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Elder Scrolls : The dumbing down

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  • DragonKingDragonKing Member Posts: 1,977
    JoenSo said:

    And that's why I think it isn't a versatile system at all. Because you don't just need meta-knowledge to optimize your character - you need it to not end up with a crap character that can't compete on higher levels.

    I was a bit surprised when I first played Skyrim and realized that it didn't have stats besides the stamina/health/magicka. But I don't really mind it now, since Skyrim actually rewards me for playing the game the way I want to play it. That feels a lot more versatile to me.

    I'm like the only person who didn't care. Than again I went into each games expecting a different experience and than using mods to fix what I didn't like.

    Unlike @subtledoctor I didn't require 30+ mods to make Oblivion good, honestly it seems I'm the only person who enjoys world's that level with me, for me it keeps things fresh interesting. 90% of my Oblivion mods dealt with magic anyways, improving the spell crafting systems, bringing in new visual effects and making myself a freaking liche which that lich mod was broken.

    Heck only thing that stopped me from liking Skyrim more than Oblivion was how badly they downgraded magic... And they took away the 5+ to destruction mavic that redguards use to get.
  • ShapiroKeatsDarkMageShapiroKeatsDarkMage Member Posts: 2,428

    JoenSo said:

    And that's why I think it isn't a versatile system at all. Because you don't just need meta-knowledge to optimize your character - you need it to not end up with a crap character that can't compete on higher levels.

    I was a bit surprised when I first played Skyrim and realized that it didn't have stats besides the stamina/health/magicka. But I don't really mind it now, since Skyrim actually rewards me for playing the game the way I want to play it. That feels a lot more versatile to me.

    I'm like the only person who didn't care. Than again I went into each games expecting a different experience and than using mods to fix what I didn't like.

    Unlike @subtledoctor I didn't require 30+ mods to make Oblivion good, honestly it seems I'm the only person who enjoys world's that level with me, for me it keeps things fresh interesting. 90% of my Oblivion mods dealt with magic anyways, improving the spell crafting systems, bringing in new visual effects and making myself a freaking liche which that lich mod was broken.

    Heck only thing that stopped me from liking Skyrim more than Oblivion was how badly they downgraded magic... And they took away the 5+ to destruction mavic that redguards use to get.
    Magic got shafted in Skyrim. I also hated how easily you could become the archmage of the mages academy even with a melee oriented Dovakhiin.
  • OlvynChuruOlvynChuru Member Posts: 3,075
    When I hear people talk about how bad Skyrim is, it often feels like they played a different Skyrim from the one I played. I've heard people say that dragons in Skyrim are really easy. Yet my memories of Skyrim dragons are of them flinging my character around in their mouth and killing him/her instantly, and of my character hiding in the river under a bridge for cover to avoid getting roasted.

    While fighting Skyrim dragons might not be as epic as fighting Baldur's Gate 2 dragons, they're still some of the most interesting enemies to fight in the Elder Scrolls series, because battles with them are different depending on the location. Some areas have more things that provide cover from the dragon's breath than others.

    While I still say Morrowind is my favorite Elder Scrolls game, I don't lift it as highly above Oblivion and Skyrim as others do. The combat in Morrowind is one area in which the game is if anything more dumbed down than Oblivion and Skyrim. In Morrowind, melee combat mostly consists of button mashing, whereas in Oblivion and Skyrim it's possible to dodge enemies' melee attacks by moving out of the way (or in Oblivion in particular, rolling out of the way).
  • ShapiroKeatsDarkMageShapiroKeatsDarkMage Member Posts: 2,428

    When I hear people talk about how bad Skyrim is, it often feels like they played a different Skyrim from the one I played. I've heard people say that dragons in Skyrim are really easy. Yet my memories of Skyrim dragons are of them flinging my character around in their mouth and killing him/her instantly, and of my character hiding in the river under a bridge for cover to avoid getting roasted.

    While fighting Skyrim dragons might not be as epic as fighting Baldur's Gate 2 dragons, they're still some of the most interesting enemies to fight in the Elder Scrolls series, because battles with them are different depending on the location. Some areas have more things that provide cover from the dragon's breath than others.

    While I still say Morrowind is my favorite Elder Scrolls game, I don't lift it as highly above Oblivion and Skyrim as others do. The combat in Morrowind is one area in which the game is if anything more dumbed down than Oblivion and Skyrim. In Morrowind, melee combat mostly consists of button mashing, whereas in Oblivion and Skyrim it's possible to dodge enemies' melee attacks by moving out of the way (or in Oblivion in particular, rolling out of the way).

