I did not put anything in your mouth. You (or whoever i was replying to) clearly stated that "people disliking the game are a minority", which you simply and clearly do not have any way of knowing. Aka, you pulled this out of your ass to try and justify your position.

As for your opinion.. yes, it does need to be backed up. Otherwise its meaningless/worthless.

I took a break from this and went and played through the dungeon I happened to be standing outside with my thief character, which is called Forelhost. Just a place I came across while wandering about. The whole time, all I could think was that if you are unhappy with this game, you probably spend a lot of your life feeling unhappy about something.

Indeed. Politicians svck, lawyers, insurance people, and tax people seem to be "bad people" in general, human rights in the third world are a joke, the environment is going to hell, we're still going to be using antiquated energy sources for decades, and computer is getting rather old at this point. Never any shortage of things to be unhappy about.

I'm curious as to when the OP is going to start engaging with constructive arguments in their own thread rather than tossing out emotionally driven one liners that are obviously designed to fuel the fires of discontent.

Or to put it another way: I think the OP is trolling.

I found a note on a corpse one day. As soon as I read it, an arrow appeared in my compass. There were no directions on the note. No map. Nothing that would point me to the location of whatever cave was being referenced by the writer (not even the fact that it was a cave -- just a name was written). And yet the arrow knew exactly where to go.

How isn't that dumbed down? How isn't that hand-holding? In Morrowind, I would have been given vague or cryptic directions, perhaps even told to look for an oddly shaped rock formation or other geographical feature, and it would actually require time, effort, and some investigation to find the location being referenced.

You are just blindly ignoring the fact that people want their roleplay to be represented in the game they play.

If you played D&D and the game master decided for you what to reply to NPCs and how to react to events, would you call it freedom? Because thats about how Skyrim plays. You have a lot of choices of where to go, but you cannot control your interactions with the game in any way, shape or form. That is not something I call "making a choice without the game telling me".

Again: to me, RPing means deciding how my character reacts to what happens to him. It does not mean deciding wether to react or not.

And sometimes, the directions were WRONG! Just like in the real world. I LOVED that.

The game HAS been simplified since Daggerfall. Fewer skills, quest compass, the complete elimination of attributes, more concentration on player skill, rather than character skill, fewer weapon varieties. (i still miss crossbows) etc. You can STILL be everything to every one. Only exception being you can't join both the stormcloaks, and the empire. There are an extremely small number of quests that you can actually fail. For the most part, you CAN'T fail. The player has ALL the advantages in Skyrim, NPC's don't get perks, they don't upgrade their weapons. They do have the unlimited mana pool though......

Morrowind, and previous games, were developed on the PC, FOR the PC. Morrowind was ported to xbox. All the following games, including the FO games, were developed on xbox, and ported to PC, the games are developed to cater to casaul/console gamers, with limited control sets. The game was developed on an obsolete platform, that is now six or more years old. How far has computer technology come in that six years? Yet we are still stuck with a game engine that can't effectively use multi-core CPUs, or Multi-GPU solutions. Why is that? Xbox doesn't have 'em.

Yeah, it's a really great tactic.

And this is a great example of it. I'm growing tired of having to explain why perks don't work for specialization in Skyrim (there just aren't enough to force you into a choice, base perks are mandatory, every swordsman will have the same perks, focusing the discussion on perks fails to mention all the other lost aspects of the character system, etc.), and having to list all the character builds we lost throughout the series. Which will ultimately just be refuted by "well, but now we have dual wielding!"

I agree. Its about the game presenting you with a choice, or even if you decide to go your own way. Either way, in a RPG the game itself should recognise that a choice has been made. If it does not do this, then its a linear story, and not a true RPG.

An open world where you can act as you wish is not the same as a RPG that recognises that your character is different from any other NPC.

So I guess for the OP and like-minded players, the "magic" of TES was all about doing stuff in menus, and spending countless hours beating up your own summoned creatures to build your stats.

Yeah, boy I sure do miss those "complex" (*needlessly complicated and pointless) systems, nothing like spending hours doing skills that aren't the ones I picked in order to get my stats where I want. Yeah...Morrowind and Oblivion were real gems of RPG character design and depth.


