Playing Skyrim

Todd never said that, get your facts straight.

http://fallout.bethsoft.com/eng/vault/diaries_diary1-08.01.07.php

In the second paragraph he clearly states:




If you've played all or even one of the previous TES titles obviously Skyrim is going to be a walk in the park, even on master difficulty and especially taking into consideration that combat is now, much, much smoother than it was in previous TES titles. If you've put several hundred hours into the series, you're going to be good and shouldn't be complaining about the difficulty. Plus, looking back, Morrowind & Daggerfall weren't hard games at all, it was overly easy to abuse intentionally and even unintentionally the class (IE. Major & Minor Skills), race bonuses & attribute system to create characters that were extremely overpowered even in the early stages of the game. Even if you didn't, the games were still fairly easy and only held a challenge if you were inexperienced. Try going back and playing them again, you'll see what I mean.

You need to think about the new players as well, sure it's easy for us, but for someone who's just getting into the game who's most likely using a controller versus a mouse and a keyboard? It's probably not a piece of cake when they first start off.

The perk system in a way, as I have already stated, replaced the class system and in my opinion it was the right move. The class and attribute systems were flawed and led to serious balancing issues in previous TES titles. Yeah, you can master all of the skills, but you will never be as effective with a warrior play style if you tailored your perks towards a mage play style.

Lastly, when has TES really been about the combat and challenge? As far as I'm concerned it's always been about immersing players in a vast, detailed world filled with personality that you could explore for hours on end, and the developers seem to feel that way as well. Morrowind was a smaller world than Skyrim, and by a good amount too:

Skyrim Tamriel Worldspace = 3808 x 3008 [ 119 x 94 TES4 size cells ] = 6.9km x 5.4km = 37.6 sq km = 14.5 sq miles

Morrowind Vvardenfell World = 2688 x 2816 [ 84 x 88 TES4 size cells ] = 4.8km x 5km = 24 sq km = 9.3 sq miles

The world was designed from the ground up by a full team of skilled individuals; no more randomly generated terrain and personalities; the characters & the stories revolving around them are intricate, realistic and play out quite well.

The developers removed a little bit of complexity from how characters are built which was then promptly replaced by a system that, realistically, adds a hell of a lot more new content and plays in far better with the style of game than the previous systems did.

Really, your notion of "no depth" is complete bullshit, you're just butthurt over the removal of age old systems that you were used to. There's a new generation of gamers entering the market, keep up or fall behind, because most of the mechanics we're used to in games are either going to be revised heavily or removed completely.

Aws, I scavenged the net for a minute or two but didn't find the interview, so you are probably right. The correlation that the more power Howard gets the worse the TES games get is there though, starting with Daggerfall, where he was just a grunt, moving on to Morrowind where he was a project lead, to Oblivion where he were one of the producers to Skyrim which essentially is Todd Howard's private jackfest. Each game is slightly less unique and more generic than the next.


I respectfully disagree, upping the difficulty in Morrowind makes a significant change in how hard the game is, Daggerfall is always pretty damn hard, wheras Skyrim essentially plays itself. You could abuse the stat system in Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion to become really OP, granted, but you don't even have to abuse the system in Skryim, it just happens.


I'm not saying the starting difficulty is too easy, I'm saying the harder difficulties are.


True, but you will still manage with hardly any problem.


By that logic Daggerfall with it's several hundred thousand square Km's knock people out cold, but we all know that size is not an issue. And you can't deny that Skyrim is the single most combat-oriented TES game to date.



Absolutely.


A little bit of complexity? I'd consider removing essentially all differences between races and all impact from having to choose what skills you want to primely use in order to replace it with a system that eventually will make your character unbalanced whether you like it or not is a step in the wrong direction. That teamed up with the fact that you level at the very least once every 10 minutes does take out the point of leveling for me, you could just as well start by choosing 20 or so perks and completely remove the level system and the difference would be marginal.

I also consider using a set of skills and being able to put the gained perk into a different perk-tree to hardly be more realistic than using a skill and get a raise in the attribute that correlates to it.


I know, I know, this generation of gamers need games that reward them for doing nothing, HP that generates faster than they loose it and AI smart enough to finish the game for them so they can stroll through looking at the pretty colors.

Not so unlike the outlook this very same generation have on life itself.

It's not Todd's job to produce a game with the complexity of a pen & paper RPG that nerds like you and I would love, it's his job to produce a game that makes his company money and that's exactly what he's been doing. Revenue, critics and ratings clearly show he's done a better job with each title so the correlation only holds weight in the minds of hardcore fans of the previous titles, which, I'm sorry to say, is definitely the minority.

If you want to hold a grudge against those responsible for taking out your attribute and class system don't hold it against Todd, it's unfair and he doesn't deserve it, he's just doing his job and he's doing it well. It was his job to abandon the opinions of the hardcore fans in the name of profit. You should be holding a grudge against the CEO and major shareholders of Bethesda instead of him.



Uh, no that's not the line of my logic at all, allow me to elaborate:

I didn't include Daggerfall for a reason, My point is that Skyrim is larger than Morrowind and at the same time it's entire landmass and all of it's dungeons are designed from the bottom up by multiple teams. Skyrim was a significant step forward over previous titles in creating a believable fantasy world that players could easily immerse themselves in.

Is it really more combat oriented, or did it improve in both non-combat and combat oriented content? The main reason Bethesda strayed from combat in previous titles was because the combat sucked. Now they have a vastly improved engine to throw at us complete with epic death scenes, flashy spell and swing animations along with plenty of gore, which is exactly what people enjoy. Not only this, but Skyrim includes more questing content (that isn't randomly generated) and more hours of audio & text dialogue (again, that isn't randomly generated) than any previous title in the series. There's more of both non-combat oriented and combat oriented content, not less.

So while having a vastly improved combat system, Skyrim also has more depth and personality content-wise than any of it's predecessors. I'm pretty sure that's a step in the right direction. Your discontent with the removal of a few gameplay elements has left you unable to appreciate what's been improved, the titles haven't gotten worse as you think they have, they've only gotten better, the majority of consumers and critics alike already agree with me. I didn't like the removal of the class and attribute systems either, believe me, but the pros far outweigh the cons even with this in mind, Skyrim is an improvement over the previous titles.




I consider differently, unlike previous TES titles, you're not just any random prisoner getting off the boat or escaping from a sewer, you're Dovahkiin, slayer of gods dragons (God I want to play Bayonetta 2 already). It's not such a crazy idea to think that you might be just a little or even a lot more powerful than the beings around you. You're absolutely correct on the second point though, I'm assuming the real reason they've even kept the leveling system in the game is because people like watching an XP bar fill up and then having a flashy animation displayed that basically says "You gained a level! You're awesome! Here's a cookie!".




It was late when I made my post and my words weren't very clear, forgive me, what I meant was that the perk system adds more content than the class system did that effected your character in more unique ways. From dual-casting to slow motion during an enemy's power strike, I'd rather have that than the attribute system system given the style of the current game if faced with the choice. If not faced with the choice, I'd prefer it if they had implemented the same system as Fallout 3.



I can't disagree with you, the new generation of gamers really does bite the big one. I'm angry about the removal of the class and attribute systems as well, but I don't let that stop me from judging the improvement of a title over it's predecessors properly. Skyrim does have more depth than previous titles, maybe not in the player character category specifically, but in most other areas I'm certain it does. Overall, it's a better game.

so many walls of text

this is still IB, right?

I guess this would be the weird side of Youtube but in relation to IB.

Holy fucking shit, I'm not gonna keep this up you know?


Morrowind is far more immersible than Skyrim ever hoped to be.


