http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/111515-Skyrim-Streamlining-Removes-Confusion-Says-Bethesda

It may be small, but I found it to be a pretty decent read on the whole "dumbing down" situation I am seeing. Just thought I would share

It's dumbing down for the people who got confused. I do agree about classes though. I don't think they should be GONE per se, but I think you should choose your class after the first few levels, with something suggested automatically based on what you've leveled so far.

but video games are a secret special club that only me and my secret special club mates are allowed to take part in! the secret special handshake involved slitting your throat and walking forty miles for almost ten years now and now they're making it just a fist bump because most people complained that suicide was kind of dumb! they're ruining EVERYTHING!

hey I always liked the Gothic-y way to start the game

True on that part, but I guess Todd and Bethesda want it to make it easy for gamers and easier for us :shrug: idk

Sadly they also tore down half your clubhouse, it was too big to find your way around in apparently.

I think a F2P mmo (Never played it) called Jade Era or something, they had you pick classes after reaching level 15

I think Todd is making up problems where there really aren't any. Oblivion was not a confusing game at all, and the scenario he's suggesting is hardly a reason to make such drastic changes to one of the core features of the series.

To refurbish it, yes.

Some people don't like the new playhouse...

I never found it that complicated in MW or Oblivion
in my experience having talked to a fair few "casual" gamers they had a fair idea what a warrior or a mage or an archer was and what type of playstyle would suit that character
the big problem was how bad Bethesda were at designing classes (such that using a premade rather than a custom class was a way to handicap your character) and how counter-intuitive the PC levelling was
given that they have done away with classes and improved the PC levelling system I think they could have left us with some choices (eg select 3 skills at start and get a bonus to them like FO3 or select a birthsign or choose from a list of traits like FONV) and everybody, even "casuals" would cope

Isn't this exactly what the Guardian Stones in Skyrim do? You find them after you've played a while, and they give you the exact same levelling boost to certain of your skills as choosing a class would? I suppose the only 'dumbing down' there would be that you could go back and change your chosen class later.

i dunno..i remain optimistic but every time i hear management defending certain aspects of the game, i think DA2 and was Bioware did to that franchise. Words like 'accessibility', 'polishing', etc are sometimes code for 'streamlining' and 'simplifying'.

I mean seriously, who are these people Todd said got confused and frustrated playing Oblivion? Isn't a RPG all about choice and consequence?

No. Guardian stones do not affect starting levels, just leveling rate. The also only correspond to the major archetypes, so any sort of hybrid character doesn't work.

I'm happy about them getting rid of classes so I don't like the Guardian Stones as they are classes by the back door
What I miss is the ability to personalise my character so that they had some sort of life before creation
I can live without it, its not a gamekiller for me, I just don't see the neccessity for it

Gotta love how dumbing down is now "removing confusion". I guess it sounds better, but what is done still has the same effect. The next step is obviously "adding clarity" because increasing always sounds better than removing.



This made me burst. Really, are there even any RPGs anymore (from recent years) that could possibly confuse an average gamer?

That's a pretty big assumption. You can always just ignore them and level whatever skills you want at the same pace. Or level some magic skills with the gstone then switch to a combat stone and level those. Stop spreading misinformation.

Never have I witnessed anyone complaining that Morrowind was too complicated and needed to be streamlined, but we got Oblivion, I honestly and totally convinced myself you could not streamline TES any further. and I was proven wrong by Bethesda.



Why won't you accomplish the Impossible in the OTHER direction Bethesda.

Not to defend streamlining, but here's an example. In Oblivion I played a conjurer with a strong sideline in alchemy. I relied on summoning creatures to fight for me, and made money by gathering materials, making potions and selling them.

Because I chose a class where intelligence was one of my primary skills, I levelled up like crazy making potions and summoning. In fairly short order I was high level, could be killed in (literally) one blow by most enemies, and being only able to summon one idiot creature at a time was horribly vulnerable. Basically I made a broken character without meaning to, because I hadn't read up in advance about how Oblivion's level-scaling worked, and so carefully chosen primary skills that weren't the ones I'd be mostly using.