    The issues RPG fans have with Skyrim are not about the combat system.
  • voidofopinionvoidofopinion Member, Moderator Posts: 1,248
    Considering all they remove from each iteration I think by TES 7 the game will be an on rails shooter with QTEs.
  • ShapiroKeatsDarkMageShapiroKeatsDarkMage Member Posts: 2,428

    Considering all they remove from each iteration I think by TES 7 the game will be an on rails shooter with QTEs.

    This reminds me of that ''if quake was made today'' video.
  • DragonKingDragonKing Member Posts: 1,977

    JoenSo said:

    And that's why I think it isn't a versatile system at all. Because you don't just need meta-knowledge to optimize your character - you need it to not end up with a crap character that can't compete on higher levels.

    I was a bit surprised when I first played Skyrim and realized that it didn't have stats besides the stamina/health/magicka. But I don't really mind it now, since Skyrim actually rewards me for playing the game the way I want to play it. That feels a lot more versatile to me.

    I'm like the only person who didn't care. Than again I went into each games expecting a different experience and than using mods to fix what I didn't like.

    Unlike @subtledoctor I didn't require 30+ mods to make Oblivion good, honestly it seems I'm the only person who enjoys world's that level with me, for me it keeps things fresh interesting. 90% of my Oblivion mods dealt with magic anyways, improving the spell crafting systems, bringing in new visual effects and making myself a freaking liche which that lich mod was broken.

    Heck only thing that stopped me from liking Skyrim more than Oblivion was how badly they downgraded magic... And they took away the 5+ to destruction mavic that redguards use to get.
    Magic got shafted in Skyrim. I also hated how easily you could become the archmage of the mages academy even with a melee oriented Dovakhiin.
    And that's why I had like 30 magic mods for Skyrim as well. My wizard was literally pulling bridges out of his *beep*. Also, one of my problems with Skyrim was the guilds, like seriously why is EVERY guild on the verge of death again and we are the one who magically saves it?

    When I hear people talk about how bad Skyrim is, it often feels like they played a different Skyrim from the one I played. I've heard people say that dragons in Skyrim are really easy. Yet my memories of Skyrim dragons are of them flinging my character around in their mouth and killing him/her instantly, and of my character hiding in the river under a bridge for cover to avoid getting roasted.

    While fighting Skyrim dragons might not be as epic as fighting Baldur's Gate 2 dragons, they're still some of the most interesting enemies to fight in the Elder Scrolls series, because battles with them are different depending on the location. Some areas have more things that provide cover from the dragon's breath than others.

    While I still say Morrowind is my favorite Elder Scrolls game, I don't lift it as highly above Oblivion and Skyrim as others do. The combat in Morrowind is one area in which the game is if anything more dumbed down than Oblivion and Skyrim. In Morrowind, melee combat mostly consists of button mashing, whereas in Oblivion and Skyrim it's possible to dodge enemies' melee attacks by moving out of the way (or in Oblivion in particular, rolling out of the way).

    The issues RPG fans have with Skyrim are not about the combat system.
    Honestly, that actually is a lot of complaining I heard about it, especially when it was compared to Morrowind which combat system is just a baby dice roll which made no sense when a pin point accurate hit miss because of that system. Especially when that miss was the last strike between killing the enemy and dying.
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    Let's be serious here, the combat in all the Elder Scrolls games is pretty crappy.
  • WarChiefZekeWarChiefZeke Member Posts: 2,651

    In Morrowind, melee combat mostly consists of button mashing, whereas in Oblivion and Skyrim it's possible to dodge enemies' melee attacks by moving out of the way (or in Oblivion in particular, rolling out of the way).

    If you have high enough speed and athletics you can dodge in Morrowind, or even jump right over your enemies. Agility also affects your natural dodge rate, I believe.

    That's why I always treat Speed and Agility as primary stats for every Morrowind build. Hitting things is important, and you have to do alot of walking so i'd rather get it done quickly.
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    I don't bother with Speed in Morrowind. I just go west of Caldera, meet with Pemenie, deliver her to Gnaar Mok, and then nab the Boots of Blinding Speed. If you have a Resist Magicka effect, you can partially negate the blindness and still see. If you have 100% Resist Magicka when you equip it (which can come a single-second custom spell that's fairly cheap to create), you'll negate the blindness entirely and suffer no penalty to hit. After that, I just use low-magnitude custom Levitate spells to fly around. It's easily the fastest way to get around in Morrowind, costs very little, and can be gotten very early.
  • ShapiroKeatsDarkMageShapiroKeatsDarkMage Member Posts: 2,428

    In Morrowind, melee combat mostly consists of button mashing, whereas in Oblivion and Skyrim it's possible to dodge enemies' melee attacks by moving out of the way (or in Oblivion in particular, rolling out of the way).