Sigh...I have not played a TES game where choice meant much of anything, did you guys all get amnesia when you bought Skyrim or what? It's like you expect something the the series has never delivered without mods. Arguably with the perk system your choices at least have some minimal effect on how you play, as far as i'm concerned there is more choice in Skyrim than the previous two games, and there's certainly less that's broken in terms of choices.

There's also no more choice in the quests or dialogue in the previous two games, and i'm not sure where people get that from. Morrowind was linear as hell, it was just a list of canned responses and then the couple of functional conversation branches for whatever quest you were on. Oblivion had what, maybe a couple quests that involved any kind of 'choice', most of it was very standard stuff.

The one place I think the game is dumbed down is lack of journal, and presence of a compass..so TURN THAT MAHFAH off.

Don't like the game? Tell it to Bethesda's phat bank accounts and perfect 10 reviews. I'm sure they'll take your opinion very seriously. Think that Bethesda is abandoning it's PC fans? How many of it's PC fans do you think abandoned Bethesda when they pirated the game? (I know it's not representative of the general population, but of the 8 PC users I know who own Skyrim, 1 of them actually paid for it). Bethesda is not in the business of making you happy. It's in the business of making money. If you don't like it, don't buy their product. Otherwise, you might as well complain that the sun is too bright for all the good it will do.

Something that annoys me is the Bethbots have this argument bass ackwards. I keep on hearing how perks are more realistic when, as you say, the opposite is true. Attributes are a much more realistic system for simulating real-life character values.

There is no magical perkolator out there to give someone more carrying capacity.

You say it like its a terrible thing, but yes, wake up call: a lot of people play RPGs for character developement. Was TES ever a stellar game in that department? No. But simplifying it even further only makes it worst.

And yes, most of us expect a sequel that took 5 years to complete to somehow improve upon its predecessor. When Morrowind or even Oblivion came out, that was pretty much the norm in RPG, and fully acceptable. Games have come leaps and bound further since, and gamers now expect more complexity and depth then they did.

Coffee?

holy[censored]ing[censored]readthethreadpleaseohmychrist

This is my first Elder Scrolls game, and I got exactly what I expected. I am not disappointed, but I know that I am unlikely to come back to the game for any length of time once my current character is finished. Same as with Fallout 3, you can experience mostly everything with one character, and few of my subsequent ones have lasted more than a few levels.

There's certainly a lot more choice than in Fallout 3, and that is most welcome.

However, I so believe that opening up the game to mods is not wholly a positive thing. Console users do not have this luxury, so have only the base game to work with. This is something I have touched upon before - the game's longevity should not be reliant on mods, and sometimes I think that it is.

... Sigh...

In my option, the really devoted fan's opinions are wrong.
I don't need to explain why, but believe me -- I'm right.

Therefore, [censored] are wrong.

Eat that, [censored]!

...

Opinions matter, but not because they're opinions.
For salesmen, opinions matter per head -- no matter if the opinions are funded on reality or schizoid fantasies.
For debates, opinions do not matter -- arguments do.

IF this is a debate, and not a tally of opinions (a poll), opinions do not matter.
It is what LEADS to your opinion that matters.

This all reminds me of a political debate some months ago, where the thread title was:
Organ donation: Why aren't some people donors?

One person replied: "I don't want to".

...
...
...

That is why opinions are worthless without reasoning and argumentation.

I asked the same person if that person would like to recieve a new organ should that person need it, or if that person's child should need it.
The answer was "Yes, of course".
Clearly, the person's opinion wasn't thought through at all.

...
How can we know that an opinion is thought through, and not just a superficial "I can has opinion too!" type of baseless opinion, if the opinion cannot be backed by reasoning and argumentation?

Even when asking specifically for REASONS WHY people have an opinion, people believe their opinion is holy for the merit of being an opinion.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion.
But in a debate, your opinion is next to worhtless -- because people are not interested in opinions, they are interested in the FACTS that LEAD to the person having that opinion.

People who want your money are interested in your opinion, because they want to make a product that caters to you, wheter you're right or wrong.

