Following up on some of these discussions that quickly ends up filled up about the "hardcoe" gamers attitude that everything in Skyrim is dumbed down for casual players.

I looked at some of the most common arguments that gets thrown around in this crusade against every change of TES since Morrowind and added my comments to them:

-There are no attributes - hence there is no depth in character generation and development

Wrong, numerical attributes is by no means some benchmark of depth within a game. A character can be described and characterized with just as much detail using descriptive traits such as perks, feats, abilities etc. The description of my character with traits such as "skullcrusher" and "devastating blow" describes the fact that a character is strong just as well, if not better, than having an attribute value that says strength - 88.

-There are no classes, without a pre-conceived label of my character he or she is just bland and generic, like everybody else

Wrong, the preference of a pre-generated path for character development or not, is just that: a preference! Without classes, characters may start out more similar, however, the unlimited options for developing any combination of skills and traits creates, in the end, much more diversity and variation of characters. It also allows for REAL roleplaying choices in character development within the game, perhaps my character was destined to be a great mage, but growing up as a mere thief it wasn′t until he met master Tolfdir at the college of Winterhold that he discovered his true path and began his epic journey towards mastery of magic. That is true storytelling and roleplaying as I didn′t know where my character would end up when I started.

-I can′t play the character I used to play, the system has removed an important option for me and is consequently more shallow and restricted

Wrong, there are thousands of character concepts that the previous system did not allow me to play the way I wanted. Subjective attachment to a certain character does not constitute a valid reason for why a designer HAS to include this for your well-being. When I am the gamemaster in a roleplaying game, I decide what characters will fit my campaign. You want astronauts in TES, design your own game or mod!

-The quests are all trivial, go fetch this or kill this, and they have no consequences in the game world, it lacks depth.

Right,however neither did they in Daggerfall or Morrowind or Oblivion (excluding the main quests). And it′s also arguable, some quests do change the setting and certain events stop occuring (not giving away any spoilers, just leaving it at that). This perceived depth of the world in the previous games is the most inflated and overrrated statement ever. Morrowind was completely static, unless I started killing people off, in which case the only noticeable "effect" was that there was fewer people. The series have not lost any depth in that regard, because they never had much of it to begin with.

-Features such as spellmaking, ordinance and coercion have been removed, the game is being streamlined to make it easier to learn for dumb people.

Wrong, none of these features were actually very hard to learn. The level of complexity involved in bringing a repair hammer along to maintain your armor did not deter casual gamers. Game designers are always trying to streamline their mechanics because what happens is that you always end up trying to include too much, and you need to be brutal towards your design and cut all unnecessary content or you end up with a collosal beast of a game where the content you actually spent most of the energy preparing for the players to discover and enjoy is lost.

Almost every relevant criticism towards Skyrim; the linear main quest, the stereotypical side quests, lack of dialogue, no evolved system of real impact on the environment, can be said about every other TES title as well, so using them as comparison for saying that the game is shallow and dumbed down is pointless.

I tend to agree in each example cited above.

What players mostly complain about, aside from game bugs such as a giant that knocks you 300 feet into the air, or a dragon that flies backwards, or game flaws such as a UI that is not optimized for PC despite being easily adapted to be PC friendly, is in my opinion that the game isn't what they personally 'feel' the game should be about. This is the hangover from hype- the players decided what every aspect of the game was, at times in detail, before they see it and some cannot get around the fact that they were mistaken

The term 'dumbed down' is in itself a very ill-considered catch all negative phrase that effortlessly places the user on some kind of higher "I'm better than you" level while somehow releiving the commenter of any need to back it up. What most players mean by this phrase is "less complex", as if complexity is a trait which is in and of itself desireable. In that case, TES VI: Tax Accountancy Adventures will be a stuning RPG success.

Each TES game has been differnt from the last. This is natural- they have already made Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion, and the players already played them. I want something new. I want some new game with a new way of doing things, not the same old rehashed concepts

Does that excuse Slyrim from its faults? Of course not. That does not mean the lack of pauldrons or blade skill or dexterity points etc is a 'fault'. That is simply personal preference. But I begin to dismiss out of hand any complainer who cannot articulate what they don't like about Skyrim without using the term "dumbed down". Ironically, the term identifies for me players that may not have the wherewithal to do anything but post negativity- the inability to see beyond what the person wishes to see; quite different from the heightened sense of the term as it is commonly tossed about.

