-And all of the things attributes effected were taken apart, and put into those skills/perks directly, and you know it.
-And all the things lost from a 20 point attribute decrease would still exist in a system were losing 20 points in a skill would cause you to temporarily lose like 5 different perks, and you know it.
-And the decrease in total carry weight from a 20 point STR loss could STILL be in Skyrim, as it is right now, without attributes, just be lowering total stamina, and you know it.
-And most NPCs in Skyrim actually go through many tiers based on what you do for them, and if you attack them after, just like in Morrowind, and you know it.
-And the vast majority of the 1-100 NPC disposition level in Morrowind meant nothing, unless it was at an extreme on either end, or in the dead middle, effectively making it a 3 tired system, and you know it.


I no more "wilfully and continuously misrepresent, omit and warp things" then anyone else here. I just don't do it in a pro-Morrowind fashion.

Attributes worked very well in Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout 3 not so much.
In New Vegas there was a marked difference between a melee player with skills and perks geared to that, to a sniper, to an energy weapon user.
Each had their particular strengths and weaknesses and the the way perks were tied to an attribute as well as a skill requirement really helped enhance a particular chosen playstyle.
There was simply no way in which any given character would be able to get all the 'good' perks. Then there were a handful of perks that gave a slightly different flavour to the game, such as Black Widow, which opened up some dialogue and quest options.
Excellent for roleplay, because there were such vastly differing ways to build a character, and different characters had a completely different game experience.

Want to be an explosives expert and side with the Powder Ganger bandits? You could.
Want to be a sciency, nerdy guy that talks a lot and convices other villagers to help him defeat these same Powder Gangers in the opposite quest to the one I described previously? You could.
My personal favorite was the low intelligence character that had several altered dialogue options exemplifying the character really didnt understand what was happening around him.
In one quest a sentence gets changed from "My interest in this place is scientific." to "I is scientist." Or the unforgetable: "Do flowers of pock-lypse and NCR bear play together?"
Again, great for roleplay.

Id love to see such a system with specialisations and strong and weak points make an entry in TES.

Hm, I seldom pick those "wear all pieces of this armor and you get a bonus" perks. When I do, it's just because I want to get past them to the next star. I let my character wear what my character would wear. And I agree with those who consider that roleplaying.

I think Skyrim is a great game, but it's still too much "story-playing" compared to "roleplaying" for me. I've found workarounds though, because I know the game so well by now. And along with it, I use mods or imagination, but not all players have access to mods. Alternate start mods are among the most popular mods for both Skyrim and Oblivion, along with more armors and more weapons. It seems many players appreciate variety.

If Skyrim were to compete with the Sims, it would svck. Build your "own" home and "customize" it? Lol...

I don't suffer from Morrowind Nostalgia - I've only played it for a short while compared to how long I've played Skyrim. But the things people miss from Morrowind, such as no handholding, unobtrusive main quest, and more armor and weapon variety - I totally understand why they miss them. Had they been in Skyrim, the great game would have been awesome. I would also like to add sleeping in the wilds, and having your sleep interrupted by wild animals.

Now, attributes, I think, are a bit confusing. My first experience of actually enjoying them was when my Personality was reduced in Morrowind and NPCs said things like "you stink" "I really have to go now", etc. That was cool! Maybe there's a way of in-depth character development and world adaption that is less confusing for the player, feels more natural, but achieves a similar result?

Yes and no. I think, as I said in my large post, that BGS took away difficult choices from the player. Anything with a consequence is what really falls into the roll of an RPG, there are few choices the player realistically get to make anymore, and each is relatively simple.

I have the dissability to sometimes underline my point, because I am still learning english and I don't get some sentence constructions. I wanted to prove that "the old was better" is nothing more than a common fallacy.


