You know, the first system I gamed on was an Atari 400, followed shortly by the Atari 800. My first games were the likes of Pac-Man, Frogger, Donky King, Qbert and Archon. From there I went to the PC. While I remember my father playing Zork, one of my first PC games was King's Quest, rendered in amazing CGA graphics. The PC has been my platform of choice since, but I've played plenty of Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega, N64, etc at my friends' houses. One of my friends even had a TurboGrafx 16.

So, I've been gaming a while and I've seen things improve over the years. But I'm sorry, I do not buy this argument. It's like telling someone they shouldn't complain about the crappy POS car because it is SO much better than a Ford Model T.

I don't care how far games have come. When I look at games today, I see no reason why I can't ask for a good story, consistent and well thought out visual design and interesting game mechanics. And if I don't feel that I got them, I see no reason why I can't say so.

Because you should be imagining that they are there.

Alright, I may white knight against whiners and complaints a lot, but honestly I couldn't agree more with this. In the past five years, I've seen a lot of good franchises turn their games into simplified pieces of crap. My list of games to watch has dwindled A LOT, and it's because people are trying to open to a wider audience that for the most part doesn't care, and in the process, alienating their loyal fanbase.

Operation Flashpoint, Red Faction, Ghost Recon, Mass Effect, Rainbow 6, are a few that I know of. Bethesda and Rockstar are the only companies I kind of trust right now in the industry, and Todd if you are reading this, PLEASE don't over simplify TES, and please add a hardcoe mode!

I don't think so, at least i know that is the case with myself. I'm have recently been diving into the dreamworld of
the game:The longest journey (1999), and both dreaming of myself as the main character and actually playing in a "dreamworld"

When it comes to the Nobody explains it better than Michael Pachter (you can tell he is a tad angry to ): http://www.gametrailers.com/video/whiners-vs-pach-attack/729996

What I'm saying is don't bash an overall good content just because some sectors are lacking

Can the story be improved? No story can't be improved. Not even Star Wars is immune
Can the graphics be bumped up? Why not? Crytek did it VERY well.
Can the voice acting be made better? Why not? Hundreds of talents from literally across the globe are available
Can ANYTHING be made better? Nothing can't be made better. Not even KFC

But is the game actually good overall? Why yes, it is. It has its goods and bads, but overall it's good, and dismissing the good while focusing only at the bad is not nice

I understand that when you're delivering critic, there can only be "rooms for improvement", but you need to look at the good points too, and say "yeah, they did a good job here"

And asking for the ultimate game? One with awesome graphics, story, mechanics? Perhaps there will be a company that does that. But nagging your developer for not delivering the best and only "good"?

There is no "best", there will always be room for improvement.

For example, "Capes Bethesda!" so it is.
"Animated capes Bethesda!" you got it.
"PhysX for the capes movement Bethesda!" okay.
"nVIDIA APEX for the cape, Bethesda!"... fine.
"Better textures for the capes, Bethesda".....
"More variants for the capes Bethesda!".......
"More functionality for the capes Bethesda!"
"Not enough functionality for the capes Bethesda!"

Get what I mean?

I'm just saying that, after a milestone, stop. Have a look at the ground you are on, and take a look back at what ground you were on. Things are not exactly pretty, but compared to the old days? Things sure have improved a lot

Kinda hard to do that when I work for Belethor at the General Goods Store

The difference is Pacman may be an extremely basic game, but it utterly nailed what it was going for. It's simple and straightforward, but becomes progressively more challenging as you go. What improvements can be made there without simply introducing gimmicks? Unless all you want is a big, pretty world to kill things in, Skyrim is pretty poor. It lacks compelling narrative content, minimizes player agency, fails at constructing a believable world, and doesn't even match the standard set by some of its predecessors. The means of fixing these problems do not require any technological leaps, they only require proper forethought and the right priorities.

^This, and this:

Actually, I'd say it requires more time. It really does show in this game where the most time was spent. The only other way round it is MOAR EXPERIENCED STAFF! But the money men will laugh that off. What gaming needs is a roman abramovich - "I'm gonna throw money at it til it buries everything else, profit margins be damned!"

Right, that's kind of what I meant by forethought and priorities. If the narrative and player agency is not given priority from day one, it's necessarily going to suffer. A lot of the quests in Skyrim seem more like afterthoughts, tossed in to give the illusion of more content than there really is.

