And in whose definition are those things "problems"? Many of them are GOOD things as far as I see it, not everyone necessarily agrees with you, or any other portion of the fan base on all matters. Not to mention a lot of those things are not even confirmed. Now, that doesn't mean you can't worry about them, but the way the opening post was worded was rather misleading since it talks about both confirmed aspects of the game and speculation as though they're the same thing.
No spellmaking? That's a GOOD thing as far as I'm concerned, mainly because for once this might mean the spell system won't be limited by the need to make it easy to create new spells within the game, allowing us to actually have spells that aren't incredibly boring. Removal of attributes? I'll wait until the game is released before I judge if that's good or bad. Removing athletics, acrobatics, or mysticism? I'm a little dubious about athletics and acrobatics, but mysticism is no big loss, seeing as it was nothing more than the magic sklll every spell Bethesda didn't put into other skills get's shoe-horned into. The only thing mysterious about it is the kind of logic that leads someone to think that it makes sense for all those different spells to be in the same school when other schools all have consistent themes (Destruction has spells that damage health or attributes or weaken targets to magic, restoration has spells that heal and fortify characters' abilities, illusion has spells that effect minds and perception, and such.) And what's wrong with dragons? You make it sound like dragons are just a bad idea by nature, which I don't feel is the case, And don't tell me "They're cliche", the Elder Scrolls has lots of cliche concepts in it, like say, elves, I don't see anyone saying that elves shouldn't be in the game, and while certainly, dragons and elves are both pretty cliche, I'd say that at least dragons are a more enjoyable cliche. And what m,akes you think the story will be simple? And I'm not saying it won't be, no one can say if it will be simple or not, because we haven't experienced it yet. Sure, it may not sound complex from the summaries we've heard of it, but any story could be made to sound simple if you summarize it in such terms, in most cases, complexity and depth come from the execution, which even if it could be explained in a short summary, would probably be left out of it anyway, so as to avoid spoilers. Could Skyrim's story be simple, maybe. You can worry about that if it makes you happy, but you shouldn't just assume it will be simple without first seeing for yourself what it's like. And too many dragons? I'll admit I can understand being worried about that, but that really comes down entirely to how well Bethesda hands the distribution of dragons, so we can only wait and see on that. And I for one LIKE Oblivion style fast travel (I must specifically note it's
Oblivion style fast travel because travel services as done in Morrowind are a form of fast travel too, just a different form from what Oblivion employs.) it's convenient, which is exactly what the entire point of fast travel is, and it's optional, I play games to have fun, and I for one do NOT find walking the exact same unchanging path over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again because there was no way to skip the travel proccess, which no matter how interesting you make the world WILL inevitably grow tedious if you have to do it in real time every time you want to go to a specific place and need to go there many times over in the game, and when I don't want to use fast travel, guess what? I don't use it, I know not using something you don't want to use is a very foreign idea in these parts, but it's actually not as hard as people make it out to be. Now, you could argue that the "don't like it, don't use it." argument didn't work in Oblivion because there wasn't a viable alternative, andI said before when the subject came up that there SHOULD be an alternative, but now we have one, so in theory everyone should be happy, except for those who don't object to the concept of Oblivion's fast travel system but would like some changes made to the mechanics of it, maybe, or to the mechanics of the travel services that serve as alternatives, maybe, or maybe some will come up with a third option they'd like to see, but otherwise, the only ones I could see complaining about the subject are the sort who resent the notion of having the
option to do a thing they don't want to do, and you can't really come up with a reasonable argument to be used against them.
