I hope we return to more discreet armour components.


Then just add a little script to make duplicate effects non-cumulative. The Enchant system in Morrowind was designed well and implemented poorly. In Oblivion it was designed poorly and implemented poorly.


CAUTION: Morrowind hater. Do not attempt to reason.

There is a picture of what looks like a Bosmer who has armour for his body on but no helmet.

Diversity is a winner in my book

How does a 1 piece armor design save money?

Well, I was thinking talking about the Mw 12(?) clothing slots + rings and neck, a 2 piece system would obviously scale down. K, for each individual item:

Design documentation, decision to include item, implementation, implementation of variations for race and six as required, sign off, compatibility with other items tests for each variation, test of any relevant enchantment effects for each variation, test in inventory, test on paper doll.

For all items,
Paper doll design, inventory design, testing on each platform, evaluation of balance wrt enchantment wrt all possible item combinations.

I very happy to have you tell me that the increase in costs is negligible for the 2 piece system, perhaps it will stay Unfortunately I've developed a liking for the 14 slot system and consider even 2 piece a joke.

Also, on page 52, you can see that the character which is - presumably - the same one, has the same helmet in the top right and bottom left picture, but different body armour.

I don't think Bethesda would take out the armour customisation. I really, really don't - Seeing as that's part of the Elder Scrolls' fame.

I thought the Mw design and implementation to be brilliant, so much freedom, so much choice. Unfortunately many players proved themselves unable to handle such freedom, instead of balancing their char to enhance game play they power played their char then complained the game was broken.

Body slots are most likely hardcoded, there's probably no chance of modding that. You don't see pauldron mods for Oblivion either.

Yeah whoever said that helmets and chest pieces are now combined, whether jokingly or seriously, is completely wrong. Looking at some of the pictures and there are two men who have the same helmet but different armor. Just clearing that up. Don't know if anyone believe what he said or not. Okay. Good day.

I played Oblivion before Morrowind, and I thought: "Cool. Separate pauldrons I can enchant!" I also preferred the self-recharging enchanted weapons, meaning I didn't have to constantly worry about filling soul gems. It was just MORE FUN and less of a chore; which is what playing a game is about, surely?

I honestly can't see any reason they'd remove more armor slots And I hope they haven't... preferably they have re added shoulder and clothing slots... It's not like it has any negative sideeffects as far as I can see..

Nothing like a good nap on the side of the road to recharge the good old hoptoad ring

I admit I didn't read all of page 3 of this conversation because it seems more like a totally off-topic argument.

So instead of doing that lets anolyze the little information we have: the GI cover story and most importantly the screenshots featured in it. I'm using the scans, so I might be wrong here (it's up to you to find them if you wish to check this) but here goes.

Page 49
Top-left picture looks like a suit of elven armor, the leafs on the thighs (graves) suggest this. Looks like a full suit. Judging by the design pauldrons could be merged with the cuirass.
Bottom-left picture is a bit unclear.

Page 50
Top-right picture: a hooded figure is stabbing a dark elf or an orc (or a dark-green Martian ). Hoods are back! This looks like a finishing move of sorts (their existence in the game has been confirmed in the article). Note the straps forming an X on the elf's back: they appear to be holding a pauldron-like piece of leather (?) on his left shoulder (this piece is under the straps). Above this leather piece there seems to be a metallic pauldron. His other shoulder is bare. He also has what appears to be a sheath on his left side (like single-hand swords in OB).

Page 50-51
Bottom picture: one character (the player probably) finishes off a foe. The armor the player is wearing can be seen in more detail in other screenshots. Lets focus on the other figure. Note that he's wearing some bracers that look like fur bracers and what appears to be a fur helm.

Page 52
Top-right picture: the player wearing the same armor as before.This time with a shield.
Bottom-left picture: a character without a cuirass. But he's wearing those straps the dark elf was wearing on page 50, again holding a piece of leather on the left shoulder. It could be a "sheath" for big axes and big swords but the elf seems to have a small sword sheath so this might be a totally different item/item-slot
Bottom-right picture: props to Beth for improving faces! Eagerly awaiting what Dracomies can do with this when the game gets released *hint hint*

page 56-57
Same armor as we've seen before being worn by the player.

page 58 (The One They Fear page)
Again we see the elven armor. The character has what looks like a glass mace this time and not a sword. Looking at the pauldrons I think they could be removed (contrary to what I said before) but this is inconclusive.

No idea what page this is, it's a picture of a guy charging a giant spider.
Axe looks awesome!
But look at his bracers. Same bracers as the guy getting facial reconstruction on pages 50-51. But he has the helm with horns not the fur helm. And if you look really closely you'll realize the horned helm isn't the same as the one you've seen in the other shots! This could mean that helms aren't included with other pieces of armor or that bracers aren't included with other pieces. Or both! Again the character is wearing the leather straps and they're holding a piece of leather on his right shoulder and go beneath the pauldron on his left shoulder. Notice that the armor is different from the one worn by the dark elf on page 50. This time the character is wearing what looks like orcish armor but the graves and boots look like fur.

No idea what page this is, it's a picture of a guy standing in front of 3 spirit like enemies called Ice Wraiths (it says so in the captation)
Character is wearing elven armor and has what looks to be like an elven sword. Pauldrons look like the ycould be separate this time (contrary to what I said before) but it's again inconclusive.




So, in my opinion armors are separate just like OB with possibly some new slots (the straps and pauldrons). This is just my opinion though, no need to get your hopes up or anything.

Correction: people did make pauldron mods for Oblivion, and they used the same technique they used to make cloaks. What they did was they cut the pauldrons off the original meshes, then made separate pauldron meshes. These separate pauldron items were tied to either:
1. the two ring slots.
2. the tail slot.
3. the amulet slot.

