Thread #2

From the previous thread...
So it's only possible for characters that favor strength and agility, or for players who metagame and dump points into strength and agility for that purpose. Really, that sounds rather exploitive and cheap... instead of letting weak skills be weak, you can pump up specific attributes (without training or even using their related skills) to make them usable. Don't you think you should face consequences for leaving certain skills weak as you level up?

It's only weak because the arbitrary class and birthsign buffs aren't stacked, which requires metagaming to get around. There's no reason a Khajiit mage born under The Lady needs to be a weak build, and it doesn't harm you if it isn't weak. There's plenty of other ways you can willingly gimp your character if you want more challenge than what the game provides.

That's what the difficulty option is for. Complain about Bethesda not providing a real challenge if you must, but it's not the place of character builds to change difficulty since it's pure metagaming and impedes role-play.

No I'm not. You're more than free to favor different stats, use different skills for different characters, even different weapons/abilities within those skills, and take on different personalities... and still be recognized for it. The only difference is you don't start with arbitrary buffs and have to instead earn them through play.

And not everybody wants to be punished because the character they created doesn't stack buffs before even starting the game.

If you make a weak character, you're going to have a tougher time. Common sense. Taking the ability to fail out of a game doesn't make it fun.

What's the difference between starting with a buffed up sword skill and using swords in Morrowind, compared to just picking up and using a sword in Skyrim? Or starting with a buffed up mace skill and using maces in Morrowind, compared to just picking up and using a mace in Skyrim?

The main difference I see is that one requires metagaming and can potentially get in the way of role-play.

It's in-depth, I'll give it that. But it's also boring to work through it because there's so many things you must set up before you even start playing (particularly when it amounts to the same thing... buffing the skills and stats you're going to be using to make them usable; or exploiting the game to hell and back). By all means, provide the ability to tweak characters that much, so long as the game will recognize it, but there's no reason to punish players that don't want to screw around for a half-hour before they can finally start playing.

Simplifying character creation doesn't take the ability to fail out of the game. What it does is remove the ability for players to have messed up characters because what they created doesn't jive with the arbitrary buffs that you'd need.

You seem to be forgetting that these are supposed to be RPGs. It's a genre known (or it used to be known) for its complexity. If something is needlessly complex, yes, go ahead and improve it. But Daggerfall's system wasn't needlessly complex. There is a reason to punish players that don't want to "screw around" to make a new character - it's an RPG, and you should play it like one - that means pre-planning your character build, you know, all those things that go along with being an RPG and not an FPS. This simplification the genre is undergoing isn't evolution, it's regression, and it isn't something to be applauded.

Dont know, but hero riding on Dragon and maybe able to grab some gound enemies in Skyrim's kind of open world free-roam world, if they do it Bethesda's boss laugh on the way to the bank. They should keep improving what ES is best at. Who knows really. Im kind of worried I remember Bethesda saying Skyrim's success was big surprise for them. It wasnt for me. Maybe they dont realize all the potential in this.

TES has never been a standard RPG, being that it's always had a focus on real-time action, blending player skill with character skill, and sandbox gameplay. Even Morrowind is nothing like what a "real RPG" is if you want to go by genre standards (a non-linear narrative? random exploration instead of following a story? classes that don't prevent you from using skills? skills that improve through use? combat and stealth that relies on player reflexes?).

"It's not how RPGs work are supposed to work!" is not a valid criticism, particularly since TES has always challenged how an RPG works. Any valid criticism (which there are plenty of for Skyrim) would not need to fall back on such a lame excuse.

Except that birthsigns are part of world lore and part of defining your character's strengths and weaknesses and guardian stones are arbitrary, because you can switch them.


Which is antithetical to any sense of logic or consistency of a living world.

And from the old thread:


No it's not. And to claim so reveals your claim to be separating between character knowledge and player knowledge as false. Your character is not three years old. He's already finished high school and should have an idea how to tackle life at least for the coming years. The fact that you might not is a different story - and plain and utter meta-gaming.


You made them very much distinguishable when it fit your argumentation.



The chief similarity is that these weapons are held with one hand. There is a difference between delivering damage through blunt force trauma only and having hacking, stabbing and slicing at your disposal. There's also a profound difference in handling a very top-heavy weapon - ESPECIALLY when only handling it with one hand - and one with a center of gravity closer to where you hold it. There is likewise a difference between a weapon made from top to bottom of reasonably flexible steel and ones with a wooden rod at its core. (And mantling the rod with steel or iron doesn't change that at all).

There is a big difference between declaring something similar weapon and that actually being the case. And when you want to rewrite history and the laws of physics, you better have more credible arguments than sheer say-so. But then again, you didn't even catch that the possibility of picking up a sword perk without having used a sword is an absurdity, pointing out that it would be counterproductive if you don't use swords and missing that nothing impedes you from using one from then on, becoming a skilled swordsman from zero.

