» Wed Dec 14, 2011 7:34 am You are my favourite game developers and I care about you and your games enough to register for the forums and write this feedback thread even though I usually never register anywhere. I speak for myself and the crowd of slightly older (30 years+) roleplayers who have purchased and enjoyed most Elder Scrolls games to this day, along with the Fallout series, Wizards & Warriors, Might & Magic and so on. My motivation for this post was inspired by the fact that while I enjoyed Skyrim and appreciate all the work you put into it, I found myself going back to Oscuro's modded version of Oblivion after just under 100 hours, and I perceive a certain trend in newer roleplaying games that causes me concern. There are still many roleplayers out there who very much prefer the oldschool style of roleplay game to newer, simpler and more strongly action oriented games. I hope that we oldschoolers will continue to be heard, and that you don't value the mass market of FPS players more highly than us oldschool roleplayers.
Let's group the feedback into the good and the bad - to explain why I had fun, band why it did not last as long as I had hoped.
The Good
Perks system: Awesome. This was the new addition I loved the most, and it kept character development interesting despite the lack of character classes and attributes.
Huge, open, realistic world: Not much to say there, it's one of the greatest strengths both of your development team and the Elder Scrolls series to keep pulling this off so well.
Crafting: More crafting than ever before, even for non-magic users... me and my friends loved it.
Handmade, non-generic world: It's beautiful, and you know it!
Quests and Storyline: The Elder Scrolls world has grown over decades, and it shows - all those books, little discoverable details about history and other elements, many interesting, often surprising and unique quests. Some reviewers complained about the main storyline, but I really don't see why... if you look at it, pretty much every possible Fantasy story has already been told and the so highly praised Dragon Age invasion wasn't any more or less original than the Dovahkiin saga. The only difference is in the depth of character and especially NPC backgrounds and personalities. Your NPCs, even followers remain quite two-dimensional, but hey, that's cool. If we demanded everything you'd spend 15 years developing the next game.
Modding support: The release of development tools, and your overall planned and upcoming support of the modding community is exemplary. Many thanks in advance!
The Bad
Level Scaling of rewards and some opponents: The one thing that bugged me the most. I thank you for disabling the development of level 100 rats that we had in Oblivion, but the partial level scaling is still awkward and removes a great deal of potential appeal from the game. The main reason I have now enjoyed Oscuro's modded Oblivion for twice as long as Skyrim (and I'm still playing) is the complete removal of any sort of level scaling. Let me explain why.
Firstly, there are balancing issues. I breeze through a dungeon and two-hit hordes of monsters there, turning difficulty up to master, only to then be completely and utterly annihilated by the level-scaled badass NPC towards the end. A lot of difficulty switching ensues, but even with the option of turning it up or down it never really feels satisfying. I also wondered why you would go such lengths to create a world that feels realistic and alive only to destroy the effect with the partial level scaling. So I'm a hero who has killed countless dragons... why does a camp of ordinary level scaled bandits suddenly give me such trouble? I just waded through a sea of Stormcloak soldiers that I two-hitted. And why does some ordinary small cave close to a large city have an ebony hauberk in a chest only because I'm level 40? It really hurts the atmosphere of a believable world. And the spellbooks, this is something else that bothered me quite a bit. Why can't I find or buy high level spells of doom and destruction even though I can't use them? Why do they magically appear once my skill level is higher? For a long time, I was not motivated to train my magic skills at all because every single spell in existence was a low level one, the better versions did not seem to exist. It would be so very much more motivating to see the full potential magic can reach, right from start - I would then know what I am training for, and would have something to look forward to.
