Oh I see what you mean about the lists. I think for any detailed info you'll probably have to click on an item yes.

the CVG article did slip in a few negative comments (http://www.computerandvideogames.com/298510/previews/elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-the-most-beautiful-game-of-the-generation/), but I should think there wasn't many bad things to say from their demo viewing. Which is a great sign!

There was the part about character creation. It wasn't exactly criticism, but neither was it praise.
Lastly, Todd sad that in the video that the Dragons made the game hard. Because they are treated like any creature, and could spawn randomly.

Some of those shots are...very underwhelming I really hope those are xbox shots.

Let's look at traditional RPGs.

They all have attributes, many skills, things of that nature.

Stop pretending that argument isn't relevant.

Regardless if you think it's a bad argument or not, bottom line is that this is another case of video game streamlining, which very often is synonymous with dumbing down. You'd think that they'd be adding MORE skills to the game, not taking them away. Yet they have been taking them away almost every game since Arena. If I remember correctly, Arena (and/or Daggerfall) had a climb skill. Haven't seen that skill since, in addition to many others. You'd think we'd see those with the technology we have now. Why take them away? The only good reason to take something away is that it would improve gameplay. How does taking away Acrobatics and Athletics improve gameplay? Please, do explain this to me.

I don't know... how about just jumping from rooftop to rooftop? They didn't say they removed the ability to run and jump. :shrug: I like playing sneaky stealthy characters - so i will be sneaking and jumping from things, I never remotely cared about Athletics and Acrobatics in Oblivion. The bonuses at journeyman, etc, were fairly negligible (to me) in the grand scheme of character development and gameplay.

I will reserve judgment on the changes in leveling/attributes or lack thereof, etc., but so far, I am not overly bothered by it.

And omg... the Khajiit and Orc screenshots? They both look amazing. Especially that Orc. Bad.Ass.


Also, the modders must be psyched, with the Creation Kit confirmed. I love that they acknowledged some influence from the modding community as well.

In my mind, that's not a good thing. As much as people may not like lists, at least in Oblivion I could open up my inventory, see the names of the items, their damage/armor value, their weight, their condition, etc. All with just a quick glance, without having to cycle through every item in my inventory. I don't remember if it was standard or thanks to the darnifiedUI, but I could even reorganize the list according the stat I wanted, making it even easier and quicker to find what I was wanting.

That sounds like a reason to improve them, not completely take them out of the game completely. That just doesn't make sense to me.

Alright, I give up. You either can't or don't want to understand.



Yes, all hail the perks, bla bla bla.
Attributes are different from perks. Attributes are about generalization. Perks are about specilization.

Thanks

Everything that has always been shown is xbox shots (the article even mentioned that they have only shown xbox) and what shots were underwhelming, they were all great, especially the orc shot. I mean, check out that environment, that is some amazing *bleep*.

This.

Magic attributes are now perks under magicka, attributes related to strength are now perks under strength...see where i'm going?

This:

But you seem to forget that the reason they did this, was because the attributes, however general the illusion was, stood for nothing. You didnt really gain intelligence. you just increased in what intelligence increased for you. So unless you just want the satisfactory of a number with no value, then you are making a fuitile arguement.

All the previews state this is a huge leap from Oblivion, and yes they are 360 screens.

A leap, yes. A huge leap? Not quite. They are better, but a huge leap would be, you know, taking advantage of current PC technology. Of course, those are all 360 screens, but apparently everything is going to look the same on every platform. This doesn't help much.

The two of you can take the "what is an RPG" and what isn't to PMs, if you plan in continuing it. I have found, playing games for 20 years or so, that it pays to be open-minded as technology changes, as I change, as the games I love grow and change. I refuse to dismiss a game like this until I have logged some time into it - read all the articles you want and jump to your personal conclusions, but until you have it in front of you and are digging around in it, all this "this is gone, that makes the game wrongbadfun" arguments just don't have a ton of heft, at least where I am concerned.

