You only choose to remind us of those and you don't give us more because you don't have more.

They took out crossbows and spears because it didn't fit the world and tech that the company liked. Why does Naruto live in a medieval ninja world with computers and tv? because thats the world the creator wanted. Todd didn't feel those weapons ans such fit the world he wanted, so they got rid of them. And I'd hate it if an Ai had a crossbow (RAGE QUIT)

They simplified the skills for good reason... I hated having too many skills I needed to advance and maintain. The new set fits nicely, not too many that I can't maintain my desired character type without being a level 70 noob at sword fighting (spread out my levels across the different skills too much to try to achieve my perfect desired character and get left behind my actual level, or become solely one-sided so my skills actually match my level.)

Also, they wanted to focus the game less on fighting and more on life. I got sick of my characters life being only battle. This game lets you focus your character and his skills and time on human things like a job (and skills/perks related to it,) and being a friend (chop their wood for them when they're sleeping) etc... with so many weapons and skills, you have to take out everything else and only focus on the fighting aspect. Even if you keep the other stuff, you can't add all those weapons and stuff without unbalancing the game.

An RPG isn't just role playing a fighter...... Its also role playing the LIFE of a human and citizen of a working economy... Fighting and living a life.

*reads the OP*

Not always. In OB there were characters with voices that really didn't fit their character so it look fake than anything else. MW had very few voice acting but I would rather read good dialogue than to hear horrible voice acting and limited dialogue.

Yes, Morrowind did dialogue pretty well. It would have been a lot worse without the intros. However, I believe the full voice-acting has brought the world into a more "believable" state, with the conversations, bards, and dynamic discussions between characters that don't require the player to intervene.

Honestly, I never get sick of hearing about Mudcrabs in Oblivion.

Feel free to move on to a different game series then.

Oblivion was pretty bad in regard to voice acting, but Skyrim did it a lot better. Still voice acting comes at the cost of less information. Which pretty much sums it all up.

Skyrim tries to be more immersive at the cost of data (and sometimes options.)

I'd actually say the opposite. I feel Oblivion did voice acting better than Skyrim. In Skyrim, a lot of the voices are so generic you can never tell what it belongs to, while in Oblivion, you could easily tell a male Imperial from a Nord or Breton. It helped identify and distinguish races, instead of causing them to all meld together. The problems Oblivion had (being unable to tell some races apart because they shared voices, or a character suddenly switching voices in dialog) are still present in Skyrim.

Additionally, a large portion of Oblivion's cast were seasoned voice actors, or at least really good, and even the newcomers were good or decent. There's probably only one or two out of the "regular" cast that I had any issue with. Aside from the three returning (one of whom only has a rather small role), Skyrim only has a few good voice actors, a bunch with seemingly little to no good voice acting experience (hint: being a television actor doesn't inherently make you a good voice actor), and some that sound like they're reading right from the script (how in the world Farengar's VA passed auditions, I'll never know, sorry to say).

What? I like Farengar's voice-acting!

Oblivion? That game is the worst in the series.

... No it isn't. Arena's practically unplayable.

Riiiiiight. Too many of Oblivion's NPCs spouted the same generic nonsense regardless of location and those other variables. There's a set of House and Guild rivalries in Morrowind that make the Atius/Sintav rivalry look inconsequential, along with an organization to conduct strictly regulated "approved" assassinations to prevent the rivalries from turning into open civil war. Granted, most of them were in factions, but then again, a significant proportion of the NPCs were actually in a faction, whether it was a Great House, a Guild, a religious group, etc., and your standings with those factions and their rivals had an effect on their Disposition. In Oblivion, you could belong to a rival group and nobody cared.

As far as I know the 'stupid design' of having the thighs protected by an extension of the chest armor is fairly common in IRL armor - mail hauberks are a good example of that, with the same armor extending from the shoulders to the knee, and the feature is quite common in flexible armors. Another common design has legs protected by legging or chaps like armor pieces with a skirt-like part fixed to the cuirass to cover the gap. Even plate armor often had some sort of articulation at the belt but had pieces fixed at the cuirass's lower end to cover the buttocks/groin/upper thighs.

Yes, voice acting is way better than text if done correctly. In the future I can see every videogame voice acting be on par with Hollywood movies. The problem today is that voice files take a lot of memory space. I believe OB voice files took more space than the rest of the game. But with tomorrow's fast and powerful chips this kind of limitation will be a thing of the past.

