Athletics and Acrobatics: Could have been merged, just like any combination of Sneak, Lockpicking, and Pickpocket could have been merged. Athletics was kind of redundant and there really is no loss from it being removed, but Acrobatics was incredibly useful, all you need to do to fix it is put in protection to keep people from spamming it, either by reducing the XP gained or making so you only get XP every few seconds, to prevent grinding spam.

Open Lock: Does not make Lockpicking useless, it just gives mages an alternative choice for getting into things. With having to have a certain level to open certain locks (the same way the Open spell has always worked) it actually makes it more balanced than lockpicking. The simple aim and press mechanic of lockpicking makes the Open spell useless, not the other way around.

Attributes: The only reason they caused problems is because of how leveling was handled in the Oblivion. You were forced to min/max if you wanted the right boosts. If you combine attributes with the current "Level up, put X points in any attribute you want" system you get the same effect as the current system, with less balance issues and more options.

Mysticism: The spells matter, the school does not.

Weapon Degradation: Taking cue from your reference to the Fallout series, why not just make it similar to that and fuse it with Skyrim? Make so you have to be at a bench or grind stone to repair, and you need ore/ingots instead of hammers, similar to the improving system.

Spell Creation: Not the same spell with a different name. You find me a single spell in Oblivion that allowed me to absorb Health and Magicka from an enemy at the same time, or a spell that leaves someone weak against a spell type and leaves them Soul Trapped, for an easy follow-up with a damage spell that plays the weakness you just put on them. The combinations and costs needed balancing, but even that isn't too hard to figure out.

Classes: Besides the preset classes, it was an arbitrary name. The problem was the major and minor skills behind it, which was already fixed in Skyrim.

It's easy to say what doesn't work without giving any possible fixes. But it isn't that hard to suggest how things could be fixed either. And that's as good of a jumping off point as any.

Now for the things you listed as added as new improved things, the only things I will dispute are enchanting and pickpocketing. Pickpocket is more or less the same as Oblivion, the only difference is that you can actually improve your chances with it via perks and leveling. Other than that it is more or less the same. It makes much more sense to merge it with another underdeveloped stealth skill (Lockpick) and make room for one that is much more useful. For enchanting, the very fact that a skill was removed and later added back is a very good argument that things are better off fixed than cut.

@nilecroc: It's generally frowned upon to quote a 60 lined post and respond to it with one sentence.

I actually like that the world is auto scaled, nothing kills a game more then leveled areas that make no sense. Biggest problem in Morrowind by far was a lack of level scaling in it's world.

They honestly didn't add much to replace what they cut. And as for having a beautifully handcrafted world, Morrowind already had that. Skyrim lacks the intriguing storyline, depth, and mystery that Morrowind had as well (everything involving the Tribunal was a mystery, and then you go on to read the 36 Lessons of Vivec.. -- Skyrim takes the amazing mystery surrounding Alduin, eats it, and craps it out to produce a smelly pile of poo (much like Malacath); It's incredibly lackluster, but still not worse than the fact that Bethesda seems to think we're all idiots. They made it so we can't kill at least half of the population of Skyrim; we're given an arrow on our compass that takes us to the exact location of the objective for the quest we're currently on (quests that, if you don't like, you're forced to ignore and leave in your journal FOREVER -- and there's no way of keeping them from being added in the first place because Bethesda seems to think you can't do that yourself either) -- they even provide a magical spell that basically lights up the exact path you need to walk in order to complete quests, and that's probably because they think mages are even dumber than their warrior counterparts; they even go so far as to have some quest givers force dialogue with you, and continue to do so until you accept the fact that, well, you were just born to be a thief.

It's insulting. They did a much better job with Morrowind, but Skyrim shows us that Bethesda likes to sell out and cut amazing features, which they replace with completely shallow and nearly broken ones, all for the sake of making more money and making their games look better.. and better, in this case, really isn't even better.


But yeah, I can see your point. They added just so much! You're able to marry both men and women, who give you money and can sometimes act as your companion, and even.. well, no, that's it.
... but they added children! My game feels more immersive than ever with all the Nord, "Redguard", "Breton", "Imperial", and.. wait, no, that's it too.
Oh, but we also have an amazing spell system! I don't even need to bring along all my weapons anymore, no sir! I can put down my trusted one-handed sword and simply bind one! I can even do the same for my.. uhh, mace? No, that's not right. Dagger, yes, it was a dag.. no, not that either. Two-handed sword? Ugh, no.

Whatever, you get the point. They added just so much.

