Unfortunately, every developer in town watched CODBlops reach $1 billion sales in 6 weeks and was thinking "How can I get me some of that?"

From the interviews I've seen, I get the sense that Todd and the senior team at Bethesda genuinely have a lot of love for the TES series and its dedicated fans. I don't imagine any of them would ever want to make certain fundamental changes that would completely alienate its fan base.

But who knows what will happen a few years down the road. Could be different leadership, different market conditions, etc., but certainly within the realm of possibility that the TES name could get attached to a game that is designed to reach a much broader target market.

Well I feel presence of X-COM in your words

oblivions default level scaling was horrible. oblivions default levelling system was horrible....5x multipliers anyone? nGCD was a necessity. spellcasting while holding a shield and a weapon was lame and something for a Disney princess type of game. being able to create exploit spells and gear was also annoying because in a good game i shouldnt have to force my self NOT to do something so as not to ruin the game. ill miss attributes but to be honest i can live without them. my only concern is that if you decide to heavily invest in either magic or stamina that you dont become a power attack or spell machine gun with infinite ammo. im mad that they arent exploiting the PCs full potential power considering the next TES game is 5 or 6 years away but skyrim does look alot better than oblivion did.

i know what you mean people really should be more angry

Why would people be angry? I see nothing lost.
Whilst somethings have been removed, many things have been added. How is it streamlining to remove hand to hand, yet add a new feature, like Dragon Shouts. There is still the same number of features, infact you can get alot more variation out of the dragon shouts.
But alas, people will always scream when something is lost, but say nothing when something new is given.

*** The short of it (TL;DR crowd) ***
I'm sure I'm not alone in saying I don't get upset because its rather pointless.

Seriously, its their game, and raising my blood pressure won't change anything. G*d grant me the serenity to accept the things I can't change, and all that.

The main indispensable feature for me is the construction kit. Removing that WOULD be a dealbreaker. The open world nature of TES would also be a dealbreaker. Anything else leaves room for consideration and weighting of pros and cons.



*** The long of it ***
Does this mean I don't care? Of course I do. But in the end it will come down to whether their decisions lead to better sales or not, not how close I came to a heart attack over x, y, or z feature getting dropped (or added). I may or may not be in line when 11.11.11 rolls around. I may or may not get it in the weeks or months that follow. I may never buy it. As an individual consumer I'm replaceable tho, we only matter in aggregate.

Having the construction kit also gives BSG more margin to play with as far as making mistakes goes, since long-time fans know that things they don't like will probably be fixable somehow. This alone will mean I'll prolly buy it, even if they make a decision that negatively affects a feature that's important to me.

I don't think a game is important enough for me to sacrifice years off my lifespan over, but it seems not everyone else feels the same way.

That said, I see a few things that are troubling, but the exact implementations are crucial to whether they are dealbreakers for me or not.




*** Why I'm not worried...yet ***
For the record, here are some examples of implementations that wouldn't bug me, but would technically count as 'x has been removed':

* H2H may now fall under 1 hand combat, since you are essentially dual wielding fists (each fist only occupies 1 hand). This would mean you could stick a spell in one hand and punch with the other.

* H2H may now just be a default attack not attached to a skill. It might be attached to stamina (as a broad measure of physicality and fitness) for determining effectiveness/damage.

* H2H may now fall under a class of abilities that are no longer tied to a single skill but are affected by an average of all the skills in a particular category, such that effectiveness of H2H is an average of all your warrior skills to simulate general fighting skills like reading an opponent or identifying the best places to strike based on what they're wearing, etc.

* We've been told that attributes have mostly been removed, but that their functions still exist under the hood. Just because we can't modify them directly or view them as a simple number doesn't mean such information isn't internally represented as a formula so that they can describe strength at a given moment to be a function where some of the terms are max stamina, current stamina, and a weighted average across all skills that are usually associated with strength. Do stuff that increases skills normally associated with being strong and you'll get stronger. This way the 'attributes' we directly control are our skills, rather than arbitrarily deciding "ok, I spent this whole level casting fireballs but I really need to carry more stuff so strength gets a point". That really doesn't make sense anyway.

