:shrug: Realism seems to be the only point ~until it becomes inconvenient.

This reminds me of a device I read about that somebody supposedly made back in the late 90's...
A USB device that allowed you to mix amounts of scented chemicals via software API to create custom odors in the room.

The joke about it was that a game that used it could look, sound, and even smell like real sewers. Nobody wants that kind of realism.

**I decided to look it up, and I actually found it (or something like it).
http://chandanworld.wordpress.com/2008/09/29/digital-smell/

My feeling on realism is that if they are determined to forsake the advantages of an abstracted RPG, and go for all out realism (in context) with their graphics and sound, then they should leave the abstractions behind altogether. This means designing believable, plausible mechanics that don't need excuses like "its only a game".

Well this isn't about whether or not the combat skills will be good in Skyrim in the end, it's about the fact that less skills doesn't mean the game is less complex when in reality with the new systems, we have way more customization than we did in previous games, which is what this discussion is about.



What is so unrealistic about getting the basic concept of fighting with one handed weapons after using one handed weapons for a long time. It is incredibly basic, just basically getting the swinging motion right. Perks allow for the reality of specialization to come in. In reality, when you work at a certain weapon, you get a familiarity with it and start to learn how to use that certain weapon very skillfully. That is incredibly realistic. You get the jist of using a one-handed weapon by using a one handed axe(one-handed weapon skill) but you become a master of combat with the axe after you fight with them for long periods of time and it becomes second nature (perks)

Hmm, I re-read a bit of this and I want to make one last thing clear.

I am not against the change Beth has made with perks. On the whole I am a bit more optimistic than not on how fun the mechanics will be.
But I do keep on hoping that they decide to expand the content of all the facets of game play.

What facets do you mean in particular? They have expanded the content in several parts of the game in Skyrim so far. New combat system, new magic system, new leveling system and new perks system. They have expanded the content a lot.

Are you talking about expanding the minor things?

Its just that... well... For me, customization just isn't a core aspect for an RPG. Customization is near the bottom of my list of important RPG features (just above condemnation of toilet drinking). If my PC were assigned (pre-made); Skills already picked, and rendered with an unchanging appearance... I wouldn't have a problem with that.

Haha, thats awesome.

I think Duke Patrick has some really great Oblivion mods that are sort of the same thing. With Combat Archery it really changes the entire game, but after a while tripping on rocks or bodies just isnt fun anymore. Or using mods like Realistic Fatigue(not a Duke one) just get annoying after a while. But I know there are people who really enjoy those kinds of mods and even tweak them for further realism.

Visually I much prefer Morrowind over Oblivion. Its fantastical enough to be different and interesting, but based enough on reality to not just be jarring. I kind of like hanging between real and abstract that TES games have so far, but I would like to see more realism and immersion options built in. This could be extended past just eating and drinking to skill penalties.

everything

perks, skills, customization, world, quests.
everything.

I honestly think that in all the re-working that the company is fond of they lose a ton of content that would be able to put the game as top RPG bar none.

Their games are always top RPG bar none. And what content do they lose? People keep saying we lose stuff. All we have been doing is gaining. We gained more content in this game then any other game has had in the past. At what point is enough? When they 20 TB worth of content?

That doesn't seem like an RPG at all. It may technically fit under the RPG genre, but why do you play TES then? TES is about complete freedom, you seem to want a game that chooses everything for you and does everything for you. I think you want an MMORPG.

I disagree, I think some of the old TES systems needed revamps. The magic system in Morrowind and Oblivion is HORRIBLE, and the melee is just plain mindlessly dull. Its a little like some MMOs where they just keep adding more and more content but leave the core gameplay flaws unaddressed. Adding more without fixing problems just condelutes things. If Skyrim had the same chance based melee and blocking system that Morrowind had, I wouldnt play it.

Agreed :tops:


I couldn't rank FO3 over FO1. :shrug:

Based on the little time I've played it I think I'd greatly prefer Morrowind over Oblivion for almost everything that Oblivion cut out.
(And I played Oblivion before I'd ever heard of Morrowind.)

lol, not gonna lie - the guts it took to say that here are on par with the guts it took me to make my 3-skill thread. Gotta give you props for that.

you misunderstand

When they find a mechanic they are comfortable with, no matter what it may be, coders can finally stop reinventing the wheel as far as combat or this and that and really add more and fix more. An ES game that releases without major bugs. Potentially allocate more all around to fleshing out the game.

