To decoy00069: Not quite. In Oblivion, they took out the staircase, because "everyone would naturally want to use the elevator". The reply to those who complained about the elevator was "just don't use it". Sure, just climb the side of the building, like THAT's going to solve the problem. Besides, I'm one of those "in the middle" people who occasionally DO use the stairs, although I'll take the "path of least resistance" at least 3/4 of the time.

Anyway.....

What was (and still is) needed was a compromise between freedom and "sensible limits". Having a fresh-off-the-boat character in MW making absurdly game-breaking potions and enchantments at Level 1 was far outside "sensible limits", and needed some correction. Taking away the ability to do things at all in OB was a case of amputating the limb to solve the problem with the broken fingernail.

As for Alchemy, it could very easily have been fixed by making potion strength totally dependent on the apparatus, and making it "difficult" to use apparatus one step above your level (bring back failure chance, but only if you're attempting something DIFFICULT), while making it impossible to use apparatus higher than that. That way, they could have the various more exotic forms of apparatus in the game from the start (but you wouldn't have enough skill to use them), instead of having only "novice" equipment throughout the world and then having the more expensive equipment suddenly appear and become commonplace overnight. Potions would STACK, because anything made with the same level apparatus would have the same effects. Your exact skill would matter in the case of attempting potions with the apparatus one step above your level, by affecting the odds of success, while you could always guarantee success by using the apparatus that you were "proficient with".

Enchantments could be similarly limited, where your skill would put a cap on the total enchantment points or soul size (such as what would fit in a Petty gem versus a Lesser). Below that level, you'd have pretty much freedom to make whatever enchantment you wished (although there might be skill-based limits to how high the maximum strength, area of effect, or duration could be). Attempting an enchantment with the next higher soul size or enchantment value would result in a possibility of failure dependent on your actual skill number, and trying anything above that would be impossible, and risk unleashing a very "pissed off" spirit that you'd have to deal with.

Getting rid of "exploits" doesn't mean removing the whole system from the game, or turning it into a mindless "yes/no" proposition. A touch of "exploitation" is fun, any more than that needs to be corrected. If you want "no explots", play chess. If you're into insane exploits and cheats, then mod your game, or use the cheat codes.

Exactly, I'm actually kind of shocked to see people talking about gamebreaking exploits as a good thing, no other community I've seen uses how many ways you can make the game so easy that it's insulting to the players as a measure of how much freedom a game has, okay, I've seen other people defend exploits before, because they WANT to make the game incredibly easy, but it's not every community that can do this while at the same time complaining about games being too easy.

I'm in favor of freedom within reason, but when freedom is taken to mean the freedom to cheat, then that is going too far. I mean, games often have cheats, even the console in the Elder Scrolls games can be used this way, however, I would not want the console taken away, for two reasons, first, the console serves an important purpose other than cheating, it can be used for testing mods, for one thing, it is also helpful for fixing certain bugs, like getting stuck in objects, which could otherwise force the player to reload, it also has some commands that are helpful for taking screenshots, like TM, which disables the menus, therefore, when I do use the console, my intention is not necessarily to cheat, on the other hand, there's no reason I'd want to use 100% chameleon except to make the game extremely easy. Secondly, the console is not part of normal gameplay, and it's not actually an ability that the character has, therefore, I don't feel like I'm artificially limiting myself or forcing anything, it just seems perfectly normal to not use the console to cheat. The same can be said for mods, sure, you can download mods that make the game extremely easy, but since they are not part of the gameplay as it was designed by Bethesda, those don't count, I wouldn't download a mod I don't want anyway, whether it's because that mod is effectively a cheat or not. And some mods actually make the game harder (and yes, I've used some of these mods.) but whether you use mods to make the game harder, easier, or neither of the two, the mods aren't even part of the game unless you choose to use them. On the other hand, alchemy abuse or 100% chameleon are, the fact that you don't use them doesn't mean they're there, and even if I choose not to use them, which generally, I do, I'm still left with the knowledge that it's there, and it kind of diminishes the impact of whatever challenges I face when I know that if I wanted, I could make everything easy by using an option that is part of actual gameplay.

And yes, there will, I'm sure, be exploits, even if Bethesda tries to fix them, in the same way, there will be bugs in the game, no matter how hard Bethesda tries to fix them, but usually, players agree that developers shouldn't intentionally include bugs in the game, or leave known ones infixed.

Though once you bring fast travel into the matter, I can't agree with what you say below.