Even if you restrict yourself to CRPGs, skills that improve from use have been practiced in the Wizardry series before TES existed, and Wizardry 7 also left quite a bit of the world open for exploration, subject to you being able to tackle what came your way in those parts. And in the pen&paper realm, where TES drew many inspirations from, nonlinearity of the story and random exploration are part and parcel of the vagaries of spontaneous ideas and unwillingness to follow the "hint, hint, nudge, nudge" of the game master. Classes that don't prevent you from using skills have been quite common in that part for a while, too.

Claiming that "TES has always challenged how an RPG works" when TES:Arena was in fact highly derivative only underscores a very unrealistic perception of what TES is.

actually video game rpgs and adventure books for pen and paper rpgs introduced linear storytelling. it was great to see TES bring a limited freedom of rpgs to video game rpgs.

morrowind and daggerfall went more to how rpgs are supposed to work(daggerfalls random npcs felt more like pen and paper then anything lol) if the only rpgs you played before TES were linear video game rpgs, then i dont think you have much of a claim to say how rpgs are supposed to be.

i dont think the simplifying of TES is killing RPGs , i think its just killing future TES games from being RPGs. i mean i like linear RPGs that have good combat, but i know what they are before playing them. getting an ES game and it being linear hack and slash isnt why i buy TES games.
first person was a tool to help immersion, now that vanity button is 3rd person mode because people thought it was hard to fight in vanity mode. well duh its for looking at your character. its neat they made it easier to fight in vanity mode but thats more of a hack and slash option.

as for your points on the game not needing to punish you for starting selections. im curious have you beaten other RPGs? its just thats your defense on alot of things people bring up about character creation lacking from what it was. your giving me the impression that you have had a difficult time with other games, and had to keep making new characters from picking a difficult to play character.

if you want to justify every other argument with meta game knowledge of RPGers then yes, every RPG out there has been done there really aren't many new plots left and the system is pretty much the same. new games with very weak plots and twists are going to be outright horrible especailly if they butcher the system and dumb it down. those kind of games are the ones DMs make to get someone new into the genre, and anybody who has played one before will cringe at it. though the meta game knowledge is picked up and ignoring it is the challenge in RPGs. meta game knowledge is the learning curve in RPGs, if you dont have it they are harder to play, if you do then you know what works and what doesnt. meta gamming has only got in the way role playing when you go and kill some npc because you know hes the evil guy instead of him screwing you over so your character can learn it. no meta gamming on your character creation kind of turns out like final fantasy. if a mage happens to be breton and born under the apprentice then well he was just naturally talented. while i have problems with people being able to pick up magic in skyrim and even oblivion the way it was handled. one the lore points to magick as having to take a long time to learn and talent would need to be visable at a younger age to be really good. and two in skyrim and oblivion you start with magick, just a healing spell and a damage spell but still you start with magick(sounds like a hand out, or hand holding if you prefer)

as for starting off the same that causes some issues. i get that the idea is to make everybody feel special and make everybody the same so nobody starts off ahead and makes little kids cry. but it really does take a way from the immersion, i mean my character is an advlt who is the same as every other advlt when i start this game. be they orc or altmer..... thats not right. he has no talents or overall significant skills which he spent more time on in his previous years...... thats pretty darn weird was he living in a bubble where they teach you to be good at all weapons and magick and be equally talented as everybody else i make? he can have scars... ok from what the weapons training to be equally good at all of them?(couldnt have been from the magick) he has no birthsign.... so people dont have birthdays anymore, wow thats pretty damn shallow. he has no profession.... well ok that could explain him in prison as he is a bum, but how did he get trained in all the weapons and magick? he has the same physical and mental abilities as every other person i make.... ok i got it cloners on camino.... so star wars is in elder scrolls now??

now when i make a person in morrowind. hes a breton hes born under the aprentice hes a mage, hes very good at some things and very bad at alot of other things. he is very smart, but the studying has left his body weaker. he has a strong sense of will and a pretty good personality. maby he studied politics and has ambition? he started off with spells, well yeah thats what he has learned form his studies. what if he needs a weapon? he can summon one and the affinity will aid his lack of experience a bit, or even summon flame to do the job. any ways the point being it gives answers, a start in the direction i want to go, a background/story/history, a definition as to what he is. a blank slate is a blank slate, there is no story or background there.

as for the difficulty settings, that really doesnt make up for a non challenging game from the start. yes it used to be a slider in the past but that seemed to be to hard for people so it is now difficulty levels???? so even the difficulty setting is dumbed down?? wow thats kind of pathetic.

Birthsigns in lore are never said to confer magical buffs to everyone born under them. In Morrowind you did because of the whole prophecy bit about being "born on an uncertain day" and "far-star-marked", and to reiterate the magical nature of the world. In Oblivion you did because it was essentially the same system as Morrowind, but with a few tweaks. There's no reason other games need to have birthsign-conferred buffs.

"You're more than free to favor different stats, use different skills for different characters, even different weapons/abilities within those skills, and take on different personalities... and still be recognized for it" is antithetical to any sense of logic or consistency of a living world? What?

That is of course assuming your character is a seasoned adventurer, which they are not. They wouldn't be at the bottom of the barrel if they had any significant experience to work with. You can try to role-play it away however you like, and more power to you, but that doesn't change the fact that the character is a level 1 newb.

