Hey look, its another ASSumption, how cool. :banghead:

To me, the only real issue here is whether or not to use the pejorative "dumbing down" to describe what they're doing with the game. Beth has stated EXPLICITLY, on more than one occasion, as justification for more than one change, that they're trying to make the game easier to get into. So it only really comes down to a semantic quibble over what one might wish to call that design goal.

It takes away from immersion because most people are trying to roleplay a mortal. Mortals don't magically regenerate constantly. So when the player constantly regenerates they look at it and say "Why am I healing?" and they are forced to think "Oh yea, because that's a videogame mechanic".



Oh look, it's another person with their head buried in the sand. :tongue:

How would that work in practice? "I don't have to use the healing provisions because I heal either way." That's not exactly discouraging, as the spells are faster and magicka (surely) regenerates faster than health. And the idea of it is just lessening the value of player driven healing (spells, potions).

Wouldn't it work better if you just made healing items and spells much harder to come by and use?

While I can't say anything about clothing, I can tell you what the trade-off for the missing greaves is
look at my last post at the bottom of http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1222637-some-old-news-just-made-my-day/

As Faulgor said earlier, the term "dumbing down" is insulting itself. I believe Skyrim's way of organizing, and handling skills are giving the chance for more options. Morrowind packed so many skills, that you couldn't decide which skills you were going to use, because you didn't know how it would affect gameplay. In Skyrim, it is getting more complex than Oblivion, but more polished than Morrowind. Perks, and a new crafting system add more complexity in the Role-Playing aspect, but you know what you're doing when making decisions. Even after playing 50 hours of Morrowind, I still feel uncomfortable with the skills, and attributes. I think TESV balances the systems, and removes confusion. Sure, Bethesda has made some sacrifices, but not very major. As a hardcoe fan of TES, I have no opinions that "dumbing-down" is related to Skyrim.

Definitely yes. Checked everything else in the list except for the loss of classes (basically the new leveling system) which I dont mind. I even think it might work better than the old one. I do mind the removal of birthsigns though and dont like the new stones. Theres probably a lot of other stuff as well that wasnt mentioned in the list. If the general direction of the game is streamlining, accessibility, pick up and play, removal of confusion etc etc its sure to be dumbed down. All of those things mean dumbed down in nicer words. Bethesda wants that casuals and people who dont play rpgs but dont want to learn how to play them can play the game. People like me who want a good, in-depth complex and challenging rpg get a worse game.

maybe, but I doubt it. then you'd have even more people whining because there would be even fewer options for healing, and you'd be pushing players towards resting as their only option for regenerating health outside of combat
and as I've said, the idea of it in no way diminishes the value of player driven healing. it merely refocuses it on situations when you really need it, which in this case is combat.

let's face it: potions aren't cheap. the cheap potions become next to useless, and the good ones are so expensive in the quantities you would need to rely on them(particularly in later levels) that you'd be broke and unable to get anything else, or at least missing a very large chunk of your income. and if you want to make them yourself, then you need to keep a supply of the ingredients. that takes time and you have to carry the ingredients around with you, plus have a high enough alchemy skill to make them worth the trouble.
the alternative is restoration spells. those are a good alternative for on the spot healing when potions aren't available, and can be a real lifesaver in combat(especially if you use the new system to double charge a healing spell). but outside of combat, that just wastes time and energy that you could be directing towards better things, like exploring your environment. with auto-regeneration, you can conserve that magic for when you need it, and avoid grinding at the same time. the obvious catch is, of course, that you have to be careful when you're exploring

or just sleep for an hour, which completely negates every other option put together

Bethesda has said that in some quests, the quest giver will point out the road, or direction you must go.

Help me to understand something...

Guy is unhappy with perceived changes. Guy creates new thread. Guy creates poll. Guy fills poll with loaded questions to enforce his perspective that he perceives bad changes. Guy opens poll. Guy is unhappy with repliers who disagree. Guy then proceeds to berate and badger repliers to further enforce his point of view.

Did I get it right?

Where in this thread is it okay to answer the question without being worried the OP will attack you?

I see the changes as moving the series forward, so I'm happy. I rather have them try new things and not having the game turn out like CoD: Fans demanding new versions of the same game over and over.

I have re-read the original post, as well as my response, and I believe I know why you responded to my post as you did.

I made an error, when I said:

Some fear, or dislike change, or perhaps a some feel a favored feature was not repeated in a newer game.

I sympathize with your perceived loss.

LOl, what I intended to say was:

Some fear, or dislike change, or perhaps a some feel a favored feature was not repeated in a newer game.