Yeah, I know that my opinnion about a piece of enterteinment is fully subjective and even If I try to reason with those subjective feelings and cross out the most biased ones I will still end up with a subjective opinion. I wanted to word it diffrently. I try to fix my mistake.
I wasn't implying that I am the best judge there ever was. Those phrases are used in my surrounding in a casual conversation. As more "open minded" I meant: older, so more experienced which implies that my point of view shifted many times and changed based on events that happened to me. And what I wanted to adress as "wiser" wasn't as an objective counter of personal intelligence, but as a natural process of acumulating various abilities (like judgements) over time and a realisation how to use them on daily basis , which every human being experience . It does not imply gaining intelligence or knowledge of any meaningful subject.

Youre right, older is not always better. Videogames have improved a lot since Morrowind times, especially in the graphics and complex NPC behaviour areas.
It would be even better though if certain things had been kept in as well as improving on these other things. The loss of attributes cost us about half our destruction spell effects, and that is one school alone.

There are things from Morrowind I enjoy and miss, there are things from Oblivion I enjoy and miss...at the same time, Skyrim does a lot right that causes me to miss it in Oblivion and Morrowind as well.

It's a give and a take. I wish Skyrim was less "Set Piece" and more "organic" like Vvardenfell. By that I mean Morrowind had hidey holes and ancestral tombs that weren't connected to anything they just existed. In Skyrim, those same "Just existing" places tend to have the feeling of window dressing. In both Morrowind and Oblivion, a cave was a cave and who knows what you'd find inside. In Skyrim, there were always little doodads and knick knacks out in front of the opening to give you an idea what to expect. That being said, Skyrim has a lot more "places for the sake of places" like Morrowind then Oblivion did. Oblivion was a scripted experience from start to finish, with not even the dungeons escaping a tightly focused narrative. On one hand, it was nice each place visited had a story to tell. On the other hand, there's not much reason to go back and clear it again on another character.

There were seldom any kind of surprises in Skyrim, especially not with the visual aids of the map markers. I honestly don't mind the compass and general markers, but don't denote places of interest on my map by giving me a visual cue what's around me. Half the fun of exploration in the likes of Fallout 3 is wanting to see what's beyond the next hill. Knowing when I was nearing a Dwemer Ruin/Daedric Shrine/Word Wall really killed the magic.of exploring the world for me.

Combat I feel is the best it's ever been. I adore the combat system of Skyrim, though I do miss the ability to channel spells through your weapons like you could in Oblivion.

More armor and weapon choices is never a bad thing. An essential mod for me in Skyrim is the Heavy Armoury, which adds Halberds, Quarterstaffs, Glaives, Katanas, Spears, etc to the game. On that note, staves are actually a lot of fun to wield, since they're basically low damage but very fast warhammers.

I would like to see a return to the attributes and a Perk system other then that silly constellation system. I do like the Standing Stone mechanic of Skyrim as opposed to a fixed, unchangeable Birth Sign.

I'm going to assume you are referring to Morrowind allowing players to wear separate pauldrons, gloves, clothes underneath, robe overtop, etc etc. You know what I'm getting at.
Now I haven't played much Baulders Gate, BUT I have played a bunch of other Old School RPGs(namely Fallout 1/2, Neverwinter Nights, Divine Divinity, Diablo 2).
They had about the same amount of Armour Slots as Skyrim, less in the case of Fallout.


On another topic, I agree with you, sort of, about attributes. Fallout: New Vegas does them great, in that, you get special interactions with NPCs and Objects in the world based on your attributes.
ie Arcade Gannon joining your party out of pity if your intelligence was 3 or below.

I still don't think a game has gotten the "Dumb" Character right since Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magicka Obscura.

Low Intelligence Characters in that game got a Journal that was written in crayon.

Agree, what one or two of the games do right, the other(s) do wrong, but what's right and wrong in each seems to be a matter of personal taste. All of them are good, but none of them is completely my ideal game. As far as I know, no game is.
I prefer birthsigns to the standing stones; I usually just pick one and stick with that and pretend it's my birthsign - or pick none. I had a mod that changed the stones to permanent birthsigns, but it also removed the stones themselves, which looked a bit weird when there was a mapmarker for a non-existant object.

Come to think of it, in the Shivering Isles, in the addiction quest, they've done a great work with attributes. It was terrible (as in terrible for my character, not as in bad game experience) - I died idk how many times. That quest was a little masterpiece.

Still, I think attributes are confusing. Maybe it's not the attributes themselves but rather that it's a bit unclear what they do. I mean, what personality and luck do is obvious, but wth does the willpower do?! And sometimes when someone poisons me and I get "your so-and so-is being drained"; it's not like I feel like looking up what so-and-so does, in the middle of a battle. I haven't played Fallout; from what I've heard, it's more railroading and not true open-world, which makes me not interested, so I can't compare with that. Invisible walls sounds like something I would hate, considering how I feel about forced stuff in Skyrim.

Maybe they should remake the character development system altogether - which is what it seems they've tried to do in Skyrim; perks is a great idea, but still.

Fallout isn't railroading. Fallout 3 is a traditional Bethesda game, and New Vegas (Developed by Obsidian) generally only has "soft walls". And by that I mean they just put murderous creatures you have zero hope of defeating at Level one along the area they don't want you to go down. It was only consecutive playthroughs that I really felt hampered by New Vegas' game design. First time through, you don't even realize you are being deliberately lead.

And even then, that's only to New Vegas proper. Once you get there, the entire game world is yours to explore.

I for one always liked the idea that some areas are not avaible to you, because of lack of skill. It sets up a goal for your level progression and hated the idea that every enemy in the game is scaled to you. The "Norwanol destroyer of worlds" NPC would be as easly defeatable at level 5 and level 50, which I find really dumb.

I am not saying this to prove something, or that my opinion is better or worse. I am saying this that those are in fact opinions and yours is just as wrong as mine.

The problem I have with the Wall of Deathclaws in New Vegas is - despite making the Deathclaws the terrifying things they were in Fallout 1 and 2 (Fallout 3 they were a joke), it's the fact they were put at that point on the map specifically to ensure you couldn't go straight to New Vegas from Goodsprings that bugged me. The map being a giant circle with little to see if you went off The Road™ was also another issue I had in multiple playthroughs.

But that's a design issue. From a gameplay perspective, it was just nice to have to properly fear Deathclaws again. Plus, no matter how much I grumble about the game world design, the fact remains New Vegas is still one of the most smartly written RPGs on the market to date.

Except that there was no such railroading.
If you didnt know what you were doing it was easy to be led down the 'proper path for the main quest'.
However, if you knew the game and its environs you could quite easily get to Novac or New Vegas at level one.
The deathclaws are easily avoidable if you know what youre doing and there are at least two paths that go from west to east without forcing you to take the long road south first.

In fact, I dont ever take the road south anymore on a playthrough of Vegas, I head north to New Vegas at level one.

So it's like Skyrim then. You can make the game your own when you know it.

More or less, I suppose so, yes.

No, because while Skyrim's perks simply unlock the ability to keep playing the game the same exact way you were playing the game, New Vegas' perks unlock new playstyles.
Because while Skyrim's different types of swords are nothing but direct upgrades and downgrades from each other, New Vegas' weapons are balanced with literally every single weapon in the game being in some way viable for your entire playthrough.
Because while Skyrim says nothing but "here, have another cave with 20 random bandits," New Vegas gives you quests that basically ask who you are by giving you difficult decisions that different kinds of people would solve different ways, thus diversifying your characters.

Thing is though, things will continue to be dumbed-down cause money. But there may not be money if this continues, as http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czRtaPf4UsQ Bethesda might want to take note of that.

I wasn't talking about character development, but about forced stuff and railroading in this case.

"hardcoe" (whatever that is supposed to mean) Elder Scrolls fans are most certainly a small minority when it comes to the playerbase of TES games.

I personally loved the amount of choices and quest options available in New Vegas. However, New Vegas was literally all about the quests. The actual explorable landmass was very weak, and really I feel that the key component of every Elder Scrolls game thus far has been the exploration. Although I very much enjoyed New Vegas, it is an RPG of a distinctly different style compared to a Bethesda game, and this is a discussion of how specifically TES games have been "dumbed down".

