The point to repairing was RP, but I agree that it was pretty lame. I don't know how to improve it, but it's too bad that it was cut. Same with disposition. I didn't think the spellmaking system was too bad.
I was with you until this quote.

Daggerfall(Lacked in guild story though) and Morrowind.

Obliv had decent guild storylines. Skyrim has a 1 page book for guild storylines.

Hey newcomer you look like a fine person. I pronounce you guild leader.

This must be why the NPCs never notice. Factions in Skyrim probably get new leaders every week, so nobody cares.

That and Nords are easy to impress

Well, I have to say that since the RP focused guys have to imagine a lot of stuff anyway, they could imagine this too so the rest would not need this mindless chore. But if it has to be implemented again, make it like Stalker CoP: Repairing is just possible in a safe hub, i.e. in TES universe in a town where a blacksmith lives. Everything else does not make sense, or how does one repair broken steel (FO3 lol xD) with a hammer in the middle of some cave?

Daggerfall and MW had an interesting world (I still ahte MW's art style but that is purely subjective), but the story? Ok, Daggerfall was quite cool with Numidium and the Dragon Break, which was not part of the game, broke the story for me. Morrwind on the other hand...
"Get off that ship you totally unimportant person!"
"Do tedious repeticious stuff for me."
"Oops, you may fit into some old prophecy, how random and totally not connected to you release from prison."
"Since you are some kind of special guy now, how about more tedious tasks which any random mercenary could do?"
"Oh hello, you are the chosen one. Please prove this by more repeticious crap."
"Hey chosen one, go fight the evil dark lord in the volcano fortress who stole his power from a dead god. But before you do that, how about more filler quests?"

Nope, sorry, MW has a special setting, but the story is RPG standard. You are the chosen one, go there, kill this, whoopdidoo you are our hero. Now bring be 10 goblin heads. Skyrim has the same tone to it, but at least everybody accepts you as the prophecy guy and you don't have to do hundreds of fetch quests just to prove it.

Oblivion's faction quests were sometimes good. DB was kind of cool and TG reminded me somehow of some old tale I always forget the name of. Mage's Guild? Well, Mannimarco was obviously a yellow elf. And I have to admit I like the faction quests in Skyrim just because I don't have to spend a whole week on them, but that's just my preference.

Beth is really good in creating a cool setting. MW had the alien like insectoid thing going on (which I really hated), Oblivion was bizarro middle-earth and Skyrim has this norse saga feeling. But the stories are mostly pretty standard, the setting just allows for some tweaks like Vivec or Deviath Fyr.

You can't really dumb down something that's already dumb. None of the TES games were even remotely complex or challenging. Hell, even World of Warcraft, which is played by millions, and hence probably has more than a few morons playing it, has gameplay several orders of magnitude more complex than anything Bethesda has ever done. There are whole sites dedicated to researching ways to optimize class performance, even sophisticated programs that model the game's environment to better predict the effect of certain changes to one's build / gear, as well as addons that log every single action in a group down to the millisecond for later anolysis. Anyone that claims Daggerfall or Morrowind were complex simply haven't played enough games, or played them very casually.

The great thing about TES has always been primarily the exploration, and the lore. They went through great pains in Skyrim to make the dungeons not feel like copy / paste jobs which was probably the #1 complaint on their list, and yet the haters very rarely acknowledge that. I'd much rather have varied dungeons than a bit more 'complexity' which traditionally has only really been a layer of quirkiness and poorly thought-out features.

Do I think Skyrim is perfect? Nope, not at all. But it definitely improved on TES's core feature -- exploration -- and for that alone I'm extremely glad. Hoping DLC will focus more on lore (falmer, forsworn, thalmor), which is the series' second defining feature.

When did RP became synonymous with numbercrunching?

Here's an example of an early RPG in "3D":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxNNp2Y6YTM

Dungeon Master came out in 1987. In essence it's not very different from Skyrim dungeon crawling. Just that you have (up to) four characters instead of one. All combat is in real time.