Still, Beth is operating with something like three times the staff as when they built Morrowind. You think they could dedicate some time and manpower to producing meaningful stories with meaningful choices and meaningful results.

to me alot of the complaints myself included is that bethesda takes a couple of steps forward but then goes steps quite a few back. Their trying to reinvent the wheel with less ingrediants.
The perks replacing the stats can be somewhat done but they failed in that sense in limiting what type of charectors we can creat.
The guilds no longer stop when u reach the top but they sacrifised the beef in the storys and made them shorter to where u rely on the radiant quests for substance.
The combat got better but they sacrifised equipment slots, variety of armor, clothes, weapons and omg the spells selection is at an all time low.
The dungeuons are handmade but they sacrifised the exploration of it when ur hand guided to them and the automatic quests that automatically give a purpose for exoring them instead of just coming across an item or whatnot that leads u into a quest or straight loses the mystery of the place when u know exactly what u need to do and what the location is for.

Theyve given us a bit but took away the stuff that gives what they gave meaning. For once bethesda needs to stop trying to reinvent the wheel with less and start improving on what they have to make it better. Or else there gonna quickly fall in the same spot as final fantasys at now. Streamling gets you money but shortens ur life span.

Bingo. And i say the same about classic doom, simple game, but perfectly executed. It is the closes thing to a perfect game i've ever played. And due to having 2d graphics it ages well too, as long as you use modern resolutions

For a game like Skyrim to reach that level of exectuion, the time and cost would be insane. And that is (one of) the problem of modern games, they are too large and complex for their own good

I think you're exaggerating a fair point with just a little bit of passive aggressiveness thrown in.

Considering the level of bugginess on release, I'd say they still bit off more than they could chew, increased manpower or no.

There has been a lot of flak over the questlines etc, I for one will be surprised if they don't talk up 'improved storytelling' for TES VI.

And spears. I really want to charge someone with a spear...

Someone made a comment about Super Mario lacking story and having bad graphics, which ALMOST seems like an argument of "all modern games are better because the current technology is better." Maybe that's not quite the argument that was made, but that's the vibe I had gotten from that poster, and I would hope I don't have to explain why it's such a flawed argument. That's like complaining about Yoshi's Island having a lackluster story. That game wasn't really intended to win players over with a deep storyline, well-thought characters or incredible graphics. It was meant to win players over with interesting enemies, variety in levels, cool boss battles, and generally solid gameplay. So to say that Super Mario (or in my example, Yoshi's Island) is a bad game to today's standards because it lacked a storyline is missing the point of what that game was meant for. The argument could easily be made that Skyrim was meant to win players over with exploration, deep characters, customization, interesting questlines and important choices; but many people feel that Skyrim failed on some, or all levels there, hence the complaints.



I don't think players have forgotten how to play at all. Most of the complainers are tired of having their hands held. Many of them cannot stand how NPCs are constantly approaching you to do quests, and many more hate just how short the guilds are and how shallow the characters/followers are. Many critics are upset over the many game-breaking bugs and the loss of features that were in previous installments of the series. We've lost attributes, skills, weapons, armor types, quests that require some investigation to complete, characters that have backgrounds, lengthy guild questlines, spell-making and spells in general. We now have a lack of IMPORTANT choices and consequences, poor gameplay balance, poorly thought-out perk trees, insanely-repetitive NPC dialogue and little recognition of your achievements from NPCs. I think all of these are legitmate complaints, and there is much more where that came from. There's no denying that some good features were added, but many feel that we lost many elements necessary in their vision of a good RPG, which is why they complain so much. We can argue on some of those points, no doubt. But there are some points there that I think are completely indefensible.

To conclude, I find Skyrim enjoyable, however I think it could have been so much more. There are many elements that could have been included that would have made the game better for ALL audiences. I think it would have been so much more if Bethesda was not pressured into the 11/11/11 release date.

Oh, I don't know. I've seen people propose exactly that. And then they say there's nothing wrong with the game.

Well, you know that I agree with you.

Very concise, except the fourth Indiana Jones movie did happen, and I still want a refund.

First of all, everyone can like what they like. We all have our preferences. With that out of the way, there has been so much complaining in the six months since release that it really put me off. Ugh on so much negativity. I don't know why but if people come to a game expecting one thing and it's another, the complaining is out of line imho. It is what it is and they can't make it into something it isn't. It's the devs vision and we can join in their vision or go find something else. I do believe it takes some practice to learn how to role-play. I wasn't fortunate to have experienced that or learned during the early years of D&D but I'm learning now and having a great time with it. I see a lot less complaining now too so I'm hopeful that people are having as much fun as I am. The game is massive and has a lot to enjoy.

