Lachdonin

Well, yeah. Cause there's what, a dozen people on Tamriel who even know what happened? Do you expect them to come out and say "Oh yeah, turns out our fighting roused an ancient world ending threat, and we just narrowly escaped extinction because This-Dude showed up. Go back to your days now". We aren't talking about major public events here, like the Nerevarine and the Oblivion Crisis. We're talking about one Dragon very few people saw, being killed off screen. To the average person, the situation isn't going to change. There are still dragons about, and Alduin is still a myth.

Everyone is pretty ugly in Skyrim. As for why Elves look the way they do... Because that's how Elves look in TES. And for the better, IMO.

In some contexts, yes. Determining what contexts it is appropriate in is the important (and most difficult) part of the struggle. That's why we have Philosophers and Psychologists, Sociologists and a dozen other specialised professions. To collectively evaluate the value and consequences of beliefs and attitudes, and shape informed decisions. And they all agree that Ignorance is the enemy. No one should be allowed to be willfully ignorant, and ignorance should never be praised or defended.

I don't believe i ever advocated for tolerance, now did it? In many ways, i am an incredibly intolerant person, and will proudly admit that. Ignorance is an enemy that must constantly be opposed, and cannot be allowed to fester in any form, at any time. If people refuse to acknowledge the importance of politics, and the understanding therein, they SHOULD be confronted, and they SHOULD be made uncomfortable, just the same as fascists should be opposed, racists should be ostracised, and ideologues should be ridiculed. I simply used them as two of the more vocal examples of problematic outlooks that hold back the artistry of the medium. Amongst others there are the Neckeards, the Puritans, the Misandrists, the Traditionalists, the Overbearing Parents, and the ever annoying Trolls.

What if i told you... Both Red Dead Redemption 2 and Doom 2016 are actually running on older engines than Skyrim? Age isn't the problem. Bethesda's inability to actually keep updating (or inability to technically execute on anything, really) it is the problem.

I, however, am not. I've always found it strange how Television, Movies, Literature, Art and even Music have long been platforms for exploring, expressing and confronting real-world social and political ideas... And yet most people seem to think the same has no place in video games. Humans are political creatures, it's how we organize, how we interact, how we self identify. it's integration is the highest expression of any art. And yet, it has no place in gaming? Hah! We NEED more real world political and religious issues in games. We need more analogues for real-world problems. And we can't be afraid to go there, because of moronic consumers who think they can avoid the single most important influence in their lives, or fascist ideologues who can't tolerate the idea of someone differing in opinion.

Pfft, when has that ever stopped modders?

No, they were not. You could join every Guild in Morrowind, including the Morag Tong, without conflict. The only mutually exclusive factions were the Vampire Clans (and those weren't so much by choice rather than a consequence of where you got infected) and the Great Houses. And Morrowind equally allowed you to become the leader of all the guilds at once.

A lot of that comes from the fact it's a decision with mutually exclusive outcomes. That inherently causes continuity problems, where you have to try and figure out what's going to happen, and strips the decision of any real impact. Your side wins, and that's the end of it. Rather than tell an interesting story, they decided to go the New Vegas route (probably because of all the undeserved praise that game gets for it's terrible story) and give you a crude, binary choice and a pat on the back. That sort of dynamic makes it difficult to really develop characters and a setting, and frankly always amounts to a mess (even in the games that have done 'Choice' well, it's actively made the storytelling worse). The entire questline suffers from the lack of narrative focus and development, which is part of what even leads to the discussion about it.

And Unreal 4 is an evolved version of the original Unreal Engine. Nothing about an engine is set in stone, they aren't monolithic constructs that need to be tossed aside and rebuilt from the ground up. They're modular digital constructs that can be changed and adapted to the necessary purposes from one iteration to the next. Bethesda has already shown they have total control over their engines modules. They've revamped both the Physics, and the basic processing of it. Changing the ID tagging for mod recognition would be a cakewalk in comparison. It's just probably not high on their to-do list.

THey They aren't using Gamebryo though. They're using an engine based on some of Gamebryo's code, but it is it's self something distinct and entirely under Bethesda's control.