For those of you who feel something you liked has been removed,or drastically changed, I sympathize with your perceived loss.

I believe I gave my opinion (answer) to the question of "dumbing-down" when I said.

However, I regard the term "dumbed-down" with disdain. I prefer "refinement."

Further Clarification:

About the poll questions:

Do you feel Skyrim is "dumbed down"? - My answer is no. I believe it is being changed, rather than "dumbed-down."

What characteristics make it seem "dumbed down"?

The answer to this question would be in each instance, an opinion of the reader, or "eye of the beholder."

My personal solution is to reserve judgement until I actually get to experience those listed items in game.

The devs have given reasons for most of these issues/changes, whether accepted, or not.

With respect to the map/compass issue, if my characters were given a compass as an in-game item, and quests were written to that pertinant data was clear, or pointed to further investigation, my characters would do well without the hud compass.

However, having the hud compass in Skyrim is not actually "dumbing-down" Skyrim, as this feature has already been included in a previous game, Oblivion.

Of course, all of this is just a matter of opinion.

I hope this helps to clarify any issues with my original post.

I'm sorry, would you care to point out the loaded questions?

Would you like to point out all the badgering as well?

Oh wait, you have nothing to add to the conversation? Then why did you come here?

Case in point. Thanks, OP!

Yes, that change would have made the intent of your post more clear. I understand now.

I thought of adding some qualifier to say that the question isn't meant specifically to refer to changes from Oblivion but didn't want it to seem like a "MORROWIND WAS DA BESTUST" thread because I think the series has improved greatly over Morrowind as well. I don't care about the 'compass' per se, just the constant map marker ON the compass

1+ 8 squared - (6 x 12) = -8 ||||||| More clutter, same answer.

or

0 - 8 = -8 ||||||| Less clutter, same answer.

Which math problem do you prefer?

As for health regen, I'll live, I'm not happy about it, but its not a game breaker.

What case in point? That you aren't actually replying to the topic and instead are attempting to derail the thread (which is against forum rules)? Or the point that you can't provide instances of me tearing people down with personal attacks or using loaded questions?

0 - 8, the other one has unnecessary redundancy.
This goes along with my opinion on Skyrim's skill system.

Brilliant way to explain the fallacy of believing the game has been "dumbed-down."

There is nothing "dumbed down" about Skyrim, and many of these objections I find confusing, as the majority seem to me like welcome fixes to the long laundry list of problems I've seen throughout the Elder Scrolls series. Most of the objections I see here seem to be emotionally based in nature, or down to a pessimistic confirmation bias. I'm going to go through each in order and espouse what are my pretty irrelevant views (it's not like I can change anything, minds, game, or otherwise) focusing as much as possible on just the mechanical changes to gameplay and how they affect the character or translate into fun.

EDIT - yikes, I wrote loads more than I though. Sorry everyone...


Constant Quest Markers
We're getting an option to turn them off, right? If so why is this an issue? It's like complaining that Morrowind gave us a map as it makes no sense for our character to have that knowledge. From what I've seen it seems it'll be a "selected quest" marker system like Oblivion, so either unselect the quest or select one that you're not doing to fix it. No more than a minor annoyance as I see it.



Loss of Attributes
I understand why this seems terrible as it's "removing options", or making all characters the same, et cetera. In fact, rather counter-intuitively, I think it does quite the reverse. By omitting attributes Bethesda have destroyed the clunky, abtruse character creation system of old where you could hamstring your character from the beginning without realising it in favour of one where your character grows into a class instead. All the functionality of the attributes from earlier games is realised in the three energy pools (health/mana/fatigue) and in the perks. The only real difference is that you select them over time rather than at once at the beginning. While I'm sure there are quite a few people who won't like that, I'll be much happier getting to select an awesome perk each level rather than getting all that over right at the start - on a scientific level perks is a far more fun system as spreading rewards over time rather than into one moment leads to more dopamine release and therefore more fun (it also makes the game far more addictive, but TES already mastered that a while ago).

On top of this, removing attributes makes your levelling choices actually matter - if I put 5 points at level up into INT at level up it's effects will be spread across a large number of skills. This seems at first to be a good thing, but in terms of game mechanics it means the increase has to be small to each or the game becomes unbalanced. If, as with perks, the choice at level up affects only one condition then the change can be more significant as the amount of improvement that was spread out before can be compressed into that one characteristic. Every level then becomes significant, not just the ones where you hit the magical multiple of 25 in a particular skill. This will mean you will notice the change after each level, not just because you might have a new toy to play with (eg shield bash) but your basic damage in a discipline will feel noticeable (unless you spread things out to become a generalist of course).



