+3

for when a post is so good +1 just doesn't cut it.

I agree completely. At first, when you don't notice the difference, it seems that every skill simply became a major skill, and that was that. But its not! I have a lvl 30 character, who is specialized in melee combat (Heavy, One hand, Smithing.. the usual), and when I tried to "cheat" my way to one easy lvl for a perk, by getting the last bit on the lvl, by purchasing Destruction skill (which was lvl 15, unlike my main skills which are a good 60-70), it more the lvling bar about as much as 1-2 skills in one hand would have. Even then if that wasn't the case, I would agree that its better, as I have several friends who is coming this game (because of me btw.. gief me stuff Bethesda! :hubbahubba: ), who has NEVER played Oblivion or Morrowind (their loss but oh well) and they simply didn't have to deal with the whole;

(may sound like ranting, so feel friend to overlook this part)

Make a character, play it for 1-10 hours (Lets face it, Morrowind at least, had you going for hours before you started thinking about how the modifiers worked and so on), make a new char, because now you know how [censored] works, and know that you current char will be so severly weakened later on you simply can't play it. THEN AGAIN start a new character when you realize you need endurance early on, or your [censored]. And then, ONLY THEN, can you finally play the game, and have been set several limitations that you (arguably) need to follow to have fun.

(ranting over)

That said, Morrowind is still a game a I will remember, and probably playthrough many more times, and not ONCE when I started over did I actually feel bothered about it, but I know a lot of people who isn't as RPG involved and me, and who wouldn't have been as forgiving as I was. This gives us much more freedom to play as we want, without having to pay attention to game mechanics unless we actually want to.

Bethesda is going in the right direction

I saw our community in the first one http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TheyChangedItNowItsvcks/VideoGames... :teehee:

Agree on this.
Morrowind and Oblivion's levelling system were flawed. I actually GRINDED to make sure i have the optimum +5 in the stats i wanted so i didn't gimp my character.
Having the need to GRIND really feels wrong in the open world free form concept of Elder Scrolls.
In the end, i gave up and just downloaded a mod that gave auto +5 to the attributes u wanted during level up. Saved me the trouble.

Skyrim's leveling system while not perfect, is definitely a HUGE IMPROVEMENT.
For the first time in the Elder Scrolls series, i can truly play the game how i like, and not have to worry about levelling mechanics.
There is no longer a need for me to download a mod to just give me auto +5 or something.

My gripe towards Skyrim leveling is that i feel Speechcraft shouldn't play a part in increasing my level.
If speechcraft is integral in raising my level, then at least don't increase speechcraft when im only selling/buying stuffs,
increase speechcraft only when i successfully bribe/persuade/intimidate.

I see it immersion breaking because if speechcraft can increase a character's level, then i suppose all the worlds traders/merchants
would be at least level 50, given that they buy and sell stuffs on a regular basis. Just doesn't make sense to me.

Only a true master of illusion could see through the lies of the thread title, sadly i am not a master of illusion...

On topic though i think the new system is ba.

Someone will make a mod that removes markers and disables fast travel, except via cart. Players who have no lives will enjoy the heck out of walking walking walking walking walking and walking to get to one point, do something that takes all of 30 seconds, and then have to walk and walk and walk all the way back. Experiencing the world is cool, but for those who do have a life with responsibilities that put a serious limit on available time for gaming, the current system is perfect. I don't call it dumbed down. I call it convenient. But technically, even though we have the option to fast travel everywhere, we are not required to. So even now those who want to manually reavel the whole way from one side of the map to the other can still do so. They don't need a mod to make sure they cannot fast travel if they have the strength of will to avoid the temptation to speed things along...

As to the markers and the radar? Nobody makes you look at compass...

I am retired and living alone, so I play a lot: and, I also fast travel whenever possible.

