As I trove the forums listening to all the gripes of the hardcoe players of which I am one, I can't help but be saddened that this is not going to get any better any time soon. All the dumbing down of the game mechanics while at the same time concentrating on the graphics and atmosphere has ultimately accomplished Bethesda's goal. Selling the most amount of copies as possible. Cater to the casual player and the console players and you will make money. Period. Of course you will have to hear all the complaints from the loyal long time supporters that the questing is basic, the mechanics are streamlined, and the character development is lacking. But in the end, there are only so many hardcoe players out there and honestly if they can sell one copy for 60 bucks to a hardcoe player or 4 copies to the casual player, they ultimately net 180 bucks more.

From Beth's standpoint there are really only 2 options because the casual and HC players are so different.

1. make your game deep and engrossing and the casual player puts it in the XBOX and says "What am I supposed to do? This is confusing, I'll just pop CoD back in" and you lose future biz from that player
2. make your game easy and dummy proof and the hardcoe player plays it and says "ya this game is good and pretty to look at but I have so many complaints about....." but he still plays and still buys the next copy and you retain that business in the future

This won't be better with TES 6 and the days of Morrowind's complexities are gone. Its a sad day. We will have to wait for the next up and coming studio to want to hit the market with an RPG that they think is fun and difficult before they are tainted with the money grab mentality. For the record, I'm not saying BGS is wrong, cause I'm a business guy, just sad for me and my fellow RPGers.

To the OP: I think you should have posted this in the pc forums since over here everybody are a bit touchy.

You're quite right. They say in politics that a vote cast with passion counts the same as a vote cast with indifference, and the same can be said for video games - we all pay the same amount of money. I'm just really annoyed by the people who say that the game isn't being 'simplified' (always use 'simplified' or 'streamlined', and not 'dumbed down' to cut down on bickering over semantics), and freely admit that while maybe it's a necessary process for the game to survive for future installments, at least be honest about it. And throw the old Morrowind-lovers a couple bones too.

if pc players are l33t hardcoe, why is The Sims one of the most successful and popular game for pc?

Why is Solitaire the most successful PC game of all time?

I think you're right, this is the direction. I don't feel sad because of it though.

Streamlining, making the experience accessible, making the experience consistent, simplifying development procedures, designing cross-platform content. More good than bad will come from this.

boo hoo.
also solitaire svcks, you know.. as far as open ended one player rpgs go.

and furthermore, boo hoo, we learned this lesson the day oblivion came out.

You relize that they made this game because they thought they could still make a great game with what the current xbox could handle right? They pushed it to the max and its a great game, but dont expect the next big leap of an amazing TES game until the next generation of consoles come out. By then they will be able to fit all your content into the game and make it look beautiful. Plus w still haven't even seen any DLC or expansions yet for skyrim.

Still waiting on the good to come from cross platforming, because so far it's been a MASSIVE ball and chain made of fail.

Edit: For consumers, that is, I'm sure the publishers love it as it maximises potential revenue streams.

Good for some I guess. More TES games that get progressively more like everything else on the market.

Not good for me, nor the op I'd imagine. As he said though, I don't think we're fooling ourselves into thinking we're the majority.

Sound anolysis. Though, serving two masters is always playing with fire. The writing could very well be on the wall when TES would become not only a total console game, but also, an Xbox exclusive; provinding, of course, another great deal from Microsoft.

I'm a PC player who's been playing The Elder Scrolls since Daggerfall and Skyrim is my favorite installment so far. To each his own.

Wait, i dont need spreadsheet's to play Skyrim? winning.

Because expectation where high and the lies went rampant much where promised and very few delivered.

Even i was caught, even saying before its release the game would be shallow.

To the OP, i totally agree, as i just sayd in another thread this is the result of player demand, market behavior and monopolistic setting in RPG sandbox Market.

Unfortunatly Gothic producers lost themselves.

I don't think I will let myself get hyped about TES VI. Two disappointments in a row is too much.

