGs anymore; they make games for everyone with a games console or gaming PC.

That said, I think the term 'selling out' is a bit harsh. Such a term suggests greed and trying to squeeze every last penny out of a franchise.... which isn't really true of Bethesda. They may be trying to appeal to a broader audience, but they still support the PC modding community, and intend on improving the game long after release (including free content).

Compared to other game companies out there, Beth is not selling out. The amount of content and detail they have put into their single player games is probably the best in the business. If they wanted to sell out, they could cut production time to every year instead of 3 (or 5 although some people think not).

Edit: on a side note, it’s like I’ve returned to the forums and everyone seems to have a joined opinion that Skyrim is "The worse TES ever" or "dumbed down and streamlined". I’ve played nearly all of the elder scrolls games and I think Skyrim is one of the best games in the series so far. Not the best, but pritty damn good. This makes me an alien on the skyrim forum which is freaky lol.

Bethesda could solve a lot of their problems by having 'advanced settings' for power users. Keep the attributes, etc., all hidden behind the scenes but accessible, the same way every other piece of software is designed. The game could play with little or no input from the player, but be tremendously complex 'under the hood'. Have the game automatically allocate attribute points, etc., based on skill use whenever you raise a level, but give the player the option of going in and changing the allocation. Give options like: "Locks require minimum skill level", "Use classes", "Verbose journal entries" and "Turn off undiscovered location icons on compass". If they had included all of these extra features, they could have created a game that appeals to both hard-core RPG fans and players new to the genre without sacrificing any of the RPG mechanics. Could have been done, but sadly wasn't.

yes, gamesas created a game in skyrim that appeals to the millions of casual gamers out there and left just barely enough in it to satisfy a majority of the rest and pretty much left out the hardcoe rpg fans.

it's the NEXT beth game that will tell us all we need to know.

As small companies get more money, they expand, and as they grow they begin garner more patrons for their products granting more money to purchase higher quality labor and machinery. Therefor; they must appeal to a larger, more varied cliental to sustain themselves. This is how business works, so unless if you want Bethesda to downsize loosing money and resources for the sake of the "Old Days", this is how it is.


Now maybe there will be a renaissance on traditional CRPG-gaming; I'd certainly like to see updated versions of previous titles and it's certainly possible. However, this is far from "selling out". Bethesda still holds onto the mainstays of their franchises and they do care for their customers. People need to stop correlating change with simplification.

Since when do people have to have their entire lives at their gaming stations to be people who like complex games instead of this "easy to get into" crap?

I did some editing and fixed this part for you

How many more disappointments do we need to suffer though before we hit the point of saying enough is enough. Even the most loyal customer eventually hits that point where they've had enough and just give up on what was once such a great series, and could be again...but not under it's current leadership.

Bethesda has sold out to the lowest common denominator...money. All their success has come at the expense of [censored]ting on their most loyal customers...the same ones who've stood by them through thick and thin, but have now gotten to the point of considering giving up on the series.

I agree with you Red Guardian, I don't understand what got into them to remove the stats from this series. It's such a bad idea, you remove where you should put your mind at work and balance. World of Warcraft, to many a staple for 'casual' gaming, is 10x deeper than Skyrim in character stats and I've never heard of anyone being killed by attributes, armor slots and weapon degradation.