Skyrim will be what I expect, an Elder Scrolls game.
I expect that, and need nothing more!

What does anything I said have to do with my sig?

Dice are very useful in RPG's. They are used to reflect what is not under player control. Dice can indicate that a rickety bridge finally collapses when the guy after you crosses, or that your lock pick breaks ~not even due to mistakes, just bad luck. In most RPG combat dice indicate the subtleties that even today's impressive graphically rich RPG's cannot. Dice reflect random change & variation. A sword expert cannot attack a target flawlessly the same identical way multiple times ~Its only possible for an inorganic machine; the blade will be off by milimeters, inches, or yards (depending on skill). Dice rolls reflect this, and they indicate whether the target was missed, cut, or scratched. I would not be opposed to a game like Oblivion, or Skyrim implementing attenuated attacks visually (in the animation) instead of numerically, (though it would be a lot of extra work), but until that time, I don't see an acceptable alternative to dice.

That said.....
Dice were never http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_Diceless_Roleplaying_Game for our or anyone's generation ~they were just efficient and popular.

When I play Baldur's Gate, or NWN, the first thing I do is enable the numerical information to print. It is the only way to perceive your opponent's advantage or disadvantage, and I'd never play it without. Its also the only way to perceive just how good or bad the attempt, attack or defense really was. This is something that your character would immediately notice, but not something the player would see without access to the numbers or an RPG that gives Xena/Bruce Lee combat moves to your opponent, while the level 2 PC fights like Dagwood Bumstead. Arx Fatalis did a great job of hiding the rolls while keeping their benefits, but I really wished I that could see what was really going on in that game. I haven't played an RPG (yet) that that provides information visually that is comparable to the numeric values.
(and I'm not really sure that I'd want to, as the information is all I'm interested in, and the numbers tell me immediately. Its the same argument some have against voiced dialog... They can read faster than the NPC's talk, and the text is cheaper than voiced lines (so there can be more of them).

As for "verisimilitude"... I don't get it. I know the word, but I don't see how that applies to an RPG. Verisimilitude applies to simulators. Those that want verisimilitude in a game, want simulation. (Verisimilitude would take the fun out of Monopoly, same as it would out of Fallout ~any of them... or would we all like to to spin like tops firing a minigun?)

Good VR is cool for it's own sake, but its not something I'd ever want in a role playing game. I like getting a lot done in an hour, and would not like playing the game 1:1 with my time. At least current gen RPG's still play with time compressed.

What you said is fine, its the needless cursing and all that crap. speak with a reasoned voice and you wont look like something undesirable.

So, OP, you make a poll asking if people know what an RPG is and then say that TES is moving away from the RP aspect. If anything, the RP aspects of TES has gotten better with each game. I don't see how people think that the loss of numbers and having to have some actual player skill when they play the game is moving from the RP aspect. RPing is from having the freedom to do as you please to play a role in the game. Some RPGs go to a limited amount of RPing where you play an RPG with a character that has their own backstory and name. In TES, you make your character, they have no backstory and you have so much RPing power, you are just as free to RP as you were in any past game and you have even more customization then you did in any previous TES game. If you think that Skyrim is not an RPG then no TES game in the past has been an RPG.

In the end, Skyrim has the same RP aspects as the past TES games, the only thing limiting you from RPing to the same extent as the other games is your own imagination. If you really can't get an RP effect from Skyrim, Oblivion or Morrowind, which are all the same RP quality, then maybe you just have gotten numb to RPing and you should move on to a different game series. It happens, I've known people that were hardcoe RPers and then they just got numb to it, some people do, it doesn't make them bad people and doesn't mean that RPGs have gotten worse, it was out of their control. Instead of trying to ruin RPing for the rest of us, please just move on to another game genre.

Will you give an example?

You have more customization in Skyrim than before. The magic system is inherently more customization than spellcrafting previously was. Perks are a huge customization boost and what not and this is all on top of the fact that TES still has it's truest RP factors, that you can be anyone you want to be and make the world to be anything you want. RPing gets even better when the people in the RP world actually seem like real people, which in Skyrim they are far and beyond what they were in previous TES games.

I read your post and won't be voting on the topic. So long as Bethesda provides us PC users with a Construction Kit to make our own mods... the games will always be more than what we expected, thanks to know how and the talented people who are part of the TES/FO modding community.

But I read this quite a few times over...


Like the PC Gaming community that has been "dying" for 25 years, right?

