HeyYou

I rather liked the way the world was leveled with FCOM for Oblivion. Closer to the city, it was just bandits, goblins, and such, (with some vampire caves tossed in for good measure), the further you got from 'civilization', the more powerful the opponents became, regardless of your level. Having the world revolve around the player, especially in the EXTREME way it did in vanilla oblivion, really turned me off to the game. (to the point that I stopped playing after about 45 minutes, as leveling seemed counter-productive. When FCOM started becoming more mature, it renewed my interest in the game.) That aside...... with the trend beth is currently following, I don't expect a resurgence of RPG Elements in the next game. Quite the contrary. I expect things to get even more simplified than they are now..... We went from seven attributes to three..... we went from 30 plus skills in Daggerfall, to what? 18 in Skyrim? I expect that will be reduced again in the next game. Combat, Magic, and Stealth....... The games are trending more and more toward action/adventure, and less focused on Role playing, which is what I see as the biggest disappointment. Is TESVI even going to be worth the 60 bucks they are going to want for it? My opinion is "No."......

In your opinion. I LIKED the Morrowind system better. It got simplified for Oblivion, and then gutted for Skyrim.

If you do sports, involving a lot of running..... and don't require an inhaler on a regular basis, or, not at all..... You will pass with flying colors. Wonder why my spell check stopped working......

Either extreme really doesn't do me any favors....... (I have MS, so, am a bit more susecptible to temp extremes) Generally, the summers here were pretty nice... up until lately... more than four weeks of temps north of 100 dgrees. (F) That is NOT typical. And then of course, we have several weeks in Jan/Feb, where the weather man earns my ire by telling me things like: "The high today will be -5."..... Joy. I would dearly love to find a place where the temp is generally right around 75, 20% humidity, and it only rains at night...... Oh well. :D

Do you understand why this has mainly happened in our country? Our country does not have a very healthy middle class anymore. "job creators" have basically benifited from how skewed our government works to make over 300 times more than an average worker without any intent to try to stimulate the economy back. For a capitalistic nation we have some of the most unfair taxations laws that rich benifit the most out of. Our country has states that get rid important state taxes in very red and blue states but our secretly increasing sales taxes knowing full well the onces that will suffer the most from this kind of taxation is everyone but the rich... The answer is not to get rid of government programs that help a majority of the nation just because we can't afford it anymore. But this is not ruling out that Welfare, medicare, medicade etc... should not be atleast reformed. You look at the banks in our country and how they have basically gotten to the point they are too big to fail. Just imagine what would happen if all majory buisnesses got this way eventually... It would be great if our country could work on small government but as it is now trying to shrink our government i really don't think is the right anwaser. What I know for sure about government and economics could be placed easily inside a thimble and still have room enough fort a thumb. What I see is that the two party system we have in America has successfully separated Americans from Americans and has replaced common sense with the ideology that keeps us separated and at each others throats while they, the special interest groups and big business walk arm in arm for their own benefit and not ours. What I believe of government programs is they are a sideshow to placate the masses into believing the government actually cares for them. Most of this is social engineering that robs from Peter to pay Paul and really doesn't aid in getting us anywhere except right back where were, but we , by virtue of our addiction to partisan bickering either feel vindicated or vindictive depending on which party comes up on top on election day. Kind of like backing a team in the Superbowl, but never playing for them. You want government to work for you? (1) Have then live with the same medical, social and retirement situations that the average citizen has to deal with. Set their retirement age to that of the average citizen and ban corporations who have donated to any politician from hiring that person for at least 5 years after they leave office, (2) Make it so that they don't get paid until they do something worth being paid for. (3) Have them drive themselves to work on the same streets, through the same rush hour traffic and pay the same for gas, out of their own pockets that we do. (4) Ban big money, special interest groups from giving them gifts and perks that are unrelated to the performance of their duties to their constituents and have every dollar changing hands documented and posted on the internet along with the names of the corporation(s) involved. As for the presidents. We should not be liable for the care and upkeep of ex presidents or flip the bill for their security. They are private citizens and I haven't heard of anyone of them who has left the office destitute. As far as business go if they are too big to fail then they are too big to exist in their present configuration. If they screw up then they screw up. They should not be bailed out like the banks, only so they can pay their execs bonuses and hoard the money we gave them. I'm pretty sure we haven't come out of the pit we are in because the banks are setting on the money. Government should stay out of business and business out of government. Let big business and big labor fight the good fight until there is a stalemate that neither side will give. Then government should be the arbitrator in the end, but only that, There's also a third element that effects society, but discussing that is banned here. This. Is. The. Problem. While your solutions are pretty much spot on, they have no hope of ever being implemented. The ONLY folks that have the power to change the way things are, are the very same people that benefit the MOST from the current situation. Trying to convince them to turn off their gravy train just isn't going to happen, except, perhaps, at gunpoint.... (regime change.....) It has been my observation that amercians, taken as a whole, are pretty lazy when it comes to government reform..... seems we would rather just complain about it, rather than doing something.. which again, is completely understandable, given that we don't have the power to actually DO anything. We don't get to pick who runs for public office, that is decided by someone else. (those with money) we are presented a choice of the lesser of two (or more) evils. Independents have very little chance of getting elected, as the folks with the money see them as a threat, they make REAL sure that someone else gets the better financing/public exposure/whathave you, and does their best to discredit the person they DON'T want in office. We NEED government reform, but, it is going to have to start with ELECTION reform. Limit campaign donations to 5000.00 dollars from an individual registered voter. Corporations are NOT people, and are NOT entitled to spend as much as they want as their 'free speech'. If it doesn't have a birth certificate, it is NOT entitled to the rights of one. Campaigns may last a total of three months, up to the date of the election. That's it. Get caught cheating by either campaigning early, or donations outside the above outlined limits, and you are banned from running for public office, for LIFE. (this would include a single individual handing out cash to other 'people' to contribute to the same campaign.)

