One example of "Doing it Right" in that regard, is actually Mass Effect 3. I don't know who came up with their Health system, but it was virtually flawless. 5 Blocks of health, individual blocks regenerate, but already depleted blocks do not, without Medi-gel. GENIUS I SAY!

I wish there was more resource management in Skyrim, but I'm just saying why there was probably a lot more in Fallout 3 than in Oblivion and Skyrim, because of the setting.

Its not an exploit.
Its a feature.

While I hate the 'dont like it, dont use it' argument, in this case it applies.
It is much, much better to have a choice how you want to go about things, to choose to be weak or strong for example rather than to be railroaded in the every-class-is-same that is 'balance'.

Skyrim is not easy.
Its as simple or hard as you want to make it, same as every tes game.
Except that its about 10% of a tes game, because so many fantastic features were removed for the sake of streamlining and if some people here are correct, the atrocity that is 'balance'.
It simply has no place in a tes game.

Look, I don't mind mages being a little more powerful than warriors or theives because they can create spells, on the contrary, I would love that. Look, making them all identical is worse than inbalance, I would rather have many different unique playstyles if a couple are slightly more powerful than the rest, but making one class so powerful that no one else picks the other classes actually limits player freedom.

I agree.
Ideally I would like it if each class had its own strengths and weaknesses.
I would like to see shortcuts in dungeons you cant get to unless youre a good lockpick or can pickpocket a key.
Enemies that are hard to beat for a mage, but a comparative cakewalk for a warrior, you get my drift.

Traditionally mages have always been the weakest class early on, relying on avoidance and misdirection rather than confrontation, but the pay-off was sweet, you got to become godlike at endgame.
There is nothing wrong with that, I would say.

For people that are not mages, there are spell scrolls and potions. I thought this system worked very nice in Morrowind where my Khajiit used his acrobacy to make his way up Telvanni towers, my mage cast levitation or jump and my warrior chucked a potion or used a scroll.

In Daggerfall a warrior could bash a lock, a thief would use lockpick and a mage a spell.
That is the kind of thing I would like to see.
Different options for different playstyles, one maybe more powerful than the other but each playstyle fully fleshed out.

What we see in Skyrim is that if you see a locked door you know it leads to a sideroom with treasure, because quest related paths are very rarely locked.
You see a door that requires a spell, handily there is a staff or book right next to it.

I dont like that kind of thing much.

Has anyone said the armour customisation?
So many options in morrowind.
So few in skyrim.

To be honest, I wish they went even further than that. Like, to assasinate a target during a party, a warrior would just bash down the door and bludgeon his face in with a hammer, a thief would disguise himself as a guest and poision the drink, and a mage might lock the doors and summon a few undead within the building. I'm not talking about 3 ways to complete the same basic tasks (jumping to a ledge) I'm talking about entirely different ways to complete quest. Although this is pretty idealistic, I doubt very many games, even from talented companies, have pulled this off well and with a majority of the quests.

Is there some bizarre requirement that this thread or some minor variant thereof always be on the first page every day?

What do you mean, this is specifically feautres from past games you miss, not jsut features you want to have.

That reminds me of Morrowind a bit, the quest to kill the Redoran stronghold builder in specific.
I remember that on warrior-like characters I just bashed in there and killed the lot, my thief would sneak in and out and snipe the target and my mage used to walk in there, close the door to isolate Banden Indarys, lock it, summon a daedra and become invisible.

this is why I have made the HUD transparent and turned off music entirely.

I would add that in previuos titles the major factions and quests were more race agnositic than skyrim.

Indeed, none of the previous systems were 'perfect' but rather than do the hard thing and try and find a better solution they just completely dropped these things.

Limited to no dialogue options.
Limited to no quest completion options.
Limited to no consequences.
Removal of character development options (no attributes, fewer skills).

Oh, and climbing. I still haven't gotten over the loss of climbing.

Which should say something to the folks who think that a favorite game aspect will be back. Look at the history. It won't.

