It seems like throughout the Elder Scrolls history, the games have gotten more and more simple to play. I mean, I understand that for Oblivion they were making it more action oriented, but the amount of customization and development was meager compared to a game like Morrowind which had more skills, armor combos and types, along with more depth gameplay with more factions, guilds and missions. Daggerfall also had a lot of depth and customization in terms of Morrowind and Oblivion. All these games were great but it seems like they lost depth and, density in terms of what you could do in the game. I always liked doing more than just running around and killing stuff. I liked making potions, developing skills unrelated to combat, and interacting with guilds and factions. I mean, the combat got better in my opinion, but the other key pieces of the game that truely mattered got worse. I think in the future the games should have more meat on their bones. More like Morrowind with more to do. Maybe even add more features to pander to the hardcoe RPG fans. Seems more like Oblivion is for the Average RPG gamer, which is a large party, but are less likely to stay with the gameplay. Discuss?

Go play now some NES games. I never had a problem playing super mario bros 1 when I was a kid, went to my cousins house the other day. He still has his NES (not sure why) for his kids. I tried Mario 1 and was losing like crazy. So explain that.



Ten years from now Oblivion will be hard for those games.

Most likely because game companys have begun to make games simpler and more appealing to all audiences. People feel powerful when they can beat a game and not die. It makes them want to come back. I still play lots of old hard games along with the new games that end up being harder to, but it is funny to see people now a days playing the old games and wondering why they can't beat the first level. Not that the older games are that hard, but the game doesn't hold your hand throughout it. Morrowind had so many things that you had to figure out the effect or outcome yourself, not have a description or tutorial to do so for you.

i dunno what i should say, to much spending on the flash and not on the bang? fire_hawks answer is the best i think.



i still have my NES connected to my TV (and it has been since it was brand new in 1987) and i can still compelte Super Mario Bros with one hand and i got no trouble at all with most games. depends more on how good you are at gaming i guess or something.

and to answer why your cousin still have his NES after all these years, you got to be an 80's gamer to understand.

I think game devs have been spending to much time recently on graphics and simple game mechanics and not the parts that make the game interesting.

Isn't it the price to pay for Bethesda's independence ?
Bethesda doesn't produce / publish many games in a year. They have to aim to a larger market than "hardcoe western RPG fans" if they want to survive.

Well, now put their hands on a successful franchise with Fallout, so they might become a little more daring with TES than they were a few years ago (unlike the 90es and early 2000es, Bethesda didn't have any sports / racing games going on at the same time, so they were really relying on Oblivion's sales)

Well most company's out there don't have franchise games, and they to rely on single games. Yes Bethesda takes their time with their games, but they should at least market to the average gamer and the hardcoe. Having more depth could get other gamers involved with different games as well. However ya it makes sense that they can't put everything in their games.

It's going to keep getting watered down until we start demanding more from our games, just kidding, we will never be able to stop it.

Casual gamers have taken over all genres and everything will be made to apeal to them.

Mostly gonna be up to the modders out their to make games better

Well Oblivion is still more complex than Arena.

And the "simplifications" from Daggerfall to Morrowind were well designed. They mostly just shed skills they were never able to implement and consolidated some that can't stand by themselves.

So the only real problem in the series is the changes they made from Morrowind to Oblivion. Classes definitely feel too homogenized/incomplete. You just can't define a lot of these classes sufficiently with only 7 skills to work with, some of which are ridiculously broad in scope ("blade"?).

Here's hoping they give us a teensy bit more skills in TESV

Agreed, Daggerfall and Morrowind both had a nice set of unusual and specific skills that you could level. Oblivion cut the list down and if the route goes the same I'll bet you that the next game all magic (destruction, restoration, illusion, mysticism, conjuration alteration etc..) will be put into 3 skills; Healing, Combat/Destruction and Alteration.

God hope not. It was bad enough when they put all the blade skills into one single skill. Made it a bit easier yes but less strategic. All magic into 3 skills though? That would be sad making leveling so much faster and much less fun.

Something people easily overlook is that simplifying thing does NOT automatically mean it's worse.
Now i'm not saying "the challange should be reduced" but you seriously have to think what SHOULD be made simpler and what shoul be made more of a challange? For example i doubt anyone would want opening DOORS to be more of a challange (and yes, having to manually pull or push doors open has actually been done in at least one game) but the same time it could be said that you have to be at least in arms reach to open a door or actually your characte having to reach out instead of seemingly opening doors with telekinesis.

I'd for one make everything connected to managing and overviewing your inventory easier but the same time make it a bit more challanging by having a difference between things in your backpack and equipped.

Again people should see the difference between complex and complicated because many just lean towards complicated.

There is a reason that the term "Nintendo Hard" exists.

But Super Mario never was a very complex game. in fact, most video games I remember from that time were very simple in terms of gameplay. This doesn't mean they were easy, as there is a difference between challenge and complexity, Morrowind is not the simplest game on the market, but once you familiarize yourself with its gameplay and develop a strong character, it gets pretty easy. A game can be very simple yet still be quite challenging, and while a complex game might drive away some players with its learning curve, once you've mastered it, it might still be extremely easy.