And ES has competitors that are doing things to help them compete in the same arena. Personally still and ES fan, but plenty of other people I know favor other games to ES because of ways they felt the games were lacking.
----

don't get me wrong, I am trying to stay realistic. I agree that the series has needed to be reworked over the years.
I am just looking forward to when that massive reworking is no longer required.

Tes needs to stay the way it is, giving more options in how they play and who they play as than almost any other games out there, if we would all have the same skills to begin with and be the same race and only have a a few different skills, all play throught would be similar. That is the problem with basically every single game, if it fails to give unique content it is just another game, and we have more than enough to choose from at that genre.

Truth be told, if we would always start of as a nord warrior in Skyrim, I wouldn't buy it, because there is Dark Souls comming up that would be the number one game of 2011 on my list. But because Skyrim offers the way it is, more options for me than Dark Souls, I wiull buy Skyrim first, instead of not all all.

I bought Oblivion because I'd never heard of Bethesda, and I'd read about their licensing the Fallout IP. I wanted to see what they were capable of.

I usually won't play an MMO; I tried a free trial of WoW not too long ago, and after a few minutes thought, "This is it?"; I let the trial expire without a second session.

If I had to pick only one RPG from the last decade, and not have any others... I'd pick the Witcher.
(I cannot put to words just how much I wish FO3 had been like the Witcher reskinned with cosmetic tweaks, instead of Oblivion reskinned with cosmetic tweaks).

Cutting skills to add "perks" makes the game less role playing , DOT, bleeding or price reduction with haggling can never replace merchandile or axes skill.

Because every single master of axe being the exact same is so rpgish. The skill is a line every one must follow. A perk tree allows for axe users to be different.

We had Perks in Oblivon! Do you call Oblivion not RPGish? If that's where we draw the line of what is RPG and what is not... Well lets just say it would be a most strange thing to do.

My question is how generic is the perk system gonna be?? Yeah streamlining skills to add this content is fine but not when all the perks are generic and boring with no impact other than "DoT" or "Ignore armor". I need something a little more fantastic than a rehashed perk system found in so many terrible RPG's. I could go play Borderlands for a generic perk tree.....

Ultimately, I'd probably play Skyrim like I would Morrowind or Oblivion-like it's a completely separate game. Regardless of the skills implemented in any game in the series, none are closer to perfection than another because what perfection and preference are is up to each individual person, as shown by some people preferring one games features over another. Lore wise, aspects of the games have to be similar, but they are indeed different games. I jumped back into Morrowind a few days ago and felt like it was a completely different game than Oblivion, in a good way. I love them both equally and if given the choice to have one or the other on console, I wouldn't know which to choose. On PC, I'd have to go with Oblivion simply because most of the functions that people loved in Morrowind had been implemented through mods. Whatever they left out in Skyrim will eventually be put back in through mods if capable.

All of the talk about whether or not so called "redundant" skills should be in the game shows that people simply play the game differently. I've personally found a use for every skill in Oblivion as well as Morrowind.

I grew up with D&D. I like my game to have spread sheets and tons of seemingly useless features. With the right DM, nothing in the game is completely useless. Weaker combat features could be upgraded into significantly better ones and non-combat oriented features could do the same. Why choose a perk at a level up that makes you run faster when you could run faster by running more. The same goes for swimming and every other useful activity that could be enhanced through repetition/practice. So then you could choose your combat orient through leveling up and still make the decision whether or not your character can read arcane scripts or smooth talk his way out of combat through bluff or charm. They could keep characters with certain proficiencies from being an "uber" character by making it where you need a certain amount of points in intelligence to learn new languages or decipher puzzles or a certain amount of charisma to be that smooth talking rogue. You'd put more points as a warrior into melee oriented stats and not be able to cast big spells learned from what should take a lot of study. A mage has tenaciously studied aspects of the universe to let them manipulate it in ways people of lower intelligence couldn't possibly understand, but he probably hasn't swung a sword enough times to gain the muscle memory of a battle tested warrior or the social sixiness or dexterity of a rogue that has been stealing hearts and coin all his life.

