Right, but one should not mistake one qualitative soundbite for another.
If you are going to divide the world in what sounds right, you may as well be correct.

The sheer point is that you can excise many features. This doesnt make it a better or more deep game.
Quite the opposite.
When one then insists that 'One doesnt need a lot of variables to decide deepness' one is comminting a fallacy.
One assumes that a minimal amount of features may achieve richness while ignoring that what was already there and now is not.
There used to be no need to imagine certain features, as the game supported them.
Now people say""but you can just imagine".

It is like watching rome burn and commenting the ruins are splendid.

The entire chain of logic makes little sense and I hope to have pointed this out.

I do wish we had some more complexity back into this game.
More variables does create more substance, that cannot be argued.
Complexity and richness have been lost and confused with the attractive graphics.
I also cannot imagine an entire feature set as its missing.

i think the word "imagine" has been thrown out of proportion. Speaking for myself at least, I always imagine I am the character while playing RPGs. Nothing absurd like writing a backstory or making up rules for my gameplay (although thats fine if you do), it's more like, what would I like to do right now, or "I don't want to join the thieves guild because my guy is a "good" guy."

For example, the game informer article with matt stone and trey parker, they point out that they hate it when their character speaks and has lenghy dialogue because, as they say, "thats not what I would say/do in this situation."

Same reason for the developers of Zelda not adding voice acting in the Zelda games; because hearing the voice actor takes away from the fact that we (in a sort of way) kind of pretend to 'be' that character while we are playing....

Maybe they should just implement some kind of switch in the next TES game for all the fancy numbers I'm missing so I can carefully develop my character and just set the default to auto-tune so all the other people that do not like numbers can just play a medieval version of Mass Effect or some genius modder creates a fancy mod and gets some babies from me .

To get back on the topic one example that defines "dumbing down" perfectly for me is the level up screen:

pre-Skyrim -> spend points on attributes choose/train wisely especially on harder modes
Skyrim -> choose HP/MP or Stamina and pick a perk, unless you're forcefully trying to screw up your character you can't do much wrong here

I like Skyrim but to me Skyrim with numbers to crunch would be even more awesome but as I said that's my opinion you may have your own

To my extreme sadness that's probably true but that doesn't mean I like it. I hate the way skyrim made away with stats, lowered the number of armor pieces, lowered the number of skills and got rid of spellmaking (the last I'm the least sad about really).
I also hate and feel slightly insulted by the fact that just because Bethesda wanted to reach the console audience they imo completely F'd up the control mechanism. To the point it's driving me away from the
game. I realize you want to make it easy for PS3/XBox but why not make a slightly different UI for PC it would have cost you hardly anything compared to the insane amounts of money put into stupidities like voice acting.

I am probably in the minority but I don't want my Rpg to play pretty much like Tomb raider and to be honest I would take no voice acting, and Morrowind like graphics for a good UI, better quest development, and my STATS BACK.
Then again I loved Angband, and I still don't think Planescape torments graphics are even remotely dated and its story could run circles around Skyrim while hopping on one leg.

This


And this.

There's nothing "dumbed down" about Skyrim. At all. Removing tedious tasks is not "dumbing down".

I fixed your post for you, you got it wrong the first time.

"Who put these stats and skills in mah game? Spending points is so tedious!"

Don't worry, friend. I'm sure by 2020 TES will become a medieval corridor FPS and you will not have to worry about having them tedious choices anymore.

Morrowind doesn't require you to think.

If it did, then you did Morrowind wrong.

I don't play Skyrim for a stat system, or min/maxing, or even for a challenge.

I play it because I enjoy what the game has to offer, you can pretty much do whatever it is you want in this game. I can just pick up the game and play it at my leisure. It gives the option to go to a town, and mercilessly slaughter everyone in that town, or you can similarly ask around to see if there's any way you can help any of the towns people. I can reflect myself in the game, which is something I enjoy but maybe other people might not enjoy as much. For people who complain about the hand holding, or the features that make it easier like fast traveling, carriages, etc. You can opt not to use those feature or just turn them off. You want more of a challenge, then ramp up the difficulty. Bethesda did give us the option to control certain aspects of the game, and the people complaining might very well be those people who feel accomplished when they can do something better than someone else (the term [censored] comes to mind).

Don't get me wrong I absolutely love to min/max, I've played table-top DnD, I played diablo/wow, and I'm a mechanical engineering major irl, so min/maxing is essentially what I want to do as a profession. But Skyrim is geared towards delivering an experience that is devoid of a stats system, just because you want it doesn't mean it isn't right to not have one.

TL;DR: the game isn't about stats, the focus of the series has changed, if you want them, then look elsewhere.

Its to spread sheety is also an excuse now you cannot forget that one.

I hope not, I hope they start adding now instead of butchering.

TES Attributes were the height of rpg complexity
/sarcasm

I didn't recognize this was an attribute thread.

