Although I agree a lot of games are sacrificing depth to become more 'casual' I like the way bethesda are going about it. Although Skyrim is being 'streamlined' we essentially have one of the most in-depth character creators in the series, while they are doing one or two things I object to I like the fact they're trimming the 'bad fat' off the game. Making a game more complex doesn't inherently make the game better.

From what we have seen the perks are going to be considerably less powerful than in FO3. Given that there are perk trees and skill requirements it will take time to acquire the most powerful
Guardian Stones aren't birthsigns, all they do is replace specialisations
No idea yet how fast or easy it will be to obtain Dragonshouts
You level up faster true but the difficulty is decided by how challanging the foes are, not how quickly you level up. MW (despite being the best game Bethesda ever made IMO) got very easy quickly
Previous TES games have all had over 85 spells

The TES series has always given the PC a lot of options. Compared to previous games I suspect you will be less godlike since you can't get all the perks and will be forced to decide which skills are most important to you

Oblivion was very easy right off the bat. It only got easier when you could spam Invisibility and had a high Heavy Armor skill. Exploiting (spell stacking weakness, 100% Chameleon, 100% Reflection, etc) removed all challenge from the game.

Fallout 3 had the difficulty right at the start of the game but that very quickly left and the character hit god status within a few hours of playing.

Fallout New Vegas was actaully challenging at the start due to them throwing enemies at you that you didnt have the equipment for. Still it has the same problem as Fallout 3 though where the difficulty quickly leaves and the player hits god status within a few hours.

On top of this all three of these allow you to save and load as much as you like where you like so you can always backtrack any mistakes you make. I have no doubts Skyrim will be a fairly easy game but whether its going to be easier than the above 3 we cant say until we play it.

I'm starting to get the impression that this problem in past titles didn't have anything to do with Beth's design decisions, but was all about people's pathologic obsession with exploiting every possible exploit there is to tinker with.
If that's the case, then I doubt it's possible to create an adequately challenging TES without sacrificing variety or making a lot of stuff really bland (f.e. making spells just another form of hack-and-slash). :spotted owl:

PS. yes, it's my dreaded owl again. I call him Hooty.

Not knowing how any of these things are balanced, just listing those doesn't mean anything.

Like.... I could take the 20 levels of Fallout 3, multiply the number of levels by 10 - level cap 200!, divide the experience needed for each level by 10, divide the the skill points gained each level by 10, and only give you a perk every 10 levels. You'd "level up" ten times faster!1!1!!one!..... but it would end up being exactly the same overall leveling speed and power curve as default FO3.

Or... 85 spells! OMG! Ok, looking at the Oblivion wiki. Alteration (34 spells), Conjuration (35 spells), Destruction (73 spells!)... well, you get the idea. And that's NOT counting the crazy other spells you can make with spell customizing.

"Upgrade your talent tree each level".... Random thought experiment: What's the difference between taking a "+5 skill" talent each level or taking a "+25 skill" talent every five levels? Virtually none. Until we know how strong any particular perk is, and what the restrictions are on taking them (does it have a skill requirement? a level requirement? something else?), we can't say that they're overpowered, underpowered, or balanced.



See above comments. (Also, perks? 50 out of ~280. Certainly can't "max out" everything. Especially compared to Oblivion, where, if you put in the time and effort to get all skills to 100, you'd get all the "perks" associated with them.)

at the same time, we have FO3/FNV-style level scaling, so there will be some areas on the map set initially at a much higher level than the player. In vanilla Oblivion, there were no such areas. Also, it looks like the devs have incorporated elements of Duke Patricks combat archery, where you can one-shot enemies with your bow, but enemy archers can also one-shot you.

There should be some dungeons that will be extremely tough, practically impossible for a low level character to beat, but if you manage to tough it out and survive the lair of the Volkihar, for example, I'm hoping that you can find high level (non-scaled) magic items.

not possible to know until we actually PLAY the frigging game

...um. This may be a silly question. But, if 100% Cham / 100% Reflect is BOOOORING (and "god mode"). And 50% Cham/50% Reflect is only "some kind of challenge"...... why are you still using Cham & Reflect? Why not try a different build, or stop using abilities you think are boring and/or overpowered?

So if variable ways to do things mean easier game, then Deus Ex will be/was an extremely easy game...

But really I don't understand the problems here.

You gain perks every level up- just like you gained attributes at every level up.
Choose a birthsign as you go- you've chosen a birthsign at the beginning... yeah it stuck with you and they were mostly useless. How would this make the game easier?
Over 20 Dragon shouts and upgrades, over 85 spells. Uh... so? How would this make the game easier again?

And there are restrictions. You have to choose between health magicka and stamina, you can't max out all of them (because there's no max). You have to choose 50 perks out of 280, you cannot choose all of them. You have to decide how you are going to play, you cannot hold a two hander and a spell at the same time for example.

Yeah, you can max out all of your skills, JUST LIKE BEFORE!

WHAT PUZZLES?!

There were no puzzles AT ALL in Daggerfall nor in Morrowind. Those riddles in Arena hardly count either!

That door that needs a password, oh that's a giant headscratcher... you have to ask the owner of the castle to tell you the password. Oooooh, that was deep :bonk:

Not to mention they've already said there are going to be actual puzzles in the game, with traps, secret buttons and whatnot...

Get off your high horse...

