excuse me? other then the lack of light sources like torches or lanterns and candles decorating is easy it just requires picking things up and sometimes bumping them into objects to get them at the desired angle and then dropping them. and then saving to prevent them from spawning at the location that you dropped them due to a glitch and most of all patience and or stubbornness. also i didnt see any weapon display racks in morrowind. granted in some aspects decorating was easier in morrowind you didnt have to worry about knowing anything over. and there where the options of various light sources of many colors. so despite what you say which i suspect was brought on for lack of patience and determination to get your home just how you want it. decoration is very much possible in this game.

Morrowind also rewarded you for swimming against obstacles, for bunnyhoping, for taking a stack of silverware to a merchant and haggle over the price of each piece, for alternating between insulting and sweettalking to people, for standing under a bridge with the jump button pressed...though it did take a bit of 'thinking' to figure these things out (or searching online), it's not exactly the kind of thinking and strategy I am looking for in a complex rpg.

I don't care for too much mundane complexities (like repairs.. I guess it's ok, but I don't need it), but I hate how the questlines just center on beating the crap out of things and there isn't much complexity in the dialogue. Funnily, the game seems to make fun of itself about this too.

First, let's keep it civil here. No need to call people who disagree with your point of view slow-minded.

On topic: Morrowind doesn't trick anybody into thinking anything. It only makes sense that lower-tiered equipment would be much more common than end-game quality artifacts. In Morrowind there were maybe three instances of any one piece of Daedric equipment within the game and various artifacts scattered about the world. When you found even a single piece, you felt like you'd accomplished something because the acquisition usually involved extensive adventuring into the various nooks and crannies of Vvardenfell and a nasty scrap or two along the way. Not only was there a sense of accomplishment that came with each item, but finding an artifact like Eleidon's Ward or the Dragonbone Cuirass or Chrysamere truly made a difference in your game; adventure actually served a purpose. Now all you have to do is grind iron daggers for half an hour, and you can pump out equipment better than anything you could possibly find through adventuring.

You forward the idea that the handful of multi-tiered quests in Skyrim make up for this deficiency and lead to great items, but I can only think of the Gauldur quests and the Red Eagle quests that fall under this category -- and Red Eagle's Bane is, for lack of a better (uncensored) term, a piece of crap.

As you say yourself: Even when you find a decent or unique item through adventuring, it doesn't match up favorably with the generic items you can buy for a few hundred coins. My character is now level 39 with level 60 smithing and over a hundred hours in him, and nothing I've found has yet surpassed my unenchanted Skyforge steel blades. Out of all the quests I've done, the only items of interest that I've acquired are Mehrune's Razor, Dawnbreaker, and Spellbreaker, and only the last is of any real value to me because of its unique enchantment (I feel the need to clarify here the fact that these are not the only unique items I've acquired; they are just the few that I feel worth mentioning). Everything else gets tossed into my chest in Breezehome.

You claimed that we "slow-minded" have been tricked into thinking that artifacts in Morrowind were great by the glut of generic items available through merchants and off enemies. It seems that Skyrim has solved for that problem by providing us with no useful artifacts at all, hidden or otherwise.

I have turned off the quest markers and compass. I'm getting along fine. If the place is added to your map, you just need to find your way there, and that truly isn't difficult.

If the place isn't added to your map, you just have to hit m when reading the journal entry, and it shows you the exact location of the ruin. This still involves quite a bit of exploration, as often you have to circle around a mountain or attempt to go through a mountain pass to find exactly where it is you are supposed to go.

As you don't have map markers on your compass, it truly is an exploratory and rewarding experience.

Generally you can find what you need to find where you expect to find it. Occasionally I've had to use the local map because I've missed a side passage or the object has glitched through a ceiling.

It is an entirely possible and indeed, fun, playstyle

I fixed that for you.

I want this:
[img]http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120124130248/elderscrolls/images/thumb/5/54/Skyrim_Treasure_Map_I.png/182px-Skyrim_Treasure_Map_I.png[/img]

Not a map marker on my magical 3D Map that always keeps track of my own and every other position with 100% accuracy.

That just removes the arrow and replaces it with a magic line. Both do the same job, only one requires you to press a button more often. Dungeons/ruins/caves all tend to be linear in nature, so even forfeiting the arrow in those circumstances is pretty pointless.

Lol, OT but I have a friend who couldn't get into Skyrim because it was "too difficult"

The game is dumbed down too much. Unfortunately it`s unlikley to get better since this game was so `successful`. Much like MCDonald`s is so incredibly successful even though it doesn`t fill you with much goodness at all. It just feels like it has.

What a lot people on here seem to think is that this forum is an exact representation of Skyrim's playerbase, which it is not. We are perhaps 1%, probably a much smaller percentage even, and pretty hardcoe at that. Even though I like Skyrim as it is, I wouldn't mind more customization or a little more challenge every now and then, but remember that the gross of the players probably doesn't want that. The biggest part of the playerbase is casual, and they just want to do some quests, fetch some mead, slay a dragon, and that's that. Really, they are not looking for extremely deep quests and all. And since this big part makes up most of Bethesda's income, Bethesda will stick to their current plans of operating, and will keep the game 'dumbed down', as people here like to call it. There is perhaps 5% of the players that really want to see more depth, and it's just not worth it to make a game for them.

Gaming has always revolved around money, but now it's more 'mainstream', it is doing so more than ever, and this isn't going to change. It svcks, but we'll have to deal with it.

