Tell you what. Why don't you sell your copy of skyrim and go play Morrowind or earlier games, if you have such a big problem with it don't buy their games. I did that with MW3 and well there not getting my ￡40 , why dont you do that with TES game or go even futher and don't buy any bethesda published games

I wish people on the fence about whether or not The Main Event is a troll would read his posts. His just throwing out the same baseless complaints everybody here should be used to by now.

To quote myself.....


Regarding fewer skills:

Medium Armor -
What's the point? With the perks available to Heavy and Light Armor you can easily get any advantage that medium armor once offered. Notice that a some of the "heavy" and "light" armors are more like a "medium" armor in weight and protection anyway (like Scaled for example). They're just classified differently.

Mysticism -
Most of the important mysticism spells are still in, just in different schools. And who says the College of Winterhold has to follow the same school classification as the former Mage's Guild? I do miss Dispell and Reflect though.

Athletics and Acrobatics -
Thank God these are gone. I no longer feel compelled to jump around like an idiot while wandering the woods. If you ask me, the new sprint mechanic is far more realistic.

Armorer -
Smithing is way better. Besides, repairing weapons all the time was annoying. You can argue that having a weapon degrade was realistic. But all things considered repairing equipment wasn't very realistic anyway. "Okay, I'm gonna sit down in the middle of a dungeon and use a freakin' hammer to make my leather armor more effective."

Mercantile -
Um... Isn't having Speechcraft and Mercantile a bit redundant?

Blade and Blunt (also Axe, Short Blade, and Long Blade) -
One-Handed and Two-Handed just make more sense. Are you telling me that a master swordsman would be totally clueless if you handed him an axe or mace? I think the perk trees for these skills more than makes up for the fact that blade and blunt are no longer specific skills.

Security -
This was just renamed "Lockpicking" and Pickpocketing is a separate skill altogether.

Hand-to-Hand -
Okay, I miss this a little bit. But it was always more of a novelty than a skill most people actually used. Besides, the Fists of Steel perk is there if you want to beef up your punches.

Unarmored -
Miss this one a little bit too. But it's kinda from the "dice-roll" era of TES anyway, and was only really good for saving throws. Graphics and animations are a LOT better now, so it's pretty immersion breaking to see an enemy's sword clearly nail you in the face and have the game say it "missed." Also, the Mage Armor perk in Alteration, and the bonus to sneaking are great ways to reward unarmored players.

Spear -
Spears would have been cool, but I really think they were taken out for game balance purposes. Face it, a medium-long range thrusting weapon is virtual invincibility when facing any opponent without a ranged attack.


Regarding Attributes

Lets be honest. The old attribute system was a total D&D rip off, and unnecessarily complicated. Upgrading attributes in Oblivion and Morrowind had two purposes: A- increase Health, Stamina, or Magicka. And B- increase the effectiveness (or reduce the cost) of certain skills. You can still do exactly that by spending perk points, and increasing attributes directly. Seriously, why be complex simply for the sake of being complex? The new system is just better.


Regarding... Um... everything else

Bugs -
Hardly new to Bethesda games.

Spellmaking -
Totally agree with you here. Spellmaking needs to be back. Or at least something like http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1313799-mages-dlc-wish-list/page__p__19754521__fromsearch__1#entry19754521
Armor pieces -
The problem with this is enchantment stacking. It was super easy to make your character into a god with NINE enchantable items. However, I would like the ability to have more options in the creation of armor - such as adding or removing those beloved pauldrons.

Arena -
Actually I miss this. But, I don't think it has anything to do with "dumbing down" the game. Maybe we'll see it in a DLC.

Smaller cities -
Skyrim is just different than Cyrodill or Morrowind. It's like comparing Alaska to New York or Florida. And if you really want to get down to brass tacks - has ANY city in a TES game really been a city? The Imperial City in Oblivion had about 150 residents. Would you seriously call a community with 150 residents a city? At least in Skyrim the people are actually doing stuff.
This post has been edited by Nero Joe: Yesterday, 11:20 PM

I think this is what actually scares most people. How do you think they define "what works"? Personally, I feel rather convinced that the people they'll interview about the game will not include any of the veterans. Heck, I'd probably too "old school" as it is, and I'm not a veteran. I didn't join the universe until TES3. I'm also quite sure that they frankly don't care what grumpy PC RPG gamers feel about the level of complexity, since grumpy PC RPG gamers are not the target segment anyway.