I Also cannot fault Skyrim for not being some other game. If it were, I wouldn't have bought it. I knew it would be different but in the same vein as other TES titles. That was a selling point

Me too. The OP got it right.

@OP QFT, I could not agree more with what you have said. Skyrim has amazing depth and is certainly not dumbed down. I was actually going to take a break from Skyrim in order to play other games but it just kept calling me back and I played it for a couple of hours and I'm probably going to go on another 50 hour run if not more. Skyrim allows us to Roleplay so much better then the previous games and the changes to scaling and getting rid of the terrible attribute system that Morrowind/Oblivion had puts it over the top.

They are giving the CK to PC users for a reason .

I have one you forgot to answer: I'm not allowed to kill anyone due to fools expecting still being able to complete the thieves guild after killing it off completely.
Also: Last I checked Daggerfalls main quest wasn't rather linear...

Well, unless you want to play as an Unarmed, hand to hand specialist, who uses open lock spells & likes to dabble in making spells, your screwed

Yeah. Mods.

When you exaggerate to this extent, why would you feel that your arguments will be taken seriously? Of course it is not true that you 'can't kill anyone'. You yourself even follow up your hyperbole with an indication that it can't be killed off completely. You're contradicting yourself a little

As far as linearity in DF's main quest, the point was clearly made that the examples were being made exclusive of main quests. please Read the original post.

Yep, wholly agree on your points OP.

The trouble is that some people just can't move on...they don't want a 'new game', they want an expansion pack for a game that came out years ago.

I loved F3, spent well over 1800 hours in it...wasn't too keen on FNV, but I didn't come onto the boards griping or arguing as to why Beth/Obsidian got it wrong. I simply accepted that things changed and enjoed it for what it was, even if it wasn't as satisfying as F3 was for me.

The reason being that they have traditionally released a tool like that with every game since Morrowind.

Let's keep platform bashing stuff out of the thread please.

The game is dumbed down. Its just a fact:

- No Spell making.
- Enchanting has less freedom.
- Lesser Skills.
- Lesser armor slots
- Lesser daedra variation.
- Lesser summon spells
- Shorter guild stories.

This some huge rpg aspects that has been axed since Morrowind.

If this isn't dumbing down of a series then what is?

I agree, there are some design choices in New Vegas that make me want to pull my hair out of my head in comparasion to what FO3 did but still New Vegas is a great game overall, the same could be said for Skyrim although most of the changes if not all of them have been good.

That's certainly not true, Enchanting has more depth now then it has in the past. I couldn't put two enchantments on the same armor piece in Oblivion, with Skyrim I can do now do that. I agree with the less summon options although that doesn't hurt the product overall and Skyrim still has all of it's RPG elements from the previous games they are just in different places now.

No, previous games had this problem, Skyrim has it even worse.

Without the class system it basically means your character has been doing absolutely NOTHING before he/she got off the cart in Skyrim....everyone starts exactly the same. All of a sudden (at around age 25) your character suddenly starts doing something with their life. At least in previous games the class system gave you an initial boost to represent what you had done previous in your life.


Agree ... mostly.

The only thing is the idea of playing a pure Mage, Destruction for damage, Alteration for protection, Conjuration for support can no longer be played properly. COnsidering this used to be a very popular playstyle it is very disappointing that we cannot do it anymore.


You shouldn't pick on Morrowind for being static.....it was made 12+ years ago and at the time AI was still very basic.

Quests however have always been a bit dull in the World of Elder Scrolls, but the radiant quests are the dullest quests since the days of Daggerfall's quests.



Repairing was a part of the game that was on the way out....but it's didn't need removal...just revamping. Instead of a manual click-repair system system they could have replaced it with something more automatic.....but that would be hard easier just to remove it.

Spellmaking though was very important....it allowed Mage characters to fine tune spells for each character....so you could get the most out of your magicka. It also allowed you to put multiple spells together for faster casting.....in SKyrim I really dont want to have to cast Mage Armor, then switch to conjuration for a summon, then back to a ward in one hand and a destruction in the other......then repeat every 60 secs while going through a dungeon...BAD BAD DESIGN.


