I have been perusing the forums a fair bit recently and have noticed both a ton of complaints about Bethesda, and a ton of complaints about complaints. To me, the problem isn't criticism or support, it's the over-the-top inferences made by everyone the second they get their hands on information. Yes, everyone has the right to complain, and yes everyone has the right to support, it's the means by which you do so that is the important aspect. The second people get some tidbit of news they jump on it and assume this game will be the best TES game yet and better than any other game they will ever play. On the other hand, if Bethesda releases some piece of information that could possibly change something they liked, people line up along bridges and declare that they will never purchase the game. Both sides are guilty of the same problem.

For me, I'm tired of reading complaints because fringe desires aren't given priority. From what I remember of Oblivion's spell crafting, the system was kind of flawed and likely wouldn't transition well into the new combat system. Instead of keeping a gimped system, Beth is likely trying to incorporate some its elements (control over spell radius/power/effect combinations) into a new system. The new magic system allows you to control how you cast your spells (surround, target, etc). Your spells still have the ability to effect the opponent (slow them down, burn damage etc), and duel wielding should give you the ability to combine effects, along with the return of enchanting. What it removes is the ability to create ridiculous spells that break game mechanics. There may be a small loss in absolute control, but it seems to fit the overall combat mechanics better. I think what Beth is trying to do is break the boundary between RPG planning and gameplay. By integrating the stat sheets within the gameplay itself, Beth actually enhances both. Their motto seems to remain "you get better at what you do". Many of the complaints against Oblivion had to do with a character creation system that rewarded seemingly illogical choices. By removing the stat sheet itself, they didn't necessarily remove stats. What they have done is shift the decision making from a stat page to the gameplay choices made by the player. To some, gameplay doesn't seem like a choice. To bethesda, that is what roleplaying is IN ESSENCE. Including perks is a way to satisfy those who still like to feel a certain "godlike" control through planning. So skyrim does seem like an extension of Oblivion, in fact it goes farther. The problem the Devs had with Oblivion wasn't that it went too far down the road, but rather that it didn't go far enough. By holding on to the statsheet approach in many regards, Bethesda partially crippled their role-playing goal. Spellcrafting didn't seem like it really worked within the gameplay design, and it showed. In Skyrim, your playstyle will hopefully define you. If you approach your gameplay with that in mind, you should have more control over your character than ever before. No longer are you limited by your preset spell-effect combinations. Instead, you can combine any magic/melee/archery/stealth element in real time.

Example: If you play a battlemage and see a troll in the distance. You know the troll has a lot of health and moves slowly. If Skyrim performs as promised, you now have lots of options to deal with the monster. You can throw fireballs from a distance. Since the troll is slow, burn damage is the best tactical ploy as it has enough time to have a large effect. On his last legs as he reaches you, you take out your axe to finish your (unarmoured) foe. A different approach would work best against a speedy wolf. The strategy isn't gone, it is just redirected.

What I don't appreciate is people equating an RPG to a statsheet. This obviously isn't how Beth views the series. From my perspective, role playing games can work in 3 rough manners
1. Your stats affect your gameplay (more morrowind)
2. Your gameplay (style) affects your stats (likely Skyrim)
3. a mix of both (oblivion)

Whether you prefer 1 or 2 is just a matter of preference, but you definitely can't say that 1 is truer role playing, as it requires you to step outside of your character to make magical adjustments to their abilities. I think the danger comes in when you take the middle road, which doesn't really offer the benefits of either approach. Choice 1 is much easier to implement, but choice 2 seems to have the greatest potential if done properly.

Conclusion: Beth is abandoning old gameplay systems, but not their ideals. Their view of what the elder scrolls is has not changed. They are just trying to perfect that same vision. Just because the transition from Morrowind to Oblivion may have been a regression for some, it doesn't follow that another step in the same direction is necessarily bad.

So, respond to the poll! How do you feel about these only slightly related questions?

Yeah so what if I want uncencored elf action! :tongue:

I'm at the point where I read new info get happy, then read the threads, and see so much shark/gun jumping hyperbolic assumptions, I don't even know which logical fallacies I should address first and usually end up just leaving the thread.

I'll get your coat.

Pretentious little wood elf!
Anyway I'm pretty much waiting for release to decide on what I like, saying things svck before trying them is what started wars. Granted there are some things one should never subject themselves to(Final Fantasy), but a slightly different combat style isn't one of them.
Also why isn't there a "Everyone on this forum is an overreacting conspiracy theorist who thinks that everything should stay the same forever and screams at a drop of a hat" option? I swear I've never seen this many whiners since DA2's combat gameplay was a wee bit faster. Getting a bit better though, so there's hope I guess.

I registered on these forums just to reply to this topic. I'm usually a lurker but I felt I needed to respond to this.

You are absolutely right. Role-playing does NOT equal tons of stats and numbers and min/maxing. In fact when I play a role-playing game in real life, like Dungeons and Dragons, we call people that focus on that sort of thing power gamers. I can play a session of DnD with maybe three or four dice rolls if it's a particularly "role-play" kind of night. Of course the fighting and numbers can be fun, but it's generally thought of in the pen and paper circuit that the role-playing transcends the numbers on the paper.

So I am in total agreement, and I hope people can move past their own grognard definition of what role-playing is as far as video games go. So far I see Skyrim as a step in the right direction. Radiant AI to me sounds like they're trying to create an AI Game Master that responds to you and your character specifically. I think that's awesome.

hopefully this will serve as a needed reminder to people, but also bring up an interesting point. How should an RPG function?

Should stats control gameplay, or the other way around? Responses to that would be nice. Sure beats doing my politics paper...

NINJA'd. The real question remains, did he choose his stats and then ninja me, or did he ninja me and thereby increase his stats?

Bethesda's approach to role-playing is "a combat-heavy adventure game with character progression, where you explore dungeons and do quests". every game in the core series falls under this description.

the only actual change Oblivion brought to the series as a whole was the removal of dicerolls calculating whether or not an attack connects. Skyrim seems to be polishing up that decision and in general making combat feel tighter and less antiquated, while bringing back some of the emergent gameplay that Daggerfall was so critically acclaimed for, and the unique environments that Morrowind was known for.

i don't think most people on this forum actually understand what TES games are. they've just played Morrowind and decided the formula was perfect and should not change at all ever, even though constantly repeating the same formula stagnates a franchise. they build up this personal fantasy of the ultimate LARP sim and cry "casual!" and "damnit, Todd!" whenever Bethesda opts to focus on tightening up the aspects of the game that most people utilize while culling the superfluous bits that are either unbalanced or unused, and that would have taken more effort than necessary to bring up to the same level as the more popular elements.

ed i also wanted to say that this is one of the better polls i've seen on this forum. very nicely done, sir.

My head hurts........ :

Do You Agree with Bethesda's Approach?
To what roleplaying? There can never be a pure roleplaying system in a game. To make a game capable of responding to every players idea. So I think the point of that is mute.

Do you feel Beth will do a better job with the "you get better at what you do" formula?
Again at what?

How do you feel about the attitude of this forum in general?

I think the whole forum is guano insane.

I for one loved the OPs humour. I was sorely tempted to vote on a the funny ones just because they were so awesome. Ahem, however, I voted for the first option in all three instances. I don't fully agree with the second though. I believe Beth will IMPROVE the get better at what you do formula, by no means do I think they will perfect it however. Perhaps TESVII.

I have never been one of the people who consider stats important to roleplaying. To me its all about imagination and making a story for your character. Sure, picking different classes and so on enables more ease to approach RP (rather than trying to play a gimped stealthy char because you -have- to be a warrior in heavy armour, says the game). Ultimately I think it depends on imagination, game mechanics and design only serve to discourage/encourage or make it very easy to do (such as the get better at what you do thing, imo) or potentially get in the way of it (above mentioned stealthy warrior thing). ^_^

Generalization: The lazy man's tool to creating questionable humor.

In all seriousness, that poll is way too biased and sarcastic in some points, so I'll exercise my right to not vote.

As for my opinion on this matter, no sir, I don't like it.

The approach was explained in the OP. The idea is that Beth is joining the statsheet and the gameplay such that they are one and the same. "you get better at what you do". Some people think this helps roleplay, some think it hurts.

2'nd question is self explanatory I think. Oblivion had a bunch of exploits and half developed concepts. Will Skyrim perfect the idea that you develop according to your gameplay? You can answer regardless of whether you prefer a different game style. Will they do better at what they are trying to do?

brevity, the lazy man's tool to creating forum post lacking content.
None of the poll questions are meant to be taken completely literally, the aim is just to see how you feel about Beth's decision-making.

As for bias, I don't know which system I like better, so I don't know whether I can even have bias. My one point of view was that I don't like people dismissing a new system outright because it differs from convention. I don't know whether Beth will succeed in what they are trying to do, something that will effect my judgement, so my stance is still undecided.

Your freedoms are your own, though.

What would you prefer?

Do You Agree with Bethesda's Approach?
Don't really care to be honest, I'll judge it when I play it. If I don't like it I'll try my best to change it to suit.

