Possibly, it is unrelated, except maybe indirectly. Darn. I read "core base of fans" and "new fans" and "this new school derp fest", and just wanted to add that there are core fans who favor the derp changes over the old stuff.

Regarding the OP's suggestion that Skyrim's direction is bold and improved, I think discarding attributes is the only thing I might consider bold. As I recall, Todd Howard said that removing attributes was risky. I think Bethesda left them out so they could spend their time improving other aspects of the game, not because they had a new, improved way of handling attributes.

The whole Morrowind 2 Oblivion 2 bit serves no purpose but to be flippant if you think morrowind is enjoyed to this day because of its poor combat, low graphics as far as todays standards, text based dialoge and static NPC's then you do not or don't care to understand why what makes Morrowind and Daggerfall games Great in the eyes of others.

what depth is there in Oblivion?

What exactly is bad about having everything that made the past games great, using them as bases and including all the new features of todays Skyrim? hmm?

Multiple weapons types are Bad?

the ability to design your own spells is bad?

Options are bad? what happened to the Go anywhere do anything motto? because thats not what was going on in oblivion, for Oblivion it was Go everywhere do everything. multiple play throughs arent even neccessary, it makes all of no sense to even replaythe mainquests because the choices never change, you don't miss a thing one time through.


I've one hope, that Beth learned from Fallout 3 not to end the game but the have choices, and actually make them matter...I mean I poisoned the watter supply and all of one person dies in contrast to the supposed killing off the entire region

Well if people agreed on what made the old games great that would be easy.

I've got a list of things about MW I like, things I dislike and things I absolutely hate. I'm sure most people who played it have too. I'm pretty certain none of them are identical.

Beth is perfectly capable of shoring up why their games kicked ass and making their titles accordingly while still keeping their experimental tendencies. and they didnt, as noted by the Article "Oblivion sacrificed what made Morrowind Special" where essentially what I saw was a smear job on Oblivion as if they were not aware of their descisions being made pre Oblivions release. and its not even about Morrowind or Oblivion, THEY are the ones making the game, Morrowind and Oblivion aren't self aware entities so it is no ones fault/praise except their own no excuses .

this isn't so much a complaint about Skyrim or saying its going to fail, and if someones going to label me a Glass half empty guy implying im happy with nothing and complacant, I say this I don't need to acknowledge my Glass half full, everything in the Glass is excellent and nice Im not concerned with it why should I be? its good isnt it? but when I drink that glass half full theres nothing left what reason is there if thats all the glass had?

Thank you for the intelligent response.


Once again, thank you.


That's like saying, "I ate an apple for breakfast" and then when someone says "He ate fruit for breakfast" you say, "Do know that by saying I ate an apple I was referring to a ham sandwich."

It makes absolutely no sense. You're basically including one of the improvements I mentioned. So you're saying, "Oh, well if Morrowind had Oblivion's improvements, Oblivion wouldn't compare", even though by that point Morrowind will have basically become Oblivion just with different quests.


First off, I never once said that I found Morrowind to be complicated. By saying, at times, the game was a hassle isn't saying I thought the game was too complicated. You must not understand what "hassle" means, so I'll give you the dictionary definition: "Irritating inconvenience." Nothing in the two word definition of hassle suggests that it has any relation to something being complicated. I said it was a hassle, meaning that is was an "irritating inconvenience." Finding where to travel for a quest became a tedious bore, and once you found where to go, you had to do tons of walking through areas you had already been in, which also became downright boring. That, along with the awful user interface in Morrowind (by user interface, I mean your inventory and journal), made Morrowind more a hassle and harder to enjoy than Oblivion.

Like I said, it's great that you love Morrowind so much, but just because it's your favorite TES game doesn't automatically make Morrowind better than Oblivion, and doesn't mean that everyone should agree with your opinion.

I know why I feel MW was a great game. It certainly wasn't classes or many of the other mediocre mechanics. It was the gameworld. They seem to have made an effort to make Skyrim a more atmospheric and interesting place than Cyrodil. Whilst I don't agree 100% with all the changes they have made the game looks like a big improvement on Oblivion to me.

So how many NPCs could you get as a companion in Oblivion? Or Morrowind? Daggerfall? How many perks did Oblivion have? Job skills?