No Spellmaking
Again, this seems like a bad thing, but to be honest was it actually fun to spam that same spell over and over getting one shot kills? Putting aside all the awesome improvement to the appearance and feel of magic in Skyrim what is the mechanical difference? Well, in earlier titles we could make any spell we chose to provided we had the mana and level, whereas in Skyrim we have a set list of effects that we can improve through perks. The earlier system usually resulted in mages that had one tactic: 100% chameleon enchantment and uber-spell spamming. While there are probably a few who want to recreate that on the grounds that "mages SHOULD be powerful", it could get pretty dull after a while. In Skyrim, by limiting us to an extent, mages will actually have to adjust tactics and actually stand a chance of getting killed. Because of the changes and simplification to the magic system, Skyrim is the first TES game in which I'm actually excited about playing a mage, and will be the first character I create, simply because it looks like fun now.



Auto Health Regen
Totally depends on how fast it is, which I have no idea about, so I'm not touching this one.



No More Greaves
One item of clothing. One. Really? How is that dumbing down? The aesthetics arguments aside, they managed to make having fewer slots than Morrowind work in Oblivion, so the same will probably be true of this next jump. If you're worried you can't have 100% chameleon now, they might have allowed a larger effect per item in Skyrim, so your fears are based purely in pessimistic conjecture - I hope your fears are not vindicated, but they don't amount to evidence that he game has dumbed down.



Loss of Classes
Pretty much the same as the loss of attributes here, with the exception that it might make your choice of race at character creation actually mean something in the long-run, and definitely at the start if abilities like the increased magicka for Bretons still exist. The mechanical difference here is again a delay of choice in terms of character development instead of a pre-selection at character creation. I understand the objection to this change as if you envision your character being a ranger for example, you might not become ranger-like until level 5 (wild guess) when you've got a few perks for bow skill, swordsmanship, and say an animal summoning spell. While this is a bit rubbish in my opinion, the benefits over time could possibly outweigh this loss of initial identity.

Presume that you want to be a ranger in Oblivion, you might choose marksman, sneak, light armour, blade, block, alchemy, and athletics as your major skills and wander into the world. After hitting level 15 you would then have discovered your mistake and gone back to choose majors in none of your actual class skills. Not only is this annoying but it totally ruins roleplay immersion if you're a ranger with none of your best abilities listed as class skills. Add to that periodically standing in plate armour while a rat attacks you to get a X5 bonus and jumping everywhere you go and it all gets a bit silly.

In Skyrim, the classless system is better, simply because it allows you to actually play as a class. Weird, eh? Perk selection for your best skills should only increase your ability in your chosen play style, and the skill increases as you use them should mean you aren't ruining your character as none are major or minor skills. There's a chance Bethesda might have messed it up more somehow, but it's seems to me to be the best solution to what was the biggest problem in Oblivion.



More "Essential" Characters
Honestly, did anyone actually keep playing after they ruined the main quest for themselves in Morrowind? If so they are a better roleplayer than me. This is an inconsequential objection to me, so I'm going to skip it - yay!


Reduced Number of Skills
I'm conflicted over this one, but as the ones removed are ones I never used it doesn't affect me much. It svcks that there won't be guards with spears around (I think guards look cooler with spears), but losses like acrobatics remove the ridiculous bunny-hopping. Hopefully the removals will be represented in perks, but I don't know enough to comment any more. So I won't.



Weapon Magnetism
Hopefully this is in because of companions, and not because we have to do any more bleeping escorting quests again. As long as my fireball doesn't have a noticeably curved trajectory I'm ok with it. It's probably to allow for easier play in 3rd person, and might switch on off as perspective changes, but even if you're in 1st it shouldn't be too noticeable. I don't think Beth would have put this in unless necessary - it's not like it was that all easy to miss in Oblivion either, so it'll probably either be slight or circumstantially activated.



General Casualisation
The example here is the clairvoyance spell. There's a very simple answer to that one, I don't think I need to even say it...

Thank you. :vaultboy:

Thank you. :vaultboy:

DOUBLE POST.

The only thing I really dislike is the automatic health generation. I hope one can turn it off with a hardcoe/survival mode.

Actually, let's just get back to the topic of the thread. And if you guys want to continue this then please take it to PM. Thanks.

Only thing that's really annoying is weapon magnetism. I hope you can turn it off without messing with NPC's ai.