And since that paragraph is getting pretty long, I'll post the rest in a new one. As to the quest compass, I don't recall it ever being said it's in, or out, though I'm assuming it's in the game in some form since that seems to be the trend in recent RPGs, though I don't actually mind the concept of quest markers in itself, but I would prefer not to have it done in Oblivion's fashion, making it so that quest markers point to the general area of something rather than the exact location would help a lot, also, make it so you only get quest markers if your character could conceivably know something's location, and have more quests similar to Lifting the Vale where you don't have quest markers for at least some portions of the quest and have to find your next objective based on clues you're given, most importantly, though, quest markers should be optional, and I know in Oblivion you could "turn them off" by activating a quest that doesn't have quest markers, but that's not what I mean. I mean actually having an option to disable quest markers or choose whether a quest should should have a compass marker or not, and finally, finding quest objectives needs to still be viable without relying on the compass, and since the game world is too big and open for you to just keep searching until you find it without anything to point you in the right direction, that pretty much has to be directions, so yes, have NPCs give you directions, even if the compass isn't optional, that at least makes more sense from a role-playing standpoint since it justifies your character knowing where to go, and it makes things much easier for modders who want to remove the quest compass. When it comes to the removal of birthsigns, I won't say that's a good thing, but it wouldn't bother me that much if they were gone, I can't compare removing them to attributes because birthsigns were just something you could choose at the start to give you certain often poorly balanced bonuses, whereas attributes were a fundamental aspect of how the game's RPG mechanics worked, so removing attributes has much more potential to cause problems than birthsigns, if it turns out that birthsigns are gone, it won't really be a big loss to me, but if they're still in the game, I just hope they're better balanced, because in past games, there were just too many birthsigns that weren't worth choosing. Now, if we truly can't see our legs in first person, which I suspect is the case, that's something I can agree is a problem, though VERY far from a game ruining one. Really, it seems to me that with how much people obssess over "realism" in games, something as basic as not being a floating camera with arms should be pretty obvious, so it's one of those things that I just don't see why so few games do it. Now, not enough choices and concequences is founded on absolutely nothing except our experiences with Morrowind and Oblivion, which admitably doesn't give me much reason to be optimistic about Skyrim giving players a large amount of choices with concequences during quests. I'd certainly like to see Bethesda improve on that aspect of the series, though, but I just don't know whether to believe they will or not. When it comes to the combat system, if what Bethesda has told us is to believed, it should be pretty satisfying, but like with the story, I'll judge it once I've experienced it. At the very least though, I'm sure it will be more entertaining than Morrowind's. "Slash slash slash slash slash slash slash slash slash..." and so on and hope your enemy dies before you do.
I can't say anything reassuring about the PC version being limited (Downgraded isn't the term I'd use because that implies that Bethesda originally planned on making the PC version have better technical capabilities, but downgraded it so that the PC version wouldn't look better than it's console counterparts, whereas it seems much more likely to me that Bethesda made their plans for all three versions according to the limitations of what consoles are capable of.) because I believe that's what's going to happen, and it's not really a practice I approve of, no real objections I can make there. The removal of classes on the other hand is another thing that I consider a good thing, at the very least, it's not something I feel is detrimental to the game, and I've said why in threads on the subject, really, classes were pretty trivial in Morrowind and Oblivion, and removing them seemed like the next logical step, not just in terms of how they already were in past games, but also as far as moving towards truly realizing the freedom to "do whatever you want" the series makes its selling point. Why shouldn't my freedom to "do whatever I want" include deciding when I reach level five that I want to be a thief instead of the mage I chose at the start? And it's not like this means your choices don't have concequences, seeing as there is a limit to how many perks you can choose, so even if you maximize all skills, there can still be variations between characters' abilities despite the absence of the class system. As to low resolution textures, my thoughts are similar to what I said about the PC version being limited for the sake of consoles, though MOST of the textures I've seen in screenshots look alright to me (Though of course, I also thought Oblivion's textures would be better than they turned out to be based on the early screenshots, so make of that what you will.) But I have noticed a few textures that aren't up to the standards I'd hoped to see from the game, Ideally, what I'd want to see is for PCs to have high-end graphics options that allow the game to surpass what the console versions are capable of, but I don't really believe that's happening. And not being able to climb mountains? I was under the impression that most mountains had ways you could go up, just that they wouldn't be easy to traverse and you wouldn't be able to directly walk up them, on the other hand, if you mean not having an actual climbing feature, yes, it sounds like we won't have that, though that wouldn't actually bother me too much, I never got the obssession with climbing, I mean, it might be nice to see it if it could be done properly, but I don't feel that my freedom is being unreasonably limited because can't climb over any wall in the game, besides, climbing would be obsolete if Bethesda brought back levitation... And the lack of blocking with spells or weapons equipped in the off hand (Obviously, you can still block with a weapon and a shield, and I'm not sure if you can block with a two handed weapon or a weapon in one hand while not using anything in the other.) but I suspect there are reasons for this, either it's for game balance reasons (To offer a penalty for dual wielding or the weapon and spell combo.) or due to the limited number of buttons on a controller (Makin it once again an example of the console versions limiting the PC version, I suppose, not that I have any objection to consoles, but it's something one can't deny that their controllers do not have as many buttons as a keyboard.) And yes, no spears kind of bothers me, not much more I can say about it than that, it's not going to stop me from playing the game, but nor am I going to try to make no spears sound like it's something I am happy with either.