The way I see it we're getting a trade off. For every feature that gets dumbed down or cut we get a new feature that's twice as awesome.

Features Gained do not make up for features lost

X gained does not make up for Y lowered

Please carefully consider something:

Imagine, if you can, late last year before Todd starting talking about all the features being removed in Skyrim. Do you really think there were a bunch of people saying that they hated spellmaking and it needed to be removed? Do you remember a lot of people saying that there were too many skills in Oblivion? Perhaps some skills were poorly designed, like athletics. But can you honestly tell me that the NUMBER of skills was deemed to be too high? Do you remember people complaining about there being TOO MANY factions in Oblivion? Do you remember people complaining about how they hated birthsigns? Or hand to hand combat? Or attributes (their existence, not the way they level up). The list goes on. Hopefully you see my point.

To be fair, there were also things that we all agreed were good that Beth hasn't (as of yet) removed, such as enchanting, perks, quest lines, etc.

So there was a great deal of agreement on what made TES good. Yes, there was. What's happening now is Beth is ruining Skyrim and the battle lines are being drawn between the people who play TES for the game experience, and people who are simply Bethesda [censored]. All the other debates are secondary, they're just offshoots from this key point. Now, I would say that the market will determine who's right in the end, but we know from experiences with Call of Duty and Duke Nukem that the market is mostly idiots. So it's places like this forum where the true fans will determine whether the game was worthy of the TES title or not. My money is on "no".


EDIT: By the way, there's nothing "bold" about what Beth is doing. They know this dumbing down process makes them lots of money because the consumers are morons. "Bold" would have been increasing skills, adding more depth to spellmaking, adding more factions, etc.

No, I can't agree
The mechanics were not what made TES good
And no I do not accept your division of people into simplistic categories. Whats a true fan? Someone who agrees with you I suppose.

You remember people complaining about the existence of spell making, attributes, birthsigns, 21 skills, etc.?

I complained about all of those things needing to be redesigned, and guess what.... BGS redesigned them. :shocking:

Every TES game has changed the mechanics, removed and/or added features. Skyrim is no different in this respect.
I'll repeat it. Mechanics are not what made previous TES games good, the gameworld was, and that of Skyrim looks to me like an improvement on that of Oblivion.

Actually, yes, I know some people alongside with me complaining about the drawbacks of spellmaking.

And why should they only change things we allow them to do?

Just to clear up some points on your "list":
Hand-to-Hand combat is still in, just not as a skill.
There's not less factions in Skyrim than there are in Oblivion, we just haven't heard of every faction yet. (So far, we got 4, which is the same amount of real joinable factions as in Oblivion...)

Yes, there have been lots of threads about people saying they disliked how spellmaking worked. Not that it needed to be removed, but that it was poorly implemented. Bethesda tried to fix it, but didn't succeed, so instead of implementing a faulty system, they removed it.
Few complained about there being too many skills, but that is not the point at all. The point is that the skills were utterly useless as skills. Yes, you could run faster and jump higher, but what did they give you as skills? Nothing, because you would use them no matter what type of character you played. And yes, people complained about the fact that athletics and acrobatics was useless skills. And about birth signs, I guess you are right, not many complained about that. But if developers were to listen to everything the players said, and not come up with things themselves, the games would svck! Just look at all the suggestions floating around on various forums!

---

And to people saying that they are "removing the rpg elements to appeal to more people, and earn more money." - Yes, you are right about that. But who's to blame? The developers, or could it actually be the players?! If you thought the latter, you were right....

I blame the Former, Players aren't stupid, when Morrowind rolled around for Xbox people who played played and people who did not did not, its called liking different Genre's or having preferences. No one, Console users or PC users are holding up signs saying streamline it! simplify it! no one is telling Beth how to make their game, they are the ones incurring the majority of the changes under their own power, sure people complain and give feedback but it is entirely up to the devs on how, and if to address those features.

yes Players played a part in the atrocity that is level scaling and the GPS compass because people past complained about how it was difficult finding things and that they didnt like at level 30 everything died. Beth Addressed them, and it turned out even worse >_>....

So yes I do blame the devs, saying the fans are the reason is acknowledging that Beth is making the game for the fans or catering to the fans, and from what I've heard from posters here, no they aren't and they shouldn't. and I agree Morrowind and Daggerfall wasnt made for anyone in particular its up to the person to pick up the game, so yes excuse me if I find the notion of "garnering a wider audience" = trying to put as much flash as possible to sway those peoples descisions ahead of time and leaving little in the way of underdepth.