But it's understandable that Bethesda might choose to simplify the series. Like all game companies, Bethesda is a business, so they want to make money from their products. You could bring up things like art and putting out a quality product, and while that's all nice, if it doesn't make any money, it's still not going to allow a company to survive amidst competition with other companies that are making money. And besides, art and quality products don't mean anything if no one appreciates them, trying to widen a products appeal is a good way to allow it to bring in more money. It also may allow the product to reach a greater amount of people, thus allowing more people to appreciate it. One can only hope that in trying to increase the game's potential market, the developers don't end up alienating the demographic they've already managed to appeal to.

Regardless, though, Oblivion has already been highly successful, hopefully, Bethesda will take this as a sign that it needs not be simplified further.



On this I can agree, making something more complex does not always make it better, and simplifying it does not always make it worse. In fact, if something is unnecessarily complicated but adds nothing to the game, simplifying it would be an improvement, however, one could make an entire thread dedicated to the discussion of just what is good complexity and what is bad complexity. I do not wish to discuss it here.

Exactly. I for example would like to see return of the mini map (at least able to turn it on, was no problem in Morrowind so why now?) since always having to jump to the inventory, clicking on the map section and back and forth was unnecessarily complicated.
I tend to differ between the terms complex and complicated. To me saying "it's complex" just means it has a lot of functions and variables, for example a map that's zoomable, you can toggle a lot of different markers and legends and can set marks on it (similar to GTA4s map) is complex. However if i have to dig the map out of several sub inventories and when using it it only shows me a tiny section of my environment rather than all of it that just makes it complicated.


Actually... http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1041923&hl=

I never had a problem playing super mario bros 1 when I was a kid, went to my cousins house the other day. He still has his NES (not sure why) for his kids.
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http://www.watch-movies-online.tv

My dad still plays my Nintendo 64.

Did anyone ever think maybe it's not getting more simple that perhaps we are just getting smarter and better playing games?

Um no.

Oblivion is DEFINITELY more simple

Compared to what? OBlivion is perfectly challenged.

I was TALKING to Tamalak. I don't feel like arguing with others.

TES has never been about D&D-style complexity and I don't want that. The game mechanics should be no more complex than neccessary. What is disappointing is that the story & background/lore that was so rich and original compared to other CRPGs in MW appeared to be losing out in favour of a more b&w story and generic background in Oblivion.

Compared to Morrowind.. read my other post

Oblivion is challenging enough if you set the difficulty slider correctly. However "hard enough" is not the same as good or compelling design. I can make minesweeper as hard as I want but it looses its luster after a bit

No, it is not. It is more user friendly due to the compass and it does have a more educational tutorial but otherwise I see nothing more simple about it. And I saw nothing interesting about the challenge of running in circles without good direction in Morrowind. Don't get me wrong. I love MW, maybe a tad more than Oblivion but not because one is more simple than the other because they are not. If anything Oblivion had some much tougher battles and some much more complicated and interesting quests. Much less "fed ex" quests imo.

The only think I can think of that seemed more simple was :

1. compass: which for me was a welcome addition as I could therefore find something and not waste precious time to complete my quests which is what I am more interested in.
2. fast travel: which once again assisted me in not wasting time on travel except for exploration.
3. leveled scaling: which while it made things more possible to accomplish at early levels, it did assist in making the game more challenging in the end. Unlike Dagoth Ur who was no challenge at all by the time I got around to him in MW.

Now, I won't drag this thread any further into the MW/Ob comparision/which one is better/harder place, but I will say that I am of the belief that while I understand that some think Oblivion was more simple, I maintain that the quests were more involved, more interesting, more mature and more detailed which could be seen as more difficult. And I also believe that many were on a higher learning curve when they played MW. First time gamers were brought into the loop, people were 14 and 15 then and upon Ob's release they were 18 and 19 so they were much more experienced in many ways.

After all, it is much more complicated to find an NPC when they don't stand in the same place 24/7. And the dungeons in Oblivion were much more interesting. More traps and more puzzles in Oblivion. There were more consequences for our decisions in Oblivion. I could go on but time won't allow atm. You get the picture.

I do have complaints about both MW and OB but "more simple" is not one of them. I will say there seemed more oppertunies to resolve quests in a diplomatic manner in MW and I missed that. I missed hand place armor and did not like what should have been rare armor and weapons showing up on bandits everywhere you went. But my first character does not wear armor anyway so...I wanted "unarmored" back. I missed levitation. I missed the various means of travel.

But more simple...to me at least, was not an issue.

Welllll....morrowind, daggerfall, seriously have you seen the skills in those games, especially daggerfall, there were even language skills, magic was extended even further than now, the manual itself was more complex. Daggerfall was amazing...

the three reasons you point out are the reasons why I like oblivion compared to morrowind and add in leveled loot as well.
I like the dungeons in morrowind more since they felt more unique and i didnt feel like i was just going into the same dungeon every time. the traveling system in morrowind was more fun to deal with and made more sense and it felt like an actual journey.

Also I liked the story better;more shades of gray.