Exactly, most of OB landscape seemed auto-crafted, while Morrowind was obviously hand-crafted.

There has to be balance somewhere, and the mainstreaming has to draw the line at some point.

The easier they make the games, the less satisfaction you get from developing your character, and achieving something, using your mind and/or your character's capabilities.

FPS games can give us satisfaction of our fast reflexes, but role playing games should give us the satisfaction of our choices about character development, our choices about doing tasks and achieving goals, our choices about maintaining a role, or a relation with NPCs, our choices about how to approach a problem, and so on...

The harder, and more limited the environment and our capabilities are at the beginning of a role playing game, the more satisfaction we would have of breaking out of the starting limits, out of improving our capabilities, and achieving goals.

If we do not have to use our minds in order to solve the problems and it is enough for us to precisely follow instructions and on screen indications, then it is an kid's arcade game, not a mature role playing game, no matter how much gore are there on the screen.

I really miss the olde times where the shiny graphics was not the norm, but quality was in the depth of the games, and their mature nature regarding their approach with problems, now the instructions just jump out of the screen indicating how to solve problems like robots.

I really miss the olde times. <_<

...
IMHO the biggest problem rises from the decision to make the game for children, and this trend started with Oblivion, and that game has inbred hand holding woven into every parts of its core, and leaves nothing for our imagination and ingenuity to solve, and hand feed all the information and instruction needed to do the next tasks, and nose lead us to the place that we have to be to solve the problems, and leave nothing for us to try ourselves.

You can do anything right from the beginning and do not need to "EARN" any right to to things, you can go (jump) anywhere, attend any guild, become master of all, leader of all, winner of all.

And you can do it right from the start, without an real need to improve your character, and you can do it by just one character, and you do not have to fight really hard to do it either.

When there is no need to improve your character to become able to do things that you could do not before, and when there is no need to choose between two opposing factions, skills, places, or anything, and you can have them all, from the beginning, and when you do not need to impersonate a special person, and can be all of the characters in one play-through, then IMHO the game is not a role playing game.

It is a kids' arcade game, full of action, where you jump from one action packed place to another and have instant gratification, and move on.

Hopefully Skyrim got better in this era from the black sheep of the family Oblivion, but I fear has not reached the exalted height that TES series had when it was younger.

A great critique, and I love the reasoning you have used. The only issue I have is with your critique of being able to do anything at any stage taking the role playing aspect away from the game. Isn't this the whole point of the genre? You create the limitations and PC back-story, so You can implement your own rules. I also think this is a very mature aspect of the game as many children would not have the capacity to create their own in-depth storyline.

What I meant, was that when there is no need to develop a character to be able to do things, and you can do anything right from the beginning, there goes "The character development" aspect of RPGs out of the window.

In a role playing game, you would play a role and stick to it and develop your character relative to that role, so that you can do the tasks that the role model could do better, and you live that role.

But in a game that no matter what type of character you have developed, and no matter what role you have impersonated, you could do anything you liked and join any faction that you liked, no matter if they are related to your role model, or not, and you could become their leader, nonetheless, even if they are completely unrelated to your previous role, and developed character, then goes "The role playing" aspect or RPGs out of the window.

The kid part was regarding the ease of access to the quest solving, because when a quest started, the "Precise" and "Full" instruction of how you should finish the task was dictated, and reminded at appropriate positions and times, and the precise direction of the exact position of the target was always visible on the screen, and you had only to follow the on-screen directions and at the right moments a pop-up would dictate you what you should do next, and you did it like a robot.

A kid could do the tasks, provided he could understand the meaning of the dictated instructions.

Further hand holding, nose leading, and precise dictating of next actions, in one way, linear quest lines, with obvious black and white morality, and making a game for children in a harsh and gory environment.

IMHO Morrowind had perfect settings in all ways, Oblivion had all the above problems, and I hope in Skyrim they are half back toward Morrowind standards, but I still fear those mistakes.

I hope they do not include the compass markers on the HUD at all, and just give us enough journal directions and NPC guidance and Clairvoyance spell.

=== === === === ===

You, as a newbie player, have joined a guild, and a quest giver in the guild has just given you a task to perform:

Quest giver: Find the "Elvenbane Axe" in the "Nihilus Keep".

