Spot on. Great post.

As to the comment about a sandbox to play pretend, yeah, playing pretend is the point. Bethesda just gives you a bigger world to do it in.

It's funny that back in the day Morrowind was the "filthy casual" TES game, Daggerfall was the "only real" TES game. Now Morrowind's the gold standard and the previous ones faded away, with Oblivion/Skyrim the new "filthy casual".

I wonder when Fallout 3/New Vegas will become the gold standards, and Fallout 4/5 become the "filthy casual" ones

When Nostalgic Bias kicks in for FO3. lol.

Its the standard progression within gamer culture. So much of gamer culture is about being exclusionary. Distancing yourself and your tribe from the masses. With gamers you see these tribes form around PvP vs PvE players, around excluding newcomers to a franchise and trying to imply that if you came to the franchise sooner you are somehow superior. Pc vs Console. Xbox vs playstation. Its all about forming a tribe and raising your tribes status higher by tearing down the other tribes. Its childish and immature but it is the norm.

Almost always gamers try to cage their subjective opinions about a game as if it is enshrined in objective perspectives when it is not and they do this by citing how they are an old school die hard fan not some casual player. Or any change in X is simply done to appeal to the casual gamers because casual gamers are the go to phrase to mean "pleb" or inferior.

It makes my become a

Or that could mean the series gradually regressed into the hack and slash hiking simulator Skyrim was. Each iteration in the series stripping more and more RPG elements compared to its predecessor, hence the reason each new game was labeled a "filthy casual".

I recall doing that in Morrowind, though it was a big bull netch... and some crazy guy sent me to do it

[EDIT]

I should add a little to the discussion, I guess.

What is wrong with failing quests? Why do NPCs need artificial protection? As others have stated, wandering, mobile NPCs need NOT attack everything in sight when they have NO weapons or armor. Yea... today's "realism" in a nutshell.

If you think MW or OB had depth you need to take off the rose tinted goggles.

Skyrim had more depth in 1 enemy encounter than either of those games has in an entire dungeon.

Failing quest svck when it is not in your control at all. Should NPCs attack dragons? Depends on the NPC, but for the most part it wasn't really up to them, the mobs attack them and usually they die in a few hits. If they had a sprint feature that would probably go a long way to avoiding skyrim's god tier bears.

Them attacking NPCs is just a by product of AI being hostile to anything dangerous, instead of recognizing it is a threat and fleeing, but that is true in more than quest givers. Bandits will attack a dragon with the same zeal as they would a wolf or a player.

I agree with a lot of what you say, but specifically on the PC vs. Console question, I think you're wrong. How can you argue that a game developed for console is far from reaching the potential it could've had if it had been developed for PC? The plethora of Skyrim mods available for PC is a good example of what that game could have been, and arguably should have been. I'm not just talking about graphics performance, but also the clunky interface and worst of all, the way the game got demoted to a mix between an "RPG" and a console shooter game. The attention to detail was simply missing when it came to depth, quest and character development because that's today's standard console culture where faster is better an no one has the attention span to play a game for hundreds or thousands of hours. If you were to compare the average number of hours, or complete replays, put into Skyrim or FONV between a PC user and a console user I think that would become clear. All tribe culture aside, the number of casual gamers on console far exceed those on PC, and their sheer numbers makes it so that that's where the majority of the market is.

And if you play games without any emotional impact, why the hell are you playing at all? To test the level structure and finish as wuickly as possible? Then I think you've missed the point all together.

Do this for every quest and you have an endless dev cycle of what ifs.

Fortunately, not every quest needs to be quite like that.

What you're talking about is definitely a thing, but trying to say that all criticism is caused by nostalgia or gamer snobbery is a strawman argument. A number of things that were there in Morrowind were removed in Oblivion and a number of things that existed in Oblivion were removed in Skyrim, and this resulted in simplifying the franchise. This is objective. You can argue that the mechanics that were removed did not work well, or that the new simpler mechanics are better, or that casuals are people too but it's wrong to try to dismiss all criticism out of hand.

Fine by me, but it won't satisfy everyone, sadly.

Sorry, what were you saying?

And what of the things that each game added? Oblivion had advanced stealth and combat mechanics, and the new Radiant AI to create a "living, breathing world" was its main selling point. Skyrim's new Radiant Story system is what makes Skyrim's world much more responsive to your actions, along with governing randomized quests and world encounters. Skyrim also added perks, but the end result is a character system that focuses less on character creation (choosing your favored skills and attributes at chargen) and more on character development, so I'd just call that a lateral move.

That's harder to talk about with Fallout, since Bethesda's Fallout games are a straight-up genre shift from the older titles. Trying to quantify complexity between the games (outside of writing and quest design) is pointless.

Not gonna get into what I'm sure will turn into a clusterf***, pointless argument, but... that's an awesome smiley

This is another solution, non combat npc should flee from strong enemies, the enemies should also have them as low priority.

An non combat npc like an farmer might however fight and kill a rat as its far weaker than him.

In the same way an weak npc will not attack you then you have high level, same for smarter monsters.

Essential npc goes unconscious then beaten anyway and the enemy moves no to next target. We know kids will be essential, they should also always flee and have no priority from enemies. Important NPC should be protected as followers in Skyrim. any non combat npc of them should also flee easy, fleeing into houses is an good idea.

I really don't see the issue here, the above system will ensure an pretty realistic behavior.

I won't be as happy with a more streamlined character system probably. I want more skills.. skill with subcategories of skills. I like complicated character build systems that really feel like you're focusing on a certain build. My favorite character building system to this day is still Arcanum.

LOL and yes, I have played all the tes games except arena a lot as in thousands of hours. i stopped playing Morrowind after picking the mushrooms needed for the first mage guild quest in the starting town and did not remember doing it, it was just instinct. Same was lost of the other actions you did to get good gear fast.

Its an reason gear is more random and leveled in later games

I always said Daggerfall was more like Oblivion than Morrowind, however in Daggerfall everything outside the main quest was random also quests, they was like Skyrim radial ones.

And everything was level scaled, shop content, enemies and loot. Main difference was that the spread in Daggerfall was larger, you could get an enemy in an dungeon who was impossible to kill, exit and reenrer the dungeon and it was probably gone.

X-Com managed to simplify but keep true to the originals.

I hope they cut more of the fluff perks and focus on less but more meaningful perks.

I doubt it's a simple homage or reference to past games, because some of the perk icons appear to be completely new.

Several perks have black circles on them, sort of like ow Skyrim's perk lit up after taking them.

Its likely to be the new level up/perk selection screen for Fallout 4.

Was wondering about if those dirt stains were indicative of something like that.

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This being a thread about streamlining, the board paints a rather worrisome suspicion that it might be all there is to character progression. That skills are streamlined into perks and at each level up you get an attribute point and a perk point like in skyrim, opening new perks by increasing the governing attribute. Not an inherently bad system, should that end up being the case, but unnecessary streamlining still.

I think if they add the option to toggle level scaling, they could please a lot of people at once. I really liked Fallout 3's character advancement system so I hope they leave it the same. FPS mechanics need to be updated too, for when I run out of action points.

Sorry, what were you saying?