Considering your continued insistence that the game is telling you who you are, when it isn't, I would think that that is exactly what you did. You tell the game who you are and then you go on to prove it through gameplay. This "technically" happens in Skyrim, but the difference is that the former comes with all the nice things that facilitate roleplaying to a far greater degree than the latter does alone.



Obviously. But that does not change the fact that that is not the only time development takes place.



Because it ignores the past 20 or so years of your life before the game actually starts. Or, for old characters, most of their actual lives. In an ideal world the game should be able to represent this with a Fallout esque start but x100. But because thats pretty much impossible, the class system was the next best thing.



No, you become a more powerful Knight. You become a more recognized knight. You grow into a legend amongst those who could call themselves the same as you would. You spend the years of your life up to the point the game starts training and learning the basics of what it is that you want to be. And when the game starts, you are at the absolute minimum point of development in which you can legitimately call yourself a Knight or a Battlemage.



No, it wouldn't. Because then we wouldn't have all of Oblivions faults. We wouldn't have terrible, morally one-sided quests, terrible level scaling, a bland and boring world, and so on.

Morrowind's praise isn't based in its graphics (which aren't even bad) or how it handles combat, and weighing those more than what actually made Morrowind the great game that it was is just an insult to the game.



Nor did I say that you did. I was speaking in general.



You found directions hard? Fascinating. Not to insult you but Morrowind was not lacking in good directions. And even in the few times where you could understandably get lost, it isn't like you couldn't eventually figure it out. And thats a good thing. The game shouldn't hold your hand.

And yeah, you can still cite inconvenience but fact of the matter is it was not hard at all to work with the directions given and still get where you need to go.



I'll give you the journal thing, but inventory? Morrowinds inventory was far better than Oblivions. In fact I would argue that Morrowind's inventory is an essential predecessor to Skyrim's.



Actually Daggerfall is my favorite TES game, but its okay. I'm used to people making false assumptions about me at this point. And besides that, Morrowind IS better than Oblivion. On virtually all counts except graphics (which is only because its 2011 and not 2003. Personally I disregard graphics) and how it handles combat. (which even then isn't that terrible) I could sit here and explain it more in depth, but this isn't a Morrowind vs Oblivion topic.



I would figure its because it was because of us that they even really made it as a company.

But what happens when the devs doesn't address those issues? The players complains even more than they would if the devs actually addressed the issue (In which case, the players would still complain^^)
Yes, the Devs make the game as they want, but without the support of players, they're not getting enough money to make the game they want to make. So, in the end, they make the game the way the players want as well.
And I never said that players are stupid. I am a player myself, and I don't think of myself as stupid. But when it all comes to it, the players influence how the game is made in a major way!


Beth is still catering to the fans, but believe or not, there is a middle ground here as well, just as with everything else. If Beth was to only cater to the fans, TES would never evolve at all, and they would just be making Arena 2, Arena 3, Arena 4, etc...
So, they cater to the fans, while at the same time opening up for a wider audience to enjoy their games They need to do something new, and to do that, some thing that the fans love, oh so much needs to go away to make room for new features. (Mostly features that no one really cared about, that people suddenly starts caring so much about.)

My point is you can't have enough options for everyone. I refused all your suggestions there, for roleplaying reasons. I use chargen mods too, if I like the starts in them. At least, with prison start, I can say it is out of my hands so this doesn't become an issue.


I advocate the choice of starting from zero or halfway too. :foodndrink: But designing a game like this for masses, I don't think anyone will choose starting from zero. So it is a silly idea. I say let's remove leveling and introduce skill atrophy which will make it really feasible but that's not a really popular idea.

Now, if you don't think it is not terrible, why are we arguing? I just defend that, "it is not terrible". I see good value in it, let's see it firsthand.


I meant, "it is their lore and game, they change it or not change it."

I want a skill named, "reflection" where all reflect spells are categorized so I can play my reflector. It sounds silly, doesn't it?


I just wanted to remind that. Classes aren't removed from my perspective. Classes from character creation, that one is removed. But then again, I don't see the problem about its removal either. Just a little head start...