So what your saying is that the moment you impose even minor limitations on the Elder Scrolls (Like say, limiting how strong a chameleon spell can be.) it instantly transforms into a completely linear and restrictive game with absolutely no freedom. That seems a little extreme, I'd think there would be some middle ground between complete freedom and no freedom at all, especially since past games never had complete freedom to begin with... remember how you couldn't join Dagoth Ur in Morrowind? That was a limitation, it was something that prevented you from doing anything you could possibly want to do. And maybe you didn't like that, maybe you felt you should have been able to join Dagoth Ur, and if you could, then so be it, but whether you wanted to do it or not, that doesn't change the fact that it's a limitation, at some point, there must be limitations, because the developers can't account for every possible choice one could make. The only RPG where you can ever truly have freedom to do whatever you want is a pen and paper RPG, and even then, some GMs may try to railroad their players into whatever story they have planned (Though good ones might know how to do so without making the players feel like their feeling is being limited.) In a video game, there are different degrees of freedom, the Elder Scrolls leans pretty far towards the "free" end of the spectrum, but that doesn't mean it's truely completely free, there must still be limitations, it's just a question of where to draw them. I always thought that preventing players from removing all challenge from the game is something most people could agree should be outside of the players' options myself (Okay, maybe easy mode could do that, but even the easiest difficulty in most games still has the player facing threats, it's just that chances are even people who aren't good at the game will be able to overcome those threats, if they try, but more extreme exploits can potentially make it so that you don't even have to try.) but it seems there are those who don't agree with that after all.



Those are my thoughts too, I don't generally approve of removing options entirely to prevent exploits, but sometimes, sensible limits are needed, that doesn't mean we should entirely remove a feature because it's potentially abusable, but rethinking how it works may be in order, and maybe the solution is to impose some reasonable limitations on it. I'd only argue that entirely removing a feature is an ideal solution for an exploit if there's simply no other way and the only reason one would use said feature is for the exploit.

Exploits are never good. Even in an open world like this, having easy access to exploits makes the world seem unreal. Why would any NPC walk around without potions in a world in which alchemy was so broken? Why wasn't everyone a genius when it was so easy to have thousands of intelligence? Given that, why was there any death at all when from that anyone could create potions that fully healed every second for months?

Why would anyone walk around with a sword when all it would take to kill you was a levitate potion and some arrows? Why did anyone get caught stealing when you could get away with it easily with a few chameleon spells?

Having these things devalue the gameworld itself. Ultimately if people want to 'cheat' they will do it regardless of what the designer intends, but such loops should still be closed for the sake of providing a believable game world with believable problems. It's like all the talking people did about Ashlander tribes in Morrowind, and proper etiquette when dealing with Ashlanders. And then through the entire game almost every Ashlander tribe would just attack you on sight, and those rules only (barely) applied to the big tribes of the main storyline. Considering they rarely had more than a chitin spear, it took the Ashlanders from being a real traditional culture to being suicidal annoyances.

Freedom, freedom of choosing, freedom of creating freedom of will, always better then 'Cool looking' and 'Unique' Golden Cage.
If some one didn't have enough willpower and try to close self in such cages its their problem, at last there must compromise decision thats will balance freedom and limits.

Fantasy game: A game that takes place in a fantasy world? Or a game that allows the player to indulge their fantasies?

The former is a common find, it often has elves and may on occasion have dragons, I can buy 100 such games right here, right now. The latter is a rare and precious thing, so rare in fact, I can count the number of games that, for me, come even close to such an offering on one finger. The thing is, I don't even need to mention the game by name do I?

It's a stupid game. In so many ways a stupid, stupid game, but I've never thought the word 'game' did it justice. It transcends 'games' and in many ways makes few concessions to those who expect to jump in and play a' la carte, indeed, those who try to play it in such a way are often disappointed. It gives you a world in which many limits have been removed, throws in a massive box of toys, a set of building blocks, some basic plans based on lore then it shouts in your face "COME ON. BREAK ME IF YOU CAN". How else can you describe a game which in the first 5 minutes play gives you the ability to jump 5 miles?

Say what you like about freedom and balance and exploits and people who are incapable of accepting responsibility for their own actions and how all that relates to all of the hundreds of games which in the current climate are all converging on a single point called boredom. I have one game in my collection which is truly a fantasy game, its design was deliberate and within the scope of that design it is a masterpiece.