There sure does seem to be a lot of melodramatic statements about the world of RPGs is dooooooomed type things every time info is released on this game, or other RPG developers games. (And no, I am not saying sequels can be perfect and that technical changes can't make a game feel wrong, or make me lose interest. I have never been more disappointed in a game in recent years than DA2, the follow-up to one of my all time favorite games. The changes were drastic and abrupt. I remain optimistic that the Skyrim changes will have a good, intuitive flow in terms of gameplay and natural character development.

I can already tell you the reason they were removed. They were negligible in the scheme of game combat. They were more of a gimmick then having any beneficial effect on the game. So they cut them as skills, there really isn't a way to improve them beyond what they were other than making points in the game that required you to have higher acrobatics or athletics. They really aren't needed to complete the game and that's why they don't need to be a major mechanic in the game. Maybe there will be perks to increase your jump height, probably not though. Also, I personally like the removal of athletics and acrobatics because they always really shattered my suspension of disbelief. In Morrowind you could jump over a fort wall because you could jump so high, they remedied that in Oblivion a bit but you were still jumping a little too high. If they reduced it to a more logical level, then raising your acrobatics would be not worth the effort. Also, those to stats were used to break leveling in Oblivion.

I never cared for athletics and acrobatics and I'm glad they are gone but that's just my opinion.

There will likely be perks for that.

Sounds like an iPhone commercial.

There's a perk for that.

Why are people upset by the removal of Acrobatics and Athletics? They've gone for a more realistic approach and I like it. Orc looks beyond awesome. Khajiit has a muscular build but a gaunt face? Still seems like a house cat. Definitely 10x better than Oblivion's though! Love, love, love the fur! :drool:

There is a much bigger opportunity cost with increasing running and jumping abilities with a perk system than in previous games. Before I could improve my acrobatics to get my jump where I wanted it without really impacting my other abilities. Now there is a hard cap of 50 perks, unless I actually cover everything I want to do in my character focus(like lets say thief) marksman, security etc based perks I can;t really take a mostly fluff based perk like jump high, jump even higher, jump really high I mean it. Whether this is good or bad I leave up to the individual.

As for the attribute loss, I do not think it is a big thing really. Why did you increase personality, because it was tied to X skills. Well now just improve those skills. I don't think it really added much to have both an attribute and a skill contribute to the end goal of conning someone, just improve the conning skill and you are fine. Some of the ancillary things like carry capacity will apparently be perks, and like my acrobatics example above it kind of depends on how many perks you get compared to how many you need to progress your character down your main path of advancement. When you are taking crush skull perks, and block really well perks will you ever feel you have the space for the carry more loot perk?

I find that argument hard to tackle because it's all about where you draw the line. Health is also just another "number" that determines how long you can survive. Intelligence was a factor that influenced several skills, much in the same way that the new 1-handed-weapon skill influences several weapon types. If I would follow your argument, there should be a skill for every possible weapon because the "container-skill" itself stands for nothing.



I can already see several oddities this will lead to, if perks are supposed to fix everything.

For example, where should the perk for increased encumberance go? Acrobatics and Athletics have been removed, so there probably is no seperate skill anymore that enhances your physique.
Well, maybe Mercantile then? Merchants have to carry a lot of stuff. But Mercantile as its own skill is kind of redundant when you have Speechcraft, so you merge the two - et voila, you increase your encumberance by leveling your Speechcraft skill.

Also, i dont think perks need to be the answer for everything either. Your abilities and such dont need to be entirely solid, im pretty sure there will be quit a bit of inbetween-the-lines skill gainage. if you do more of one thing, you get better. like they said, its all how you play the game.

This. Leydenne's already talked about how you could jump from building to building when you're acrobatics got high enough. I mean, it was pretty urealistic.

The only time athletics became important to me is after I installed nGCD and Realistic Fatigue (both mods). But the point is, we had to mod in a reason to make athletics important.

~ Dani ~

Edit: Oh yes, the Khajiit image is sooo cool, I may actually play a beast race for the first time.