Why is it so hard for you to just tell us what a Ranger should be able to do in your eyes and explain why you can’t do it in Skyrim?

I am pretty sure there is a reason why he did not respond to my post .

Holy crap. I leave for rehearsal and come back to find a monster.

Anyway, someone got my meaning on the first page. I was not looking for inane list of "I can't jump up and down in one spot and level up," comments. I was curious to know what broader classes/playstyles people felt weren't possible anymore. As someone else also pointed out, I think that pretty much any playstyle from previous games is still completely playable in Skyrim. It's just a little different.

And to the guy who said "I'd like to see your monk take on a dragon," I'd like to counter with this: I'd like to see anyone punch anything wearing armor and walk out with their hands intact. My monk character's been pretty playable so far, but I think it's somewhat realistic that he can't punch out a dragon.

P.S. Tolkien didn't create fantasy, nor did he create the notion of a Ranger. That's ridiculous.

Yes, but the access that people have to mods, in comparison to vanilla is at least 3 to 1 and at that point it's not longer an exploit, it's someone that is willing to alter their game at the expense of balance. It's no longer a mechanic in the game that can be exploited, it's someone willingly altering the game to exploit it. It's like giving someone a gun, and teaching them how to make a gun.

No, there's numerous builds that are no longer viable, everything from actual mechanic getting cut like acrobatics or increasing run speed, to spell effects and the loss of SC.

That has nothing to do with what you said, you talked about Beth devs feeling underappreciated.

In my opinion, this is the approach that Skyrim has taken... even in the narrative.

Its one giant creation kit, it provides the tools and the player defines the rules for the tools and how far those rules can go (parameters).

The ultimate gamespace is the player's imagination, and I think that's largely where Skyrim's mechanics succeed in a philosophical approach. In a practical sense though...

Some things could obviously be improved.

TES games are a prime example of how things that look good on paper aren't necessarily good in practice, consider levitation or enchanting + smithing.

Skyrim is the first whack at a new system, and it should really be no surprise to anyone that they didn't get it absolutely perfect on the first go around.

And I'm still looking for examples. Just because your "Acrobat" can't leap tall buildings in a single bound doesn't mean that he isn't jumping around to get everywhere.

A poor choice of words on my part.

I did not mean realistic as in immersion, but realistic as in practical or from a 'balanced' perspective.

Shouts sort of make sense in this dynamic because the spoken word is instantaneous, but traditionally... spells take a little bit to cast. Lord knows I remember the 10 second harm spell when quick cast would fail.

Some spells could certainly stand to be a little quicker though, and stronger for that matter.

When people say numerous they are normally talking about a couple of things in my opinion...

Levitate...

Acrobatics due to cities being in cells.

I can't think of many other builds that cannot be duplicated in Skyrim through one way or the other... there are just so many 'pink bunny options' in Skyrim when it comes to builds/classes/playstyles/archetypes.

Hes no longer an acrobat.

Inquisitor, Psijic, Medium, Maormer, Nagas, street performers, con artists, social passive builds have been hampered, as well as limiting builds to a shadow of their former selves, like Vampires, Witchdoctors, more specialized mages, Illusionists, Mystics, sacrificial magic users like blood mages etc. all types of other outside of the box things that spell creation could do like act as 'powers' that used stamina as well as magic. And most of thats just magic based builds.

Its mostly about the limiting of builds through custom tailored spells, although there are plenty that simply aren't there anymore. It isn't just acrobats that suffer from not being able to leap extremely high, or run extremely fast, which is lore friendly and prevalent.

I am not responding to me, I am responding to you, unless you're me. My posts are not expansions of previous works, they're new ideas stimulated by the environment around me... and yes that sentence is a reference to the development cycle Bethesda has seem to taken.

I think monk and hit and run assains/mages are gone. I loved making quick mages with a doomsday spell that ate up all of my magicka. Like drain 1000 health on touch. Kind of impossible now, not only is there no spell making to accomplish this (although I think I used a mod to expand the spell making limits) there is also no way to run faster than the other guy without using stamina and as a mage I sink everything into magicka.