Am I to feel guilty? After ten long years is it so wrong of me to ask the company which produced this opus to once again trust its fans and deliver a world in which the only limit is imagination? Reading some of the previous posts I think the answer is obvious, with freedom comes responsibility and there are many here incapable of grasping what that entails

That is what common sense would dictate, it seems common sense is lacking among some people at bethesda.

This^

I recall some saying that being able to jump on a rock(in MW and OB and so many other games) and kill npcs with ease was fine, just don't do it if you don't like it. But it simply does not make sense, it make the world less beliveable like you said, in real life those npc would just run away if they could not reach me, not stand there and get killed. I want a believable immersive world, broken stuff takes me out of that world and reminds me this is a game.

Leave it up to the player. If you see something as an exploit you don't have to use it. People need to quit trying to ruin other people's fun.

I see a difference between "exploits" (things like dupe bugs, or tricking the speech/reputation system to get more rep with someone, etc) and stuff that's just "overpowered" (making a chameleon suit, for instance).

One is an error. The other isn't.


Also, stuff you have to go out of your way to use, like the Chameleon suit? How is that an issue for people who think it's overpowered? Nothing in the game forces you to do it. (I get aggravated by people who complain that a game is "too easy", then list off all the ways that they min/maxed their way to being fantastically powerful.)


------
also, re: "people say exploits are freedom, then complain the game is too easy".....

Welcome to an Internet forum, where two completely opposite things can be said - because it's different people saying it.

(Example - at the end of the last WoW expansion, "everyone" was complaining that the dungeons were too easy. Fast forward to the new expansion, and "everyone" was saying they made the new ones too hard. Yeah, well.... the two groups of "everyone" were different sets of people. The folks who were fine with the old difficulty? They weren't posting, because they didn't have any complaint.)

i believe i have been misunderstood with this topic

"freedom vs exploits" does not mean that i want for elements of the game to be removed just to make it more balanced , just adapted

in the "chameleon suit" example balance could easily be achieved by a principle of diminishing returns , just make every new item with the same effect ( in this case +chameleon ) add less and less so there is a cap at about 50 %
a magic caster can still cast a 100 % chameleon on himself but he is then limited by his illusion skill and mana pool

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UBEYVd3OKk&feature=related

Yes. Selbeth is right. That is all. The motto is "Live another life, in another world". Not "live in your imagination".



No. Let Bethesda decide. They make the lore. They make the rules of the gameworld. Breaking those rules breaks the game.



This is true. I used exploits to save time in the past, but I also knew they were game breaking. Were they amusing for 5 minutes? Yes. Did they absolutely ruin the game? Yes.



This has no point. TES is limited and always has been just like every other game ever created. By your argument we should have just had a giant, foolproof paddle in Pong and be done with it. Pong was the first popular video game because it had rules and a challenge. No rules=no challenge=bad game. Every game since has followed that example to varying extents.



I agree with you 90%, but you're wrong in a major way. Example - I can use the duping glitch in OB to give myself unlimited weaponry, arrows, potions, etc. I can also pile up a stack of chess pieces in a bucket next to me and simply replace a piece I lose with a new one endlessly. Those are exploits. Those are cheats that break the rules of the game to allow a supreme advantage to the player. Both are possible. Both are stupid. Nuff' said.



A game that allows you to indulge your fantasies? Sure.....go play GTA. A fantasy game with a story, rules, and good gameplay? That is what TES is. If you want to do something where the only limit is your imagination, you should write. No video game will ever allow that until we can have one linked to our brains that has no rules, and we can choose whatever we want via virtual reality. Then you can literally do whatever you want. And the freedom you seem to describe is logically impossible IRL or in a game. Nothing is ever without limitations and rules, except your imagination.

I still see some people missing the point about it not be blatantly obvious exploits, there are going to be bugs and unintended consiquences, why reduce options as it has been seen before to scruff out exploints that are completely manual in nature so that they cannot be replicated by people who initiate the exploits under their own power?

I take the stairs. Whenever I used to visit my grandparents or my aunt (all of whom lived in apartments on at least the 3rd story) I would always take the stairs, even though there was an elevator. It is still a matter of choice. Not all of us are the braindead simpletons who use the elevator because walking is too hard. It is the same with games. In Oblivion I killed Dorian for unlimited gold. I duped items, I finished the main quest right out of the sewers using paintbrushes, I got the Mace of Doom. I got 100% chameleon. I did it all. However, I am still playing Oblivion to this day. Do I still use those glitches? No. I stopped using them because it is only fun for so long. Anyone who can't resist using the exploits or anything like that has problems that the developer can't fix.

