It seems to me like the "dumbed down" accusation never seems to take into account the mechanics that were added.

You might not be, but I see plenty of the people who nag and nag and nag who decry how horrible 4 is for the franchise, yet I can promise they'll be the first to pull out their wallets come release (If they haven't to secretly buy the Pip-Boy Edition because they don't want to publicly admit they don't hate 4 as much as they behave as they do.)

I used clairvoyance....... there were times when I wandered looking for a route to a location for far too long.... Granted, the spell didn't always take me where I wanted to go, but, most of the time it did.

Why would they? People just don't like change and have to complain about it. Skyrim added alot of stuff that improved the RPG aspect of the game, no one talking about that. And that we will see alot of that in Fallout 4.

Not even the same thing. Pushing a button to fire goes along with keeping the crosshairs on target and dealing with recoil of bullet spread. Those things have to be managed and game play altered so that you don't waste limited ammo. When the gun is out of ammo or you are, you have to switch guns or reload. Those things take precious seconds that could spell the difference between victory or defeat. They happen quickly enough and often enough that it has a real impact on the flow of a battle and how you play the game. Item degradation does not. Item degradation is slow enough that you can go through multiple fire fights and never feel the impact of it. You have all the time in the world to fix up your gun in between fights. The impact on how you play is minimal at best.

Except when more was cut than added. In regard to Skyrim, they added smithing, cooking, marriage/adoption and dual wielding.

Attributes worked like ass in TES.

-Things like the melee damage increase from STR were spread out over so many levels that you never noticed it until you got like 20 more points in said attribute.

-Attributes bundled multiple major character stats such as, stamina, melee weapon damage, and carry weight, thus forcing increased homogeneity between characters as you were forced to level them up all at the same time.

-The +1-5 bonus system made quickly maxing out your primary attributes impossible to avoid, forcing you to level up your non primary attributes every time you leveled up, thus further increasing homogeneity as everyone ended up with roughly equal attributes every time by the time they finished leveling.

Skyrim had none of those problems

-It bundled things like melee weapon damage increases into a smaller number of perks that gave noticeable increases every time.

-It filled the now empty spaces in skill leveling with new powers that were 100% optional, thus increasing the number of ways to define your character.

-Separating things like carry weight, melee weapon damage, and stamina from a singular attribute allowed for far more individual customization of your character over time.

-The removal of attributes and the +1-5 bonus system meant that one was never forced to raise their HP/Magicka/Stamina due to having to raise non-primary attributes when they leveled up because their primary ones were maxed. You could just keep putting bonuses into whatever you wanted since there was no caps on any of the stats.

Also

>People who have no real specalizations are basically the same

So like real world humans who have had no specialized training in something?

You still are lacking counters to what I said about the fact that everything could nearly be broken, just like you said the repair is broken and pointless, and Skyrim wasn't dumb downed? let me go thorugh:

1.auto regen health

2.Lack of attributes, just face it the basic stat increase were not as interactive as before.

3. No Degradation

4. no portable alchemy

5. really shallow quests

And many others I can't go through right now because i have to go for now.

But to be fair, the crafting does look really good like you said.

Except they did work, and they while the "attributes" are gone, their functions (well some of them) are still in game but are just bundled into three catagories. health, stamina, magicka. The attributes gave us more health, more stamina, and more magicka. I personally do recall the threads you mention about people complaining about attributes, but what they were complaining about wasn't the result of attributes. Specificly people were complaining that the game became impossibly hard if they picked the wrong attributes to increase. as for example, if you increased nothing but agility and willpower and speed you'd be a high leveled character with low health and weapon damage fighting enemies whose strength was increased based on your level. The problem was with most enemies getting stronger depending on your level. Essentially what you had was a enemy leveling system that punished character builds that focused on any thing but combat.

Most people either didn't know the enemies were getting boosts of health and damage, while their choices in attribute points didn't have any blatantly obvious benefits. Like willpower, people claimed it to be completely useless beyond magicka regen speed. but willpower actually affected a lot of things in slight degrees. like the penalty you received for casting spells while wearing armor, or efficiency of spell absorption/reflection when you had that spell in effect.

