Micro management is one of the many elements of RPG specially the traditional hardcoe rpg's. I like repairing my armor/weapons. You like to carry a weapon the last forever. That's a fps mentality.

Things like that are part of a tradition in RPGs of "reality simulation". Look at the old AD&D rule books. There were rules for just about everything in there, from Aging effects to STDs. Casual players wont like these things, but people who enjoy a more "hardcoe" RPG usually will. I guess I could use the word "oldschool" in place of "hardcoe", but whatever; when you talk of RPGs, they are pretty much interchangable terms.

People who mostly play CoD and Halo and other shooters where you just load up one session at a time are just interested in casual play. To them, the game is as "realistic" as you want, with one-shot kills and awesome graphics and blood splatter, realistic weapon models, etc. However, from an "oldschool" RPGer standpoint, there is very little reality there - nothing realistic about "respawning" every time you are killed, getting shot many times and having a medic revive or quickly heal you. You usually don't have to deal with weapon jams. I can tell you from experience, you can't go around shooting an automatic or semi-automatic weapon for an extended period of time without having to clean carbon out of the weapon and do basic weapon maintenance. For short online session, however, this is fine.

For a continuous world-style RPG, part of the fun is what happens after and before the battles - rest, healing, weapon maintenance, training etc. All these things enhance the sense (for some people) of being connected to your character and the game world they are in. In Daggerfall or Arena, you could give your weapons to a smith to have them repaired, but the repair time was actually a number of days. You also had the option of paying more gold to have it repaired faster and maybe get it back in the same day. For a cheap steel/iron sword, you're probably not gonna bother, but for your favorite magic sword, you would pay. What did you do in the mean time? Explore the town, visit other shops and temples, maybe just use an alternate weapon/armor until you get your other stuff back.

So yes, this process of "streamlining" or "dumbing down" has alot to do with the attention span of the average player. Maybe us "dinosaurs" are a minority, but my kids, nephews, and nieces etc. are being raised with the same values, so we aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

The game has been designed to draw in gamers who would normally avoid an RPG game. Oblivion was much the same as was Morrowind, which is where I came into TES world but before that I was a hard core FPS player and just thought RPG's where to labor intensive. What drew me to the series was the fighting in first person with a sword instead of a gun, and learning to "properly" RPG came afterwards. I think this is the very aim of Skyrim, to get the attention of all the COD gamers who will see the in-game combat and become interested but if it had the "proper" RPG mechanics then those FPS gamers would loose that interest upon the character creation menue. This almost happened to me with Morrowind but luckily my brother was a hard core RPGer and walked me through the class creation.
Skyrim has a Fallout feel to it and Fallout was as close to a FPS/RPG as you can get and it pulled in a lot of gamers who are not into RPG's and this is the same market Skyrim is aimed at. But to get those FPS gamers to play they need to tone down the RPG aspect of the game and make it more action orientated, it just takes some imagination on the hard-core RPGer's part to feel as though he/she is RPGing and not playing a FPS.

It's really a shame how us dirty FPS playing peasants slowly destroy the glorious RPG gaming master race's playground.

Well, I'm off playing ARMA2, where you get shot in the leg and crawl for the rest of the mission or die if your wound is not treated by the medic. Of course this is just too dumbed down for the holy RPG players who can get shot in the face by 20 arrows and still instakill a demon the size of a mountain with a dagger.

Seriously, just accept the fact that some RPG players just enjoy having more time to actually enjoy the story or get immersed in the world by not beeing hindered by micro managing every little thing. Some people have jobs after all.

Seriously, just accept the fact that some RPG players just enjoy having more time to actually enjoy the story or get immersed in the world by not beeing hindered by micro managing every little thing. Some people have jobs after all.

I'm not saying there is anything wrong with being a FPS, I AM ONE, but TES from Morrowind-Skyrim are the only RPG style games I will play and sorry to say but if TES played like Starocean or Final fantasy then I would not have picked them up. It was the fact that the combat was in first person and I had a sword and shield instead of a assault rifle that drew me in, I really didn't start to actually RP until I was shown how to create a class properly and got some pointers on some basic RP rules.

I would be one of those.

Except Skyrim needs to have an actual story.

Then I don't see why you are accusing fans of another genre to be the reason for the TES series to start "dumbing down" (which started with MW btw). TES was never really a challenge game play wise for hardcoe RPG fans anyway, or was I the only one in MW who used an echanted spear and levitated the whole time just to break the hardly existing balance completly?

Every time I read the same "boohoo CoD players made Skyrim the way it is" argument I feel like the "old school" TES fans have to compensate for seomthing and want to be viewed as something superior.


Which TES game had a good story? The sub-plots are almost always far better than the MQ and it's really more about the world itself. Beth is good at creating worlds, their writers just need to get some other drugs.

*OP snip*

Im not saying anyone is dumb but try going back and replaying morrowind then try to say skyrim isnt dumbed down.

Well, then I just don't understand why you looking at Skyrim as a "dumbing down" case. Even in Daggerfall you had to aim, something a true D&D nerd (and as former VTM player I assume I can feel like the D&D guys) would never want to touch. But I guess I can see you point, I just don't support it really.