And water not looking good, yes, I agree, when the trailer first became available, I criticized the water, and I still haven't changed my mind on the matter. The water just doesn't look that great, from what I've seen, and when there were at least three threads criticizing the water each day, one common defense of it was "The game isn't finished yet, it will look better when it's released." but does that defense really hold water? (Apologies in advance for the terrible pun that was not my initial intention when I considered wording the sentence in that way but I soon realized was present in it.) After all, did Oblivion look better upon release than the older screenshots or the official trailer would lead us to believe? I wouldn't say so. Really, I suspect that the things Bethesda chooses to show in the trailer and screenshots are for the most part done, at the very least, I wouldn't expect them to look significantly better when the game is released, after all, why would Bethesda show us images of water that don't look very good if what will be in the finished product will actually look better? That's misleading, and while it wouldn't be the first time a game company has said or shown something about a game that's misleading, usually, when they do that, they'd want to make the game look better than it is, what could they gain by making it look worse, in any case, we haven't seen any screenshots or videos of good looking water, so when I only see things that make me think it will look bad and nothing that makes me think it will look good, why should I believe it will look good? And yes, I'm concerned about the "magnetism", in general I don't like the idea of auto-aim in games, which sounds like essentially what it is even if Bethesda gives it a different name, hopefully, there will be a way to turn it off, if not, I'll be on the lookout for a mod that removes it, I just hope that won't mess up a game clearly designed with its presence in mind too much. And I am worried that dragons could turn out to be "the new Oblivion gates", cliffracers not so much, unfortunately, there's absolutely no way to know if they will be or not until we've tried them ourselves, until then, I'll just say I've taken that possibility into account. As to less role-playing options, I'm not too worried about that, if anything, I'd may have more, considering that we're getting smithing, wood cutting, and other such activities, these sound like role-playing options to me. As to armor slots, I don't know what to expect in this regard as well, I don't believe it will be like Fallout 3, though, when talking about this sort of thing, people often seem to forget a crucial fact, which is that Fallout 3 is a sequal to Fallout, not the Elder Scrolls, and Fallout 1 and 2 also did not have seperate slots for gloves, boots or shoes, shirts and pants and such. Now, personally, I don't think it was necessary for Bethesda to keep the game like its predeccessors in that regard when they gladly changes much more major things like the perspective of the game or having combat be real time instead of turn based (And I'm not going to debate whether those changes were good or bad here, because that's a discussion for the Fallout forums, not the Elder Scrolls ones, but for better or for worse, I'd say they had a bigger impact on the gameplay than changing how many armor slots there are would have.) But at least there was precedence in the series for it, so I don't feel that the fact that Fallout 3 had the single outfit and helmet setup means that it will carry over into Skyrim, I expect the smallest number of armor slots we might see to be the same as in Oblivion, maybe it will go up to Morrowind's level or somewhere in between (Having pauldrons be seperate items but having the left and right pauldrons be a single item and also having gauntlets the same way, for example.)
Now back to dragons, I could see them going either way, since Bethesda has had a precedence for balancing things poorly, but I don't see much we can do about that now either way, so I'll just say it's a possbility I consider, and leave it at that. And in regards to the dragon fight, I think it's pretty much a given that it's scripted to an extent, at the very least, I'm sure we're not going to see the dragon perspective shots in the game, the real question is, how much of it was scripted? And how accurately will it reflect gameplay? Well, that's impossible to say. And Radiant AI was included in Oblivion, as it will be in Skyrim, I'm sure, however, it WAS toned down somewhat from what it had originally been intended to be, because it was found to be too prone to causing utter chaos, and could this also happen with Skyrim? Maybe. But it's important not to forget that the fact that Bethesda has made such a mistake before (The mistake in this case being leading us to believe Radient AI would be more than it turned out to be.) also means they've had experience with it, which means it's possible that they learned from said experience and will be more careful about avoiding it in the future, so what I'm hoping is that Bethesda is being more cautious about hyping up Radient AI, or other such mechanics, still, it should be common sense that one shouldn't expect TOO much from these things, not that it's necessary to assume that everything you hear about the game is all lies, but if the developers start to make it sound like the AI they're programming for the game is truly intelligent AI like what you see in science-fiction, you should take that as a sure sign that maybe they're hyping it a little too much, not that I'm saying they're doing this with Skyrim, it actually seems to me that what little we've heard about the AI in Skyrim sounds more realistic than what some expected form it in Oblivion, which is probably not a bad sign. And mounts? It hasn't been confirmed or denied either way, and I won't have strong feelings either way, mounts are by no means a vital part of the game for me, and from what we've heard, it sounds like if Bethesda does them, they will make sure they can do them well, which probably means if they're not in the game, Bethesda couldn't get them done well, so it would be no big loss not to have them. I mean, I rarely ever used horses in Oblivion, and what's the point in having mounts if they're so poorly done that I don't want to use them? On the subject of children, since it's not my intention to see this topic locked, I won't say too much on that, I'll just say that limitations only bother me if there's a good reason I'd actually want to do something, and expect to be able to do it, and, well, this is one of those things where even if I had the option, I wouldn't want to use it, so not having it doesn't bother me anyway.
