Morrowind was a different place than Cyrodiil. If Cyrodiil had so many different biomes that are so strange, that would be really, really weird for the capital of the Empire.

It's less to do with which biomes it had, but rather how they are portrayed. The problem is that the biomes chosen had great potential to be diverse and interesting in a way that looks natural, but instead come down to "How high is it?" "How sparse are the trees?" "What colour is it?"

That's a generalisation, there are a few slightly more interesting places, but the majority of the land gives that feel.

If Skyrim had the same leveling system I use for Oblivion, I might have played it this year...

That's interesting. I'm currently leveling a mage character, which is now at level 18 or so and I'm using a good range of spells from all schools and all levels, including the stock spells! I suppose it might be different depending on how you spend your perks, but if you only used the highest level spells that were available, you wouldn't be able to conserve magicka over longer fights without sinking a dozen potions or more just to stay alive! Well, that's how I've found it anyway, and I'm really enjoying the whole magic thing in Skyrim. I've found that it's far more challenging than melee approach, it's great fun! Spell creation would be nice, but with the way they've done magic in Skyrim, I can't see that it would be as useful as it was for Oblivion or Morrowind.

As far as diversity of environments goes, I'm very happy with Skyrim, probably because whilst playing Oblivion I, like Pseron Wyrd, spent most of my time in the Jeralls and in Bruma, my favourite area of that game. But I think there's plenty enough diversity of landscape in Skyrim, as there is with Oblivion and Morrowind.

The 'hand-holding' began with Oblivion, and they've just got a little better at it with Skyrim, which is good for business as it allows for their games to appeal to a wider audience. However, it's not such a big deal for me, I just leave quests inactive (unselected) and try to ignore the compass/points-of-interest as much as I can etc. In short, I refuse to hold their hand!

If Oblivion had Skyrim's graphics and combat, I'd never stop playing it. Bethesda clearly doesn't understand the concept of streamlining and simplifying. The whole concept is to rework weird concepts and make them flow better. For example, when it comes to repairing items, they should be done at a grindstone or workbench. Bethesda takes the cheap way out and just removes the whole system. Truly I tell you, nothing beats the feel of thrusting a sword through somebody that has just been sharpened. You just get the feel that you are on top of your game.

Given the commercial success of the series, and the increase in sales for newer releases compared to the older, I think Bethesda understands exactly what they are doing. I just don't think they are doing what some of us would like. Skyrim made a fortune, breaking records, and given that it's classified as an RPG it's even more incredible. We can all point out things that we dislike, areas we wish they had "improved", and features we want them to implement. Regardless, Bethesda hasn't made a mistake yet when it comes to The Elder Scrolls, at least, not since Morrowind.

Yeah, Skyrim has flaws, but doesn't every game have flaws? I enjoy Skyrim for what it is, being able to ragdollize enemies and NPCs you don't like, it having a much better look and feel to Oblivion (No offence to Bethesda, but the Adoring fan's face has soiled my eyesight), and it having better combat overall. I tried to like Morrowind, but after dying to a rat whilst docked out in full steel armour and every hit I tried to make against it missed, I gave up on it.

I think it could be argued just as much that it's the popularity and expanding awareness of the series that is fuelling the higher sales, and it's not necessarily the quality of the games or the "accessibility" of the games that is causing it. If you only do one test in an experiment and it's a success, but don't do any other tests, how do you know those tests wouldn't also be a success? Every single TES game has had a significantly improved public popularity, all this tells us is that it's becoming a famous and well-established franchise, not that every design choice they make is causing more people to buy it? I reckon if the series had a real competitor doing a similar thing, they might have more trouble if people realise the other franchise has better mechanics. It's difficult to say exactly what type of mechanics would be generally preffered, but I get a feeling it would be somewhat different to the current situation.

That's a legitimate possibility, but I doubt it's as strong an argument as one would hope. Does anyone really think that just because the series has become better known that the games would have sold to a larger demographic if they had become more like a hardcoe RPG? I seriously doubt it. I'm sure sales would have continued to increase, but I don't think they'd look anything like they do today. When Skyrim was released almost every demographic of gamer rushed to purchase it. I would dearly love to see TES become a true hard-and-fast CRPG. I just don't think that's ever going to happen. If it did, I'm sure more people who want that would buy the game, but it wouldn't take many iterations in the series to be released before people outside that demographic began to shun it again.

It should be obvious: until people play the game, they don't know whether they like new mechanics or not. Since initial sales make up a HUGE part of the overall sales of video games (in general), it would be fair to say that significantly less than 50% of Skyrim's sales to date are made with a solid foreknowledge of the mechanics. Therefore, it's the franchise selling the game right now.