What Oscuro did with his Oblivion mod is something I would love to see continued officially in future Elder Scrolls games: Static content of greatly varying difficulty and reward quality spread across the world in ways that make sense realistically. Dungeons closer to great cities are usually easier to tackle and contain lesser rewards, the further out in the wilderness something is found, the greater the challenge and reward. The vampire patriarch in his fortress deep in the wilderness carries a dagger of doom and destruction - the little bandit group in the village sewers doesn't. Even with an open world, you can over the course of the main questline and faction questlines guide players towards the areas with greater challenges. Sure, I might still receive an easy quest in the later game, but so what? Even if I breeze through it, if it tells an interesting story, the location is visually interesting with secrets to discover and / or if the quest matters for character or faction development I will still enjoy it. And if it is clear that it won't be worth the effort (plenty of ways to give hints, most notably from NPCs) I'll skip the quest and tackle something else. More players than you know get massive kicks out of trying to survive challenges they aren't geared / skilled for, and feel greatly satisfied if they somehow (after three hours of reloading) managed to sneak past all those deadly threats to get that one superitem that is a massive upgrade to what they currently have. This is how many of us get the most long-term fun. Level scaling is booooring. Realistic world for the sixy win!
Overall difficulty and balancing: You underestimate most of your playerbase. Absolutely every Skyrim player I know plays only on master. The game has an alright difficulty during the earlier stages at character development, but at some point the only way to still experience any sort of challenge is to turn difficulty to the max. This hints at balancing flaws.
No spell creation This is the other main reason I went back to Oblivion. I miss it very, very, very much, and I'm not the only one by far. I don't understand why the option was removed - don't underestimate the playerbase, we can handle a bit of complexity :tongue:
No character classes. According to the vibes I get from the rest of the playerbase near me, many really don't like the fact that any skill they have to use (such as lockpicking) makes them level up even more quickly. They would prefer to focus on developing the build they had in mind for their character, and not gain 10 levels from crafting only because it is something they enjoy. Once again, it feels like you underestimate the playerbase.
No interesting character attributes. I played a sneaky thief-archer who never really developed magic because I did not realize there were worthwhile spells in the game. I did not use the zoom perk because it wasn't that much of a help, thus I didn't really need stamina, or magicka. I generally avoided close combat where I could and didn't get hit much. I might as well have had no attributes at all to raise - I needed some measure of health, but apart from that, every option was equally unimportant. Please bring attributes back! It would be so much more exciting if NPCs reacted differently depending on my personality attribute, or if they commented on my beefy build with high strength, etc. You fixed what wasn't broken, and, you guessed it - underestimated the playerbase. Why not make automatic increases on level ups an option for FPS players, but one that can disabled for those of us who enjoy a bit of complexity?
WoW-inspired levelling speed. This has actually been a feature of the newer Fallout games and Oblivion, as well, and it already bothered me there. Heck, it bothered me in World of Warcraft. Where is the fun in breezing past the majority of equipment upgrades and areas suited for my level? It makes upgrades so short term that they become meaningless. In Skyrim, I skipped all the gear upgrades between elven and glass / dragon (glass only for weapons). Here's the thing, if you made levelling 3 times slower and created a realistic world without level scaling, players would experience more content suited for their level, for a longer time. If you create such a huge world, motivate us to experience more of it, instead of breezing past 75% of the content!
Hardly any NPC variety After 15 or so dungeons with similar design elements and the same kind of undead I swear I can't see any of them anymore. There are still a lot more dragon words to collect, but the mere thought of entering yet another of those dungeons makes me want to search the world for another dwarven ruin just for the sake of something different. I haven't encountered nearly as many Falmer, either. It's mostly those undead... again, and again, and again. Their dungeons look very much alike, as well, even though they are handmade. I loved the one with the floating wisps, even though they didn't do anything. It was a neat change.
Shorter faction questlines The bard's college hardly had any quests at all, and overall, I became archmage way too quickly - despite not having a single magic skill even at 50. I would have preferred more faction quests and less random ones (that I might or might not discover). Also, the repeatable thieves guild quests felt like a grind with little variety that didn't bring any improvement. After 8 of them and not seeing any progress for the guild, I had lost my motivation.
Faction questlines enforcing unreasonable character decisions. Many of my friends roleplay their characters - there are certain things they would do, or not do. I was unable to finish the already rather short Companions and Thieves Guild questlines because even though it was just a game, I felt they enforced decisions my character would never agree to. I ended up walking out on both of them - no, my character would neither want to be mutated, nor be bound after death for a bunch of people she only got to know a few weeks before. Please, make such decisions an option, not a requirement for those of us who roleplay.
