your thoughts?

Personally for me the Elder Scrolls fascinates in its ability to interlink interesting characters along the player’s storyline and throughout quests, dumbing down of such could limit my own in-game fun, however I would trade in complex and slow game mechanics for polished ones any day of the week.

In my opinion simpler can mean more complex. I'll explain below;

Take Gran Tourismo 5 as an example of a game that tried to be too complex. In the end, what the user ended up with was a racing game that had this huge amount of content and the game had lots of things that were done well, but none that were really done excellently. So, when compared to say Forza 3 (its direct competitor) it feels as though Forza is a much more complex game even though, it has much less content and actually has less options in a sense. This is because what Forza does, it does excellently. Sure, you get less cars, tracks and options but in the end, Forza feels more complete and better quality than GT5 even though it is simpler. This is because the elements that Turn 10 focused on in the development of Forza 3 were core gameplay mechanics such as damage modelling, tyre flexing and vehicle handling. Where as with GT5, Polyphonic went for the "more is better" mentality and neglected to improve the core game mechanics and instead focused on porting over cars from GT4 and adding in new tracks and some new "premium" vehicles which ultimately, were good for marketing puroses but once the player actually got their hands on the product they were left wondering whether Polyphonic were serious that GT5 was a racing sim. Since the basic mechanics of a racing sim such as damage modelling, vehicle handling and car physics did not simulate the real world anywhere near to the degree that one would expect from a true racing sim. However the game was marketed as a racing sim so it looses huge points because the developer went for the "more is better" approach rather than making the core elements as good as they could possible be. And this is what I mean when I say keeping it simple can actually make a game more complex.

Streamlining ideas into a more coherent game mechanic or narrative feels much more complex and polished than having a game with hundreds of unique ideas and game mechanics which ultimately, are incoherent and feel clunky and cumbersome.

So as far as I am concerned, I would rather have a few features removed or changed in the way they are implemented but have them done fantastically well. Than have a game with hundreds of ideas which don't really gel to make a coherent game. Because the former will feel much more complex than the latter. Even though in reality it is actually simpler. Much like Forza 3 feels more refined and complete than GT5 despite the fact it has less content.

The view that Forza 3 is better than GT5 is entriely my personal opinion and I accept that others may feel differently. I am simply using it as an example.