You ask a few guild members and find out that "Nihilus Keep" is probably south west of the "Scorched Catacombs", so you open your map and find the catacombs on that, and plan a route there, or simply use a "Scroll of relocation" to jump to the catacombs, and head south west.

In the route you find a traveling NPC and ask her if she can help you find the target keep, and she points toward a direction and tells you to keep going that way, but you bribe her, or sweet talk her to guide you toward the target, and she agrees to come along a bit.

She falls in front of you and you start to follow her in the route, until she stops and points towards a small keep, half hidden behind the large mountain in front of you and tells you that it is your target, and departs.

=== === === === ===

You enter the keep, and try to look around and find the item on your own, or decide to give up and use your clairvoyance spell and with its help find the axe.

You cast a spell and the avatar of your unconscious half-draconic inner self appears in front on you and beckons you to follow him, and you follow your inner self until finally its time is up so that it stops on the track, and point you toward a direction to follow, and disappears into a wisp of smoke.

You follow the direction and try to find the axe on your own, or decide to cast the spell again, and again you follow the avatar of your inner self, until he stands beside the item, and points toward it.

=== === === === ===

Now compare it with Oblivion's implementation:

Quest giver: Find the "Elvenbane Axe" in the "Nihilus Keep".

You open the map, there it is, marked on your map, so you click on a nearby visited place, and teleport to it, then follow the compass markers until you reach the door steps of Nihilus keep and enter it and continue following the aforementioned markers, until you are standing right beside the item. Note that I did not write about the opposition found in the middle.

=== === === === ===

Please tell me which method gives us the most satisfaction that we have achieved something in the game, and finished a task?

Which method gives us the more opportunities to perceive and interact with the game environment and its population, and let us be immersed in the game?

Well, it seems that a lot of people around here want to be able to go anywhere and do anything from the beginning of the game.

I want to earn that. I want to be shackled in limitation from the beginning of the game and by practicing, and gradually improving my character, by gradually defeating the monsters and other barriers that are in the way of my freedom, by completing the gradually more complicated quests, by gradually conquering my way into the hearts of the local people, and by gradually finding my place in the game world, to be able to break free from those shackles and limitation, and feel the sweet taste of triumph over those initial limits, so it is like a combination of a lot of those choices.

I want to finally become great, but I want to do it in a special way each time, so I would become unique in the end. For replay-ability, of course.

But my choice, the core and foundation of it all, that other role playing elements would be achieved on the top of it would be: Breaking from initial limits, and become free to go anywhere, and do anything.

Level cap is 70, with only 50 unlockable perks, no spell making, no athletics/acrobatics so we are stuck running a static pace. Yeah, too much freedom.. MY ASS. You [censored] tell me how much you hate quick travel when you are stuck running at the speed of [censored] Commander Shepard across your huge vistas! Tell me how we have too much freedom when forced to level spells we don't want instead of creating our own! And how you've earned no perks for the last 20 levels when you hit level 70!

The level cap is 70 :cryvaultboy: !? how do you know this

Level cap is 70, with only 50 unlockable perks, no spell making, no athletics/acrobatics so we are stuck running a static pace. Yeah, too much freedom.. MY ASS. You [censored] tell me how much you hate quick travel when you are stuck running at the speed of [censored] Commander Shepard across your huge vistas! Tell me how we have too much freedom when forced to level spells we don't want instead of creating our own! And how you've earned no perks for the last 20 levels when you hit level 70!

The level cap is 70 :cryvaultboy: !? how do you know this

I don't remember no SC being officially confirmed and it hasn't been said whether something will eventually allow us to change our running speed.

Level cap is 70, with only 50 unlockable perks, no spell making...

The argument is either: "Locked speeds" or "every race will have the same speed in the beginning".

Are you serious no spellmaking!? That's [censored]! We can enchant weapons and armour and create weapons and armor, but no way could we make our own spells, that's just illogical..........................................................sarcasm

I'm sorry, I have to ask- why does everyone complain about 'fast travel?'

No one's twisting your arm to use 'fast travel.' Enjoy the game as wish to.