It is lame. I agree. There are certain things we should adapt though. Inconsistent lore and everchanging gameplay is a part of this series. You should have expected it and waited for designing characters for Skyrim until you know the details about the new lore and gameplay.


When you can't have enough choices, choices become irrelevant. I am forced to 6 situation now. Instead we can have one single start that is justifiable. Imprisonment is really universal.


No, it was no more than a little head start. Classes are still in the game. Its lack from an UI, when you can still play them, when NPCs have classes themselves, is not a loss of playstyles or roleplaying options.

Just think about your character before starting.

Start the game, don't look at the skill labels. Just do what that character would do. That's it. Stats are not there to dictate you. Stats are a mere reflection of what you are, it is fake and loosely accurate at best. It is nice to have a reflection to look at now and then but it shouldn't stop you from defining yourself.

This game is perfectly playable without a skill menu. No playstyles or roleplaying options are lost if they are already in the game. And there are millions of things which aren't in the game already which means millions of playstyles and roleplaying options are lost anyway. They can't have everything, we are limited by in-game things. Are there classes in game? Yes. ^_^

PS. This thread derailed into accessibility. I prefer we talk about it from hardcoe players' perspective.

Thing is though is that they aren't standing in the middle ground. The scales are fairly tipped towards "mainstream".

Man Zzar...i have to say i agree with you 10000% on this. I dont really agree with a lot of your stances on things but this all the way. I like good voice acting but to be honest if it requires huge cuts to gameplay depth(which it obviously has) im pretty against it.

Id say voice acting is the culprit in a lot of the new shallower gameplay.

[1] The class youre labeled as when interacting with people throughout the world.

[2] The biggest problem with it for me is that it makes the quests much much shallower(this obviously leads to quest markers which i hate). In morrowind you would have some extensive written dialogue explaining detailed directions to get to a specific location telling you which rivers to cross, which big rocks to look for, which Forts that will tell you youve gone too far. Then with the shift to voice acting you just get a quest marker with little to no direction, verbal or written.(it seems that bethesda just having their voice actors say something like "this information isnt to be heard by anyone else...let me write that down for you" would be a good way to circumvent this problem.

Yeah, but what about all the other people who would have had it in their hands?



Except I don't want to start halfway and I'm pretty sure no one else does either (though if they do, more power to them). I'm not arguing for skills to be able to start at 50 right off the bat. I'm thinking may be level 10 or 15 at the most.



Yeah, my mystic doesn't though.



Sure they will. Some will do it for the challenge. Some will do it because they want absolute control over what their character learns during the game. Some will pick it because they want to roleplay a peasant. Some will pick it because they don't like classes. And so on.



That can not only carry a good bit gameplay implications but massive roleplaying ones. You have to understand that these aren't just "labels" and "small boosts" that we are losing out on. They are much more than that for the people who actually care about them.



I shouldn't have to expect a perfectly useful skill to be axed for no legitimate reason. Seriously, there is NO possible way they can justify the removal of mysticism, no matter what damage control they come up with in the lore.

Second half of post incoming. Stupid cap on quotes.

Not when you're advocating being whoever you want to be. Not when you're advocating a game where you are allowed near absolute freedom.



Yeah, it is. We've been over this.



They never stopped me. They helped to facilitate me defining myself in the game. As I explained earlier, any old fool can pick up a sword and a shield and just say hes a "knight" but that doesn't make him one.



Except a lot of options ARE NOT in the game anymore. Sure, you can argue that they are there in spirit but that hardly makes for a substantial playstyle. You can't call yourself a pure mystic when you have to rely on 6 or 7 different skills ON TOP of the other skills you would use along side them.



Right, but that doesn't change the fact that several of them were removed.

Mainstream, the principal or dominant course, tendency, or trend.

Now,
Is it a trend to make open-world Singleplayer RPGs? - No, most Developers today make either FPS, MMO or Adventure games. Bethesda could change focus, but they don't, because they are not "mainstream".
Is it a trend to remove stats? - No, most Developers actually adds more stats, no matter how redundant, just so players will have more things to boast about, and to add more grinding to games, which in return, makes player spend more time playing the game.
Is it a trend to allow modding for games? No, most Developers today, more than before, close off access to certain files, simply so it's not moddable.

Right, but you have to admit at least that they are treading the borders a bit.