I've only played Oblivion, so compared to that, Skyrim is a heckuva TES game. Are these people who are nostalgic for Morrowind or something?

Yes, and people who think that RPG = virtual dice rolls.

I started with Morrowind. Morrowind was my favorite game of all time. Skyrim is better.

Careful there, you need to refer to the glorious Morrowind, otherwise the grumpy people will tell you to "get of their lawn"

Skyrim is just different, and I'm loving it. And the whole bate-and-switch conspiracy is just trash talk in a pseudo intelectual mask. This angers me. I'm gonna go take Meeko for a walk.

But why can't we have the depth of games like MW or OB or F:NV, or the variety of gear you can use? It seems like each Elder Scrolls game just cuts out more and more options that we had in prior games - sure, some new stuff may be added, but why get rid of the options we had in the old games?

More really is more. This should branded on the Bethesda devteam's heads so they have to see it every time they look in a mirror.

Here's a case in point, levitation. I recall seeing some dev saying "we kept having these good ideas but someone would say 'well the player could just use levitate and go past it' so we just took out levitation." Here's a TRUTH BOMB for you, devs - and I hope like hell the guy who said that is reading this thread - If your idea was so good, you wouldn't need to worry about levitation, because the players would want to deal with the 'good idea' that you had. Truth is, your idea just svcks, and is probably some sort of puzzle/padding gimmick that no one really likes anyway.

What would be the point in making the same game in a row without changing it, anyways? That's called MILKING. That's Activision's job, not Bethesda's.

Way to take one single element among plenty of others that made us love Morrowind...

I most certainly can't feel that spells have been expanded.

Are the pretty graphics worth having 23 times less options ?

I can understand having to make small cuts for other features, but not such large ones...

Edit: I feel confused... I could have sworn your post had some comparison to music and expanding before I made my quote...

It blows my mind that people think that Skyrim would be anything like a game from almost a decade ago. Todd had even said that Skyrim would be more streamlined and people still bought it believing it would be like MW. A lot of TES fans are just like BF fans. Over at the BF3 forums people complain that BF3 isn't like BF2.

This game is incredible. It's not perfect, but it's awesome. Patches will be released, mods will come, my enjoyment will continue.
What exactly was this bait and switch? Like, explain how they advertised one thing and then sold something else.

Deleted because its irrelevant and goo goo dolls svck anyways

Oh, you mean the same way those of us who love Skyrim are referred to as simple minded console gamers?

Thing is, when there is room for improvement, it's a shame just to take a whole mechanic out. They could make the RPG elements deeper and better, WHILE changing up some stuff. But seriously, Skyrim isn't much different than Oblivion, the only major difference besides the setting (which doesn't count) is perks, which are not even mutually exclusive with attributes and classes. That's not doing things differently to replace them with perks. But adding perks is doing things a bit differently. Seriously, despite what Todd Howard claims, Oblivion is basically a streamlined and technically superior Morrowind, as Skyrim is basically a streamlined and technically superior Oblivion. There's no reinventing the wheel or artistic innovation, only technical innovations.

And there's a difference between a musician who works for himself and a major developer working for his publishers and shareholders. If Bethesda doesn't work for them, or do what they ask, they're all gonna leave. And nowadays with how much expensive video games are to make, if you want to keep up with the "industry standards", self-financing would never be enough. Even major artists make more commercial albums because they have to. I watched an interview with the bassist/vocalist of one of my favourite bands (which you wouldn't even know of) and he admitted he has to write something appealing to wide audiences. "I have a family to take care of". He didn't say he had no artistic freedom, only that he had to keep in mind that he had a particular crowd to cater to. And it showed on their last album, I didn't really like it. Their drummer left for "artistic differences" too, probably much like the major Bethesda designers left before Morrowind was finished (it was meant to be much more like Daggerfall) Todd the new guy replacing the main one.

There aren't "23 times" less options.

Spell #'s in Oblivion are inflated by multiple spells that have different names, but the same exact effects. For instance, my character had multiple spells that were "Open Average Lock". They were different spells. Same exact effect.

Plus all the spells that are the same effect, but just a different magnitude.

Skyrim may have less spells than Oblivion, but it's not "23 times" less.

