Because Oblivion has core features that were drastically simplified. Like I mentioned, the enchanting system, stats, and even the map marker pointing directly to your goal.

I'm not making a final judgement on Skyrim yet, because like you said we don't know enough about it.

Daggerfall:

better character creation
more stats
more complex guild rankings
more advanced reputation system


I've got four.

Character creation I mentioned.

Daggerfall doesn't have more attributes, just more skills. And a lot of them are redundant.

Guilds and reputation are all tied into the random mission gameplay, IMO. It's just... different. While Morrowind and Oblivion both follow the open-world/static quest formula, where each guild has sort of a storyline.

The best singleplayer game I can imagine ?

"The Temple of Elemental Evil" with
(a) a great story (note: GREAT not necessarily LONG if its only 40 hours so be it as long as I get entertained over that distance)
(B) tiny little bit more accessibility (fixed hitpoints per level, working knowledge skills, no riddiculous party NPCs that steal scrolls, hide their stats, insist on specific equipment and so on)
© less bugs

That would be pretty much heaven.

The TES games have always been action-RPG's, no doubt, Morrowind no less so than Oblivion (haven't played the first two so no comment there, though I've read a fair amount about Daggerfall). Morrowind has 27 skills, 13 of which are combat-only, adding another 3 if you consider that Destruction, Restoration, and Conjuration have almost no function outside combat. That 16 jumps to 21 if you include the other magic schools, which frankly have barely any use outside of combat either. What are you left with? Sneak, Security, Mercantile? Either an alternate approach to combat, or a way to acquire items...items that generally only have any use for combat. Athletics and Acrobatics are handy for exploration, though there's not much to find aside from dungeons full of monsters to engage in combat with. Speechcraft is all that's left, and I haven't heard many people calling that skill particularly useful. I rarely had any use for it beyond goading people into letting me legally kill them, anyway.

My issue with their direction has been that they don't make an effort to strengthen their roleplaying weaknesses, but instead cut them out as "useless". Your options with a badly-implemented feature are generally to remove it or work on it, and I take opposition to the former, because I feel that options are vital to a sandbox RPG. I might make an average knight-type warrior, with sword and shield. I might make a swift, finesse-based fighter, or a slow power-based one. Merging weapon skills makes it harder to focus on anything, removing athletics/acrobatics instead of improving them removes my mobility options, removing attributes threatens the ability to differ between finesse and power. It wasn't the combat that drew me to TES; there are other games that do that better. The world and exploration are good, but if the only thing those lead me to is combat, that alone isn't going to hold my interest either. My disappointment in Oblivion from Morrowind was not from any sort of desire to see more of the same. What I was interested in was the potential I saw in Morrowind, the weak roleplay options that could potentially be vastly improved, and create a truly incredible experience when applied to a world unlike any I could find in other games. Oblivion did not "fix" Morrowind's faults and turn them into strengths, as I hoped, but cut out the faults to keep them from interfering with the game factors I either didn't care about or didn't have a problem with to begin with. I look at Skyrim warily. There are good things I've heard and bad, but I'm far too jaded with the industry as a whole to look at it optimistically. As it stands now there is virtually no chance of getting it at full price, if at all.

The way I define dumbing-down is the removal/changing of game features not because it improves the core game, but in order to appease people who are not fans of the core game. For example, an FPS reducing the reflexes/AI of enemies in order to make the game more playable for non-veterans of FPS games (thought I'd use an RPG example, didn't you. The FPS is neither inherently dumb nor immune to this affliction). What I mean by core game is the "pure concept" behind it. I want my RPG's to be thick with options and rich with the chance for personal creativity, my puzzle games to require me to stop and think, my strategy games to not be winnable by just spamming a basic action. Dumbing-down is a plague on the industry today, largely because of its own success. There is a lot of money to be made, and lost. It's not enough for a game to be a great RPG; it has to be one that's accessible to fans of other genres and people who've never played them. It's risky to make a game tough, because you can drive away the impatient or the casual who don't have time. Now it's self-defeating to have a great, smooth interface, because it probably won't port well across every platform. A "smart" game is a pinnacle example of its genre, a fine wine you've got only one bottle of. A dumb one may be just as "fine", but watered down so there's enough for everybody.