I cannot fathom how people can run so many mods. Even at my heaviest modding, i haven't hit 100. That said, it should be a relatively simple fix, now that they've upgraded to 64 bit. They just need to go in and change the ID tagging the engine uses for plugins, allowing for more than 255 IDs.

And immersion, and challenge, and storytelling, and just basic fun. Such is the price of subjectivity, unfortunately.

I'd actually argue that Classes are inherently unrealistic. Those sorts of impositions don't exist in reality, and we aren't locked into particular identities at any time. The only limiting factors on what we can and cannot learn are Personal Aptitude (and even then, that can largely be overcome) and Time. Classes, on the other hand, are artificial limitations that impose an identity on you. You're a Knight, this is what you do. You're a Healer, this is how you behave. It would be like signing a piece of paper in your first year of high school, and that dictates what career you have to have for the rest of your life. It's an unnatural, totally unrealistic way to build characters. Skyrim did have problems in it's pacing. It was far too easy to master everything. But the potential to do so should be there. It shouldn't be a forced dynamic, but rather the difference between investing 500 hours in one character to master everything at once, or 300 across a dozen to master specific builds. Of course, replayability is different for different people... If a game forces me to make binary choices, i usually don't bother with additional playthroughs. It ends up feeling forced and shallow (especially regarding storytelling, which is why i hate Choice Driven Narratives) and makes it feel like the developers are holding my hand, preventing me from making my own character defining decisions. Who are they to define how my Paladin fights or interacts? Depends on how you look at it. I look at Perks as just retroactively stating what your character has been practicing that whole level. I'm of course not saying Skyrim executed things well. But that's Bethesda for you, they can only ever seem to hit the right general block, though they always miss the address. Still, using the system offers way more character potential than basically anything else out there, up to and including bringing back Attributes in a model that actually makes some sense.

I'll freely admit that Skyrim's execution of the potential the system has was... Less than ideal. Barely competent is probably more appropriate... But a lot of it generally depends on how you see Skills, and how you see what Perks are (or should be). Skills should be broad, interwoven areas of knowledge. Painting. Fighting. Agriculture. Medicine. Diverse ideas that run a wide range, but all rely on the same fundamental basis. Perks, then, are the specialisations. They are the Impressionists and the Surrealists, Fencing and Mugai-ryu, Psychology and Pediatrics. Now, yes, in a far more realistic context, it would be difficult for any individual to spontaneously develop any of these specialised fields of study from nothing. But for the sake of function, there's a little more leeway. You can attach unlocking the ability to pick a Perk to certain quests or trainers, but building the entire system off that heavily limits what you can do with a character. Want to learn a paralyzing strike? Well, there's only one quest in the entire game that gets you it, so every character you have HAS to get it from him. You strip away the ability to play someone whose knowledge of anatomy allows him to develop something similar on his own, or someone who learned the technique from some far off land, or someone who just stumbles upon it in a drunken brawl. Attaching powers, abilities and increases to particular quests or activities limits what sorts of characters you can build within the system, just like attaching Shouting to Dragons Souls inherently limited the Tongue you could play. Want to play an old, practiced master? Too bad, Dragon Souls. Extending that problem to the meat of one of the best RPG stat dynamics ever put in a game seems like a step backwards to me. Absolutely.. It's just a trope i hate. Whoever came up with the Master on the Mountaintop notion clearly never taught, or at least was a terrible teacher. Other tropes i hate are the 'Average Joe rising to the challenge' and 'Sewers'.

Agriculture was independently and spontaneously developed by at least 4 separate cultures at the same time. Writing developed spontaneously at least 3 times. The same Schools of Thought appeared in Mesoamerica and the Old World independent of eachother with no known association between the two. Thats not to say learning from others doesn't speed the process along. But if it was the only way to learn new things, we'd all still be living in trees.

I feel like that approach is far too limiting from a roleplaying perspective. It assumes that it's impossible to learn things on your own, to develop your own approaches and solutions to Skills. Plus, it reeks of of the Master on the Mountaintop trope, which is something i hate in RPGs almost as much as Classes.

