[I spoiler-tagged to keep vertical space use down]
Spoiler
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.
I actually agree with pretty much everything you said, except maybe the more subjective things. I'd rather have attributes (and a better system for improving them) than perks, for instance. I'd rather deal more damage because I'm just that strong than because I've invested 5 points in some super-perk that doesn't actually represent anything in real life. Yeah, I'm being a bit over-dramatic at times but I feel it's occasionally the only way to get your point across. And no, I don't actually think gamesas cares too much whether the games are kept alive. That's got to be the message, if anything, you pick up from the direction of Skyrim and the CK being released nearly two months after release.
I don't think I pointed out all that many flaws. I simply pointed out a few simple builds and a few things not to do. There's no reason to think archers are ever going to need more than that, enchant, and smithing for offensive options. Adding stealth make things even more crazy and adding illusion and conjuration provides significant crowd control, which isn't likely to change either. Melee, well, as long as smithing + double enchant is crazy strong, and block has a 50% elemental reduction perk (and a bowling perk), I don't see why that build would change either. Super-strong defense, solid offense. What more could you want?
Oh, and you asked for complexities in Morrowind. Well, the specifics for to hit chances and weapon damage, while not massively complex, were at least not painfully simple either. And it worked a lot better than the overly simplistic damage formula in Skyrim. In TES3, ungodly amounts of armor would protect you very well from normal attacks, going far above 80% damage reduction, but even stupid high levels wouldn't make a 250 damage hit go away entirely or even be reduced to 20%. I think I have that formula written down somewhere, actually. We could compare it to the Skyrim equivalent, if you want. The short version, however, is that weaker hits had more trouble penetrating armor than one big, thunderous hit. And that's exactly as it should be, even if it gimps daggers against heavy armor.
The way fatigue had a very significant effect on your combat performance, having multiple Great House factions that actually tried to sabotage one another, and having faction dispositions on top of NPC disposition was kind of cool as well. Having weapons which only did damage if you did the right kind of attack with them was also cool. Didn't actually work right in the game but the idea was great. And yes, you could actually control what kind of attack you'd make, even though it was fairly hit and miss and most people just activated "always use best", which is why they only ever saw one attack animation.
Finally, health wasn't retrospective. Go mage and you'd never have the health of a warrior, since warriors would have higher endurance and consequently get more health per level. Not really complex in itself, but it did add a complicating factor in that your mages actually sacrificed something. Another aspect was the really cool enemy design. No, not graphically, but if you went pure mage then your enemies would have a huge array of resistances and immunities and working around that was actually a lot harder than it might seem, and every so often you'd run into enemies with just a tiny bit of Reflect. Not a lot, just enough that you'd run the very real risk of having your killer spell of doom thrown straight back in your face. Working within the confines of those creature immunities was fun.
Now look at Skyrim creations. Half are weak to frost, strong vs flame. The other half is weak to flame, strong vs frost. If something looks dead or spews cold, it's frost resistant and fire vulnerable. If it spews fire then vice versa. Where's the fun in that?
Despite the above examples, I'm not sure I can give you an example of over-the-top complexity. Morrowind wasn't actually all that complex, as you said, which just makes it even more of a shame that sequels have consistently become even less complex.
» Sun Jun 03, 2012 2:08 am 