You haven't convinced me.

i actually love the leveling system because i actually play it and lvl as i go along instead of immersion breaking to get the stats right. Is it perfect? no...but its close enuf that im happy with it to not have to mod it.

also for the people who are complaining about that stats means magic/sta regen, dmg to weapons/spells, etc...the last i looked they were in the perks list.....except how to jump higher, which of coure without that its game breaking...lol i kid i kid.
point is, its not perfect but i have yet to see a perfect build out there in any game, but this is the first time in TES that i dont have to run and jump across the map to lvl which i am enternally grateful. But there will peopel saying it breaks my roleplaying experience because i cant min max my stats with birthsigns at the beginning to start off powerful as a certain spec......yes the game starts us all out as "average joe" but cmon we some pretty bad@#$ average joes. BTH cmon if u like it u like it, and if u dotn NOONE on here is gonna convince u other wise until it grows on ya if it does, but as for me im digging the new direction and i dotn feel at all they are ddumbing it down, i feel they just trimmed soem of the fat that was immersion breaking . well im off to enjoy the game.

no way do i think the game is perfect, there is a few things i wish they didnt do away with but i am very happy with the lvling aspect, the others i can deal with.

If that was directed at me, I wasn't trying to convince anyone. It's stupid to try to convince someone of something in a game where whatever you do is a matter of personal preference.

It's funny that people say that the freedom to fast travel dumbs the game down. I would say it's also dumbing it down even more to have a mod that artificially prevents you from doing so, because the ability to choose is removed and you have to do what the mod makes you do.

Having said all that, when the creation kit comes out, I'll probably write a mod that removes all default markers from the map... Unless the player chooses Nord as their race. Nords would be familiar with their native land, I think. Why? To familiarize myself with modding markers and map elements so when/if I get into quest mods, it will be familiar to me.

Sorry, but Skyrim's system is most definitely dumbed down.

- No real character creation beyond deciding what my character looks like.
- Choice between Magicka, Health and Stamina when levelling up, which doesn't say much about my character at all compared to strength, intelligence, willpower, agility, endurance, speed, etc.
- Skill progression seems almost entirely reliant on perks, which should be there to compliment attributes and skills... addinga bit of flavour to your character - not to define them entirely. They're much too lacking for that.

The whole thing just seems so short, simple and unsatisfactory. Instead of making a unique character who progresses gradually over time it feels like i'm just making a very generic character and waiting for the next big perk boost as I inevitably complete all the perk trees for the skills i'm interested in.

Strength for encumbrance?

Agility for staggering?

Acrobatics?

Athletics?

Willpower for mana regeneration?

Fatigue improvement from some attributes?

Luck?

etc etc... Well you did have some more flexibility when leveling on how your character would be built didn't you? (I mean for example instead of getting a +100 weight perk by having high pickpocket you could raise strength whenever you wanted)
But nah, i don't mind these to be honest (maybe except luck, athletics and acrobatics) - the improvements were more, but...

Spells and effects? http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Spells
Spellcrafting? (Why in Oblivion did they not add this one..)
Quests lines (Definitely shorter and some are very repetitive)
Dialog scripts/Npc AI (just tragic i don't know where to start with this one)

The only reason I'm posting this is because I'm at work and my job allows me time to skim through stuff on my phone's browser.

The bottom line is people come here for two reasons:

Ask questions for help.

Complain.

90% of what you're going to see on these forums is people complaining because if they were enjoying the game they would be spending their free time on it instead of here. That brings my back to my point at the beginning, if I was home right now this post wouldn't exist. So I ask the thread author (yes I did, I hate vague acronyms...no time to type the whole word...no time to post on a forum) that they quit wasting their time trying to defend this game. All you'll recieve is more complaints along with flames from people with nothing better to do.

This is your opinion OP

But it is not mind

IT has been dumbed down to sell it to the bigger genres

And it worked

They set records

Expect all RPGs to only have the illusion of character creation from now on

Case and point. You see kids when someone doesn't actually know what they are talking about they usually say things like "selling to a wider audience" or "nostalgia" (when people bash the out-crowd Morrowind troop) instead of trying to explain in good detail why it is dumbed down.