Morrowind's guilds and quests did not even approach the depth and complexity of the factions in New Vegas. There were no quests that had any sort of meaningful impact on the game. Although Morrowind offered the illusion of skill based faction advancement, the truth of the matter is that it was a very weak system, and any character with enough gold could spend 5 minutes "training" a skill up to master levels without ever having to actually utilize those skills to complete guild quests. Suddenly a warrior who has never cast a spell and has no knowledge of any spells is fully accredited to be the Archmage. This is literally no different from Oblivion and Skyrim.

Furthermore, the idea that the lack of quest markers made Morrowind's quests more complex is ridiculous. Having to spend 30 minutes looking around a dungeon just to find some small item tucked away in a corner does not make a quest complex... and Morrowind had an abundance of these tedious fetch quests that served no purpose other than to arbitrarily extend the length of the game. You could just as well argue that Morrowind was "dumbed down" because there was no time limit on quests.

Irrelevant.
Why should designers care for metagamers in an RPG? Sure you can do those things, but you can also argue that it goes against the 'spirit' of the game and it is most certainly a fact that people that design a role for themselves to play do not metagame in this fashion.
So what is wrong then with having an option to aid your character development?
Sure if you abuse the system and relentlessly metagame you can quite easily create a build that has no trouble with anything. But since metagaming is fundamentally not what the games are about I say let em, but dont remove stuff so that roleplay is hindered just to make this kind of thing impossible.

Also, Morrowind offered far more meaningful consequences than Oblivion or Skyrim. For instance the whole Thieves Guild - Fighters Guild animosity that could be solved in three different ways or none, whatever the player preferred.

They don't make the quests more complex, but they do make them more realistic. Not compared to having markers as such (as some people have said, NPCs may very well mark locations on your map, but not ALWAYS and not EXACTLY at the item/person/chest in question.)
Personally, I think the boring part of Morrowind is not the lack of quest markers, but the lack of fast travel in the wilds. It's pretty tedious to run back and forth the same distances for the 36428628th time.

The argument is still relevant, because what is the point of imposing skill qualifications on guild advancement if another game mechanic totally trivializes the need for actually building those skills through use?

If you truly are creating a role for your character, why should it matter if the guilds have arbitrary skill requirements? If you're role playing a warrior who would have no interest in joining the College of Winterhold, you simply don't join the College of Winterhold. Skill requirements are an incredibly "gamey" feature and I'm glad that Bethesda did away with them. They simply don't add anything to the game.

Edit: I'm not saying that the guilds shouldn't have some element of exclusivity and advancement requirements, but arbitrary number requirements aren't the way to go about doing it.

Because choice is better than being forced down a linear path.
It would be quite, quite annoying to have no other option but to cast fireball a million times. A smart mage with a bit of money would simply go to a better mage and pay him to learn some new tricks.
Nothing is 'trivialised', this is only a valid argument for metagamers and TES fundamentally is not meant to metagame. Its an RPG.

Having no skill requirements in Skyrim is just.. dumb.
At least in Morrowind you couldnt become archmage without some hefty attribute and skill scores, and that is how things should be.
Skyrim is far too scared to deny you anything at all, you cant fail, you dont have to work for anything, its an instant gratification playground.
These things might be fun for some, those who get frustrated if they forgot to bring an item needed or train a skill to advance in a logical fashion but when it comes to RPG it only makes the game easier and therefore less interesting to me.
What kind of puzzle is a puzzle if the answer is right there behind the puzzle?
What kind of requirement to advance a quest is casting a fire spell, when there is a fire tome right there on the pedestal next to the door?
Its blatant handholding, because Skyrim seems to be terrified of telling you that you cant do something and actually need to go back, think things through and prepare better.
This is not good.

I'm not arguing against choice or against skill training (sorry if it may have sounded like that, I added an edit to my post), I'm arguing against choices that are presented as arbitrary number requirements. A character in Morrowind can easily train a skill like destruction to 100, without ever casting a spell or even needing to know any destruction spells. Yet the simple fact that an arbitrary stat number is high enough is the sole factor of what qualifies a player for advancement in a guild. Morrowind is a terrible example of how an RPG should properly handle player choice and faction requirements. New Vegas is a much better example of a game with meaningful choices that define your character.