Changing of the times I guess. Just like watching an action movie made in the 70's compared to an action movie made today. Things need to change to keep up with the times. Game makers make games for the masses. So they have to go with what's popular. The good thing is that there is a circle.. Things go in and out of style. So a genre you like that may not be here right now will eventually come back into play.
But like most have said there's not enough information to make an informed decision on whether or not the game has been "dumbed down" You won't know until you play it. Plus if your already telling yourself it's not going to be good your just gearing yourself up to be disappointed no matter what kind of game it turns out to be.

This is very true, I try to temper my criticism because I'm aware that at some point it's preventing me from enjoying the games at their potential.

Well, it's true they had to cut off some things, while the game was still awsome and improved a lot of things from Morrowind. But you have to look after the way you say it... it seem like you are saying that The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is the greatest game in the history of the universe. and everything will svck. We now some things about Skyrim, but we don't know how they will be in the actual game. It's not time to complain about everything.

It's more like:

Daggerfall was great game for the time it was released, but many of those skills were useless or could have been combined into others. The world may have been huge but was almost entirely randomly generated. The main plot was good but sidequests were terribly generic. Character development was almost completely absent. Morrowind was an improvement in almost every aspect: Lore, skills, combat, immersion, design and value. Not to mention longevity with the Construction set.

I will agree that Oblivion was sorely lacking a good main plot. But it wasn't the original script that was really flawed, it was the engine's limitations when handling the scope they aimed for. Radiant was still very experimental and some may argue it backfired in many circunstances. From a designer's perspective, Oblivion is HUGE and would probably have benefitted from extra development time and a more polished engine. Yet, it suceeded in presenting breakthrough graphics and a vast landscape. It may have been generic medieval setting, but that was clearly intentional and not something that slipped through. And it was probably more successful in attracting new fans more than all other ES titles combined.

What truly irks me with Oblivion is that it was the first multiplatform release, so things like console memory limitations really compromised certain aspects of the game, such as a true open world, limited performance optmization for multicore threading and lack of high quality textures, at least in the retail release. But it's just the reality of the market today. The same issues will affect Skyrim, but it's something we'll need to live with. We can only hope Bethesda has projected this new engine thinking about scalability and future hardware, which is something that did not happen before.

But we have to keep in mind that 2d games in the 80's and 90's were far more artsy than today's games are meant to be. Today they're treated like Hollywood produtions, running on a very tight development schedule and colossal budgets. As such, we should expect less controversial themes, a very broad target audience and a certain template to be followed. Studios are rarely daring when the stakes are so high.

However, if we're to talk only about design aspects, size doesn't mean quality. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Accessibility is good, intuitive UI's are good, getting rid of the obsolete and the redundant is good. Streamlining is only bad if it compromises gameplay and removes features instead of replacing them with better looking or more functional alternatives. For instance: Combining long blades with short blades is good. Moving spells from one school to another, fine. Getting rid of crossbows, armor slots, polearms and spears, because they all have particular technical woes attached to them: bad but acceptable. Level scaling, lack of unique treasure placement, fast travelling are "features" that are designed exclusively to make the game easier and less frustrating for the casual player. But they altered fundamental core mechanics that define ES games. This is very bad Streamlining in my opinion..





Daggerfall was extremely detailed for the time it was released. It's certainly not detailed in the sense of a fully realized game world, but it has so many gameplay mechanics combined that it was truly revolutionary for a CRPG. Today, for Oblivion's standards though, it naturally doesn't stand very well.



I agree. I only thought it was probably too short, thanks to the portions of gameplay they left out. But the ones left in make up for the missing content, which is quite a feat. Deus Ex: Invisible War related to Deus Ex 1 and Fable 2 and 3 in comparison to Fable are better examples of poor design directions.

I'm sick of rediculous threads complaining about a game that isn't even release for another 9-10 months.

The game is being streamlined, and all alterations make sense. Ok so there was less in Ob compared to Morrowind, get over it. And your guesses at VI and VII are just laughable!

If you don't like the game, don't play it. I would prefer these forums to be more about constructive ideas instead of negativity spanning the next 10 years of TES as in the case of this thread.

While I agre with you that some alterations make sense and some streamling makes sense, you remarks contain the same kind of attitude that inspires this sort of spamming, thus you're not being any better than the OP. Telling people to go play other games and asking them to get over their opinions, while yours are clearly the best is not exactly constructive either. Debating why and how said features are important or not is far more valuable than hushing away all negavity and create hundreds of threads to compliment Bethesda and overhype the game.

They are just omitting what is superfluous and chaff. There are only 3 fewer skills than in Oblivion, and this is because of the perk system, which will allow greater sub-specialties in a single skill. It will give more customization than DF. And DF's landscape was huge, yet very repetitive. Morrowind's was comparatively large, but very detailed. Oblivion's was a little larger, but less detailed. The landscape in Skyrim will be a little bit larger than OB's, and probably more detailed (they said more uniqueness).

Unless you want to "lol" at your warning and posting ability suspension, I suggest you read the forum rules.

Platform bashing of any kind is not tolerated on the forums.

Your post went away.

Bravo sir bravo!

Just thought I'd point out that Daggerfall was a terrible game and Oblivion was miles better. More doesn't mean better.

Edit: Oblivion and Morrowind >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Daggerfall and Arena

Why? Design wise it was the most solid ES game. Excellent for what it was. the only one in the series that isn't more of a flawed gem. They didn't try to bite way more than they could chew like daggerfall did.

