You can go everywhere and do everything! : V - Skyrim

» Sun Jul 10, 2011 8:51 am

The biggest strength of TES games is its open world character. Be who you want to be and go to everywhere. Still on this board and the general consensus of the developers is that there must be a balance to everything and that the player must be confined in a lot of ways. In this single player game that says it is al about free choice I keep feeling I'm being hand held through the whole experience. Houses and chest have nothing worth while. Oh so you snuck into the castle at night. Well guess what we are nobles just by title. Of you go, shhhhh (getting rich by theft is unbalanced D:, eek).

Levitation gave the world an extra dimension in Morrowind. Especially with the prison above Vivec en the houses on the east part of the Island(forgot the name). The player had extra choices that made the game world rich and gave a lot of ways to handle your problems. It was taken out because people could abuse it and we don't want that! It is so narrow minded. It is a singleplayer game If it really ruins someone's fun that much it is their fault and their fault alone that it happened. Same for enchanting armour. I never even made on piece of armour with deflect magic on it. The game became to easy for you? Congrats you did everything to make it so. This is not a fault of the game or even a balance issue it is the player's choice and that is what can make a game exceptional instead of great.

Again I feel acrobatics and athletics where taken out because they could be "abused". You could get to places where no one could go. I had great fun alone in Oblivion to jump to get on top of all kind of places. But if you can get to places the devs didn't think of you might have an experience that wasn't intended by the devs. Of course this is an outrage and must be stopped. The game says its about freedom, but more and more choices get cut from the game. Can we only do what the devs intended? Will I again feel that I'm constantly reminded that some stuff just isn't possible. Will this game get more linear with every iteration? Will we get a game like mass effect where you cant even jump? With this I see them taking frenzy and charm out as well. I'm worried. Are you?

You raise some valid concerns, here, although the issues with Levitation are not the same issues with acrobatics and athletics.

My understanding is that with levitation the devs were not necessarily worried that it would abused, but that incorporating levitation meant they would be significantly more restricted when developing quests and instead of making every single quest work with levitation, they found it easier to exclude levitation.

In the case of Athletics, while it might be considered an exploit to allow the PC to get to a point where he can run around like Speedy Gonzalez, since you can avoid all enemies in Oblivion this way, I think it was more a matter of it being a bit silly to level up this skill by walking quickly everywhere, since everyone is going to be doing that all the time anyways except when they use fast travel. Also it makes the horseback riding feature a bit silly if the PC can run faster than a horse.

In the case of Acrobatics, it's possible the devs were concerned about some limitations for quests taking into account jump height, but I think primarily they wanted to eliminate requiring people to hop about like a bunny rabbit everywhere to level up this skill. And can you honestly come up with 12-20 good perks for the Acrobatics skill?

» Sat Jul 09, 2011 8:57 pm

Not to mention dragons...

... no, airborne dragon fighting wouldn't be as awesome as you would think... unless you want to turn the game into Dragon Ball Z...

Main problem I see with levitation is that it's an overly powerful tool, but in the hands of mages only. You cannot cast it for anything useful, unless you're highly trained in alteration, cutting out many people from certain areas and just making others unfairly powerful (Yes, yes, single player game, but that's no excuse to make mages into the "easy mode", not to mention the NPCs...)

And it always was about doing everything the game allows, there's no other way around it, this is the biggest problem of cRPGs over PnP RPGs which can be a lot more flexible in this matter...

» Sun Jul 10, 2011 1:11 am

TESV: Skyrim Unofficial Q&A

Question: Can I levitate in Skyrim?
Answer: What are you? A fairy? Keep it on the ground Tinkerbell.

Question: Can I use Mark\Recall magic?
Answer: Are your feet broken? Ride a horse, or something.

Question: What about jump spells.
Answer: What? Regular jumping ain't good enough for ya? Gotta be all magic about it, get outta here.

Question: What about lore, the lore clearly says I can do all this stuff?
Answer: Screw the lore, that's what.

Skyrim Coming: 11\11\11

» Sun Jul 10, 2011 12:55 am

Its not that they couldn't have designed away to make levitation work. It was just decided the time and effort to make it work wouldn't be worth it cause it would take away from other portions of the game. Its really as simple as that. Same reasons mounted combat and multiplayer were cut.

» Sun Jul 10, 2011 4:46 am

It's good game design to remove an entire feature, thousands of people enjoy, because it "might" break "some" quest. ???

And, someone has obviously never played Tribunal.. (They control the flow just fine, and didn't remove levitation from the game.)

