Sigh, if your post had any relevance that suggest you read past the first sentence it would be worthy of a decent reply, but you are neither interested in a summation of a seperate view nor proper clarification, you can go ahead and remove the qoute of mines since there really isn't anything constructive in your post.

Have a nice day.

Funny that's about as far as I got in your last post too. Genius

I've said my piece, just waiting for a decent reply.

Morrowind was missing a chunk of the system Daggerfall had.
Oblivion was missing a chunk of what was left.
Skyrim is missing even more.

If you like a dungeon crawler with no consequences, Skyrim is for you. But any game that even pretends to have a storyline has to have consequences. There are none in Skyrim. If you sit in Riverwood and scratch your anatomy, the world does not come to an end. You do 4-ish dungeons and you get to be archmage whether you know your spell from your spud. You have to choose to kill Nords or Imperials to unlock those quests.....and the result really isn't that different save in a cinematic. You lack the option to knock the morons heads together and point out that they are both being played for fools. And if you don't choose, the so-called 'civil war' never really happens, does it?

Like it or not, they've upped the visual bling and gutted the rpg mechanics so Bubba can swill a beer and actually kill something with no thought whatsoever. A few more bits cut away and all we'll have is an open world FPS with swords. That may be what certain sections of the current community want, but it will destroy what TES was and is intended to be; a non-linear sandbox CRPG. And none of the issues revolves around graphics; it is game design, play mechanics, and writing.

No.. you're not.. you're waiting for someone to bend over backwards to your own opinion. You've had plenty of answers; you just don't like any of them. At this point it just sounds like whining.

So by your estimation, Final Fantasy X's storyline is bad because their are no other consequences or Red Dead Redemptions Storyline too. Not to mention that what was dropped needed to be cut but I do agree about the Guild lengths, I don't think anybody can defend them being shorter and I certainly won't defend that decision. The rest though is fine.

Dale B, you've been on these forums for quite a long time (You knew Hungry Donner before he was a mod?). Has there been a typical forum community response to the same issue across all three TES games released in your time here or has it been a bit different each time?

But Dale when did the community give Beth any hint of that kind that people want -less-?

Those of us who have watched the prostitution of the Elder Scrolls series to the quick buck when it was not neccesary, and the perversion of the lore and world to adapt to a lead platform that is pathetically weak and outdated have a right to the tears. And frankly, since I can sit down and play and enjoy every TES from Arena on, I think I can speak more accurately about things. Here's a clue: removing something is not the same thing as 'fixing' it. It's removing. As to what Bethesda cares about, I have no idea.... I just know that there have been other franchises that blew off the 'old loyalists' for the newbies and paid a price for it, ranging from loss of prestige to outright failure and bankruptcy. Daggerfall is -still- being played today; each one of the X generation titles have had less and less apparent fan support. Whether Skyrim follows that trend remains to be seen.....and since the PC crowd seems to be making their presence felt once again, consideration for the only platform that can =guarantee= longevity had better be taken into account.


Hmmm.
This is a digital game. It works in numbers. Period. More discrete number fields, more complex scenarios of interaction. Example the 1st: Skyrim would be a monster if they had implemented the reputation system Daggerfall had. It would have affected how you talked to each distinct social class.....and might have prevented you from doing so altogether, forcing you to figure out an alternative way to deal with a situation. If you became an acolyte of Dibella, it would affect how you would talk to other religious groups. Being friends with the Stormcloaks would make the Imperials suspicious of you, less likely to talk or offer quests. Saving a town from a dragon would make you a hero in that town, which could have all sorts of effects. And that is a system that you really wouldn't see after character creation.

All those stats helped define who your character was =before the game ever began=. In Skyrim you are a bum.......nothing to indicate you learned a thing before you got caught. The 3 overarching types are so easy to top out in it is annoying. Unless you =try= to be different, you will wind up with an ebony swinging, spell tossing dragon killing tank at the end, no matter how you start out. Make sure you read the first of the previous sentence, btw. Now it is a massive effort to make a character that isn't like everyone else's......and what your imagination does is irrelevant, as the game system couldn't interpret your imagination any better than the local wildlife around you can. The only interface with a computer is numbers. With the past systems, you could slant your character with knowledge of certain skills; now you have to play a decent distance into the game to even -begin- to differentiate from a generalist.