Lol, there were so many times during Daggerfall that I felt like the main quest had disappeared off the face of the earth, but when I found it again it was a great sense of relief and achievement, only to lose it again in the next stage? Now we have map markers and though this cuts back on frustration, well it doesn't actually because we have the internet at our fingers these days to get help when really stuck, it takes some of the fun out of questing and seeking and searching.

It's like the Quest For the Holy Grail with arrows saying 'this way' please? But I still enjoy it.

How does 85 spells make the game easier? And dragonshouts won't make the game any easier than spells do, regardless of how Many levels of it you've gained. And just because we level up faster doesn't mean it'll be easier, sure we'll get a perk, but the creatures throughout the world will gradually get harder as we level up.

Nope.

You can beat the MQ and become the Guildmaster of every faction, complete every single quest in the game in Oblivion at level 1 and the only option for travel is to click on a map that magically takes you where you want to go (with all the major cities already on the map at the start of the game!). It can't get any easier than Oblivion, its by definition impossible to be any easier than that. If you do level up in Oblivion, you can EASILY become 100% chameleon at all times, immune to magic, and/or reflect 100% damage... its honestly hard NOT to end up with the items needed to do so, rather than actually difficult to find such things. You can make poisons that do so much damage any enemy in the game will have their health vaporized in mere seconds even on the hardest difficulty setting, let alone normal. It would actually be a serious challenge TO make a game easier than Oblivion, so that's one thing I don't think we are going to have with Skyrim. It will be harder than Oblivion, but how much so remains to be seen.

You know what, if it wasnt against forum rules I would tell you what I think of you.
No sir. You need to get off your high horse and quit twisting every little thing I say.
Quit quoting out of context, quit selectively replying, quit strawmans and ad hominems and all in all just quit it.
Please.

No puzzles in Daggerfall. Go play the game again. I have neither the inclination nor the patience to keep repeating myself ad nauseum.

Judging from all the "ITS A SINGLE PLAYER GAME" responses I see as a justification for wanting content that can be seen and used as a cheap exploit I just assumed that "Balance" was the last thing you guys wanted in this game.

Oblivion didn't make you feel powerful unless you exploited various things in the game (using Birthsigns to access Reflect Damage for enchantment, spell stacking effects, etc).

With Skyrim, I think perks and Dragon Shouts are going to determine the majority of how well you're able to take on challenges. Obviously if you're against a bandit and you drop nothing but shouts on him, it'll likely be easy.

So really, despite the lack of tangible stats to numerically modify, I think there's still going to be an element of min/maxing in essence. So it's up to you how easy or hard the game is.

I get the impression that, E3 Toddmode demonstration aside, dragon shouts will still have way too short of a cooldown. I'm not exactly liking how they seem to be able to do half the work of the battle.

EDIT: Honestly, no TES game had a profoundly difficult skill curve. Daggerfall's enemies moved so dreadfully slowly that you could eventually win almost any encounter by simply backpedaling whilst swinging your weapon. All you had to worry about was getting blasted by a potent spell here or there, or an offscreen spider paralyzing you. In Morrowind too, I think it was usually paralysis or poison that got me first - it wasn't too hard to simply run away from most encounters by going into another cell or tricking enemies by getting them stuck on a fencepost or something. Even Cliff Racers took forever to actually retaliate to you because of how they had to slowly descend like a helicopter (glad to see Dragons in Skyrim actually fly and don't hover). Oblivion I can't speak for because I've always used level adjustment mods.

To be honest, Bukee, there were puzzles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YTuTDUkoCo

Sadly, Morrowind and oblivion didn't have. Luckily, they have said that we ae going to have puzzles in Skyrim.

Oblivion had clannfears and dremora. Skyrim has dragons and giant [censored] spiders. I think we're going to need all the help we can get.

Morrowind had a few puzzles, and one of them I found so hard I was unable to finish it until I looked it up online. This was before I had internet and I must have had the game for about a year then.
The puzzle canol shrine quest, for the pilgrimage of the seven graces.




Oblivion also had one puzzle I liked, it was the one for the mages guild where you have to fire spell scrolls at a pillar in a certain order.

I am happy for the news that puzzles will make a return in Skyrim, and I imagine the new inventory with its 3d rotation of items will be useful for making puzzles.

keep in mind some of us have not played this part of Morrowind yet (pls use spoiler tag)

I'm pretty sure they mentioned in an early interview about the system that some of the quests involved turning items to look for clues, should be awesome. Reminds me of Resident Evil Code: Veronica, the suitcase at the start had me stumped for ages.

Don't think it will be easy at all. From what I see it will be harder.

O yeah, I remember that one in Oblivion, now.

Anyway, even having a few puzzles, there weren't many. I mean... I like a lot Tomb Raider series, so sometimes when I entered a ruin and watched something suspicious I tried to do all kind of silly stuff (as I would in a Tomb Raider), just in case there was a puzzle. I spent long time in ruins trying to solve what I thought was an enigma... to discover, dissapointed, that there was no enigma and that I had been wasting my time.

(Oh, and the 3D inventory is, indeed, very useful for puzzles. It has been mentioned that in a ruin, there is a puzzle whose answer is written on a staff that previously, a enemy had looted).

Still, what does puzzles or the lack of them have to do with difficulty and character creation?

Well, nothing with character creation, but I would say it has to do with difficulty.