I in no way rate Oblivion higher than Skyrim. That just seems ridiculous to me. Skyrim is an amazing game in itself. They certainly could improve on a lot of aspects, but that in itself says something. Skyrim is probably considered the best game of 2011 even with it's flaws which says something about what it could be with the improvements that could be made.

In the TES I've only played Oblivion and Skyrim. Both were RPG's and both had a pretty good plot line. I hate to say it because it's still buggier than heck, but Skyrim is more immersive for me. I like making my own weapons from scratch. I didn't really like the fact that magic was pretty much removed from the game when compared to Oblivion. Other than that, the only issues I've had have been all software issues and glitches. So much so in fact, that all I'm doing now is waiting for the next Xbox patch to see if this game is worth continuing to play.

As we see more people using "Dumbed Down" in this manner, we'll probably just start warning for flaming. It's a lame short cut to air your dislike, or nostalgia for past - and perhaps better games - but it's a direct insult. Using "dumbed down" you are saying "If you like this game, you are stupid and ruined gaming for cool, leet dudes like me."


This probably sounded way more clever in your head than it does when posted. Don't flame. You'll end up with a warning.

I moved this to the series discussion threads because it's the usual fare of "I think the current game is poor because I think the past games were better." That's fine if you feel that way, but on a personal note? Eh. Then I guess you could continue to go play Morrowind, Daggerfall and Oblivion and ignore Skyrim. Problem solved!

useless skills, less options in settings, no hardcoe mode, less weapons/armor, less developed companions, useless/uninspired/redundant perks, no companion wheel, idiotic regression of ability to decorate house and manipulate objects, uneven scaling, no spellmaking, forced quests, inability to delete/move quests, redundant npc dialogue, werewolf content is a joke (haven't played a vampire yet), chest itemization is alphabetical and not categorized, no factions, there's a war going on and it seems invisible, over/underpowered abilities, guards don't protect their cities, step the pluck back, lydia! broken/obsolete economy system, poor a.i. mechanics, horrible horse sytem, decreased rping capability, lack of proper differentiation between talents vs. perks vs. skills... etcetcetc

it all leads to a lack of depth, less customization, less sophistication, less gameplay innovation and advancement, increased regression and most importantly less options.

it's as if they've forgotten all the great things from their past games and other games and said forget it.

streamline, mainstream and accessible all equal less depth and options. the term dumbed-down is rightfully applied and can be backed with fact.

This, it is funny how so often on this forum "dumbed down" and all that talk of the old glory days really just usually means people didn't get catered to.

Yah know, I've gotten paid to write gear-heavy table top role playing books, and I play table top games that have weapon lists that take pages and pages, armor for every piece of the body, hit locations, etc.

I miss none of that when playing Skyrim. I don't need every option under the sun, I just need the ones I have to a) fit the setting be fun to use c) be different enough from the other choices to matter.

Yeah, they "dumbed it down" a bit. In Oblivion & Morrowing, there were 20 ways to do something wrong compared to the 2-3 ways to do it right. That's BAD GAME DESIGN, not "good role playing options". Skyrim's system is much more elegant, in that it gives you 80% of the freedom / variety with only 20% of the complexity.

Well if you like OB and MR so much you can always go back and play them

I mean, I understand some people are not happy with the game but things are changing and we need to appreciate the good things and start complaining about the little flaws

Thats your problem, I enjoy this game when roleplaying, also if I'm not. Most people who have brought the game enjoy it.

Yeah it would be nice if skyrim had more weapons, a 1h crossbow would be nice IMO, but I'm not going to whine about how disappointed I am. I play the game because I enjoy it anyway, if I didn't enjoy it I wouldn't play, maybe you shouldn't play it.

Not flaming, telling the truth. Oblivion was a good game which I enjoyed BUT content was literally copied from point to another at several places. Saying that Skyrim with it's one-by-one style hand-crafted content is step-back compared to that is rather steep.