I remember the days when "challenge" wasn't a dirty word and failing was an option Before playing games became "Gaming" But as i've said, as long as Beth keeps publishing the Creation Kit i'll keep buying their games at full price. No matter whet they take out, the modding community will put it back in

"Dumbed down too much"? Not in my opinion. It has a lack of depth, but that i see as a separate issue. That issue being that Beth focused too much on the world, and not enough to the things you can do in it.

not to mention that it was exactly the same in oblivion

I think it is dumbed down though just not in that way. I don't mind quest markers or not having to think that hard to play the game. I'm not an elitist, I am more than happy to share my game with people of low intelligence. I don't want to play something as pretentious as a game exclusively for those that are intellectually gifted or oriented. I do, however, think waaaaay too much has been removed. Here's a list of things I miss, and I do count it as dumbing down because all that means is being made simpler. But with a negative connotation.

-Acrobatics/Atheltics: The roll from acrobatics was so essential to my gameplay. Now there is no proper dodge mechanic, and you have to block or bash every attack you want to avoid. Or run away. Also now since speed isn't influenced by a skill only your height makes a difference which makes all Altmer faster than Khajiit. That doesn't make any sense. You also can't do anything while jumping anymore.
-Forced 3rd person: No more 1st person horse was an ouch moment. No 1st person werewolf was a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWaLxFIVX1s moment
-Underwater: You can't do anything or kill slaughterfish.
-Guilds: They're so short. This I think is literally dumbed down. Its like they are made for ADD kids. I have freakin ADD and they're too short for me.
-Spellcrafting: Its just not there lol. as well as spell variety
-Death animations break combat...literally. No more close calls or barely survived fights

Those are the big ones. The list of stuff I think was improved upon is way bigger though. Waaaaay bigger. I just think they forgot about some really important [censored].

Morrowind has dumbed-down aspects of its own relative to the later games. One of these is the scratch-off map. You can easily look at the map and see where you haven't been before, because those areas are grayed out. Do we really need to be told where we haven't been before?

Removing features that didn't serve a real purpose, or adapting things to the new combat/AI system in Skyrim does not qualify as dumbing down. If you don't like it, just say that. Don't make it about some universal concept of catering to stupid people.

-Many people hated Athletics/Acrobatics, because they were basically just leveling-sinks.
-How on earth is this dumbing things down? It's just a different perspective. Again, if you don't like it, fine, but please get off your (3rd-person-only-please) high horse.
-Because it always made sense that you could swing a giant sword underwater just as fast as on land. This would be the opposite of dumbing down.
-I loathe this complaint. The guilds aren't really much shorter than Oblivion, each individual quest is much, much longer. There are no guild quests which consist of running next door for the lazy Arch-Mage.
-Please stop. The dead horse can't take much more of this.
-Kill cams don't always happen, and they only happen when you are already going to die. The game doesn't initiate a kill animation unless the next blow is actually going to kill you. And I have plenty of fights that I escape by the skin of my teeth.

Again, if you don't like features, that's fine. Just stop placing everything you don't like under the umbrella term "dumbing down". You are not automatically smarter than people who like these features.

That is the ONLY reason I still buy their games.

They cancel modding and I cancel my pay to them!

It's quite fascinating how people who consider themselves 'smart' for having wasted 10000 hours on a crappy game like Morrowind, can sit and say that 'casuals', who in the meantime pursued an education and career, made friends and started a family, have low intelligence and are generally too dumb to understand a game...

http://sourceforge.net/projects/morrgraphext/

That should help. There are a ton of mods out there to make it what you want, or at least closer to something modern.

Only one people blamed the casuals. On the contrary we also got a casual testifying that he would like the game to become more complex again, as long as it's not just too complex for his gaming style.
Personally I just fail to see how making a game casual-friendly (i.e. compatible with 30mins sessions) has anything to see with oversimplifying it (i.e. killing exploration with "go there" arrows) : even if the casual gamer spend 30mins trying to find a place, meanwhile he will have visited a cave, stumbled upon a monument and such, so his session won't be wasted and unpleasant. Casual-friendly and dumbed down are just two different things, it may be related sometimes in some games (especially time-intensive and challenging ones like MMO) but not here. Besides a game like Elder Scrolls is large enough that you can provide different content levels (from an easy and linear main quest to the most eluding optional quests).

This. And it didn't come across as elitist at all.

I agree, I have always contended that this myth about the casual gamer is completely false and absurd. Everyone enjoys a bit of challenge, a good story and well-designed mechanics and that there is no need to 'dumb down' a game to give it mass appeal. Of course it is entirely different if you look at Wii-gamers, smartphone-gamers or facebook-gamers, but a single-player action rpg certainly doesn't gain any more sale-appeal by making it overly simplified and 'dumbed down'.

I think Skyrim is pretty dumbed down and I despise that term.

I did not do anything you just said repeatedly. You think Skyrim is complex, is that right. You do not have to worry about armor degradation because your armor is now invincible. The magic system is basically like this buy a spell use it until there is a more powerful version then you use that next. They removed several useful spells they removed spell creation as well. In Skyrim there are only a few weapon choices. In Skyrim there is no reputation at all you can murder a guild member and you do not get kicked out of a guild. All the quest lines are short, oh so short. Skyrim is my idea of a dumbed down RPG.

For me, Skyrim is the most beautifully design TES game. Unfortunately, it is the most shallow game in TES. Thank God I've the pc version, I'm downloading much needed gameplay immersion mods.

To be fair... You did not have to worry about armor degradation in Fallout either. Personally I don't equate equipment failure with RPG complexity ~though it can be a nice touch if done well;
(or be a real pain if it's not done well).