Nah. Skyrim's tepid experience is (in a large measure) caused by a character system design that is streamlined to the point where nobody really needs to care for it, out of the way of the action adventure gameplay, slightly buffing abilities that are already mastered by the player. For the most part. It works behind the screen and does so very little of any actual worth, that it might've as well be gotten rid of altogether.

In Morrowind, however, despite it's shortcomings (and it does have a good deal of those), the character system is the character. You are not going to be able to operate without paying attention to it because the end results are out of your precise control. It works well enough and it does something, as opposed to what we have right now.

It's only redundant if you can't figure out a utility for... what ever it is (attributes? classes? percentile skillchecks?). Skills are indeed not redundant nor have they ever been; but by a similiar logic that got rid of the TES attributes, they might also get rid of the Fallout skills too. Just might, and hopefully not. We don't know. It's easy to look at the board and see how it might convert to be a similiar system to Skyrim's perk trees, only governed by attributes this time around. If you don't see it, that's ok. It's just something that popped up to me whilst figuring out those perk images.

They shouldn't be doing that in a Fallout title; first off. However... I see no dissonance here. If you are playing a thief... No thief starts out learning to pick locks on someone else's door in the dead of night. It is a mistake [in an RPG] to assume that the PC only ever enacts what the player sees them enact. I mean we all know they presumably poop on their own time; certainly so during long overland trips... Same as we know they undertake the long trek from point A to B, every time the player elects to use the map-travel feature... One [hopefully] cannot discount that they made the trip even though the player did not see them make the trip, and didn't watch their footsteps 1:1. One can easily imagine them having admired the setting Sun, or the call of passing birds, or even worked out a few brain teasers along the way... all while not under scrutiny of the Player.

The player should have no assumption of total knowledge or control over the character. It's their task to decide how the character would react in a given situation. Allotting skill points is deciding that they brushed up on their skill sometime recently. It doesn't matter if they actively chose the use of that skill.

Playing Fallout 3 (and Oblivion with its Oblivion XP mod) recently, I prefer allotting skills myself to be honest.

I really dislike having to grind skills that my character (back-story wise) is already good at. Really kills immersion.

I prefer XP & point allotment myself, but I do see it as that TES has its system, just as the Fallout series has (I mean had ) it's own; and that the two should never be swapped, as one is TES, and the other is (I mean was ) Fallout.

I would never ~ever play TES when looking for what the Fallout series offers, just as I would never ~ever play a Fallout game, when wanting what the TES series offers. (And I consider it shameful of them to have simply draqed TES in the Fallout setting, and called it "Fallout 3" ).
Their problem [made our problem], is that they don't value what Fallout was intended to be; they value what they can warp it into and sell; and no one can deny that TES will sell to a broader audience than Fallout; and so they made FO3 from TES. I'd like to think that they don't see what's wrong with that.

That is in the top ten most ridiculous things I have read today and it's only 2pm. First of all games share features ALL the time. Because The Last Of Us was in third person, that means Uncharted has to develop an entirely new game lest the two somehow get confused? Jumping was in Inquisition so I guess it can never be in Mass Effect incase it gets labelled Dragon Age with guns. I understand you wanting a separate experience from Elder Scrolls but that doesn't mean they can't share game features that players enjoyed.

I must have played a different game. In Morrowind I could do quite a bit more builds than in Skyrim, that played differently. (Which is how I judge a good character system).

Well personally I prefer when NPCs come off as unique entities with their own lives, personalities, and relationships.

We are clearly not talking about the same things; and you are talking hyperbole.

Series experience; everyone returns to TES for the strengths of the TES series; now everyone returns to the Fallout series for the strengths of the TES series too.

And repeating the same line over and over again like it was their first time meeting you, and having a line or two of banter really hit home on that regard?

I especially liked how the bartender in the thieves guild keeps calling me brynolf's new protege even though I'm the undisputed master of the thieves guild.
Or how the companions keep calling me whelp when I'm the harbinger.

Sure lots of the generic npcs had copy and pasted dialogue in morrowind, but at least I can walk up to any given townsfolk and ask them about the city, where services are and who the influential people are, along with some backstory of the region. I guess those things in skyrim don't matter to people much though, as the towns are small and easy to navigate and the lore around most of the towns isn't very intriguing, and the lowest common denominator doesn't care about such things anyway, they just need a place to sell phat lewt and some dungeons to kill enemies in and all is well.

Not to mention the few important npcs like caius cosades and divayth fyr had more personality than anyone in skyrim and all they did was stand around all day.

Though I do admit the dlc for skyrim took a step in the right direction in regards to npcs with neloth, serana, isran, etc. If their npcs have the same depth as these guys then I won't be disappointed.

Sounds like a bug, all the Companions have dialog where they refrence you as harbinger.

Heh. I recently wanted to test my character by fighting the boss at the end of Skyrim's Fellglow Keep, but couldn't because my character's persuade skill was too high. I could have attacked her after she gave me the quest items, but that would have been out of character. In any case, it's simply not true that Skyrim lacks alternative means of resolving quests. They may not be obvious, as in the Morrowind Mage's Guild quest where the quest giver lays out your options, and you may need to meet specific requirements, but that doesn't mean they're absent.

