Rather than designing it for elitists who denigrate everyone who's not as "srs bzns" about Gaming? as them, as 5 year olds.

:facepalm:


Personally, I find that, specifically, to be a positive thing.

And you can tell that by merely playing three weeks? Wow. But hey, everyone has his own gaming experience and his own impressions.
I thought the same of Oblivion but after a few months I heavily questioned its replayability just like Gothic 3 and Dragon Age 2 just to mention two. At the beginning there is always everything to discover. Try replaying and then answer that for yourself. I am impressed by the world too, the atmosphere, the music, the setting, the lore. But what I do not like is the UI, the skilling and the magic. Perks are nice though, a good addition. There are so many pros and cons - but too many for me too be overly impressed by Bethesdas work. TES 2 / 3 were epic without mods, but these were other times.



Well, I would not call myself an elitist. I am "oldschool" or "purist" or the like. I do not denigrate anyone and clearly said that these are other times. But I don't have to accept or like it. And so I agree with the starter of this thread.

Excellent Post, shame it will be skipped by many.

It really is the age old argument between Pen and Paper roleplayers sneering at the Live Action Roleplayers. Live Action roleplayers had to watch their body language, tone of voice and entire presentation of character.

This to some, despite a simplified ruleset made it a highly more advanced roleplay, which require a lot of constant thinking and brainpower, and most importantly focus. The pen and paper roleplayers dismissed it because the skills and abilities were simplified hugely to be workable in a live setting.

BUT.. this is where we have a problem, and my issue. The simplification issue is not so much with the stats, but the presentation of the game.

To justify simplification to allow for a more live action style of roleplay, you have to introduce elements where the personality of the player is imperative, instead of the stats. This is where Skyrim fell down for me.
Quick Disclaimer: I still adore the game, so fell down is a purely an admission of where I see fault.

Simplifying the rules, but without adding complexity to EMOTIONAL CHOICE rather than MATHEMATICAL CHOICE, you do remove some elements of defining the character through the story. This is achieved through multiple ways to complete quests, more story based non-combat quests (no.. not collect 10 butterfly wings!), and a stronger array of quest branches (I mean seriously.. you're going to force my good character with a hatred of assassins into a conversation tree which only has ONE option, which is .. Yes, I will Kill For You Little Boy... I mean.. really!?!).

It actually makes ME sad as a roleplayer, to see so many complaints about the math being simplified (and by the way, ignoring a lot of the invisible math that goes on behind the scenes), and yet so few comparatively about the removal of Quest and Choice options. Which to me, define character far more.

Guilds were hit and miss in previous games, but yeah, Skyrim's guild experience hasn't been exciting for me so far. I have only done mage's guild so far however. They seem to've focused more on non-faction quests which is disappointing as I generally prefer the structure of a guild which gave you generally level appropriate tasks.



And most of them were boring, redundant, or worthless. I am sorry but sheer numbers are meaningless here. Very little of value was lost from Oblivion's spell system to Skyrim's, and a lot was gained. Spells now take more interesting forms, have distinct purposes, can be cast in different ways, and many can be improved by perks for specialist casters. Channeling, dual casting, laying runes and walls, etc. add more actual variety to magic use than the hundreds of spells with different numerical values did in Oblivion.

I have plenty of complaints about Skyrim's spell system and spells as well, there are balance issues that disappointingly prevent some of the fun new types of spells from being practical, there's a lot of room for improvement, but it's much better than Oblivion's numerous but very bland spells.

- Serious about gaming.
- RPG.

Pick one. RPGs are like the least serious "gaming" genre.

Go play Dwarf Fortress, Jesus Christ. :rolleyes:

Spellmaking - Ok, you DO know that this function was simply in earlier titles to compensate the fact that the pre-made spells were weak right?

Attributes - Now, this is a REALLY mixed subject. It IS more simple to have only the 3 we have, but it works. The thing is, in the past they were NEVER implemented right. IF they had been, THEN we'd agree about useless simplification. Hell, the only game that ever had the right was Fallout, and then again, it was truely limited. "but I want to roleplay an intelligent guy..." - JUST DO IT! If you really need a number ot make his personnality, then you lack any kind of creativity

Health, Stamina and Magicka not divisible by 10 - Ok now that's just silly. Having numbers like 47 or whatever wouldn't make ANYTHING more complex, it would just make you wonder in what direction is the game biased. Say, an enemy throws a spell at you that depletes half of your health. Now you wonder "will the game count that at 23 or 24?" That's not complexity, it requires nothing on your part either. It's just... weird.