I think the problem is that we are considered a small but vocal minority (I can't tell if this is true or not), also, the difference between the amount of sales between games increases with each game, not because they are dumbing it down, but because each game is great on its own, desptie its flaws. The increase of sales from game to game probably sends bethesda the wrong message.

There was no "Armor Customization", all the armor was static. There was just simply a lot more character customization. It's an important distinction to make.

This is one "Streamline" i can understand though, rendering multiple characters with 15 different equipment slots was a resource hog, even for the PC, to say nothing of the Ecksbawks. I'd love that level of customization back, but as far as I'm concerned, as both a console and PC player, I'll take the performance increase for now.





Since when did spellmaking's removal have anything to do with balance? I was under the impression it wasn't implemented because of a lot of difficulties with particle effects problems (Including possibly crashing the game), and also a lot of conflicts with the Dual-casting system on a technical level.

Only that it helps balance (imho), but as a secondary effect. I too believe there are mostly technical reasons for it to be removed.

As for "exploits" - many have been removed throughout the game iterations, and more will be fixed down the line. And possibly new ones added as well, I might add.

Daggerfalls absorbtion technique while casting destruction spells into the wall to gain skill XP added "freedom", but it sure broke all norms of decent game mechanics. It was considered an exploit, and consequently removed.

Morrowind still let you spam destruction spells to gain skill XP. It was considered an exploit, and consequently removed.

Oblivion forced us to cast destruction spells at actual enemies in order to gain the skill XP. It is no longer an exploit.

Invisibility and chameleon were obvious exploits in that the game offered no counters for it, unlike what a human game master could be able to do. They were deemed too hard to fix the "proper" way, and then removed instead. So another exploits "down the drain".

I don't care how much some here "like" these exploits, and what they offer. It's bad game design, plain and simple. It can't be disputed, and luckily Beth are the game designers rather than these guys.

Quest directions.

The only thing I can think of that legitimizes spellmaking's removal for "Balance" reasons, is the fact that you can lower casting costs to 0Magicka with enchantments... But I'm sure they could have done something to change that. Make custom spells unable to receive equipment reductions to casting maybe? It seems like such a petty reason to remove such an interesting feature.

I agree, it's health regeneration that still requires "potion" use.

What he said.

Seasonal foliage would be an amazing thing to do for an official PC DLC... I am curious if the Seasonal Foliage Game Jam took into account LOD changes at distance too though. And I'm also curious if it's something that would work without a huge impact on the Consoles.

i don't know if there was somebody before them as i sit here thinking, but, the freakin awesome game called....

riddike: escape from butcher bay had it.

Spellmaking.

The lack of NPC disposition score. Certain quest triggers can change an NPCs reactions to you, but the disposition and associated stats/spells like charm are removed. The NPC dialogues have no real options/consequences anyway, so perhaps it doesnt matter.

Removal of stats, less inclined to re-roll as player created characters are less differentiated from eachother.

Removal of certain skills, spells, armour slots, weapon types.. just that creeping feeling that choices I could previosuly make are being taken away, and things are inexplicably being removed and made easier in order to appeal to a 14 year old with an xbox.

Lack of unique loot/scaled loot.

For the record I love Skyrim, and it does a lot of thing right/better than any previous TES games, but those are the top few things for me.

Usable / placeable candles for once.

+1 for spellmaking of course. That's a given. Also, the fleshed out world and backstory to morrowind. Sometimes I close my eyes and day dream about that place. Never happened to another TES.

I remember on Morrowind for Ecksbawks, after I had discovered that by killing that orc in Balmora for the Fighter's guild, I could totally use her house as my own, there were red light candles, I took every single one I could find in the game.

About 60 hours and 20 or so candles later, I crashed my Ecksbawks with lighting.

That's probably why we don't get movable light sources anymore. Sorry everyone.

Ah hah! So you were the one!

lol!

heck ya. you take it for granted in morrowind and then for some unnecessary reason it's taken out in later games.