But to be honest, I just read the "blabla damn shooters" thing too often here, so I kind of get very defensive sometimes. You have to believe me, I did not want to attack you, it's just that these forums are generally a little bit hostile towards "my" type of gamer and thus I get a bit too engaged. Sorry. ^^

It's really a shame how us dirty FPS playing peasants slowly destroy the glorious RPG gaming master race's playground.

Well, I'm off playing ARMA2, where you get shot in the leg and crawl for the rest of the mission or die if your wound is not treated by the medic. Of course this is just too dumbed down for the holy RPG players who can get shot in the face by 20 arrows and still instakill a demon the size of a mountain with a dagger.

Seriously, just accept the fact that some RPG players just enjoy having more time to actually enjoy the story or get immersed in the world by not beeing hindered by micro managing every little thing. Some people have jobs after all.

This "me me me now now now" mentality, regardless of being for better or for worse, is not going to be ignored by game developers whose goal is to sell games.

No harm done I just use COD or FPS as an anology if you look at it from a prospective view it's really us as a society who wants lots of action and want it now and it's this mind set that is causing " true RPG's" to change to action RPG's. And if I'm not mistaken, it was my generation that started this trend (80's-90's) in games. But by using my "noodle" I have managed to make Skyrim feel more immersive and to tell the truth I really don't think that Skyrim is "dumb down" any more then Oblivion both were rather easy to both play and RP.

No one is claiming that FPS games are the reason that Skyrim is the way it is. I mean, they're two distinct generas in their own right and are not really comparable.

What I will say, is that each generation of gamers is far less patient and accustomed to instant gratification. FPS games tend to involve much more action. And even then, some people can be impatient. I used to help mod a TF2 server a few years ago and we would receive tons of complaints from people and would have people leave the server because of our use of standard reapawn times. Everyone wanted instant respawn, which honestly breaks the maps.

This "me me me now now now" mentality, regardless of being for better or for worse, is not going to be ignored by game developers whose goal is to sell games.

The biggest problem however is choosing dialog. Way too many times the game selected the dialog choice I did not want even though my curser was right on top of what I wanted. Now I have to deliberately hit W and S until the selection I want is highlighted, then put my curser over it, then hold my breath and click. It will still miss sometimes, which is extremely annoying.

In short; I's an improvement over Oblivion, but compared to Morrowind, a baby could play this.

I think fans of classic rpg's (such as Baldur's Gate) are barking up the wrong tree. You can't transform a fps-action oriented rpg-series such as TES into the classic, third person, party-based strategy rpg's of Black Isle. That has never been, nor will it ever be the direction for the TES series, it's like if fans of the Paradox Entertainment grand strategy series would be outraged that Total War isn't more like Europa Universalis and cry over every grand strategy aspect that is missing from the series.

What these old TES-fans need to realize is that Daggerfall, or Morrowind, where basically the same type of games as Skyrim, with a bunch of fluffy rpg-accesories randomly taped onto them with no thought given to overall design, mechanics or gameplay. The amount of sophistication and intelligence required to look at the crosshair on your screen and swing your weapon at the right time to hit your opponent hasn't decreased, nor was it ever very high to begin with, and all those fancy little stats and character build mechanics that were behind it all before, did very little to the overall challenge of the experience.

*sigh* This again...

What does third-person perspective have to do with anything? You seem under this delusion that the isometric RPGs of the late 90s (like Baldur's Gate) somehow set the standard for classic or traditional RPGs. They really don't. Many first-person RPGs were around years before.

Does anyone else think Oblivion is but a scapegoat to shield Skyrim these days without actually objectively comparing Skyrim to Oblivion?
FFS, I don't agree. Oblivion had better NPCs and storylines (Thieves' Guild, hell yeah) and while the RPG character system itself could be easily exploited, it could also be used to limit your character as you please. I honestly don't think Skyrim has gone backwards OR forwards on character customization, but rather managed to completely change the system without actually changing a darn or getting anywhere.

I think fans of classic rpg's (such as Baldur's Gate) are barking up the wrong tree. You can't transform a fps-action oriented rpg-series such as TES into the classic, third person, party-based strategy rpg's of Black Isle. That has never been, nor will it ever be the direction for the TES series, it's like if fans of the Paradox Entertainment grand strategy series would be outraged that Total War isn't more like Europa Universalis and cry over every grand strategy aspect that is missing from the series.

What these old TES-fans need to realize is that Daggerfall, or Morrowind, where basically the same type of games as Skyrim, with a bunch of fluffy rpg-accesories randomly taped onto them with no thought given to overall design, mechanics or gameplay. The amount of sophistication and intelligence required to look at the crosshair on your screen and swing your weapon at the right time to hit your opponent hasn't decreased, nor was it ever very high to begin with, and all those fancy little stats and character build mechanics that were behind it all before, did very little to the overall challenge of the experience.

To some, the third person, top down view while the player controls an entire party of characters is a defining feature of the genera, probably from the influence of table top RPGs.

To some, the third person, top down view while the player controls an entire party of characters is a defining feature of the genera, probably from the influence of table top RPGs.