I tend to agree with your sentiments for the reasons you stated. After having logged over 500 hours in Oblivion and a couple hundred in Morrowing and Skyrim, I love all three games but as much as I love them, I am never quiet satisfied with a new Elder Scrolls release. Oblivion was better than Morrowind in a lot of ways, but in other ways Morrowind was superior. Skyrim is better than Oblivion in many ways, but in other ways, as you point out Oblivion is better.

We have gone from how many skills in Morrowind? 28? Down to 21 in Oblivion, down to 18 in Skyrim. That is not a good trend. At that rate, they will eliminate skills entirely by Elder Scrolls VII. They have already eliminated attributes. Someday you are going to have magicka, stamina and health, and that's it because everything else just contributes to those three.

I have played a dozen different characters in Oblivion, but I cannot see myself playing more than about four in Skyrim. There is just not enough variety in Character building in Skyrim the way there was in Oblivion and Morrowind. I used to spend hours thinking of different combinations of skill sets/races/birthsigns for new characters in Oblivion. While I applaud the shift away from having to worry about "efficient" leveling and all the number crunching that entailed, I wish they could have done it in a more unique way than simply eliminating character classes and adding a perk tree.

Even a beautiful perk tree that looks like it was designed by Apple is still just a perk tree. There is nothing original about a perk tree. They have been around since the first Baldur's Gate game and probably a long time before that. I wish Bethesda could have solved the efficient leveling problem in an original way without scrapping their entire character class system. It was a really unique system and I miss it.

And that is just one of the things I miss about prior Elder Scrolls games. The list goes on, and on . . . But I still love Skyrim and will play it until I get bored with it. Time will tell how long that takes.

Wait, what?

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but I've been playing CRPGs since Ultima III came out for my C=64 back in the 80s. I remember the gold box games such as Curse of the Azure Bonds and the Temple of Elemental Evil. I remember Ultima III + IV, Bards Tale I and II, and many, many others.

Given the games that we've had post-2k, such as NWN + expansions, NWN2 + expansions, Dragon Age: Origin, and other more ARPG-ish titles such as DA2, Mass Effect 1/2, Dungeon Siege 1 and 2 (what happened to 3, OMG), and so on.

Skyrim has *by far* the most believable world, the most compelling game play, and the best graphical presentation. Granted, the actual main plot itself is a bit thin and tired in the high-fantasy world, it is what it is.

I tried to load up Oblivion and play it again, and the world just felt plastic, rigid, and plain. While one might have had better options w/r/t character building, I just couldn't get more than 15 hours in before I just hung it up and started a mage on Skyrim (3rd playthrough now, about 230 hrs total).

Just sayin'... Skyrim is a damned GEM in the pool of what is available these days. Go play a few hours of Dragon Age 2 and tell me how Skyrim compares

Not trying to justify the situation, because you're totally right - but the cost of making a game like this these days means that the game needs to appeal to a very broad audience. Most people aren't micromanaging nerd-knob turners. Sure, I enjoyed the myriad different combinations of characters that could be built in the games based on AD&D rules and in Oblivion, but if we want quality CRPGs that cost 10's of millions to produce, we're going to need to accept the fact that they need to be slightly streamlined for the average customer.

I remember the gripes about DA:O - Sure it was GOTY in 2010, but they polled many of the purchasers who didn't even make it past the first 8 hours of the game.

If they made a new Baldur's Gate 2 today with the same 2nd ed. AD&D rules but with modern 3d graphics and more depth to the world, do you think that it would be able to outsell the cost of production?

See, I REALLY do not understand comments like these. All your initial skill choices did in Morrowind and Oblivion was give you starting boots to those skills. There was still nothing preventing anyone from using as many or as little skills as they wanted, and once you started getting skills to 100 there was no difference in someone who picked one skill or the other at character creation. As far as character creation is concerned, Skyrim just removes those starting bonuses. People keep saying that they could make so many unique characters in the previous two games, but every character was the same! Other than health values and such (due to the way attributes worked), the more you leveled up the more similar everyone characters became. Skyrim offers MORE ways of making unique characters due to how you have to choose between health, mana, and stamina at level up, and the fact that there aren't enough Perk points to max everything out. The more you level in Skyrim, the more your character differs from someone else playing the game, as opposed to the inverse in Oblivion and Morrowind.

There are RPG aspects that I have found Skyrim to be wildly successful in providing and other in which it is lacking. I have three incredibly different characters, and the mechanics of playing those characters is very different. Each comes with his own self imposed limitations (no magic for this one, no sneak for that, no enchanting here, no weapons there) and all are really enjoyable.