The number is twenty-nine
The Scripture of the Numbers:

1. The Dragon Break, or the Tower. 1

2. The Enantiomorph. 68

3. The Invisible Gate, ALMSIVI. 112

4. The Corners of House of Troubles. 242

5. The Corners of the World. 100

6. The Walking Ways. 266

7. The Sword at the Center. 39

8. The Wheel, or the Eight Givers. 484

9. The Missing. 11

10. The Tribes of the Altmer. 140

11. The Number of the Master. 102

12. The Heavens. 379

13. The Serpent. 36

14. The King's Cough. 32

15. The Redeeming Force. 110

16. The Acceptable Blasphemes. 12

17. The Hurling Disk. 283

18. The Egg, or Six Times the Wise.

19. The Provisional House. 258

20. The Lunar Lattice. 425

21. The Womb. 13

22. Unknown. 453

23. The Hollow Prophet. 54

24. The Star Wound. 44

25. The Emperor. 239

26. The Rogue Plane. 81

27. The Secret Fire. 120

28. The Drowned Lamp. 8

29. The Captive Sage. 217

30. The Scarab. 10

31. The Listening Frame. 473

32. The False Call. 7

33. The Anticipations. 234

34. The Lawless Grammar. 2

35. The Prison-Shirt. 191

36. The Hours. 364

'The presence of deaf witness, this is what the numbers are. They hang onto the Aurbis as the last nostalgia of their godhood. The effigies of numbers are their current applications; this is folly, as above. To be affixed to a symbol is too, too certain.'

The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.

The number is eight
And presently Nerevar and Vivec were within sight of the capital and the Four Corners of the House of Troubles knew that it was not time to contest them. The caravan musicians made a great song of entrance and the eleven gates of the Mourning Hold were thrown wide.

Ayem was accompanied by her husband-state, a flickering image that was channeled to her ever-changing female need. Around her were the Shouts, a guild now forgotten, who carried with them the whims of the people, for the Velothi then were still mostly good at heart. The Shouts were the counselors of Ayem and the country, though they sometimes quarreled and needed Seht to wring them into usefulness. Ayem approached Nerevar, who was by now adorned in the flags of House Indoril. He gifted her with the simulacrum of the netchiman's wife and the egg of Vivec inside.

Ayem said to Nerevar:

'Seht who is Azura has revealed that war is come and that the Hortator that shall deliver us will approach with a solution walking at his side.'

Nerevar said:

'I have traveled out of my way to warn you of the deceit of our enemies, the Dwemer, but I have learned much on the journey and have changed my mind. This netchiman's wife you see at my side is a sword and a symbol and there is prophecy inside. It tells me that, like it, we must for a while be like he is and, as a people, cloaked in our former enemies, and to use their machines without shame.'

At which Vivec spoke aloud:

'Boethiah-who-is-you wore the skin of Trinimac to cleanse the faults of Veloth, my Queen, and so it should be again. This is the walking way of the glorious.'

Seht appeared out of a cloud of iron vapor and his minions made of their blood a chair. He sat beside Ayem and looked on the rebirth of mastery. Vivec said to them, his Triune:

'My rituals and ordeals and all the rhymes within,
Use no other motive than the revelation of my skin.'

Ayem said:

'AYEM AE SEHTI AH VEHK. We are delivered and made whole, the diamond of the Black Hands is uncovered.'

Seht said:

'Wherever so he treads, there is invisible scripture.'

To which the Shouts were silent in sudden reading. Vivec then reached out from the egg all his limbs and features, merging with the simulacrum of his mother, gilled and blended in all the arts of the starwounded East, under water and in fire and in metal and in ash, six times the wise, and he became the union of male and female, the magic hermaphrodite, the martial axiom, the six-death of language and unique in all the middle world. He said:

'Let us now guide the hands of the Hortator in war and its aftermath. For we go different, and in thunder. This is our destiny.'