Affirmative action is not about letting less skilled people equal opertunities in work places over people with more skills just because they are minorities. Affirmative action is about equally giving opertunities to people equally skilled reguardless of race or gender. No employer is forced into hiring someone who is less skilled than someone who is not. But if a work place has a very low minority employment role then employers would then have to put more emphasis on hiring a minority with equal or greater skill over someone who is not a minority. When the white male becomes an extreme minority in the U.S.A. Affirmative action will probably be impossed the same on them. Employers who are hiring people in the work place less skilled than other reguardless of race are not following Affirmative action but actually are only doing so to make their company or buisness look better. This is not Affirmative action ... sadly you see this happening in colleges where schools just want to look better letting minorities into the school over people who are not minorities when actaul school grades can be messured... again this is not Affirmative action this is just the school trying to look better when this happens, Otherwise in all honesty a majority of our top schools would probably be filled by people from asia since over 4,000,000,000 people are probably asian in this world given the estimate the current world population is around 7,000,000,000. You have to think if a company has only 4 placements for bio chemist job and two are already filled by white males they would probably try to find 2 people who are minorities who are equally qualified for the job. If no one who is a minority is qualified they will just hire anyone who is qualified. they are not going to hire some minority who has no experience and or qualifications just to fill the job placement. If an employer MUST look at race, in their hiring practices, that IS discrimination. I have had direct experience with this. I applied for a job that I figgered I was a shoe-in for. The qualifications exactly matched my skill set, and not many folks applied for the job. A man of color, with LESS experience, LESS training, and NO work experience got the job...... and got paid more per hour than I had asked for. In a private conversation I had with one of the hiring managers, I was TOLD, FLAT OUT, that he got the job, because they needed "more diversity in their workforce" due to some government regulation. Affirmative action is discrimination against the white man. Business should be able to hire the BEST QUALIFIED person for the job, regardless of their race.

You have some good points there. Expanding on that some.... It doesn't help that our government is conspiring against the average white male. Maybe not directly, or even intentionally, but, they are doing so none the less. Affirmative action was a good point here. In the interests of 'ethnic diversity' they came up with rules that the workforce of a given company needs to be representative of the population demographics as well.... This was used by a fair few people to scream DISCRIMINATION! when they didn't get some job they applied for..... even though the person that was hired was better qualified than they were. It got to the point where the minorities were being hired instead of better qualified applicants, in the interest of avoiding lawsuits. This carries into our education system as well. Race is indeed a major factor for consideration of admission to universities. U of M recently went thru a major lawsuit on their admissions practices, they used a 'points' system, and simply being of Asian descent would give you a serious advantage over EVERY other race. Basically, the government, in the interests of making things "fair", seriously tilted the scales in favor of anyone that WASN'T white. Combine that little tidbit, running over the course of a couple decades, with dramatically flawed economic ideas..... (free trade being right up there on the list) which led to the severe loss/outsourcing of jobs, and you have a society that is seeing its standard of living decline at a dizzying rate, with no real hope for things getting better in the future. Sure, unemployment is supposedly going down, but, given how the government calculates those numbers, they don't reflect the actual reality on the ground. They also do not reflect the fact that average income for the middle class has also significantly decreased. The good-paying manufacturing jobs are a thing of the past, and they are being replaced with low-paying jobs in the services sector, or retail. Given that "a" job, is better than No job..... folks take what they can get, giving the illusion that 'things are getting better'..... for the top 5% of the population, yes, I suppose they are, for the other 95% though, they are barely holding their own, or, more often than not, losing ground in their accustomed lifestyle. I can see how that would annoy folks. We are becoming a stratified society. The haves, and the have nots. Never a good recipe for a stable society.

Freedom is something your government gives you. Or not..... you only have a 'right' to what the government says you do. If the government decides that 'freedom' isn't useful any longer, than you won't have it. What you will have instead (probably) is civil war.

Not sure if it is just me, but, the link just takes me to a blank white page.... I don't think it is JUST the white male that is in decline, nor do I think that is the root cause of it all. I see it more as a symptom of a larger ill.... the lack of personal responsibility that is becoming ingrained in our society. Apparently, no one is responsible for their own actions anymore. There is always some 'underlying cause' that is beyond the control of the person exhibiting the undesirable behavior. Personally, I don't particularly care WHY someone committed X crime, the mere fact that they DID should be more than enough reason for the punishment to fit the crime......

The 'creation engine' IS just a slightly modified version of the morrowind engine. Sure, beth fixed SOME of the issues, but, they left in the glaring problems that restricts how well the engine runs. Like rendering EVERYTHING in your field of view, whether you can see it or not...... Gamebryo is outdated, and has been 'adapted' so many times, with half-fixes, that it really is NOT a good engine anymore.... Beth needs to completely re-write it. Sure, you may not have problems with multi-core processors, or multi-video cards, but, you don't get the full benefit of them either. The game runs just as good on dual core, as a quad core, (of the same clock speed/architecture) The game engine has NOT been optimized........ Quite frankly, it is outdated technology, that has outlived its usefulness.

have a look here.

Skyrim runs on pretty much the same engine as Morrowind did, with some tweaks. The engine has 'evolved' somewhat, over time, but, it's still basically the same pile of crap that morrowind ran on. Now, HARDWARE has gotten SIGNIFICANTLY more powerful in the same time period. Please note, that the hardware requirements for subsequent games kept going up. (and the graphics got better too.....) Sure, armor may have a minor impact on framerate.... but, that's it. Minor. AI, on the other hand..... has ALWAYS had a MAJOR impact on framerate. Justifying reducing the number of armor pieces to help increase framerate is silly. (I have a more appropriate word... but, not for the forums....) It would have made much more sense to improve the efficiency of the rendering engine.... but, beth seems incapable of making ANY improvements there. The engine doesn't make good use of multi-core processors, or multi-vid cards either. Both technologies that have been around since BEFORE the release of Oblivion. If Beth wanted to do something to improve framerate, they missed out on two EXTREMELY powerful opportunities. Also of note: When Skyrim was still in development, Beth STATED FLATLY that is was an "all-new" game engine. That is most certainly NOT the case. I would also point out that there is essentially zero difference between a mace, and a sword. Sure, the player can use perks, that give the different weapons a bit of an edge, but, NPC's can't use perks. So, that mace wielding bandit might just as well have ANY one-handed weapon, as to him, it makes zero difference. Didn't seem to matter to beth that a bashing weapon vs. slashing weapon will do different types/amounts of damage given the same attack style. (these were differentiated in morrowind, something that was lost in Oblivion. of course, in morrowind, you could MISS. Not so since then.) But, once again, I am wasting my breath here..... I think I just respond for the minor mental exercise it presents, and in the hope that others might learn something interesting. You seem firmly convinced that skyrim is the next best thing since sliced bread, and beth can do no wrong. You don't happen to work for beth do you? Paid shill perhaps?

If you get the error sound, try alt-tabbing out of the game, to see if you can see what the error actually is.

No, I'm not a game designer, but Matt Carofano is. http://www.vg247.com...s-as-oblivions/ "In Morrowind, players had to equip each piece of armour individually, while in Oblivion, sets were broken into fewer pieces. In Skyrim, each full set of armour is one item, according to lead artist Matt Carofano. "This helps create armour styles that have the look we needed for Skyrim," he said. "In most of the Nordic designs we created, the upper armour would completely cover the lower armour, making it unnecessary. "We get much better visual results combining those pieces, and it renders a lot faster too, so we can put more people on screen, so that was an easy tradeoff for us. "We can also make a lot more armours now, so the number and variation types are more than we've ever had."" And yes, total number of armor pieces DOES affect the total number of NPCs on the screen, more pieces = more stuff to render, more stuff to render = more strain on the computer when making all these NPCs move, attack, walk, etc. etc. Less pieces = less stuff to render allowing for many times more NPCs to be on the screen, while only causing the same, or less, total strain on the computer because it has to render less items per NPC. This is BASIC game design. -Merging skills is negated by the fact that each skill does more, and has a specialization for each weapon type. Morrowind and Oblivion worked on a system of 1 skill = 1 thing, the thing being an increase in weapon damage, whereas Skyrim's 1 handed skill has five separate paths, one for each weapon type, a path for dual wielding, and two paths for power attacks. So where Mororwind/Oblivion's skills only did one thing, make that one weapon types damage higher, Skyrim's skill trees allow for differing paths, allowing for far greater specialization, and customization, that none of the past ES games could match. -The consolidation of armor pieces allowed for armor perks such as matching set, custom fit, deft movement, and wind walker to work effectively, or even be viable. Where Morrowind/Oblivion's armor skills, again, only did one thing, make armor better, Skyrim does like 5 things, and on top of that, the merger of armor makes each armor pieces more important, more detailed, and allows for more NPCs on the screen. -I will half give you spell making, which was only removed because they couldn't find a way to make it work without ruining the magic feel, but they have said they are working on it. However, Skyrim's perk system, once again, trumps the diversity of Morrowind and Oblivion because of the ways we can argument spells with perks, a spell in Morrowind and Oblivion was the way it was forever, spells in Skyrim can get increased range, new effects like stagger, the ability to turn people into dust, the ability to dual cast, etc. etc. and all of it is at the hands of the user. Skyrim's spell system offers far more meaningful choice in which to augment spell's abilities. Even the most basic fire spell in Skyrim can be augmented into nearly 20 different spells based on what perks you take, Morrowind and Oblivion could offer no such thing. -How was meaningful enchanting removed again? because I have been able to create far greater enchantments, with far greater control over the levels of said enchantments, with Skyrim's perk system, then I ever could in Oblivion/Morrowind. Not to mention that, because of dual enchanting, skyrim has the same total number of enchants as Mororwind, meaning a skilled enchanter could easily make something just as good, and with perks easily better, then anything in Morrowind. Bethesda interview with a gaming magazine touting how their new game is "better" because of missing content. That's pretty funny. Not to mention weak. It's a PR piece trying to shine a turd.

Not really. 99% of the mass shooters had mental issues to one degree or another. (and much more so than your average criminal) Several of them have already been determined to have been somewhat less than sane, but, as there was no help available to them, there really wasn't much record of it, or even none at all. Others had a history of mental illness, that was even thoroughly documented, but, as sharing that information with law enforcement (and thus having it show up on a background check to purchase a weapon) was considered a violation of doctor/patient privilege. So, when the gun dealer ran the check, nothing came up, so he sold the shooter the weapon. Others were simply ignored by their parents, for whatever reason.... and in retrospect, all the signs of a troubled personality were there for everyone to see. Seems that no one chose to see it though... (and of course, this IS in retrospect..... so, things seem much clearer 'now'....) Another shooter, who happened to be a man that had been convicted of murder previously, why he wasn't in prison is anyones guess. maybe out on parole... could not buy his own weapons for his dirty work, so, he got some gal to buy them for him. (straw purchaser) I would also point out, that 99% of the weapons used in mass shootings, were acquired legally, by their owners..... in a lot of cases, the owners were the parents/family of the shooter, and the weapons used were in the home. Sandy Hook, Columbine fall in to this category. (along with others, but, I am not going to list them all....) Something else of interest is, most shootings are done with pistols, and shotguns..... not necessarily pistols with huge magazines either. NONE of the laws currently working their way thru congress will make the slightest difference in these incidents. They are targeting the exact WRONG crowd. Again.

Armor has nothing to do with how many NPCs can be on the screen at any one time. That is all about AI processing. A modder over on the beth forums wanted to be able to do massive battles in morrowind. He was able to get upwards of 100 NPC's on screen at any one time, simply by stripping out most of their AI. They were not running around naked. But, I should know better than to try and argue this point with you, after all, you are obviously a game designer, and know more than all the rest of us combined.....:rolleyes:

Isn't that a flightless bird, that lives in New Zealand, or some such?

I ran into a pretty good size crowd on multiple occasions when leaving Riften, and just waking north..... couple groups of four or more in the forest... didn't even have to go into a cave.

Don't you think the respective Jarl's would have some real issues with giving up a large chunk of their territory though? Ever consider going south of the border??? Into the mountains?

Excellent video, it's sums up exactly why I don't like the game. Nothing you do makes the slightest bit of difference to anyone or anything, the characters are bland, the quests are dull and the story is tired. I never felt part of anything, I felt like my character was nothing more than a camera watching some not very interesting events unfold. The game looks stunning and there's very good artistic design in there but that's it. Bethesda really need to start investing in writers, an awful lot of the issues with their games can traced back to the appalling writing and a staggering lack of imagination, it's hard to believe this is the same company that bought us Morrowind. Yee Haa!! Someone gets it. :D I see the major problem being Beth going mainstream. They are appealing to the casual gamers, so the games get more and more simplified. Unfortunately, that's where the big money is..... Don't expect it to change. TESVI will have three skills..... combat, stealth, and magic....... and a boatload of perks.....

So, suddenly providing sourced evidence and requesting decent argument formatting is a bad thing? Excuse me while i alert the media, the Trolls have finally won. Sajuukkar is argueing that everything you do has an impact, and changes the way characters react to you. But it does so in a way that isn't as flashy or forces as... well... Every guild quest im Oblivion (lets face it, the game was a test to see how many world-ending events they could cram into one game. Between Undead, Daedra, Hist-junkies and flaming dogs, Cyrodiil was practically a write off). The woman running a Sawmill sends you to look for her deadbeat husband, and when you find out he was murdered trying to provide for his family, from then on she thanks you for avenging him and for releaving the scorn she felt. When you complete the Civil War questline, supporters of the opposing faction resent you for your choice every time you walk by. People comment on your acheivements and your affiliations every time you run into them, with the obvious exception of the main quest, which has been dealt with before. Most people had no clue Alduin had returned, or what exactly was happening. Dragons were comming back, that's all they knew. Even when you do Season Unending, you're only talking to the LEADERS of Skyrim, not the general public. No one in their right mind would stand infront of the general populace and shout "Ok, the World Eater is back, this guy is going to try to save us, but if he fails, we're all gonna die". It would incite panic. And when the deed is done, it's best to sweep it under the rug rather than tell those same panicy morons that you kept something that big from them. That's why there is very little recognition for defeating Alduin, because the entire situation was kept on a very need-to-know basis, and was in fact the type of situation where you could keep it low key. Absolutely, totally unlike the battle for New Vegas. I will admit, the quest lines in Skyrim are rushed, but no more than they were in Oblivion. Oblivion's only advantage was the fact that you got a lot of the Morrowind-esque filler as padding. How many missions in hte Fighters Guild actually involved the Blackwood Company? 4? How about Necromancers? 3 or 4 there. The Theives Guild was probably the most well rounded in Oblivion, and again it's actually a good chain in Skyrim, working to build the trust of the guild and your station therin before being trusted with very serious, important information. The point of this isn't that Sajuukkar (and myself, really) refuse to accept the validity of other arguements, its that other arguements are failing to dispute the facts we present. If you can't present proof, definitive, subjective or otherwise, that nothing you do in Skyrim affects how NPC's react, you aren't even making an arguement. You get more reactions, in a more realistic manner, out of people in Skyrim, than you ever did in Oblivion. All Oblivion had was end of the day hero worship. And Farengar keeps telling me to go the college at Winterhold if I have any aptitude for magic. As I stand there in my Arch Mages robes...... Also, one of the points of contention here (and the major one, in my opinion) is his definition of "choice" on accepting, or not... quests. His contention that you can't get quests just walking past folks is wrong, even though he still maintains that you can 'avoid it'....... You seem to be in agreement with him here... in that it isn't a 'journal' per se, but a log.... I am not entirely sure just what the difference there is..... either way, you get a list of things to do, not all of which you have any interest in doing, but, you have no option to clear them from the log, as completed quests are cleared. Yes, some of your actions do indeed have an impact on the world around you, and folks reactions to you change accordingly. Unfortunately, those are in the minority.... You can be the head of a guild, and folks, including members, still treat you as if you have never joined, or, are still the low man on the totem pole.

He didn't have sufficient criminal history to merit revoking his gun rights. (no felony convictions) Nor did he have any mental health history that was verifiable by any gun sellers, to preclude them from selling him a weapon. Not to mention no word on just how long he had owned his guns..... He was supposed to go to court last week for the firearm charges. (at least, the most recent ones.) Instead, he kidnapped a child... In any event, the child is safe, he is dead, and this issue is solved.

Just human nature taking its standard course. The strong will always try and rule over the weak. Even in a society where that isn't 'supposed' to happen. It still does. I am not saying that it is flat out impossible, I am just sayin' that if humans are involved, it is highly unlikely to work.

Or at convenient travel locations... Whiterun really could be a capitol as well. Central location, good for trade.

The point is, he doesn't WANT to accept your argument. He will talk the same point to death, arguing in circles, reiterating the same tired arguments, until folks just give up. It gives him the illusion of 'winning'. He/She has his/her view of 'the way things are', and everyone else is simply wrong.