Elder Scrolls The dumbing down of The Elder Scrolls

[DalekFlay]

I can imagine that at various points of the development, the hardware limitation made a debate on gameplay/mechanincs vs. graphics (i.e., make animal packs larger or raise the animal texture), and due it's casual audience, graphics were placed as priority...

Of course. And better tech will allow them to make those decisions less often, but also it means a higher budget and therefore great profit demand.

Oblivion, though wretched to the core in some ways, was largely a product of it's graphics and technology advances. The impact of more graphical fidelity and voice acting effected city size, NPC numbers, dialogue, number of assets and whatever else. Almost anything you can think of from why Vivec was larger than the Imperial City to a lack of hand placed loot could be explained with limiting the scope and workload in the face of larger graphical demand for time and resources. And then whatever simplifications that cannot be put under that banner could be closely linked to the higher budget and development time necessitating more sales, which means broader audience, etc.

Better and more detailed graphics are the enemy of niche audiences and deep gameplay in almost all cases.

 

[Pika-Cthulhu]

Spent too much time at the start going in circles about console limitations, by the time he got to the points I was getting ready to close the video. He made good points, just too much faffing about at the start, even if he was repeatedly pissing on consoles. Perhaps it was to get them in a frothing rage to cultivate a long list of comments.

 

[Zewp]

The Codex seems to think that Skyrimjob is an improvement over Oblivion, which I found to be blatantly untrue upon actually playing the game and comparing it to what I remember of Oblivion.

Yeah, I don't get it either. The world was a bit better in Skyrim, but the role-playing aspects were severely dumbed down from Oblivion, which was already dumbed down to start with.

 

[DalekFlay]

Yeah, I don't get it either. The world was a bit better in Skyrim, but the role-playing aspects were severely dumbed down from Oblivion, which was already dumbed down to start with.

How so? The perk system made me roleplay a specific type of character for the first time ever in TES. You can't be a master of everything. It certainly has more choice and consequence and impact in the world than Oblivion did (though still limited). The scaling was massively scaled back and you can stumble on a sabercat at level 1 which will destroy you in one hit.

It ain't Gothic but it's much better on RPG elements than Oblivion, to my mind. Most people who say otherwise seem to obsess on STR DEX CHA and shit, which are pretty irrelevant in this series in the grand scheme of things.

 

[ohWOW]

DalekFlay, you are fucking retarded.

You can be a master of everything, you can ding every skill in fucking no time (had everything maxed on my one and only character in matter of 15 hours) and perks are shit, even if you can't get everyone. Choice and consequence and impact? Fucking where? So I won't be able to brew 10% more powerful potion, oh wait it doesn't fucking matter with every magic, weapon and armor skill at 100, when I kill everything in matter of seconds in a world of copy-paste which makes almost no fucking sense if player is thrown to "do something" (as killing the fucking emperor and becoming a general of the legion few minutes later, because duh, no one fucking noticed it).
Go play your precious choices and consequences in this piece of crap.

Did crafting skill in that dwarven ruins city, crafting nothing but iron daggers. Hundred daggers later, fuck mang, I dinged from 15 to 100, took me about 40 minutes.

 

[bloodlover]

I am surprised nobody mentioned spells and spellmaking.

 

[Zewp]

How so? The perk system made me roleplay a specific type of character for the first time ever in TES. You can't be a master of everything. It certainly has more choice and consequence and impact in the world than Oblivion did (though still limited). The scaling was massively scaled back and you can stumble on a sabercat at level 1 which will destroy you in one hit.

The removal of attributes means that you actually can be the master of everything. You won't be able to get all the perks on the perk tree, but you can be a master at every single skill in the game.

 

[Commissar Draco]

Which means you'll be still shit compared to PC who mastered the specific path, Have you seen what perks give you in Skyrim? The bonuses are massive and given that Magic damage don't scale to the encounter level necessary for mage.

 

[abnaxus]

He means to say that without appropriate perks, your 100 in a skill will be worth nothing.

 

[ohWOW]

All enemies will die in 2 seconds on master difficulty no matter if I have every perk on not.

 

[Wilian]

All enemies will die in 2 seconds on master difficulty no matter if I have every perk on not.

You magically wished the HP-bloat away?

 

[ohWOW]

with broken alchemy they're laughable

 

[Commissar Draco]

Which I didn't used even back in Morrowind you either RP or don't and usually don't play mages... but don't worry Tod and Pit will cut fix it in next TES same way as they did with broken Magic spell maker.