Hehehe, I saw your avatar and the words "Completely Disappointed" next to each other and I laughed harder than I should

Why do people keep thinking Morrowind is the "Purest" TES game? Daggerfall is the spire of the series, and Skyrim has managed to capture and exceed that game in all regards except acrobatics, spellmaking, and quests.

But the world, character development, and blend between NPC depth and "life".

More people need to try Daggerfall, if only to dispel the mystique about that game. Of course, putting more life into the "Past Elder Scrolls Games" forum would be nice. It's lonely in there.

Morrowind disappointed a lot of fans with the tiny world, dumbed-down dungeons, and lifeless NPCs. Yes, it was a good RPG - but it wasn't the living, breathing world we came to love in Daggerfall.

The coolest feature of Daggerfall was the dungeons - Yes, you could get lost in them... but only if you fail to memorize what the entrance looked like. Instead of being a straight line with side-paths, they were more like a web - There were numerous "Ends" to most dungeons, they weren't always in the furthest depths, and certainly not within one branch. However, most of the "Quest Subject Points" were generally obvious as such when you stumbled across them.

I interpreted your statement differently then. My apologies.

I can't recall a single instance of that. Care to elaborate?

No problem. I may have came off as too harsh as well. I enjoyed every TES game despite each had it's faults. However, I think Bethseda has been improving. They did away with certain things which seems like a step-back but overall... Skyrim is successful at being Skyrim, the homeland of the Nords and another part of the legendary series. Saying "herp derp Oblivion/Morrowind/Daggerfall/ManBearPig is way better" is like saying radio is better than now day's fancy schmancy mp3 players.

Useless or poorly-implemented skills, good riddance. Perks are a much better way to delineate beyond the available skill list.

Bows, fire shout, ice shout, fireball, firebolt, ice spike, blizzard, chain lightning, runes, summons... yep, such a shortage of ranged attacks.

Lifts-Her-Tail has been busy taking care of them all.

Interesting thing about this one. The purpose of crossbows over regular bows was that they do more damage but are slower to fire. Note how Skyrim's bows fire slower and do more damage compared to previous games.

It was a game design crutch and a station for abuse.

So? Not like you have trouble finding people to fight.

Only attribute that really mattered here was strength, which increased your carrying capacity (which, FWIW, can be done via potions and enchantments). Otherwise, attributes largely just fed into health/magicka/stamina or back into the skills that raised them in the first place. Improve Light Armor to increase Agility, which improved Light Armor... rather useless feedback.

Better designs and removing an avenue for exploitation.

Dungeons - There was like 3 dungeon layout and that varied between all of the caves.
Landscape - Mass generated generic grass and trees. Almost the whole place was flat, filled with identical vegetation, caves and wildlife.
Clothes - Clothes, robes and armour were really similar with the exception of the player equipment (elven, glass, orcish, etc.). The guards all had the exact same uniforms just with a different color. NPCs could choose from around 6 clothes, all similar to each other both in style and colour.
Enemies - There was a decent amount of enemy types but all looked the same not to mention no matter where were you adventuring, they just spawned according to your level. No one cared if Minotaurs would get their huge horned heads stuck in a forest lush with trees, you were high level? They spawned. Skyrim tried to balance this by giving the bandits varying type of weapons and outfits, wildlife colored to match the region it prowls in and enemies actually placed where they belong.

Acrobatics, while not perfect, was by no means useless - I have endless fun in the past games just jumping (And in Oblivion, rolling) around like an awesomething.

No more than alchemy or enchanting ever were. In Daggerfall, Oblivion, and Morrowind, it allowed you to create spells you liked and fit your character - It also had tremendous potential in Skyrim - A shame it wasn't implemented. Merari could elaborate on this far more than I can.

If so, then why do all three Elven Armors (Light, Elven, and Gilded) look exactly the same? There's nothing the armors could do that splitting them up into their component parts couldn't do better. The excuse "We found you couldn't see the legs under the torso pieces of our armors" isn't really a valid excuse to me - At that moment, they should have stepped back, and realized "Hey, skirts should count as pants, not shirts!" - My biggest beef with Oblivion's armors was the need to go into the Nif-editors and trim the skirts off the armors, adding them to the Greaves where appropriate.