BUT in a debate, people are interested in the reasoning that formed your opinion.

This is my opinion on why opinions should always be backed up by the reasoning leading to that opinion, or at the least supporting the opinion.

It may very well just be my opinion, but at the least you know it's a rational position.

Opinions of sane mature people are not opinions -- they're opinons based on experiences.

Ok, and what i'm saying is in my opinion you guys that wanted some uber-character creator game are in a definite minority of TES fans.

I think that most of us wanted an improved upon version of the open-world roaming that existed in the previous games, and a big trimming of the fat, and had less opinion on the poorly done, over complicated character creation/advancement systems of the previous two games. Certainly I don't think there were that many TES fans whose main concern was this stuff. About the only thing I miss is spellmaking, and only slightly.

So I think that people who cared most about what TES games have historically done a mediocre job at anyway - character development and specialization are a small minority of the series' fans. It makes sense they'd be a small and vocal minority, but I think the evidence is clear that that is exactly what you guys are, a small, vocal minority that will probably only be satisfied with the game once it's modded up.

I don't blame you, the fact is that to my mind also these games are generally better once modded by the smaller, more specialized mod community. But that is just a question of my personal tastes and I don't think those represent the wants of most of TES players.

My perk for today was:

+15% caffeine high

Tomorrow when I go to work out I'll be sure to choose the +20% carry capacity perk before starting....because that is how you get. it. done.

What have you been smoking? No more cheese for you, that's for sure. I'll just go back to playing the best elder scrolls game the world has ever known, bye!

Although, could someone name a single-player game that had so much stuff to do it didn't "need mods" to be enjoyable for 1000 hours? Any single-player game will do. But you aren't going to succeed when naming those, because my two nominations go to oblivion and skyrim and you must then come up with a single-player game that gives 'more', because apparently skyrim ain't giving enough even with it's infinite quests.

A factual opinion is a logical fallacy... just sayin. You do not know who is the minority and who is the majority because such data does not exist. Aka, this is not an opinion, its just a baseless statement.

So you might want to stop justifying your position by pulling made-up statistics and unverefied data and presenting it as an opinion. How about giving us some actual arguments? All you have been able to give us so far is "I am right because i think most people agree with me!"

Here gomes "guy who paid attention for one hour in his logic and crit class", great.


I didn't cite any statistics because I don't have any, it's my take on reality..I can go into why I think it, but the reasons are pretty clear. This whole thread is opinion Mr. Master Debater, and this is mine.

It's no worse than the OP and all the other hand-wringing about the death of the series, they certainly have no statistics or relevant data to support their positions, furthermore, a cursory glance at reality makes their take on things simply less likely than mine.

Clearly if the majority were as disappointed as you guys, there would not be the number of people there are enjoying the game. No, I do not have a formal survey for this..but it is plainly obvious, and as a wise man once said : "Ya don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows".

opnions on this thread don't matter since the sales volumes are the best indices, that show that dumbification of the games is profitable. Why? because the majority of the population is dumb as .... .

Nope. If I wanted to increase my stats like that, I'd console them up and simply pretend to have grinded them up. Same end result, much less time wasted.

By the way, if that's actually what you think then your reading comprehension is FUBAR and you should consider going back to school.

They were deeper than Skyrim, though. And I strangely never did grind too much but then I always had loads better things to do, such as playing the damn games.

So if choice isn't tremendous to begin with then reducing it doesn't matter? Is that really a line of reasoning you think is valid?

What effect do you suppose perks have? I've been toying with a build that can do almost everything perfectly well. It's the same thing as in Morrowind, except skills obviously do less. Even so, there's plenty of perks to allow the same character to do solid magic, solid melee, solid archery and still be well protected defensively. There are plenty of perks that it really doesn't make any kind of sense to invest in, which means the only choice they provide is whether you want to throw away a perk point or not. Some choice, isn't it?

Sigh that's the whole point, there isn't that much less choice than the previous games, most of it was (to most people) meaningless fat cut from the game, it's that a few of the harcore fans actually liked these features, but again a SMALL minority compared to the huge volumes of people that make up the people who will purchase the games.