I think eventually the "dummy games" will have to stop. Whether or not it will kill off a lot of big devs in the meantime is up for grabs. The average gamer is somewhere in his mid-20s, and 5 years later he'll be 30. Eventually, they'll stop being impressed by kewl graphics and easy gameplay and want something more than just following an arrow. They'll not be interested in the flavor of the week type stories, because they aren't the same adreneline junkies with ADD. Look at the movies aimed at 35 year olds -- sure there are a few Michael Bey flicks, but most of the most popular movies right now have a bit more depth than that. Characters aren't as one dimensional -- heros have a dark side, and villians have a light side. The most popular TV shows aren't the stand alone episodes of 1980 where everything was solved in half an hour, they're things like Lost, or Heros, or other series in which you have to pay close attention to keep up. The most popular HBO series is Game of Thrones -- which isn't really on a 3rd grade level. All of the rest of entertaimnent is going more complex because audiences are older and demand more from a movie or TV show.

A good RPG written for advlts with a good storyline would probably tap the 30+ market a heck of a lot better than something written for 14 year olds. It's one of the things that made me switch to TES from Final Fantasy. I just outgrew it -- FF is essentially aimed at teens and once I reached 24 or 25, sappy love stories about teens saving the world no longer held my attention. This is probably one of the biggest untapped markets out there -- grown-ups who have simply outgrown most of the teenage aimed games that flood the market.

Well there is the problem of those people growing out of games entirely. Some people simply do not have time for an RPG. They jsut want to go shoot some crap to relieve stress and do so for about an hour or less. Then back to whatever they got to do. As their careers take off and there is less time for them to game they will spend less money and get fewer games. I bought way more games from 14-17 than I have from 18-22.

So while it is true that the gamers who stick around will eventually want games with more depth and complexity to them that demographic will also decrease over time due to marriage, jobs, careers, budgeting, kids, etc etc. Not to mention there probably will always be more kids interested in playing video games than there are advlts who are interested in video games. I am thinking the market is going to split to accomadate both audiences in the next ten or so years. When I am in my 30's it will be interesting to see what the gaming industry is like.

Why are you spending your time on a Skyrim forum if you despise it so much? Methinks the man doth protest too much...

However, I do agree that a tad bit of the complexity and richness of prior TES games are lacking in Skyrim.

It might be because it's a TES forum, which existed many years before Skyrim. To many, the Skyrim fanbase represents "outlanders come to steal our land". It's certainly a different type of game than DF and MW.

As for protesting: Picture hearing about the 2013 Corvette coming out, you've been a proud Corvette owner and repeat buyer for years, and then you discover that it's now an SUV, and drives like one. The SUV fans buy it in quantity and it's a big success, but a lot of the "old buyers" feel like a part of their world has died. The new SUV fans point out the logo on the steering wheel and say "it's still a Corvette, what's your problem?", not even understanding the point, because they're not "sports car" fans, they're SUV fans buying the new SUV product that's oddly enough still being marketed as a "sports car".

FTFY

Great anology. Perfectly styled to force a perspective so someone sees your viewpoint!

They just don't give a damn about as someone said "cult follwing",they just want to sell their games as much as they can, and they are doing it fantastic.
Seems like there is a growing trend in gaming to make game as much simple so that none bothers with story,lore,exploring the world, but just need to have great graphics.Sorry to say this, but Beth couldn't care less about old fanbase.It is akin to artists who make pictures just to sell them, not to give part of themeves to their creation.
Morrowind was a beautiful exception.

Not that I truly think they abandoned the old fanbases but this is kind of amusing to me.

Bethesda Gaming Studio's plan.
-Morrowind-Revamp the series by A) Get a hardcoe cult following with an incredibly indepth game that relies on great story, interactions and Lore and not on fun skill based combat blah blah.
Optimize it for PC and port it to consoles.

-Oblivion-begin the appeasemant to "casual gamers" and start trending towards streamlining and consolization. Don't make it obvious. Use the dedicated fanbase from Morrowind too help get more people to buy this game.

-Skyrim- Now that we have enough attention ditch the fanbase that helped support us and keep the newer more profitable casual fanbase.

Blah blah blah more BS dah dah dah

I think Skyrim is a pretty cool guy.