 

[ohWOW]

In tes 6 there will be 3 skills
"combat"
"magic"
"support"

so many choices and consequences.
and impact

 

[DalekFlay]

The removal of attributes means that you actually can be the master of everything. You won't be able to get all the perks on the perk tree, but you can be a master at every single skill in the game.

As others said, the perks are massive. Especially for the 200 hours of gameplay where you don't have 100 in a bunch of skills. And choosing between health, stamina and magica is important as well, even if they don't pertain to attributes.

Try being a mage in Skyrim who can also go toe to toe with a decent enemy using only a two handed melee weapon. You'll get your ass kicked because you put almost every level up into magica, so your health is shit and your stamina is so low you can't run dodge or use power attacks, and your armor isn't soaking up much damage. You have to use what your level choices and perks have been designed to use. Until you power level and become a god, but again that takes a lot of gameplay.

 

[Commissar Draco]

Good brofistable post but why should mage even touch greatsword? Skyrim just punish you for playing jack of the trade character which is over Oblivion again.

 

[abnaxus]

Good brofistable post but why should mage even touch greatsword?

 

[Commissar Draco]

Wichers are not Mages... even in Sapkowski setting. It's like calling DnD Rangers and Paladins Wizards cause they can cast a few spells.

 

[evdk]

That's not Geralt, that's Anomander Rake (not that he's a mage either, he's a demigod). It's the cover of the Subterranean edition of Gardens of the Moon.

 

[Gord]

DalekFlay, you are fucking retarded.

You can be a master of everything, you can ding every skill in fucking no time (had everything maxed on my one and only character in matter of 15 hours) and perks are shit, even if you can't get everyone. Choice and consequence and impact? Fucking where? So I won't be able to brew 10% more powerful potion, oh wait it doesn't fucking matter with every magic, weapon and armor skill at 100, when I kill everything in matter of seconds in a world of copy-paste which makes almost no fucking sense if player is thrown to "do something" (as killing the fucking emperor and becoming a general of the legion few minutes later, because duh, no one fucking noticed it).
Go play your precious choices and consequences in this piece of crap.

Did crafting skill in that dwarven ruins city, crafting nothing but iron daggers. Hundred daggers later, fuck mang, I dinged from 15 to 100, took me about 40 minutes.

Nonsense.
Crafting xp gain got massively nerfed by one of the first patches and is now much more sensible. Even back then it was exploitative anyway, but it's singleplayer, so if you feel like you are ruining your own game, who cares?
Most other skills never leveled that fast anyway.
Every magic, weapon and armor skill at 100 in 15 hours? Bullshit (or a mod install gone seriously wrong).

Now, there's a lot that can be said about Skyrim or TES in general (vanilla especially), but this is plain wrong.

 

[ohWOW]

I played this game from day one for 2 weeks, no mods, and got crafting skill from 15 to 100 in one try in 40 minutes, buy shitload of resources, spam daggers, sell, repeat.
Around 15/16 hours as steam was saying, my character was maxed out level 50 all skills at 100 (at every level i used to buy certain skill levels of course). At hour 80th all guilds, mq, daedras, and civil war were finished.

 

[Stokowski]

Anomandaris Dragnipurake, to be .

<-- has read far too much Erikson.

 

[Zewp]

At hour 80 in Morrowind I still hadn't finished all Caius Cosades' quests.

 

[DalekFlay]

I played this game from day one for 2 weeks, no mods, and got crafting skill from 15 to 100 in one try in 40 minutes, buy shitload of resources, spam daggers, sell, repeat.
Around 15/16 hours as steam was saying, my character was maxed out level 50 all skills at 100 (at every level i used to buy certain skill levels of course). At hour 80th all guilds, mq, daedras, and civil war were finished.

Complete and utter fallacy.

 

[Delterius]

Better and more detailed graphics are the enemy of niche audiences and deep gameplay in almost all cases.

I agree that graphics are a root of the problem. Especially when tied to consolization demands of a late generation.

But can you really blame every design flaw on graphics? Sweet pixels can syphon resources and time, but then you have something like the Quest Compass. World of Warcraft didn't have that - but then some fan went and created the QuestHelper addon, which added the functionality of a compass - eventually incorporated into the base UI years later.

Further, aren't graphics also getting cheaper to make? Sure, there will always be new fronts in the impossible quest of photorealism, but isn't it true that the cost of graphics weighted more for Oblivion than for Skyrim?