Lack of handplaced, unique loot - *epic facepalm* just because you haven't found it, doesn't mean there isn't any. I must have found at least 5 unique weapons just laying around somehwere by now. All uniquely named, and some with unique appearances too. Stop complaining it's not there, and search. The game doesn't stop to just quests you know...

Number of spells - yeah... as if the spells back then were anything more interresting than a big ball you threw with different numbers for each spell...
At least in skyrim it's exciting to learn a new ones. In the past games it was "oh yeah, finally my generic ball does more damage!"

Anyways, I won't bother answering further. All I see is is people looking for a reason to hate a pretty solid game

The problem if companys which got successfull with complex games get simple is that they and their "Niche" games get replicable and one out of many.
So it is basically a gamble, either you continue to make games with lots of effort and a smaler surplus at the end and almost certain success.
Or you join the bandwagon and just make the same game over and over again with new graphics and settings with less effort and risk getting thrown out of the boat because you are nothing special.
Given that Bethesda didnt really add anything new to TES since Morrowind (I dont think they dumbed it down though), Iam quite surprised that didnt happen to them.
Maybe it did to some extend and some potential buyers now play MMORPG′s instead, which are often very close to TES in their gameplay when you play them solo.
Could very well be, since there is now multiple times the amount of gamers then at the beginning of the last decade.
In fact, I never understood why Bethesda didnt go online with Fallout as well as TES, their world is much better (smaller though) then the usual ones. Maybe technical reasons ?
Well, just realised I talked stagnation and simplicity together....well I dont want to rewrite, so bite me

I am sick and tired of hearing this crap as a 26 year old gamer, who's played everything over the years.

Look UNDERGROUND if you want the not mainstream media, duh. If you watch the Grammys and lament the course of music, you're ignoring everything good that exists. Listen to Ill Bill instead of Jay Z and you'll know what I mean, or Immortal Technique instead of Kayne West.

Skyrim is not easy, casual or simple. You're wrong.

This.

So much this.

I think each game series have their own key elements. Game developers should keep the complexity of those key elements while adding options that can streamline the experience for new players.

Example would be player statistics in Skyrim. Instead of taking stats out completely, organize them into 3 categories. Players can choose to level each category, which will evenly distribute stats into each governed attribute, or manually alot points into each attribute themselves.

The right kind of simplicity can coexist with complexity.

Games to just kill some time and relax after work are nice. The problem is that they are progressively taking all the space and pushing other more involving games out. I like to let off some steam and dike around and have a bit of mindless fun, but for the most part I prefer games which are maybe harder to enter into, but give in the end a much deeper gratification.

Let's take a simple (ahah) example :
A fast-food requires minimal effort, minimal money, you go in, get it, eat it quickly, and that's it you're somehow satiated. It gives instant, but shallow, gratification.
A classy restaurant usually needs reservations to be made, cost much more, and you tend to prepare a lot more about it. You take much more time to eat, you pay much more. The gratification comes later, it requires more investment, but it's much better.

It's the same for game. And the problem is, masses tend to favour lack of efforts so much, that "fast-food" games are killing "classy restaurants" games.

Going to throw out big +1s to Nell2ThaIzzay and Kiralyn2000 to start off. Both really good takes on this.

I think the funny side to all this is that as much as people like to drag out the dead horse that is the "They're dumbing it down for the average Call of Duty/etc fans that can't tie their shoes without help and need a hundred page manual to operate a TV remote" (and so on) argument, most of Bethesda's changes are a lot closer to home. That's right. Right here, in the Elder Scrolls forums.

Quest icons? "The cave in Morrowind's MQ is too hard to find! The directions aren't specific enough!"
OB's level scaling? "Morrowind is too easy! You become a god by level twenty!"
Removed skills? "X is useless! It's so useless! Why is it so useless?"
Attributes and leveling changes? "The +5/+5/+5 grind makes it no fun to play!"

Am I saying that all of Bethesda's changes are good? Hell no! I'm a mostly positive person, but OB's reliance on "You're never going to find anything better than your current tier, ever" made me want to explore the samey dungeons less and less. Compare it to Skyrim, where I just pick a region and explore, because I want to look. I never know what I'll find, and an amazing amount of places have little stories. A cave where a summoner's research has gotten out of hand, or a home that was taken over by someone's once-close friend.

