Simplification can be a very bad thing. Everytime I've heard that or "accessibility" over the last 4 years it's meant "We're putting less in the game and hoping you don't notice."

^^Thanks for the info, as displeasing as it is

Sometimes, sure, but we aren't talking about regression. This isn't a step back so much as a step in a different direction. And in general, expansion isn't always a good thing - it's nice to have more, but more skills means more useless skills and less differentiation between the skills and the systems that use them. Daggerfall had plenty of skills, but a huge amount of them did next to nothing and a fairly large amount more were mostly useless. Morrowind had fewer skills, but those skills were better-handled. Oblivion, again, had fewer skills, but the individual skills that they kept had far more depth to them than Morrowind's skills did and the gameplay systems designed around them were far more complex.

Skill consolidation allows them to put more focus on the individual skills and on differentiating those skills. That's a trade-off, but I really don't see why so many people take it to be an inherently bad trade.




See, again, what I've already said about "dumbed down". Also, why are you making the assumption that stamina is replacing or being treated like strength in Skyrim (it isn't)? Why are you making the assumption that things like running speed aren't going to be determined by your character's skills? Why are you... basically making several far-reaching (and in at least one case, wrong) assumptions to try and make this seem as bad as possible?

I've got still the hope they mean 18skills beside the magical skills.

They are trying to turn the game more user-friendly to please the masses... I′m rather curious on how this skill list will turn out

To me, dumbing down simply means losing game mechanics, especially those that enhance customizability

Dumbing down means taking away depth or a portion of the gameplay in favor of simplicity. Steam-lining preserve these depths or replaces them with something better in favor of ease. If they allocated some of these mechanics they are still preserved just somewhere else.

No problem. To put it in context:

"Use one-handed weapons and your skill with them will improve. Cast lots of illusion spells and your abilities with that school of magic will be amplified."

This very much sounds like 'blade' & 'blunt' will become 'one-handed' & 'two-handed'. However, that doesn't actually decrease the number of skills, so it doesn't really get us any closer to learning what else has been axed/absorbed from the OB skill set.

They're trying to make the game that user-friendly that my little 7years old sister can play and understand it without problems.

Okay... let's run with Oblivion as an example, since I'm fairly certain that's the one people are thinking of. Does Oblivion have fewer skills than Morrowind? Yes... but the gameplay revolving around those skills is more complex, and those skills have certain "tiers" that unlock additional abilities (making the individual skills considerably more interesting than the ones in Morrowind). Does it have fewer factions? Yes... but those factions are (again) more complex in terms of quest design and variation. Does it have fewer quests? I haven't counted. I wouldn't be surprised. But those quests rarely boil down as far down to the pointless and basic A-to-B fetch-and-deliver that Morrowind so consistently used. There were quests like that, but they generally introduced some tweak or some element that at least made them stand out the slightest bit from the mold (and by design they had to - Oblivion couldn't pad game length with walking time and searching the way Morrowind could, mainly because of the compass and fast travel).

Basically, Oblivion's got (or at least, I'm fairly sure it's got) less content if you look at it in purely numerical terms... but to say that they put less in the game simply isn't true, because the content that it did have was considerably deeper and more well-developed than what they had in Morrowind (note: not in terms of writing, in terms of design). It's not about sheer numbers, it's about how they've developed the things those numbers represent.


They don't.



Then I'm not really sure how that applies as plainly as you're trying to apply it here. The attributes were something used by a number of different game mechanics, but I'm not sure it's even fair to call them a game mechanic all on their own - they were basically just a sheet of numbers that influenced other things. If the new system works the way they claim that it does and the perks associated with it are varied and interesting enough, losing those numbers isn't a flat loss, nor is losing a very small portion of the skills in the game. You're doing more or less exactly what I said most people who use the phrase "dumbed down" are doing: you're claiming that something is "dumbed down" not because of an outright and overall loss of content, but because it's different.

So...you're telling me that's not simplified?

I know the point you were trying to make in terms of what we might see, but I very much disagree with this. OB was at critical mass, at the dangerously low end, of skill count determining depth.
[edit] Thanks for clarifying.


Tausig, not that it will all end in total despair, but there is little to go on other than a brief word that these set of skills will be handled particularly better.

You guys don't seem to understand. The skill system will be slightly more simple, not even that much more. And it will become more specialized with the perks.

From the skills they had in Oblivion and the way they were used:

Athletics and Acrobatics can be turned into perks easily (+x% to speed, jump higher, etc).
Speechcraft and Mercantile can be combined into a new skill, lets call it Streetwise.

Hand-to-hand could also be "scrapped" or "transformed" as well. Since Morrowind, it have been a bit ineffective.

See, that's not at all what you asked me in your original post. And again, if the skills and perks are handled properly... no, that's not a simplification. It's just different.


Not at all what I was actually saying with that. The actual skill levels, for the most part, didn't have a big enough impact on the gameplay in Oblivion. That was a design decision. But taken on their own, the skills themselves were far deeper and more varied than the ones in Morrowind. Particularly thanks to the bonuses you'd get from achieving those various tiers of advancement, increasing them had a considerably more tangible feel and a more apparent impact on the game than just "higher skill means more hits" or "higher skill means casting better".

I'm not saying that Oblivion used its skills well. I'm saying that the skills themselves were deeper and more complex.

Yes you gain perks, but (from what I can tell) I think I'd rather have attributes. Basically, I'm speculating that perks < attributes in complexity

That makes more sense. And I have actually thought similar things.

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Attributes are not gone for sure, just unmentioned.

I have a feeling we're gonna have to jam this idea into everyones head, like we did when we had to tell every new guy on the forum TESV wouldn't be an mmo.

In what sense? Perks are more numerous and typically represent clearer, far more specific, and more apparent changes to your character's abilities and to how the game actually plays. How is that less complex than a series of numbers being tossed into random dice rolls?

Now that you put it that way. it does seem pretty good

but to have skills like

axe ,spear , longbalde, shortblade, blunt weapon

equal to

one handed and two handed

is a big gamepalydifference
because you've to decide which weapon you want to use

We needed more skills, not less.

Well since attributes are out, you can call it persuasion.

There are no objective criteria for complexity in this sense, so arguing is pointless

At lestiks kind of like having 18 major skills now... I would take so long picking my skills cuz I wanted them all lol