I disagree about "clipping there nuts"(I assume you mean there core mechanics) , there core mechanics have always been "freedom of choice" not "Over complicated stats", I personally loved how they streamlined a good deal, they did not "dumb" down it.

You left out daggerfall's political intrigue.

Most stories have a chosen one theme. That doesn't make them bad.


Completely leaving out the implications that the tribunal murdered your previous incarnation to become gods. Your ability to kill them, steal the tools and defeat Ur yourself instead. Or that you aren't necessarily Nerevar Incarnate and Azura saw a chance to use you in a vengeance plot against the Tribunal.

Caius knows you're supposed to be fulfilling the nerevarine prophecies the very moment you give him the package(The code was http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Package_for_Caius_Cosades/Decoded).
Your brief summary is pretty incorrect

"You'll be serving the blades. Make sure you're fit for duty, fit in with the world before you come back here."
"My orders regard the nerevarine prophecy, gather info about this prophecy."
"Find the dissidents and whatever they might know about the prophecy."
"Rumors of a sixth house base, find it and destroy it."
"Crap, you've got corprus. Divayth is your best chance. Good luck."
"There's unrest in Cyrodiil, I'm promoting you to Operative and leaving you in command of the blades interest in Vvardenfall. Finish the orders. Ensure this prophecy is fulfilled."
"Careful, outlander. Nerevarine prohecy discussion is dangerous around tribunal cities. I suggest you visit the Ashlanders for more info on the prophecy."
"Outlander, we have the prophecy here, it appears you have already fulfilled several of them. You may indeed be the Nerevarine."
-fulfill rest of prophecy or fail to fulfill rest of prophecy-
"Outlander, I've received word that Vivec wishes to speak with you, he has called off the Ordinator hunts." or "Outlander, though you haven't fulfilled all the prophecies, you're our best hope. Vivec wishes to see you"
-plans for red mountain assault, etc-
"Come Nerevar, friend or traitor. Come."
Defeat a second numidium, destabalize an entire culture, set into motion events that completely devastate the dunmer as a whole.

You don't have to listen to any of them. You can meet with Ur any time you like. Without the tools you won't be able to defeat him though. You can tell them all to bugger off and it won't feel unnatural(Seriously, daedra invasions and dragon attacks are a bit harder to ignore)


You did know that you don't have to do the 4th and 5th trial right? Or that you could kill vivec, steal wraithguard and seek advice from Yagrum instead?

Yes, I do know all the shortcuts to the end game, and it's nice to have them. But if you want to be the Nerevarine, let's just assume that, you should do the MQ properly or else it just feels like you (the player) did it and not you char because he/she shouldn't know anything about this until Caius tels him/her. Sure you can skip the whole MQ business and go nuts in Vvardenfell, but you can do that in OB and SK too, so nothing special for MW. The dragons only appear if you are willing to do the MQ in SK and the portals in OB only open after Kvatch, so it's basically the same. If you don't do the MQ, Cyrodiil just lost the emperor without knowing why and in Skyrim there are just some rumors about dragons.

My problem with the story of MW is the same as in Skyrim, it's just the good ol' chosen one tale. You're not the first hero to get a curse and has to cure it, you're not the first hero to kill some traitorous gods and you're definitly not the first one who has to prove his worth. I don't see why MW's story should be so imaginitive while Skyrim's and Oblivion's are so bad. They all have the same problem, at least in OB you're not really the chosen one, more the unlucky bastard who was in the wrong cell. MW's story is longer because of more fetch quests.

TES is always about the lore and exploration. The backstories of the MQs are always way cooler than the plot itself.

"You are the one from my dreams! Take this amulet which you cannot wear or remove. You must deliver it IMMEDIATELY"
"HOLY CRAP DRAGONS DESTROYING CITIES GET TO WHITERUN AND WARN THE JARL"
"You look green adventurer. Go do something else for a while."