They easily could have broken Skyrim's "Armor" slot into five pieces - Skirt, Shirt, Cloak/cape, Left Pauldron, and Right Pauldron. Or, they could have made it three - Skirt, Shirt, and Cloak/Cape/Pauldrons.

I think it's better than Oblivion, but yeah. Bethesda seems to be completely uninterested in making anything of the caliber of Daggerfall or Morrowind any more. Probably a good business decision, but I find it sad.

It was poorly implemented, though. There was rarely ever a practical reason to jump around much, and falling had far too little to do with it (it actually has the same problem Smithing has now; it's utility is far too low, that the only good way to level it is to explicitly grind it). The skill, as it was in Morrowind and Oblivion, is better off gone. Could something else have been added to take its place that's better designed? Probably, but that doesn't mean a poorly-done skill shouldn't be removed.

Alchemy and enchanting serve practical purposes, to get potions and enchantments you could use (eg, to apply that Fortify Archery effect to your Glass Gauntlets instead of these Hide Bracers you found, or to have more needed restore potions than you could otherwise get). The only practical use for spell making is to make stronger spells than what the game provides for at higher levels, and given how powerful magic already was at high levels, it was little more than a built-in exploit.

Dual-wielding spells offers similar opportunities. The only problem here is the lack of spell effects, and how poorly spell usefulness scales with level, but that's not a fault of spell-making being removed.

The second part is a good answer to the first. With the armor designs, it's often difficult to tell where the body piece ends and the leg piece begins. How do you know that "skirt" wasn't actually an elongated undershirt? And even if not, it would make sense from a design standpoint to be attached to the bottom of the body piece and hang down over the legs, rather than the top of the leg piece.

And much enchanting abuse was had by all. Well, except mages who could probably actually have use of those enchantments. A lot of robes, even in previous games, were both part of the body and legs, which would cut an enchantment slot. Then consider they also wouldn't use pauldrons, losing another enchantment slot or two. So it mainly serves to give more enchantment capabilities to fighter types (who don't need them) than the mage types (that could benefit).

You might wanna stop complaining about how skills should be removed because they can be abused. After all TES games are still single-player. But please do let me know if this has changed during the past 5 hours in which I have not played any of the TES games. This debate is all about choices. Yes, spellmaking was exploitable but people should have that choice. Nevermind the fact that spellmaking came at a cost.

Spellmaking served to create unique spells that could fill all kind of niches. I even remember multipile spells I created just for particular quest chains. Even so if I did choose to abuse the spellmaking system you would not be hurt by that. Believe it or not but you are not forced to abuse exploits. Until I hear complaints about the console commands I will not consider this a valid argument.

This is ,however, not an excuse for everything to be broken and exploitable. They should try fixing it by all means but I would rather have the choice to utilise it than nothing at all. Yes, there are certain key aspects that should never be broken or exploitable. If for example melee combat would be horribly overpowered compared to the other playstyles than that would be disastrous. You would then be 'forced' to play a melee character because you would otherwise be too weak to fight the challenges the game expects you to overcome.

That would be 'forcing' a player to do something. Spellmaking will always remain an additional choice and Skyrim leaves us with few enough choices as it is.

As someone who's played a Khajiit Acrobat since Arena I have to disagree on all counts here. A true acrobat doesn't need to Grind the skill - They level it up normally over the course of the game because there's no drop too far, nor obstacle too high for them to get over. You're not a die-hard acrobat-player, so you wouldn't understand, just as you apparently don't understand the appeal of Spell-making either.

I loved acrobatics in Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion - The moment I fell in love with the series was in the starter dungeon of Arena - I vaulted over a massive chasm, stabbing a pair of goblins in the face. In Daggerfall, the cities are a lot more fun to cross by vaulting from building to building, or across the gaps between underground fortresses and towers - Yes, there are usually other ways to get around them, but it's faster and more fun to simply vault.

I only rarely used Levitation in Morrowind - I could jump anywhere I needed to go. Furthermore, the less I wore and carried, the further I could jump. And the Khajiit don't have underwear!

