Rational advlts can acknowledge that the simplification of Elder Scrolls is just a symptom of the unfortunate reality of business, and that apportioning blame to Bethesda and Zenimax is unwarranted.

ALL businesses strive to maximise financial return - you can't reasonably begrudge Bethesda for behaving like any company would do in their position. The problem with commercial success it it tends to stunt creative growth, and Bethesda are not immune to such a phenomenon. The bigger the market, the more "mass appeal" the product must have.

So be upset that the intellectual depth of this series has waned, but rationally concede its inevitability. Decrying it (though sometimes a satisfying outlet) is ultimately pointless. The tragic reality is that intelligent, maths-and-literature classic RPG players like you and I are a curious relic that barely registers on the market demographic.

It took Morrowind two years to reach 1.4 million sales. Skyrim achieved nearly three times that amount - in two DAYS. The intellectual devolution (and consequent growth of mass appeal) is not going away, friend.

And always remember - we have at least mods to shape the game into something superior. Naturally that isn't ideal - but having the power to correct the game is nonetheless appreciated.


So onwards and downwards, I say!

lol

I can't even begin to think of how Oblivion was "intellectually deeper" than Skyrim. I never played Morrowind, but Imma bet if I did, I wouldn't be equating it with Aquinas, Melville or similar.

Yup I am beginning to discover mods and I think they are great.

I think I am going to have to play Morrowind to see what has changed about it.

Maximizing profit can be had without making shallow games that barely hold a candle to their predecessors.

Shallow stuff sells, but deep stuff sells too if you do it right. Playing the easy card is not acceptable for anyone, no matter what their venture might be.

The point of reference was in fact Morrowind, not Oblivion. As implied. *facepalm*

did morrowind sell poorly?

Examples, please?

Protip: Gaming wasn't as big back then, and there wasn't a convenient way to to have your game ready to go the moment it released. Skyrim is doing so well because its so readily available and mass marketed. I don't ever remember seeing a commercial for Morrowind (and hell, Oblivion I didn't even know about period until I saw it on a store shelf a couple days after release) and the only reason I knew about it was because a friend of mine knew about it and told me. And I certainly remember when I sat outside my local gameshop waiting for it to open so I could go buy the game on its release.

Skyrim I knew about a mere hour after its release and I had the Collector's Edition at my doorstep 9 hours after its release. If I felt like it, I could have been playing Skyrim at 1 minute after its release.

Yes - I actually wrote a thread on another forum about how the market has changed so much in the last decade. It's a negative reinforcement loop for Bethesda. They think their games are making more sales because of their creative decisions, when that is only one aspect. The market is naturally bigger by itself for any franchise over time.

Nonetheless, the problem is still that Bethesda can and will make more money with a game that can appeal to more people.

How does simplifying a game like TES...make more sales....Find me a header somewhere that says "40% more Simplified than Oblivion get it while its hot!" aside from being cheap/lazy which reduces expenses please convey to me how simplification that ISNT advertised equates to greater sales.

not a snipe, not a flame, just a quesiton

OP this game could have sold just as well off the marketing of the dragons and pretty graphics even if it had the depth of Morrowind.

They gutted the game because according to Todd Howard they felt the game was to spreadsheety: but when the did that they have farther alienated us long time RPG fans and vets of TES.

I refuse to except the simplification of this series.

Martyr much?

Some things you find very important may not be (as) important to others.

Ask companies like Troika and Black Isle Studios.They have made some of the most criticly acclaimed games in history.It wasn't enough to keep them in business.

I think the OP means that you needed to excercise your intellect more in prior games than in Skyrim. The OP was referring to Morrowind, but there are examples from Oblivion as well, like in Oblivion, some considerable forethought was needed in designing your character class. There are no classes in Skyrim. In Oblivion, some thinking was required for spell creation to make the best mage you could. There is no spell creation in Skyrim. In Oblivion, you had to worry about your fame/infamy levels because they had an impact on how well received your were by the NPCs in the game. In Skyrim there are no disposition modifiers based on your character's actions, so do what you want. It does not matter. In Oblivion, you could not violate your guild's rules without getting yourself kicked out of your guild. In Skyrim, you cannot get kicked out of your guild.

Basically, you do not have to think about what you are doing very much in Skyrim as compared to Oblivion. I could say the same think about Oblivion as compared to Morrowind. Morrowind required a LOT of thinking to play the game.

I agree with OP.

A lot of the intricacy has been gutted from the game. What I hate is the lack of dialogue options and genuine interest in other characters situations and plights. Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas made you WANT to complete a quest or find out what happens next. The characters were fun, weird, intelligent, amoral or quirky in some ways. People had personalities. I have no motivation to play the game nor find out what happens in the quests and because they are so uninteresting they lack replayability.

I know its an "RPG" but I play it as a hack-and-slash because thats what it feels like as the RPG elements are too few and far between.

I am waiting on mods to make the game more challenging. If the game is not interesting I may as well make it challenging.