* We've heard that spellmaking is being tweaked but isn't guaranteed. Not sure why people are so certain it won't be in, that's a huge leap in logic. There's plenty of implementations that would be acceptable.

* Birthsigns? Todd has stated there WILL be racial perks, so skill perks aren't the only ones in the game. There's room for selecting a few perks at character creation. Even if not, the birthsigns they had before mostly svcked anyway. The only one with real impact on play was the atronach. RP value? RPers use imagination to fill in background all the time, birthsigns are not an insurmountable additional stretch.

* Spears and crossbows? Left out due to time constraints, obvious candidates for a DLC or mod. It constrains character concepts, but who has only one character concept, to which spears and crossbows are indispensable?

Can't think of anything else atm, but I doubt anyone has read this far anyway.

So you're Raging that normal people aren't getting angry over 2-3 minor changes in a list of 50 or so improvements over Tes3/4...........


Sorry, not everyone is a super bitter/angry forum nerd. Some people are realists and just don't care over minor changes, as there's too busy being hyped over massive improvements/additions rather than cry about "H2H" and other trash that next to noon is gonna miss over the insane additions.


(P.S. That would make us normal people, so stop using the f word. Aren't [censored] the ones who rage and get angry?)

I don't mind the cut to 18 skills because a lot of things in past games really shouldn't have been skills...

Merging the armor classes isn't cutting skills, it's merging them so a person who's used to Heavy armor isn't completely worthless in Light armor, and allows Medium armors to be implemented again.
Removing the Hand-to-Hand skill... I'm going to continue to hope they've merged it with the One-handed skill, like dual-wielding seems like it will be.
In previous games, lacking Acrobatics, Athletics, Speechcraft, and Merchantile was too annoying to consider leaving them Misc/Minor skills, but not strong enough to justify using your skill in them to calculate your level. The new leveling system doesn't seem like it would support athletics and Merchantile as skills anymore, because everyone is always running and frequently jumping (We have better things to do with our game time than waste it moving at half-speed from point A to point B), and even the least social, most combat-oriented character is making lots of transactions from selling loot.

Though mysticism is gone, I doubt the spell effects it had are. I think the fewer arbitrary divisions in spellcasting, the better. A thief had to really only juggle two Thief skills to get his job done: Sneak and Security. A dedicated warrior only needed to take three skills for maximum functionality: one Weapon skill, one Armor skill, and Block. A dedicated mage, on the other hand, needed to juggle 5 skills: Alteration, Destruction or Conjuration, Restoration, Illusion, and Mysticism.

So, it's not about the numbers they take out. It's about what they do with the functionality of the game. I have yet to see any functions really cut from the game. And I'm only slightly annoyed by the chance of not being able to dual-wield shields (Despite how awesome that would be).

Unless someone can elaborate on the removal of hand-to-hand combat.

And as the person above me noted: The niche [censored] are the ones getting upset about the removal of material from the game, because they have the most invested interest.

This aspect of this forum always reminds me of political forums and partisans, and I don't think that's a coincidence.

We all define ourselves in particular ways. Among the ways in which people define themselves is a reference to their support for an external organization or idea or pastime. It's a thing that they consider to be a mark of distinction - they are liberals or conservatives or Christians or atheists or otakus or juggalos or....... Bethesda fans. And since that allegiance serves as part of their self-perception, and they have the fundamental need to believe that they possess self-worth, they have to believe that that allegiance contributes to their self-worth. And the corollary to that is that any implication that the thing with which they've aligned themselves is in any way less deserving of their support than they believe it to be cannot be tolerated. That's the source of the often otherwise inexplicable hostility that you see here (and anywhere else where fans gather) at any criticism of the thing of which they are fans. Such criticism, since it undermines the purported value of the thing the fandom of which serves as a part of their self perception, is not simply an assault on the game or the developer, but on them personally. Since they derive some sense of their own value from associating themselves with the perceived value of the thing in question, anything that might serve to devalue the thing in question serves to devalue them.