Oblivion captured acrobatics in a way I hadn't experienced since Daggerfall - I was jumping, flipping, and rolling all over the place - enemies couldn't hit me! The dungeons in Oblivion, while sometimes repetitious, were also quite acrobat-friendly, with gaps I could clear with jumps, or places "normal" characters couldn't jump to, that I could. If acrobatics was as poorly implemented as people seem to think it was, why do all my characters have it as a main skill?


Spell-crafting has a practical purpose as well - tweaking the abilities of spells to fit your liking. Again, Merari can elaborate a lot more on this - I wish I remembered his post outlining a lot of the possibilities.

Actually, it is a problem with spell-making being removed. The only "broken" spells created at the spell-making altar were those that exploited glitches in the spellcasting system.

Because that's just stupid design - If I want something to cover my legs, I'll put on pants or a skirt/kilt. Having the entire weight of a suit of armor rest on the shoulders is also bad armor design. Because the waist needs to be flexible, there's ALWAYS a good "Breaking point" around the belt. And if a shirt goes down to the knee all around the body, you're a girl wearing a dress.

You got it backward here - Mages aren't the ones that need enchantments as much as fighters do. They get spells for the much-needed arcane thump. Warriors are the ones who need enchantments - it's been this way since Arena, where Mages didn't get any armor (Or clothes, everyone had a basic, unchangable outfit under their armor in that game)), and only Heavy Armor could be enchanted. A mage has a spell for every occassion. A Warrior needs enchantments to give him the flexibility needed in higher levels. Only the gimping of magic and the removal of spellmaking made the Warrior/Mage growth fall on its head.

Great post, I recognized a lot from it. Reading this whole thing makes me also sad that they removed the jump spell effect (was it in Daggerfall too? I cannot remember).

I do not know about athlethics though. I agree that it was badly implemented, but it was always fun when you started a character with much higher athlethics than others. I do not know why but I somehow still miss it.

I'll say that Athletics tended to be useless without Acrobatics - merging them, and removing the "run to gain XP" would have fixed that skill.

Acrobatics that would increase your running speed (and fatigue regeneration) as well. I could certainly live with that.

Great idea.

Alright, now try answering me again without the hyperbole.

Dungeons- It's true that there were only 6 dungeon sets (Ayleid, fort, cave, crypt, mine, and Oblivion gate) but that doesn't make them "cut and paste." The dungeons were handled exactly as they were in Morrowind (and, I believe, Skyrim as well), where the overall layout is created out of premade tiles, and then populated with clutter, spawn points, treasure, etc.

Landscape- This is simply wrong. Each of the ten regions of Cyrodiil had a unique flavor, be it the dry grasslands of the Gold Coast, the lush swamps of the Blackwood region, the snow-capped peaks of the Jerall mountains, or the fertile lowlands of the Nibenay Basin. And each of those regions had its own flora.

http://images.uesp.net/5/51/OB-Map-BogBeaconAscoCap.jpg
http://images.uesp.net/e/ed/OB-Map-BergamotSeeds.jpg
http://images.uesp.net/1/10/OB-Map-AloeVeraLeaves.jpg
http://uesp.net/wiki/File:OB-Map-AlkanetFlower.jpg

Those maps show where a sampling of the plants in Oblivion can be found in the game. As you can clearly see, each of them can only be found, with a few exceptions, in pretty much one region.

Clothes/Armor- I don't even know what to make of this. Oblivion had 33 armor types, not counting artifacts, and 30 full clothing sets, split up into lower, middle, and upper class, not counting pieces like the shirt with suspenders that doesn't have a corresponding pair of pants or shoes, nor the various robes. That's a little different than 6 clothing sets.

Level scaling- Entire essays have already been written on this subject by far better writers than me. I'm not gonna get into it here.

So, I'll ask again. What exactly is the point you're trying to make?

EDIT: And to nip one potential argument in the bud, the 33 armor types and 30 clothing sets only refer to the models used (fur armor, beggar shirt, etc.), that number doesn't count enchanted gear and the like that rely on the same models.