Where it lacks - stated more than once in this thread - is the lack of variation in quest completion. No real branches in the story line. No real consequences for the player's actions. I finally have a quest with two different outcomes - kill the NPC and take the loot or let the NPC finish and see the loot (an evil artifact) destroyed. Now I know that there will be no long term ramifications of my choice, but at least there is some choice there. But there are too few quest lines like that, and none that I have seen that offer up the choices and consequences of FO3:NV.

Hmm.

Daggerfall came out in 1996, and still has an active playing community. Still has people writing tools to mod and hack the game system for tweaking and adding in features that weren't complete. Has at least 2 engine rebuild projects active. 15 years and still going.....and if one of those engine rebuild projects hits the finish line, there will be a big spurt in players who just couldn't bring themselves to deal with sprites.

Morrowind is still holding in there, as well.

Oblivion has been fading fast.

People are =already= expressing boredom with Skyrim, and considerable doubt about the replayability.

Just remember, the vocal minority are the ones who tend to stick around and keep the game out there by word of mouth. Casuals might give you a big boost initially, but then they find new bling and the longevity of any title falls back on the old timers to keep the fires lit. I daresay that in 60 days or so, a lot of the overeager cheerleaders won't even be here, as that new bling will have lured them elsewhere.

Oh. And if you look back, you will see that gamesas -does- listen to the user base, somewhat. Usually things appear in the next game than where the original clamor happened, because they have the design document done at the very least before we know about a new title. Can't run the risk of getting into an IP catfight, after all.....

I see your point. And if you play your Oblivion character untill every skill is maxed, you are correct. The only character building choices in Oblivion that really make a difference once you have maxed every skill (and assuming you have leveled "efficiently") are race and birthsign because every character can get to 100 and beyond in every skill and attribute. So, to that extent, the Skyrim Perk tree forces hard choices and you cannot create a character that can be the best at everything the way you could in Oblivion.

The difference is that in Oblivion/Morrowind, when you pick your initial major skills, you start with a significant leg up in certain skills, but because of the leveling issues, you could not just pick all the things you wanted to be good at and dump them into major skills unless you wanted a seriously gimped character at alter levels. It takes quite a bit of planning to make an Oblivion custom character class that you can roleplay in a certain role that will be good at what you want it to be good at in the early game and that will level efficiently in the attributes you need to increase to make that character strong. There is a lot more to making a good Oblivion character than you realize, and part of the fun of Oblivion is starting a new character and seeing if you made good choices in your character creation by the way the character plays in the world.

In Skyrim, all of that has been reduced to picking health, stamina or magicka on level-up and lighting up a dot on a perk tree.

Really, that seems more like the result of Oblivion's flawed enemy scaling than any strong point on its character creation. And I can't help but think it's a bit funny that you're arguing that the difficulty in making a "viable" character in Oblivion (meaning that there are lots of possible character creation options that aren't "viable" and that you need to pick the "right" options to be able to succeed) somehow encourages making new characters and experimentation

No. No no no no no. You obviously havent played Fallout enough to know what it's really about. Please actually play the games before you throw manure like this around.

OT: The majority of the times us "[censored]" complain about critisizm is when:

1.) People are complaining for the sake if complaining.

2.) People are "critisizing" without any basis whatsoever for what they are critisizing about

3.) People critisizing are doing it just to get a rise out of the fans.

That bieng said, yes, the game has problems, but what a lot of people don't realize is that it takes time to fix. Expecially with an open world game like Skyrim.

Couldn't agree more. I did make hundreds of characters in Oblivion in an attempt to find an interesting/fun combination of skills. But it was an excercise in frustration and futility. Oblivion punished you for advancing Major skills by ramping up the difficulty to the point of daedric wielding bandits. And perversely, rewarded you for selecting all or most of you favorite skills as Minor Skills or outside your predefined class. It was a terrible system whose main replay value was in creating the most counter-intuitive game breaking skill combos imaginable. I was so caught up in this "replay value" that I never finished any of the quest lines. That is not depth, that is a structural quagmire. There are aspects of Morrowind and Oblivion that I miss, but the class system isn't one of them.

I'm sorry you were frustrated with Oblivion's leveling system- you never moved the difficulty bar?

The solution to the involved leveling system was not to scrap it, but repair it. Other posters have weighed in that such a repair was more than possible. So, Bethesda gave up on the concept of a more in depth character build, and the result is boredom. There were lots of people who expressed legitimate frustration with the leveling system. ( I wasn't one of them)

I don't know if your view of Skyrim will change after you put in more hours. I realized Skyrim had no depth after playing through twice.

One person's junk is another person's treasure. I never through Oblivion's enemy level scaling was "flawed." I like world leveling cause it keeps things always challenging. The only thing I would have changed about that is to increase the stats of the bandits without increasing the quality of their gear. Seeing bandits outfitted in glass and daedric was a bit much.