In another few months, we'll see what the word of mouth sales are doing. If my little tiny corner of the world is any indication, it's not pretty so far, with over 50% of the Skyrim owners having abandoned it, myself included.

Where are you pulling those numbers from? Outside of forums like this one, I haven't heard anyone who was dissatisfied with Skyrim.

If you're referring to Heavy Metal Archmage then he's not necessarily saying that anyone is dissatisfied. His point is that at least a majority of people buying Skyrim do so without a significant understanding of the game's mechanics or concepts. Instead they spy it on Steam as the top selling for about 6 months in a row, or they hear about it through word of mouth, etc. and decide to try it. So again it's not that he's saying anyone is 'dissatisfied', it's we're at a point where at least 50% of Skyrim's players bought it without really knowing just too much detail about what they could expect from the TES franchise.

Now whether or not this 50%+ figure is accurate or not, I'm not sure. I'd say that at least half of the people who bought Skyrim also bought or played Oblivion, but I don't think there's any way to easily make that determination.

The point is that the early commercial success of Skyrim is almost certainly based on something other than mechanics.

Skyrim shipped something like 5 million copies in the first week. How many of those people can we reasonably pin down as having somehow "known" the new mechanics were to their liking? The answer is going to be so small that it's statistically meaningless compared to the number who bought the game based on Oblivion's reputation, let alone people who were fans from the Arena, Daggerfall, or Morrowind days.

As Skyrim had, at last word, shipped around 10 million, to have anything approaching 50% of purchasers using changed game mechanics as a reason for purchase would, in the most basic sense, require almost everyone who bought the game since week 1 to have bought it exclusively because of the new mechanics. That didn't happen, and we're all smart enough to know that.

Or, to summarize it in one sentence, "Skyrim's commercial success or failure cannot reasonably be construed as an endorsemant or refutation of the design philosophy behind the game mechanics, as at least five million copies were sold before an opportunity for meaningful critiques of the system could have existed and therefore sales figures are an entirely invalid argument at this point in time."

I knew that Attributes were gone from the game before I bought my copy. I knew that mechanics like birthsigns, spellmaking and item degradation were gone before I bought my copy. I knew that fast travel was still in the game. I knew that dual-wielding, crafting and upgrading, Radiant quests, followers, marriage and other mechanics had been added to the game. I knew all of this and I was not even one of the legions of gamers who stripmined every video and interview to discover the smallest nuggets of information in the months leading up to release. Now that I have become more familiar with the game's mechanics I think I'm in a position to say I knew a fair amount about Skyrim's game mechanics before I bought the game. And I would say I was among the more ignorant consumers out there (willfully so).

Neither of us know what percentage of buyers purchased the game without knowing a single thing about the game they purchased. But I'm willing to bet it's significantly smaller than the percentage you would like us to believe.

The original statements I was replying to were regarding commercial success versus reputation and "whether TES was a hardcoe RPG".

When I refered to a solid foreknowledge, I'm not talking "yeah, I read about them". Most people here did that. Then they bought the game. Some adore the mechanics, and a loud group of us despise them. Tell me, did the latter have the foreknowledge of the mechanics necessary to make the purchasing decision that was best for them?

My objection is to people citing Skyrim's commercial success as "popular endorsemant of the mechanics". There's almost no way that's the case relative to the sales generated by the brand itself.

ie, did you buy the game because of the TES nameplate or the change in game mechanics? Did you know whether you'd like no attributes, Radiant Story, and dual-wielding *before* you played? I certainly didn't know I'd hate them.

do you know anyone who seriously said "No attributes? I MUST OWN THIS GAME NOW!"? How many people do you know who heard "It's by the Fallout 3 people? I'm in!"?

We don't know whether Skyrim would have or could have succeeded as a hardcoe RPG, and we'll never know for certain because Bethesda didn't take that route. In fact, I'm hard-pressed to think of any franchise that has stuck to its roots in the face of broad awareness and modest commercial success. Needless to say, that makes it virtually impossible to say what "probably" would have been the outcome.

My argument is simply this: Skyrim sold more copies by being from the "Oblivion people" or the "Fallout people" than it does for all the stuff they added or removed, and by a substantial margin.

Makes sense if it's true.

Pseron Wyrd has the right of it, I think. Perhaps nobody said "Finally, they took out attributes, now I can play this game!" But the vast majority did know something of the game's mechanics, and said "Yeah, that sounds like a good time." You seem to be arguing that half the people who bought Skyrim were dissatisfied with the gameplay, and had they known, they wouldn't have bought it. That's nonsense. I'm willing to bet that even 50% of the people on these forums would agree with that.

He's not saying that though. Nowhere has he tried to say that anyone is dissatisfied with the gameplay. Rather, had Skyrim had gameplay similar to previous titles or 'hardcoe' RPGs is there any reason to think that it would've sold less, or that virtually everyone satisfied with the game at present would not still be more or less satisfied with a stat-heavy, RPG-centric Skyrim?