I love RPGs. I've been playing D&D since I was like eleven. I've collected a ton of P&P RPGs and strategy games of all types. The main difference is that in most RPGs, I'm not playing it thinking "I have to use my sword a lot this level so I can raise my strength or I won't be able to use Ability X next level!". There's a difference between "complexity" and "tedium" and despite the hundreds of hours I poured into the series it often slid into the latter.

Is Skyrim a perfect solution? No. Am I enjoying it despite the flaws? Yes - just like I did with Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion.

You are missing the point. It's not about numbers for the sake of numbers, but rather numbers that affect the game in various ways.

Speed 90 is not only a number, but also means that I'm frickin fast.
Willpower 20 means that magic will wreck me more than most people and that my mana regeneration is a joke.
Charisma 20 means that people wont talk to me, sell items for horrendously amounts and tell me to [censored] off whenever I walk past them.

Those things made for distinct characters. Skyrim doesn't have those featres anymore.

Oh can it. Skyrim is NOT simple, and don't ever say who is and isn't a true gamer. I'll run circles around you in gaming, you high-horse elitist.

Get out. I'm tired of you people and your disingenuous insults.

We can all thank Blizzard for the dumbing-down of games approach as it would seem to have started there.

During Rift's Beta, there was a lot of forum posts about the old games, EQ for instance, where you had to use tactics to do dungeons; death penalty was rough; corpse runs could take longer than clearing the dungeon. That's the way it was. It kind of svcked then, but looking back, it was awesome. We missed it.

World of Warcraft and the Lich King, you could do a dungeon in 10-15mins, just so you could sit in a town and wait longer than that for your next queue, if the group didn't requeue together.

Rift early on in Beta wasn't the easiest, but it wasn't hard either. Before that finished beta testing, it was dumbed down. Everything the early beta testers feared would happen, has happened. They listened to the wrong crowd.

We now live in the age of instant gratification and sadly there's no going back. "You mean I have to think about how to get through this dungeon. What a crappy game!!"

No game developer in their right minds would try to make a game like the older ones again. There was little hope Bethesda wouldn't follow, as they already started to shift with Oblivion and maybe even with Morrowind.

Uldred

It does depend on how you define "complex" though. 'The Binding of Issac' was released a few months ago, that's not complex in terms of giving you loads of stats and choice, but it's bloody hard.

If you're into stats, plenty of JRPGs are always being released. A new Final Fantasy was released in Japan recently and Pokemon games are released every few years.

Dwarf Fortress is good if you want a game that doesn't hold your hand at all.

You'll get better answers if you define exactly what you mean by "complex" and "RPG".

In a related note, I was watching a nephew of mine play this years incarnation of Madden and I was blown away by how dumbed down I thought it was. I had played Madden for years but it has been a few years now since I've touched it and it was ridiculous to watch. Apparently, they don't even want you calling plays now as it just picks the play for you. No strategy involved on your part.

Yes, I realize you could do this in the past but it was considered an option if you didn't want to call a play. This new auto play call seems to be the default setting. All I could do is chuckle.

I realize this is not Skyrim related, but it's still related to the direction companies are taking with simplifying games.

Some of the things they've done in Skyrim are an improvement over previous games. Removing dice rolls, removing spell failure, etc, are good things. Attributes were a pain in the rear. They wouldn't be a problem in a typical "kill stuff -> get EXP -> level up -> select what gets better" leveling system, because you don't need to obsess over using certain skills a certain amount of times to get a +5 on three attributes every level. Ironically, some people complain about the typical level up system because "it's not realistic!", but obsessing over one number so you can raise another number is also unrealistic. With Skyrim, you only need to "obsess" over one number, to raise only that number.

In Oblivion especially, attributes were broken. I even tried different leveling mods. One that made it more like the typical EXP system, and one that made attributes automatically raise based on your skills. They. Were. Still. Broken. I'd bet the real reason they removed attributes wasn't (just) to appeal to a bigger market. Attributes were simply broken in these games, and they knew it.

And while it's easy to assume they added things like health regen just to please the "CoD fans"... In fact, that's the first thing I thought when I heard about it. Keep in mind that some people kept complaining that they couldn't play their "pure warrior no magic ever!1!!1!!" without using Restoration spells. Some would call this "obeying survival instincts", but whatever.