If Bethesda simply removed everything that someone thought was broken or imbalanced from each of the previous games, there would be so little remaining in Skyrim by now that it would hardly be recognizable as part of the series. As it is, many people feel as though it has already turned in that direction.

I would much rather have Beth start working on refining the mechanics to make them work better rather than removing / replacing them with something completely different.

We need a way to procedurally-generate voices, so we aren't stuck with having to record dialogue.

Or, maybe not.

They're not simply removing everything that some people see broken. They are fixing and enhancing things... we have lycanthropy back, combat AI has been improved, the dragon's AI is rather impressive given the engine design and how they're unscripted, NPCs will react to many more things (looking at locked doors will illicit responses from guards, dropping valuable items can start fights, arrows hitting walls and general noise-making will cause enemies to investigate, etc), the "homing beacon" effect after being spotted is much reduced, NPCs do actual jobs instead of just standing around and gossiping all day, quests can have randomized givers/targets based on several factors, we have companions, and more.

If you want to complain that they didn't fix spell-making or whatever, fine, but it's completely unfair to say they just drop incomplete/unbalancing features and don't try to fix or add anything. Sometimes features are better dropped than to be left in a broken/incomplete state that can have an unknown effect on gameplay. It svcks if such a feature happens to be one you like, I know, but that doesn't mean they're dropping things all across the board and not adding or fixing/enhancing stuff.

The main problem is that many people (myself included) had a "don't fix what ain't broke" attitude after Morrowind. Bethesda did not share that attitude at all.

Fixing things that aren't broke take time and resources from new things. More than that there are clearly things that are broken that should be fixed first... Like horses and mounted combat since its quite bad to have to dismount before fights.

Horses were something that they tried to implement, then decided to cut because they didn't like how it changed the balance of the gameplay.

Not fixing things that are only semi-broke is the recipe for stagnation. I like Skyrim as its own game - I just wish I could get Oblivion to look as good.

Once they figure out dynamic shadows for OBGE that's it for me. Morrowind already has it, it's just a matter of time.

I agree. When I want to play Morrowind I play Morrowind. If, I want to play Oblivion, I play Oblivion. When I want to play Skyrim I will play that. I think there is lot of people wished things would look and feel like the older games. Put it simply it wont. I dont see people on here wishing Morrowind was like Arena.

Actually, this is not such a bad idea. If text-to-speech software were improved to the point where you could have a large variety of different voices, while being able to manipulate tone, inflection, speed, timbre, etc. within the 'code', then I think it could open up a world of possibilites. Game studios would no longer need to go through the time, expense and inherent limitations of hiring voice actors and recording dialogue. It would also make modifying the game that much easier.


Let me start by setting the record straight: I like Skyrim (so far) and I think its a fun (RP) game.

Now that I've said that, I will also say that it isn't without quite a few faults, as has been the case with every game in the series.

But that isn't really what my point was about. I'm not just here to gripe about the things that I perceive to be lost, or air my disapproval regarding the direction of the series. Rather, the main idea that I was trying to get across in my post was two-fold:

1. If Beth continually removed things that some of the fan base (or even a majority) thought was broken or imbalanced, we'd have very little left to do in th game.

The reason I mention this is because often times when people bemoan the loss of X feature or Y feature, other members on the forum (generally the ones infatuated with the newest game of the series) feel the need to justify Bethesda's decision to remove said feature with some variation of; * 'it was overpowered / broken', or, 'I don't really care because it was useless / I never used it anyway'.

So what?

It was there for you to use if you wanted, or ignore it if you wished. It was also entirely up to you to abuse the mechanic or not.


Unfortunately, rather than iron out the feature to make it better, it is usually removed, or replaced with some mechanic that does essentially the same thing, but in a different way -- and not necessarily for the better. And to be honest, it rubs me the wrong way when people insinuate that it's okay for something to be removed because of the *aforementioned reasons.

IMO, removal of a feature is rarely ever a good thing. I would much rather that they try to refine a feature until their eyes bleed before they ever consider removing something. Even then, I would rather they include it as a 'broken' or 'imbalanced' feature than not at all. But if given a good reason why something just won't work, I can accept the loss, disappointed as I may be, so long as I understand why.