No, I can defend most of the design decisions, but even I can't disagree with a few complaints. That said, I understand the reason behind dropping degradation in a game involving flying lizards that breath fire that can jump you in the wilderness.

Speaking solely for myself, dragging my worn and weary behind back to a smith to fix my gear only to get pounced on by a Dragon or a Master Vampire spawn would royally stink. Heck, that's akin to the Daggerfall days when sending my gear to be repaired prior to an adventure and getting jumped by marauders while in my skivvies that spawn thanks to a quest I'd picked up.

Not exactly my idea of a fun gameplay experience.

That is just your opinion. Even if it was the most useless feature ever devised in gaming it would still be warranted since it is a POST-APOCALYPSE or do you expect your dirty little rifle to survive being shot, smacked, slammed into things, blown up, dropped, fired all-day-every-day, and submerged in who-knows-what radioactive filth and still be in perfect condition at the end of your adventure? If you answer is anything other than "no" then you dont have a point, you just want to argue

Item repair is only an issue for the first five levels. Once the caps/repair items/repair kits are easy to get a hd of, it's all por nada. Couldn't care less.

Hilarious how pre release Sky PR basically spelled out they were dumbing the game down and who they were dumbing it down for.

I like weapon degradation, but like a poster said it should be realistic not use duct tape to fix a gun lol.

Well, they have to buy the game and play it in order to find everything that's wrong with the game so they can keep complaining about it.

I didn't have a problem with them.... Well, Ok, Damage in Oblvion was done poorly, but, that was also a change from Morrowind.... and it was beths answer to not having miss animations. (in morrowind, it was indeed possible to miss your target, in oblivion, it was not, damage was just stupidly scaled.) The problem wasn't with stats, it was with how beth used them in that particular case.

Attributes are an RPG element. Those seem to be becoming scarcer in Beth games.... that purport themselves to be "RPGs"..... I find them more action/adventure games, with a few RPG elements, more than classic RPG's.

No, they buy it because they're massive hypocrites.

That too.

Not really. If they buy the game, then they are supporting a game company that destroyed their precious IP....... so, they will just "have heard", or, "saw at a friends house", etc.

So are perks, but they do not define RPGs, and one can be an RPG without them.

Skyrim merely shifted the ineffectual and bundled attributes into less bundled and more effective perks, while also adding in plenty of new powers that didn't exist in past games.

昫ont use the spell?
旽ealth regen does nothing to help player while in combat and out of it we can wait.
昄ike someone else said in this thread, attributes are in the perks.
昗hat was so clever about using repair hammers? And degradation in oblivion degraded way to fast I hope they work it out further in future installments of their games.
?how is alchemy in skyrim hand holding!? Now that you cant carry heavy fragile glass equipment in your pocket? So now you make potions at set locations and thats dumbing down? Isnt that the opposite of dumbing down? Smarting up? Like you better smart up with your potion decision making while you're at an alchemy table. prepare yourself well friend there are dragons about.
昩irthsigns are called standing stones......how much of the game did you play?

It is sad what happened to spell crafting though. I hope it makes its return in the next game and skyrim is the only game to not have included it.

So you can't defend the dumbing down, either. Birth signs are not standing stones either. You can't change when you were born LMAO. You also realize Oblivion had 3 types of stones including birth stones, right? You have played the games?

Removing 3x as many powers as they added...totally cool right?

Yes, it is my opinion. Is this where I'm suppose to insult or denigrate you for having a different one?

Honestly, I don't think that that is a very compelling argument for why it should be in the game. Everyone knows that guns require maintenance. That isn't in dispute. The question is whether or not the gameplay mechanic is compelling or interesting enough to be included. It is my opinion that it is not. It does not add to the fun or enjoyment of the game. It does not add to the difficulty of the game. It's simply a hassle to deal with and I would rather not have to.

They removed a lot of spells, but most of them were just copies of other spell effects.

However, they added in many new things like physical spell properties such as runes, sprays, cloaks, walls, that added a whole new tactical elements to spell that didn't exist in past games.

on top of that fire/frost/shock magic got special elemental effects that didn't exist in past games as well.