And removing separate weapon skills? If you were a pure warrior, you would use every weapon. If you weren't, then you would use a particular type of weapon. But ultimately you would only raise the other weapon skills to increase your strength attribute. Now it's a non-issue. You need to pick between 1-hand and 2-hand weapons, but the actual weapon type doesn't matter. Which means nothing has really changed. Wanna use them all? Go ahead. Don't want to touch an axe or mace? Then don't use them.

But I'm not happy about the loss of Mysticism. They seemed to be phasing it out even in Oblivion. Those Absorb X spells in the Restoration school? Those used to be in Mysticism. By making that change, they turned Mysticism from a hybrid of other schools (Hurt enemies while healing yourself, unique defensive spells [Spell Reflection and Absorption], and a few other useful spells), into something mostly useless. Now they removed it entirely in Skyrim.

As for armor degradation and repairing... Well, I'm neutral on that. I don't miss it, but I didn't really mind it.

Spell Making. No comment. Never really had a chance to use it in previous games. But I do know that all spells were basically just "Fireball" and "Bigger fireball that hurts more" type stuff. Spells didn't have the variations that they do now. Now, should there be a way to make spells stronger? Sure. An enchantment or potion or something that makes an element do more damage would be great. But that's a different topic.

For the most part, the simplifications they've made are good.

/my opinion

This is exactly the problem with this game. Dumbed down whatever you want to call it choices have no consequence and make every character ultimately the same. Light armor and heavy armor are for all intents in purposes identical. This game is probably the worst of them all as far as character development and scaling goes. Every encounter plays out the same way because the difficulty of the enemy is scaled up and every skill behaves the same, every armor skills is the same. Everything is viable in every situation, fire against robot machinery no problem, frost against frost enemies no problem. Combat is dumbed down to an all time low with this game. You cant even stamina drain enemies or magicka drain them, it does no good they have unlimited amounts of both. Lock picking is something everyone cal do....chests are tossed around like pez despesners. There is gold in every nook and cranny of this game. Pick up a coffee lid and look someone left 3 gold pieces for you.

Torches that are always present...mty god someone might have to use a torch or make the illusion illumination skills useful....the Xbox players might not find the "torch" button. Night vision...ah who needs that? Had to dumb that down it really never gets dark in Skyrim..EVER. Every area is accessible to every possible build of character. And we have to wait two months for the construction kit. I will not be buying the next Bethesda game...they are becoming something completely different from how they started.

This kind of alarmist thinking is almost cute.

I remember the days of when a game was about as complex as gathering coins and jumping on the heads of things, and the most that there was for player motivation was to get a high score and save the princess.

Saying that games are in danger of becoming too simple is a joke, especially with using Skyrim as an example.

All they've done is trim the fat, so that the focus is more on playing the game and creating your own sense of adventure, instead of spending so much time working out numbers on a spreadsheet and planning out how you're going to level up for each attribute and skill.

Streamlining isn't "dumbing down," it's removing the excess.

I spent more time worrying about leveling up in Morrowind and Oblivion than I did on just simply playing the game and enjoying the adventure of finding new places to explore and completing all the various quests.

But I know that people will always have this mentality that when things are removed, it's somehow "making the game less" instead of actually improving it, because it's a basic association that subtraction means a reduction in the complexity in most people's minds. Has a lot to do with people being unable to see the forest for the trees.

If you think the intent of the OP and every other poster here defending complexity is to hate this game, you're getting it wrong. There are alot of valid points here, not about this game, but about the general trend of the industry, about the conflict between consumers, about the values in entertainment.

I don't think anyone here hates the game. Most will say that the game is overall better. What we're specifically debating on is one aspect of the game.

Is it okay to have a debate without degrading into the usual troll garbage of love vs hate. Nothing is black and white. You learned that in elementary school.

Pretty much, compare Diablo to Skyrim for example. Or Doom to Call of Duty.

I'll agree with this that each series does have its own key elements. And those elements probably shouldn't be changed too much (unless it improves upon something) as they're probably what make a certain game identifiable as a part or feel like it's a part of a certain series. (I personally have no real feelings on the attributes in either direction though.)
But when I got to thinking about it one day, attributes (and character level) has been more secondary, or complimentary, to the individual skills of a character. It seems like the main key element overall that a lot of things and game mechanics appear to revolve around has been the individual skills. (concerning stats and attributes in TES)

Looking at the "dungeons" in Skyrim, this quote sure hits home