It was the same when Morrowind was released. You would think Morrowind was the worst game any company had ever released, to read these forums then. A month after I registered I had to stop coming here. The constant, incessant, unrelenting hate and negativity directed at Morrowind was ruining my enjoyment of the game. I came back about the time they announced Tribunal. I think I was more mentally prepared for it by that time. I'd say the negativity finally died down a couple of months after Tribunal came out.

Now, of course, Morrowind is being held up as a true RPG. That game's public image underwent a sudden, massive change when Oblivion came out. A similar thing is happening to Oblivion now: people are starting to say a few nice things about Oblivion now that Skyrim is out. And it will happen again once TES VI is out. People will begin to think that maybe Skyrim wasn't so bad after all.

And do you know why it will continue to happen? Because, for the most part, "real" RPGs aren't being made anymore. When a new game comes and more is "streamlined," it makes the previous game look better in comparison. Morrowind may have looked watered down then, but when you compare it to today's standards of what constitutes an RPG, suddenly it looks a lot different.

I don't think it is likely that we have forgotten how to play. Its more likely that Bethesda is trying to get more money by streamlining their products.

also if we [censored] and [censored], bethesda might glance our way and read the complaints. I mean the combat, copy and paste dungeouns, radiant quests, and having a faction to join was something bethesda thought up all on their own? No that stuff has been complained about severly, and from the video id say that maybe they read about the unarmed complaints with that suplex finisher. If we dont complain how else when and if they glance at the forums are they gonna know what to fix? Also and whats most people see that needs to be fixed or improved.

And besthesda if u do glance at this, quit trying to reinvent the wheel each game. Take skyrim and improve upon it. Gives us more weapons and armor and more types of them, gives us more perks, do away with the constalation crap and reorganize and rework the perk system, give us more storys, more beef with the storys, give us more information that we can actually finish and complete quests without fully relying on the arrow system, rework factions to where each side is unique and not copy and paste quests for both sides, have npcs take over the guards duty in talking about what we have done, give us dispostion back, have people comment on out skills when they reach high numbers like 70s, give us back underwater combat and more areas in underwater, gives us the option to complete each quest without being forced into the main quest, just take away scripted encounters at the very first time u encounter them, place them on a scheldule to only happen at certain times during the day or only one day each week. Dont force us to join factions that we have dont wanna join to complete quests, bring back ranks and requirements in guilds, dont let my sword and board warrior that using health potions only become the archmage or my glass cannon mage become the leader of the fighters guild, , give us the option to tell people no when forced witha quest, .......ummmm I cant think of anything else atm but im sure theres more.

We haven't forgotten how to play. The companies have just gotten greedier and dummied down their games to please the widest range of audiences for the profit$. Niche is dead. Genre-specificism is dead. Platform exlusivity is dead. Sad times. The golden age of PC gaming died too soon.

See, that's the thing though... 1.) I don't think the story is any worse than say, Morrowind, and 2.) that "meaningful choice" / "meaningful results" that you're talking about have never been a part of Elder Scrolls, and while you might say "we're on the 5th game, it should have improved by now" - well, no, it shouldn't have improved if that was never their intention.

I've been disappointed that I couldn't join the 6th House since Morrowind... and it's never changed. You can't join the Mythic Dawn in Oblivion (I mean seriously join them, for all the people who will tell me that you join them for the main quest. I understand that, but only to infiltrate, not to actually become part of the Mythic Dawn). I would say, however, that Skyrim actually has improved in this regard, and given us more meaningful choice than Morrowind or Oblivion. In Skyrim, we can choose either the Imperial Legion or the Stormcloaks. In Skyrim, we can choose to kill or not to kill a particular character, at the expense of an alliance from an entire faction. We already have more meaningful main quest choice and overall world choice than we did in the past games.

But seriously, the BioWare style "choose your own adventure" questlines, and the consequences that come as a result, are not now and never have been the intention of Bethesda for Elder Scrolls games. So, while maybe they could have improved on that, when that's not their goal, they don't really need to.

That's like saying Madden NFL needs to improve on its RPG mechanics, or StarCraft why hasn't StarCraft implemented a 1st person mode yet?

It's simply put not the kind of game that Elder Scrolls is, nor aspires to be.