Can you name me NPCs besides Fyr, Vivec, Cosades, and Yagrum that were even remotely memorable from Morrowind.

The dissonance is created from exactly that - raw gameplay vs background activity. The thief starts out by either from a mentor, reading, or doing - so the skills of the thief naturally progress under the player's input and guidance.

See, fast-traveling and saying a character popped a squat along the way is reasonable and more than likely to understand. But, contrasting this to Medicine and saying he can now perform a heart-transplant after said journey brings up the question of, how? Did my character, having travelled through a town, stop and help the citizens as a surgeon? Why did I have no choice to decide whether he would stop in that given situation or just keep on truckin.' Now, if you tell me my character learned to be a better surgeon, doctor, medical practitioner, etc, by reading a book (during fast travel) I would certainly believe you, but books are there to assist in foundational knowledge, whereas hands-on experience is the meat and potatoes in development and growth. Can you imagine if you're on the slab and the guy about to operate on you gleaned the entirety of his medicinal knowledge from books he read traveling the Mojave?

I agree and the best would be the combining of the two. Morrowind's NPCs did not have "personalities", per se, I agree. I wonder if that stems more from voice acting or actual background stories...

There are a "handful" of quests like that in Skyrim. it is not void of quests with alternate options to complete. But these are few and far between. Can you name 10 out of the hundreds of quests where options are present?

Not all of Morrowind's quests had options like my example, either. But they were many (by comparison) where Skyrim's are mostly straight forward with the "Go. Kill. Find Item" set up.

Lets see

-Azura's daedric quest.

-Hircine's daedric quest.

-Clavicus Vile's daedric quest.

-Mehrunes Dagon's daedric quest.

-Namira's daedric quest.

-Molag Bal's daedric quest.

-Vaermina's daedric quest.

-The second quest in the DB chain, the one where Astrid kidnaps you.

-The quest dealing with Cicero and his wagon.

-The escape from Cidhna mine quest.

-The gildergreen quest

just to name some off the top of my head.

Wow... you totally missed the point. I'm not asking which "side" to do you choose, but "how to accomplish the task given."

Let's see... From your list, I would accept The Gildergreen. The rest of those have no choice in how to succeed, just different paths for succeeding. Can you talk your way through any of them? How about Charm? Can you sneak and pickpocket?

No, you are seeing my "point of choice" as choice of which side to take. Not deep at all, in my opinion.

Sneaking is viable in basically every quest in the game actually.

Keeping one's mind on the points and skill level is metagaming. The PC is simply [in this case] a thief, and they can get points spent on Lock Picking in between two attempts on adjacent locks, in the same moment... but the rationalization for their increased should be whatever comes to mind. One could decide that their last attempt afforded some insight, or even decide that they switched lock picks, and the next one is an inherently better tool; or that the second [identical] lock, is damaged from having been picked before (by someone else); or they attempted the previous lock with a splitting headache, that has since faded, and now they concentrate better. The details are not really important; or even necessary. It's enough to just decide that they worked on it a bit a while ago, and are now better at it.


It's reasonable to assume thought on the trips (and even during regular 1:1 play), but it's the same as above. The rationalization can be anything that makes sense to player; or none needed, or just have the assumption that they improved on their own time.

Speaking of quests http://i.imgur.com/zonlwEv.png

>People who didnt have to spend time making the engine, scripts, models, textures, and many other assests, had more time to make quests then the people who did.

Who would have thunk?

Not to mention how horribly deceptive that pic is due to NV constantly making quests nothing more then placeholder lead-ins to other quests, such as every faction MQ chain.

I dunno, I played both games and I felt that list feels pretty damn accurate. I felt NV had more quests and they had more paths.

Also, yeah BGS had to make all that stuff but they also had a much longer development time and money.

Look, you think that Skyrim is a "deep" game, Nothing I say will change your opinion. I disagree and think Skyrim is the most shallow TES game yet. Have fun

Thanks for those insights. I had not realized these were available and after a few playthroughs, did not pursue differing paths. Speechcraft was so limited, I never did anything with it, unlike Morrowond where speechcraft was an active skill that a player could use on every single NPC, not just certain cases here and there. But you have shone me the light , however dim:)

[EDIT]

Got to thinking, I do not think a player can "speechcraft" Dagoth Ur

Pfft, Skyrim was so dumbed down it's not even funny. No attributes, no spell creation, no degradation, no acrobatics, no H2H, no mobile alchemy, no birthsigns. And it's not just cutting these features that dumbed it down, but the supposed reasons for the cutting. Spell creation too spreadsheety? To who, Lennie from Mice and Men? People "ruining" their builds with a birthsign? Doubt those "people" ever had a build to begin with. PR read like: http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/535139239270155463/725B0C7F8A4A9619383B252D8BD3CC3D6974C320/