    If you have high enough speed and athletics you can DODGE in Morrowind, or even jump right over your enemies. Agility also affects your natural dodge rate,

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvS6zMThiZU





  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    I just ran into this video of horribly dumb Oblivion NPC conversations.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5wX30EQMSs
  • DragonKingDragonKing Member Posts: 1,977
    @semiticgod
    I don't need a video to tell you how dumb it was, the fact I could create a 2-3 100% charming spell to making even freaking molag bal like and then talk to the person which freezes time making that spell last as long as that conversation was unbelievably dumb. Lol
  • SorcererV1ct0rSorcererV1ct0r Member Posts: 2,176
    ThacoBell said:

    Let's be serious here, the combat in all the Elder Scrolls games is pretty crappy.

    I agree. Daggerfall have a AVERAGE for DOS era RPG combat, but Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim have an awful combat.

    ------------------------------------------

    Anyway, Elder Scrolls is being dumbed down.
    * No classes
    * No attributes
    * No levitation
    * No reputation system
    * No disposition system
    * Everything that you do have no consequences. You become a god-slayer savior of the world and everyone threats you the same way
    * No spellmaking
    * Can't fail at casting
    * Vampires takes no sun damage
    (...)

    On the video "Why The Elder Scrolls Isn't Dumbing Down"
    Manz Spartan IV Ace92 years ago
    "tell me was there any REAL reason to take out custom spells and enchants other than to piss off long time followers of the series?"

    TheLordUrban2 years ago
    "A huge problem for me in Skyrim was the removal of any sort of fame/infamy system. You can be a demigod slaying scores of dragons but nobody will treat you any different then the day you stepped off the wagon.

    There are no political or social quests in the game everything is kill and collect. It's a good game but no where near where it should have been."

    on the river road2 years ago
    "If the next edition of D&D cut down on the number of skills, spells, weapons and armor types, would people claim it has not been dumbed down?"

  • SorcererV1ct0rSorcererV1ct0r Member Posts: 2,176
    edited July 2018
    Now why TES is beind dumbed down? Console peasants. If you look to the top RPG's on metacritic by user score

    Top pc user score on metacritic
    http://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/genre/userscore/role-playing/pc?view=condensed

    Most of high score PC RPG games are depth, good and immersive RPG's. Witcher have an amazing story, Baldur's Gate is a must play. Planescape is epic too. Fallout, Star wars Kotor, Morrowind, etc are all very good RPG's. On PC's, Action based RPG's like Witcher and Diablo sell well and non action RPG's too but if you look to PS4 top sellers, only ACTIONS-rpg's and jRPG's are on top of user score ( http://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/genre/userscore/role-playing/ps4?view=condensed ), i can't find a single RPG on that list similar to Baldur's Gate 2.

    The average console peasant don't wanna read, they wanna enjoy a story with a lot of cutscenes and nothing that the player character do should have consequences. The console market is only very expressive on USA and on Japan. On Europe(mainly Eastern Europe), and in South and Central America, PC gaming is much more popular than console. Since most developers are on USA, they made RPG's with the console peasant in mind, that explain why there are no depth RPG coming for this publishers.

    In fact, most good Action-RPG or RPG's are coming from Eastern Europe like CD Projekt Red(Witcher) is Polish, Owlcat Games(Developer of Pathfinder : Kingmaker) is Russian ( source https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Owlcat_Games ) and go on.

    If you love RPG's, hope for a growth on eastern European developers. Only they can save the RPG market.
    Post edited by SorcererV1ct0r on
  • ShapiroKeatsDarkMageShapiroKeatsDarkMage Member Posts: 2,428

    ThacoBell said:

    Let's be serious here, the combat in all the Elder Scrolls games is pretty crappy.

    I agree. Daggerfall have a AVERAGE for DOS era RPG combat, but Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim have an awful combat.

    ------------------------------------------

    Anyway, Elder Scrolls is being dumbed down.
    * No classes
    * No attributes
    * No levitation
    * No reputation system
    * No disposition system
    * Everything that you do have no consequences. You become a god-slayer savior of the world and everyone threats you the same way
    * No spellmaking
    * Can't fail at casting
    * Vampires takes no sun damage
    (...)

    On the video "Why The Elder Scrolls Isn't Dumbing Down"
    Manz Spartan IV Ace92 years ago
    "tell me was there any REAL reason to take out custom spells and enchants other than to piss off long time followers of the series?"

    TheLordUrban2 years ago
    "A huge problem for me in Skyrim was the removal of any sort of fame/infamy system. You can be a demigod slaying scores of dragons but nobody will treat you any different then the day you stepped off the wagon.