Morrowwind was created for the PC and it had no limitations such as the xbox 360 would impose (ie. oblivion and skyrim). Any game also created to play on any console system has limited memory (compared to a PC) and will never be as good. Unless TES goes back to creating for PC only, it will never be as good as people remember MW (MW is the only TES title I haven't actually played)

Expecting a MW style on a console just isn't going to happen, unfortunately. Unless, perhaps, they use more than 1 CD. Since the xbox 360 has the strictest settings to work with, that's the model they base all the systems off of. This leads to other issues such as "dumbing down" and "simplifying".

That being said, I wish TES would simply just go back for making PC only titles but it simply isn't going to happen. They won't make enough money off PC sales only so we are stuck with liking TES games but accepting that its going to have console limitations. Its either buy and play or don't buy and don't play.

Maybe by other people, but not by me, so how is this relevant? Anyway, it's not because people say the game is catered to simple minded console gamers that they are accusing you of being so. There's a difference. I like some commercial movies, but they are not commercial for no reason, because they were meant for mass appeal. Same thing with Skyrim. Sure Skyrim has some depth, but you need to make the depth bypassable, and it never can be as deep as a game with depth you can't walk around.

Meh... I had never played any of the previous TES games and hadn't planned on getting Skyrim until some fellows talking about it talked me into it. Once I found ENB's patch, that actually let the game run smoothly on my PC, Skyrim quickly grew on me. I liked Skyrim so much that I bought Oblivion through that Steam special the other day. Didn't like it. Downloaded a bunch of mods and still didn't like it. So I could see people not liking Skyrim who liked Oblivion, but its the opposite for me.

I was referring neither to two spells having the same exact effect and cast method nor was I talking about spells simply having a different magnitude.

No it goes like this. I count each spell once for every cast method (is it ranged or on self ?), then I multiply that by the number of ranks (like the Skin spells have 5 ranks so I count them five times giving Skyrim 91 spells rather than 87 or even less if I did the same to all spells), and that's it really. I also ignore range so a spell doing apprentice fire damage on range hitting things in a radius of 21 would count the same as a spell doing the same for 22 radius.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1302338-a-small-observation-on-the-amount-of-spells-in-the-game/

Now that's ignorant. Morrowind was made for the PC, but they still managed to port it to the xbox. Why wouldn't Skyrim manage the same level of complexity of Morrowind on the 360, when Morrowind itself was ported to the xbox? The limitations are mostly about the graphics and performance (which work hand in hand), they can just dumb down the graphics to the console version. Adding more skills, putting attributes back, giving us more travel services, more quests and such is barely going to ask more juice. Skyrim could be twice as big (the province) and the performance would be the same (or almost) as the game doesn't load the whole thing in a go. The 360 isn't very powerful by today's standards, but a poor console will always squeeze MUCH more juice than a pc with the very same capabilities. The original xbox was a crap pc and look what the wonders they did with it. It has more to do with the crowd they are catering to, who mostly play through consoles.

The class system of Skyrim is really no different than the class system in Oblivion or Morrowind.

Morrowind / Oblivion: You tag a specified number of skills for an early bonus, and leveling these skills levels your character. There is no game mechanic limiting to you to only these skills. You can still use any and all skills, whether they are one of your chosen skills or not. The class system is really nothing more than a label on your stat sheet telling you what you are, but really doesn't do anything in terms of gameplay. There is no real means of specialization, as if you play long enough, your character will begin to increase skills and attributes that aren't definitive of the character, just because you've maxed everything out. If you play long enough, in the long run, all characters become the same.

Skyrim: You don't tag any skills, thus you don't get an early bonus. All skills work towards leveling you up. You can still use and level any and all skills. The difference is that this time around, there's no arbitrary title on your stat sheet telling you that you are a "Warrior", "Mage", "Thief", "Battlemage", "Assassin", "Nightblade", "Spellsword", "Necromancer", etc. You just simply play as that.

So the real difference is perks, which actually creates more customization and specialization than Morrowind or Oblivion. In Morrowind or Oblivion, someone who was 100 in Conjuration was the same as everyone else who was 100 in Conjuration. In Skyrim, a level 100 Conjuration character can be specialized in Necromancy, and reanimating corpses to fight for them. They could be specialized in summoning Atronachs from the realm of Oblivion. They could specialize in Bound Weapons and harvesting souls with ethereal weaponry. They could even be completely unperked, and otherwise unefficient in the skill.