That doesn't exclude it from being a point. Oh what a point it is...

Morrowind doesn't have more than Oblivion, only more skills, and the same can be said about them and redundancy.

It's just different even though they're both more advanced?

On another note, about those questlines, Oblivion's had actual plots, to them, so there's a point for Oblivion's difference (or improvement). Both Daggerfall and Oblivion had better AI than Morrowind, so there's another for the two of them. The combat was actually more complex in Oblivion, so there could be another. Oblivion's skills were more definied due to perks, so there's another. These are differences, as are the other points. Oblivion focused a bit less on some areas and a bit more on others. It's not different from a Daggerfall-Morrowind comparison, if your logic in this is to be used (for example, Daggerfall's more advanced systems being dismissed as just different).

There were a number of smaller things in Oblivion I'm sure some role-players found valuable, such as being able to buy houses, buy horses, and break out of jail. It's different. Why you would dismiss some of what Daggerfall has as deeper as being different while not doing the same for Oblivion confuses me. You've stated no true difference between the two comparisons other than it being your opinion, and if it's just your opinion it's just your opinion, but I've given you the reasons why people may say otherwise from any point of view.

A lot of RPGs are selling out to appeal to a once unreceptive demographic, alienating the original fans who liked them for what they were. A game that made you think.

I've never considered fewer skills to be a sign of dumbing things down, so long as there are still plenty of things to be done with what skills are available. It's good to break out of the familiar and into something perhaps a little jarring, I think this is a big part of the success behind Morrowind, not just the fact that it was on Xbox. Were I to build an update version of that game, I'd be folding some skills into others as well, though I'd also be adding some in that are just too cool to pass up, like Crafting.

Dumbing things down is adopting too much of what other really popular games are doing simply for the sake of luring people who play those games towards your own. Or crafting the very base of the game around making things easier to do, specifically so that newcomers won't get turned off. From what I've seen, Skyrim isn't that game, at least not as much as Oblivion.

I think the problem for that kind of stuff is more how developers obsess with wanting to create a more "cinematic experience", and that doesn't jive well with having a very open-ended game.

Actually I've been the believer that RPGs..well games in general are being made more complex than simplistic..

lol Seti and Company, my statement about Combat being touted harder than anything WAS A RESPONSE, NOT A CRITICISM Jeeesh lol if you READ just a few post prior to that about Vsta was talking about you'd see what I was responding too, damn lol...

As much as I loved Oblivion, I didn't liked the dialogues, the quest/map markers and the leveled items (enemies wearing "en masse" the rare daedric armor?).

Anyway, I agree with the person saying that we should first define what is "dumbed down". I am sure my definition of it is different from many others.


I think it is a fallacy to say that people dislike change just because they have some critics about some changes.

Rhekarid, you nailed it. The biggest crime of Oblivion was that it horribly failed to live up to the potential presented by Morrowind. What I expected was something better and deeper than Morrowind, not just prettier. Sequels should always be better, so why are they almost always worse? It's a fact of both films and games that truly baffles me. If your movie/game is successful, why do you spend less time and effort crafting the next one in line? That, to me, either shows laziness or greed, and that largely depends on the company. In Bethesda's case, I believe it was the former (at least, I hope it was).

Note: And despite having never played it, I believe the same occurred from Daggerfall to Morrowind, which would mean that the TES series has been on a perpetual downward spiral ever since then. However, I can kind of understand that switch from Daggerfall. It was just too big of a game to translate into a new, fully realized 3D engine. The loss of all those skills, though, has no excuse.

So it's an "I felt special when it was only us 'insiders' who knew about it" thing like Indie Rock / Grunge /etc? ("Nirvana sold out, now their music svcks!")




It's interesting. I played Morrowind first, with mods. It was my first TES game. Wasn't bad, but it didn't change my life or anything. I've only played it once or twice - admittedly, that's because I borrowed my copy.... but, still, it's cheap enough to get one of my own. I've never felt motivated.

