I work in a supermarket and I know this mentality all too well. Honestly, working on customer services you do see some of the most mind blowingly self centred behaviour ever.

Cases in point: "OMG I has to wait for 2 minutes behind someone else, every till should be open right up until you close" yeah, not gonna happen.

"OMG there's too many disabled bays! And why do they all have to be so close to the doors?" 2 things, it's a legal requirement, and put yourself in their place. So you have to walk an extra 10 feet or so, boo hoo.

"OMG the offer finished yesterday!? Thats not fair, in emailing head office" well, TROLOLOLOL

/rant

I agree with you 100%! Oregon Trail was a great game back in the day. Games like that actually encouraged creativity, dreaming...that is missing from a lot of games today.

I know i get annoyed with skyrim every now and then, and im not much older then you, but its nothing major...I have a few small gripes with this game, but its nothing major and nothing is perfect. A game as big as Skyrim...all things considered, the game is pretty good...i think its a classic!

By the way, how is the Witcher 2 XCR, is it worth picking up?

And it doesn't to me. It's the only ES game without attributes, the only game without spellmaking, the only game without a proper disposition system. I could go on and on and on. What may be minor differences to you could be major to someone else.

But, on topic, I don't think we've "forgotten" how to play. There are plenty of old-school games that require more thought to play, and I prefer that type of game myself. I just don't think imagination should be used to pretend a game is functioning differently than it actually is.

and yet i only miss the disposition...from MW not OB lol

In an age where games are better than ever, people complain more than they ever have.

I only complaining I do is the bugs and glitches in the game that stops me playing the game properly. I had a bit of a hissy fit couple weeks ago. There is a certain game breaking glitch I don't know its from the game proper or from a mod, that I cannot continue the main quest and I lost a weeks worth of game play and 16 levels that I have to go back and do that again. I caught up and playing differently and learning from the mistakes I done.

I install mods in my game for my liking. Still I enjoy my game. I don't nick pick.

I use my imagination to play the game.

My first character he was a solider using a sword, shield, bow and join the companions.
My second character was a mage and she join a collage. She did not use melee a bow and later on did not wear armour. She was a deadly weapon on her own right and a puppeteer.
My third character is a hunter first then a assassin and she joined the Dark Brotherhood. She only wear her own armour but take the fallen weapons.
For my fourth character for the first time I be playing a orc. Instead staying in a village or fortified city like my earlier characters did, he or she will be staying in the strongholds that dotted in Skyrim but only uses villages and cities to buy and sell stuff and for work opportunities.

As for questing, well I have no choice to do the main quest but, up to point. Then I do something else like exploring, raiding and ask the inn keeper for work. Then I start one of the guild quest and do some of them and break from it. Then I explore, raid and find work then then do the main quest. Then I do the whole cycle again. I try to play this game like Oblivion but no good because the guild quest is a little short, so I space them out. It looks like through my eyes that other players are rushing through the guild quest or the main quest and then that is it. Its like they are playing a cookie cutter game instead of a sandbox game. I playing Skyrim the way I want to be (sandbox) not the game want to be (cookie cutter).

To I there is no hand holding. When I first played this game there is a floating maker. I removed that. Later on the cross hairs. When I start a new game I removed the compass by editing Skyrim prefini. For I the compass is big and ugly. Then I remove the enemy health bar through a mod. With the character I playing now the only spells she using is the health spell and the dragon shouts because being a dragon born she has the right to use it. If the ancient Nords use it she can. Stuff the other Nords of today.

As for my age. Op you are 24. To I you are a whipper snipper. There are players older then I am so I call them old bag of bones. I just a dinosaur. I be 41 very shortly.

I actually don't think people are complaining more, per se. I think there are more people playing Bethesda's games now than ever before. A larger number of people playing the game = a larger number of complaints.