    There are no political or social quests in the game everything is kill and collect. It's a good game but no where near where it should have been."

    on the river road2 years ago
    "If the next edition of D&D cut down on the number of skills, spells, weapons and armor types, would people claim it has not been dumbed down?"

    Exactly the same issues i had with Skyrim. I don't have much Faith in TES 6 and Starfield since Fallout 4 turned out to be Pretty bad from a RPG perspective.
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    @SorcererV1ct0r Way to make post consisting entirely of nothing but insulting entire swaths of people.
  • VallmyrVallmyr Member, Mobile Tester Posts: 2,459
    A little off topic but I keep wanting to try Requiem but the start is so rough I can never get into it. It seems to fix Skyrim in a lot of ways but gosh darn starting is so hard lol
  • KamigoroshiKamigoroshi Member Posts: 5,870
    edited July 2018
    Not a fan of Requiem, myself. Tried it dozens of years back and deleted it pretty much straight away after getting mauled by 20 Frost Trolls at level 1 in Bleak Falls Barrow. I suppose Dark Soul fans will find it to be an essential mod, especially when paired together with Apotheosis/VIGILANT/Darkend/ect., but I'm not masochistic enough for it.

    Me, I'll stick with Beyond Skyrim: Bruma and am hyped about the upcoming Beyond Skyrim: Kvatch.

  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    edited July 2018
    I considered Requiem, but decided against it because the installation process seemed complicated. I've had trouble getting mods to work on my game: for some reason, one or two mods for Skyrim Special Edition can't recognize SKSE (it installs fine and the console says it's there, but a mod that uses SKSE says in-game that it can't find it), and some mods don't seem to work on Skyrim normal edition; only on the Special Edition.

    If Requiem involves multiple Frost Trolls in a starting dungeon, then I probably am not missing too much.
  • SorcererV1ct0rSorcererV1ct0r Member Posts: 2,176
    Mods can fix over 90% of Skyrim "dumb down", for example, there are mods who adds classes, spells, sun damage for vampires, etc
  • megamike15megamike15 Member Posts: 2,666
    ThacoBell said:

    @SorcererV1ct0r Way to make post consisting entirely of nothing but insulting entire swaths of people.

    he listed kotor. fun fact that game was made for xbox and ported to pc.
  • DragonKingDragonKing Member Posts: 1,977
    @Vallmyr
    Requiem is over hyped, i prefer the other redone mods. Than again call me bias because i don't like the idea of having to pick a specific race to play a specific way instead of being shoehorned because of race.

    @megamike15
    Funny, he thinks KOTOR but it lacks similar thongs that he claims makes skyrim bad.
  • The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • SorcererV1ct0rSorcererV1ct0r Member Posts: 2,176

    (...)
    he listed kotor. fun fact that game was made for xbox and ported to pc.

    Yes, but kotor is an exception to the rule and kotor is more popular with the PC audience.
  • SorcererV1ct0rSorcererV1ct0r Member Posts: 2,176
    edited July 2018
    An interesting video about dumbing down

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXH4QbVxHzc

    Remove features is seen as "improvement"
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    I found another couple of great Oblivion videos: live-action parodies. The first one is only 15 seconds!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN80_7rNmcE

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNrRdwbGDZg
  • SorcererV1ct0rSorcererV1ct0r Member Posts: 2,176
    edited August 2018
    IMHO :
    Fallout 1/2 = RPG
    Fallout 3/NV = aRPG
    Fallout 4 = shooter

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KSb4wVBAGo

    If you don't wanna see all the video, he starts talking about how there are almost no character customization on his background and then compare(3:32) the dialog of many fallout games. As anyone can see, the dialog was dumbed down to oblivion.

    The same happened to The Elder Scrolls. For example, Morrowind have spears, halberds, levitation, jump, spellmaking, attributes, NPC disposition, general fame, local fame, faction fame, rare items who are actually insanely expensive and are hard to sell, vampires take sun damage and i can list on for a long time why morrowind is more rpg than any modern bethesda game.

    When M&B Bannerlord was announced to consoles, a lot of PC fans become concerned that the game can be dumbed down...

    If you look to this article "ESA Figures Prove What We've Suspected For Years: Classic PC Gaming is Dying"

    https://hothardware.com/news/esa-figures-prove-what-weve-suspected-for-years-classic-pc-gaming-is-dying

    Console players aren't a big fan of RPG's. And most console RPG's aren't depth and complex RPG's like Baldur's Gate, NWN1, Icewind dale, arcanum, vtmb, etc. Also, the genres strategy and rpg are clearly the most "dumbed down" genres(and both are much more popular on pc's)
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