A level 100 Blade / Blunt (or Axe / Short Blade / Long Blade / Blunt Weapon in Morrowind) is the same as a 100 in the same skill. In Skyrim, a level 100 One Handed character could be specialized in Blades, Maces, or Axes. They can be specialized in one handed power attacks. They could be specialized in Dual Wielding and double weapon fighting.

I just don't understand the argument about the lack of classes in Skyrim. Classes literally did -nothing- in Morrowind or Oblivion. Skyrim is lacking only a label, but effectively, actually encourages classes much more than Morrowind or Oblivion ever could.

Most of Vvardenfell is volcanic ash regions. How is that not dark and gritty? Did you spend all your time in the Ascadian Isles?

Perhaps it was some ignorance since I never realized they actually ported it to the xbox *cough cough*

I never owned one so never looked at any xbox games. I guess I assumed and we all know what that does ;P

Personally what I believe happened is they added in all the voice acting and ran out of memory (along with the also expanded graphics and gameplay) so they had to remove some things for other things to work properly. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. I didn't design this particular game hehehe

How much of Morrowwind was voice acted out of curiosity since I never really played it past the 1st town. My only speculation was MW has enough memory addresses to run on a xbox as it was created for the PC. Oblivion and Skyrim were both designed (I believe) as 360 first then ported to PC and PS3 though I'm not sure that oblivion wasn't created for the PC originally first. At that time in my life I was too preoccupied and didn't have money enough for gaming so I didn't get to play Oblivion until after I got my 1st 360.

I'd like Skyrim more if I didn't spend more time reopening the game after a crash than playing. Dragon Age 2 was the most over advertised piece of [censored] ever created. They by far veered way to far away from the original, don't know what the hell Bioware was thinking when they made that Greek tragedy...

Witcher 2, now THAT is a good game. There's actually a couple things I'd like to see Skyrim take away from Witcher 2 and Dark Souls.

Witcher 2:
The fist fighting system. As opposed to me running around like a chicken with his head cut off trying to regain health (on Master), why not setup a system similar to Witcher 2. Witcher 2 had a system where the two people were in a closed, almost schematic like setting where you hit 1 of 4 buttons (sometimes 2 for combos) and whoever took the most punches lost. Simple as that.

Dark Souls:
The combat in Demon/Dark Souls is by far superior to any game I've ever played. It's extremely hard, and punishing if you fail, but rewarding when you come out on top. I don't think that Elder Scrolls combat needs to be as hard, BUT I do think they should consider adopting some of the combat systems, such as the parry, riposte and lock on (especially for people who enjoy playing third person).

The lock on system will also help out quite a bit with people who are trying to heal their tanks, but instead end up healing the enemy.

It's also extremely frustrating to see that the community has to pump out textures for the company. As opposed to taking the cheap way out and trying to finish things quickly, release a polished game, where the textures are at their max and their are limited crashes. People can choose their settings based on their system, there's no need to skimp out on textures just to rush the project out the door. Most of the texture packs were available within the first week, done by a single person most of the time. You all have an ENTIRE professional team, please don't tell me you can't do this on your own...

As for hair in your games, while trying to put in hair styles that match with the times is nice, throw in some modern hair styles while you're at it... Not everyone role plays their character, and would like to have a decent looking character.

You got it wrong, there is no "bonus" in Morrowind or Oblivion, you choose who you are. Let me put it this way: in Morrowind, if you choose a barbarian class, you're going to get a axe boost. BUT, if you choose a mage class, your axe skill with be below acceptable, you will miss most of your blows. Why? It's not because the barbarian got a bonus, it's because the barbarian didn't wield his first axe when you started the game. Your mage on the other hand, probably never touched an axe, so it's only normal he's going to be pretty bad at it and rarely manage to hit his enemy.