Please save the catch lines for magazines and politicians.

The idea of roleplaying has infected other avenues of video games. From Football games having stuff like injuries, Puzzle Games trying to create RPG-esque elements... to games like Saints Row 2 and GTA 4 which play out very much like an open world RPG, yet draw in a different crowd than golden rpg's like Morrowind or NWN.

So of course other genres will permeate the RPG development process as well, changing and expanding some of the concepts of what an RPG is.

If that weren't the case... I'd still be playing text games like Zork.

I totally agree.

RPG is not dead, it is flourishing. You can now do more in games than you could ever do before. I have played numerous D&D games on PC all the way back to Pool of Radiance and going forward - all RPG games and you could do substantially less in those games compared to Oblivion. Having a life sim added on to an adventure does not make a game a RPG. While owning shops, farming, mining, marriage, pet ownership may be fun in a game, in some respects they become tedious. They actually break my 'immersion'. I am supposed to be the saviour of the world but I have to run a shop to get enough cash to help out?

Standard RPG has always been about swords, spells, killing, looting and creating a throne of skulls from those you have vanquished. Anything else is the Sims.

Obviously Ill blame Bethesda!
Who should we blame the Janitor ? :facepalm:

EDIT: If Bethesda moved away from RPG elements in favor of spending more time to enhance the "Dovahkiin dragon riding hero" feeling then Ill consider the game a FAIL! and not play it and move on.

I disagree. This all comes down to people's misplaced sense that Morrowind was god and everything should strive to be it. You know how long people complained that Daggerfall lost 10 skills from the transition to Morrowind? A month at most but people still complain that from Morrowind to Oblivion they only really lost 1 skill. Less skills doesn't mean less customization, it means that we don't have separate skills that are basically the same thing. Would you really like if Swimming was still it's own skill? I wouldn't I thought it was great when they got rid of the redundant skills. With the new level system, for all we know 18 skills are equal to 50 skill in one of the other games. I don't see why we need an acrobatics skill and an athletics skill or a speechcraft skill and a mercantile skill. Those are all basically the same thing. That's all that was combined was skills that basically are the same thing. Security fits under sneak, acrobatics fits under athletics and mercantile fits under speechcraft, you don't need separate skills. People complain about the silliest things, like one time they complained about the font of the Skyrim menu. I'm not even kidding...

So for all of those that are so disappointed because Skyrim has the same RP factors and more than previous TES games, I say, if you are really so disappointed with Bethesda and how they "ruined" the game by not changing any RP aspects and only adding to it, then don't spend your money on the game and leave TES and BGS behind. We won't notice your lack of money because we will gain far more new fans to replace the ones that are seeing the loss of RP value that isn't really gone at all.

Thank you for your response. I agree with your examples. Avatar customization has greatly increased and great strides have been made to create the illusion of what you'd see if you were standing in the game world; and with each game that bit gets better.

My first, (and only) Oblivion character to reach above level 4 in the game was an acrobat. I can't help but truly loath skill merging and all the problems it creates. At some point there will just be the "Fight", "Stealth", and "Magic" skills ~and nothing else. It will become the mechanics counterpart of the "Rumors" dialog problem in Oblivion.

Sadly (IMO) that's quite the truth.
But I don't agree that this is.

Do we really need to blame anyone in the first place?

Indeed. I'm excited to be able to see if I can actually make my character look like me this time around after hours of tweaking without having to mod the game. I want my handsome face on my Ayleid character dammit!

I really want to know what people think was lost from rping in Skyrim or the TES series as a whole. I'm not seeing it. As for merging of skills, it doesn't mean that every game will have more and more merged skills. The skill merging has greatly dropped with each game. Daggerfall to Morrowind was the biggest. Morrowind to Oblivion was about half of that of Daggerfall to Morrowind. Oblivion to Skyrim is half the merging of Morrowind to Oblivion. So if the trend continues, which it most likely won't as I don't see what else could be merged, then there may be one more skill merged and then it's over. People expect more skills to get axed when there is no evidence to the fact. If anything, old skills from Daggerfall might come back into the game in TES VI for all we know or a whole brand new one which people will complain that the new skills aren't as cool as they wanted and they are just oversaturating the game with skills <_<

This is what I don't understand. To me (and to a lot of people), Roleplaying is being like water poured into an ornate decanter, and the water takes on those aspects. Conforming to the interior bounds of the new shape. What you describe seems more like tailoring a suit. This is just not my idea of roleplaying. :shrug:
(And its the flaw in all the TES games from my perspective).

