And how was it immersion breaking? Wasn't it MORE immersive? And what was wrong with the percentage thing? How do you want to do it? The weapon degrades over time, the percentage is just a way for you to ''visualize'' its condition. What do you want instead, seeing the real damage? And how that would make it less boring?

My guess is that we will see a few new skills in TES VI. Don't quote me on that, though; I can see them merging the one-handed and two-handed trees.

Games are changing indeed, they're not for nerdy people anymore and developers need to cater to bigger crowds. Tell me objectively, what is better with the whole show-off aspects of video games nowadays? IMO it's just a boring flashy gimmick, like CGI, and it svcks. There was nothing wrong with how the past games worked, although you'd bet it wouldn't sell as much. There's no "games are getting better and some things are just outdated and we need to move on", you can do what you want to do, but if you want to make money, there's things you won't do anymore.

MonkeyKing has it pretty much right.

RPGs were made the way they were because gaming technology couldn't accurately simulate some things. Numbers were used as proxies for in-game events. Gaming technology has advanced a lot, so I don't think we'll be seeing another mainstream 'classic' RPG; 'classic' RPGs, if they exist at all in the future (as anything but small, indy products), will be consigned to the realm of strategy games.

I think this is a good thing. And Bethesda has made a good attempt at bridging the gap between old-school and future RPGs. They haven't quite gotten there yet- for instance, perks should define both WHAT you can do as well as HOW WELL you can do it; environments, stories and characters should be as immersive and 'deep' as possile- but they're on the right path. Actually, it's possible they've done this 'bridge' game in order to ease fans into the new way of doing things, and while they wait for console gaming to catch up.

This entire discussion depends on whether TES Vi is an xbox 360 game or not. If we get next gen hardware in the next 4-5 years, the next tes game might actually be something special. If not, expect Oblivion 3.

Sure thing, because you can't understand that Skyrim is shorter than Oblivion. Also in Skyrim you don't really have multiply choises like in Oblivion. If the Quest want you to kill someone your "good" Character HAS to kill this person. So Skyrim prevents you from playing wrong, there you are right.

I can see dual- and single-wielding perks being melded, and perk trees being created for each weapon type instead, e.g. swords, maces, axes, bows ... It would at least make a bit more sense than the current system, and would probably be more fun to use.
Then again, Bethesda isn't known for its common sense, so I'm probably completely off target.

lol, if only we had that many skills to be removed Daggerfall character creation was the most fun I've had in a TES character creation in part because of the huge amount of skills to choose from. "What? Critical Strike is a skill? Hell yeah, awesome primary skill for an assassin."


I used it a lot early on as an easy way to make money. A 200 gold ring here, a 300 gold necklace there etc. Now that I'm sitting on 40k though I mainly just use it whenever someone tells me to keep my fingers out of their pockets just to spite them.


I agree that the previous system wasn't perfect and could've used fixing. Bringing a bunch of hammers with you and just banging away on a piece of leather to fix it, what? But like leveling of attributes from Morrowind and Oblivion, Beth seems to pick the lazy route and just removes them instead of fixing them and making them more interesting. They could've easily made stats level naturally just like skills, and they could've easily integrated repairing equipment into the new Smithing skill(along with greatly lowering the degradation of course, stuff broke way too quickly in Oblivion).

My guess going by the current rate is there will be no skills just perks you unlock each level all your spells/blows/arrows/etc will do the same damage throughout the game unless you have the spell that increases said attack. Better armor = better armor

This system is as simple as you can get when it goes to a RPG..

I'd guess on rearranging the skills (like, making Lockpicking & Pickpocket into something like "Thievery" or "Security", and then adding a new skill. Or changing around the crafting). Not removing.

But then, I'm not part of the "everything's been going downhill since Daggerfall" crowd.

I predict they will keep essentially the same system, maybe add agility back in as a stat and connect some skills to it, also I think they will probably add in acrobatics and athletics in some form, though i'm not sure how. I'd also guess they will add some kind of limited spellmaking back in. I could even see a couple of these with an expansion rather than a new game.

I also predict they may merge skills into a 'stealth' tree etc..not necessarily a bad thing at all depending on how it's done.
Then again, I am one of those people that thought the fact that you could fly at lighting speed in Morrowind was stupid, sometimes less is more.

There will be no skills. Only two lines of perks. One is "sword" and the other is "Spell" (consisting of "heal" and "fireball")

I care less about the number of skills than the functions. Merging weapon skills does not bother me much, but losing polearms, thrown weapons etc does. While having a separate skill for every weapons type works so does have 1 weapon skill with perks to show specialization.(though skyrim perks svck at doing this)

The number of skills available depends solely on the variety of weapons and armor types, magic schools, stealth tactics, and crafting skills. Personally, I think this is a healthy number, but to answer your question, the quantity of skills we'll have in TES VI is whether they decide to give us different weapons or resurrect the school of Mysticism. No one can be sure.

All signs point to less weapons and less skills, but I really don't think that they can streamline away any more of them. We're down to bare bones weapon selection and somewhat limited spells. I'd like more armor selection - been playing a Breton in Glass armor for nearly a friggin decade - but I don't think it's in the cards.

They could probably get rid of alteration, divy up the alteration spells between illusion and restoration. But that would create imbalanced archetypes, so a warrior skill and a thief skill would have to be axed. Thief is easy - just streamline away pickpocket and divy up the skills between sneak and lockpicking. For a warrior skill, they could probably combine blocking and heavy armor. Not that I'm suggesting any of this, just speculating how much closer to GTA the next Elder Scrolls will be.

Whatever makes us have to think less about our character and just focus on moving towards that quest marker, right?!

But then anything can be a skill. Breathing could be a skill. Eating could be a skill. Alcohol digestion should be a skill.

Stupid examples I know, but my point is anything can be a skill in a game like this. It's a case of is that skill actually useful and used by many, With the case of acrobatics and athletics, they weren't.

Though even at that level of example, can armor even be a skill? Oh look, I wore this leather and let a rat attack me all afternoon. Now my armor is weightless!

Bethesda should be embarrassed that armor ever became a skill for Morrowind and the new games.

Customisation? Never!

After all the complaining about restrictive weapon types in Oblivion, They went ahead and merged short and longswords.

Trust me, if bethedsa want to....they will merge and remove more. I really want spears back....they are a really common weapon that has been missing for too long.....and considering one of the first lots of questinos was "is there spears?" I cant see them not bring spears back in.

Skills are redundant. RPG means grab an axe kill some monsters. 3 skills are enough: mage, thief, warrior.

I can see some skills removed/merged. A stealth kill which involves sneak and pickpocket, illusion could most likely be fittted into alteration , armor skills go into one and smithing goes with enchant. Or they completely change the entire skil arsenal to something completely different. Maybe at one pont we get three skills, magic, combat and stealth?

You are speaking too general while you shouldn't.
Acrobatics and Athletics where useless TO YOU not to everybody.
Not everybody has to adopt your playstyle simply because you like it.

What Bethesda has done in Skyrim by removing things like Atheltics,Acrobatics,the Disposition System and its accompanying spells is to limit gameplay variation and force specific playstyles to some players.
I remember 2 builds of Oblivion characters I used to role-play.

One of them was a charismatic bard.He had a natural charisma and people liked him,and he was very social and wanted to make people like him, so he would be the guy who would meet everyday different people and talk with them,tell them jokes,admire them and do other stuff to make people happy. He was a pacifist character that didn't liked fighting so he mostly completed non-battle quests like those that are completed only by speaking to other people or doing small puzzles.
I spent many many hours with that character travelling to the cities of Cyrodill making people happy,solving their problems the nice pacifist way and acquiring their love and money. I had lot of fun doing it.
Now in Skyrim there is no disposition meter,you don't know if you can alter someone's likeness to you or not,and all the Illusion spells that where used to charm people and make them like you are gone!
A whole unique gameplay style is lost,and along with the many hours someone could spend playing that way.Perhaps that was never YOUR playstyle and you don't care for the loss of an attribute,a skill,a meter,a minigame,and many spells that where making this playstyle able,but that doesn't mean that because you never played that way that others didn't do.

Another of my loved character builds was a super flexible Khajit that decided to become the fastest,most agile character in Cyrodill.He would train his speed to become the fastest along his race.He was an athlet.He also liked to do acrobatics.Jumping to places others couldn't jump and laugh at them from above.The existence of such skills as acrobatics and athletics allowed me to set my own goals or 'quests' in the game and try to complete them,and I had fan doing it.Perhaps you never wanted your character to be an athlet,but not everybody has your tastes.


My point is that by removing various features like some skills,attributes,spells etc,the variety of things you can do in the game is shortened.
Sure Skyrim is still a very nice game,BUT it is more directed and close-ended. Sure it's open world and you can go wherever you want any time you want,but the things you can do in the game and the gameplay variation from which you could choose your playstyle has been shortened.You might have a specific playstyle in your mind that suits your taste and happens to be included in the playstyles that Skyrim allows you to choose from.But that's not the case for everyone.
Generally speaking,the more options you have to engage in a situation is better,no matter a game's genre. One of the things that made Crysis a popular game except from its graphics,was that thanks to its nanosuit it allowed you to choose between a variety of ways to engage.You could turn nanosuit to cloak mode to play stealthy or turn it to strength mode for devastating mellee attacks or to speed mode to run fast so you can run past guards...
Variety in gameplay is a desired feature,and in TES gameplay variety is to come with the variety of many different factors like attributes,skills,guilds,spells etc.
Limiting the variety of these is limiting gameplay styles,or ways to engage situations,thus its limiting somewhat the overall freedom you have since the fewer the things you can choose from,the more forced you are to adopt a specific playstyle.


I for once wish that in the next TES game we will be handed with a larger variety of gameplay styles,a larger variety of options to engage situations,so A) more people will be able to choose their favourite style and play that way,and the replay value of the game is greater.

Woah, Skyrim has FAR more choices than Oblivion, FFS. You have Paarthunax, Legion/Stormcloaks, Season Unending, most daedric quests, siding or not with Madanach, Cicero, Blood on the Ice, etc. In Oblivion you had only a couple of quests with choices, and they were minimal.

Also, Skyrim's MQ is longer than Oblivion's except for the mindnublingly repetitive "Help for Bruma" quest, not to mention has more interesting side quests, while keeping some simpler quests in the misc folder, which Oblivion had as "real" quests.

The only thing that's longer in Oblivion (and kind of a disappointment in Skyrim) is guild questlines. They've managed to make them far more interesting than in Oblivion, but stupidly shorter.

Except that running and jumping are actually useful things to train in for an adventurer. Get to archers faster, get away from monsters, jump that gap, jump up to that ledge etc. Instead of removing they should be expanding upon. Bring back climbing, make athletics so it can hold your breath for insane lengths for a diver idea. I don't want less ways to interact with the world I want more.

IMHO, the only way keeping acrobatics and athletism would improve the game would be by separating mages, warriors, thiefs and everything in between, and sadly as a mage you'd end up having a high athletism and acrobatic skill, for you need to run and jump like everyone else.

Pretty soon, an axe is going to be all you have left.