I′ve noticed it too. Too much Skyrim here.

Sorry. Skyrim boards are about as pleasant as a necromancer's lair.

I do understand why you rather come here to talk than there. That section needs some more cooling down I guess. And maybe I shouldn′t say too much as my latest Courier article was about Skyrim

I have been lurking Sky's forums a bit and have noticed they are a wee bit less disasterous than they were a few months ago. But I still feel like an outsider over there. I do lots more lurking and reading of the Sky forum, and of TES General, than posting, I actually learn a lot just from reading TES General posts, a lot about lore and history, especially.

If you post constantly in those other forums, it requires you develop a thick skin (like Pseron Wyrd) or are able to completely ignore rude people. I don't have a thick skin, and if someone flames me or makes makes an insult about something I said (or a coment to someone I care about), I can't help it. I go into "Renee Gade" mode. I don't really like being this way, I find it stressful.

I figure maybe a year from now, the Sky forums may have cooled to the point that we all can inhabit there without incident (or with rare incidents).

A year from now only the people that LOVE Skyrim will dwell there, as is the same here with Oblivion

We just gotta wait til' the Bioware forumers go away.

And even so I do not see how the character build better. Maybe it is only me, but when I look at character development I look for what makes my character different from the others. Because it is so hard to not get high numbers in just about all attributes by playing normally and the lack of difference between a major and minor skill in term of gameplay most characters will have generic stats and can do exactly what he/she want at any time. And while that is what TES is about in one understanding of the expression it removes the reason for having major skills in the first place.
You chose the major skills because you want to specialize in them and when a "pure" mage can be equally good as a "pure" warrior with any weapon I find something wrong with the character development.

The only reason any of my characters in Vanilla Oblivion have major differences is because I specificly and purposly gimp them to prevent them getting too wellrounded stats.

This is one of Oblivion′s greatest strengths; to specify one′s character in any way you want. Jack of all trades are useful but maybe boring, and to specialize in one or two areas is to recommend in this game. At least for RP purposes

Agreed. That's one thing about Oblivion early on, when I was power-gaming with the first Renee Gade. She became proficient at everything at once...magic, sneaking, swordplay, etc. The only thing that kept her from becoming an uber-goddess at every damn skill & spell in the game is scheduling. She was so busy with quests she simply didn't have time to get to every little facet of gameplay. But there was no limit to her actually choosing to do so.

And so of course, I purposely "gimped" RG2, mostly because she was my first official RP. I much preferred the gimped game to the power-game.

Yes, I love the freedom of Oblivion! I so much more enjoying imposing my own restrictions to a wide open character development palette (Oblivion) than having those restrictions imposed upon me (Dragon Age or Baldur's Gate for example). Not many games will allow the particular type of character that I want to play. For those who desire rules and restrictions to 'contain' their character, Oblivion is not the game.

I think you missed the point of my post. When you have to specificly gimp yourself to prevent your character to become to wellrounded I cannot see how the system is any good. It works, barely that is.
I agree that itis more interesting to play as gimped characters though.

I think Skyrim forces you to specialise more than Oblivion... It's harder to be Jack of all Trades in Skyrim imo.

Yes it does. You can get high skill in many areas, but it is the perks that make you a master. If you spread your perks around too much, you're in for a tough time.

On the contrary I′d say. The system that works is the system that lets you be who you want to be. If you don′t choose then the system chooses for you, it′s up to you to decide and that′s what makes it so good imo

Since it's more interesting to play as a gimped character, then how is it a problem?

In any case, what you're calling "gimped" is actually a character with characteristics, and it seems to me that it's a loss to take away the ability to create one (and note that I said "create," not "develop"; I still maintain that there's an ongoing confusion between "character creation" and "character development.")

And when I do not get characteristics simply by playing the class I chose... You see where I am going? It is not about the system being abother for me, if it where I wouldn't have played it regulary the last 4-5 years. My problem is that my character doesn't develop characteristics unless I neglect some stats despite I chose a class at the start of the game.

Class isn′t everything. What makes a character is what he does, as in real life.

I agree and this is kind of the point I was making earlier. For me, chargen doesn't define my character's personality. It's what happens after chargen that defines my character's personality. In my games roleplaying happens before and after chargen, not during.

I've never really understood all the fuss about Classes in these games. Classes don't fit, and for both Morrowind and Oblivion, I have installed mods that lessen the effects of your class down to only providing an initial boost to a few skills and attributes. I am no longer forced to use my major skills to gain level-up points. In fact, I don't level up at all, the mods sort out all the attribute shenanigans in the background. My job is to decide what I want my character to be, and then just go do it. So I'm glad Skyrim did away with classes, though I am sad that I can no longer pick initial specializations (maybe a couple free perks at the start for you to "tag" your skills or something). But, I can live without.

That being said, both games have a weak story, and both fail in exactly the same places. The sense of urgency is obviously fake, the endings are both extremely anticlimactic (Big Boss Dragon is hopelessly easy in Skyrim, and you just sit back and watch the final battle in Oblivion), the plots are very predictable, and the major enemies in both games (Oblivion Gates in Oblivion, Dragons in Skyrim) don't really feel dangerous. And then there's Bethesda's Celebrity Sideshow hijinks, casting celebrity voice actors for roles that only ever get ten to twenty minutes of screen time.

There are elements of Oblivion's gameplay that I prefer, mind. Namely your skill progression matters more, magic is a lot more flexible and malleable (why did they get rid of Spellcrafting again?), and attributes, once you get rid of the stupidity of the vanilla leveling, really help to flesh your character out. Skyrim improved a lot, but to say the least, it just didn't improve them enough. Floaty hack-n-slash combat is forgivable in Oblivion due to it being a legacy title now, but all Skyrim did to improve it is add some nifty kill animations and allow you to bash (I do not consider dual-wielding to be an improvement). Then there's magic, which was gutted in exchange for extra pizzazz, and stealth, which is a carbon copy from Fallout 3 with the only difference being you draw your bow a bit slower this time.

That is why it is so easy for me to go back to Oblivion from Skyrim, because when you sweep away all the extra fluff, Skyrim is nothing more than Oblivion with a new coat of paint. That is why I do not prefer either game over the other, they are equals. Skyrim simply has a case of the Sequels, where the only changes made were minor improvements, with the only things radical about the design being what they removed (Spellcrafting).

So, from my standpoint: Skyrim = Oblivion. When I look at the pros and cons for both, neither of them gain an edge over each other.

Skyrims' plot is actually excellent, it's just the execution that let's it down. I feel you have to use your imagination to get the most out of it. At least Oblivion had a pretty good twist at the end (though i don't rate that MQ too highly either).

I agree they both have pro's and cons. Some things i miss from Oblivion are so simple like attributes, faction ranks and the epic NPC conversations.

Sorry, but I have a very hard time taking the "hero saves the world from the evil Dragon" plotline seriously anymore. It's just too cliched, and I will not forgive that with a plot that was, as you said, badly done.

Beth really needs to face the music and admit to themselves that this kind of active storytelling is outside of their comfort zone. Oblivion failed, Fallout 3 failed, and now Skyrim has failed, and all three of them tried to tell a story directly through activity. There is a reason people (including me) still prefer Morrowind's story: because it was told indirectly through lore and books. Skyrim doesn't achieve the same thing, there are only two points in the game where you learn the history behind the main quest, whereas in Morrowind, the story WAS the history. It wasn't so much WHAT was happening than it was WHY it was happening. And if you stripped all that why away, Morrowind's plot would then be on par with what Bethesda is churning out today. The plot was elevated because you could learn the whole story from the very beginning, and THAT is what gave the characters depth and dimension.

Passive storytelling is Bethesda's forte, but they are refusing to admit this to themselves and keep trying to be active storytellers. And failing.

I feel (sadly) that you are right. However, before playing Skyrim if you learned the story was about a civil war with an uneasy tension with the Thalmor. Then on top of that the return of the dragons (big thing in TES) and you are the big hero guy who saves the world.

I personally feel that is a good plot to work with, and it could have been really really great. It wasn't.

Indeed, but if it has little to no real effect how is it a good part of character creation?

Very true. I've been saying this since the weekend after 11/11/11. They both have flaws and both have good points. For me, Oblivion's flaws are balanced up by its better features, and this goes for Sky as well.

You like Oblivion for the better story?

Dude, if that's what you're looking for, by all means drop Oblivion and pick up Daggerfall right now.

VEEENGEAAANCE!!!

I can't forget how many choices Skyrim removed from the player to give it equality with either Oblivion or Morrowind. It's a better action adventure game than either of the other two; it's also a lot closer to Halo than I want to be.