They did a similar thing with cloaks, only cloaks usually occupied the tail or amulet slot and not the two ring slots. So as long as there are tail, ring, and amulet slots, we can make pauldron mods.

God no, no, no, please not a single-slot armor!!

I would be severely let down by Skyrim if they just had Mass Effect armor..

Every outfit will be created in virtually the same way and splitting them into, cuirass, boots, gloves, etc is just something you know is going to happen when you begin to create the asset. A single piece outfit is basically just like creating a multi piece one.

Some of those testing procedures you mention I personally could do with a dozen outfits and fix a lot of inter clipping between them, in a day or 2. Assuming the art lead laid it out well for the artists creating the whole outfit selection, and gave feedback during the creation, TBH I don't think there will be that many character artists on staff, and they will all be clued in on what each other is doing. So the assets might be pretty good in this regard right off the bat.

all the gameplay related testing, like enchantments are issues the designers would have thought about very early on when coding the mechanics in.
and all the tweaking for that that followed would be happening all the way until release. Regardless. The time frame is set for release by the producers and that's that. Everyone is getting paid, and the game ships how it ships. What I am saying is, even though trying to make a working outfit system that is more complex and offers some options, might take more thought to get right, It doesn't really cost anyone more money.

Saying that, as soon as you try to factor any of that clothes and robes mixed in with armor and being represented on the character, It's a complete nightmare.

IMO Oblivions system isn't really harder to develop assets for than Fallouts is. Morrowinds system even though slightly more complex, really makes things a head ache, especially on the nextgen platform, one reason why it works is because of the lower character detail, segmented bodies, and lack of blended skin weighs is a lot of armor in MW. You can get away with clipping between different outfits much more easily. In Fact MW assets don't seem to hardly care very much. OB had a lot of issues with different assets clipping between sets as well.

Mass Effect 1 or 2? Because I don't think the sequel did a bad job imo.

The problem with Morrowind's was the formula^* underpinning the Enchant skill. Even with Enchant and Intelligence at 100, it was impossible to successfully enchant a powerful item, or make something even remotely comparable to the stronger enchantments in the game. If they'd fixed that formula, we'd have had a fairly solid system. Unfortunately they completely nerfed the system in Oblivion. Looks like it may make a comeback in Skyrim. Still, I'd hope Skyrim does more than just fix the faults behind Morrowind's system. For one, I'd like to see the ability to increase enchantment capacity by adding gems to an item (ie diamond = +50, ruby = +20 etc). There's so much can be done to the Enchant system, while barely just scratching the surface of what is possible.



^* Chance = Ench + .25*INT + .125*LCK - 2.5*[X]*[enchantment points]
X is 1 for on use and on strikes enchantments, but it is 2 for constant effect.

good point..we do have enchanting back. so maybe they do have more slots.
i bet its oblivion style though. no pauldrons

ty for that, very interesting

So, if a reduction in clothing slots yields no great cost saving then why do they do it? Not just Beth. but Bio. and others.

<< If they would stop going around spouting how Oblivion is dumbed down without any merit to their statements I would stop calling them out for complaining about little things that didn't affect the gameplay negatively in anyway, in fact it improved the gameplay by helping to get rid of the things that made Morrowind so easy. >>

I think the term Dumbed Down gets a little too much use. However, this statement is false by itself. You are attacking folks, based on their perception. There is merit to everyone's opinion, generally speaking. For those of us who've been around since Arena, or even just DF, we've absolutely seen a reduction in the series. I lable that mainstreaming so Beth can make more money....other folks use the term dumb down. The facts are indisputable. From character depth, skills, story, the amount of level scaling, the character evolution. MW was easy? Oblivion felt like the same game thruought and I'll tell you what's worse than easy, it's called boring. Thanks the gods for mods. I love Beth and the TES series. I would never begrudge them their right to go out and appeal to a larger audience and thus make more money. Perhaps if they had made MW and O like DF, they'd be out of business or not doing as well as they are financially. So I get that. But just as I'm able to understand that, you need to understand that there will be other opinions on this board other than yours. Most of the fans on this board agree that the series has become more and more simplified. What else would you call the reduction of "stuff" in the game? It's not a criticism....well, maybe for some it is....it's a point of fact. As more and more facts come out, people are going to compare it to past games, because that's what we do. Skyrim will be a bad/good/phenomenal game relative to the games it follows....MW/DF/Arena/O. Please understand, I'm not flaming you, just trying to get a point across so you can comprehend that's there are other points of view out there and it's only going to become more scrutinized as more details about Skyrim come out.

Nice summary }{ellKnight

Thanks! I fear I might have made it too long and some people might skip over it which is disappointing because I really tried to make it as objective as possible XD

@ Pisa50
Very well said, sir!

I think the fact that you structured it in points made it real easy to read, nicely done.

I really have to step in here. Guys, look at the evidence.

The screenshots show what appears to be incomplete armour sets on some characters, not to mention clipping through a piece of armour in another shot. Both of these point to full customization, clipping is difficult to avoid when you have so much variety. Customization is a new buzzword. Look at games like COD and Bad Company. Both offered more customization in their sequels than in previous titles, for Bethesda to go backwards would be a huge mistake.

The only reason that FO3 did not have as many options is because Fallout has always been like that.

I honestly don't fear 1 piece armorsets at all, because that is not going to happen. I however doubt we'll see an increase in armor customization as we really should.

The magazine leads me to believe that pauldrons are separate again, but that's about it. It wouldn't be too far for Bethesda to add a slot for pauldrons, pretty easy to do and would keep all parties happy.