A rather crude visual representation that was more for the sake of being cool than actually conveying anything reasonable. Perks are, IMO, the greatest thing to happen to TES in recent memory. They allow you to capture the diversity and specificity of knowledge, without sacrificing the broad strokes. Even in the crudest expression of them that we see in Skyrim, they already offer more range than any of the previous games. Maybe calling them Perks was the wrong naming convention. But we're kinda stuck with it now.

Here's a more concrete wish... I wish they'd abandon the whole 'Choice Driven Narrative' thing. It is, IMO, the lowest form of story telling, and has actively diminished the plot of every game i've played with it. Tell good stories, not branching ones. Tie things up into actual endings, with emotional weight and narrative consequences, not the tacked-on Alternate Endings that ultimately mean nothing and convolute stories to the point they can't move forward.

Unfortunately, i think you're right. Which is why i've personally been growing more and more disenfranchised with RPGs of late. It's always the same core problems with no attempts at revision. There's this mentality that somehow more options means it's better, without ever having to address the fundamental deficiencies. The problem even extends to narrative structures, with an inane focus on 'Choice' rather than good storytelling or world building. Games like New Vegas are held to a gold standard (despite being s#*! wrapped in garbage) while anything that steps out of line and does something different and possibly revolutionary (Fallout 4's dialogue) gets shouted down by the ravenous consumer whose more interested in their comfort zone than advancing the genre. I can only hope that CDPR does something at least a little original with Cyberpunk's mechanics... Though from the gameplay trailer, it looks like more of the same. Still stoked for it though.

Stebbinsd! What the hells are you doing over here. Don't you know its dangerous to wander alone? Eh, YMMV. I personally prefer Skyrim's base UI over SkyUI, which i find to be a cluttered mess that fails in every way to convey information in an efficient manner or be visually pleasing. Even with it's customization options, i've never gotten the damned thing to feel like anything but a chore. So, i personally don't think it's a good starting point for discussion. It's just another in a rather long line of terrible RPG interfaces, and the entire thing needs to be re-examined from the ground up. But, that's a general problem with TES (and most RPGs). They're built on a familiar framework, and that framework is basically garbage. Weight Behaviours, Armour Classes, Menu Management, Durability, Classes, Conversation, Stat Management... Hell, even basic controls are burdened by traditional thinking that doesn't take advantage of modern solutions.

The quick and dirty version. Open the editor. Load the plugins for the base game, and whatever armour mod you want. Open the actor list, pick the first character on there, and double click. This will open their Character Editor. Change the characters Base ID, and click save. You'll get a prompt saying the ID has changed, and asking if you want to create a new save or overwrite the old. Create a new one. Then, find your new character in the Actor lost, based on the ID you entered, and open up their charactr screen. You can change their look, name, AI scripts and inventory from there. To add items to their inventory, simply find the items in the Item Lists, and click and drag them to the inventory tab on the character editor. You can create base characters from scratch by right clicking Actors and selecting New, but for inexperienced modders its often easier to duplicate existing NPCs and change the duplicate, so you don't have to play with AI settings.

That's probably for the best. Man is an artist at dodging questions and not giving straight answers. Anyway... Every time anything Akaviri shows up, i'm disappointed. Both the Tsaesci and the Kamal have been relegated to generic humanoids, their art style has been downgraded to a smooth-realistic, their arms and armour are bog-standard oriental knockoffs. The mystery and majesty of the Akaviri gets eroded every time they try to do anything with them. Enough is enough. The less i see or hear about them for the foreseeable future, the better.