(And with Oblivion style GPS here to stay, how could you possibly miss anything?)

---

Edit: ^

As far as level design, again, what part of optional, mage only power, are you missing? The dungeons you describe would work fine for any other character type, and for the mage, it would also be fine, we cast the spell for a reason, don't you think?

It's not like, whoops, I cast this spell, now the dungeon is ruined! It's more like, this dungeon svcks, I'm going to cast my spell to get over there quicker, etc,. Honestly, I don't care what the devs wanted, it was their own fault for not listening, I complained as soon as I found it was missing from Oblivion, did they think I would change my mind?

Don't speak for thousands of people.

» Sat Jul 09, 2011 10:49 pm

Yeah, the "if you see it, you can go there" concept of past TES games is more or less dead, due to the lack of any way to scale sharp inclines.

To have a world that is truly fully traversible with realistic mountains, you would need a climbing skill or levitation, etc. I understand their reasons for keeping such abilities out, but it's a poor tradeoff. Without being able to scale cliffs and sharp mountain sides, what we're left with is a more limited, compartmentalized world compared to past TES games.

» Sun Jul 10, 2011 5:44 am

Yeah, the "if you see it, you can go there" concept of past TES games is more or less dead, due to the lack of any way to scale sharp inclines.

To have a world that is truly fully traversible with realistic mountains, you would need a climbing skill or levitation, etc. I understand their reasons for keeping such abilities out, but it's a poor tradeoff. Without being able to scale cliffs and sharp mountain sides, what we're left with is a more limited, compartmentalized world compared to past TES games.

You could get anywhere in Oblivion...

» Sun Jul 10, 2011 12:47 am

I think Claviticus is getting a bit of a rough time from some guys here, but I can see the point he is making with his original post. It's not necessarily about levitate, or having high acrobatics, it's more about the developers feeling the need to rein you in so you don't go beyond what they intend, or break the game, or whatever. That's usually fine, but in Elder Scrolls it never bothered me that I could float my way to victory, or spam a spell to commit mass destruction on the settlement of Balmora - my theory was always that you make your own fun, and if that meant being an unbalanced floating killing-machine, then so be it. It's single-player, after all, so who cares?

On the other hand, I understand the developers want you to be in a certain place to experience what they deem the game is about, but again, this was never how it was in my view. But times change, I guess.

» Sun Jul 10, 2011 2:34 am

Don't speak for thousands of people.

I just did, care to come stop me? I'll be anxiously awaiting your arrival.

That aside, go look at levitation mods for OB, check the download counts. (Here, I'll make it easy for ya.)

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=7094

or

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2736

or

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4094

---

Edit: The guy above me seems to have good sense. Thanks.

I agree, I don't need my hand held, I'm a big boy.

And what the devs want, doesn't concern me, it's about what I want. (I'm shelling out $60 for the game, etc,.)

» Sun Jul 10, 2011 9:23 am

Seems to me that we can't go everywhere and do everything anymore, at least not from the start. It was said in several interviews and in the Q&A that the higher we go, the more difficult the enemies are. To me that means I won't be able to uncover the entire map in the beginning of the game like in the past. I am quite sure this is in response to people not wanting leveled scaling. In the end, to me at least, it means having to follow a path and a much more linear game. (just make it so they can't go to those areas we don't want them too and fill it with very high level creatures so only high level characters can access that area)

Levitation might screw that whole process up as one could levitate into an area he might not otherwise be able to reach due to those high level creatures.

I'm a bit bummed about the whole remove level scaling and force them to walk this path and assure they can't get there until they reach a high level. I'm afraid for me that is a step back and unfortunately to remove scaling generally means, become more linear. :shrug:

I would much rather have some scaling and levitation and the ability to travel anywhere, any time. :sad:

» Sat Jul 09, 2011 11:18 pm

I just did, care to come stop me? I'll be anxiously awaiting your arrival.

That aside, go look at levitation mods for OB, check the download counts. (Here, I'll make it easy for ya.)

That's pretty small actually... :confused:

» Sun Jul 10, 2011 6:20 am

I just did, care to come stop me? I'll be anxiously awaiting your arrival.

That aside, go look at levitation mods for OB, check the download counts. (Here, I'll make it easy for ya.)

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=7094

or

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2736

or

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4094

Whats to say that thousands of people hated the Mod after trying it out? Improbable but possible, my point still stands.

» Sun Jul 10, 2011 9:01 am

You could get anywhere in Oblivion...

Oblivion didn't have jagged mountain sides. The landscape of Skyrim makes the need for a climbing skill or levitation spell more obvious than ever.