If we were to go with that type of a system, would we be able to fit it onto the 360 in terms of data size. That's the only problem that I can see, that and possibly the programing of the system where you would need to make sure that the Battleborns of the world don't talk to you at all if you joined the Stormcloaks, however that partially interferes with the Thorald quest (Although it's optional to talk to the Battleborns) or the Silver Bloods if you joined with the Legion but then that could interfere with Forsworn Conspiracy possibly forcing you to go with Murdach. This studio isn't know for being the best at managing bugs so that could add more problems then solutions but it sounds good in theory.

And if you ever bothered designing game mechanics your self you would realize that it makes mathematically no difference in all the said scenarios you just mentioned how many stats you have choice over. I've written enough of them my self.

Funny none of my characters "wind up with an ebony swinging, spell tossing dragon killing tank at the end, no matter how you start out.". In fact I still kite with my lvl78... sure it's not needed, but I do. Like wise the only spell he has is a minor heal, so I know you're just exaggerating.

Daggerfall was a DOS 5 game that ran on 256 megs of RAM and an 80486 processor. This is the thing about writing; it takes up one byte per character. A text parser is a fairly compact bit of code. The system -did- work. Radiant story should be able to work with it just fine. From my viewpoint, a compelling story is work tossing a little video bling for.

And both those other games do not claim to be what TES is; both are pretty linear in nature, and that restricts your choices to a prewritten script without needing to take into account that you could do quest 17 before you do 4,5,7,9. That's what linear games do. One of TES's hallmarks is doing or not doing specific quests outside the main quest line. None of the FF games have that capability by design, so.....



And no, MX. The community has =NEVER= asked for less. They have consistently asked for new features =in addition= to the pre-existing ones. You get the newbies every game who get off on it and have no idea there is more than their current fetish object in the TES universe, and by the time they figure it out they have dug themselves a hole so deep they can never just say 'oops' and move on.


Seti, it has depended. Morrowind was cut a -lot- of slack due to the transition to full 3D technology. But the world was tiny. Well thought out, as was the cultural stuff, but pathetically small. Oblivion had more eyecandy, but there again the world had far too much packed into it, and there was more concentration on blowing the horn of 'hand crafted everything!' than story logic and world building. And there was design decisions that showed which way the wind was blowing, and it wasn't towards a power platform and the capabilities therein. In Skyrim there is a bit of a hint of what Daggerfall was like for the oldsters, but just the playing. There are only a fraction of the factions, your existence means nothing. You have no reputation. Your choices mean nothing. And if you sit on your hands, the world patiently waits for you to do something. But all of them have seen a lessening of story complexity. I wasn't being facetious when I said 'TEX VI: Sonic goes to Hammerfell'. I fear that is where we are headed, and we are far too close to the edge of that cliff as it is.......

That depends on -how- the mechanics are written, doesn't it. They -can- be written so that each and every stat you can imagine has relevance. You have to work out the formula to do correctly, and the parsers and tables, but it can and has been done. It's been a couple of decades since I have done any game coding, but it isn't some arcane mystery. They decided to gut the mechanics and truncate the storyline and fill in the space with eyecandy goodness and Bubba level interaction.

Complaining about factions, story, and moral consequence I understand. Complaining about a streamlined leveling system is novelty. I find they could have set towns up against one another (making them go to war so that you could pick a side), but that is all story involvement which I do agree could use some work. Not so much a morality system as a conflicting faction system.... Why not a morality system as well.. but that's not what has been stream-lined... people complaining about that might have a legit gripe... people complaining about the leveling system it self are splitting hairs over stats they now get along with the ones they were only putting points in to in the first place.

Oh no, I very much agree with what you've said and I have much experience with the series (Arena - Skyrim). I've anolyzed and come to my own conclusions about the differences between the various TES games and they arrive at something very similar to what you've said. What I meant by my question was exclusively about how the forums reacted to it. I mean, for example, Morrowind was the first really mainstream game in the series and so I must question how many Daggerfall fans were really around in comparison to the influx of Morrowind fans and then afterwards whether Oblivion was in the same situation as Skyrim is now in terms of how many people condemn the decisions, how many people defend them, and how many people just shrug it off.