I think such fears are why the "haters" are being somewhat aggressive. Nobody likes to be marginalized like this. Nobody likes being a part of something for years, only to be thrown onto a garbage heap and told you're not a good enough customer, that people who play the game less and move on quicker are actually better customers.

Simple. How much money did we (Bethesda) make on it. Well then, that's what works.

Sad.

Uldred

So what you are saying is that you are skating around the words "dumbed down" because you dont like the stigma attached to it, but you are still aware that everything was simplified?

Stop being afraid of words. Yes, there is a stigma attached to them, and for a good reason. Skyrim was simplified. For people who thinks this simplification has somehow lessened the game's overall quality/depth, the stigma-related "dumbed down" is simply the most accurate way to put it.

If I remember correctly (and I wasn't taking notes), I came to TES with Arena after beginning my computer game life with Ultima IV. Until I saw that game, I thought all PC games were more like arcade games, and I had no interest in playing those.

I think I then played Might & Magic Xeen, which I got for a Christmas present. Unlike what I used to, it was just a hack and slash type game as I learned they were called, and Arena struck me as very much in the same vein. Nothing Bethesda has done since then has given me any reason to change my mind. It's all just mindless killing with a heavy focus on combat, and while I even still love and play Daggerfall, I don't fool myself that TES has ever been anything other than simple.

I agree, to a certain extent, that elements of the game have been shaved off. But I don't find this a game breaking deal. Some of it is rather unbelievable, like the removal of magic creation, but I'm not too bothered that they revamped the leveling system and removed attributes.

This is why I can only call it different. I don't know how to compare this to another TES title as some of the core mechanics of the game have been scrapped. As a standalone game? It's fun, has some terribly poor writing/lack of imaginative quests, but still enjoyable to a degree. As a TES game? It is more like an "action-walk-around-and-kill-things game", instead of a richly imagined world which is only represented by, as you put it, shiny graphics.

Is it what I hoped it would be? Nope. But I don't mind a little mindless maiming once in a while. Most quests are an absolute joke, though.

Edit: "Mindless maiming"

Yeah, okay, I see where you're coming from now. If I wrote that, then it definitely suggests you don't need to think...obviously.

Only a moron would say Skyrim is 'dumbed down'. Numbers, attributes and an overload of stats and skills only made a better rpg when gameplay and graphics couldnt provide the immersion needed. If Morrowind felt like a really deep and immersive rpg because there was tons of skills and other numbers to play around with then you can be fooled easily. Skyrim finally adds levels of detail and fantasy-realism that was unparalleled in previous games....not just TES, but any other previous rpgs. They removed lame, annoying 'features' such as constant weapon and armor repair, and gave us crafting and improving instead, all done at actual smithing areas instead of in some number cluttered menu. They took away flying cardboard cliff racers and gave us dragons with actual A.I. They took away the dull, dime a dozen caves and bandit lairs and gave us detailed, fleshed out areas to explore. I loved Morrowind and past tes games myself, but role playing doesnt mean an overload of stats, numbers and tediousness. Those features had to suffice when imagination had to make up for pathetic graphics and/or subpar gameplay. Skyrim is real roleplaying now.

word

The fact that this topic has 2 threads and SEVENTEEN pages of total discussion goes to show there are plenty of people upset with this series spiraling out of control.

Oh, so you are free choose what type of reaction to have in dialogues (angry, sad, yes, no, etc)? You have multiple ways to complete tasks/quests? The storyline is engaging and involving, and your character develops a real personality that is taken into account in your interaction with NPCs?

Sorry man, but you are completely dellusional. This is one of the worst game there is for roleplaying.... you are on rails from when you create your toon till the moment you close your Xbox. The game is built on a single unchangeable script and simply does not let you personify your character ingame.

See my sig...

How is this in any way "real roleplaying" now?nowhere??

Actually, most people on here are giving reasons why the series IS NOT "spiraling out of control."

If you think complexity somehow automatically makes a game better or more immersive you should just quit TES and buy some 20 sided dice.

No, because that doesnt make any sense.

Meanwhile, there is no way in any universe that removal means a better, more deep game.
So many things are gutted from the series, it is a hollow shell of itself.
It is shallow. It does not have meat on its beautiful bones.

This is because of all the things that were removed. Complexity may not automatically make a better game, there is no way you get an excellent game by taking one and removing everything that made it great.

A more complex character system offers more choices to shape your character, which is what an open world role-playing game that emphasizes its freedom is all about. It's really simple, I don't see why people always try to ridicule that argument.

I'll wager you didn't start the series before Oblivion or even Morrowind? The fact that there are people who have been with this series from the very BEGINNING means that I'm going to voice my opinion when I want. I will NOT let people who jumped on boars midway, or even worse, with/after Oblivion, to respond to legit concerns with smarm and snarl.

After readind a few pages, no, its not. Its people annoyed with people like you posting these stupid threads.

All you contribute is short one liner pokes hoping to incite some reaction, and its been successful. There is another name for this too, and it rhymes with strolling.

I think there is always room for improvement and I defintely don't think the game is perfect. I'm also a bit worried about the continuous removal of skills with every subsequent titles, but Skyrim did actually add things in contrast to Oblivion, which only removed things. I'll come back to that later in my post. The number of skills isn't really something to go by, because I don't feel a lot of skills had potential to start with. Acrobatics and Athletics, for example, were the worst skills in TES (and perhaps any game I've ever played) in that they required you to grind moving to level.


TES games have never very complex in their nature, just in their execution. Morrowind was a relatively simple game to play but it had a steep learning curve because of unbalance and vague descriptions, indications, and explanations as to what was required of the player. If you can point me to actual complexity in quests or anything in Morrowind apart from the books (which aren't gameplay related), I'd be happy to come back on that. What I've seen in Oblivion and Skyrim is that they cater more to players that don't have extreme amounts of time to invest in a game by adding quest markers and the compass to explain to people what to do and where to go. Do I like these additions? Not really, but I always play without quest markers and without compass. The only thing that really stuck out for me with Skyrim was the removal of a proper journal. That's just a bad step and really removes something I consider an important part of TES games.


I think gamesas is much more interested in selling millions of copies than in keeping their games alive. It's a nice bonus, but that's it. There maybe a few thousand people (maybe tens of thousands) who keep playing these games for years but the overwhelming majority of players will put the game aside and hardly ever touch it again.

And gamesas telling you to jump of a bridge is a bit overdramatic, don't you think? Surely your life doesn't revolve around a series of video games. I love TES as much as the next guy, but if it turned into something I hated, I would be a bit bummed and then proceed to move on to other things. Don't make it bigger than it is.

But yeah, these kind of posts are a logical result of the direction TES is heading in, I agree with you on that.


Well to keep it short, attributes were just a 30-100 thing. And if you played "correctly" you'd end up with all attributes except for luck at 100 in the end. All end-game characters were carbon copies as a result, save the racials and birthsigns. With perks, you'll never get all of them and each character will be more unique. Attributes did add make some roleplaying aspects easier, but you can still roleplay as a strong guy you just don't have a value in an attribute anymore. Now don't get me wrong, I'd actually would have loved to see perks and attributes in Skyrim. But if it's an or/or kind of thing I prefer perks.


Indeed. I never said Skyrim was complex. In fact, I said games across the board are getting more accessible and TES is just one of the many. But previous TES games were hardly complex either, except Daggerfall perhaps but I must admit I hardly played that. I started off in the TES series with Morrowind and it was slightly confusing and vague the first few hours, but once I got how it worked (the hit/miss, magic succes rolls, etc) it wasn't really complex at all. It was slightly more complex than Skyrim was, I agree, but still pretty simple and it never had any deep roleplaying aspects like a lot of people claim. The same goes for Oblivion.

Finally, a lot of flaws you're pointing out are balance, not something inherent to the system. The fact that lockpick and speech are horrible perk trees is because the balance is off. That can be fixed (though I actually fear Bethesda won't even touch it) through balance patches/mods and aren't inherent flaws of the perk system.

So, I do think TES games are getting slightly less complex with every title (though the drop from Morrowind to Oblivion was a lot bigger than from Oblivion to Skyrim) but I don't think it's killing the series. Attribute replacement by perks is no disaster and a lot of the bad things about Skyrim actually come down to balance. The only real loss is Spellmaking which makes mage gameplay considerably less complex and engaging.

@Echonite Try reading through the first thread and this one. Plenty of people agree. Just read some of the responses on this very page.

at least we PC users still have the mods
midas made some mods too ^ ^
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3863

Make nr3 when next TES comes out and we'll see

Way to go out of your way to develop a logical fallacy.

Complexity doesn not mean a better/more immersive game, but that does not mean that simplicity does it eitther. Complexity does, however, adds depth and makes a game more involving, which cannot be said of simplicity.

Nr3?

@ Nero Joe

What's the point of having separate skills for light and heavy armor when they're effectively the same thing, only with different weights? Currently armor is a style option, nothing more. Light or heavy, you can buff it to hit the armor cap and make it weightless with a perk. Where's the practica difference? And it's even more absurd when we try to link this to reality, where a leather armor is much different from a chain mail, which in turn is much different from plated mail. Then again, reality is complex and so it's a place where gamesas really don't want to go.

Totally. It makes perfect sense that an Imperial woman in a suit of plated armor runs just as fast and jumps just as high as male Nords, Redguards, and Orcs. Absolutely. Then again, "making sense" means "fits with reality" and that, as said, is very far from what gamesas wants.

Armorer didn't break the game. Smithing does. Perhaps they could've come up with something in between?

It's redundant if you think being a fast talker and a good negotiator is the same thing. As someone who has quite a bit of formal education in business, I can tell you that they're absolutely not the same thing. You'll of course ignore that because reality is overrated.

Are you kidding me? Merging all the different weapon skills into a mere two skills based on the number of hands you hold the weapon with is [censored] INSANE! YES, the master swordsman would be down crap creek without a paddle if given a mace, because the principles of a mace are entirely different. A mace is all about impact momentum, it's dramatically less balanced than a sword, it's got no edge so cutting motions are useless, it's got no tip so stabbing is useless. It is far, far removed from the art of using a sword well. Even further, a master swordsman would also be in deep trouble if handed a whip, a police baton, an axe, a spear, or really any other weapon than the one he's been training with.

Having a perk that gives a potential +100% damage with all 1H or 2H weapons is so unrealistic that anyone who cares the least bit about world consistency is violently shook out of any immersion. That's just not how things work in reality. Might as well improve a mace or bow's damage by sharpening it on a whetstone or improving your armor's level of protection by urinating on it.

Fists of Steel is a heavy armor perkj. Who the heck would put on heavy armor when playing a monk character? WHO? That's right, NOT A SINGLE PERSON EVER! And having a garbage perk does not make up for a loss skill, does it? Well, if you're the most fanatic gamesas ass-kisser ever, maybe. If you're employed by them, definitely. If you're a reasonably critical gamer, NO [censored] WAY IN HELL.

Saving throws? Unarmored gave you more armor from being unarmored, nothing more. It's like light armor, except it applies to naked / regularly clothed bodyparts. Even though it should be dodge-based, it wasn't.

And the Mage Armor perk only makes any kind of sense if you're going to be a mage and cast those thingyflesh spells every two minutes. Have you considered that there may be very strong RP reasons to not do that? Such as being a monk, a thief, a rogue, a burglar, a ninja or what have you? No, you haven't? Not really surprising.

Spears were taken out because giving people more than three weapon types is overkill. Casuals are happy with just three totally similar types and that's all that matters. Adding in spears would just make things complex again and that's the thing gamesas are trying to get away from. How can they sell 15 million copies of the game if people have to actually think while playing? By the way, how on Earth can you have horses in the game but not include one of the biggest features of horses nor one of the biggest anti-horse weapons? It boggles the mind that the gamesas team can stomach it, but then of course they're getting well paid to make such sacrifices.

Increase agility and your dodge and ability to hit would improve. Increase Wis and you'd become better at casting certain spells. Increase Int and you'd get more magicka and become better at alchemy. Increase Str and you'd hit harder and jump higher. Increase Speed and you'd be faster. All these things make perfect sense and are rather intuitive. They also provided plenty of ways to customize your character. How is this even remotely replicated with lameass perks? Where's the realism in my non-thief warrior needing Extra Pockets for carrying capacity rather than simply upping strength?

Not just something like spellmaking. Let the players have control with the spells the player is casting. How [censored] hard can that concept be? It's a sandbox game so let us sandbox our spells, for crying out loud. Less choice is not more and that's just how it is.

As for armor pieces, the simple answer is to limit stacking efficiency. By the way, nine? Helmet, cuirass, left pauldron, left glove, right pauldron, right glove, greaves, boots, shield, sword, ring, ring, amulet. Am I counting that wrong or is that 13? And yet the game didn't break until you could afford to pay an enchanter to make some godly CE enchants, because you weren't likely to have enough items worth enchanting to want to risk doing it yourself.