Certainly, such skills should take time to master, but there's no harm in allowing high-level players access to powerful abilities.

» Sat Jul 09, 2011 5:35 pm

I think Claviticus is getting a bit of a rough time from some guys here, but I can see the point he is making with his original post. It's not necessarily about levitate, or having high acrobatics, it's more about the developers feeling the need to rein you in so you don't go beyond what they intend, or break the game, or whatever. That's usually fine, but in Elder Scrolls it never bothered me that I could float my way to victory, or spam a spell to commit mass destruction on the settlement of Balmora - my theory was always that you make your own fun, and if that meant being an unbalanced floating killing-machine, then so be it. It's single-player, after all, so who cares?

On the other hand, I understand the developers want you to be in a certain place to experience what they deem the game is about, but again, this was never how it was in my view. But times change, I guess.

I have noticed many bring up the fact that the game is single player to suggest that game balance is not as important as it would be for a mulitplayer game.

I can't claim to know much about multiplayer games, since the only one I ever played was the Civ series; however, as someone who plays a lot of single player RPGs, game balance is VERY important to me personally.

Setting aside the specific details of levitation, athletics, etc., game balance on the whole is important because a huge part of the fun of any RPG for many of us involves planning a character build carefully and progressing through the game to make that character as powerful as possible within the parameters of the game. We love difficult decisions.

If, for example, one perk tree is extremely overpowered, then some of the fun of leveling up is lost, because there is not a difficult choice there about which perk to select.

This is one of the reasons why the devs are putting a lot of resources into making the following kinds of builds relatively balanced, which is impressive considering the depth of all the choices available in this open sandbox game:

Stealth
Dual wield warrior
Two-handed warrior
Archer
Pure mage (specializing in any one of the schools of magic, or some combination)
Hybrid

» Sun Jul 10, 2011 1:01 am

Oblivion didn't have jagged mountain sides. The landscape of Skyrim makes the need for a climbing skill or levitation spell more obvious than ever.

Certainly, such skills should take time to master, but there's no harm in allowing high-level players access to powerful abilities.

Or just... go around and follow the path...

» Sun Jul 10, 2011 2:55 am

Oblivion didn't have jagged mountain sides. The landscape of Skyrim makes the need for a climbing skill or levitation spell more obvious than ever.

Certainly, such skills should take time to master, but there's no harm in allowing high-level players access to powerful abilities.

Complete agreement.

The best way to limit it's abuse would be to make it require (even for a weak levitation spell) at least 80 points in the alterartion skill and a high magika level.

Thereby you can't do it right from the beginning, you would have to work hard towards it and you would therefore be rewarded for doing so.

» Sat Jul 09, 2011 7:45 pm

Or just... go around and follow the path...

Can't have Paths in an open world game, that would just be a completely stupid idea.

» Sun Jul 10, 2011 7:27 am

Or just... go around and follow the path...

Yeah, just like you do in any linear game...

Funneling the player down set paths gets old fast. Tell me, in Fallout 3, after you discovered areas in downtown DC that you needed to use the metros to reach, how many times did you retread those metro tunnels?

TES is about making your own path. If the designers force you down a linear path, after the first few times it won't matter how pretty it looks. The journey will feel like a chore and you'll just fast travel instead. When the world is fully traversible - when you feel like you're forging your own path through the wilderness - that's when a sense of exploration and discovery truly shine.

» Sat Jul 09, 2011 9:03 pm

That's pretty small actually... :confused:

He told me not to speak for thousands, just one of the mods listed had 10,000+ downloads.

Last I checked, 10,000+ people, is equal to thousands, so, yeah, I'd say you are confused.

Whats to say that thousands of people hated the Mod after trying it out? Improbable but possible, my point still stands.

There were still over 10,000 downloads.

I'm guessing at least 1,000-2,000 of those people use the mods.

Supreme Magicka also has this feature, but, it has many others too, so it's hard to count it's numbers in this equation.

» Sat Jul 09, 2011 10:17 pm

I doubt this is exactly a new point of view but when people speak about how they want a potentially overpowered ability, they generally believe that anyone who's going to use it will use it completely out of choice and if they ruin the game that was what they were aiming to do. But after the eleventy billionth attempt at a particularly hard quest even the most hardcoe of gamers lose patience and just want out with their loot. So they use the 'I win' card, levitate over the enemies get the loot and leave. But basically the point is if there is an easy way out of something sooner or later someone is going to screw their enjoyment up wether or not they were aiming to and that usually means less sales and whining which devs do not want. :dry: Wow I need to work on my attention span when it comes to writing paragraphs.