Ah you're right. I missed that line it seems.

In that case I kind of have to agree with Jiub. There is no widespread discontent at large in the gaming community for Skyrim, otherwise we'd have seen Skyrim's score begin to drop in game reviewer aggregate websites like Metacritic, which hasn't happened.

Granted, I hear whispers from friends or classmates who I know are fans of Elder Scrolls who say they were disappointed with (though not necessarily dissatisfied) with Skyrim. By and large though, the discontent seems limited to the forums, and clearly nothing like 50% of the entire Skyrim player base is on the cusp of revolting, or abandoning the game. Of course I would argue that the reason the people on the forums are disappointed is because by and large we're the most informed, most thoughtful, and more exposed [to other's ideas] segment of the TES population. But that wasn't Archmage's point and doesn't need to be contested here.

Of course, in his defense he did say that in his corner of the world 50% of the people have abandoned Skyrim. So out of his friends and acquaintances his statement may very well be accurate, but I would contest that this is not a trend that we'll see carried over to the broader player body.

I think people are also missing the likely quite common conclusion from previous fans of the series, something which I expressed earlier last year. "Even if Skyrim isn't as good as Oblivion/Morrowind, why would I pass up the chance to play more of a series I love". This is the advantage of having a series of games in a genre with no competitors. Almost your entire fanbase will probably want to continue regardless of the quality/content of the next game simply because there is no other option available to get their fix. When my family was on a road trip, recently, my mother would get a coffee everyday. It didn't matter to her if the coffee was crap or it cost far too much or they didn't heat it well or only half filled the cup, she wanted coffee and sometimes there was only one option. This anology hopefully demonstrates my point.

I think that's a good way of putting it, Dragonbone.

It also illustrates why some of us are so concerned over the direction of the series. When your favorite video game genre is basically (for lack of a better term) 'Open world, big-ass RPG', and there's only one company making those types of games, with installments only once every five years...you can see how it gets depressing if you don't like the latest installment of your favorite genre, and have no indication that the next installment will be any better. In fact if trends hold it will be (at least in your mind) worse.

Oh, I'd agree that my circles (multiple) aren't exactly "normal", given that you don't see many people working for low-end retailers who are avid PC gamers. Let alone three in a work crew of ten. It's a little bit of an expensive hobby when your starting wage is less than $8/hour.

Any discussion of who is/isn't playing is fundamentally secondary. It's anecdotal, and it's just providing a snapshot of what I'm seeing: 3 people admittedly quit, 1 person I can verify hasn't played in the last 2 weeks (through Steam), and three people I only assume are still playing.

And you're tending to focus on the secondary details. The main question is still reputation versus popularity through new-found accessability, and I still say it's pure crap to believe that a statistically significant number of people bought the game inside the first 2 months due to "new-found accessability".

I am a PC gamer turned console gamer. I recently returned to PC gaming because of 2 PC mods.

The first and my personal favorite is Morroblivion. MW combined with the oblivion Gamesbyro engine. Check it out here. http://morroblivion.com/
It's not too hard to install thanks to this post of instructions. http://morroblivion.com/forums/morroblivion/mods/2173

The second hasn't been released but I have high hopes it comes to light one day. That is Andoran. They originally were planning to make a new game out of the Oblivion game engine and it was originally scheduled to be released late 2011.

Since the Creation Engine is similar to the Gamesbyro Engine the Andoran team created a conversion kit. They recently posted a trailer of the revised Andoran game on the Creation engine. It's stunning to say the least. http://andoran.com/en/

The reason why I share this info is because The Andoran team has released the conversion tool to the Morroblivion team. Which means.......I'll let u dream up the possibilities. Kudos to those teams.

I love each TES game for what it is. I look at them as if they were a individual family member(not really). One different from one another but I love them the same. Same as each Fallout.

Right now i think my only gripe about Skyrim is the simplistic character "design" and lack of attributes. At first it didn't bother me. I rationalized it as, being able to adjust either Health, stamina, or mana however you like is the same end result of having attributes right?

Well, yes, but the simplistic design effects ones perception of depth. An RPG should feel like it has some depth to it. Currently im taking a break and playing Legend of Grimrock ( http://store.steampowered.com/app/207170/ ) And playing through it, it has reminded me just how important attributes are. Now, Diablo 1 and 2 aren't really considered RPG's by the more hardcoe RPG fans, but even those games had attributes!

I have to admit i've never been a big fan of the original leveling system in how you increased your attributes, nonetheless I find myself thinking that the removal of attributes and free flowing birthsigns was a big mistake. It really makes character building feel generic and vanilla - dumbed down even. Each character you build should feel unique and they don't.