I understand where you're coming from, but the important thing to keep in mind is that even back in the days of Arena, I doubt what Bethesda wanted to do was create an RPG about attributes, spellmaking and a proper disposition system. They were just means to an end. It's always been an RPG about having an open world and doing what you want - and that's what Bethesda have consistently achieved. This isn't a criticism of you, or your tastes, because that would be ridiculous - I even had similar reservations about Oblivion - but Bethesda haven't put a foot wrong here. They've been following the series to its logical destination.

OMG, I remember games like that

Also the text only adventures that used verb/noun commands, those were fun and often frustrating too.

One of the first all graphic games I played was 'Mercenary' by Novagen on a Sinclair Spectrum. I remember the billboards that you could destroy with Atari logos and Commodore logos and got a cheer every time you did it, One had a Novagen logo and if you destroyed it, the game warned you it would get a lot harder from now on Also, the box of "Essential 12939 supplies." The box just had 12939 on it using the digital calculator type numbers, being wireframe, you could go around the other side and read that 12939 actually said PEPSI, that was amusing.

However, most of the games back then used a lot of brain power and were often educational as well as fun, many had quite complex puzzles to solve, others were often historically based.

No one persecuting you,but there is truth in the statement he made.I know,Im part of this "younger generation" too, and I see it every day in my crappy public school.Dont lump your self in with the bad part of our gen., because you arent part of it,you are an individual,you are what you make your self to be, and no one's telling you otherwise.

On topic,other than the story(or lack there of) Skyrim is prity much perfect to me.I dont fast travel, I play without a hud, I try to remamber to eat the useless food in the game to add realism, and I craft (IMO lol) amazing RPs that I enjoy playing.For,if only a short time, I can use this game as a form of escape, a way to take a break from life, and become something els.

You should be able to enjoy a game for it's good points and criticize the bad points.

I will agree there, but even then this is not only with Bethesda but with the entire gaming industry as a whole. I haven't seen a single game forum where there wasn't a massive [censored] fest, except maybe GTA IV.

I don't know. When I think about the state of the gaming industry as a whole, I find myself thinking that the customers have every right to be complaining.

^ This.

Then I guess I'm one that enjoys the journey more than the destination, in this case.
I love open world games, but roleplaying mechanics are much more important to me. As they say, to each his own.

It's absurd to suggest that Bethesda had the same design goals in mind when they were developing Arena and Daggerfall as when they were developing Skyrim. Spellmaking, attributes, NPC disposition, meaningful choice and consequence. These are things that make a world more real and believable, that provide the player with a greater degree of options (both practically and conceptually). If your goal is to create an open world in which the player can choose their own course, how do these things do anything, but enhance the offering? The logical evolution of TES is a larger world with more to do and more complex interactions, not the opposite.

I found Skyrim to be quite entertaining; played my first character for over 150 hours until I got a new machine. Waiting to finish ME3 to start a new character; essentially however, I got a power machine so I could play Skyrim in full glory.

Now are there some problems with the game? Yes. The college at winterhold thing was a big one; my warrior, who I played as an amiable imbecile ended up as archmage. I shouldn't have been let in the door. I should have been thrown down the stairs...that doesn't make it an epic failure as a game.
I have no problems discussing shortcomings of the game or seeing criticisms. The ones that make me grit my teeth are the overwrought 'Bethesda should feel ashamed for ...whatever.' I just tune those out.
Werewolf/vampire system may not be perfect but the game is still fun.
They don't have every bladed weapon ever used in the past 10,000 years modelled in the game..but the game is still fun.
The writing is not Hollywood sharp..but neither is a lot of writing I see in big screen hits. The game.is.still.fun.

Now if these things kill it for you..then don't play it. Plenty of things out there that people claim to be fun that I'd rather burn myself to death than participate in..like watching 2 and a half men. Different strokes. Like everygame Beth has made that I've played, there is a lot of good, some bad..and I'm still eagerly awaiting the next one.

I can't really comment too much on the main quest forcing you to join the College bit, because I was already a member of the college when I got to that part of the main quest, but from my understanding, it seems as though you don't have to join persay, you just have to get the knowledge you need from the library.

