I watched all of it. I'm in stitches. I blame the awful tutorial for all that.

http://youtu.be/8FpigqfcvlM

This video explains it.

Handholding is something that is done outside of our will. The handholding didn't do good for that person because when he actually was in need of help, when he was crying for help... It wasn't there.

They can streamline the game into linear corridors, one button and one stat and people would still get confused but if we asked, I am sure, they would say they could use a better tutorial.

In Morrowind, I could just ask people around just like I would in real life and they helped me about almost everything and for anything else, common sense worked real fine. It was amazing, I was one step ahead in everything and the game could catch me up. That was brilliant, I wasn't pursuing what I was told, I was pursuing what was in my mind... I had a journal and I rarely checked it, when I checked it was just to look up for a name or a place or some directions. It wasn't a log for my objectives, it was a log for my achievements. I never read there that I must kill someone, I read there that I killed someone or that I didn't later, after doing it on my own, based on my interpretation and my minute decisions. I got sidetracked with my Morrowind fanboyism here, hehe. Sorry.

I think TES games can be played via common sense only and nothing more. But the devs must show how common sense applies because this concept doesn't occur to people easily.

Still he did really good. http://youtu.be/Vt5YKmP7ecY Or me playing Daggerfall but don't, that would be too embarrassing, 20+ attempts to leave tutorial dungeon, exploiting the CC to godmode and still failing in every quest...

Gix. I miss his Morrowind. His epic battle with the guy on the bridge at Arkngthand. A thing of legend. Hail Gix!

Er, how is that guy a vet? He admitted he didnt play much of Morrowind at all. Said he only played Oblivion. Or is that video just really old or something?

His Let's Play is 179 episodes. He stuck with it for a long time.

Yes ^^

I said it in jest, all of that paragraph. Also, Oblivion isn't really that different from Morrowind in basics. I was referring to his current experience too.

We were all there at some point. Most things are second nature to us now, it might not be the case for others.

My idea for what the stat system in the next TES game should be is rather simple: bring back all the attributes and skills, maybe add in a few... And then hide them from the player. Attributes and skills are not the issue, numbers are. Having an interface where you can see the values of your stats makes people focus on the game part rather than on the role play part (and yes, it is to varying degrees based on the individual player).

Now, some may ask "how do I know when I'm stronger?" The answer is that it takes less effort to kill that group of bandits than it did earlier. Your bow draws faster, your sword hits harder, your spells are more efficient, and when you later create a new character and try to perform the same actions, there is a noticeable difference in speed/power/whatever.

There are still some issues that would need to be worked out, like how exactly to tell how badly wounded your character is, or when your out of magicka or stamina. But all in all I think it'd work great, giving veterans their skills and complexity back, and still allowing the game to be easily accessible to new players.

2 hours! TL;DW

Well, by that logic Morrowind is the most dumbed down TES game of them all, followed closely by Oblivion and then Skyrim.

The flaw in the old system was tying Skills 100% to Attributes when the attributes themselves should be independent of the skills and effecient leveling was also a problem. In Fallout 3 for example, The Attributes only minorly affected the skills at the beginning of the game and didn't affect them at all through out the rest of the game unless you increased an attribute which would only put the skill up 2 more points that the attribute affected. Morrowind and Oblivion though, they had to have Skills tied to Attributes meaning if you wanted to raise strength you had to raise both Blade, Blunt and Hand To Hand. If someone is roleplaying a Swordsman would that Swordsman use an Axe, no they wouldn't but that character would suffer in the strength department due to not getting the +5 needed to stay competitve and if he just focuses on Blade and getting the +5 in strength that way, the rest of his attributes would suffer and that character would lag. It's a bad system that didn't benefit from attributes at all, rather the game was held back because of the attribute system that was in Oblivion. A lot of people modded out the attribute system that Oblivion had and went with either a static one or getting +5's every level but then again that goes to the same problem of ending up at the same place unless you set it up in a way to have your character be different.


Agree 100%, Morrowind you can exploit things to no end and get incredibly powerful items with eaise it's a joke in my opinion, Oblivion almost as much although the scaling made things harder and more annoying, Skyrim is much harder to exploit outside of Alchemy, Enchanting, and Smithing but even with those 3 skills that you can exploit, Skyrim is much harder to do so then the previous games and the scaling is much better then the previous games. The game also benefits from not having 8 attributes that did more problems then good by now having 3 attributes that totally matter this time around.

I was just coming here to post that very thing--reverse ninja?

You'd want to keep some things visible to reward the player, but a ton of complexity could be added to stats (and quests) to make everyone's playthrough different, while not being overly (and overtly) complex for the new RPG'er or casual gamer.

The only attribute system that I could see working in TES in the future is the Fallout Attribute system where it's static for the whole length of the game, minorly affects the skills and you can set it up to your style at the beginning of the game.

Which is somewhat ironic, since one of the main complaints a number of us 'old-school' types had against Fallout 3 was that the effects of the Attributes had been minimized.

It should be noted that Attributes in Fallout games affect their related skills in a different manner than Attributes in TES do, in that they directly increase the level of said skills rather than being applied as a modifier, so raising one Attribute as little as one point can have a significant effect on one's build. Fallout 3 changed this, by reducing the extent by which Attributes increased their related skills, which largely trivialized Attributes since raising them didn't really affect one's skills to any significant degree. That it then tossed Attribute and Skill increases at you like Halloween candy didn't help either, as it made capping all of both ridiculously easy to do.

Said Attributes weren't really static, although in Fallout 1 and 2 you could only increase each one once and only had about 3-4 total opportunities (you could get 5 in FO1 if you knew what you were doing) to increase them. That insured that you couldn't cap everything, which meant you had to consider those limited opportunities when designing a character so that you could properly place the additional Attribute points you received during character creation.

if anything, the problem is not that Attributes can be raised, but that they are linked to the skills, since that link practically forces 'stilted' play if one wishes to raise a given attribute to a high level. Severing the two creates its own problems, as it both largely negates the point of having Attributes in the first place as well as making it rather difficult to increase them without radically altering the character growth systems, so I'm not sure what can be done to fix this without causing more damage in the process.

double post

no way OO is this real?
ok.... *grabs popcorn* time for 2h of loling

that is not true at all. first you dont need to use a bunch of weapon skills to raise str. i have raised it many times and have never used anything other than blade. you also dont need +5 to be competitive, that is just a load of bs. you need to learn how to play.

Beth did a good job streamlining this game. They also made it so your average gamer who enjoys mindless first person shooters/zombie killer games will play it. If you want you can delve deeper with the enchanting, alchemy, shouts, and specific quest objectives. They catered to both sides and I salute them for it. They really could have turned this game into a mindless shooter and probably would have reached a larger audience and made more money. Who knows on that last point. The trend in gaming is, give them everything, make it simple so a 4 year old can play it, and make it easy so people do not have to think. Bethesda, Paradox and a few other gaming studios have resisted this formula to degree, or at least are trying to integrate it.

It's not dumbed down when they replace those missing features with newer, more in depth and more complex features.

Whick they didn't.

that, not a darn thing complex about H/M/S or the crafting system in Skyrim.

Yes they did.

Armorer skill, and equipment degradation replaced with Smithing, and a full fledged equipment crafting and improvement system.
Attributes replaced with Perks, which allow for much more character variety and customization than Attributes ever could.
Spellmaking replaced with more in depth casting gameplay mechanics that allow for more versatile styles of magic and casting.

The only thing Skyrim is missing from Oblivion, that wasn't replaced and improved upon, was Hand to Hand, Athletics, and Acrobatics. Everything else is either still in the game (Mysticism), or was replaced with something better.

I've been trying play without the map markers, by only relying on the instructions given in the journal and the npcs. Not doable most of the time. Fortunately once your in the correct dungeon, turning off the active marker makes things far more enjoyable, as you actually need to look for the target yourself.

Agree and I would argue that some of those changes were necessary and better for the game. Smithing while broken when it's abused, is a pretty cool skill.

Armor Degration was annoying, works for Fallout because you can just use another equipment to repair the armor but doesn't work great in Elder Scrolls especially when you had to spam Repair Hammer just to keep everything high. Thus by doing that you raise Endurance which could screw over your attribute build although Endurance is important. Acrobatics and Athletics are gone which is good, would be really bad with this current system, even worse then it would've been in Oblivion. Mysticism is a meh but 7 magic skills vs 6 and 6 isn't an even number.

Attributes are still there, it's just down to 3 main attributes that are important and 18 skills with over 200 perk choices, giving us a bunch of routes that we can go with our characters. Overall I would say the changes are for the better although the attribute situation isn't perfect at all, I definitely think the game could benefit from a Fallout like Attribute system but that's never going to happen. People would complain, "Too much Fallout in my Elder Scrolls".

I'm actually really pleased with Skyrim, much more so than I was with Oblivion. Please don't give me the "but Morrowind/Daggerfall/whatever" arguments, I never played them, and I don't care to play them. Skyrim is better than Oblivion, and that's good enough for me. As far as the perjorative "dumbing down" meme, I think it's useful only to express discontent, and says nothing about the quality of the game or of the players. I don't find streamlining to be a useful term either, in that it assumes that the changes will necessarily be good. But in the forums, one person's dumbing-down is another person's streamlining.

I find that I don't really miss the greaves/cuirass being split. I don't miss repairing armour either, even though I enjoyed it in Oblivion. I think magic is more fun, if more predictable without custom spells. I honestly have not cared to check my stats at all, so add me to that list as well. My character seems more organic and less artificial without having to level up stats. Anyway, I don't mind that Skyrim is "dumbed-down."

The only change I don't like from Oblivion to Skyrim is the exclusion of many spell effects. Most specifically, the summonables (Skeletons, Ghosts, Wraiths, Liches), and the Command spells.

Spellmaking I was a huge fan of in Morrowind and Oblivion, but I don't particularly miss it. It's importance to magic is greatly exaggerated around here. I also don't think it'd work with the new spell mechanics, at least not as we've known Spellmaking in the past. If they can implement it properly, I'll be all about seeing it in a DLC, but outside of that it's not an issue.

I just want the missing spell effects to come back, and the spells that we do have to scale better.

Virtually every other change from Oblivion to Skyrim, outside of missing spell effects, I feel is for the better of the series. It adds more than what we had before.