I really REALLY hope Skyrim won't be more simplified. I mean Oblivion's complexity compared to Morrowind is like a cupcake to a wedding cake. I hope Skyrim isn't becoming a crumb compared to a cupcake, seriously. That's what I liked about Morrowind. It's complexity. And Daggerfall is uber complex. Because if it oversimplifies. It comes to a point where the game becomes kind of linear. Spellmaking is amazing and should be in, it allows to express creativity in gameplay. I made a spell called "Anger Management" Frenzy 60 points on touch Rally 100 points on touch. I don't want this game being a linear piece of crap like Fable or The Witcher, or... Dragon age :yucky: .

Maybe it's because I only played it for about a year or so when it came out, but I don't remember MW being overly complex. Maybe I missed alot, but what in particular could you do in MW that you couldn't do in OB? I'm not referring to 'oh they took this out so i couldn't carry it around'. I'm referring to real fundamental changes?

Well here's one of the more obvious examples:
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Skills
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Skills
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Skills

Oh, prepare for the "HOW DARE YOU TELL IT LIKE IT IS. I HAVE MY OWN OPINION. YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED ONE." comments.

But I completely agree with you.

HOW DARE YOU TELL IT LIKE IT IS!!!!!!!! I HAVE MY OWN OPINION AND YOU"RE NOT ALLOWED ONE! NOOOOB! :stare:



...... :twirl:



I also agree with the OP

Never played Morrowind, just daggerfall and then OB. Maybe simplifying it is a good thing? Like in a book you'll have simple sentence and complex. We'll have to just see, hope for the best.

Go play Morrowind my kind sir

taking skills out of the game isn't always simplifying, There where just a lot of skills that where redundant in morrowind ( and oblivion asswell ). Very nice to see more options in my menu but since I don't look at them it doesn't give me any more functionality.

Nearly half of Daggerfall's skills were pointless (mainly the language ones). People go on how many weapon and armor types were there for Morrowind, but forgetting to mention that there were hardly any difference between them.

The number of skills, hardly matters, especially now with perks, where you can specialize inside the skills even more.

Overall, more complexity does not automatically means more depth but it does mean more confusion. Adding another thing that does nearly same thing as another won't make the game more in-depth.

I don't want it so comlicated that it becomes a chore but more complexity than Oblivion would be great. Morrowinds style was perfect having Long Blade and Short Blade rather than just Blade. Morrowind had Light, Medium and Heavy Armour - Oblivion had Light and Heavy Armour. If Skyrim comes out and has just Armour I am going take it back to Bethesda personally and tell them I think they forgot to finish the game off before they released it.

More variation equals better game

My systems shabby at best and I don't enjoy the keyboard to play games much... I might just get it on xbox and deal with the heavy load times.

You sir, have a valid point.

But I would say there were such things as in Morrowind you could go about with trading and whatnot. Oblivion had a broken market system.

From Daggerfall to Morrowind the language skills were removed, and numerous skills were melded into one another. As far I'm concerned redundant skills were taken out or merged with complementary skills. Enchantment was simplified.

From Morrowind to Oblivion:

Medium armor was lost as a skill, but chain and orchish armors were merged into light and heavy armor.

Axe was fused with blunt weapon. (And as someone on this forum once made a long ranting post about, axes are wielded quite similarly to the other blunt weapons)

Spears were removed.

Short and long blade fused into a single blade skill

Enchantment stopped being a skill, but enchanting mechanism was also changed for oblivion. Enchanting still existed.

Its really not good for business when players cant even understand the game to get "into it" i had a rough time with MW in the beginning because the game was really vague with its directions on how to do stuff and where to go next. Making things simpler isnt always a bad thing, and you say Oblivion was watered down but at its core it has been the very same as any other TES game. Im not worried about Skyrim being linear cause it sets its self apart from those other games and stands on its own.

This. In both Daggerfall & Morrowind, unarmed (hand-to-hand) and unarmored (not light, but none like regular clothes and robes) were viable skills. Once maxed, I could run around town completely bare-ass and smite Daedra with my fists :flamethrower: It's just an unfortunate trend of gaming; things get simpler in order to appeal to a wider audience. The fact that Oblivion & Skyrim are console ports doesn't help matters.

I think Skyrim will bring back complexity in its own way, perks being the major player here. Armor may be combined into one skill, but there will be perks to completely divide it in two different tracks. They may bring back some of the older skills by making them into perks, one can only hope.