Willpower didn't mean willpower.
Intelligence didn't mean intelligence.
Strength didn't mean strength, not exactly. It was so simple, the game doesn't support it. No logs to lift in this game.(Haha, we lift some logs in this game, but you get my point, I hope.)
Endurance didn't mean endurance, not exactly. Again, in a very simple way.
Agility meant agility. In Morrowind, not Oblivion.
Personality didn't mean personality, not exactly. Again, too simple, doesn't cover the complexity of actual personality.
Luck works weird, I will ignore it.
Speed meant speed.

I think they did the right thing for removing them except agility and speed. They should have included new skills to cover their absence. And there are some other skills they could bring back too (not mysticism ) but medical and something for acrobatics/athletics.

Fixing attributes would make a completely new game that I wouldn't call TES.

So where is the reputation system? That's a stat that was important and it is missing.

What was removed, and not replaced?


Exactly what Skyrim did.


Skyrim is not dumbed down.

You do realize that attributes are just tip of the iceberg right? I mean [censored], even something as simple as wearing cloaks over armor was removed.

People just point out to attributes because they were the most obvious thing.

Skyrim had to be dumbed down for players who confuse their personal preferences for the definition of what constitutes an RPG.

Am I the only one who can't ignore the irony running throughout this conversation?

I agree we should have reputation system too, there would be more causer and effect.

Yeah, I'm still a little bummed about that. If there's anything that should be constant in the series, it's the reputation's in/famous rating. It's common sense in this kind of setting.

That's not entirely true. It does test your reading comprehension at a grade school level. After all, you have to be able to follow simple directions.

Then again, Skyrim doesn't even require that. We went from a grade school game to a pre-school game. As I'm sure you all realize, this is a huge loss. What will the 5th grade intellectuals play now?

I... I hope to god that your post is a joke.

Because if not...

"RPG's are not about immersion and roleplay" - that mentality is the EXACT problem with the "RPG elitists" who want to throw around the "dumbed down" card. That's exactly what RPG's are about.

Also, what you described about the great MMORPG's is exactly what Skyrim allows you to do, and in even better detail, so...

Some of us don't make the poor assumption that the reasons for all kinds of things not being included boiled down to dumbing the game down.

You seem to have missed the point of the sarcasm.

The problem is that some things were removed for good reasons and others for expediency and most people can't tell the difference between the two.

Agree, there's a reason why the 3 letters in RPG stand for Role Playing Game as in you play the game and assume the role of a character and then you tell the story and you have as much freedom to do so depending on the Dungeon Master. In that case, Beth has given us a huge amount of freedom to RP.

RPG's aren't 100% about stats although they do need some form of stats otherwise it's just a mindless action game. Skyrim certainly has it's stats, even though it's less then Oblivion it's done in a way that doesn't force you to screw with the system or focus on useless skills just to get +5 in a random attribute, or has useless attributes like Luck that don't do anything important.

Bravo, good sir, bravo!

And directions in your journal that tell you "take this path, make a left at the rock, and then take that 5 steps and turn right, and there's your quest dungeon" with a big yellow marker on your map is requiring you to think???

And I'm okay with features being removed, when they are replaced with more fleshed out, more in depth and more complex features instead, which is exactly what happened with Skyrim.

Weapon degradation was replaced with a fully fleshed out crafting system.

Spellmaking was replaced with a more in depth casting system and gameplay mechanics (which I admit is not fully fleshed out, but it's better than what we had)

We lost Athletics and Acrobatics, but saw the inclusion of Enchanting and Pickpocketing which add more roleplay possibilities.

We lost questline length, but got much more involved and fleshed out individual quests.

We lost Attributes but instead got a fully fleshed out Perks system that allows for way more flexibility, specialization, and customization for characters.

We gained Dual Wielding which, whether you agree with how it was implemented or not (I happen to love it), it is a CHOICE that we never had before. More builds, more options.

We gained a much more detailed and complex world.

We gained actual puzzles in dungeons to overcome. They might not be overly complex, but they require you to think more than Morrowind dungeons ever did.

There are actually choices in the main quest. They may not be -huge- choices, but it is more choice than we ever had in Morrowind.

The fact is, the claims of "dumbed down" are 100% false - this game actually makes you "think" more than Morrowind ever did. So many times in Skyrim I've gotten lost going from point A to point B, or I've gotten stuck on how to solve a problem in a quest or a dungeon, and spent plenty of time trying to actually figure it out. Something I never had to do in Morrowind. I never had to "think" in Morrowind.

It's a fact, simply put, that Skyrim offers more than Morrowind ever did. It is more complex, and offers you more choice than Morrowind ever did. So you don't have a character stat page, can't create a spell, and NPC's don't respond to your deeds as much as you like. That doesn't equate to "dumbing down", when the game improved and became more complex in every other aspect of the game.