One of those three lends itself to believability should you decide not to do the main quest.


You seem to have skipped over the whole Azura's manipulating you, or Vivec killing you aspects. Not everyone loves you the moment they set eyes upon you. Do you recall many heroes overcoming the adversary by completely dooming the people who have been waiting for him to save them?

Indeed. And IMO Thieves Guild has the best questline in Skyrim too.

Hmm, maybe the devs would be thieves if they weren't making games? Keep buying them or they come and rob you blind

It's dumbed down alright, compared to previous TES. But TES has never been truly complex compared to even older titles (like Realms of Arkania). I really don't understand how people can say that less complex is better, in order to attract more people. The complexity comes from attempting to model realism usually (see tabletop rule books), and if someone wants to "powerplay" by these numbers they are free to do so. Personally I think it severely limits the roleplaying as an experience though.

Repetitiveness only becomes tedious if you are led to think it is something you have to do to make due. Let's take those hammers: In Oblivion weapons became highly ineffective unless you kept them tip top, and easy access to hammers made you spend them like crazy, causing a repetitive system. A "good system" (imo of course) would be if you could do simple maintenance in the field using simple tools, and restore from degradation only at smiths. Call it sharpening of blade (using whetstone) vs restore from corrosion (for an item, this becomes part of the "three split bar system", operating in permanent damages that cannot easily be fixed anywhere and temporary damages which tends to be easy and/or regenerative and accessible everywhere but rarely "fatal"). This expands to all stats. But...

This comes with a problem - the number of data to save expands exponentially, and becomes heavier to compute. I don't think we lack the computing power on either PC or consoles, but haven't data tracking (save game sizes) been an issue already with these "dumbed down mechanics"?

I'm not supporting dumbing down, and I don't think Beth is incapable of writing the code. I actually think it boils down to (at least wrt complexity of systems) database and table management (which is pretty much all there is to RPG mechanics when you exclude gfx) growing too complex and save files. Don't neglect the fact that when some things go missing, something new comes in. There are many systems we'd take for granted now that we couldn't live without.

I do hate the dumbing down, but I also think there is more to it than typically meets the eyes around here.

I still don't have to do the quests, even if Cpt. Piccard or Ralof tell me to do it immediatly. Maybe my char just doesn't care and keeps on jumping on top of rooftops for the rest of his life. I don't see why these lines should ruin the freedom of the games.

Nope, I didn't miss it, it's just the same as always. A god is using me, the guy from the prophecy, as a tool? Holy donuts what a surprise! Maybe I just read too much fantasy stuff already, which is definitly the case, but I still don't see why MW's story is so much better then those of its successors. At least Daggerfall had conflicting political porties and went a little bit in the direction of A Song of Ice and Fire, but all the others really didn't do much story wise for me. The backstory was always pretty cool, like the Vivec probably killing Nerevar thing you said, or Alduin already eating other worlds, Dagon probably beeing the god of destruction because of a curse. But story/plot is for me what you experience through the game, I can't really remember getting poked by Vivec myself during my playthrough.

Then I suppose we'll have to disagree. I think a story, even a cliched one, can still be good if told well.

You know several times I just dropped the letter on the steps in front of the door and never went in. Never became a Blade.

In Skyrim I have retired several characters who never did the main quest. Well I say that but I did take them through Act 1 just for the shouts and so Dragons would appear. Incredible how boring Skyrim is without dragons flying around.

I actually do agree on that, I just don't get why MW's copy paste scheme is good and its successors same plot building structure is bad at the same time.

Arma 2 is the only fps game that I respect. It's actually more of a military simulator than a typical fps. Great game done by a indy company. Can't wait for Arma 3.

Compared to oblivion, skyrim is definetly dumbed down.

Looks like Mass Effect joined the mass market dumb down of games but at least Elder scrolls has difference buttons than space to run, space to jump, space to cover, space to come out of cover, automatic jump.