It's been reported in many interviews that there is no hard cap, but a mathematical soft cap, a limit beyond which it is not possible to advance in character level, somewhere between 70-80.

As for the perks stopping at 50, I haven't seen that confirmed in any interviews so far, but essentially the higher you advance, you gain levels more and more slowly until at some point between 70-80 you can't increase anything else.

from Todd's description, he gave the impression that even after playing for hundreds of hours, very few people would reach the mathematical limit.

No spellmaking was confirmed in the Italian OXM back in january or February.

there might have been a conflicting interview more recently suggesting they are still exploring the possibility however

Yeah, so out of 280 perks, the max a player can ever achieve is 70 assuming that is the level cap. That's not freedom, that's making the player choose a class without ever actually choosing a class, in which case they should just add classes back to the character creation so we're not just finding out how little freedom we actually have after 300+ hours. Removing character classes from the character creation is an illusion of freedom, by the end of your playthrough you will have been forced to become one of those classes by the limiting of the level cap and the perk system.

Oh great...
It's 6 AM, so I'm not going to be nice, supportive, understanding or civil... when was I ever really...

When I've read the first sentences how this is from a blog about how "all the ways modern videogames are disappointing me", I was expecting the common "old man speech", and lo and behold, that is exactly what I've got...

So you say how fast travel ruined the game? How didn't Morrowind's fast travel ruined it? You could reach all of the major cities from the very beginning, the price it costed was negligible. Removed the danger, by going home instantly from the middle of nowhere? Morrowind's intervention scrolls were cheap as dirt and were given away to you in the dozens. Ruins exploration? Howso? You have to get there somehow, before you can fast travel there?
Still how did you dealt with not visiting every city in Morrowind? Probably by not using the Silt Riders, and going to the cities on foot, even if it is for one time. So what stopped you in Oblivion doing the same?

And about level scaling? A common misconception was that Morrowind did not have that. Most of morrowind's denizens were level scaled, many enemies did not appeared until you reached a certain level. You might have noticed how suddenly after level 15, Deadra appear in most areas out of nowhere. Even Daedric ruins, which had just a few Scamps before now have Dremoras and Atronach everywhere. I admit, Oblivion did take it too far, and Morrowind also had a lot more static creatures, but the landscape were not set to any level, the danger was the same everywhere you went, maybe near ruins you could find some more dangerous enemies, as dungeons tend to be pretty static, but that's not tend to be fully true either. The only really powerful area was the Red Mountain itself really, because it had the Ash creatures which were mainly high level.

And what the hell does this have to do with "too much freedom"? Hell, isn't one of your problems were the evil quest markers that told you where to go, even though it always just showed the destination, never the way itself?
And you said you haven't read the books from the game either, because you were too busy doing those quests? I don't know, this doesn't seem like the game's problem to me...

Do you have the link?

I'm trying to understand your post, but I don't quite get if you are in favor of increased freedom or against it.

In Oblivion and Morrowind we only had about, what, perhaps 20 different perks available? And most of them were iterations of the other perks.

If you want to be able to make a character who is like Zeus with 280 perks, the only option is going to be to use console command or a mod.

For the rest of us we are massively happy about having 280 perks to choose from, even if we will never progress to any kind of character level 280, because this means my second, third and fourth playthrough are going to be a lot more fun. There is greater freedom to specialize our characters. In fact, for the very first time in any TES game, I'm really looking forward to playing some pure stealth and pure warrior characters that don't use any spells, or enchanting.

Considering the 280 perks, plus the fact that every playthrough will be different thanks to Radiant Story, in my view Skyrim will have a much higher replay value than previous TES games, especially if there is greater non-linearity in the quests. I'm estimating 5 - 10 playthroughs of around 300-500 hours each, spread out over the course of a several years.

I just think a level cap of 100 with 100 perks is more reasonable than 70 without altering the dynamic they are obviously trying to create by introducing these caps, I never said I wanted all 280 perks. I think 70 is really unreasonable for players that spend many hours playing their game and would rather continue improving their character than starting a whole new game.

A level cap of 100? Morrowind had a higher one, it numbered into the thousands. Only reachable by exploits, lawl.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1163214-skyrim-italian-coverage-thread-2/