That's just like, my opinion man.

As to the topic, you can turn off quest markers. I really think there are a lot of nostalgia glasses that get put on when it comes to the "superb directions" in older games. This is of course subjective, but I'm just not seeing it. Just finding things was part of the challenge often, but the thing is that wasn't the intention of many developers. It's a shame if that aspect is something that was beloved by a portion of the base (let's not pretend there is some unified "true" fanbase here, people have all kinds of personal opinions), but it's not some mark of honor to be able to.... find a geographic location.

I will worry if they totally eliminate things such as miscellaneous junk items and crafting and such. I think they fumbled magic big time but I think their intentions were far more ambitious, until they cut more and more from their concept until they ended up with what's in the final game.


You are making sweeping assumptions that your personal tastes directly correlate with age. There are young gamers that prefer more challenging games as well, and not everyone plays games strictly for a harder challenge. I think you should stop trying to categorize everything into neat little packages to easily judge. Just worry about what you like, and not what others like. You being more picky does not mean you are more mature. It means your tastes are more specific. Some of us can still enjoy things regardless of how complex they try to be, or what age label may be slapped on them. I'm not saying a single one of your opinions is wrong. By definition they are correct for you. It's when you try to apply those opinions as some strange maturity measuring stick when things go awry. Romance movies have been done over and over for many decades now for example. Some people enjoy new ones still despite that, and why shouldn't they? It's silly to try and make sure what you like it some how "age appropriate." In my opinion it is far less mature to judge your own tastes by your age than it is to simply enjoy what you like without worrying about silly labels.

There are far more to games than simply challenge and plenty of very easy games have multidimensional characters for example. Honestly I think the dark tale of the troubled hero with a dark past or darkness in his/her heart is just as much cliché as any goodie two-shoes, if not even more so in modern games with the prevalence of karma meters and such. I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing, but it's far more of a personal preference than a more "mature" story.

The jist of what I'm saying is there's nothing wrong with being disappointed, but it makes no sense to try and act as if this somehow gives you the right to judge others' over their not agreeing with you. Well you do have that right, but it's silly to do so.

Doubt they will take the quest markers out of the next game. I don't even mind them anymore, but that's just me.

As for why is Skyrim popular? Bethesda advertised it everywhere, and not only that. Skyrim is a good game, a very good game. It's like it was made to impress - take a look at Blackreach and Sovngarde. It is one of those good mainstream things. Be glad that some casual gamers have good taste. Half of me doesn't like Skyrim's popularity, but I've been doing great ignoring it. The same half doesn't like ignorant folk metal-loving, YouTube'd "outlanders" (good job calling them that way). Must be because I do my best to understand the lore and TEs for what it is, and it's more than the games.

Anyway, most pople don't play Skyrim, or any other TES game, the way it was meant to be played. It's not that Skyrim isn't a RPG - it is, it's just not a traditional RPG, it's that people play it like it was a hack-and-slash game. Everyone plays the game his or her own way. You can't help it.

I feel like a Dunmer now.

Yeeeeah, 'cause Oblivion did so much for the complexity of the next TES game after bringing in more fans...read your history boys and girls

Next Elder Scrolls game will have an advanced perk tree system designed to address the complaints of character build in Skyrim. It will not address the failings of character build in Skyrim. It will appeal to those who do not find any fundemental lacking in Skyrim's build, only expand the choices and broaden the range of abilities. The new car's dash will have even more features.

Bethesda could have packaged a brick and almost sold more than last time; they will sell. They could have sold with all the former attributes and spells too, but that will never be proven of course.

No, it will be the opposite, because simplifying the game worked to draw more players (paying customers) in each time they did it, so continuing in that direction will appear to be more profitable to them... and they're right. And they care about making money, not about making unique or intellectually deep experiences.

War_Psyence: It IS a hack-and-slash game. Every TES game is, and despite real-time combat, your success still mostly depends on your character stats, not on real-time decisions. With obvious exceptions, such as... taking off your armor and weapons in a fight and punching. Unless what you mean is that... people enjoy the game for the combat. Well, in Skyrim, that's all there is to enjoy, because the lore has almost been stripped away completely.