Simply because a majority says they're satisfied doesn't mean the remaining numbers should give up criticisms.

I will boldly be the black sheep in any circle jerk if I think something has a flaw worth pointing out. Even if it doesn't get seen by the people who could change it, as if they would.

Human nature, it scratches the itch and it makes me feel better.



Besides, any creative team shouldn't be looking at their positive comments about their work; they should be looking for the negative ones that might match their own, because chances are, the painter is more critical of his painting than the gallery tour group.

Oh, don't get me wrong. I enjoyed the enemy scaling for the same reasons (and also disliked it for similar). But if the system forces you to build your character in a specific way or else you won't be able to keep up with the ever increasing strength of enemies then I'd consider that a flaw somewhere in the system.

You know if you need some suggestions on character builds, I could share some with you. I got a bunch of very viable characters going right now in every archtype. Like you, I have yet to finish most of the quest lines, but probably for different reasons. I like taking it slow. I have over 500, maybe over 1,000 hours in Oblivion and have yet to even begin the main quest line. But I am thinking maybe it is about time to start tackling those Oblivion gates.

And I had thought all hope was lost.

The difficulty slider is just a simple damage toggle. I used several insane realism mods to increase the difficulty by modding the NPC damage only and ramping up the AI to ludicrous levels of deviousness. This didn't fix the perverse incentives in the leveling system, but it bypassed the NPC scaling enough that I stopped caring and just played my class. By the time the modders had fixed it to my satisfaction, Skyrim was months away from launching. At that point I was bored to tears with all of the quest lines in Oblivion. Maybe it's because I never finished them that I didn't see all the varied endings, but so far the missions, stories, and mechanics of Skyrim are far more compelling to me. Each city is also filled with so many intereting and lore-based quests that I can't see ever finishing them all, but the difference between Skyrimm and Oblivion is that I actually WANT to try!

I've only gotten in about 30 hours but honestly I think Skyrim is far superior to Oblivion in many regards. Exploring in Oblivion was bland once you figured out that every area had enemies leveled to you and there was nothing in the world that you couldn't handle. Also if a place wasn't a main city or small village everything was hostile to you, I've been quite happy in Skyrim finding at least 1 mine being worked with NPCs that won't automatically try to kill you (I think this is going back to the lived in environment I loved so much in Morrowind which was completely absent in Oblivion). On that note traveling a road doesn't mean you will either 1) find non-hostile game animals or 2) someone/something that wants to kill you. I've spent plenty of time roaming roads to find non-hostile NPCs.

I think the leveling is also much improved in that you won't hurt yourself health wise by not grinding only the abilities that affect your health stat. In Skyrim I've found you are much better able to level the stat that your current situation has shown to be the most in need of leveling. Leveling skills seems much the same as it is in Morrowind and Oblivion, your "class" is just not explicit. But I think if you intended to role play you don't need an explict class to remind you who your character is. Perks are a cool thing, although I think some could have been done better (such as not having perks with several levels that significantly increase that skill's base usefulness where not putting points into that perk early can have significant negative results later on). I don't think leveling overall has been negatively hurt, just made different.

Overall I found Oblivion to be far less immersive than Skyrim so far. In Oblivion stores were only useful for selling stuff but bandits invariably had the best equipment, in Skyrim bandits rarely have the best equipment and you need to either buy or make it which I find far more immersive. In Oblivion everything outside the city walls wanted to kill you every 100-200 yards, in Skyrim you can go for a mile or more without encountering a hostile creature but still encounter plenty of NPCs and beasts.

As for quests I haven't done many but I don't think Oblivion really had significant consequences for your choices either. As I recall you could join every guild and get 100% completion, at best you'd get different comments from the NPCs but you didn't have to really pay for your actions. Knights of the Nine was the only case where you actually had some consequences for your choices and even then you could effectively erase any consequences of being in the Dark Brotherhood.

This.

Skyrim isn't perfect, but I'm seeing tons of whining here about things that really don't matter, that makes this sound like the worst game of the year. Lots of "they changed it now it svcks" kind of stuff, or "zomg I powerleveled smithing, crafted Dragon armor at lvl 15, and now it's too easy!!! HOW DO I IMPROVE FROM HERE?! WTF BETH?!"

As for the "mainstreaming" of the series...this is easily the most immersive game I've ever played. Ever. I could care less about whether or not "Acrobatics" is gone, especially if the time that would have went into developing that aspect of the game went towards adding more detail to the world and making things more immersive.

