I like minigames.. Just don't think they need to be as graphically intense as they've made them in the past. You don't really need a big lock pick game to pop up in front of you. Gothic 1 had a great lockpicking system with no graphical interface.. just right and left patterns of various length depending on the difficulty of the lock. Basically just a long memory game. Yet at the same time I'd like a more graphically intense minigame for creating potions or enchanting. I don't know if those are considered mini-games by most but they seem mini-gamish to me. I'd like to be able to pick up the material.. grind it up, pour it in a beaker, refine it.. etc. etc.. rather than have a tiny pop up and be able to click a button to make a potion. I guess it just comes down to what you consider a mini-game and how you'd want to do things.

I'd rather it rely a bit on player skill at least. if we can't actually do anything, we might as well just watch a damn movie... more entertaining than just watching some animation try to pick a lock for you

yeah i guess thats why it should be impossible at low levels. you don't want to do it over and over with the slim hopes of opening it. and it doesn't have to just be an animation it could be both player skill and character skill.

Hmmm...
Take cooking as a craft. Ir's fine in principle.
Though i have just spotted something that had me second guessing it.
In the Gameinformer feature on Skyrim: Behind the scenes tour with Todd Howard
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlF4gAO9FNI)

At 1:50, the drawing board with the title ?Crafting? is shown over what i assume is a depiction of the whole ?cooking? screen.
...
It looks like it's going to be a minigame.
...

yikes
...

Ahhhh, I was hopiing for seamless gameplay all the way through.
Looks like a second class solution to me.
But, hey, I'm all in for pleasant surprises. I would hate 4 minigames, one for cooking, another for farming ,mining, etc, though.

Oh well, let's Keep the faith alive!

Some minigames take away from the game...

Liek why is my Nord playing a lute to earn money when hes evil and kills people for the fun of it? Or why is he making 200 pies for a small town?

Others like lock picking conversation etc etc add to a game but for some people its not their style. You do have the options to use them or not. You should not say "I dont like this so it does not belong in the game" when other people do infact use it and add to the role the play. You may be a minority of people who say this does not belong in a game or a magority. Everybody should not be punished because you dont use this function in the game. Because even in Oblivion these were choices. You didn't have to play these minigames if you didn't want to.


On the note lock picking. I belive this would make everybody happy to some degree. Very easy 1-25, Easy 26-50, Medium 51- 75, Hard 76-100. Your skill determins what level of lock you can pick. If you dont meet the requirments then it will say somthing like this. "You examin the lock and determine that it is beyond your skills to pick." and if you meet it you can ither play the mini game or use the auto pick. you skill level determins how easily you can pick the lock. Some of you may disagre

Minigames in a bar such as cards/gambling? Yes!
Minigames such as Wheel Of Speechcraft or Stick a Pick? No!

Minigames are not a legitimate replacement for character skill and should be reserved exclusively for "quality of life" enhancements. If your character svcks at picking locks the player should not be able to get the chest/door open, period. If you want to play a game where your skills are more important than your character skills may I recommend Call of Duty?

I dislike them because they get very very repetitive. The lock pick one for example was fine and all the first few times doing it, but by your 20th or 30th lock it became absolutely annoying.

Thank god for the console and "unlock" lol

Well put!

If minigames make skills useless, the mini game is fail. It's like having blade skill 5 in MW and always hitting with your attacks or blade skill 5 in OB and always do max damage. The skills were in OB totally forgotten. That's the simplest reason why I hated them

Two Worlds 2 has pretty neat minigames (I'm still in chapter 1, so there might be more). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yul6Ae0lIs. As you can see, you need to stick your pick (this might sound odd for Dutchies) in the slots, with a time limit. When you increase your skill, you increase the time you get, and the percentage chance of an auto-lockpick.

There also is a music minigame, which is similar to Guitar Hero. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhMDcXKh55c, but you can earn a lot of money. There's five instruments, and it's fun to do.

That (IMO) is the way to make a minigame work. OB's were annoying, really...

Those sound like minigames that would be optional. That's like saying "Why is there a Mages guild when my character is a warrior?" If you could play a lute to earn money, or bake pies I don't see why that would make you do it. That's almost in contradiction with what you said after.


Thing is, you don't have the option to use them or not (as opposed to the suggestions you gave earlier). What about people who want an improved persuasion mini-game? Or people who want it to be more based off of stats (I don't think the mini game had an auto feature like lockpicking did).


I think you should still be able to try. They should just make it so ridiculously complex on hard when your at a lower level and just have it get easier as you raise levels. That was the idea with Oblivions, but the execution just came out wrong. You could pick a hard lock at level 1 from the start, with just a little practice.

Speech minigame felt VERY unnatural.