...tes games have always been super popular...anyways i think it will be more like skyrim, i doubt they will lose the quest arrow, i just hope they redo the magic system, bring back spell creation...or do a better job of making mages fun,

The dumbing down and hand-holding will probably just get worse and worse as the series becomes more popular. Or at the very least stay the same.

Only if Beth goes indie, so they can cater to the niche crowd again, but it probably won't happen.

Though I'd ask, when have they ever catered to any kind of niche crowd whatsoever? I've bought their games since 1996 just for having their name on it, and I haven't seen their niche catering yet. I had never even heard of Redguard until I saw it at the computer store, but the previous Elder Scrolls games were well known among everyone I knew that had a computer. You know those old Terminator games they did? They were cool as could come, not the niche market stuff.

I really don't think you give Bethesda the credit they deserve. The series has become more popular with every TES release, but it is because of the depth and effort they put into each new title. TES games set the standard of excellent gaming for each release they make, they force the other rpgs to step up their efforts or be seen as lame in comparison. Do you remember how we talked about how the hand-holding and dumbing down were far worse when Morrowind came out? There will always be complaints, and I will always be one of the complainers about this or that. Though honestly, as a person who played the first two Fallouts in their heyday and whatnot, Bethesda's Fallout 3 blew those games away by miles.

The next best thing for TES is to hire Obsidian on as part of the team permanently.

I'm no expert on anything, but the current trend of streamlining and dumbing down seems to be designed to attract the most people in a console dominated era, which is great for casual gamers or people who are new to the series, and thus I don't think we will ever see a return to the deeper and more complex games we have seen in the past. I think I read somewhere that something like 90% of Bethesda's audience (don't quote me on that) is console gamers. They would be absolute fools to ignore those and cast accessibility to the wind, and thus i don't think spears,throwing weapons, attributes, deeper and more complex factions etc will ever return, unless maybe for DLC which would be great.

I think this idea that Beth can't cater to the niche crowd and sell well is ill founded. Make a good game and people will buy it.

90% of Bethesda's audience is console gamers? I fail to see how that could be possible. Bethesda's games are always better on the PC. Not that they are always made with the PC in mind, but the PC's got the mods and the graphics (gamers these days do indeed love their graphics too much), and Bethesda is (still) at core a PC games dev. They have a large fanbase among the PC gamers.


Well, action RPGs do usually have hack-and-slash elements. What I meant is that people play Skyrim as if it weren't a RPG, but nothing more than a mere hack-and-slash game. They don't RP, or give the slightest damn about the storyline or lore, they just kill, kill, kill, GTA-style. Fortunately rampages in Skyrim are pretty boring, making the game less fun, at least for me.
Speaking of the lore, they introduced new one and focused on it. They did a good job with it imo. Skyrim's world seems much more complex and complete than Oblivion's, and I'm impressed they achieved that with voice acting.

Why have spears if you can't throw them? I want to be able to throw the spear, and not just thrust it. If Beth's spear-throwing mechanics aren't decent, it's better to leave such weapons out. Yet I don't think it would take that long to add some fine throw-able spears to the game.

Keep in mind that people complained about Morrowind's lack of hand holding. Gamers want compass, gamers get compass.

Having played and enjoyed the first Fallout game, I might have stopped my comment right before "those games away". Bethesda took yet another character-based RPG and turned it into a semi-FPS game. The graphics needed overhauling, badly, but their sequel's heavy reliance on the player's skill with a controller or rodent still trumped stats in too many cases. It wasn't a "bad" game by any means, but it was a totally different TYPE of game from the earlier ones, and appealed to a somewhat different target audience (with some overlap). In fact, I see it as directly comparable to what happened to the TES series between Daggerfall and Oblivion (with Morrowind hovering somewhere between the two).

As for War_Psyence's remark about throwing Spears, those are called "javelins" and were often very different from the longer and heavier melee weapon, like throwing axes from a battleaxe. I'd really have to be desperate to throw a Sarissa or Kontos, or any other 8 to 22 foot long spear. I don't mind the absence of javelins, but Spears were the MAIN military weapon of most ancient and medieval armies, as well as most of the other cultures, at least on this planet before firearms (Rome with its Shortswords was only an exception for a small part of its history).