Aito scaled makes no sense. Level scaling was one off the most hated features in Oblivion by far.

There are two sides to an open world, the detailed world and how you can interact with it. We may have increased the detailed world side of things but we cut far too much away from the how you can interact with it side.

Think of it this way is it better to have 10 dungeons with only 2 ways to go at getting through the dungeon, or 5 dungeons with 10 ways to approach each of those dungeons? If all you want to do is grab your sword, wear some armor and smash things the first way is better for you, if you are more focused on building a unique character and coming up with interesting ways to use your abilities the second way is better for you. I am not going to argue about casuals or hardcoe players or consoles vs pc, but I do think there has been a shift in game style towards the more action adventure style where what is more important is lots of places to smash monsters and not the RPG style where the focus is more at finding new ways to interact with the world.

Got to disagree there. It's a hell of a lot more fun (as well as much more realistic) to come across a creature or enemy that is simple much stronger than you. Sure the random spreading out of different levels in Morrowind, combined with everything pretty much having one static level rather than a range of levels, made it a bit challenging at times.

Frankly I think it would work just fine if they merged the current system and Morrowind's. The closer you are to civilization like a town or city, the less of a chance you have to fight a strong or dangerous creature. Guards will ignore a few mudcrabs, but if a bear is strolling through a town they will do something. Same with a bandit or necromancer group. If they are weak and generally not harassing the populace, they will likely be ignored for a while. But if Charles Manson sets up a Graqe Kool-Aid booth in the middle of Whiterun they will take action.

So the farther away you get from a high group of civilians and law enforcement the tougher the enemies are. But you still will find an occasional really strong enemy near a town or a weak group of enemies far out.

Level Scaling when done correctly is really good, I think Skyrim does the scaling pretty good in comparasion to Oblivion. It's not 100% perfect but it's pretty much the best option we got, Morrowinds Open World is bad, way too many preset items which is my biggest pet peeve. If it was randomized like in Skyrim based on your level then that would be fine but it isn't and the game isn't really fun when your killing things in one hit.

Why does leveled areas make no sense? I think its pretty lame for everything to play out exactly the same. In real life if you go to the "hood" or take a vacation in "burma" things are a lot more real there than say sitting in your hometown in central Ohio.In this game it is impossible to find a high level encounter, there is no goal to speak of. There is no enememy, god, boss, or overlord who is to be feared and confronted only when you are prepared. I mean makes no sense? In what way exactly? We have minor league baseball, little league baseball, major league baseball, and old timers league....does that too not make any sense?

And the mainstream audience will go ballistic. Reviewers will be outraged. "Ew, Reading" that's what most of the people think about it now a days. Now that Elder Scrolls is 'Main Stream' I doubt it will be able to go back to text based conversations. Maybe in 3 years they could do a TES 20th anniversary and re-release Morrowind with updated graphics, mechanics, texts, etc. Or maybe, if some of the 'hardcoe' Morrowind fans don't waint the image of the game they love to be tainted. It could be a completely new version, on the main land.

There's plenty of high level encounters in Skyrim, go to Shimmermist cave at level 5, you will get owned, head towards Labrythian at a low level, the Frost Trolls will kill you, even in Falkreath hold if you aren't careful at low levels a Spriggin could destroy you. The scaling is better, it's not perfect but it's much better.

A lot of these "broken, useless and problem causing" skills and the like are simply that way because of poor impulse control and self restrain from some people. Why don't we have Chameleon anymore? Most likely because some people abused the [censored] out of it and then complained the game was easy mode at 100% permanent Chameleon enchants. They could have had some self restraint, but no, they go and complain that they have the option to do it and don't want that because they can't control themselves. Levitate I still sorely miss because it was such a nice spell. I don't care that some people will make short cuts and the like in dungeons and make a lot of puzzles unneccesary, because nobody forces them to do it.

Well Bethesda has PC gamers to thank for the success of the game to begin with, and also the long lived support. PC gamers play Bethesda's games years after consolers have left it sitting in the dustbin. This keeps their next game relevant and anticipated. Bethesda can krap on PC gamers if it likes, but it will not be without consequence. If another developer can step in and create something inspired and creative...it would be a real blow if the mod community and PC enthusiasts defected over. I think Bethesda has taken PC gamers for granted. We will see what eventually happens.

So I'm confused. You praise automatic level scaling and then note the fact that they DID in fact change it to be a mix of Morrowind and Oblivion's scaling (which is basically Fallout Scaling, where certain areas have certain scaling) and say it is better. Are you for or against auto scaling?

There is good streamlining and then there is dumbing down....finding a good balance is not easy.