I'm afraid I lost you. Can you clarify what you mean?

Which would also mean basic use is the same way. Look, I'm not saying it's so realistic, but it does make sense from a gameplay perspective and could work for what it tries to do (if the perks themselves were better designed, at any rate).

I know full well the absurdity of doing that. But you know what? I don't have to do it, and neither do you.

Wizardry was also an exceptional RPG series, and doesn't define the RPG genre. How many other RPGs did it in '96, and combined it with real-time action?

I'd find it hard to believe that pen&paper games would do it anywhere near the scale that TES does. Obviously one of the strengths of pen&paper with a real-life DM is the spontaneous nature of questing, but they still typically follow linear story narratives, even if the narrative goes off in unexpected directions. It would be quite difficult for a real-life DM to keep track of the kind of character narratives you can make in TES games.

I think you're underestimating TES, or taking my comment out of proportion.

How many other RPGs at the time were based around the idea of real-time action in an open world, like Arena?

How many other RPGs at the time combined the idea of real-time action in an open world like Arena, with the skill-based-leveling and and unrestricted classes, like Daggerfall?

How many other RPGs at the time combined the idea of real-time action in an open world like Arena, with the skill-based-leveling and and unrestricted classes like Daggerfall, with the emphasis on exploration over direct storytelling, like Morrowind?

How many other RPGs at the time combined the idea of real-time action in an open world like Arena, with the skill-based-leveling and and unrestricted classes like Daggerfall, with the emphasis on exploration over direct storytelling like Morrowind, with the more visceral/non-dice-based combat and "radiant AI", like Oblivion? (say what you will about the pre-release promises, the AI system is still impressive today)

Now, before you misunderstand me, I'm not saying TES is unique in coming up with this stuff. It's actually pretty much a given that they didn't, as the first iteration of something is rarely successful. But TES is unique to put it all together in the way that it has, and to do it as well as it has. You can't tell me TES has ever been built like a standard RPG of the day. The closest you'd get is Arena, simply because computers couldn't do that much back then, but even that is a rather atypical RPG.

So the reasons to start out differently are just completely arbitary.

I mean, it doesn't make the game harder, it doesn't add to the replay value, you just need the game tell you that you are different.
Even though you could make yourself different in a minute after you leave Helgen and instead of picking up a two-handed weapon to beat up badguys, you pick up a dagger and sneak past them.

That would be Ultima: Underworld, actually Arena takes quite a bit from that game.

In fact the whole series is based on the ideas of the Ultima series.
And I could go on how the RPG elements were simplified as the series went on, yet it was still claimed one of the best RPGs out there.

And in Skyrim I now have to tell myself I am different.

As I pointed out, you only had to increase Agility, Strength, OR your weapon skill by a couple of points to make the skill viable, so it's not about "metagaming" at all. If you know nothing about it, and have no natural inclination in that regard, why would you expect to be able to do it? If you have either the natural ability OR a bit of previous experience/training/knowledge, then it's enough to "self-train" from there. It is in no way limited to characters who favor Agility or Strength, since most characters will almost inevitably increase one or the other of those Attributes anyway, or else they're playing a magic-based character and have a REASON not to be overly familiar with weapons. The system wasn't perfect, but beats the RP-crippling "generic start" of Skyrim, or the overly scaled dynamics in Oblivion where you almost HAD to min/max skills to keep pace with the steadily improving opponents.

As I also commented, I had no trouble taking a character with a starting skill of 5, but Agility as a favored Attribute (+5 points to the Attribute, that's hardly "stacking buffs"), and making that skill viable without paid training. Taking the skill as a Minor would actually have been slightly more effective, but I didn't know at the time of character creation that the character would have an early near-death confrontation with a Spear-user, and decide to learn to use the weapon. I also had characters change "profession" in mid-game (by which point, it's relatively EASY, since Attributes are higher), so your percieved limitations of the game haven't been limitations in my own experiences with it.

You do seem to like to refute individual pieces of an argument out of context, rather than the whole idea, for several other people's arguments besides mine. Are you perchance a prospective lawyer in training?

If you ignore your accumulated skills and perks, sure.

Or if you really need a sign that tells you "hello, I'm a [insert class here]", to remind you how different you are...


Also what is this "RP crippling" thing we are talking about here?
If you need stats to Roleplay, you are doing something wrong.

All of the Elder Scrolls games prior to Skyrim provided character creation options. As I mentioned in the previous thread, it's idiotic that a male Orc would start with the exact same Carry Weight as a female Breton. There's no way to justify this.

To bad my skills aren't worth a damn. Perks are the only thing telling me how different I am and they don't say that much.

There is, that it's a completely arbitrary complaint.

There's no other reason to add character creation other than "it feels right".
But you need skills to get perks, and for most skills the actual number do worth a damn.

Also attributes hardly gave you bigger differentiation.l

Or, you know, other than "THIS IS AN RPG," and if it wants to call itself one it needs to have some sort of character creation options beyond mere cosmetics.