In Skyrim, you start the game and you are competent at EVERYTHING. You shouldn't be able to unlock chests so easily if you never touched a lockpit, you shouldn't be able to hit an enemy square in the head with a giant warhammer 10 times out of 10 if you're a feeble wood elf thief. The class system IS different. Morrowind forces you to play a specific character, while Skyrim enables you to do anything you want. Sure, someone who never touched a lockpit can get good at some point, but it will take a helluva lot of time to get started, to understand how it works. Unless you train until you are competent enough. In Skyrim, you are already competent. You're like a jack of all trades who chooses to specialize. And the moment you have a bit of an idea to of what you'll be, all the choices become obvious, so it's like you choose a class, but quite differently like I explained.

And you got attributes. In Morrowind, attributes add "bonuses" to your skills. Someone more intelligent will be better at alchemy, while someone with more speed will be better with daggers, and someone with more strength better with long blades. It's only logical. The harder you're going to strike with a long blade, the more damage you'll do, besides your skill with it. But it's more effective to strike faster with daggers. And each attribute govern several skills, that's where things go deeper. A jack of all trades will have harder time because he won't be able to focus on all attributes, but someone only focusing on strength and endurance skills will have a significant boost early on, and for most of the game.


Perks are a good addition, but could use some work. Besides, they are not mutually exclusive to classes. Too many perks are sub-skills, making then no different than skills. One handed and two-handed skills are stupid. I can understand using claymores is different than daggers, but what about blades versus axes? The difference between war axes and battleaxes is basically a question of strength and endurance, while the difference between axes and blades (and long blades and daggers) is more important. Since there's less skills and there's not that much perks, some choices are too easy. Some perks necessitates others in order to be unlocked, and at a specific skill level, so usually after the first few levels, you don't even need to choose which ones to unlock anymore, as the others are locked to you for the moment. If you're going to be a barbarian using giant weapons and heavy armors, some perk choices will be obvious. Ie. you won't use perk points for shield perks in blocking when you only use claymores. And you're certainly not going to use perk points for alchemy. It didn't took long that my barbarian-type of character was already defined with the perks already chosen. I put points in smithing because otherwise I'd bank on perk points and I just needed to use them once every 20 levels or so.

Perks do add a bit of depth and complexity, but more than people give them credit for. It would work better with more skills and more perks, thus you can customize much more your characters. You know, I don't consider a warrior character much more different than another one because he can chop off heads or is good with war axes instead of battleaxes. There's perks offering more customization, but there aren't that much, again a certain number of them are actually skills rather than real perks. And I don't like the magic thing that certain spells require certain perks. Anyone studying the conjuration school should be able to use any spell. BUT, not everyone would be able to do detect life up to 1 kilometer, you know, anyone with he basics of illusion should be able to be invisible for 2 seconds. But then, a mage specializing in illusion will get all the perks anyway... Or someone using only certain spells from different schools with choose different perks, but how is this any different than a Morrowind mage who only use certain spells for each magic school?

ALL dialogue was text. You walked by a guard he'd talk to you. You'd go reach someone for a quest, he'd greet you. The Tribunal and Bloodmoon added even more voice acting by making NPCs say a couple of lines regarding a quest or whatnot before you actually talked to him, I preferred it that way.

Otherwise, I don't think it's a question of memory, but money. Voice acting costs money, and if for every quest you cut out 2 lines, if you take out dialogue possibilities with NPCs (which sometimes need certain lines acted by several actors), the lines that must be acted pile up pretty fast. And that can become a significant amount of money. Not only do they need to pay the actors, but the people recording it and all. Actors aren't going to get it right the first time either. Voice acting is worth way more trouble than it's worth honestly. It simplifies dialogues, gives us less detail and it can become annoying if the acting is poor or awkward. Or if there's all the same voices all over again. They already multiplied the number of actors... plus all the renown ones doing major roles... and it's a pretty expensive feature. Plus, people don't want to listen to hour-long dialogues.

The first example is only a problem when they do it too often/too soon, or when standards and expectations change beyond the ability for the system to cope. This is Modern Warfare syndrome.

The second example is only a problem in direct sequels, or when developers are not upfront about the changes. This is the bait&switch, also known as Bioware syndrome.

Contrast this to a sequel that fixes everything that was broken with it's predecessor while at the same time not breaking (or even improving) everything that was previously fine.