Played Oblivion, modded, right after MW. Own that one, so I've played it many times since. The only thing that stood out to me as "weaker" was the guilds & sidequests - the whole structure in MW of the three houses (that you could only join one), the multiple guilds (that you couldn't join all of), and the different temples (again, only one), was a bit more interesting than Oblivion's. Game mechanics, character creation? Didn't have any problems with that. No levitation or spears? Didn't even notice.



But, then, I've been playing RPGs in various forms since the 1970s. I've played many pnp RPGs (starting with Basic D&D and AD&D v1), I played the first seven Ultimas, the first three Wizardry's, the original Bard's Tales, the SSI "gold box" D&D games, a bunch of SNES games (including Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6), lots of the PS1 and PS2 JRPGs, a bunch of Bioware games, played the original Fallout 1 back when it came out, etc, etc, etc.... lots and lots of different games over the years. Yeah, not all of them were "great". And I wasn't able to finish all of them (the original Baldur's Gate for instance - got way too fiddly with the semi-infinite number of sidequests to keep track of, plus the combat difficulty really spiked hard at one point)

So, yeah.... I'm an "old school" RPG player. Been there since almost the beginning, really.

And the only problems I have with the direction the games have been going are: turning combat in super-combo-action-madness, and (connected to that) turning combat into "dark & gritty" Super Ultra Gorefest 3000.

Different game mechanics, different styles of character creation, different game engines? Hey, that's cool. Trying to expand your customer base? Hey, more people playing the games, more attention to the genre, more cash to keep developers from going out of business! Sounds good to me.





...as an aside, didn't you say in one of the other threads or posts that you hadn't actually played Oblivion? Even modded? (Or am I remembering someone else....) That seems odd - if you're enough of a fan of the series to be hanging on the Skyrim board long before it's release, I'd have thought you'd try it at least once. (I've never actually played it vanilla, which is atypical for me - but then, I got it a bit after release, and after playing Morrowind - I knew about mods, and I was also incredibly aware of how universally hated the default level scaling was. Needless to say, I had a scaling mod installed right off the bat.)

I'm imagining as well that Morrowind was built the way it was because it had to be that way. But with Oblivion they had more of a choice, thanks much to the increased revenue, which is thanks to Morrowind's success. And so they spent that money, but not as wisely as they could have. A lot of people, leading up to the release of Oblivion, talked about how they're "not going to make Morrowind 2.0". I have to ask: Why would it be bad if they did? To have the approach, the mindset that crafted Morrowind be applied to any other province in Tamriel, would've been wonderful. Like I said before, there's plenty of room for improvement with Morrowind. Bethesda just didn't go for it. They could've made something even more unforgiving, even more diabolical in its challenges, something that inspires me to, when crafting mods, simply add to the game the way only we players can, not correct half the things that make the game what it is.

A lot of Morrowind mods fix bugs, glitches, and other things that just don't make sense, and that's where Oblivion should've shined, it should've stood apart, it should've set a better example. Instead Bethesda made it pretty, went with the simplest damn storyline imaginable, threw in stuff like the compass, and robbed us all of any sense of progress as we leveled up and got better gear. I remember when first playing Morrowind so many years ago, I managed to get through one of the first Daedric ruins I ever dared to enter, Bal Ur, and was rewarded with the first piece of Glass armor I'd ever seen, the helm. And a Glass halberd, which wasn't as useful, but good for selling when I figured out how to.*

That kind of thing doesn't happen in Oblivion, and that's just unacceptable. Why disregard things that made the previous game great? Granted, sometimes it can be difficult to tell exactly what the fans appreciate most about a game, and I imagine when Bethesda took to the task of learning that, it pulled them in all kinds of directions. But I don't consider that an excuse for putting out the kind of game that they did. More and more am I convinced it was the money they smelled.

Don't forget the physics engine, the improved stealth mechanics, and the more interesting take on joining and staying in guilds compared to Morrowind (something that Daggerfall also had). And how almost all non-generic NPCs had unique dialogue (even if it was typically two lines).