Skills do not add to complexity unless they add a unique mechanism or a at least different enough in execution and feeling as to seem unique. Skills that every character will end up using as with running, swimming, climbing, jumping are either used too sparsely to be leveled effectively or are used by every character for practical reasons. Lumping them all up into 1 skill might work better or just not making them skills at all would be fine too sense they are not definitive of any play style. They are useful for role-playing to some degree as they give a character a certain feel to their movements, but that can also be done through abilities/perks in other skills.

I believe BGS is trying to design Skyrim in way that all available skills are optional. I think a skill or skills that will be used by all character types for practical reasons are being redesigned or removed just for that reason. This way players will not feel like the HAVE to have use a specific skill with every character and thus making each character less unique.

In other words, BGS wants skills to regulate actions that are used somewhat frequently and are not so unique that their function can not in some way be substituted with those of another skill archetype.

I agree that a higher number of skills doesn't directly translate to more complexity.

Bethesda will make it work. Don't worry.

Theres Simplification, and then theres Trunication


from Dagg to Morr all of the langauges skills were removed because we didnt talk to creautres that much and the *charm* spell was supposed to make up for it, but I know people who didnt make magick a primary and wanted to speak certain tongues, thing is there were no content in morrowind that included -extensive- talking BUT you could still chat up the occasional Dremora.

from Morr to Oblivion alot of stuff was taken out and dubbed "buggy" which made no sense because it was a completely new engine, beth simply didnt bother to -fix- and -improve- those things oh and -soooo- much content was taken out because the Dialog took so much, I wonder if anyone is kicking themselves for there zealousy in having voice acting, which was -redundant- after 2 playthroughs in exhange for what could have been Arenas in every city, More locations, quests, content, lore, AND the city of sutch, but of course all that took a bow to what? 6 voices in total for the entire game? yeah.

and now we have Skyrim, Attributes and Spell creation we saw were out in DECEMBER of last year, people saw this before it even becamse official and -look- it became official, your telling me current fears like Skyrim being simplified etc etc is without Basis?

That's not quite the best example

Since when is simple a bad thing? Complexity is the sign of a bad design. There's a difference between making things simple and dumbing things down. Daggerfall was overly complex and complicated. Morrowind toned it down a bit. Oblivion toned that down a bit. Skyrim will tone that down a bit.

I'd rather have a game that is accessible than one I have to spend days and days learning how to works just to achieve the same thing as the accessible one does in a couple of hours.


This coming from you?

There was a lot more 'lost" from Dagger to OB than just some skills. plus there was nothing redundant about some of the skills that were removed from Dagger and Morrow to OB.

Too true. I'm honestly not that worried because there's been a lot of depth added through the perks and weapon properties. Also the fact that we can only pick 50 perks of 280+ perks (upgrades incl.), Talk about replay value and character diversity.

More skills don't mean more complexity... It just means more skills. I don't get this... Yes, skill numbers go down from game to game, but is only because skills become redundant, or useless. look at what we know about skyrims skills, athletics and acrobatics are gone... Oh crap you can't run or jump? Nope, those were redundant. mysticism was redundant. they added enchant again, so thats a plus, and they merged speechcraft and barter, oh no! with the addition of the perk system... Its set up for less overall skills, but more complexity within the way you can build a character. the spell casting system may take a hit due to the probable spell creation axing, but the spells themselves due to multiple effects per spell. so magic is still up in the air, but spell making was broken anyways. if you mistake complexity with clutter, thats your issue, but please, don't ry to fool everyone else into thinking skyrim will be simplified to the point of being linear if I remember from your first post.

Skills only become redundant because elements are being removed from the game. If you were to flesh out each skill properly, then there would be no reason to remove them. If there were actually a lot of different axes and blunt weapons to choose from, and an actual differences between the two then they could easily exist separately from each other. Limiting their scope/usefulness and then later calling them redundant is just silly. <_<


Accessible to what ends? To the point where our games cease to challenge our abilities and minds? I strongly believe that there is nothing wrong with a learning curve. I strongly believe that there's nothing wrong with having to make choices and living with it. If someone told me it could take me days to learn how to properly find/play a relatively small part of a game, I would be awed by their attention to detail. With the millions of dollars spent into a game, the thought that anyone would actually put effort into something that only a fraction of their players will experience amazes me. Go ahead and simplify the game for those who can't be bothered, but please leave something in there for those of us who want to dive deeper.