No matter what they add, some people only see what's missing.
No matter what problem they remove, some people only see the problem they add.

There`s a difference.
10 years ago they were passionate about making an immersive game.

Now they`re passionate about making as much money as possible.

You don't seem as boorish as the rest of the complainers, so please, take a helpful hint gratis. Singling out "the casual gamer" for this does nothing but allocate blame, and breed resentment. You should aim to get the "casual gamer" to think "hey, that's a good idea", not feel like it's somehow their fault. Because it isn't. And that gets them offside. And there are a lot more of them than there are "serious gamers". And money talks, and bullsh, well you know the rest. I'm a serious gamer, and it gets me offside, so....

We should all be exhorting Bethesda to keep stuff in the game, not to nerf stuff, or remove stuff. Giving people options should be the goal, and unfortunately, shrill voices who either dislike or simply cannot handle options have tended to drown out any sort of reasonable discussion on much of the game and its features in this forum.

Yup

Ten years ago, it wouldn't take as much resource to make a game. That's the real reason. Or do you believe you can model 50 Skyrim creatures as fast as 50 Morrowind creatures?

Of course i don't mean to insult or single out anyone. The term "casual gamers" is not that bad - anyone who has too much to do in his life, obligations, a lot of other interests etc etc does not have time/doesn't want to spend time on certain aspects of the game. You can't blame them for that, it's just that when the game itself adapts to such people, these aspects change and the ones who wanted to put time in them and enjoyed them lose something.

Some others come from other game genres and have not learned to have the patience or fully experience the game in its full potential. For example my WOW playing friend, likes the compass/radar thing and i do try to make him appreciate the joy of exploring places yourself and getting lost while discovering things which you did not imagine they were there and rp-ing etc. After some time he discovered there is whole new world of games out there called TES. As you said, we should convert these people and make them know what they are missing but this probably won't happen for the most - more likely for Bethesda to adapt to their needs.

"We should all be exhorting Bethesda to keep stuff in the game, not to nerf stuff, or remove stuff." - This, in general.

I miss all the different armour types in Morrowind. Oblivion cut them and now Skyrim has cut them even more. Bring back the pauldren and greaves.

Skyrim has 50 creatures??

I gotta' chime in here, cuz I have been away from this discussion since 'PART 1', and didn't realize
this had gone to parts 2 and 3....

Back in part 2 of this discussion papercut_ninja stated: "I still don′t see how the part where you have to step away from the story and go out and jump for 30 minutes makes a game MORE hardcoe RPG???"
(And, nothing against what you said papercut.......it was a good statement about grinding aimlessly without a goal in mind)

Well: One feature cut out is that jumping skill (athletics)....... And for me, I jumped everywhere during travelling to make it useful to climb where locations inhibited your travel. In Skyrim, this would have been extremely useful. I can't count how many times I faced a small hill in front of me that was obviously easily travelled, yet since the system is "locked" at a certain jumping height, my character now is too "stupid" to learn to train to be an athlete (athletics).....

So, since this skill was removed, it could have been imlemented into say, the stamina bar, where higher stamina would increase your jumping "height", at 200 stamina you could jump say 30 percent higher (or whatever would make you traverse terrain a bit more comfortably).

One thing for sure is: This Thread needs to stay at the top of the discussion board for one reason alone:

It gets the attention of everyone concerned about improving the game, and would make the devs "see" what is popular among the masses.

Fail troll.

Geez, do you ever get tired of mindlessly defending Skyrim?
I've seen lots of posts from you doing everything you can to defend this game, why can't you just admit that Skyrim has its flaws?
People like you are the reason Bethesda can just continue dumbing down their games. No matter how bad they get, people like you will always be there to defend them.

He has admitted to several flaws...just not the features that others call flaws, such as re-designing the attribute-skill-level system.

I agree with that view, the new skill-perk-level system is not a step back or moving the game in the direction of mindless FPS-shooters. It has just as much depth and possibilities as the old system which though it seems more flexible and varied actually did not deliver much variation or flexibility in the game.

If however you wanted to discuss the storyline or trivial nature of quests, lack of a true political faction layer (only stormcloak or imperial) then I can see the flaws. But I won′t be making the old comparison with Morrowind and Oblivion and say that they were so much better because they had flaws in those areas too, I′d rather say that it′s a shame they haven′t been able to develop this more since those games, with all the positive development they have made in other areas of the game.