No. Half the bands out there that try to appeal to as massive an audience as possible would be just fine financially if they stuck to their guns and did what they truly wanted. Metallica, for example, never sold out, they've always made music exactly the way they wanted to, no matter how any fans may have felt about it, and they're the most successful metal band ever, as a direct result. St. Anger may have been crap to most Metallica fans, but Metallica didn't lose their entire audience from it., or my respect.

The approach works with music, because it's a whole different ball game. It's far more personal, and to really make it in the business, you have a lot more heartbreak to potentially go through in my eyes.



It's true, I've never been able to bring myself to touch it. That isn't a good thing at all, but the reason I haven't is all the things I know about it, things I don't care to experience. I was really looking forward to that game for the longest time, looking forward to something I felt I could trust would be better than Morrowind, would top the fun I had with that game, because the same people were responsible for it.

Then came the level-scaling, the quest markers, the fast travel, the immortal NPCs, the quest items that can't be dropped, and worst of all, the overall nature of the MQ. Seriously, find the guy to save the world, not do it yourself? WTF? I just got done being the Nerevarine, the guy who personally saves Morrowind from Dagoth Ur and his Ash minions and throws down the false gods of the Tribunal, and now I'm on a mission to relegate saving an even bigger place to someone else? Pfft. You can kill my character after I complete the MQ, I don't care, just let me chop Mehrunes Dagon's head off. Or, better yet, write a better storyline that doesn't force the player to be involved, but not the real hero.

Of course, most of this is what Skyrim fixed, which is why I haven't quit the series altogether. I know I will enjoy Skyrim, I know that there isn't anything preventing me from even trying it. But my hope that I will have more fun with it than Morrowind, that it'll truly earn a higher place in my heart, is slim. We shall see.

Ugh, I hate that. Cinematic games are so overrated.

It's unfortunate that things like movies and videogames are a lot more susceptible to "selling out" or similar than other mediums. It doesn't become more expensive to sing a song, or paint a painting, when you become famous, and selling out with them is more a matter of personal choice. There's never any guarantee that a product will succeed, no matter how good it is, but most artists can just try again. The people who DID like their last effort are still satisfied, at least. When you're spending millions on making a game, that risk becomes unacceptable for many people, as the entire company can lose their jobs if the game flops.

Like I said, the only "big" issue I've ever heard / modded around was the level scaling. All the rest of those things? Meh, minor trivia. Or good features.

And the level scaling was easy to fix, and let me enjoy a good game. Shame you missed out on that.



And this part I didn't know ahead of time (since I don't try to spoil endings), and honestly? Didn't care when it happened. There was a dramatic ending to the MQ, the world was saved, cool. Time to move on. In the many times I've started new Oblivion characters, I've only completed the Main Quest once. And I also rarely start it. I honestly don't play gamesas games for the main quests, and don't have very high expectations of them - I play the games to experience the world they've built.

(Same with Fallout 3 - I had absolutely no problems with the fact that it "ended". Not like the rioting minority on the forums who frothed at the mouth about AAAAAA! OPEN WORLD BETH GAME! IT CAN'T END! AAAAAAA! It was no big deal. Game ended, I saw the final scenes, and I reloaded my save from a few minutes before. And proceeded to run around the wasteland on that character for another 50+ hours. And again.... in all the times I've played since, I've only completed the MQ one more time. That's not what I play their games for.)

:shrug:

Me too.


Haha. Yes. And they started to call TES hack&slash.

"call TES hack&slash."
"TES hack&slash."
"hack&slash."
:banghead:


Do we have to level up in this game? NO. It is not a goal. It may seem it is, but it isn't. Be a weak character and he/she will be weak. This is intended gameplay.

Even if we want to progress, we ONLY work our skills. Just using them is enough, there is no bonus to killings. Game has no killing goal to progress a character. This is not a game where we have to kill things and get experience points. This is the WHOLE DIFFERENCE in the world.