Where'd you hear those rumors, exactly? Cause it BS, I'll tell you that much. FYI, Elder Scrolls games are SINGLEPLAYER, not MMOs. You'll want to avoid the most obvious exploits, always, but it's not so much of a big deal with SP games. The player can always choose NOT to use the exploit but if he does, it's not exactly like anyone will ever suffer from it.

However, I wouldn't be surprised if the exploitability issue was part of the problem, but by no means the only reason or even the main reason. The primary concern is that the custom spell system in TES felt spreadsheety, which I personally understand perfectly. It was awfully meta-game, exploitable, unimaginative and very limited. Because if you want something to be customizable, you necessarily want to limit things to a system that's actually doable in a computer game. But if you compare the spell system in Oblivion or Morrowind to, say, Dungeons and Dragons, it'll become clear to you exactly how limited and boring the TES spell system really is.

As for D&D, you can cast pretty much anything you can ever imagine. There's also a number of anti-magic abjuration spells, as well as spells to break those even. Invisibility, Detect Invisibility and Non-Detection, to mention but one chain of effect counters. Oblivion was pretty Low-Magic, whereas D&D is as high-magic as it can get.

Freedom. Enough balance to keep the game engaging is always a good thing, but when you start sacrificing game mechanics for it, it becomes too much. Want balance? Play a multi-player game. This was one of the problems with New Vegas, Obsidian went over board with balance and ended up making things unbalanced, or nerfing things too much. I always laugh when someone says 'we need to get rid of X feature because its unbalanced and broken'. They must be new to the TES series.

Any time I read/hear "spellmaking was spreadsheety and took the magic out of Magic" I chuckle and wonder, ok so I guess Enchanting, Smithing, leveling, getting perks and looking at stats and attributes must also go right? because follwing that logic THEY ALL HAVE NUMBERS..

You obviously didn't understand at all what he meant by it. Don't take things so literally. "Numbers" aren't just "numbers". There is context too, and there is such a thing as a "figure of speech", you know. Compare TES spells to NWN or any other D&D game. The freeform, customizable spell system in previous TES games was quite horrid, to say the least.

Enlighten me Brotha :mohawk:

because I see people bringing up terminology like numbers and making things Overpowered.....and yet we have all these crafting abilities....along side enchanting what makes spellcrafting different other than the assumed attempt and making spells static but flashy and cool

I think it was more the fact that it looked like this: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/25372-4-1245865971.JPG

It appears that the new crafting (Smithing and Enchanting) have some kind of real time component or at least a way to not appear "spreadsheety". As for the other things you are going a bit overboard there since that is all things that you have to do real time and put significant work towards (leveling skills, then picking a perk when you level up), or things you don't actually do anything with, they are just for informational purposes (stats).

That being said it is STILL utter BS that this is the reason they aren't doing spellmaking. Mainly because we had figured out how to make spellmaking work as far as mechanics since we found out it wasn't confirmed in, and have come up with at least a dozen ways to implement it in a way that is balanced, fair, and non spreadsheety.

If http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/images/25372-4-1245865971.JPG is too complex for someone, then not only is that probably going to be the least of their problems, but I dont think TES is for them, nor should we cut corners for it to appeal to them. Leveling up was more complex than spell creation in Oblivion.

Reread my posts and do some extensive research into high-fantasy computer games (D&D for instance, as already mentioned). TES spells were absolute horse manure, and now they're potentially NOT.

so wait, because you can flamethower enemies and throw traps on the ground, now TES magic is manure? and no need to shore up TES with D&D TES is its own beast and should be allowed to do as it pleases for its own regards. I was able to crowd control and disarm numerious enemies in a single well casted blow at great redux of my own magicka, and for good measure throw in another damage health spell incase their morality came back and they tried to fist fight me.

now its just going to be spamming the same handful of spells.

Which is probably the main reason why they ditched it - too simple with too few options and effectual outcomes. I mean, "chain lightning" anyone? Or weather spells like Blizzard, Hurricane or similar? Or spells like "roots/entangle", "Bigby's clenched fist" or "Wish"? What about "Counterspell", "Spell Break" and "Mirror Image"?

Time is time. If they're gonna add a spell making system to a game, then the range of spells will necessarily suffer. Or other features in the game.