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me...I won't get fooled a 3rd time. I'll love TES for what it is now. A pretty action RPG with slight RP elements.

Any company that has shareholders will do exactly precisely that. Independant developers have the luxury to push for quality, but once the soul of the company is sold (i.e. floated) it's gone.

The problem with streamlining is that companies often ignore the other half of the quote.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. With a video game there's no definition or difference between the two. What is the baseline? See what I'm saying? Ultimately you have to make a game, and it has to be an RPG. But other than those vague guidelines nothing really defines it. Unlike a car manufacture you can make things simple to use, but if you tried to make it simpler to use and cut parts you could end up in a disaster point.

Video games don't seem to follow the same principles as the rest of the world. Probably because there's no way to define a standard, and because of this the industry trend is to simplify. Now Skyrim still is pretty complex, it did simplify a lot. But it did in some ways make the game simpler too, so it did both at the same time. Folding some of the skills together but still having all of the stuff to use is making it simple to use. Removing stats but not trying to make them easier to use is making the game simpler. The two easiest examples. Video Games will always be an industry, no one tries to make a work of art as a video game. Some do, and some come really close. But so far there's just a lack of needless complexity which is a tell tale sign of art. These are just some random musings. A little depressing, but I think they should be obvious.

I doubt i'll be buying TES VI: Modern Warfare. I don't even want to play Skyrim anymore.

not to mention the success of things like farmville

gaming has become more mainstream, for better and worse
deal with it

only independent games have the artistic freedom to do what they want
but they'll never have the budget to make a game like this

We often do, we move on to other games and series. That's all we can do. Whatever offers what we like is where we go. Sometimes it's sad to say but series go mainstream, companies do that. It happens, and we move on. We deal with it, there's nothing you can do really. Other than not get attached in the first place, a lesson I learned the hard way once. But am now well aware of.

Edit
The funny thing about going mainstream though is unlike loyal fans mainstream audience can be very fickle.

Is it really that bad? What if gamesas catered to the consoles because they already know the PC community is going to mod the hell out their game to suit their taste anyways. Trying to please a PC community that can not be pleased unless they get exactly what they want seems fruitless. Unless of course you include a construction kit to allow those players to make the game do what ever it is the player wants, with a few limitations of course.

What about The Sims being popular? I don't know what you think hardcoe is. Have you seen its modding community? Nothing you can do on your consoles let me tell you.

That made me laugh, thank you

Wrong.
You make it appear as if the only possibility is to chose between two options.

That is not true. You can cater to both sides. It requires a little extra effort. But not that much. The current implementation for the PC has raised some bad blood. Negativity. Negativity associated with the game. While it could have easily been avoided.

Suppose Blizzard hired one (more) capable programmer for the PC engine. Someone who would have made the engine make a little better use of the hardware capabilities of modern videocards. And then he would have redone the User Interface. Doing a UI isn't rocket science. Any decent programmer can get something working. Now suppose we would have gotten a UI that would have made using the mouse easier, would have made keybinds easier. That would have made better use of the available space on the screen to show things ? Remember the Morrowind UI ? That was a lot better on PC. Years ago. And Bethesda still has that code lying around.

Now suppose those 2 things would have happened. What do you think the response to the game would have been ? Of course there would always been people who complain about stuff. But the two biggest gripes would have been gone. Reviews would have had nothing to complain about. And what would it have cost Bethesda ? A couple of man-months. For which you wouldn't have needed a genious programmer.

I think it was a deliberate choice by upper-management. I can't believe there was nobody working on the PC-version who had thought "we could redo this PC UI, and make it 10x better". I'm sure there have been people at Bethesda who thought that. And wanted to do it. The only explanation is that there must have been someone at the top who said: "FORBIDDEN ! You need to work on other stuff. We don't care about the PC UI. We want the PC UI to be just as clumsy as the console UI. Or even clumsier !". There is no other explanation, imho.

A missed opportunity by Bethesda.

ZING!!!!!

FYP

:bolt: