185 replies to this topic

[sajuukkhar9000]

snip

-I don't need to, and neither do countless other PC users, and OFC the console users, mod the game to make it fun.

-Are you being serious? The power of your PC is totally relevant, a more powerful PC has more resources to waste on things like that, while a less powerful PC doesn't. Yes it takes the same power no matter the system, THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT, a crappy PC, and the consoles, dont have to resources to waste on all that, because they are using what limited resources they have to just run the game to being with...... I'm really worried that you were actually being serious in that remark, because it shows a disturbing lack of knowledge on how computers work.

-Right here?

And yes, this doesn't help the consoles in their strict and limiting hardware, but honestly the idea that the content between the platforms HAS to be 100% the same is just dumb (especially once you consider that the modding community does in fact exist, so the argument falls apart anyway). Sure don't give the PC items that the consoles can't get a hold of, but don't deny the PC its ability to do more with the world just because the Xbox or the PS3 can't.

If doing more with the world =/= content, then nothing does, and yes, a different number of NPCs is TOTALLY different then textures, because more npc= bigger battles = more NPCs players have to fight = more gameplay opportunities during the battles themselves. Textures are just something you look at, NPCs are things you get to interact with, to treat them as equal is disingenuous.

-Not really, unless you are saying that pointing out that apples are not oranges is semantics also.

-Well I want games to s*** gold bricks out of my PC, doesn't make it realistic, and if I seriously asked game developers to do it, I would expect someone to point out the idiocy of it.

-But that's the problem, it's finding that balance to where it can be made useful, allow for diverse spells, but ALSO not be stupidly broken. You seem to think that game devs are these atomic supermen who can just think ways to fix all problems in two seconds, and don't do so out of sheer laziness, when nothing can be farther from the fact.

Furthermore, the removal of spellmaking had nothing to do with it being exploitable, and to try to argue that Bethesda just removed it to prevent exploits, or that they were trying to stop meta-gamers by limiting normal players, is a incorrect argument. Not to mention that the perk system does limit what you can do when you meta-game, while not limiting what you can do normally, more so then any of ES past systems did, so they HAVE been doing that, instead of limiting what you can do in-game.

-The fact of the matter is, most of what they cut, couldn't be improved any further.
--The attribute system was fundamentally flawed, both in the way ES used it, and in the way Fallout used it, ES system forced people to become more similar, while Fallout's stopped any real sense of character progression because you could almost never raise your attributes.
--The repair system was equally broken, no matter how high or how low they set the decay rate on weapons/armors, its not possible to find a magical sweet spot that made the skill useful, but at the same time not required.
And whats funny is that
--The perk system does everything the attribute system did, but lacks the problems of BOTH Fallout, or ES, attribute systems, by allowing for constant character progression, which fallout can't offer, while also allowing for characters to become far more wildly diverse instead of being railroaded into similarity like the past ES system did.
--The smithing system does everything that the repair system was supposed to, i.e. by giving those who took it a considerable advantage in the game world, while at the same time punishing those who didn't take it, but not in such a severe way that the game was made unplayable.

-No, the mechanics in Morrowind blew

Spoiler

--The attribute system was broken
-You were railraoded into taking smithing, especially in the expansions Tribunal and Bloodmoon where enemies tore through even glass or Daedric armor like it was butter
-The universal +/- reputation system made NPC's dispositions go up and down for actions they shouldn't care about
-Combat was a god-awful dice-roll
-NPcs lacked any form of personality and where just mobile "help" screens
-Guild REQs did nothing to prevent meta-gamers from being able to become leader of every guild, and instead just stopped normal players from being able to just play the damn questline because the quests they offered never got you up to the skills you needed to advance when the time came, forcing people to have to grind to be able to finish a guild.
And there were MANY more problems with Morrowind

And Skyrim fixed all of those.

Spoiler

-The perk system offers far more customization then the attribute system, while not railroading you into homogeneity.
-The smithing system offers those who take it grat bonuses, and while it punishes those who dont take it, the game is still playable, but significantly harder, without it.
-NPCs now respond to acts committed against THEM, instead f how you could rob someone five towns over and lose reputation because its built into complting the quest
-Combat is significantly more visceral, and less tedious, and based on skill
-NPcs now have schedules, talk about the world around them, and thier lives, like normal human people
-Guilds just let you play them instead of trying to stop you with broken systems that dont work, and leave the choice up to YOU.

-I dont know where you get this implication that I want the game to hand things to me.

-Creating a perk system like Skyrim's, and then making armors/weapons that dont fit into it like everything else, is, quite literally, asking for more for the sake of more, and not more for the sake of interacting with the game's systems, and improving upon them by creating greater useable weapon armor diversity, something you claim to be against.

-And had the armor set been named leather, then it would be fine, but it wasn't, it was named netch leather, indicating that this one, and only this one, type of leather is part of the set.

-I've actually said before I do believe that perk resetting should be in the base game.

And I do agree perk rest should have been in the base game.

But beyond that, in all my time of playing a mage in Skyrim, do you know how many times I wished that I could take back a +damage perk? or some perk that makes my shock spells turn people to ash? NEVER, because as you advance higher in level, you need better spells, with better abilities, and taking those away only makes your spells weaker, and thus pointless.

Similarly, once I made the ultimate death/kill spells in Morrowind, I NEVER used spellmaking again, because it's was so unnecessary to make new spells.

-Bad mages are mages who are in the thick of battle to begin with, mages are not supposed to be in the middle of things, period, being in the thick of battle means you failed to use your magic to kill enemies before they got close, which makes you a poor mage. Now, if we were talking about battlemages, you might have a point about being in the middle of battle, however, even then, it was still always easier to just use a on target spell, instead of a touch spell.

-Except it was, very much so, like a good deal of Morrowind.

Edited by sajuukkhar9000, 10 February 2013 - 12:00 AM.

[Lachdonin]

Wait wait wait... Are people actually argueing that Morrowind wasn't broken? As much as i love that game, there were so, so many things wrong with it, gameplay wise. The ballance was virtually non existant, the mechanics were exploitable in the extreme, classes were more irrelivent than they were in Oblivion (which is saying something), and its Magic system was as bad as Daggerfalls, with the obvious differance in that it became overpowered with far less work.

The only game with a functional magic system was Oblivion, and even then it was far too easy to make simple "You're dead" spells.

That said, Morrowind's more complex enchanting system was, i think, something that should have been carried through, rather the simplistic "All Petty/Common/etc" are created equal idea, as the point-based soul strength so, for instance, a Wolf would differ from a Skeever. But as it is, it's not that difficult an issue. One thing which makes Skyrim's enchanting more balanced (and that's not to say it's ballanced in the slightest) over Oblivion's and Morrowinds, is Cameleone. It took a minimal effort in Oblivion to get to the point where you could slap cameleon on a few pieces of gear, and BAM, you're perminantly invisable.

But i digress... I'm not sure how this conversation ended up about game mechanics, but things are far better in Skyrim than they ever were in Morrowind, as much as i love that game.

[jim_uk]

No one is suggesting Morrowind didn't have issues, what it did have was a world you felt part of, a story where your part in it made a difference and NPCs who recognised you as your reputation increased. What happens as you progress in Skyrim? nothing. Even after completing the main quest you're still treated like some schmuck who's just wandered in off the street. Maybe it's because there as many dragons still flying about as there was prior to your involvement, the Dovahkiin must be one of the most ineffectual heroes to ever grace a video game.

The world is static, nothing you do makes any difference to anything or anyone. Add to that the one dimensional characters, dull dialogue, tired clichéd story and the result is game inferior to both Morrowind and Oblivion.

Yes Morrowind had exploits but they're only relevant if you used them. The answer to people creating over powered spells is to balance the system, not take it away. Morrowinds magic system worked just fine, you were free to create whatever spells you liked but good luck casting them if you weren't highly skilled. You didn't have someone barely capable of casting a spell become arch mage either, something that is possible in both Oblivion and Skyrim. Playing a mage was hard but it was made before Bethesda decided that allowing the player to fail was not an option, Todd Howard said in a interview "let the player win" and that's one of the problems, there's no sense of achievement when everything is handed to you on a plate. Morrowind let the player play the game how he/she wanted to, if they wanted to play as god then they could, if not then they didn't have to, it treated the player like an adult, something neither Oblivion or Skyrim do.

I'm not sure what you mean by classes being irrelevant, they were more or less the same as Oblivions, only when it come to creating your own you had less choices in Oblivion. Both were better than not having any at all.

[imperistan]

- Congrats, now just don't use mods as an argument that everything is just all swell with the game.

-You can almost hear the whoosh as the point flies over your head.

- Generic NPC's are irrelevant, and the amount of them is also irrelevant, ESPECIALLY when half of them end up disappearing before you do anything more than kill them as it is anyway. Something like the Battle of Whiterun isn't going to be diminished just because not so many NPC's are spawning in the 360 version. Its still the Battle of Whiterun, and to be offended that the PC gets to see 20 more cannon fodder than you do is just silly.

- No, you're just grasping at straws.

- Its not totally like a 1000 iphones can't be developed over time I mean, its CLEARLY impossible to actually induce progress and progressively add more and more that do more and are more with each sucessive game. You know, actually create a sequel. What the ES games have been doing is the equivalent of making a serious drama in one movie, and then making its sequel an action movie, then making the third movie a cheesy G-rated action movie. Rather than expanding on the original concept, they continually try to turn it into something else while doing the original fans the disservice of coupling these as part of the same series.

If Beth doesn't want to do real RPG's anymore, then that's fine. But don't butcher your RPG series, make a new IP. I'd have zero problem if Skyrim was the start of a new series of games, because if it was, it would have been a fine game to be judged on its own merits. But, it isn't. Its an Elder Scrolls game, and as such its going to be judged by the standards set in the past games.

- It isn't like I didn't just come up with a way to do it that would do exactly that in all of the 1 minute it took to write it out.

- Thats why there's no such thing as crafting abuse, amirite?

- The only fundamental flaw was their method of restriction, as well as not adding anything to make attributes important (namely attribute checks for puzzles, npc interactions, etc etc). And naturally the way it affected the progression of your health stat, but that was never something so heavily ingrained into the system as to require a rewrite to fix it. These minor issues (Which were hardly problematic in the past games. Only Oblivion was really badly affected by it, but only because of another, completely separate system completely exacerbating the problems) could and should have been fixed.

And not only that, I need only point you to GCD and nGCD. Those mods fixed the attribute systems (as well as pretty much all character progression issues btw) almost exactly as I've described. So no, it is far from impossible. If a mod can do it, so can Beth, but 10 times better.

- Considering it was absolutely painless to repair your gear, this has little merit. Your gear can easily be repaired as you went back to sell your loot (which is hardly tedious at all btw, as you're already in town and most likely the person you're selling to can repair your stuff all in the same menu), and as long as your armorer skill wasn't complete crap (Which means you should probably have someone do it for you, or that you should spend the time to raise your skill) it didn't take long to repair everything unless you had like 50 items all at near zero condition, but even then, that tedium could have been completely nullifed by just introducing a "repair all" button that would automatically repair all of your stuff for you.

Further, it would be possible to develop the system to where both sides of the coin can be satisfied, but while also not making it pointless. Introduce two different decay values for equipment, one based on direct use (Sharpness, firmness, etc) and one based on over-time use.

And that that would mean was that the first value would decay at a rate of, say, 1% decrease per 5-10 minutes of real time use (and this could be represented by either words or numbers, depending on the level of immersion desired here). But this value could be repaired quickly (for a small level of experience), and in the field (attach the whetstone or whatever else to a button, rather than requiring inventory use). Your equipment under this value would only lose effectiveness (IE, less damage, protection), but it would never break.

The second value would decay far slower, say, 1% per hour of real time use. But for this value, total effectiveness would decrease, the difference being that your total effectiveness is the maximum effectiveness, rather than the actual effectiveness level of the weapon, represented by either armor points or damage. This means total effectiveness could be 100 damage, but if your item's age is at 75%, then it would only do 75 damage, even at 100% effectiveness. IE, fully sharpened. At 0% total effectiveness, your item would break if you used it. This value would take more time to repair and possibly require the use of a forge or, even more simply, just more materials to bang back into your item, but would grant you a larger amount of XP in the skill.

Doing this, you can just simply use your weapon or armor, and when its losing effectiveness you can just press your repair button, watch your character fiddle with it for a few seconds (Lets say, 10 seconds to reach 100% effectivness), and bam have it back to 100%, and all without needing much skill in armorer. You'd be able to cancel at any time, and if depending on your skill you could potentially repair quicker, or for more effectiveness (or both) to the point of gaining, say, 125% effectiveness in, say, 3 seconds. And then, over time when your item reaches its old age, you can simply travel into the town and repair it there, or have someone do it for you. Not so much tedious as it wouldn't happen very often and most often would coincide with you being in town anyway.

- You were only railroaded into similarity if you sat there and DID EVERYTHING. And if you DO EVERYTHING THERE IS TO DO, you have absolutely zero right to complain that your character came out all samey, because fact of the matter is, you can't make characters different if both characters have done everything there is in the game. If you just sit and play a straight warrior, you aren't going to end up with intelligence and willpower at 100, and agility and speed up there as well, unless you specifically make a point of leveling the skills that would let you level those attributes. And if you're making the conscious choice to break that role of a straight warrior (and don't even try to lie either. If you break the role, you are doing it consciously) then you have no right to complain that your character is becoming a JOAT or MOAT, because you're playing like one.

Don't complain that you're getting fat when you're the one dragging yourself to McDonalds every day when you can afford healthier food.

- If it go to the point where your game was unplayable because of item degradation, then you were just bad at the game. Simple as that.

- Reputation I'll give you. (Though this really hasn't changed)

- Dice rolls are just fine as a combat system as long as you illustrate the misses. That was Morrowind's problem, it didn't animate missing, and most couldn't get past that.

- Generic NPC's are generic. There's little point in expecting more than the generic from them. (though that doesn't mean they should have absolutely nothing to say either) (and do note that just because NPC's are named that doesn't stop them still being generic) The unique and/or important NPC's had more to their dialogue, or more accurately, the parts of their dialogue unique to them.

- The intention was to have you explore the game and do things as you quested. That was where you got your skill requirements. (and honestly, if you knew what you were doing it wasn't hard to meet them without grinding. And spare me the arguments about first time players. You play, you fail, and you learn. No game should ever be handed to you. Period) If you just barreled from quest to quest and ignored everything then of course you weren't going to meet your requirements.

-Its based on player skill, not character skill (as it was in Morrowind). That's the difference between combat in an RPG and combat in an action game, and is also what a lot of people didn't get about Morrowind's combat, even despite its lack of miss animations. Morrowind is supposed to be about your character, not just you.

-No one argued otherwise.

-Lol

- Ahem:

-I'm lucky is the armor merchant spawns with half a set of chitin.

Implication: I don't want to actually look for equipment, and want it peppered every 5 feet.

- There's absolutely nothing wrong with variety in equipment, even if there isn't a full matching set for every weapon and armor presented in the game. I will grant you however that the only case of this should really just be fun variants of already existing armors, rather than completely new materials. IE, there's nothing wrong with not having a full set of studded armor as long as it goes well with another set. (Which in Skyrim, it totally does btw. And even in Morrowind, most of the items without sets to accompany them (incomplete implies there was supposed to be a full set, but never made it to the game. Feel free to prove me wrong, but I don't think this was ever the case) did in fact go well with some other set)

- Leather goes with leather, who cares what kind of leather it is. The games have always lumped certain kinds of armor anyway even when they seemed radically different from one another. Fur and glass armor hardly go together yet I don't see you arguing against that.

- I never said you didn't.

- Subjective doesn't apply here, and more than that, Skyrim's method of spell progression is not only restricting but does in fact force you to either be more powerful or not use magic at all. And oh, whats this? You're being cold and calculating again. Uselessness doesn't matter when its all for the sake of fun. If I want a low powered spell just to mess around with, I should be able to do it. I shouldn't be locked out of that option just because I also want a powerful version of that spell. Spell making allows for both and doesn't restrict you to one or the other. (Nor to fixed combinations of spells)

- Then clearly you weren't creative enough and/or miss the point entirely of spellmaking. Either that, or you weren't having fun and were just powering through the game without any regard for fun beyond the kill-kill-stabby-stabby mode.

- What a god awfully bland and boring outlook on being a mage. Good lord have some fun why don't you. (Oh, and gods forbid not all mages behave the same)

[modder3434]

I'm not sure what you mean by classes being irrelevant, they were more or less the same as Oblivions, only when it come to creating your own you had less choices in Oblivion. Both were better than not having any at all.

what i liked about the class system was that it gave you a boost in whatever attributes and/or skills it specified. That type of a boost at the beginning of a new game was nice, something i wish skyrim did, maybe say your a solider class so you start with a perk point each in heavy armor, block and one-handed, as an example which would help you generate the backstory for your character.

On the other hand, once you picked a class and went on your way, five or six levels down the road you want to do something else, then your scerwed. you could pick up an axe even if your major was in blade, but it wasn't viable as you got killed quick and then it took a loonnggg time to level it up enough so you didn't suck,that it was frustrating and not fun. It went from being a challenge of learning a new weapon type to dying no matter what "well if you wanted it, you should have picked it at the beginning" since it got that annoying.

In skyrim if i try a two-handed weapon, with my one-handed character, I suck but i suck just the right amount to show that i have to work at it, and make it challenging until i get better.

in closing i like the way that allows more breathing room and freedom, so no classes is fine with me.

Edited by modder3434, 10 February 2013 - 06:14 AM.

[sajuukkhar9000]

snip

-I never used mods as an argument that as was well with the game, I used the fact that Bethesda allows people to change the game for themselves with mod, because they know they cant please everyone, to show whats fine with the game.

-It can be hard to get the point, when your point is so backwards and illogical.

-They aren't irrelevant when you are fighting them, what you just said amounts to "it doesn't matter if you get attacked by 10 bandits, or 100 bandits, at once because they are just generic bandits" , yes, it does matter, because a battle with 100 bandits, and a battle with 10 bandits is a wildly different experience.

-No I am actually pointing out two different things are different.

-The original concept of ES was to explore a world, which is what the games still are, it was never really about the stats, or the systems, but the exploration, and they have improved on that, greatly.

Also, there is no such thing as a "real" RPG, and skyrim is no less of an RPG then Oblivion was, and Oblivion is no less of an RPG then Morrowind was, same with Morrowind and Daggerfall, and Daggerfall and Arena, and possible combinations thereof,

-Well, you actually didn't, you just spouted off a very vague and nondescript summary of what you think you want, you never went into any of the details of how it would work, the balancing, what kind and levels of restrictions, you know, all the things that make a system a system.

-Abuse of systems, once again, contributed to nothing about spellmakings removal, so, again, you point has no point, because you keep trying to make these assertions that have no basis in fact.

-It doesn't matter if it was painless or not, a good RPG does not make you take any one skill, nor does it force you to carry around repair hammers because of poorly designed system, a good RPG makes all playstyles, both those with, and those without, repair, equally viable. the sheer fact that you HAD to carry around repair hammers, even if you didn't spec into repair, shows a fundamental flaw with the game's design.

And your system still fails to solve the problem of being forced to take repair, which no one should, because that's counter to the point of RPGs.

-My mage and warrior characters are vastly different in Skyrim, up to 400 points of HP/magicka difference, and tons of perk difference, and they have both done everything. Funny how Skyrim's system manages to do everything Morrowind's attribute system did, but without the failings that meta-gaming in Morrowind caused. Morrowind's system only worked for hardcore RPers, and not metagamers, Skyrim's works for both, but thats because it was better designed.

-Considering that even at level 70, with all skill maxed, all attributes maxed, and wearing a full set of glass armor, enemies in both Tribunal and Bloodmoon manages to break the armor totally in around 3-4 hits, the problem wasn't with the player, it was with Bethesda's poor enemy design and giving them stupidly damage that tore through armor. Werewovles in Bloodmoon were especially bad.

-Well, at least in Skyrim I can steal from a guy, and only have him get mad, instead of getting some generic, across the world, negative to almost everyone, because Bethesda decided to tack on some -rep to a thieves guild quest. It's still not great in Skyrim,but dragonborn shows some improvement.

-Dice-rolls are an abomination that should only be used when 100% necessary, if it can be done in a means without dice-rolls, then it should. I frankly think Bethesda needs to improve the combat system to the point where we can get a Borderlands style system were critical are based on where you hit a target, not some random dice-roll.

-Most of the unique NPCs dialog was giving you lore dumps on things that should have been in books, notes, or the game world itself. Morrowind n a perfect example of "just because you can give NPCs a 500 character text response doesn't mean you should". Morrowind's normal NPcs suffered from this, and the unique NPCs suffered from it more, whereas normal NPcs were like a computer help program list, the "unique" NPCs were like a book that when you open it up it starts screaming the contents of it at you until you close it. Morrowind's unique NPCs were bloated, their dialog was largely BS, and lore dumping, and they felt even more fake as people then the normal NPCs because it was obvious the Devs made them these massive info dumpers, and not real people.

-I did do that, and largely never reached the required levels. furthermore, removing the guild REqs does nothing to make the game handed to you, all it does is remove a system that failed to do what it was supposed to do, i.e. keep out non mages from becoming arch-mage, or non-warriors from becoming leader of the fighters guild. it was a system that didn't stop what it was supposed to, and couldn't be made to stop it, so keeping it in the game proved pointless.

-What makes a character a character is not their ability to hit/miss in combat, its the morals you give them, and the choices you make using the morals you gave them during quests. Being the one who cotnrolls combat doesn't make it any less of a character, or any more of me, because even with that, the things that make my character himself, his morals, his ethics, his decision during quests, are different from my own.

-False implication, straw man attempt. I dont want armor handed to me every 5 feet, I want an armor system that isn't so over bloated with unnecessary pieces that getting a full set of anything is neigh impossible.

-There is something wrong with variety in items that do nothing to contribute to the overall gameplay by integrating with the game's systems. Variety comes from real gameplay uses, armors/weapons that dont fit within the perk system dont offer that, all they offer is a significantly more crippled pieces of armor, with a different texture, that is not true variety, that is just changing the skin. that does not improve the game, that does not make the time spent on it worthwhile, it just means you wasted dev time making something that will sucked compared to everything else because it doesn't work in the game's system, which is, more for the sake of more, and not more for the sake of gameplay.

And by, incomplete, I meant, without a full set, creating one off armor may have been their goal, but that still doesn't make a set not complete.

-Trying to mix glass and fur wouldn't also get a matching set bonus because they are different materials, which is why I dont argue against it, and which is why I am arguing against different types of leather being part of the same "set" when they aren't, because they are made of different materials.

-Making spells just for the sake of making spells is silly, and not something most people do, the only thing most people use spell making for, is to make some uber death spell that kills vivec in like 1 hit. Also, I do want spellmaking back, I just dont want it back in a way that's shitty like in Morrowind, and I would rather not have a feature, then have a broken one.

And again, spellmakings removal had nothing to do with people making overpowered spells.

-I was having fun, by playing a mage, killing stuff before they could even get close to me was great. Skyrim made it more fun with things like rune spells, setting traps and watching enemies die as I just stand in one spot and they rush me, tripping my rune and killing themselves, all without me having to do almost anything. The greatest part of begin a mage is being able to kill stuff long before it can even get close enough to touch you.

what i liked about the class system was that it gave you a boost in whatever attributes and/or skills it specified. That type of a boost at the beginning of a new game was nice, something i wish skyrim did, maybe say your a solider class so you start with a perk point each in heavy armor, block and one-handed, as an example which would help you generate the backstory for your character.....

What Bethesda needs to do IMO is use something like Fallout's tag system so that you can get a like +15 bonus to three skills at the start of the game, that way, you get some starting uniqueness, but without the overly constricting failings of the class system, and maybe give players 5 level ups of health/magicka/stamina to throw around during character creation, so that you can start off different in that way also.

Edited by sajuukkhar9000, 10 February 2013 - 06:59 AM.

[imperistan]

- It may be impossible to please absolutely everyone, but Beth isn't exactly trying, are they? As has been suggested by countless others (not just me), it is possible to devise systems that can please the vast majority of the player base. But Beth hasn't been doing this, and instead have been catering to a very specific kind of player. That is just awful.

- Right, because its illogical that something completely independent from hardware changing values is going to be the exact same regardless of hardware (unless of course, the hardware in question can barely run the game at all).

- So is better or worse graphics.

- No, you're just completely ignoring that you're twisting sentences around when the intentions were quite clear despite the arrangement of the words. Its virtually using punctuation as an argument.

-

- "what you think you want," Nice. Now tell me when my mothers birthday is, because clearly you can now read minds.

And besides that, if I were to sit here and write it all out for you (instead of, you know, letting you infer) then I imagine you'd sit and complain about the massive amount of text I'd lay before you, and not only that, I'm sure you wouldn't even respond to it at all or would just ignore it entirely anyway. So there's little point either way.

- Regardless, spellmaking is still the prime example of something that had absolutely zero reason to be removed. The spreadsheet argument is absolutely (guess which word I want to use) and holds no weight as it is, because you can easily remove the whole "eww math" aspects by replacing numbers with pictures.

- Thats why you can pay someone to do it. You were never, EVER forced to take armorer, and if you were then you were either A, bad at the game, B, not making regular trips back into town, or C, wading your way through the massive dungeon that didn't exist (or more likely, multiple dungeons). A isn't an excuse. B is your own fault. And C was never the case in either of the past two games, and if you were wading through multiple dungeons without heading back into town, that was your own fault.

- Wow, I'm not even responding to that lunacy.

- Sounds like you were just bad to me. I never had this problem and in fact still don't, having started to play Morrowind again for old times sake.

- You're severely overblowing what effect Reputation in Morrowind had. Either that or your mistaking your awful personality and speechcraft skill as something wrong with the game rather than something wrong with your character.

- No they're not, unless you're suggesting that Dragon Age Origin's combat was horrible (in which case I'd have to question your taste in games)

-

- Please show me how your warrior got to be arch mage in Morrowind without using any magic skills (or paying tons and tons of gold to train them, which btw is a legitimate method) whatsoever. Oh wait, you can't, because it wasn't possible. Your point is destroyed and you further prove you were just bad at the game.

- Your character isn't just made of a soul. You character has a mind and body of its own, and the development of all three makes that character who he is. Being skilled enough to land a hit is a part of that. Again, its a difference between player and character skill. You can't use your preference of one over the other as an objective demerit against the game just because you don't like it. I may not like player skill, but I have never said that Skyrim or Oblivion were objectively bad just because they emphasized that more. (Note: I generally don't care much about combat at all. I'm fairly indifferent to both, though I do prefer character skill)

- Funny that you call strawman and then throw out a complete lie. (or just more proof that you were bad at Morrowind)

- Cold and calculating again. Variety comes from whats fun, and having more ways to customize your character is more fun than having less. This is why modding exists, and why there are always thousands of mods for every easily moddable game that adds new things to the game, and in particular more things for your character to interact with.

-

- I wasn't aware you spoke for everyone.

- According to you. That doesn't make it the only way to play a mage. (but it is true though that someone truly good at playing a mage should be able to mage his way through combat at both melee range and 5000 feet away, and indeed, a perfect mage should be able to do both)

On the other hand, once you picked a class and went on your way, five or six levels down the road you want to do something else, then your scerwed. you could pick up an axe even if your major was in blade, but it wasn't viable as you got killed quick and then it took a loonnggg time to level it up enough so you didn't suck,that it was frustrating and not fun. It went from being a challenge of learning a new weapon type to dying no matter what "well if you wanted it, you should have picked it at the beginning" since it got that annoying.

You weren't doing it right. If you're going to level it up without training (which is what you should do regardless. Gold, both now and then, both dropped and could be found in stupid amounts, so if you were out exploring you should have accumulated plenty) , then you should be going against things that aren't going to kill you until you can hit fairly consistently. And then you could also use magic to help boost your skill (or attributes. Or attack stat) so you leveled faster. Yes it took a long time either way, but if you have any idea at all how to appreciate something then when you finally got it up there you were proud you did.

[modder3434]

\

On the other hand, once you picked a class and went on your way, five or six levels down the road you want to do something else, then your scerwed. you could pick up an axe even if your major was in blade, but it wasn't viable as you got killed quick and then it took a loonnggg time to level it up enough so you didn't suck,that it was frustrating and not fun. It went from being a challenge of learning a new weapon type to dying no matter what "well if you wanted it, you should have picked it at the beginning" since it got that annoying.

You weren't doing it right. If you're going to level it up without training (which is what you should do regardless. Gold, both now and then, both dropped and could be found in stupid amounts, so if you were out exploring you should have accumulated plenty) , then you should be going against things that aren't going to kill you until you can hit fairly consistently. And then you could also use magic to help boost your skill (or attributes. Or attack stat) so you leveled faster. Yes it took a long time either way, but if you have any idea at all how to appreciate something then when you finally got it up there you were proud you did.

i was proud when i levled up that skill suceesfully, but the only grip about the class system was that if when you decided to switch up weapon types (referring to oblivion and morrowind skyrim was fine with me) the game took it at times way beyond the realm of challenging to utterly ridiculous.

[sajuukkhar9000]

snip

-Catering to the group that you that know are going to buy your games is awful? I guess an RTS developer catering to an RTS player is awful also? Really, were you being serious? Game companies catering to the audience they know will buy their games SUPPOSED to do, and considering that most of the systems you, and others on here, seem to want, you don't care about most people, you only care about turning the game back into some Morrowind/Pre-Morrowind era RPG, designed only for those who have the time to learn/exploit a needlessly complex system of attributes when the same diversity in characters can be achieved in less complex systems. Your intentions on wanting to "please everyone" seem dubious at best, as the only people your systems really please is the hardcore RPG player from the early 90's.

-Except it isn't unrelated to hardware, to say otherwise is either disingenuous, or shows a complete lack of understanding on how computers work.

-NPCs are not just graphics, they are things you interact with, gameplay. Textures are graphics, NPCs, be they monsters, or even random villagers, are not graphics. To say anything else is disingenuous.

-Well, considering that punctuation can very easily change the meaning of a point, if someone's punctuation being wrong changes their argument, I will fault them for it.

-Being saying that a game based on exploration is about exploration is facepalm worthy?

-Actually, I don't care about text walls, and I would like to see exactly what your plans are, because, as it stands, all you have said is "well they should make it better" without giving any real explanation as to how to even to begin to approach that.

-Except it did have reason to be removed, it was broken, and it made magic not feel like magic, nor did it work really well with the new game mechanics like runes and cloaks, and whatnot. Also, replacing the numbers with pictures only takes the magic out of magic in another way, it's the same problem.

-Having to take a trip back to town after every single dungeon crawl is not fun, nor should I have to do it, I should have to do it every now and then, but the frequency in which you had to do it in Morrowind was off the charts. Not to mention the game's poor design made the game have enormous stretches of land without anyone nearby to repair, forcing you to have to use mark and recall if you wanted to get anything done in an even remotely timely manner. Luckily, they fixed this in both Oblivion and Skyrim by placing the cities at even distances around the gameworld.

-Because pointing out how Skyrim's system offers more real difference, at greater magnitudes then, Morrowind's, is lunacy? Ha!

-I just had to play the game normally and i fell into the railroad, in fact, I actually have to meta-game, and not do 99% of the game's dungeons, in order to prevent it from happening. Funny how Morrowind's system was so broken you actually had to meta-game to prevent from becoming god, when games normally work in the reverse way.

-Not really, many thieve guild quests caused automatic disposition drops with factions for the sheer act of finishing them, or getting promotions, and not because you actually got caught, or anyone should know. Although it was largely negated by my character 100 personality attribute, it's still a flaw.

-Dragon Age Origins combat WAS terrible, great story/characters, well, at least for a modern RPG, it's no BG, or NWN, but it had terrible combat. Dark Souls, now that's a game with good combat, Zeno clash also, and Dark Messiah of Might and Magic had good combat as well.

-Easy, my warrior became arch-mage by paying skill trainers, 100 in all magic schools, zero spells cast, it was great, and broken, which is why they nerfed the number of skill trains per level.

-Your argument would have some merit if combat actually had any real impact on the game besides how long it took to kill things, but it doesn't, in any game. What makes your character who he is in an RPG is his actions in quests, and his relations with NPCs. All dice-roll combat does for your character is make combat longer then it needs to be by introducing artificial misses, it doesn't change your character's influence with NPCs, or what he does in quests, it just needlessly bloats combat out in a way to make it seem more complex then it actually is, or needs to be.

-Well, I normally just went into the ghostgate and stole the near complete set of glass armor they have in there, but in general, it often took trips to at least 5 cities to get an even remotely complete set of armor.

-Having more ways to customize your character in ways that MATTER is fun, having more ways to customize your character in what amounts to turds because they don't do anything is not. And those mods usually add armor that works within the game's systems, and has enough armor rating to be worthwhile, what you are suggesting is unlike those mods, because it doesn't work in the game's systems, it ignores them.

-I said most, not all. large difference.

-Even at melee range, it's still easier to use target spells instead of touch spells, a good mage would have enough magicka/enchants that the lower cost of touch spells wouldn't matter because the more expensive, more damaging spells, cost nothing, or next to nothing.

Edited by sajuukkhar9000, 11 February 2013 - 07:17 AM.

[imperistan]

- Complex, good one.

 

And more than that, casuals are not dumb. They'll play any game that's fun, regardless of its complexity.  The point is though is to make it so that even if your game is as complex as hell, it will still be  readily accessible.  Morrowind wasn't, and though Skyrim most certainly is, it never gets any deeper than that one point where you can hold your own.  Though it took more to learn your way around Morrowind (which only amounted to learning how the characters actually work and dealing with the fact the animation was piss poor and unfinished), at least the complexity didn't stop once you did. 

 

- Except it doesn't.  Yes my computer has the resources to handle these things better than some Dell prebuilt designed to let Grandma get a million viruses, but that doesn't change the actual demands made by the game.  Software demands are not reduced by hardware, only met (or not) or exceeded. 

 

- Graphics and gameplay are not exclusive. 

 

- It was not broken, and to continually say that is to completely over blow balance issues into the realm of the unfix-able  and that is an outright lie.  And magic not feeling like magic is still about the most meaningless tripe I've ever heard.  Magic doesn't feel anymore like magic in either game, despite the differences, because to say what magic feels like is to say that it induces wonder (which is the only real world equivalent to what magic could even possibly feel like) at its use, and neither game does this.  Morrowind didn't induce wonder because of the lack of any physical interaction, and Skyrim doesn't because its spells are mundane and restricted.

 

These differences however were never a problem of design but one of a generation gap.  Morrowind was almost a decade old by the time Skyrim was released.  The capabilities of game engines have changed drastically in that time, and that includes how magic can interact with the world.  I mean seriously, Morrowind barely had any physics at all, and Skyrim has full on physics. That alone makes any comparison automatically unfair. 

 

To say that Morrowind's magic was bad just because it wasn't even possible at the time to do what Skyrim can now do is disingenuous, to use a word you seem to like so much.  But even if we are going to sit and compare them, while Skyrim's spell effects may do more physically, at least Morrowind's spells could be all combined with each other as you wished. Spells like the Black Hand were possible in Morrowind, but not so in Skyrim, where to achieve the same effect would require a tedious swapping of spells.  Where one system fails, the other suceeds. But where the other fails, the one suceeds.  Neither situation is better than the other, but it is true that to combine them would make for a far more interesting system than either one by itself. 

 

- Not work well?  What a joke.  

 

- You didn't have to do it after every trip (and if you did then you were doing something wrong. Again it seems you conflate your own failings at the game with actual problems in the design).

 

- Gods forbid the game world had a realistic wilderness where you could actually fail if you weren't prepared.  Adventurers don't just walk into a dungeon and walk out with tons of loot with no problems. They delve into the abyss and crawl back out, triumphant or running in terror. Still a shining light in the dark or broken and penniless. 

 

- In one sentence you definitively proved yourself to be a hypocrite as you called meta-gaming both bad and good (as well as recommended and something that should be a part of the game design), as well as possible in Skyrim, which is something you said wasn't possible.  Either that, or you just typed out gibberish.  I gave you the benefit of the doubt.

 

- Sounds to me like you're in denial that you can't stick to a role. 

 

- You're a #@$! thief, what exactly did you expect?  Yes Morrowind's rep system was dumb, but that's no reason to start whining that you're being seen as the town scammer when you're one acting as such. 

 

And not only that, Guilds conflicting with one another is a good thing.  Makes them more than just meaningless quest lines.

 

- Lol.

 

- Great, so you amounted the mass amount of gold required to train all of those skills. Hint hint, it would have taken the same amount of effort to raise those skills yourself. (Yes gold did drop at stupid rates, but still. To train ALL of the skills you would have needed would still have required a substantial amount of effort to acquire that much gold, unless you got into one of the certain gold mines, but those places also took a lot of effort to get to)

 

And Oblivion, fixing this issue? LOL.  It limited training but then removed all skill requirements entirely.  You didn't even have to train your magic skills at all to be arch mage in Oblivion.  And Skyrim's just the same. 

 

- This proves you don't understand RPG's, at all.  How your character fights is just as important to their identity as their morals and choices. This is why we have distinctions like Necromancer and Conjurer.  Beserker and Knight.  Thief and assassin.  To say combat is irrelevant to the character is disingenuous. 

 

- Sounds like bad luck, figuratively and possibly literally.  Not the game's fault.

 

- Right, thats why there aren't THOUSANDS UPON MILLIONS of mods that introduce TONS of meaningless crap like hairstyles, inconsequential clothing, etc etc.  These kinds of mods wouldn't exist if what you say were true. 

 

- Again, i wasn't aware you spoke for everyone. Most or all, it doesn't matter.  You're still saying that you can actually speak for more people than just yourself, and that is false. 

 

- You can continually try to assert that you're right, but fact of the matter is just because you played your mage in one, boring way doesn't mean that everyone else does or did. 

Edited by imperistan, 11 February 2013 - 10:38 PM.