"daggerfall- insane amount of skills,insanely large world, lots of lore and factions. multiple endings to the plot"

Insane amount of extremely shallow skills, most of which were fairly pointless. The lore is good, but the factions and world were nothing but cut and paste. So were the dungeons, all of which look the same and were nightmarishly huge. The map was virtually useless too making the game a massive choice. When it comes to gameplay Daggerfall was a huge step down from arena. It's the perfect example of why more is not always better. Easily the worst of the elder scrolls games. Don't even get me started on the awful character creation. I've never seen a game more easy to abuse than Daggerfall. Compared to arena's distinct classes and races (most of which were genuinely useless in daggerfall) daggerfall was a disaster.

"morrowind- comparatively very small world but balanced out by incredibly detailed lore and landscape. highly detailed guild system. plot fleshed out fantastically. fantastic world. tod remains fairly uninfluenced"

Morrowind is my favorite game. However, the character system went into further decline. Most of the birthmarks were worthless. There was absolutely no point in picking anything other than the atronach. Natural spellcasting was largely pointless with enchanting being superior in virtually every way. Let's not get started on alchemy stat abuses.



FewER. Lower armor slots was to curb morrowind abuse. Morrowind was the most unbalanced game ever made thanks to the insane amount of crap you could shovel on your character.

" removal of cool stuff."

Like what?

" low amount of lore,"

No.

"uninspired and repetitive landscape,"

I too miss the varied, beautiful and magnificent vistas of Daggerfall.



Mostly same guild system as the previous games.



No and I can't imagine someone lacking the intellectual capacity to not make sense of the relatively simple Oblivion plot.



Blatantly false. Oblivion was the first TES game to have decent stealth going. That alone makes it better non-combat wise than all the previous 3 put together.



More =/= better. See the piece of crap that was daggerfall for details. Arena had no skills at all and still managed to pull off the most interesting and well balanced character system to date.



Like what?



Just like the previous 4.



huh?

It's all norse-like armor. Which was in TES already since oblivion. And what armor did conan wear? He walked around in his underwear with a pair of bracers for good measure.

Anyway, it's possible that they'll dumb down skyrim to unbearable levels. But there simply isn't enough information out there to decide whether they've done it or not. Particularly with the introduction of perks which should hopefully give some significant way to differentiate between characters after the travesty that was Daggerfall to Oblivion.

Well, I agree...

I only hope that attributes are in(ALL OF THEM.) and quest markers are out.

Otherwise I′m out.

No. Arena was on par with morrowind and oblivion. It was just daggerfall that was a solid miss.

If loads of skills and everything being more complicated is so much better, may I respectfully suggest purchasing rolemaster and a lot of dice. Of course it only really has one armour slot, so you could rewrite it's already lengthy rules to include multiple body location armour pieces. I myself am practically drooling at the prospect of another Elder Scrolls. I don't care if there are only 18 skills, as long as the system makes sense. I don't give a damn about how many armour slots there are, as long as there is a decent level of customisation, and if it looks even better than Oblivion, then I don't need Skyrim to look as good as Crysis or whatever. A new TES is the news I have been waiting years for.

I like how skills are more merged because now I can use more of them. Plus we will not have classes in any way now. The Elder Scrolls have switched to in side quests and classes """you are what you play."" If you want to be a heavy armored thief using a war hammer and magic now you can with effectiveness (sorta)

I don't know why people bash Oblivion's landscapes. The difference between great forest, gold coast, southern marshes and northern mountains i find very nice. Not to mention colorful mushroom forests of Mania and the depressing dark mires of Dementia.

Though i would be lying if i said i didn't use the Unique Landscapes mod :hehe:

Are you kidding me? What kind of mushroom have you eaten bro? Daggerfall even with all the bugs that plagued it was still waaaaay deeper than the "consolized' Oblivion. Daggerfall was the last TES game that was pure hardcoe RPG. Then Beth decided to cater the console community and the rest is history.

How do they not belong in TES? They look fantasy enough too me. And they decide what is TES and what isn't.

Daggerfall has a randomly generated world didnt it?

Complexity isn't always good, I think the merged skills are good choices.

I do not like oblivion true but I named myself that at 2 in the morning? If I could change my name I would.

Well, to be fair, as overrated as 7 is, anything after has been utter garbage. Square is just insulting people at this point.

Daggerfall was a randomly generated pile of crap. Not even the abundance of free MMO grind fests out there compare to Daggerfall. It's one of the worst RPGs ever made, period.

Eh, I wonder why people hate the Skills becoming fewer, I think they are doing the right thing, as more skills would just spread out thinly, and also with fewer skills, the more manageable and faster it becomes. Also alot of Daggerfall's Skills were actually just in a way Perks, like Centaurian, Giantism, Impish, Spriggan etc. Also like Etiquette and Street Wise, two skills easily replaceable via Perks. Also I think the fewer skills in this game is likely just to balance out the players options, as if you look at Morrowinds Skills there was much more Stealth then any other skill set, making it easier for players to fall into stealth, so by balancing the books it will make advancing a character much easier and much more rewarding as the Skills would have much more effect, as they would be less thinned out.

I don't like the way they simplified Armour though, I think for instance Pauldrons allowed for more customisation outside the Character creation zone, but with the news of Decals and Tattoos and what not, it sounds Skyrim has upped the ante in terms of customisation...

The only thing generic and illogical here is you jumping to conclusions. I mean really, I didn't know people could be so incredibly negative. Many of your points simply don't make sense.

Its freedom was unmatched. One of the greatest RPG's ever made, period.