There are very legitimate issues with the game, mostly QC issues, let's focus on those. Things like the fact that I can't use "Aura Whisper" without wondering whether my character will get Draugr eyes, or I can't wear the Arch-Mages robes with my Thief's Guild boots because I'll have invisible knees, or the issues that PS3 players are having with the game, etc. And yeah there are issues with things that aren't bugs, like the fact that Smithing is useless without blowing a bunch of perks on that tree(having most perks be "you can craft armor" screams lazy game design to me), but the point is let's see the forest for the trees here and not nitpick on pointless little things. Big picture stuff, people.

I am sorry OP, but I really can’t understand your point of view. I respect your opinion of course, but I could never share it.

Having been deeply involved in the franchise since Morrowind, I share this common sense of nostalgia. When I created my Sgaileach Estate mod I spent countless hours, weeks, MONTHS writing lighting scripts and adding secret passages, making sure my interior decorating was on par with the talented artists at Bethesda, incorporating clocks, an enchanted lute that played my favorite classical pieces at the time... I felt I literally LIVED in that world! So much I have come back several times to add more, as my talents improved, building my own models and textures, putting in new features.

I still load Morrowind from time to time just to revisit my old haunts. To me my own efforts in modding represented the true spirit of the "virtual homesteading" concept. The only thing better would be the ability to invite others to my home, and be able to chat with them while they visited! Already we have modders working on adding exactly such functionality to Skyrim.

I traveled the length and bredth of that land, from Balmora to Tamriel Rebuilt. I saw it all, and loved every moment of it. The lore, the “mood,” the entire experience was unlike anything I had experienced in a virtual world, and I’d been gaming for a long time before that, since the days of Zelda and Final Fantasy 1 for NES, of Atari 2600 and the Adam!

With Oblivion my focus shifted more to scripting, and re-writing conjuration with my Master Summon mod to enable more robust companions who could be told what to attack, or be given commands to wait and patrol an area... I traveled the plains of the Daedric Princes, ventured into the land of dreams, explored every corner of Cyrodiil and helped save an Empire from certain destruction. Modding only got better, with so much content even my portable tent couldn’t store it all! =P

With Skyrim I am absolutely overwhelmed. I’m a 32 year old man, and I was literally on the verge of tears the first time I wandered up to Roften. I've waited years for something like this. It truly is that awe inspiring. Ascending the 7000 steps to High Hrothgar, I got the feeling of true reverence, of something so unique and so beautiful. I have a sincere spiritual affinity for this game. In the immortal words of Robert Heinlein, Bethesda, Thou Art God!

But to address your concerns, I feel none of this missing depth you speak of. Just passing through cities and random encounters, people all have something to say. There are unique conversations and background stories literally playing out before your eyes. No previous Elder Scrolls game had this much content, this much unique dialogue and interesting side stories.

Dungeons are engaging, with traps and puzzles to solve that actually require some thinking, and engage you in the plot. Many times there are bands of adventurers outside with a story to tell who will recruit you to their aid, and join you on large-scale raids. Mines offer unique role playing opportunities and again, unique character interactions often specific to the region and materials being plumbed. Random locations have their own backstories and quests. There is always something happening.

Everything to me feels rich and full, more so than anything I have experienced in over 20 years of gaming. I could never play Morrowind or Oblivion as long as I have Skyrim without running out of things to do or feeling I was repeating myself, and I still feel like I've only scratched the surface of its potential.

Not only is there more content but the lore and dialogue itself is more interesting. Talking to an aspiring alchemist who remarks on the fragility of life, our “imperfect machines,” and how if a single part fails, life fails... Tales of corruption and greed and people trying to live a simple life in a world torn apart by civil war. The entire scope is just so much MORE.

The few specific examples like the Companions and Mages guild, I have targeted for my own characters, fully voice acted by yours truly (on a telefunken mic no less!), with quests, background stories, companion opportunities, unique items (and spells). It is, after all, a game built for modders. So, where major attractions are seen wanting, it is only an opportunity for those who would accept the challenge to subtly work their way into the story!

Expect great things, for Skyrim is truly a masterpiece!

So much truth in there...

Yea and it's funny how some people claim that the complainers are only a small minority while at the same time they are shocked about the terrible ruckus the "complainers" are causing and the great amount of critical posts in the forums.

I can only conclude the complainers haven't actually played the game. There is also the modern epidemic of ADD to consider.

I truly feel for any not getting the experience I have had out of this.

Because the vast majority of people playing the game posts here, right?

So you assume that everyone not posting here is perfectly content?
The forum is a reflection of the people playing. It may not be 100% accurate but it has credence.
3/3 of people i know in real life, playing Skyrim, do have complaints, they just don't have time or don't bother posting about these in forums.