[Skeptic. sorry, can't change it now. ]

My biggest problems with Oblivion are already known to be solved in Skyrim.

However, those problems took me completely by surprise in Oblivion, so now I'm worried a new problem will appear and make the game much worse for me.

Has anyone made a list of... "changes that you might hate"? (just to review it and confirm that I'm not bothered by any of those.)

The list:
- no casting spells with both hands occupied. (I think this is an improvement).
- no separate piece of armor for legs. (I love this one, I really hate that the optimal armor for my guy is so ridiculously mismatched.)
- no athletics (improvement, for me).
- no custom spells (aaaaargggggg... ... ok I'll live with it. Better to know it now than after becoming the archmage of the wizards guild)
- no hand to hand (I never used it anyway.)

well for the most part i agree with beth on everything.... but the fact that they took out spell making kinda annoys me :sadvaultboy:

"Exceptic" isn't a word.

And yeah, I'm upset at the removal of Hand to Hand as a skill (instead of making it cool and viable), the dissolution of Mysticism as its own school (instead of making it cool and viable), and the omission of throwing weapons, crossbows, and spears. Spellmaking I'm glad to see gone.

Yeah, that really bugs me. I wish you could go back and remove it, not that you would, but it makes me go from "oh, what's his point" to "stupid nonsense words" fairly fast.

"Problems" are based on the opinions of individuals. As individuals are individual, there will always be problems in TES games. (See "what do you MEAN the preorder map isn't cloth?!")

Not seeing any huge ones for myself (thus far), so am pretty happy.

For me the most unpleasant surprise could come from the story and dialogue. I can always adapt to new game mechanics, but if the main quest is weak and the writing uninspired, the game can't svck me in for long.

A badly trained swordsman would destroy a master at hand to hand. There was no making it viable without being idiotic.

That's a very poor statement. A poorly trained swordsman tries to hit a master in hand to hand, said master bats away his sword arm and has him knocked out before he can say "why wasn't I trained better?".

A lot is possible in empty handed against sword. Of course it's not boxing, instead you would use throws and joint locks and direct the opponent's force against him, as in Aikido for instance.

But I believe such a system is very difficult to implement and I can understand if they left it out because they had other things to focus on. But if they wanted to put so much focus on "different weapon - different style", this would have really enriched Skyrim. Same thing for spears.

a poorly trained swordsman who is intelligent can defeat a master of hand to hand...

Crap...Skeptic... ffs I even remembered there was something wrong with that word because I made the same mistake a while ago...

Sorry for the awful English. (not my first language, etc, etc.)




I agree that all problems are perfectly ok for someone, otherwise, they'd never get into the game design. However, I'm sure any feature that's a problem for me is also a problem for many other people.

I don't mind at all with most of what I've read but there might be some that are't constantly in the first page and I may have missed. What I'm looking for is a list like:
- no casting spells with both hands occupied. (I think this is an improvement).
- no separate piece of armor for legs. (I love this one, I really hate that the optimal armor for my guy is so ridiculously mismatched.)
- no athletics (improvement, for me).
- no custom spells (aaaaargggggg... ... ok I'll live with it. Better to know it now than after becoming the archmage of the wizards guild)
- etc...


Actually, I'll paste the list in the first post.

Yeah, no. It's not going to happen. You can be smart or dumb, if you aren't well trained, you won't be in tune with the sword. A hand to hand master will have been trained in how to separate a fool from his weapon.

^ this. Wielding a sword doesnt instantly make you a killing machine. A chinese proverb states it takes 100'000 swings of a sword before you can use it.

OK, fine:

"A master of hand to hand will never beat a similarly trained swordsman."

I don't care how good he is, he's not going to be able to fight a guy who's been trained to the same level with a sword. It's just too big a disadvantage. This is why hand to hand wasn't really ever realistic.

Exactly. The only difficult part is to dodge the first blow, then you have to get close. To attack with a sword you need a minimum distance, to attack with your hands you don't. But for equally trained fighters, the guy with a sword has an advantage. That's why people use them in the first place.

However, I can understand people who want to role-play a fighter who is highly skilled h2h, as you *are* usually better trained than the average bandit.

I feel like being a mage is a little stuffier this time around. In the previous games there was a sense of learning about magic and how it worked, through studying spell effects and spell creation but now we have to use what they give us and that's it.

Warrior types can learn combat strategies, moves that will insure victory. Stealth players will find all the right combos of sneaking, theft, and poisons to make each play different.

Mages... well, we're stuck with what we got. Magic dosn't feel very magical anymore. It feels more like a superpower than an arcane art. Something you just do as opposed to something you study and learn about.

Hand-to-hand (in real life) was usually an alternative for if you don't have a weapon. For example, karate was developed in Okinawa where peasants weren't allowed to be armed. Jujutsu is a Samurai art for when you lose your sword on the battlefield - so it focuses on joint locks which aren't affected if the opponent is wearing armor. Aikido is similar - it's basically a school of jujutsu that separated off. The founder of modern aikido famously had a long battle against a sword master around the turn of last century, where the sword master couldn't touch him. But generally it's either a back-up or a complement to weapons. Not many would choose to be unarmed because they think it's more effective.

That said, we are talking about computer games so it doesn't really matter. They took out Unarmed for the sake of the symmetry of the skill system. Probably they will have your unarmed skill be dependent on one of the other combat skills I suppose. If they treat it as say a "two handed weapon" then they may put in some perks that affect it also. All it needs is a couple of perks and it will be a more detailed ability than it was in Morrowind or Oblivion.

How about a basicly trained archer?

You still need to find spell tomes or learn spells from other mages, your not just geting spells magicly( pun intended).

Except that's not true either, as any military training in close-quarters combat will cover disarming since it's incredibly important. When training is equal it comes down to a combination of natural ability, circumstance, and chance. Being unarmed and facing someone who's armed is a definite disadvantage but it's not a definite loss. Regardless none of the games have depicted armed melee combat realistically in any sense of the word to begin with, so going with the Hammerfell/Elsweyr unarmed combat mastery lore and turning your dude into a kung-fu superstar would have been really cool, especially when combined with a dodge mechanic that would have made a combined athletics/acrobatics skill a viable, useful, and fun thing to have.

I think that's a matter of what you think magic is. If you think of it as a form of physics- and math-like science, where you learn to control higher forces, than the spreadsheetyness makes sense. If you think of it as an intuitive power, it doesn't. I don't know which I would prefer. Probably depends on whether you are an intelligence or willpower magician.

and you are a fool to think that a master in hand to hand doesnt make mistakes at times that would make it that even a fool with a sword could kill him. Look thoughout history, many men who were known for thier skill in a certain art died because of foolish mistakes or they let thier gaurd down, Pride can also kill a man. A master of hand to hand can go into a battle thinking "ive done this a hundred times before im fine: and then he makes one little mistake that costs him his life.... U get what im getting at? And just because your a master of something doesnt make u smart, therefore a intelligent man still stands a chance againts a master of a art...