Frost slows them down.

But yes there are builds that are no longer viable, as evolution tends to discriminate. However there are new builds, and ways of RP'ing that are now available that weren't before.

That is absolutely true, but the question OP presented was not “what can you do now that you couldn’t before?”

Here are some "custom" class builds that either got expanded on (very few) or are still viable from previous ES games: Druid, Crusader, Archaeologist, Farmer, Miner, Foreman, Courier, Pirate, Nobility, Monk, Astronomer, Naturalist, Trapper/furrier, Bar Wench, Town Drunk, Town Skooma Addict, Skooma dealer, Serial Killer, Spy, Private Investigator, Town guard, town command, Militia, Bards (If Only we could play the damn instruments) Bar Hands, Shop Hands, Dock Hands, Poachers, Outlaws, Court Wizard, Court Jester, Court Composer, Alchemist.

Obviously for the person that only makes a few builds, or only makes one and does everything, Skyrim is fine. But for the people that call ES games their major, or almost exclusive cRPG experience, then it gets old fast.

Vampires are arguably the strongest they have EVER been, and perhaps the most magically gifted build in Skyrim with one single perk in Restoration.

I'll agree that the efficiency of some builds has been reduced, specifically builds that center around attributes like Speed, Speechcraft and such... but you can still create a build like that.

You may have to play them to a self imposed level cap, but you can still play them.

Its not about power, its about customization and doing things outside the box. Just because Vamps got OPed because of another design decision for newer players, doesn't mean they got more diversified.

The biggest thing though, is that these builds are still available elsewhere (previous ES games). And that's what we're really talk how better Skyrim is compared to its predecessors. And other than graphics, its failing. Compared to 99% of the rest of gaming, its a miracle. The problem is, I remember, and still play a more expansive ES experience than in Skyrim.

Come on, you know that is not enough.
It also has to be fun and it is not. Think back to playing FO2 with 3 intelligence you were dumb as a rock and couldn’t do half of the quests but it was still fun as hell.

In a sense a Monk is still very much viable. If we are talking a very religious Monk who is a pacifist then yes it's still viable. Outside of the undead (maybe a couple of other creatures) you can basically calm anyone in the game, and if you never start the Main quest you can ignore dragons all together. You could RP undead as not being creations of god, but of evil that needs to be purged.

Perhaps I misunderstand the OP, but I believe the templates we use for comparison are the previous TES titles. When you use those monk standards as a guideline it becomes clear that playing a monk is out of the question. If we use our own standards or standards from another RPG then sure pretty much all builds are still possible and viable.

But he seemed to be asking it as our opinion on why we can't, rather than we can't because X feature was removed.

Shame, shame, shame on me...

I have never played Fallout, I started one and it somehow reminded me of Resistance. I'm obviously going to have to play it to continue in conversations on the forums... almost every debate ends with some Fallout reference.

I mean, chrissake, I played Arena... but I can't even talk about Skyrim without having some working knowledge of Fallout.

Still though, the OP's question was not about viability. It was about availability.

I think he was trying to make a point that the current system can be a worthy substitute for all builds. It is a worthy substitute but only for most builds, not all of them.

Someone brought up an example that they can’t have magicka options for a mage
They can’t choose between a
large magicka pool and slow regeneration (high Int with low Will)
Medium Magicka pool with medium regeneration (Med Int with med will)
Small magicka pool fast regeneration (low int with high will)

This however isn’t exactly true as you can increase your magicka regeneration with perks and proceed to sink points into health/stamina. The current system allows compensation for that even if it is barely adequate.

There is however no compensation for an unarmored and unarmed individual. The h2h damage perk requires armor… so no.

It is probably too late for you now. It is very hard to go back to old games and see what people who played them when they came out saw. Where I saw an interactive miracle you’ll probably see crappy graphics, bugs and irritating turn based combat.

Nah, I think Fallout is one of the few examples where the gameplay did not suffer much over the years . I played the first two games around two years ago and had a great time with it.

@zyghart: Look on gog.com if you are serious and want to give it a try .