You have kinda skewed what I said. I made a general comment and you refute it on a specific point.

What i said was that if this "It was like that in previous games, therefore your opinion on it in this game in invalid" hold true for bad things in Skyrim, shouldn't that same argument hold true for people who bash the game because it's not a previous title? In other words, just because it was in another game, it must be in Skyrim

The only questline I've had any issues with was the College of Winterhold. It felt too rushed, and the position you end up when you finish it didn't seem right in proportion to time spent at the College doing stuff.

magic- very flawed in design. I like the concept but in implementation not so great. The spell tomes were a great and I was glad to see them in Skyrim

Tdroid good point and I agree with Papercut-ninja. The people that are fussing saying that the game is "dumb" down and saying that there aren't enough derda are forgetting that this is a different story.

The OP has some valid points, but I usually can't get behind an arguement that wholly supports one side over the other 100%. It reeks of biased fandom.
Skyrim is a fun game and I like some of the changes (like the leveling system)... but to say that it is not dumbed down in any way and that those "older TES fans" have got it all wrong? Come on man.

For instance, how can you honestly try to argue that spellmaking isn't missed. You say too much can detract from the overall experience? That is a Bethesda staple my friend. Long ago they chose quantity of options over quality... and Skyrim is no different. So why not have spellmaking? Or a deeper, more comprehensive journal for that matter?

Options = freedom = better sandlot game. In my opinion.

The argument is about "dumbing down", not that Skyrim has no bad points.

ahh now I understand. I took the wrong meaning from your comment.

If you are used to features from previous games that have been removed I don't see why you shouldn't complain.....I've heard (since it was before my time here) that when Morrowind came out Daggerfall fans complained it was horribly dumbed down because:
1. It has less skills
2. It has a much smaller gameworld
3. It has way smaller dungeons
4. Way less guilds to join
5. Less customisation due to less equipment slots.
and the list goes on....yet the funny thing is these are still the complaints for new games.

Removal of features is always complained about.....often it goes unheard.....sometimes it brings features back (look how enchanting has come back as a skill).

Well, in my year on this forum I have found that it is mostly the MW fan generation who complain the most and refuse to see more than one side of the coin, but as you point out the nostalgia factor does not aply to this. I believe it might be personal preference, unrelated to the game being "dumbed down" or not.

The nazi's could have had whatever opinion they wanted... it was only when they started acting on their beliefs that it was a problem.
Please tho, let's not delve too deeply here... politcal discussions and all that.

And the elimination of things like spellmaking et cetera is dumbing down. Sorry I didn't make that clear.

it really is.

It often depends what previous games you have played. If you're a long time gamer that likes to learn about a world not just play a game then Morrowind might suit you better then Skyrim.


But the Morrowind vs Oblivion vs Skyrim debate is realyl just personal preference.....and I garranty that whichever game in the series you liked, the next will have features that are terrible to you.

If you play Morrowind first then play Skyrim you could write a long critique of the deficiencies of Skyrim.

But equally if you play Skyrim first then try out Morrowind you could write a huge critique of Morrowind's weaknesses and missing features.

Omissions are not "dumbed down". They are omissions. When you stop doing something you cease to do it worse than you presviously did

Well, seeing as I have had no real problems with the changes from Morrowind to Oblivion to Skyrim I think I can handle anything except addition of firearms and removing character leveling

Entirely wrong. You make no distinction between you pretending your character has certain abilities and the game actually recognizing it. In the games terms, "skullcrusher" and "devastating blow" mean nothing but armor negations and damage bonuses. Not to mention the fact that this only applies with one skill. By your logic, you are very strong -but only if you are using two-handed weapons! If you use a longsword instead, you suddenly have weak muscles (because the perks are tied to the two-handed skill). This is entirely different from strength, which not only determined how much damage you could do in combat (for all melee weapons), but how much you could carry and your fatigue. While you could, to a degree, argue that all of those things have been replaced by the %damage perks and the "fatigue" attribute, you can't do the same for the other attributes. Where did speed and agility go? I can't make my character any faster or more agile (or make them jump higher) with the current system, while I could with the old one. There is absolutely no denying that this is a removal of depth- in the old system you could change these things, in the new one you cannot.

Well you could argue that omitting more features to keep the mechanics as simple as possible as "dumbing down" can't you?