Level scaling, according to what we're told, is indeed similar to Fallout 3, and that's fine with me, because in that regard, I felt Fallout 3 was an improvement over Oblivion. You see, I do not dislike the very concept of level scaling, in fact, some degree of level scaling is probably a good idea in an open world RPG, the problem is that Oblivion did level scaling poorly, now look back at Morrowind, I never saw anyone complain about the existence of level scaling in that game, yet it DOES have it, contrary to what some seem to think here. Now, some might criticize Morrowind for not being scaled enough, but at the very least, I haven't seen anyone complain about it just having level scaling. Just level scaling in itself doesn't bother me, only poorly done level scaling does. And lack of open cities, it seems like that's confirmed, and it would be nice to see open cities, yes, but it doesn't really hurt my game experience that much if they're not open, really, it just means another loading screen to sit through, and at least I only have to sit through it twice during each visit to the city, once for entering and once for leaving, assuming it's not a city divided into multiple world spaces like the Imperial City, I have to deal with the loading screens for houses much more often. My main complaint with no open cities is that it probably means we won't have levitation, and, well, even if cities were open it wouldn't guarentee we'd see that. On to the size of Skyrim, I see no problem with it being the same size as Oblivion, I never felt that Oblivion's world was too small, and if Skyrim is the same size, I can live with that, especially since it should feel bigger due to the mountainous terrain. I'd just complain if the map was too much small than Oblivion. And finally on to levitation, as I've probably implied, I am not really pleased about its absence, but what can you do? If cities aren't open, no levitation seems like a natural concequence, and even if Bethesda could work around that, adding levitation in would require more than just adding a new spell in, as Bethesda would have to make changes to the environment to take advantage of it, otherwise, it would be pointless, and that's not happening now. I certainly don't try to hide that I'd like levitation in the game, but I have no dillusions that this will change anything in Skyrim.
All that being said, it seems to me that most people ARE aware of these things, at least the ones that are actually confirmed, seeing as we get topics about them pretty regularly.
And yes, that was longer than I originally intended it to be, but once I started to see how long it was becoming, it seemed like such a waste to not post all that I'd already written and adress each "problem" seperately.
why is it these pro-everything-ever-mentioned-about-skyrim-thus-far posters, often come of as desperately defensive, and also slightly mentally [censored]?
I've seen my share of anti-anything we've heard about Skyrim posters that come off as equally unreasonable, such as for example those who make unfounded generalizations about the opposite portion of the fanbase. Any fandom has it's population that is impossible to have any sort of reasonable argument with, and whether one is for or against something, either extreme can potentially lead into that realm of nonsense.
I don't understand how people say they won't be worried untill they've played it, by then its too late and you're stuck waiting at least another 5 years. Maybe its faith, but I lost that a long time ago. Having a blind faith in a company is always a bad thing.
Even if we worry now it's already too late to change most things anyway, so it seems pointless to worry needlessly, not that there's nothing I worry about anyway, but I see no sense in worrying about unfounded things if even if the worries are accurate, there's absolutely nothing we can do to change them. But regardless, putting blind faith in a company is not a healthy attitude, but neither is unfounded pessimissm, sure, with the latter, you may not have to worry about being dissappointed from the game not living up to your expectations, the price is spending every day you follow its development expecting it to be unsatisfying, which is not exactly something I'd consider preferable, best to just be reasonable and expect only as much from the game as is actually realistic.
» Thu Aug 19, 2010 8:36 pm 
(((( 