It seems like an easy way to deal with problems.

"There aren't enough options for medium armor and spear users, Beth. Could you fix that for the next game?"
"Now there are neither spears, nor medium armor. Problem solved."

For the love of god, the people that were complaining about them being useless, meant that there weren't enough equipment pieces in the game and they got outclassed by any other category.
That didn't mean they wanted to see them removed...

This is the battlefield of the casual gamers and the RPG players. The casual gamers love Skyrim, the RPGers are the ones that are disappointed. As the games progress, there are more "action" elements, and fewer "RPG" elements. Both side believe they are 'right'. Neither side will ever agree with the other. This is going to be an ongoing argument for every TES game, unless Beth gets back to what it was with Daggerfall, and Morrowind. REAL RPG games. Not simply action games with some RPG elements.

I don't care... as long as I have my Dr.Zoidberg mudcrab mod, I'll be happy forever.

But you cant blame a company for trying to widen their audience.
Its still and always will be about the money.
Even if the creators themselves have the fanbase at heart,the management & mostly the stockholders only care about the money.
And seeing how much money there is in console games these days...

And thats they way it works everywhere.
I'm a huge Capcom's Monster Hunter Fan,but only a few of those games ever make it into the EU.
Most of the series,including an oh-so-awesome PC MMO version never made it out of Japan and/or the US.
Why?
Because the sales in the EU have been too low on the previous games.
So the conversion to EU systems and languages costs too much versa the sales there.
Its something i despise,but what is there to be done?

I agree that mainstreaming has dumbed down the possibilities of TES games.
But be glad they didnt make it a Kinect game or some other New Age Casual Gaming Crap.

'Casual Gaming' apropos,is what ultimately DESTROY the gaming industry.
That concept has dumbed down the industry more than any other 'mainstreaming'

Enemy should get harder but universally makes no sense. Successful bandits should get better armor but ALL of them is ridiculous. Also the i like whole city thing that Badprenup said it makes sense.
And meykeru-sensei, yes, yes i can blame them for trying to widen there audience IF it is because they want money for its own sake, if they want to improve the game then they should try to improve the game while widen their audience but i don't think this is the case they just tried making a game they liked and missed things that others might of wanted(or even themselves if they would have thought of it).

You seem to not understand those people, who criticise smithing and spell creation. Those people do NOT whine and those people are the first, who are sad about TES being so undeep.

Spell creation in Oblivion was a very simple and unamazing feature, which took out the meaning of every other magic spells.
Smithing in Skyrim is even worse. It totally denies any sense of exploring dungeons and searching for loot. Most artefacts are a fu**ing joke compared to what you can smith after a few hours into the game.

Both are simply terribly bad made mechanics, which destroy a lot of other (much more fun) concepts of the game.
There could be done really great smithing as there could be done really great spell creation, but as long as it's done like in Oblivion and Skyrim, it's better to not have it at all.

Why do the games keep getting dumbed down? Because really devoted fans could be sold a pile of [censored] mudcrabs and say that they've never played a better RPG. They encourage Bethesda to strive for mediocrity, and I believe these really devoted fans are a primary cause for the massive cutting we've seen since Daggerfall.

Should they be slower in gaining power? Yes. Should they be removed because you would rather explore for thing? No,you should go explore for things instead its a choice I love the ability to be a craftsmen rather than just another adventure, but to each his own.

So instead the skills should be pointless because you can always find better gear? I'm fine with crafting stuff to be just as good or better than top end gear it does not wreck exploration for me in the slightest. Should they close a few loopholes here and there when they find them sure. Like stop multi-stacking of effects like weakness effects in spells from oblivions spell creation, or chameleon to 100%, or 0 cost spells, or 3,000 damage one handed swords, but even with those loopholes being in the game the game is better with smithing etc in than it not being in.

Spell Creation in Oblivion was an awesome and amazing feature, which let me custom build spells.
Smithing lets me improve upon my weapons, which I like. It's Bethesda fault for having scaled loot and puting strong hand placed items. Can smithing be improved upon. Definitely. Does it need to be nerfed? Hell no.

I disagree, those loopholes should still be in the game in my opinion. Some people actually liked the fact that they were able to use that kind of stuff. Its people with poor impulse control and/or self restrain that complain about it. I understand that it is annoying on your first play trough to realise that some of the skills you are using have basically given you a godmode, but you can always craft new, less overpowered armour and it can be completely avoided in later play troughs. If people still complain, it's their own fault for not limiting themselves and now wanting to force others down a path of not being able to play in the godmode they might like.