Excellent post, you also couldn't say your any stronger because If your not also spending your levels on stamina too you won't get and carry wieght. So You still couldn't say your any stronger then my scrony Mage character.

This has been an interesting discussion and the best one I've seen so far on the subject. I have to beat feet and shower and get to work but thanks for all the opinions and insights

I agree with the OP. Each TES game should be taken at its own value, not compared to a follow-on game 3-5 years later. These games require changes, otherwise people will complain that "it's just an expansion," and don't understand why they should pay 60.00 for it. Also, peoples' taste change, and most require something new/fresh.

A few good examples of dumbing down a game was committed by Blizzard several years ago in World of Warcraft:

1. Protection Paladins - these guys were tanks that took the beatings from the bosses while the rest of the team attacked the boss from distance (hunter) or up close in case of melee, while healers kept everyone's health up to par. It was very important for tanks to have a certain amount of defense. Defense requirements had been established, and tanks knew they needed to meet these requirements when they reached level 80. Both armor and weapons had certain defensive stats that increased your defensive level, and it was your responsibility to go out and get this gear. Both 5-men teams and raids would rarely let you tank if you didn't meet that level. So, out of nowhere, one day Blizzard announced that they're going to do away with this part of the game. Those of us who took the game serious, looked upon this as dumbing down - there were a certain number of players who constantly complained about having to meet this level, and I guess Blizzard thought to make it easier and attract more players to the game, so we'll eliminate that requirement.

2. You get a quest, to go to A and find B, which is somewhere in that general area. Again, players must have complained that they spent a lot of time looking for B, because "general area" was not descriptive enough for them. So, now Blizzard made quest objectives that are surrounded by nice "sparkly" little stars. Might as well hang a large sign with an arrow pointing saying "look here, I'm here."

Now, those things to me are dumbing down a game. Interestingly, when I started playing Rift last year, Trion did the exact same thing, Anything to speed up the game, and remove parts of the game that are orginally designed to make you think and show some initiative.

I don't know if any other games do similar things today, having only played WoW/Rift in the past 6 years, but I wouldn't be surprised if the dumbing down spreads to other game publishers/makers.

What's interesting is that one of WoWs forerunners, EQ 2, is now releasing it's 18th expansion - it tells me that there is a large population of players that prefer to play harder games that doesn't require the game to hold your hand and lead you around.

But, I guess the dumbing down caters to a certain player base - not necessarily TES - but MMOs and other genres. I think, as EQ 2 shows, that's not necessarily a good thing.

One last one, then I gotta go

Any example of anything can be brought to a disastrous, logical extreme. In a TES game, yes you could make a game in which the character walks around, and the only buttons you'd need for everything would be labelled "win" and "fail", and then people could argue that it's still an RPG about choices

But we aren't there yet!

Semantics. Are we talking about the game being dumbed down from previous versons or not?
Yes. The removal of spellmaking is not a "dumbing down" of spellmaking... it is an omission. However, because they omitted spellmaking, Skyrim itself is a dumb-downed version of its predecessors. Of course, in my opinion.

Well I'd say we're pretty close, since they don't seem to deviate from the linear quests and most of the time with immortal NPC quest givers/members that really your choice is now, Finish quest this way or ignore quest. There is no "fail".

Again you like so many of the [censored] detractors out there, answer this question, is there anything that Skyrim has done good? Answering no to this question and anybody answering no to this question makes them a troll pure and simple. Why is that the case because Skyrim has made improvements on the game formula not deimprovements, thank god Beth doesn't listen to the hardcoe Elitiests or else we would still be living in the Stoneage in terms of what Skyrim would be doing and it only would've sold 2 million instead of the 8-9 million that it currently has.

I agree...

Rediant quests (with no set rewards) should have been given some sort of time period before failure like Daggerfall had. That way you could abandon a quest and get another when the period expired.

The game recognizes it for sure, when I attack someone in the game with these perks the game recognizes it by showing me how the enemies are decapitated. It is true recognition by every standard. Regarding this not having an effect if I use another weapon, that makes perfect sense to me, a very strong football player is not by default a great weightlifter or a good javelin thrower since they all require completely different use of muscle strength and training to be accomplished in. No speed or agility? Yet again, I have descriptive traits that tells me that my character is agile and fast; "deft movement", "agile defender", "light foot", "dual flurry", "lightning reflexes" and all of it is reflected in the game.