And the gloriously long Morrowind MQ, only two characters needed to die. Is that correct? This should have showed game's nature is not killing, not the opposite. There are reasons but not objectives. Item fetch quests can be done stealthily or diplomatically too, that's the beauty of Morrowind. What were you planning to do with fire spells, bows and swords? They do their job well if you want to kill things. There are no objectives coming from the game itself, it comes from in-game characters, you don't have to obey anyone. Drop any quest on your wish. It is all player's choice. This is what I called choices&consequences. I realized fighter's guild is sending me to murder people for no real reasons, I QUIT IMMEDIATELY. Some roleplay, some hack and slash. Please... This is no hack&slash.

In Skyrim, there will be smithing, woodcutting, fishing, in Skyrim dogs will stay away from me, giants won't even notice me and dragons simply chase me into dungeons. I mean, there will be even more roleplaying options.

I'm an action junkie, I want better combat because combat is ridiculous in both Oblivion and Morrowind. Chopsticks. I use only blunts and daggers because of this. It has nothing to do with a "kill them all" philosophy. If I gotta fight in Skyrim at some point, yeah I want the rare occasions that my hero fights to be visceral and satisfying.


Like Terra Nova, I think games are getting a whole lot more complex. Games have more untapped potential in every way. Developers are a little lazy. Movies don't have potential. It is all remakes of something. This year was good though, I renewed my hope.


PS. Daggerfall vs. Morrowind vs. Oblivion
I won't compare music, story, lore, art direction. Those are really personal taste.

Oblivion's level scaling is oversimplification, quest markers too. Journal however, an improvement. Physics and graphics are expected but I'm not saying that because I don't appreciate. I do. Schedules and voice dialog are improvements for whole series. AI was not as good as promised, graphics were too. But voiced dialog is an improvement. There were long passages in both Morrowind and Oblivion. There were repetitive dialog in both Oblivion and Morrowind. Just because Morrowind gave the option to use more keywords doesn't mean there are more dialog or repetitive dialog and vice-versa for Oblivion. Add more voiced dialog and more actors. Maybe some non-talkative NPCs will be good to balance it, and realistic too. All the handplaced uniques missing from Oblivion partially because of level scaling, that has no excuse.

I'm level 2 in Daggerfall and
1. Climbing
2. Advantages/disadvantages

two removed things I noticed from series(yeah, it affects Oblivion and Skyrim too as well as Morrowind.). I think removing things and simplifications don't need to be bad things in every case. Removing climbing is bad though, whatever way you want to look at it but I can argue that a more clean start is better in a game with lots of skill progression.

To make good comparisons, we should make an added/removed features list. But I think "more" doesn't mean anything, we should avoid using it. Quality over quantity.

OK, I will look at those skills and tell you what I THINK.

I'm looking at the skills of Daggerfall, pretty much the only important skill is climbing. Does it have to be a skill? It can be in the game without being a skill too.

Walking skill, crouching skill, swimming skill, jumping skill... Oh, right... What I am saying is, it is more logical to reduce the numbers and cover more.

Thaumaturgy seems removed, but all spells are still there in Morrowind but not in Oblivion, levitation. Mysticism seems removed in Skyrim, but spells will be there likely. Mysticism was in Oblivion, but where were the teleport spells? See it is a little more complex than skill numbers. Daggerfall has 10 "X-ish" skills where description says "X will not attack.", ridiculous. So basically, 35-10. 25 skills. Critical strike, Medical, backstabbing, dodging. 21 skills. Morrowind had 27.

Only climbing, streetwise and etiquette were truly lost(and backstabbing in a sense but it is coming back for REAL in Skyrim but not as a skill.). I will personally add medical(which was not removed but it makes sense as a skill more). 2 skills can still be moved to speechcraft.

Morrowind didn't actually do a good job with its new skills. Unarmored and 3 armor skills are completely unnecessary. Swimming and running were back as acrobatics and athletics I guess. Unnecessary. What we have here, SPEARS and Conjuration with a whole new spell set.

2 lost, 2 gained. 2 remained. Arguably only climbing was lost. And spears are not even important as a skill, flails are missing.

Oblivion.
Weapons moved under to 2 skills. Short blades are there as well as axes. The whole conversion, enchant is still there, only spears and throwing weapons were removed truly. And teleportation and levitation spells, not without reason though. But nothing added.