The point of all that is to say that if you are really tired of the skill debating, spread the word that the game isn't out yet, we don't know how it plays and feels exactly, and no amount of speculating is going to prove the game unworthy of your cash. Unless you're stuck on a system, don't complain. If you are, I hope your bubbling worries are settled when it comes out. I had to wait 2 years until I could afford a decent computer and went from the console Oblivion to the PC without a second thought. :thumbsup:

If you ask me, I think that choosing your own perks is better than the 5 pre-set perks in Oblivion, even when we have only 18 skills in the game, they can be used in many different ways making up for more different types of skill mastry than there were total skills in Morrowind.

As long as the perks make sense and feel "natural", I don't really see an issue. If you wanna talk generic, then leaving them as separate skills like in MW/Ob couldn't be more generic. Raise skill for the weapon, do more damage with the weapon. With these perks, the weapons will behave uniquely, with axes doing damage-over-time, maces ignoring armor, daggers doing insane stealth hit damage, etc. So not only do you get uniqueness with how weapons work, you can become proficient with more specific weapon types. Oblivion didn't let you get better with short swords over long swords, or hammers over axes.. Skyrim will. It adds more choices than Oblivion, and offers more uniqueness in weapon effects than Morrowind. It also makes the choices meaningful -- choosing any particular weapon type in the previous games just decided which weapon you can use first, as you could always go back and master the others at any time. You can't really do that in Skyrim anymore. Another benefit is that a master long-swordsmen won't turn into a clumsy oaf the moment they happen to pick up a sword that's a couple inches too short.

In addition to that, it sounds like it will be much much nicer for modders to add new stuff. Upset over missing spears? Make a mod to add them as 2-handed weapons, and create a set of perks to make them interesting and unique, allowing characters to specialize in them. In Oblivion, you could just add them as a blade-type weapon, and that was it. Nothing too special over claymores. By treating the skills as a general skill sets, with the majority of the benefits coming from skill-related perks, it allows modders to add a bunch of new, much more unique content that Bethesda didn't want to, didn't have time to, or simply weren't able to, implement.

Edit :

I decided to make this my own topic rather than hijack this one.

I think these skills should be added for the people who want no streamlining.

A skill for EVERY language including the common tongue. so like 40-50 for them alone.
A skill for holding your breathe (different from swimming because one is not needed to do the other and it could be useful around gas traps).
jumping
tumbling
dodging
diving
swimming
sprinting
jogging
walking
hiking (traversing rough terrain/forrests)

making: (a skill for each)
cloth
silk
burlap
hemp
velvet
wool
tanning
smelting
forging
casting
engraving
fluting
fletching
tailoring
crocheting
soups
breads
stews
pies
filleting
cutlery
steaks
cakes
omelets
wine-making
brewing
distilling
pasteurizing
milking
husbandry
shoeing (horses)
cobbling
carpentry
cabinets
baskets
pottery
sculpting
carving
inlaying
listening (differentiating sounds)
tasting (refining your tastes)
leatherworking
smithing
creating campfires
plucking (used to collect feathers for your pillows and arrows)
birdwatching
tracking
cartography (more detailed world and area maps)
interior decorating
paving (making a stone path to your house!)
masonry
slaughtering
butchering
stir-frying


that is off the top of my head while sleep deprived.... I am sure there are thousands more I could come up with if you want to get really anol about skills.

some combat related skills..

parrying
ripsoting
blocking
stabbing
thrusting
slashing
hacking
clubbing
hammering
gouging
footwork (movement speed in combat)
archery from a standing position
while moving
on horseback
1 for every type of throwing weapon
1 for every type of hand held weapon (including those used for archery)
1 for every type of shield
1 for the use of every type of armor piece
1 for every material of armor
1 for every type of element
concentration (chance to hit)
exploit weaknesses (critical hits/backstabbing)

casting spells on self
on others
on a target area
on a target enemy/object and surrounding area
ressurrecting dead
calling spririts
summoning daedra
summoning wildlife
etc...

each spell shoudl be it own skill, because they do not all behave exactly the same... so 50 spell effects + whatever variations are applied to them.

I'm pretty sure it's actually how you describe it, as far as I understand, Axes always have a somewhat of a bleeding effect, and maces always have somewhat of a % armor ignoration, and some of the perks will maximize or enhance these features. I think it's supposed to simulate someone becoming more intimate with that type of weapon, learning how to get the most out of the weapons particular properties. Of course the perks will probably also do stuff like add techniques and stuff.