Let me put it like this: In Morrowind(and more so in Daggerfall) you can run through a lot of quests without the need for combat at all, or at least not more than killing the local wildlife. Often you could, instead of mindlessly smashing people's heads in, utilize the speechcraft skills (That while they exist in Skyrim, are used in like what? Half a dozen instances throughout the entire game?) to convince people to do your bidding.

I wouldn't consider having the most generic fantasy-setting since the beginning of time to count as "dept and personality".



I'll just agree to disagree.


Well, in Morrowind you're not exactly anyone, even less so than in Skyrim I'd say(The only problem there is that a non-dunmer Nerevarine makes very little sense). In Daggerfall you might not be a man of legends, but you are on a mission from the Emperor himself. (Already at the start of the game, the intro-scene is you getting the mission). In Oblivion yeah, you're just some random prisoner.


I'm not all-hate for the perk system, ofc not. But the way it's implemented makes me rage. They did implement perks in Oblivion (The fact that you gain a few extra-abilities every 20-25 skillpoints) and in my opinion they should have kept something similar. You gain skillpoints and every 10-20 or so you get to choose a perk from that specific skilltree. That would have made a lot more sense to me.


There is one last thing, you mentioned it earlier. Voiced dialog, I loathe voiced dialog in games like this, since you can never make something that resemblance a proper conversation, you can't ask people about things, and if something removes depth from a game is when the only lore you'll ever get comes from books, and we both know that people don't read the in-game books.

I understand that people like it, and ofc it's a nice touch that makes the world seem a lot more alive, but at what cost?

This discussion should be over now, it was fun, I enjoyed it, but if the reply to this is more than a few sentences I'm gonna ignore it.

oh god, what happened here?

Agreed, obviously we just have differing opinions on a few matters, there's no point in trying to change views that neither of us will budge on. On a related note, what are some of your favorite mods? These are some of mine:

Imps More Complex Needs
Frostfall
Tundra Defense
Character Creation Overhaul
XSO Tweaker Customizer Extender Awesomizer
Guard Dialogue Overhaul
Climates of Tamriel
SkyUI

Edit: I will say that I wasn't talking about the setting at all in relation to depth, I was talking about the characters within the world itself.

Oh, nice. I Really like the IMCN + Frostfall combo, epic stuff.

Other than that, I too use CCO and SkyUI from that list.

Some other that I use are :
Deadly Combat
Complete Crafting Overhaul
Skyrim Monster Mob
Expanded Towns and Cities (Damn, I really want a "Better Cities" (If you ever modded Oblivion, this was a must-have) mod.
RCRN

And then I have a bunch of retextures and mods adding extra content, ofc.

Playtime 140 hours

Still gotta finish that game LOL ^__^

I am formerly a PS3 Skyrim player. I played through all of the major questlines, spread across several characters. I couldn't justify my Companion character joining the Thieves' Guild or the Dark Brotherhood and a few other incongruities.
Right now, I've got four characters above a hundred hours and two of those are above two hundred.

I just recently pirated Skyrim for my PC, just because I'm so tired of the PS3 getting the short end of the stick every single time with Bethesda.

It's like a whole different game. First thing I did was mod the shit out of it, with mostly gameplay and bugfix mods. Then I used the Leveler's Tower to recreate one of my PS3 characters and did Dawnguard as a Vampire, then reloaded the save before and did it as a Vampire Hunter.
The next thing I did was download Serana's dialogue bugfix. "Yes, what did you need?"

All in all, orders of magnitude better than PS3. The best part of any Bethesda game is the creation kit that allows modders to fix all of the things they did wrong with the game and expand upon it.

Bethesda games have to be played off the HDD hence 360

Since necros are allowed now, I'll just bring this back.
Anyways. I've been having so much fun with my vampire lord. (Dawnguard DLC)
Probably too much fun, but who cares, it's just awesome.

Only a week or so, not too much of a necro. Anyways, I finally beat the main quest line this week.