I don't know if "dumbing down" or "hand holding" are exactly the right words.

But three have been a lot of little things that have been simplified. Some of them I think are good. No need for classes and complex attributes. The leveling system in both Oblivion and Morrowind (and they were basically the same) seemed very contrived.

But there are also a lot of "simplifications" that seem to have been made just to make the game easier. For example, armor not degrading, potions and spells always succeeding, you can always harvest every plant (vs a probability in early games), you don't need to find good alchemy equipment, etc.

And quest markers seem to be necessary because with the "radiant quests" the target location changes so there isn't a verbal cue as to where to go. Consequently you need to you quest markers and arrows.

The red dots for enemies, in particular are strange and don't really have much of a real world anolog. I could see that with detect life magic, but just any body can now see red dots but only if they are hostile and trying to find your character. When your character goes "hidden" then they go away. There is no rational explanation. They seem to have come from Fallout 3, but at least then it was tied to a perception attribute.

There are certainly some improvements in Skyrim over other games. And maybe "dumbed down" and "hand holding" are the wrong words. But there is a bunch of stuff that was simplified, and not everything that was simplified makes immersion sense. In my opinion.


I agree, with this and much of the rest of the quoted post.

I don't want the game "simplified" because game developers think people are dumb and might not play their game if it's too hard. Auto aim in games is a cheat already and next, games will end up like interactive movies and they are party like that now.

I enjoyed Dragon's Lair back in the 80s but I don't wait such games to be like it.

Whoah, there, buddy. My values are just fine, thanks. Don't try to judge me based on your perception of what you think my gaming habits or whatever are. You will fail because you have no idea what my work, family life or gaming habits are. Perhaps my work allows me a little more time for my hobbies than yours? Perhaps I don't play games as much as you think. Who knows? Not you.

Anyway, I was talking about values as in teaching kids to appreciate putting a little effort into something to get a result rather than looking for that quick dopamine rush that so many games these days seem to aspire too.

I know what you are saying about trying to play games after putting your son to bed. I was in much the same boat for a long time. He stayed up later and later knowing that I would still be up but I had to set a bedtime for him that would give him enough sleep for school the next day. My son plays his own games (including Skyrim, Oblivion and Morrowind), sometimes he plays with friends. Sometimes we play games (like Minecraft) together. Sometimes we are just talking for hours. Lately he is playing more guitar, sometimes showing me something he just learned or getting me to show him some technique.

So anyway. No, the last thing my values need is micromanagement. I prefer to play it by ear like most parents. (and I still like my RPGs more complex)

I'm reminded of games like Dungeon Hack, Eye of the Beholder and Stonekeep. Great first person RPGs.

I'm of the opinion that repairing armor was removed in favor of improving armor, which I think is a good idea. My philosophy of game design is this: I want to be rewarded for taking actions; I don't want to be punished for not taking actions.

I feel a sense of accomplishment when I upgrade armor that frankly I never felt when I repaired armor. Repairing armor just felt like "busywork" to me. But, to some extent, I have at least the illusion of putting my "stamp" on a piece of gear when I improve it. I like that. There was not even the illusion of putting my stamp on gear when I was merely repairing it.

I've mentioned this in other threads but I'll say it again here: I think a system of limited degradation could have been applied in Skyrim. The upgrades we apply to weapons and armor could degrade over time, but not the items themselves. So, over time, the item would degrade back to its base, un-upgraded stat, requiring a fresh upgrade to re-apply the improvement. I think that would have been a decent compromise.

Item degradation just does not fit easily into Bethesda's new approach of having the character do as much as possible in-game rather than having the player do the same thing in a menu. If an item degraded completely, as in previous titles, the character might be stuck in a dungeon with a broken weapon or armor and no means to fix it. In order to accommodate degradation into Skyrim's approach one would need to place at least one crafting station in every dungeon and in every exterior cell in Skyrim. That would look extremely odd and be extremely un-immersive.