I see and see people complaining and [censored]ing bethesda about how dumbed down the game has became.

I know people are refering to this in several aspects of the game, for now I will only speak about attributes and skill.

Morrowind and Oblivion had you decide attributes and minor/major skills.
People see these choices are gone and then they decide the game has been Dumbed down for a bigger audience.

Yes, of course they are looking for a wider audience, but at least me, do not believe it is the reason that skills and attributes were removed.

It mainly has to do with leveling changes, wich has IMPROVED, instead of dumbed down.

The point of chosing minor and mayor skills was to chose those skills that will make you level, and those that will not, but both will let you increase your attributes higher.
The attributes choices, forced you to level certain skills before leveling up in order to maximize the attribute gain (for those who never played, if you wanted to increase Strenght, but never leveled strenght-skills like swords and blocking, you could only increase it by 1 point, however if you leveled those skills in a total of 10 levels between all, you could increase your strenght by 5). That meant that either your character was going to level very weak, or that you had to grind skill gains.

It seems very complex, but it was BAD. It was a bad design that everyone was looking to mod, and if you search for leveling mods, you will see plenty of them.
In Skyrim, Bethesda's focus was not to DUMB IT DOWN, it was to improve the system, and they did.

The difference, that some fail to see, is that Skyrim still has major and minor skills, but they are not chosen in the character creation, they are chosen as you play, your major skills are the skills that you chose to use in your playthrough. These major skills will make you level faster and you don't need to avoid skill grinding. (the only issue is powerleveling one non-combat skill like smithing, but none should be powerleveling just one skill anyways)

Also, the attributes are no longer needed as they are somewhat incorporated in the skill leveling. If attributes would have been still in the game, everyone would level the attributes that are needed for the skills they use. If I was a mage, I would be leveling willpower and intelligence, a warrior would be leveling strenght. People like to believe that they had many choices, but no, it's not like that, yes you had the freedom to be a warrior leveling your intelligence to 100, but what sense would that make?

I agree that chosing between health, magicka and stamina is not perfect, I would have tweaked that somehow, i'm not sure, but let's face it, ATTRIBUTES are overrated.


Another thing that people likes to forget, is that we chose 1 perk per level.
Now that's a real decision we are making, as it really changes the gameplay unlike attributes and major skills. It is the perks that let you customize your character, and there are a lot of them.


So if you ask me, the game has not been dumbed down. It has changed, and it was a great change.
There is no point in making morrowind again with better graphics, the game is supposed to evolve and have changes.

It is not perfect, and it will never be, as there are no perfect games.

I thought you were talking about the illusion spells at first.

lol me too

[censored] i can't change the title xd

One thing I'd like to mention personally is that by it's very nature, Oblivion's leveling system was fundamentally flawed. As you gained more levels in the relative skills of your attributes regardless of being major or not you would gain an attribute modifier, which let you get extra levels.

Subsequently, if you actually wanted total control over your leveling, you would have to put all the skills you aren't going to use, minor skills if you wish, as your major skills. So that you could level the skills you're using, reaching 25, 50 ect and getting the bonuses. Meanwhile you could increase the skills you don't use at will to get the largest attribute modifier possible, creating the best character possible by the endgame.

I feel Oblivion was released so long ago that most posters don't understand what to compare skyrim to anymore. It seems fallout has corrupted some of you!

EDIT: I'd also like to remind everyone I'm not hating Oblivion, I still play it, and the game worked fine with major skills as the ones you used as you could still get the modifiers. I say flawed, not broken.

Attributes actually governed stuff. Unlike perks where half of them do not do [censored]. They also stripped it down to the bare minimum of stamina, magicka, and health when leveling up. Which is stupid.

I agree with a majority of your points however.

I agree. I have nothing more to add

I think it is kind of funny that people end up comparing FONV to Skyrim more than Oblivion. But Skyrim does have some of Fallout's mechanics integrated into it. Nice sig btw. Edit: May I also point out that the attribute system is older than ES itself? Don't tell me it can be improved, because after 30 or so years it hasn't.

I'll bite... WHY is it stupid?

That's pretty much how i feel about the new system too. But i would ahve gone one step further with the perks to include some auto-perks.

I mean have some pretty "minor" perks like knowing 2-3 effects of ingredients just from simply leveling alchemy to say 50/75, or perhaps a new power attack/kill animation with your weapon at 50/75. Nothing that would bring more power to your character just some minor quality of life changes for leveling some skills that you cannot afford to expand your actual perk points into. That way they could really delve into chosen perks and give more robust options.

IMO a majority of the changes are just a different way of doing things, not dumbing down. A lot of people confuse changes with negativity.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheyChangedItNowItsvcks

WARNING: That link goes to TVTropes. Unless you have several hours of your life to waste, avoid the link at all costs.

How do you explain the horrid journal and inability to quest without using the god mode marker system? That's dumming down questing which is just one of the many gripes ppl have. There's no "its just different" part about that.

Right, because really whats the difference bewteen choosing intelligence in OB, or choosing magicka in Skyrim? endurance or health? strength or stamina? If attributes actually did something in-game, like say how Fallout did, i could see why itd be a little more necessary, but since they dont well...

A lot of people confuse "stream-lining" with "dumbing down."

I don't see anything wrong with the Journal. Another point is that the quest marker really isn't that big of a deal...I don't understand why people make it out to be besides finding an excuse to call the game dumbed down. As is said before, Morrowind would seemed dumbed down compared to Daggerfall and so on...where does this end? It's basically because they game isn't the same way you use to play it. There are different audiences out there and that does not mean they have dumbed down.

I agree.

I also thought this.

OP, I agree to some extent. I feel the leveling is much better. I cannot agree with the use of perks however. I felt that they are too limiting. I have 70 enchanting on my mage but its useless due to the fact that I invested no perks in it. That makes no sense. (I plan to invest perks later, I am no fool). The rate at which you get them are too slow. I have actually been using enchanting to skip my levels up faster because I don't have enough perks to invest in my primary schools...

But again, I don't think it was dumbed down like many claim to say. Actually the opposite. Some hardcoe RPGs out there follow the set up used here where you don't pick your skills in advance. Mortal Online is a good example. You are placed with a blank slate into the world, however they still have attributes. They advance in a way similar to the skills themselves however. This would have been a better replacement for the current system. There are a lot better options that they could have used.

Edit: While I was posting someone noted about quests and the journal/compass. This IS dumbing the game down. Forgot about this. I miss Morrowinds quests where I actually had to think instead of move towards the marker killing stuff.

Because: 1 magicka no longer regenerates faster.
2. Stats like agility actually helped in combat. It prevented stagering.
3. With attributes, your health, stamina, magicka could increase at the same time.

I could go on.

Agreed. Perfection will never be achieved until everyone is the same. Thank the nine that it will never happen. I like being who I am and I'm sure others like being who they are.

but now perks handle things like preventing staggering.
it is simply a different and far better way of doing things.
in the case of leveling, streamlining has been nothing but good.

this!! :flamethrower:
sorry just had to say it :hubbahubba:

Skyrim has the BEST leveling system i've seen in a game yet. And that includes the incredibly complex Daggerfall. I am no longer jumping/running everywhere, or grinding skills. My character is now living in the world instead of trying to maximize his gains. The perk system allows for incredibly divergent ways to grow a character, in addition to leveling skills. On paper, it does look less complex. But in game, it is much more natural and has a "flow" to it that the other games in the series lacked. Anybody use NGCD for Oblivion? It was practically Skyrim's leveling system before Skyrim was ever announced.

I find leveling up in Skyrim extremely slow, but that's just me. Then again, I know how to cheat, if I have to.