My personal opinion is we should indeed return to that reputation system Daggerfall attempted (divided by social classes, regions, factions, etc. that all affect one another), we should return to leveling and character creation system similar to Daggerfall's (although without that minor, random variation in attribute points to distribute per level and perhaps with a few of the more mundane skills merged or spruced up), and plot choices similar to Daggerfall. I want a world that has as much scope as Daggerfall, but with the use of modern technology and procedural generation tools to do what Daggerfall could only dream of fully realizing back on its rushed DOS-based release. In general, I'd very much love to see a real sequel to Daggerfall with modern tech and funds.

Streamlining=success

Cheers

I disagree that people are splitting hairs over the leveling system, infact I wasn't talking about the leveling system but lets touch on that for a moment

Play how you want right? isn't that the Mantra? a Player desires to play an Arcane smithy, the leveling system is Broken been the same thing since morrowind. so the player makes leaps and bounds in levels and then gets Rolfstomped by enemies because they didn't train their "combat" skills. so there are two issues, the leveling of the player and the scaling of the game in reference of the player. yes that is an issue, no exxageration present.

and so that you can better understand my previous post.

Touching again on the How the games stats are handled and your drum beat about how if its broke it should be fixed, it was never fixed from Morrowind to Skyrim, the system functions the same with an ever increasing lack of effect on the player character. with the current system many are inhibited from getting as close to the characters in their minds eye in game. Movement speeds, Height and raw power are all stifled. so no it makes no sense that the same system from morrowind exists in Skyrim but offers less control AND shoehorns gimmicks and aspects that should be inherent to weapons/Skill raising into tick boxes.

Point and case? needless streamlining like people had issue with this in the first place when it could have been done oh so differently, instead of being rearranged, manualized and called "new"

I have never got to play Daggerfall, but I would love to have all of things above you have mentioned, I have looked into the game but never got to plait as I have said. I would like to see what they put in Daggerfall in a current generation Elder Scrolls game today with the advances we have had with technology. I would love to see an attribute system similar to the one mentioned in Daggerfall, I am sorely missing attributes in Skyrim as it is. Also a game with the scope and with the tools game companies have at their disposal now would be a treat indeed.

Ah.
Hokay.
The belweather change was Todd getting the X-box bug up a certain unnamed orifice. People were cheering on the team; and most of them were Daggerfools. Then came the flood of console players who had no idea what the game was about, and literally every other thread was derailed with a multiplayer spaz attack. A lot of older fans -left- when the CC's came marching in and proceeded to muck things up with ignorant demands and in too many cases, trolling drool. That was when they started having one thread for MM; the boards were being completely disrupted by the clueless. Morrowind started -out- firmly in the PC gamer's field, and most of the DF people were there....then began dropping off as the newbies descended and swarmed.
Me too.
Not gonna happen under current circumstances, though.......

I understood your posts, and responded to them in the same light I know you did mine. I also understand that if you do the math; the selection of those many stats are quite novelty if not altogether inconsequential in light of the ones they now only allow you to. It 'looks' like less and in some respects might be, but the characters are just as unique as they always have been. The old system only gave you the illusion that they were unique; do the math and you'll find out just how pointless the complexity of the system was.

I'm all for unique, but the current system however cut down is better because of that very aspect. That doesn't mean they couldn't add other more refined and unique things to the current system, but to say that the current system isn't an improvement is overlooking a lot; specifically when it comes to overestimating the uniqueness of the old stat system.

Fewer choices does not mean better. Particularly when TES was built on user choice. Just because it may be easier from a casual gamer aspect does not make it better. As for illusion......no more than any other GURPs based game. Mathematical elegance is tripe compared to user choice and control. RPGs are complex games, because they attempt to simulate a world situation that you as a player character can interact with, get stomped on by, outwit, and if clever and skilled and lucky, beat or win, depending. CPRG's are as complex as the hardware and software are capable of managing. This has not been the case with the limiting of the memory pool in the now lead platform, the over emphasis on audio vocals and gribble in every corner of the game environment. Bling over substance. It looks like a winning formula, but shooters did the same, and nearly died. It took Valve and Half Life to show that genre that story driven games have staying power. A lot of CRPG franchises have died over the years due to bling over innovation. The newbies haven't seen the trends developing over the past 15 years. Those trends are not reassuring.

Oh good lord, this thread... bloviation, grandstanding... reports, sniping at each other, I have to finish wrapping, not going to have time to go through and prune.

You know what guys, it's Christmas, go play a game you like.