And that's why they tend to respond to every single criticism, no matter what it might be, and respond to argue with it, no matter the logical contortions and flawed arguments they might have to rely on to do so. It's not really based on anolyzing something, coming to a conclusion, then expressing that conclusion, but instead on presuming the value of a thing first, investing themselves into a belief in that value, then defending their belief in that value. And they're so often hostile about it because, since they've invested themselves into that thing, they see any assault on the thing in question to be an assault on them personally. And they tend to grow increasingly hostile as they lose ground in an argument, simply because that brings them closer to the point at which they might have to reassess their own self-identification, and that's something they simply don't want to do.

Look up cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias for much more information on the dynamics of all of that.

To the specific question in the title of the thread - what it would take would vary from one person to another, but here's an odd thing about that - if Beth were to go beyond the point of whatever it would take to overcome the reflexive support of a particular fan, that fan would then become one of the harshest critics. It would be seen as a betrayal - here they've invested so much of themselves into supporting and defending Beth - into being there for them through thick and thin - and then Beth went and stabbed them in the back.

And in that context, one might look at the registration dates of many of the harshest critics here and wonder how they came to be so harsh in their criticisms............

And note - if one has defined oneself as a Beth critic - all of the above still tends to hold true, with the only difference being that it's the value and justification of being a Beth critic that must be defended at all costs. And that's why the ugliest battles are always between the "[censored]" and the "haters." Each side has an emotional investment in their view - each side has adopted that view as part of their self-identity - so each side takes it personally.

Long term fans don't matter. Bethesda's goal is to make money so that they don't get sued by shareholders, and even then they are under no obligation to actually make money, but only to do things that might make money. Courts have stated this again and again in innumerable shareholder suits. The shareholders almost always lose.

And that protection is only extended if you are actually a shareholder. No company gives a [censored] about consumers. Not any specific consumer, anyway. Sure they want the game to sell, but it doesn't matter to them whether they sell it to you or the three people in line behind you. Your dollar is just as good as the next guy.

That said, as long as the game they make is fun to some people, Bethesda doesn't care whether it is fun to you or not. The concept of "loyalty" to their "long term fans" is a farce.

Nice to see this did generate some decent discussion.

I think I am done with the original point anyway - both camps (die-hard critics, and die-hard optimists), both really want the same thing - the best TES game possible. It's just one group have complete faith in the choices Bethesda make, and the other are very critical of the choices they make. The funny thing is, pre-oblivion, I would have been firmly in the former group. I am wondering how many of the die-hard optomists will migrate to the jaded latter group in the run-up to TES 6 : P (It would make my day to see Dragonborn1 make some sort of derogatory comment in the run-up to TES 6, but then, that's just the sick sort of person I am)

edit - when I began writing this post the thread was towards the end of page 4, and now it is towards the end of page 5, so if I've just said something someone else has, please excuse my slow posting stylezz)

edit - @Bodycool - no need for that kind of attitude mate

Anything drasticly changed to alchemy, and if they take out Books. That would really set me off not buying Skyrim

Thank you gpstr for dragging that ugly aspect of these forums (skyrim section) out into the light, every single blasted point spot on...

And the join dates while not neccesarily a marker ( I lurked for 2 years) is a sad bit true point, however even timed "vets" I've witness can be equally as....ass-ish.

For example the poster above me :/


And no l it has not been stated attributes are under the hood... Ever....

What sense does it make putting H2H under one handed when using one hand weapons allow for another shield/spell in the other? Same for two handed which is two hands on one weapon...

That notion is under a day old and just people "hoping for the best" when it's clearly states what is and what isn't... Conjecture, it's ok when it's good but when it's bad you get flames :bonk: .