Replacing one mechanic with another is acceptable, so long as it is inarguably better. But this is rarely the case, as it is usually subjective whether or not it is 'better'. While I might not argue that improvements were made in stealth, AI, and maybe combat (among other things) in Skyrim, I would take issue with someone saying that magic, leveling, lockpicking, speechcraft, enchanting, alchemy... (the list goes on) are objectively 'better'. Of course, someone else will feel differently, and therein lies the crux of the matter. Thus, leading to my second point:

2. In most cases, I think it would be better if they 'refined' their mechanics rather than replace them with something different, or remove them altogether.

As I said earlier, I think removing a feature should be an absolute last resort to 'fixing' a broken or imbalanced mechanic. Even if a mechanic isn't working the way it ought to, or makes the game too easy after a certain point, better to leave it in to give players the option to use it -- or not.

For example, most people seem to complain that smithing, enchanting, and alchemy are OP. Would it be better if they decided to remove these things in TES VI? Or, would it be better if they did their best to refine these systems to make them harder to abuse? Personally, I'd hope that they would decide on the latter. However, they could also replace those systems with a different mechanic to do the same thing, but who knows what new problems might be created by doing so?

I think most of us have been playing TES long enough to know that when one mechanic is replaced with another in order to achieve the same / similar effect (only 'better'), it doesn't always turn out the way it was imagined, despite the best of intentions (level-scaling, anyone?). Therefore, it's better to first try to refine a mechanic in an attempt to make it better than to replace it with something different. But, if all efforts to refine it fails, it's better to replace the mechanic than to remove it entirely (IMO).

In short, I think Beth would do well to abandon their philosophy of 'build each new game from the ground up', as it tends to;

1) Introduce new problems more often than resolve old problems
2) Makes each new game seem disconnected from the other games in the 'series', as well as make the gameworld feel inconsistent

(And to a lesser extent...)

3) Alienates some of the core fanbase, while simultaneously dividing the fanbase into opposing 'factions'

If you disagree, that's fine. But stop for a moment to think about how you might feel if your favorite thing in the game was stripped out / watered-down in the next installment because others failed to value it, or because people complained it was 'OP' or 'broken'. Only then could you begin to empathize with some ot the 'complainers' who gripe about a feature that seems completely trivial to you.

That's my perspective, anyway.

Every in-game feature has to be tested and accounted for in the design, which costs development time and can get in the way of other features they have planned. If it's in-game, there has to be an expectation that it's part of the game's design, otherwise there's no justification to spend time and money on keeping it. They wouldn't just put in spell-making, for example, if it's not part of the overall design of the magic system, nor would they without making sure it's works (ie, doesn't crash and actually functions).

And this is what I was talking about, the assumption that incomplete or broken features are usually dropped instead of fixed and enhanced. That is not true, and I listed a few examples. If it was true, we wouldn't have a game.

Unfortunately, Bethesda's not in the habit of being very communicative about why they do and don't do certain things (outside of PR talk, which is rarely ever the whole story). I wish they were, but it's not like we can force them to talk. Doesn't help that there's usually many people involved with these decisions, and no one response would be the whole truth of it.

"Better", of course, being entirely subjective. How do you determine what's worth keeping and refining and what's worth redoing, if everyone has a different opinion on what's good and salvageable? And if they have good ideas for re-imagining some mechanics, I don't think it's good precedent to say "Don't try anything new, just keep what you have and tweak it." That's what leads to sequel-itis, bloated, old, and crufty mechanics, and series stagnation.

As I said above, every feature in the game costs development time and can have wide-ranging effects on the rest of the game. If you can't spare the resources to keep a mechanic from degenerating, and to make sure it doesn't interfere with other features you want to do, then it will harm the overall game. I'd rather have a bunch of dropped features that the design didn't call for than a game full of broken, incomplete, possibly unusable features that aren't truly part of the game and only a small minority would be content with (while many others will complain that it's broken and want it fixed, and/or that it's a blemish on an overall good game). Every feature that's in, whether it's incomplete and broken or not, whether it's a re-used feature form the previous game or not, has an effect on the game's development. It's better to clear out what's not designed for than to let it stagnate and negatively affect other parts of the game.

So, because something new might not turn out better, it's not a good idea to even try? If they took that attitude, we wouldn't have NPCs that can think for themselves, complete tasks by anolyzing the environment, and react to things based on their individual levels of aggression, responsibility, and disposition towards those involved... or we wouldn't have large, flying dragons that behave somewhat believably and aren't scripted to death.

We'd be stuck with Morrowind-style static NPCs and cliffracers. But with extra scripting.

I disagree. I think it's good that they build each game from the ground up, because it keeps things fresh, so there's not the feeling of "I already played this, why did I spend another $60 for it?".

Adding on and tweaking stuff is the realm of Expansions (and mods). I do wish they'd go for Bloodmoon/Shivering Isle-sized expansions and delete the concept of "DLC" from memory, but their statements on what they want to do have been.. erratic, to say the least.

Don't worry, I understand that plight quite well. There are several things I wish they didn't drop. But look at it from the other side, too. Some fun and good things that have been added to the games were a result of reworking core mechanics (not just between Oblivion and Skyrim, but throughout the whole series). Skill progression, leveling, magic, combat, radiant ai, dragons, werewolves, radiant quests, random encounters, etc. No, they're not perfect, but IMO it's still fun to have them. If the next game drops some of these things, well, the old games aren't going anywhere (and mods will help).

No game will be perfect. No amount of refining will make it perfect (particularly because "perfect" is in the eye of the beholder). They just design the games independently, and try to do the best they can.

I think they dropped the ball by cutting Athletics, Acrobatics, AND Speed - Together, the skills/attributes were stupid (You end up being a rockethorse that jumps over buildings, or something stupid like that) However, they needed to keep one and merge the others with it.

An acrobatics tree would have been fun with the new perk system:
Perks to increase Run Speed by 20/40/60/80%
Perks to increase Jump Height by 50/100/150%
Perk to reduce Stamina Cost of sprinting by 50%
Perk to allow attacking while jumping or falling
Perk to halve Falling Damage. (Why does this perk only work when wearing heavy armor?)

While Morrowind and Daggerfall are BY FAR my two favorite games of the series, you can't ignore Skyrim's popularity. It pisses me off to NO END that almost everyone talks about/plays Skyrim while most of them haven’t even played (or head of) another Elder Scrolls game. Maybe they heard of Oblivion, fewer heard of Morrowind and most played neither of them. I honestly don't know ANYONE besides close friends who I've talked to about Skyrim that knows diddly jack about the rest of the series. People I never dreamed of playing games like this are all talking about Skyrim. Like honestly, ask anyone who plays games at all, all ages and both sixes, and they have at least heard of Skyrim, and then ask them about Daggerfall. Don't give me that crap about "well Daggerfall is old". because ask those same people about Doom. I'm just saying you can't ignore its popularity, especially for the genre of game it is, they did something "right" they made the game for the masses, and not for the TES hardcoe fans. To do this, they had to dumb-down the game and stream-line it. It kind of reminds me of Call of Duty. I absolutely loved the first three games in the series, and I've played all the games in that franchise. Most people played MW2/MW3 and didn’t give a crap about the rest of the series and its World War roots.

I'll talk to people about Skyrim, and then start trying comparing it to Daggerfall and they don't even know what I'm talking about. It REALLY pisses me off how popular this game is because no one appreciates the rest of the series. All of that gorgeously orchestrated lore; yeah most people don’t give a crap. I know this mind sound stupid, but this whole thread reminded me of that.

I think they dropped the ball by cutting Athletics, Acrobatics, AND Speed - Together, the skills/attributes were stupid (You end up being a rockethorse that jumps over buildings, or something stupid like that) However, they needed to keep one and merge the others with it.

An acrobatics tree would have been fun with the new perk system:
Perks to increase Run Speed by 20/40/60/80%
Perks to increase Jump Height by 50/100/150%
Perk to reduce Stamina Cost of sprinting by 50%
Perk to allow attacking while jumping or falling
Perk to halve Falling Damage. (Why does this perk only work when wearing heavy armor?)

Great idea.

EDIT - I want to say that, trying new things and building the game from the ground up can really make the game feel fresh, like you are actually playing a NEW game (unlike MW1/2/3), but there are things they remove that there just is no point. Spears and pauldrons are two very good examples, and I know the list can be MUCH larger than that, but just think about those two. Its not like they can be hard to implment, they already removed many "types" of armor/weapons, e.g. Chintin. Nordic, Netch, Ice, Wolf, Bear, Adimantium. So why do you have to remove even more on top of that.

Speaking of Nordic and Ice.... those would have been two nice armor types to have had (and lore-fitting) in Skyrim.

Also there are some things they removed and I don't think many people miss, Medium Armor? I don't miss it.