» Sun Jul 10, 2011 4:56 am

He told me not to speak for thousands, just one of the mods listed had 10,000+ downloads.

Last I checked, 10,000+ people, is equal to thousands, so, yeah, I'd say you are confused.

There were still over 10,000 downloads.

I'm guessing at least 1,000-2,000 of those people use the mods.

Supreme Magicka also has this feature, but, it has many others too, so it's hard to count it's numbers in this equation.

I love the added complexity and some of the cool spells from magic mods like Supreme Magicka, Less Annoying Magic Experience and Midas Magic, but I most certainly did not download those mods in order to be able to levitate.

» Sat Jul 09, 2011 7:39 pm

I still don't understand the argument that levitation has to be removed for the sake of the devs needing to "balance the game, even though its an open world"... removal of levitation was a continuity problem that I don't think was well established in the lore, though maybe most people don't give an s about that kind of thing. A "levitation ban" would only make levitation illegal, not make it impossible for powerful mages to still utilize. Why can't levitation be an advanced spell that you aren't going to be qualified to use based on it requiring you to be an expert in Alteration and it requiring lots of magic power, and for any potions or scrolls of it to be very rare and expensive? Balancing something doesn't mean it has to be removed... it means it has to be balanced. Just removing things because you want to balance the world is not balancing them, its lazy.

» Sat Jul 09, 2011 8:22 pm

Topics like this puzzle me endlessly.

I can't think of anything more boring or more disappointing than finding out I can just levitate over an entire mountain range that I'm sure people spent days and days working on and making look good. I hated levitation in Morrowind. It was annoying when I had to use it and I felt like a cheater any other time, as it was incredibly easy to exploit enemy AI with it. And honestly, none of the secrets I ever found in Morrowind by levitating were that special anyway, and could just as easily have had an Oblivion-like method of concealing them that would have worked just as well if not better.

Again I feel acrobatics and athletics where taken out because they could be "abused". You could get to places where no one could go. I had great fun alone in Oblivion to jump to get on top of all kind of places. But if you can get to places the devs didn't think of you might have an experience that wasn't intended by the devs. Of course this is an outrage and must be stopped. The game says its about freedom, but more and more choices get cut from the game. Can we only do what the devs intended? Will I again feel that I'm constantly reminded that some stuff just isn't possible. Will this game get more linear with every iteration? Will we get a game like mass effect where you cant even jump? With this I see them taking frenzy and charm out as well. I'm worried. Are you?

You do realize what "freedom" means in context, right? It's about feeling free in this living, breathing world called Skyrim. It's not about being free in a video game where you can break whatever you want. You'll be constantly reminded that some stuff just isn't possible? Oh no! It's like it's the real world or something, where there are limitations on what you can and cannot do! Is it honestly so bad that you can't do things that the devs didn't intend? They're making an enormous game that's about freedom and doing what you want to do, but that's obviously intended to be within the confines of the game itself. What is more immersion-breaking than jumping over the city walls in Oblivion and finding a bunch of empty landscape?

I feel like a lot of you simply want a video game, whereas I want a world to live in and immerse myself in, and I'm certain it is the latter that Bethesda has been focusing on making their games since day one.

» Sun Jul 10, 2011 3:59 am

Complete agreement.

The best way to limit it's abuse would be to make it require (even for a weak levitation spell) at least 80 points in the alterartion skill and a high magika level.

Thereby you can't do it right from the beginning, you would have to work hard towards it and you would therefore be rewarded for doing so.

Exactly.

Besides, how do they justify not having levitation in a game with dragons, where you absorb dragons powers, etc,. ?

I'm going to make a dragon NPC, and fly everywhere just to make them mad. (I'll mod it in, or someone will.)

» Sun Jul 10, 2011 4:08 am

I feel like a lot of you simply want a video game, whereas I want a world to live in and immerse myself in, and I'm certain it is the latter that Bethesda has been focusing on making their games since day one.

No, no, no. On the contrary. We get immersed when we can actually GO there when we see it, and find out the means of how ourselves - either levitation, acrobatics, or even climbing if they were generous enough to add it. To make the world feel real, you should be able to do these things. Else it feels untouchable. There are tons and tons of games that restrict your movement, but this is Elder Scrolls, and I want to roam free.

Screens like http://cms.elderscrolls.com/sites/default/files/tes/screenshots/CompositeMountain_wLegal.jpg really worry me, how we are supposed to walk on these ridges without some sort of acrobatics. :sadvaultboy: