I really don't understand this "watered down" arguement. Do you really think that as technology increases, content will decrease? That makes no sense.

THE FACT IS GENRES ARE MIXING. RPG CAN BE FOUND ANYWHERE.

ignore the term RPG for a moment, since like you said it can be found anywhere. lets focus on "content" and "options" has that decreased overall? put aside the half thought Crafting (imo) and manual perks. the Options and content has indeed decreased, I didn't even think that was possible after Oblivion seriously. from the params I've set, do you agree? yes? no?

I ask how many hours because at 150 I still held out hope for Skyrim.

I'm old and slow, you see. I was not one of those who trashed Bethesda (and am not now) because the game needed patching. These games almost always need patching. NO one else in the industry makes a world as huge, or very very few, and at this stage in the art, we can expect patches for the next 20 years. Anyway, I'm not one who is lightening fast and can sum up the experience in 150 hours. I needed time. Believe me, there are tasks in this game that many of you younger people do without blinking an eye that takes me some study. I took my time with Skyrim. I even ordered the sound track for it- love Soule.

But after the second character, and another 240 hours, I knew the game did not have the foundation as earlier ES's- for me, it is not repeatable. May you play the same three characters to your heart's content if you feel otherwise.

Played Skyrim for a few days when it was released, completed almost all of its content (side quests. exploring and all) and put it on my self where it now collects dust.
This did not happen with Daggerfall, Morrowind or even Oblivion, which i played for months and kept replaying them over and over

That's really all that needs to be said. The fact that it wasn't the game I and (some? many?) others hoped they'd make doesn't matter. If companies do better with these modern games than they did with the older ones, it's considered a success.

"...This is the game the devs wanted to make..." [repeated for emphasis]

I disagree that they dumbed it down for sales it was going to sell epic regardless. I'm not sure why they took out some of the RPG depth but it couldn't have been for sales. There is still alot of RPG depth here but the Perk system needs to be removed forever. It could be as simple as they wanted it to be different from Oblivion .

How are you guys so sure? can that conclusion really be made at how short the breath of the guilds are in the game? or the ankle deep interactions across the land? can you really come to that conclusion? how sure are they themselves when they've alternated between "we want t make a game for a wider audience" and "we want to make a game we like to play" ? I remember a poster here last year who stated in the time they've worked on Skyrim they probably never want to play it again

What's a dev?

I think Bethesda knew people who missed the depth and repeat play would still tag along,and they would capture more market from those who did not care or percieve any lacking.

The game is, at first play, breathtaking. It takes a while to realize you will not be spending a while there. You're a tourist. Exhibit over.

Ho god go after RPG definition....
And YES the more technology advance, the game get more grafical and absurdly dumber, because it sells more to do nice grafics than smart gameplay, but is also waste tons of ressource more.
Thats also due that today kids are the main target, not advlts. The only exception to that would be simulations (real ones not fakes)

Sadly so true, what matter is selling, not how many time the customer will remain.
And to those wo seek an interesting game, program it yourself, SDT is here for that.

(Disclaimer: the below rant only refers to gameplay and graphics. Not story nor questline.)

Vanilla Oblivion gameplay is basically unplayable with its silly leveling system and cartoonish huge item interface which looks like windows 97. I can go on and on about leveling scaling enemies and artifacts but I will spare you.

Vanilla Morrowind is a graphical turd by today's standard which my iPhone games can outdo. Combat is lulz and at alchemy loop is so easy that one wonders if they actually test these things.

And yet they were great games. Why? They were great because of DLCs and mods. People tend to forget Skyrim is only a baby, a 2 month old baby those fan base is so huge that, even without a construction set, there are already thousands of mods for download.

Vanilla Skyrim gameplay is far better than the other two. Give it one year. It will surpass the best modded version of oblivion or morrowind.

(Storywise winner is Morrowind. Questwise winner is Oblivion. Gameplay, art, graphics, sounds, music, combat goes to Skyrim)

Most features are weak and unfinished, and the world is shallow because of one name:
XBOX
XBOX= Disc limitation = lesser code = lesser quality.

That doesn t explain why then the PC version is as crappy as the XBOX.

This sort of tells me a lot about the rather "lamentations" tone of your post (not meant to be insulting.) I have been gaming a long time, across a range of genres, though RPGs tend to be my favorite. But I have no problem taking a look from a perspective that time has progressed, changed and moved on. Bethesda's games are each of their time. It does not diminish them in my memory but it also does detract from my enjoying a new game.

The market place has changed dramatically along with the technology and the appeal of games. It happens. In 2002 - or prior, gaming simply was not a big piece of the pie of mass-consumer entertainment. Now it is. If you miss the older type of game companies or miss the small developer that Bethesda was when MW was released, then I urge you to support Indie gaming companies. There are a lot of them out there and a lot of interesting games to discover.

No one has said don't criticize and apparently you are not on the same forum I am -the critical posts outnumber the favorable posts more often than note. Frankly, trying to shut people down by calling them a really devoted fan or a Bethesda apologist has lately become rampant on this forum. It is a form of flaming - because it is primarily pulled out when someone who loftily decrees "This svcks because this feature is gone" "This game is dumbed down for the kiddies..." "It is not a true RPG, because of x y and z" and other similar statements made ad nauseum - which puts people on the defensive. I will be blunt here - to me, these kinds of posts are condescending, and you are in no way interested in actually having a dialog about why some people think this game is terrific. That they like it and want to excitedly talk about it is seen as a negative and too many people are quick to try and stomp that out, in the same manner that someone liking the game wants to just facepalm all over a thread like this, or one that rants about something being taken away.

Then why are you here?

On that note, let me say that Skyrim has been an utterly pleasurable gaming experience for me. Takes me back to how I felt rolling out of Seyda Neen.

Disagree... Morrowind combat had a filosoplhy and a reason behind what it was. If you can t understand it, maybe you don t understand RPG basis.

You & me both, for once a civil debate is going on. Quite a rarity.

well good thing I'm from the mindless rabble, which allows me to enjoy this game

and I did enjoy MW and even OB (which is the least favorite TES for me anyways ), but I have to say skyrim beats both games

BTW I still think MW had more in depth quests BUT it was a text based game

and text is cheaper than voice overs

I do understand it. It involves the concept of character skill vs player skill.

It is exactly the same difference between the lockpick minigame and chance-based lockpick using lockpick skill and dice rolls.

I'm not saying TES should be turned into an action game (which according to some it already is) but THAC0 is really a poor implementation in a 3D realtime game.

You have it wrong I'm not saying compare FO3 to oblivion, I'm saying compare FO3 to it's previous games. (FO1 + 2) FO3 was too much Oblivion and not enough Fallout.

yay! no more acrobatics wooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

I think Skyrim has as much replay value as Oblivion and possibly more.

Oblivion was good for a while but then it needed new mods every few months to keep it alive. Skyrim hasn't seen much in the way of mods yet because they are hoarding the editor for whatever reasons. I think with a few simple mods, Skyrim will be more replayable than Oblivion was with mods, simply because the base game is better, the engine is better and there isn't as much major work to be done to make it sweet.

I'm 275 hours in and still enjoying the game. There is so much content I still hit some new stuff here and there, and already forgot some of the content so it's almost like new yet on my 3rd character now.

There is another factor to consider that makes it not exactly fair to compare Skyrim to previous titles. When you experience something for the first time, it's epic despite obvious flaws. Say for example you had never played Morrowind or Oblivion, then Skyrim would be so epic to you that you would never dream of making this post. But since you have spent countless hours playing previous es games you have a predefined expectation so combat isn't new, spell casting isn't new, hunting isn't new, leveling up, and a million other things you take for granted are not new anymore. So there is something to be said for that first time experience that makes a game seem better than it really is.

I was a big quake fan but for some reason quake 2 svcked and the series got worse and worse with each iteration. Mainly because it was the same game over again and they didn't really do anything better than the first time. But my friends were just getting into PC games and multiplayer loved those titles, provided they were NEW to FPS. Then they wouldn't care for quake 1, because it seemed dated to them, but to me it was and is still the best FPS of all time, simply because I played it so much and it was the first one I played online. Oblivion was my first real RPG since Diablo and you can't really compare it to that since Oblivion is first person and an open world. So Oblivion was hard to beat for me but I think Skyrim did it. I think that means something.

Probably the biggest faults in Skyrim replayability is it's mostly mountains and cold areas that seem the same, and the greetings seem to be botched in that they say the same things all day every day and rarely talk to each other so its harder to get lost in the world and feel like a small part of things since they only greet the player and never have conversations with each other unless its 100% scripted.

That is where I disagree with you. In Oblivion/Skyrim, there is really only one way of doing things. Dialogue goes one way as well. In Fallout, you can do almost EVERY quest in a different way, and have different ways of talking to people. That is why I found Oblivion kind of boring, because once you've done a quest on one character, well, you've done it really. Same for Skyrim.

skyrim as a whole was a vast improvment. but it does need more depth. i feel like it will be like fallout
get game, beat it, return it
GOTY edition comes out, beat it play new content, return it.

its better then all the other crap RPGs that last 12 hours but it leads me asking, why not have just a few more of X and Y

wooo!!! yeah! perks! woooo!!!!

I'd say the remarkably short quests and linear quest options kill re-playability more then anything. Unless you purposely don't everything with one character. Not to mention the bad writing and shallow characters really leave doing quests over again tiresome. I had some many broken quests I stopped trying to explore on my own after about 40 hours of game play. I only made 3 characters to explore all the avenues the game has to offer. Imperial sword and board, Archer/thief nord, Breton Mage. THe nord joined the storm cloaks and did the thieves and assassin's guild and joined the Companions, the Imperial did the Imperial side of the civil war (Wow talk about copy paste quest/story.) The Mage is goign to Main quest completion. I could have done it all with the original mage, but decided to break from tradition in my ES gaming and make more characters. While Perks do help in making for different gameplay really it's a once your done you won't be playing again sorta game world they made.

Skyrim is the best game I've ever played; I have no significant complaints.