If the game uses the skills, then there cannot be too many IMO. In Wasteland you could (if you had learned cybernetic technology), use the equipment to enter an android head, but without that skill, your PC could not use the interface... Its as simple as that :shrug:; Doesn't matter if you never use it again. If you did have it, your PC had additional opportunities in the game.

I don't know whether I sould agree with you or not because I don't know what this means.

Yes, I can.

And I respect your idea of roleplaying. I just like my characters to resemble me and my body but not quite me because I'm not a moca-colored elf with pointy ears. I'm proud of the way I look at how hard I keep in shape and I can use myself as a point of reference (my avatar is a nice likeness of me except the face, hair color and skin color) of making a character instead of having to start from scratch. Now, my argonian I make from scratch because it can't quite look anything like me except being fit except that's not really a way of discerning it as me.

Well... Hypothetically imagine your character was afraid of snakes (like the Indiana Jones character). Not agreeing with me is (somewhat) like playing him as indifferent to snakes because you are not afraid of them.

I respect your idea of roleplaying too, I'm just finding that there are almost no RPG's left that appreciate the preference. Especially Party based RPG's that allow you to run multiple PC's, each with their own skills and personality traits.

**I have seen Dragon Age...

But at least you still have TES to fill that niche. I don't think TES will ever leave you or anyone else out to dry.



It's not really that Todd is trying to bring skills to a minimal, he is just trying to keep there from being skills that people sink a lot of time and levels into and then find out it screws them in the end and they have to start over because they are too weak to get farther in the game. This tends to happen when splitting up skills that can fit together just for the sake of having more skills. Also there is the problem that some skills get to the point where every character needs it to be competitive like enchanting. I'm very surprised that they made enchanting a skill again. I liked it better as a universal option in Oblivion though it could've had a different requirement to get the ability to enchant other than having to do the mage's guild quests to a point.



Oh, let me clarify my position on RPing, I think I came off wrong. The only thing of me I use when I RP is my own body. I actually RP in from the point of my own character and they always have their own personality. Like my Ayleids usually have a dark outlook and search for power and isn't really evil or good but he does things that are in his best interests and has no regard for other people. My argonians are usually assassins but respect other people and so on. My Ayleid characters (well my altmer characters before I found out about Ayleids in Oblivion and I fell in love with them) were really the only ones that are supposed to look like me.

So I agree with you. There are boundaries and expectation played by the developers onto me the player. Me playing the game very differently breaks the game and my enjoyment decreases. If I did not want to play as the hero of the land in Skyrm then I should be questioning myself on why I bought the game in the first place.

Now I know there are many tes players that play tes and may only do the MQ once and do everything else as they roleplay a senario they made up in their mind but I don't think people should compain that every aspect of real life is not depicted to allowthem to do those things.

So in short I expect the game to be what I expected. Swords, spells, heroes, enemies, and anything else is a bonus.

I'm not entirely clear what the best definition of role playing is, at least WRT to TES games, but I can say this.

As long as we have the tools to bend the game to our wills, we will have role playing. It would be nice if the devs gave us everything we wanted out of the box, but from the disagreements among the fans as to what should be in or out, I'd say that is unlikely. However, there are a lot of skilled artists and modders that can add or subtract from the game, and turn it into something perfect for those who like the mod.

gamesas, more than almost any other dev, gives us these tools. Sure, for advanced things, you have to buy or download other software, but for most everything else, the CS/CK/GECK lets you do a tremendous amount. As long as we have these tools, I'll continue to play TES games, and then turn around and mod them.

I don't want to say anything else about the exchange, but this argument annoys me (and I've seen it crop up a number of times). It strikes me as a really disingenuous slippery slope fallacy.

Bethesda have given reasons for merging some skills. Now you might well disagree with their design philosophy. But it's simply not true that the reasons Bethesda have given for merging some skills will generalise to merging all skills into combat, magic, and stealth. In each case where Bethesda have merged skills, they have given reasons specific to the in-game content governed by those skills. For instance, take the merging of Axe and Blunt Weapon. This was because Bethesda thought they were largely similar weapon styles. But to say that those skills should be merged because they govern similar weapon styles is not to say that all weapon styles are similar because they are all used in combat, hence there should just be a single combat skill. The reasons Bethesda gave for merging Axe and Blunt Weapon do not generalise to, say, also merging Blunt Weapon with Blade. There're quite different considerations involved.