Becoming archmage means you willingly continued along the questline, which, while I agree TES should go back to needing skill requirements to advance in the guild, you still can't blame the game when you were the one who consciously completed the College of Winterhold questline as a warrior.

I like skyirm. I can't play skyrim. Because I get migraines. Because they forced me to download the last patch, which broke shadows, making the entire screen jerk in and out of various states of light. I literally cannot play skyrim, or I will end up in pain the likes of which no one should ever have to feel.

I liked skyrim for a lot of reasons. But I cant play it anymore. Not until they fix that glitch, or let us turn off shadows, or let us remove broken patches. There are three ways, three, that the game could become playable again. and none of them are there.

Oh, and I hate execution attacks. "Hey look im about to kill this dragon on my own and oh, nope, wait, i have to watch my character wiggle around on its back while i do nothing. Good job killing the computer, computer!"

I don't mind coplainers THAT much. Afterall, it's the criticizms that keep developers honest. (at least that's what we would like to think)

My gripe is that people seem to be very inconsistent with their complaints. I know different people are going to have different complaints. But I know for a fact there are people complaining about hand-holding, and a lot of those SAME PEOPLE are complaining that the map doesn't have visible roads.

Are you f kidding me? So much for hand-holding huh?

Yes, yes you can when the game forced you along that path and the only other option would have been to put your hands over your eyes and pretend that you hadn't actually joined the College and were only there to grab what you needed and then walk out again. Imagination is no substitute for poor writing.

People always complain when something they liked is removed, even if many new things have been added to make up for it.


The main reason why I complain is that todays games are too easy for me. There's too much hand-holding. Increasing combat difficulty doesn't change that, and not even mods can fix everything. I get bored when a game treats me like I'm dumb or blind by showing me where enemies are and things like that. Without challenge I can't feel like a hero and get a rewarding experience.

Have I forgotten how to play? Nope, it's the opposite. I'm too experienced. I've been playing since 80s. And I've other experience like military training. In this time of easily accessible and simplified games I just ignore most games and mod the rest to get a satisfying experience. Console games aren't even an option because of worse controls requiring games to have aiming aids. I mostly play indie games these days.

I've been around video games for around 25 years.

Yes, we DO live in an era with some amazing games and some dramatic shifts in what we can do within games. It's just that, despite being my most anticipated game of 2011, Skyrim just doesn't make "the best of the best" on my end. It's maybe a 7.5/10 here. Above average, but hardly a home run.

There are a lot of reasons why that is. Everything from smithing having the typical Bethesda awkwardness to the killcams that I despise to the NPCs being dull contributes. I'm not going to rehash the arguments, because that's not the purpose of this thread. You asked whether we forgot how to play games. I'd say no. I didn't get Arkham City until early January, and I've beaten it three times. The third time, I'd already seen *everything*, and I still went back. Haven't finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution, but I replayed a scene of the game for something like an hour *after* I got the "good" outcome just because I wanted to find the solution that was "right" for my particular Adam Jensen. Skyrim just isn't capable of reaching that level. Not with me. So, yes, I can have fun playing games. It's just that Skyrim is not equipped to offer me much more than the shallowest type of fun, and I've got games that do THAT better.


Now, I could use my imagination and flesh out the game... or I can roleplay a whole story and put it down in text. No dice, no relying on a developer to implement "cool combat", no $60 investment. On the whole, if I'm doing that much of the heavy lifting, why not build the world and the characters, too?

So I get three basic options: 1. just give up and walk away. 2. keep my mouth shut and hope Bethesda happens to address all of the areas that aren't working for me. 3. Complain frequently, critically, and consistantly and hope they get the message.

What would the OP have me do?

It's not lack of imagination, it's taking game advancement for granted. If one game does something, suddenly they all must. If one company does one thing well, they all must. That all over.

The main quest doesn't force you to become the archmage.