I couldn't care less what happens in this game, I just run around kill and loot stuff and its boring.

I agree with everything you just posted, Oblivion was deeper than Skyrim in all those regards.

That is why Morrowind is better than Oblivion and Skyrim both, also there was far more options and that for me added greatly to the game as a whole.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books

Few among the top of the list are actually shallow or could be considered as such.

Deeper television shows (and for that matter just plain good TV shows, that don't necessarily have to be deep in the same way to be good) are generally more popular (and stay more popular) than trashy television shows. Jersey Shore is going to fall out of popularity and relevance well before a show like say Mythbusters or Bones will.



Thing is though is that the game would still appeal to more people if its marketed right.

For instance I'd bet good money that the vast majority of people who bought Skyrim likely based their purchase either on A, the past games in the series, or B, the terrifically epic commercials. Most people buy and play games (and even more serious gamers) do not spend too much time (if they spend any time at all) on forums like this or reading gaming magazines. So most people will not know the specifics of how the game is until they either A, play it for themselves, or B, look at the past games in the series and draw their conclusions from there. Some will base it just on what they can find on the back of the game box.

So Beth could have made Skyrim into the zomgawesome game we all wish it could be and it'd still sell just as well so long as the epic commercials remained epic. Beth can totally afford to take a risk with such a game because their past games reinforce their sales and if marketing is done right (which we all know Beth is more than capable at doing) the rest will be reinforced, and this isn't even going into the fact that Beth has no real competition! No one but Beth creates games like Skyrim, so EVERYONE who wants a game like Skyrim is going to end up buying it. There is no competition that can match the Elder Scrolls that isn't an ES game in of itself or a past Bethesda production. (or just so plain old as to be irrelevant to Skyrim's sales figures)

So why Beth is acting like they're actually competing with anyone when they make design decisions is beyond me.

I guess that intellectual brilliance of Morrowind was why it was so easy to game and take advantage of. I don't believe that Skyrim has been dumbed down for the mass audience as I'm not overly pretentious. I listen to a ton of music however and it's interesting to track the progression of an artists sound throughout their albums as their first album is almost always very raw, and somewhat innovative, however their later albums generally take a turn becoming more polished, and cleaner. Most fans get upset and say they "lost their sound" or that they "sold out" when in reality they're progressing as musicians.

I tend to apply that same logic to games.

I love how people refer to Morrowind as a game with high complexity or intellectuality. Really? Because the novelesque text and extra handful of attributes made the game that more complex then Oblivion or Skyrim? Guess I just dont see it.

To twist a quote... (from GB Shaw)
The rational gamer adapts himself to the game world: the irrational one persists in trying to adapt the game world to himself.
Therefore all modding depends on the irrational gamer.

Considering all the stuff that got added, and the quality of the stuff that got added versus the quality of the stuff that got removed, my personal opinion is that it got simplified by a very small amount. This topic always seems to me to be more about resistance to change than anything very objective. As I've said before, the last three games all seem roughly the same to me. It's hard for me to understand.

Wouldn't it be all progress relies on the Irrational gamer?

I can agree with most your points, but I wouldn't call it intellectual devolution, as to mean that people who prefer/like this game over previous iterations are somehow "devolved"; that's just not fair to allude to gamers who go for this kind of game as such. People are going like like what they like, even though I most certainly don't like, outside of the great looks, the direction in which Skyrim went from previous TES games.. Yes, it is about making money and they have winner and things change. I don't know if we are relics as I seem to certainly fall in-line with your style of what RPGs are (I've been RPing since 1975 starting with table top D&D) and I have been cRPGing since about 1980.

But, there's hope my friend. Changes to this style do not always make for great sales. Skyrim has most certainly gone beyond what Beth and Zenimax thought it would in sales, but that hasn't worked for other companies. Look at how horrible Dragon Age 2 did compared to the classic that was Dragon Age: Origins. Don't think for a moment Bioware (and especially EA) don't have regrets about changing a true and tried RPG like Origins into a direct sequel that's nothing more than an action/adventure game with unrealistic over the top combat mechanics with no player impact on the game story.

Look at what Obsidain did for Vegas compared to how Fallout 3 played and it sold very well

Games have been cheapened quite a bit.

Casual gamers don't like a challenge and they don't like dialogue they have to read.

Really? You don't see it? Did you ever play Morrowind? In addition to the "extra handful of attributes", Morrowind had 10 more skills than Skyrim, hundreds of more spells, spell creation, NPC's that could actually change their disposition toward you based on your actions, a journal that was hundreds of pages long that you needed to refer to frequently in order to complete quests, NPC's that gave you directions on how to find stuff or what to do when you got there that you had to listen to carefully because it did not all get put in your lengthy quest journal, no quest arrow, no fast travel, three different types of teleportation spells, etc. etc.

Did the game not feel more streamlined to you and "easy to pick up and play"?

The learning curve being easier comes at a sacrifice to do more things and customize.