It isn't confusing to have to plan your character around faults in a game's levelling system, but it is frustrating and annoying. For me, I could fix it by using a mod that let me summon up to 4 daedra/ghosts/zombies. Console players wouldn't be so lucky, and would probably have to junk their character around level 15 or 20 and start again. Fine for devoted fans with lots of time for gaming. Not so fine for working mums and dads with a few hours here and there (and please don't say that 'casual' gamers like that shouldn't play RPGs, which seems to be an all too common comment on thse forums ).

Now, the ideal situation, of course, is for the game not to have levelling problems like that, or to make the consequences of your choices clear enough that you can fairly be expected to deal with them. But I do understand some of Bethesda's motivation behind these changes, even if I don't entirely agree with the way they're avoiding the problem.

Not really. You seriously think there will be stones that correspond to random assortments of skills? It still doesn't address the starting differences at character creation. Stop pretending like this at all makes up for the removal of character creation.

i think this just sums up this topic and many others.

some people will like it and some wont.

I am an experience player of Beth's open world games, not long ago I started a new game of MW, a few hours in I realized I did not like my build and regretted it. This comes from someone who has played hundreds of hours of MW and other Beth games, I can easily see the same happening to newer players. I really like this idea of no classes or skill picking,etc to start.

I agree..OB's level scaling svcked but with SR's 'level lock' scaling and potential regeneration of mobs/enemies, couldn't you just go farm and level whatever skill/talent you wanted and improve that particular skill/talent, like wow for example?

While I find the fact that anyone found Oblivion too complicated a little bit bizarre, and I don't understand why they don't just say " here's our game, it's very different than our previous systems, but if you play it you will find it makes sense and will be an enjoyable experience", i still think they may have made a system with initial simplicity, but still containing depth if you look for it. Time will tell, as usual.

[but then I am looking at the information they give us, and imagining how it will play and feel, not comparing everything to previous games. Maybe some things look worse than a similar thing in an earlier game, but it is how it all works as a whole that concerns me]

Is it really that far-fetched to think that they will have stones that match up with the pre-made classes from previous games?


Have we heard that all characters of the same race will start the exact same? We very well might be able to "tag" 3 skills like in FO3. Also, since the game levels from 1-50, the leveling will be much faster, so you will quickly seperate characters based on the perks that you take.

Having made dozens of characters in oblivion only to dump them around level 15 (although more from wanting to change things up again after growing bored than having broken characters), I agree with the posts above. Streamlining the whole character creation system will make this game much more accessible to the broader audience. I realize that none of us here really fall into that category and many may be opposed to it...but take this example.

I lent my neighbor and best friend oblivion so he could try to understand why while he was playing shooter on xbox live he ALWAYS saw me on oblivion. He picked an argonian because he thought they looked cool and wanted to breath underwater. Then he picked lockpicking, sneak, mysticism, athletics, mercantile, speechcraft and blunt as his major skills. Needless to say, within a few levels the enemies in the game were much to hard for him due to the scaling effect, and he simply went into the options menu and turned the difficulty slider all the way down....effectively ruining the game from my point of view.

While this was a result of a combination of the class system and broken leveling system, its easy to see how getting rid of the class selection from the start will improve the game. Its not removing an option so much as making the game more open ended for the players. And hey, I was PO'd about acrobatics and athletics being cut too.....about 3/4 of my oblivion characters focused on speed and agility (i even picked the steed as a birthsign once for gods sake).....but, its just not that great of a loss. Yeah it was fun jumping onto roofs and being able to run rings around enemies....but its not anything game breaking to lose it. With bows being more powerful hopefully i'll still be able to use them despite the loss of my (kinda unfair) strategy of backpeddling all over the place