Exsactly.....if they have been problems in previous games they knew what to fix....but they still didn't and instead removed features in the name of 'STREAMLINING'.


I expect you're a bit of a Skyrim fan, and that's fine, but to vetern Elder Scroll fans that go back to Morrowind, Skyrim promised so much more then it actually delivered....and we have a right to express our disappointment.

Agreed. My sportscar is a very different car from my muslce car. It has 5.5 less liters, for starters! But I don't fault the sportscars from not being a 7.5L V8. It's different and does different things, and I like them both because of what they do, even though features of either car could be useful or fun on the other vehicle. That would be like me complaining that they don't put 800 cfm carburetors on 2007 cars anymore, and it svcks, because hearing the carb swallow air is fun and now my experience is ruined.

"Almost every relevant criticism towards Skyrim; the linear main quest, can be said about every other TES title as well, so using them as comparison for saying that the game is shallow and dumbed down is pointless. " And please explain to me why it isn't dumped down that EVERY FREAKING QUEST GIVER (EVEN THE JERKS WHO JUST DO BRAWLS) ARE FREAKING ESSENTIAL.

Classes were restrictive and hurt character development and gameplay more then ever. Not to mention that you can powergame so easily with Custom classes in the past games like Oblivion, Skyrim got this detail right. Allow the player to determine his class, not the game.

No, it's not dumped down. But it is very simplified, for an RPG. With a couple hundred perks to choose from, and half of them being utility skills -and many of them being useless as well-, you can try all you want, there are only a handful of classes you can play. Want to play a full-out necromancer? Not enough perks for that. Want to play a full-out thief. Sorry, not enough perks either - unless you want to spend 20+ perks to pick locks and pockets as easily as you'd have with only 2 points. Want to play a monk? Yeah, there is 1 perk, and that is on heavy armor, which is not armor fit for a monk.
Plus, for the classes you can play, there are not enough perks to make different builds. All 2-h warriors have pretty much the same build. All dual weilders the same. and same with destro/conjuration mages, sword and boards etc.

Well, I'm used to MMORPGs, where there are 8 or so classes with 5-6 or so different ways to build each one. And I'm talking real differences, like changing the same class from a powerhouse to a healer or vice-versa, not simply doing more damage with one kind of weapon and that's it. So I can only see Skyrim as a very simplified game of it's genre. I haven't played other TES games, so I can't say it's simplified compaired to them, but compaired to older RPGs and contemporary MMORPGs it is indeed oversimplified.

You mean allowing the player to determine their class during gameplay, not from a menu.

And anyway...I never said the new system was bad. But it does have the horrible problem of leaving you completely unskilled at the start of the game.



EDIT: Powerlevelling is still just as easy. That is not a valid point....if anything powerlevelling is easier as you can level any skill now in order to level up.

Indeed.

it is dumbed down why people still defend this, your not a moron for enjoying it, ivr played 300 hours and probably have another 300 hours plus left in me, that doesnt stop the game having obviously being dumbed down for the masses.

Two months passed and we are still talking about this?

I think "rushed" is a better word than "dumbed down". A lot of features are flawed by what appears to be a lack of time. Good ideas that gone wrong in implementation. The effect of radiant quests in most guilds (they are not part of your overall progression, with the exception of one or two, which makes the guild quests far shorter), the lack of magic scaling, the senseless levelling calculations of crafting skills, flawed factionrank-based dialogue conditions (Oblivion did this a lot better, and it also had a large list of ranks. There is almost zero progression in guilds in Skyrim), imbalanced perktrees...

All the above is a lot worse than the removal of the Attributes system or Spellmaking. The replacement systems didn't get the attention and testing they should have received.

Some aspects are dumber down maybe, but the game as a whole ? not so much. It is a TES and like other TES before, it has some flaws (that are usually well perceived after dozens and dozens of hours playing), but it is still a great game. Also, (PC speaking), there is the possibility to finetune this gem for users, which is a heavy plys in TES series imo. It takes it from "it's a very nice game, although it lacks a bit of polish", to the status of cult "I spend 4000hours on this game and mods".