Teleport, levitation spells, climbing, spears, flails and throwing weapons. None of them are skill number related. Oblivion didn't do anything BAD with skill numbers. It is pretty natural. I wish these were returned but for half, it is walled cities, for some of the others Morrowind was responsible too.

Skyrim.
Weapons moved under 2 skills again but spears can come back this time but not in a traditional sense. Mysticism is gone but spells are there. Athletics and Acrobatics are gone finally. 3 skills are out of the way already. So nothing was lost in reality. 21-18. Now, if they come to their senses and remove armor skills, that's 2 skills opening. Enchant confirmed.

One handed
Two handed
Hand to Hand
Armorer
Block
*


Illusion
Conjuration
Alteration
Destruction
Restoration
Enchant

Security
Sneak
Marksman
Mercantile
Speechcraft
Alchemy

In the end:
Teleport, levitation spells, climbing.

Spears, flails and throwing weapons.

And Skyrim might have second set for all we know. Teleport will there but not levitation and climbing because of WALLED CITIES. I wish people would have realized the importance of open cities. Truly the only thing that was lost in the series worth mentioning which levitation and climbing are depended on.

Thank you for reading my long rant. edit: I have made mistakes and missed things. Feel free to correct me.

Walled cities in and of themselves are not a problem. It's trivial to keep someone from "jumping the wall" if you want to. The problem is that Bethesda decided they didn't want us to see the low-rez textures used for place-holder of the other cells.

It's not that hard to code invisible ceilings/walls after all. Really clever would be to have slanted invisible roofs that force your character to the wall as you try and levitate. At the top of the wall you have guards that tell your character that you cannot leave the city this way. To keep someone to fly in have a pushing wall that pushes them to the edge where a guard tells them they cannot enter this way.

Basically, walled cities aren't the problem, laziness is.

Place holders are there because of walled cities(or it would be empty), not because there are placeholders so they are walled so people won't see them. I see ugly placeholders all the time. I don't mean walled as literal walls, I mean walled cities as in separate worldspaces and loading doors.

And what's the meaning of levitate if I can't use it to cross over the walls? But you're right, they can add climbing with guards pushing the player. But what if I kill all the guards?

I think it is more about performance and priorities than laziness. (But laziness is always a factor. )

The fact that those mods were necessary pissed me off something fierce. And yes I'm sure I missed out. Perhaps if I'd been able to look past the creative missteps, but I couldn't. Still can't.



I don't play them for the MQ so much either, but Morrowind's was fun, and Oblivion's should've been better. I have to be the epic hero, not the guy who finds him. I have to be the Nerevarine, the Dovahkiin, the whatever they call the hero of TES VI: Sumerset Isle (Hey, I can dream, can't I? ).



Never played Fallout 3, so I have no opinion there.



This is something I most wish I could fix, this drive to push things further and further, costing more and more money and driving companies to seek out more and more revenue to survive. It's destructive to say the least.

You didn't read what I said. I know the placeholders are there because of the different cells, I said that the reason they don't allow levitation with the walled cities is because the low-rez used to emulate the other cells -- They don't want us to see that.

Basically: they don't allow levitation so you don't see the ugly placeholders.

Invisible roofs/walls allow for you to allow levitation while making it impossible for you to exit. You can see the use of pushing invisible walls at the edge of the Oblivion map (you'll be told you can't go any further). To make this less "in-game illusion" breaking, you can combine this with guards on the walls that rush over to tell you you can't exit/enter this way -- the invisible walls still stop you, but now there is also an in-game explanation for why you can't (the guards stop you), so even if you kill the guards you still can't exit (and killing guards could be solved by making the wall guards very fast and having spawning doors for them to come out of every few feet).

It's not a matter of priority or performance: all this code existed in Oblivion (well, except the wall guards part, but that isn't strictly necessary, just adds an in-game explanation). The reason it wasn't implemented was 1. laziness and 2. It would have meant seeing the low rez placeholder textures (which is partial laziness, those textures weren't even a good match as far as shape and continuity of the textures they replace)