Alot of stuff happens in the real world that is not seen in video games. Weapon and armor degradation just plain svcked... And i was relieved to see it finally gone and replaced by smithing. I cant count how many times my Non-armorer assassin or whomever was stuck inside an oblivion gate with 0 armor and 0 weapon health. Carrying replacements was even more annoying. Im sure in the real world anyway it would take plenty of hacking to non-flesh to even begin to nick a quality weapon anyway

It really isnt hard to carry one or two hammers for situations like that.

I liked armour degradation.
It tied me to the world, made me a part of it.
I went to see smiths to get repairs, I had to think and plan ahead when going out into the world.

It has been removed in order to make the game less RPG and more hack n slash.
No thinking, no planning required, just jump into the next fight with your amazingly superhuman weapons that never need sharpening.

Bah.

The removal of these kinds of features is why Im already done with Skyrim.
Skyrim has very little replay value, exactly because there are no mechanics to keep me busy, to specialise in, to help my roleplay.
The removal of all these features, including degradation, means Skyrim is a shallow and hollow shell of a TES game that just isnt fun anymore after a playthrough or two, three.

Fully agree...in the real world you can′t carry thirty-five hammers unhindered, no matter how strong you are. And you certainly wouldn′t be able to properly repair a damaged weapon or armor by simply bringing a bunch of hammers along? So the supposed "realism" that it adds is completely killed by the fact that what you are doing with said repair hammers and equipment is unrealistic anyway.

Nonsense.
For one, no-one carried 35 hammers around, maybe two.
And if they did, power to them, doesnt bother me.

What we now have is something less interesting and less engaging.
It doesnt really matter if its 'realistic', it matters if it adds to the game.
And of course it added more than nothing does, which is what we have now in that regard. Nothing.
Its simply silly that my sword stays sharp forever, it makes very little sense.
Furthermore, that tie to the world is gone. Like the removal of the need for sleep after Daggerfall made the games poorer, more shallow and pulled you out of the world and into a 'game', so does this.

Skyrim doesn't have major flaws and is easily the best Elder Scrolls game to date.

In your opinion, sure. To me, it's easily the worst. It lacks in a lot of departments.

Just adding more and more trivial and repetitive features doesn′t add depth to a game. That′s why bowl movements haven′t been introduced, because though it would be another "aspect" to the game that you would need to consider, no one wants to play through it. Pebbles in your boots, chafing armor pieces, yeast infections, mentruation, cold sores could all be added as "features" and I can say that it doesn′t make any sense that they are not in the game, it′s perfectly logical that these things would happen frequently...but would you want to play with them?

This is what we call overexaggerating into the ridiculous and it is a debating tactic that grinds my gears, so quit it.
Nobody is saying that.
The removal of armour degradation makes the game more shallow and hollow, because it is one less feature.
Because it is a feature that ties you to the world, puts you into the world, rather than just playing a game.

Why would you have to use perks for lockpicking/ I have lockpicking at 100, no perks, and have no problem opening a master lock, enchant something to make lockipicking 100 percent easier, and its a sinch.

that depends, if someone made a game completely from user input but viewed all that input objectively and made sound design decisions based on that input you could make an amazing game. It's not about whether player input is bad, it's about how you implement that input in a rational and sound way. and who says you have to take EVERY suggestion?

10 years ago, there weren't as many people on the net discussing how things were or weren't 10 years ago.

Well This is my view on it. As it was in OB degredation of your equipment was bad. It was more that anything annoying. However it could have been much better if they evolved it instead of axing it, as seems to be the norm for gamesas dev's. Roll it in with smithing. Smithing can be split into 2 funtions.

1: Creation

2: Maintaince

The weapon have degridation that happens faster/slower depending on what happens to it in the environment. A simple thing involving quality of weapon and it's material grqade can determine how much "extra" dmage the weapon takes. IE use your Iron sword to block that ebony one it take more than it's normal damage for blocking. The creation portion of the skill governs new item creation and upgrading to higher and finer levels of said weapon IE the fine, superior, epic and legendary. Weapons have a high and low set of base damage that gets adjusted via how much the weapon is damaged. With the low being the minimum it can get to when you have a "0" health weapon. You can even expand it further and have weapon become really broken (Liek you see broken weapons on alters of Talos in the game now.) If say you continue to use your "0" health item until it get so much "negitive" modifiers on it that it breaks or perhaps if your "0" health weapon get a critical hit / blokced when you get a critical hit, or power attack.

wheny ou maintain a weapon you'd use up an ingot and fully repair the weapon. OR alternately you could have special items used up via the maintance.

saywut? You give me cooking and stuff for roleplaying, but you take away my open lock spell and expect my mage to be there picking a lock like a thief?

Nonono.