Sure we will still be able to punch but it will be as it stands now from the info, useless as running and jumping was in Fallout3, not helpful, can't be improved or changed by the characters actions : training, and is there for aesthetics..

:whistling:

Don't misunderstand my position: I'm quite the optimist. I'm one of the old fans, but I still have faith in Bethesda's games. I don't gripe and moan about announced features or changes, I reserve judgment until the game comes out.

I'm almost always defending Beth, which is something similar to what my above posts are supposed to be doing. I do, occasionally, suggest things that could be better, added, or removed, but I always keep in mind that my ideas are only as good as they are profitable.

I usually like to experience playing the game before I start crying about it being different than previous titles in the series.

Because then, if my fears turn out to be wrong, I don't look like a little cry baby for all my whining I did before anyone knew what the heck the game was all about anyway.

If I am right in my fears, no one cares that I was right first! shocking, I know. I keep it to myself and remain optimistic. Why should I moan and stress about something I can't change?

Sooo.... I guess the game would have to be really NOT fun when I actually get around to playing it, for me to be upset. The dev's would have to take the fun out of the game.

Since when is critiquing Beth a bad thing? Is this some culture where you can't talk about the govt for fear of disappearing? Since when did it become a fact that a fan that has criticism is less of a fan then those who are optimistic and thus not worth the space they occupy?

Well of course criticism is the bedrock of feedback, it's perfectly valid and even encouraged. I don't think any rational person has a problem with fans offering criticism.

Most of the threads and posts on these boards, however, aren't criticism, they are complaints. Compaining doesn't help anyone because it isn't backed by any reasoning or justification. Most of what you see on these boards is "I want X because I like it and because I've played Beth games for 15 years!!!!"

Cry me a river. Give us some good reasons the feature should be in, make some valid arguments, and stop whining, and we will have reached the point of criticism. None of this is to be read as implying that you do this, but simply that some (most) do.

I'd stop playing when the game stops being a deep, fun, engaging open world RPG. Like when I stopped playing medal of honour when they stopped (in my opinion) becoming well executed FPS games

Yep. Same thing for me with Call of Duty and with Civilization. Those companies have moved in directions that I don't much like, so I'm looking elsewhere. TES and Total War are still hanging in there for me, so I'm still buying their games. But, as usual, if they move in directions that I don't like I'll go somewhere else and I'll enjoy it.

I'll continue to make suggestions on the board, but if the games keep moving away from my tastes then so be it. I don't complain because it's their choice to make.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to cut away
and fans are always upset when they remove something, becuase change is scary

Is there a thread that says what they have taken out of the game? I would really like to know.

Thanks.

Well - setting aside the fact that this is Beth's forum (:D)

It's not so much that it's objectively a bad thing, but simply that some number of posters make that assertion. And, it should be noted, there's some number of posters who make the opposing assertion that being a reflexive fan is an inherently bad thing.

That has less to do, in the end, with whether or not either of those things (or any of the myriad other things people disparage) actually are bad things, and actually ties in with what I addressed earlier - a sense of self worth. This one is arguably even more fundamental than associating oneself with an organization or pastime - it's the age-old tendency toward "us vs. them." One provides support for one's sense of self-worth by defining a group of people based on some quality (critics of Beth, for instance), makes it clear one is not a member of that group, then condemns those who are members of that group, most often through insulting generalizations and characterizations.

It's a sort of negative affirmation - rather than supporting one's sense of self-worth based on what one is, one does so based on what one is not.

Though it's sort of a corollary to the dynamic of fans vs. critics, it's central to this thread in particular.....

Can someone list what they have taken out the game?

I think you are spot on in your anolysis of the psychological workings of fandom.
I know that I myself do take a sense of self worth and identity out of being very into elder scrolls.
Apart from job and family, hobbies are another thing people use to define themselves.
The us vs. them is just an unfortunate feature of how the brain works I suspect, as you said, the need to have a seperate and defined identity and the equal need to perceive oneself as 'good'.
Hmm.

Thanks for giving me something to think about