Do you feel Beth will do a better job with the "you get better at what you do" formula?
They haven't got it right yet, why start now

How do you feel about the attitude of this forum in general?
Better than others but too much 'I want'.

Bethesda has yet to design a leveling system on par with the amazing worlds they create with every new Elder Scrolls game. I'll take any change I get in that department because frankly, All the other games had such easy to exploit systems it was almost embarrassing.

This is definitely a step in the right direction. These forums are just filled with Morrowind worshippers who have found a place to voice their complaints. The majority of Elder Scrolls fans probably have probably never been here. The developers should never look at these forums to get an idea of how people are responding to change.

My god man. I was just joking. I didn't ever say your humor wasn't funny (in fact I somewhat enjoyed it), I was just saying the way it was created is rather unoriginal.

As for bias, it's kind of hard not to assume it whenever you rip on Morrowind fans, or say that people who like Oblivion's system are just using a broken system.

As for what I want (in reply to Celtic), does it really matter?

No, it doesn't really matter what any of us want, but I enjoy the discussion and musing that forums offer. If you want to keep your wants to yourself that's fine, I suppose. I just wanted to offer you a chance to discuss your own ideas in response to the OP.

sorry for sounding like I'm attacking you. No evil intended. Just seemed like you thought the poll questions were more biased than I think they are.. I've got nothing against Morrowind fans, they are lovely so long as you keep them in the cage where they belong.

The oblivion broken system was used because the vast majority of people on this forum had a problem with it. I would say it was the most consistently acknowledged problem. The question was whether a further move in that direction (gameplay effecting skills) was necessarily bad.

once again, didn't mean to attack.

I like you. I disagree with some of your opinions, but I like you.

Now, as absurd as it may sound, I don't play CRPGs to role-play. I know, I know, you're thinking that I'm some kind of brain moron who needs constant explosions in a game and pots 12 L of Gatorade a day. The fact is, I've come to realize that CRPGs, while they have had PnP roots, are their own animal.

Now, you're saying something about stats affecting gameplay and gameplay affecting stats, and how the middle ground svcks, but I honestly feel that the middle ground is the best, and that Oblivion is a poor example (unless we're talking about two different things). If your characters skills and attributes don't affect the game, it's not an RPG. Having useless stats for the sake of stats is terrible, and I'd never support it; stats are not fun unless they do something to make your game world seems different and unique to your character. On the other hand, gameplay should rightly affect your stats, but while most CRPGs do this indirectly (through an exp system), TES prefers the "you become better at what you do" system. Either are acceptable, but neither would do any good if the skills and attributes were meaningless.

What I'm trying to say is that Skyrim will be in the middle ground, like all of Bethesda's games. Some people will find enjoyment by using their imaginations (role playing), and that's great, but there are some of us who want the game itself to entertain us (we're a demanding lot, aren't we?). Honestly, though, I don't really see the downfall of Skyrim being that "lack of skills and statistics" people are crying about, but the lack of their impact on the game world.

I think we agree more than you may think I'm not a big role-player either. The so called problem with Oblivion (well, people have lots) was that you would pick your major skills and whatnot, only to learn that the best way to make a character was to do so in a way that was unintuitive. Obviously, as play a TES game, your gameplay changes your stats, which then influence your gameplay ( ex your character is a stronger mage). My concern with Oblivion wasn't that your stats didn't effect your gameplay (they did), but rather that Beth didn't really decide how your stats were determined (is it through gameplay? levelling? major/minor skills?). A lot of RPGs (like fallout) deal with exp and distributing your skill points. Oblivion (kind of?) tried to do things differently. Beth seemed to be trying to hold two different stat frameworks at a time.

anyone have anything more to say on the issue of Role playing through gameplay or role playing through stat selection? Seems like there is a divide between fans on what really makes the elder scrolls "the elder scrolls". It would be nice to see where people lie on this...

I think the perks could make this the most "statsheet-heavy" Elder Scrolls since Daggerfall. It's just different from the 0-100 scale we're used to and people aren't sure what to expect since little is known about them right now.

that's one thing I mentioned in the original post. Perks keep a kind of stat-planning element to the game. They seem to be forgotten on occasion.

:this:

I can't say much though because I am a fangirl and prefer to give the developers the benefit of the doubt that they are trying to improve the game and that their main goal is to make an awesome, immersive game. Sure they will end up taking away or changing stuff that I didn't want (or didn't think I wanted) changed but they will get other things right and improve other things and I am really looking forward to what they have in store. I will love Bethsada even if they don't bring back levitation. You can satisfy all the people some of the time, and you can satisfy some of the people all of the time but you can't satisfy all the people all the time.