The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.

..
Now tell me about shallow.

the way you leveled attributes was pretty dumb, but thats about the only argument you have. why are you people so married to absolutism? if skyirm streamlined some things successfully it does not mean the entire TES experience was transferred to this new system perfectly and without reason to complain. i am not some pre-schooler ignorant to the concept of streamlining. streamlining is the removal of unnecessary complication to preserve the same system in a less obtuse package; its taking a huge sack of dead weight you have to lug around the whole game and building a car out of it; giving you all the benefits of the system with much better control over it. it is the difference between shakespearian dialogue and more modern writing techniques that attempt to give you as much information as possible through clever manipulation of realistic thoughts and conversations.

in some instances, skyrim does this; options afforded to you from lost skills and attributes have been consolidated into the perk system. THAT is a good idea; giving you the same options we always had but in a single gameplay mechanic... key word being "idea". but skyrim has in no way presented you all the options we used to have, and that single gameplay mechanic is far from perfect: in fact there was a topic recently made that shows how skyrim's magic system offers a mere fraction of the options you had in oblivion. half of what we could do is simply not available in skyrim; THAT is simplification, dumbing down, or whatever you want to call it.

streamlining is not some miracle solution to the user-unfriendliness of RPGs. firstly, it is hard. you cant just shove every choice into one mechanic like skyrim. there is no systematic approach to streamlining, you have to be smart, you have manipulate every facet of the gameplay in uniquely clever ways to organize a complex system into something that makes sense on a human level. if i may continue my metaphor, its like taking a sack of scrap metal and building a car out of it. every choice, option, derived stat, base stat, skill, upgrade, equipment modifier, spell effect... EVERYTHING has to bent and wrapped around everything else in the most precise and complicated fashion to create an incredibly complex and deep machine that can all be effectively controlled in a relatively simple matter. any idiot can drive it, but for those so inclined, all the layers upon layers of complexity are still there to be mastered for the higher difficulties, theyre just better organized. thats all streamlining is; organizing a teenager's room with crap just lazily thrown everywhere into a gentleman's study where everything can be found with comfort and ease. but skyrim does not do this, skyrim takes the easy way out of just throwing away half the stuff it was supposed to organize.

secondly, its not always a good thing. in fact, its NEVER a good idea to streamline an entire game. the simple fact is, some things need to be dead weight. you need artificial complication, some kind of restrictive or overly difficult SOMETHING to challenge the player; the best car in the world isnt any fun if there is nothing trying to smash it. you have to be forced into certain things, such as using spellmaking to get the perfect ratio of cost/power, using a fast travel system that used only in-universe means of transportation, or saving some money away for repairing your equipment. these things force you into ways of playing you would otherwise never of considered, effectively cheating yourself out of what the game has to offer... from a conceptual standpoint, its the reason old-school games had punishingly unfair boss fights; not the best way to go about it, but it forced you to immerse yourself into the game and its mechanics. one poster summed it up perfectly by saying that morrowind FORCED you to immerse yourself in the game to succeed, while subsequent titles did nothing but just not remove the option to immerse yourself. say it all you want, but you cant just "choose" to be immersed into skyrim, or any other game. at some point the game has to cheat and do something to force you to immerse yourself into it... its usually after that point that the player becomes aware of the true breadth of the game and "gets into it".

thirdly, your ignoring the fact that most hardcoe players simply have different tastes than more mainstream players. you love to say how the removal of "spreadsheet" like mechanics is a good thing, but to us things dont get spreadsheet-y until you get into your second-dozen block of formulas and the scrolling across hundreds of rows and columns gets tedious. we arent scared by visible complexity like, say, a spreadsheet, and as much of a surprise as it might be for you, spreadsheets actually exist to streamline information, and some of us find them easier to work with than obnoxious abstractions like skyrim's new leveling system.

tl;dr: skyrim streamlined SOME things, but dumbed down some things as well. not every player has your taste for obnoxious abstractions. "spreadsheety-ness", believe it or not, is not the earthly incarnation of satan here to murder fun and torture you with basic arithmetic. in games, just as life, you have to slog through some tough spots in order to appreciate the good bits. im sure you all have felt some moment of great satisfaction after killing that one cheating-ass boss.

The problem with the leveling systems in TES3/4 and TES5 are exactly the same! Allow me to clarify. The problem with each leveling system is as much due to design flaw as it is placebo. The human brain is designed to solve puzzles, and the biggest puzzle for any leveling system is, "How can I get the most bang for my buck?" so to speak. With Morrowind and Oblivion that was achieved by selecting major/minor skills, each with their own attribute, yadda yadda yadda. Here, attributes are absent much to my personal annoyance as this takes an element away from the equation, thus simplifying it. Some would call this "dumbing down." I'll stick with the term simplifying. Many would say that the perk system has been added, but to be fair, some of the perks have already existed. Alchemy for example, one would glean the knowledge of additional effects through leveling of that particular skill.

So how could we compromise? Well the biggest problem will always be those who want to get the most, try to figure out the "best" build, etc. I honestly feel this comes from the player having control over the skill selections for TES3/4 and perks for TES5. Simply take away that control. I know... it feels blasphemous just to even say it. The question becomes how do we give players a truly unique experience without "overly" exploiting the system. Well for starters, make everything (EVERYTHING) hidden and unchangeable by the player (console commands not withstanding). Put back all those skills that have been removed since Morrowind... medium armor, mysticism, acrobatics, athletics, etc. Now, break those down even farther in some way, perhaps by individual armor type or break destruction down by element type. Anything to get more skills back to the game.

I will preface this next section by saying that I do like how Skyrim begins the character, w/o forcing the player to squeeze their character into some kind of per-determined archetype. With 18 skills in Sklyrim, 21 in Oblivion, and 27 in Morrowind, my idea expands on that as much as possible. I don't have an exact number as this is just a preliminary thought, but ideally it would be upwards of 50. Now for the sake of coming up with a system that will actually work on the fly, lets just say that each skill will instead be based on an attribute as they have been in TES' past. Let us also keep the idea of leveling up at the rate of 10 skill increases in the style of Skyrim. So now you've leveled up (totally unknown to the player).

Let us say that you are playing an unarmored mage who primarily uses fire, wields a staff and runs around from place to place frantically. And just for the sake of argument since we're using the Skyrim level style, assume that this guy increased his unarmored skill by 1 (he's good at not getting hit), his Destruction - Fire skill by 3, Staff by 2, and Athletics by 4 (LOTS OF RUNNING). So his ability to not get hit, which would had a direct impact on how much health he gains, means he wouldn't gain much health for that level. Improving his fire magic would give him a moderate gain in Magicka as well as more powerful Destruction - Fire magic. Using a 2h Staff to crack the skulls of those who managed to get through the fiery barrage makes him a little better at the staff skill as well as increases in both health and stamina. And lastly, he gets a pretty good boost to Stamina for all that running as well as some gain in health.

Basically, give each and every skill their own "perks" along their path to 100, but since there would be so many, literally double that seen in previous TES games, that one COULD max them all out, but it would take a long time to do it, and given that this system does not allow the player to see what their skill level is, they would have less of an idea what the maximum effectiveness of a skill would be. Sure this system has its flaws, most notably that feeling you get when you actually level up, but no matter what the solution, I think the best avenue for success is to compromise the systems of all the TES games. Or learn to script.

So is the whole 'dumbing down' topic in this thread related specifically to character leveling? Or are we talking about everything else too?

Regarding the first, it feels dumbed down to me. Mainly because when you level, you're now left with a choice to dump all of your points into, (in the old system), Intelligence, Strength or Endurance. I've always liked to spread my points out, so choice has been taken away on two fronts there. The skill trees, or "perk trees" as they are called in this game... I don't know, whatever. I think that we should be getting everything in the "perk tree" automatically as we play anyway. I mean, if I'm up to 50 skill points with the sword. I've gone from a know-nothing novice to at least a mediocre journeyman. I'm gained lots of experience, I'm more proficient with a blade. Therefore, I should automatically do more damage, or have higher chance for critical hits, or dual-wield faster. That came with experience, and training. I shouldn't have to actually choose a "be better with a sword" perk. Organically, I should already be better with a sword.

Again, whatever, it's just a different road to the same location as before. To me, it simply seems more impactful to pick which of the many attributes to spend all of my level-up points on. It gives me more control over my character. As apposed to flatly choosing to increase health, and getting to assign another "super hero bonus power." IMO, the latter is the walking definition of dumbing it down for the casuals.

If we want to talk about how the rest of the game has been dumbed way down from an RPG into and action / adventure game, we can do that a little bit as well.

The past: Weapons and armor had to be maintained. Makes perfect sense, since blades get dull the more you hit stuff with them, and armor gets worn the more they're beaten on.
The present: Nonsense.

The past: Banks were where you deposited that weighty Gold, got loans, bought / sold houses and ships, or got letters of credit to transfer your gold to other banks in other regions.
The present: What's a bank?

The past: Guards would change you with one of 10 different crimes, resulting in varying punishments dependent on reputation, or you could argue your innocence in a variety of ways... unless the Thieves Guild or DB gets you off the hook first.
The present: Pay a fine or go to jail.

The past: Stores, stores, stores. Book stores, gem stores, furniture stores, clothing stores, general stores, pawn shops, smith shops, alchemists, temples
The present: Walmart is ruining Tamriel as well.

The past: Magical items found had to be taken to an expert to have magical properties identified... for a price.
The present: Everyone is an expert in magical item identification.

The past: Searching for quest items using the directions provided by NPCs, usually referring to landmarks, directions and distances from towns, so forth and so on.
The present: "Go get my sword back," then follow the magic GPS marker to where ever the sword is.

I could go on for a while, but there's no need. The dumbing down has been an illusion? Seriously? I respect that opinion, even if I can't understand how it could be formulated. There have been lots of cool, intricate, RPG'ish things that have been stripped over the course of the series to ultimately make the game mostly about walking around and killing stuff. The only way that a game transforms from an RPG to an action /adventure game is by dumbing it down.

Disclaimer: Ultimately, they're in this business to make money, and the money is out in the vast ocean of the casual gamer market, not in the lagoon of the niche nerd market. So I can't blame them in the direction they've steered the series.

armsman increasing weapon dmg----strength
stamina lets u carry more weight----strength
tower of strength 50% less staggering-----agility
conditioning and unhindered both let u walk/run faster-----agility
there is nothing for jumping higher, im sry i know game breaking yes
recovery rank 1 and 2 magicka regens 25%/50% faster----will power
wind walker plus all the perks that lessen the amount of sta an thing uses for sta regen----willpower
just picking magicka in the lvl up screen------intellengence



throw soem more of those pitiful escuses of Bethesda did away with blah blah and i will find it for ya.

You're argument is coming apart. You can complete absolutely any quest given to you without the use of the compass or map (I happen to play that way myself). All quest givers give you a verbal explanation of where to go and what to do and even why if you ask them. No Journal for notes you might say? Well a journal crafted for you by the game would be its own 'dumbing down' wouldn't it. Because it would be taking that task away from you. So if you want to feel really smart you can start your own physical quest journal. No one is stopping you from doing that.

IMPO: Companies are changing how RPG games are played for the console. Walk into any Amusemant Arcade and you will see from where these companies are going. RPG's are transforming into Action/Adventure games. Look at what EA/Bioware did to DA2, for example. It won't be long before PC video games will be totally phased out of video gaming. Building games for the arcade player is less costly and much more profitable: And, in today's corporate world it is more about pleasing the investor than pleasing the consumer. Their notion is that people who really want to play video games will still purchase the games regardless of how dumb down they are. Good, bad or indifferent it's all about the money. Doing things for the sake of quality and art are a thing of the past. Dragon Age Origins will always be my personal favorite game of all times: and, I will keep it installed to play for nostalgia.

Or, you could play like I did in all the Elder Scroll games and not worry about how many points you got in things and just let your character develop "naturally" by advancing in the skills he or she used.

Or was I the only one who played that way, taking what the game gave me instead of adjusting my play style to get results?

What more did we really do in terms of character creation with Morrowind and Oblivion? So we don't get to select a class and then spend bonus points to balance out the stats so that they are no longer distributed uniquely in a way that differentiates one class from another? Classes and Stats are so Pen and Paper RPG with dice and crap. I like the new setup. It makes it more about experiencing the story and less about min-maxing numbers on a spreadsheet.



Well, the truth is that Stamina, Health and Magica are really the only attributes we pay attention to while actually playing the game. So instead of these increasing slowly based on how we combined our stat increases in the previous games, we are able to immediately choose one each level up and immediately benefit from it.



It is more accurate to say that perk acquisition is entirely reliant on skill progression. You can earn perks every level you make, but unless you have advanced the skill through gameplay or training, you can't spend the perk. You either hold onto the perk until you have trained up, or you spend it on a different skill.

I like the fact that when I level my character up I don't have to sit there and strategize over where I'm going to spend my advancement points in order to manipulate my Health, Stamina and Magica to my liking. I like being able to simply choose which one I want to be better in, and then get to choose "what new thing do I want my character to be able to do through this or that skill?"

It's still a complex system. It's just not complicated.

Maybe we just play these games for different reasons. I like getting into the plot and exploring. Neither of which require stat micromanagement. Individual motivations will always differ.



Why have a long and complicated approach when short and simple will do? You cannot max all the perks in a preferred tree unless you have mastered that skill. So you have to either play with heavy use of that skill or train in it.

I'm playing a heavy armored Imperial Legion soldier. To fit within that role, my main skills are single-hand with emphasis on swords, Blocking, and Heavy Armor with emphasis on full armor sets. Stamina and Health are key to an Imperial soldier, so when I level, it's either of those two. He has no interest in the Arcane Arts so Magica is left lone, used only in dire need. This new system does not detract from my ability to roleplay. In fact, it makes it a lot easier.

And it is ROLEplay that interests me, not ROLLplay. If I wanted complicated stat management, I'll go play classic Pen and Paper Dungeons & Dragons, thank you very much. But this is the 21st century and this game is played on a computer, and it is designed around delivery of a story that is open-ended enough that we decide how we go about experiencing it.

Essentially the new system lets us do the same thing the previous systems let us do. It just does it in less steps. If you want to call that dumbing it down, then so be it. As I said, I call it making it convenient. My available time for gaming is limited. So the more time I have to actually PLAY, the better. That's why the OPTION to fast travel appeals to me. Those who feel like it dumbs the game down can simply choose not to fast travel. Having the marker on the compass appeals to me because I get to spend less time wandering around lost. Those who feel that it domes the game down can simply go into the journal and turn off that quest's tracking.

I'm not a dumb or lazy player. I just don't have the luxury of sitting for hours on end in front of the game. I have a pinched nerve and if I sit too long, my back starts hurting and I have to lay down to get relief. I only medicate if pain becomes unbearable and unmanagable, which is not often if I pay attention to the warning signs my body gives me. I enjoy a good fun game that I can walk away from and come back to at my convenience. I like progressing through the story. So the less time I spend trying to find the right way to go, walking and walking and walking to get here and micromanaging a bunch of numbers, the more I get out of that game.

That's my story. You have your own. Others have theirs.

I think I'll go play Skyrim for a few minutes now...