The primary focus of the statement is the need to keep the Stormcloaks on relatively even footing with the Empire. No mention anywhere of similar support for the Empire is made. The Dominion is willing to aid the Stormcloaks, going so far as to attempt to intervene in his execution, but make no mention of raising a finger on the opposite side. The continued Dominion presence in Hammerfell is the only consistency between both Kematu and Saadia's stories. And no, they wouldn't be worse off (though we are told that the southern territories in Hammerfell have been devastated by the war) but it shows that their extra 5 years of war netted them basically nothing. They're still subject to a Dominion presence, and the only thing they really got back was direct control of a few cities. The pre-Ra Gada 'races' of Hammerfell were supposed to consist of Beast Folk (typically referring to Khajiit, Imga, maybe Satyrs if they still exist) Nedes and Orc-kin, though they lived hard lives on the oustide of the wider cultures. The Rourken were the first people to solidly establish themselves there, and the Redguards were the first to thrive. And thrive is the optimal part here. Others ran to Hammerfell to escape, and some managed to survive, but the Redguard's prospered. Their dominance of the region was so great that Tiber Septim had to wait for them to turn against each other to have a chance, and even then he barely managed to control the province. So, you think it's reasonable to make a major military and political decision on optimism alone? The Empire knew that the Dominion's holding hadn't been touched. It knew it had drawn resources from 3/4 of it's remaining (useful) territories, and 2 of those had been heavily ransacked by the enemy throughout the 5 year conflict. Gambling on nothing but a hope and a prayer may have worked, yes, but that doesn't make it a good decision. Yes, the Thalmor would have been around in an official function. But there's a difference between a diplomatic embassy operating in an area and covertly spying (which, throughout most of history, was an assumed with any sort of embassy) and them being able to arrest people in the streets. The Dominion couldn't turn those spies into tangible leverage without admitting they were spying, which meant their ability to crack down on Talos worship was impaired by the illicit means of garnering information. Enter Ulfric, who publicly makes a scene about Talos worship, calling direct attention to the issue and giving the Dominion the means to leverage greater presence. It's really not that complicated. We see them try to intervene in Ulfric's execution. No such effort is made ANYWHERE on behalf of the Empire, for any reason. They even go so far as to try to undermine peace negotiations while there's a Dragon-God trying to end the world. There's also the issue of the weapons being smuggled through Blackmarsh. While the Argonians could be making them, they've never had an established history of manufacturing Elven goods, indicating they might be an intermediary. Ah, the good old 'Just because there's no evidence for it doesn't mean it's not true' argument. We SEE them try to intervene on Ulfric's behalf. We are told that they are willing to. There is no evidence, anywhere, to say they are willing to do the same for Tullius, Rikke, Elesyf or any other Imperial supporter. You don't think that having National-Enemy-#1 escape under their watch would politically hurt the Dominion's position? Particularly with dozens of witnesses indicating the Empire was moments away from ending Ulfric and crippling his rebellion? That's the sort of political foul-up that gets your party stripped of the authority for prisoner exchange, and gets people like Elenwyn fired. That's better than not HAVING control. Layla doesn't control her own Hold. Korir is loyal only to himself. Dengier is in a mental decline. Thongvor doesn't even control his families own purse strings (and seems totally ignorant of the fact his own brother is the one inciting the Foresworn in the city). You've clearly never dealt with it, and i sincerely hope you, nor your loved ones, ever have to. That said, Alzheimer's isn't just forgetfulness. It's not just about forgetting names (and, in many cases, you don't forget names, you forget the faces that go with them). It's wholesale mental degradation, and often begins with a fixation on past events and deep suspicion of those around you. We know mental illness exists in Tamriel, and it's got an entire Deity dedicated to it's manifestation. Between his suspicion of those around him, his beratement of his caregiver, and his (admittedly single) moodswing with his brother, Dengeir's symptoms are pretty obvious. Siddgeir is a little s***, but he MAY get better over time. Dengeir will only get worse. And, again, with the exception of the Dunmer, whose LITERAL GODS told them to do it, only a small portion of the Nords and Argonians joined the Pact. And even with the Dunmer, more than half the Houses refused to fight alongside their new 'allies'. The Ebonheart Pact really isn't a good example here. Absolutely not. But it gives guaranteed support, and means that in the event of wider conflict, you know your standing forces will fight alongside potential allies. There are more hurdles between the Stormcloaks and supporting the Empire than there are with Pro-Imperial Nords doing so. But these problems are being dealt with ALONE. And that's the issue. To Prompt is a rather wide range idea, but fair, it does convey a degree of directness. Many of those bad decisions lie with Oncano, and Uriel VII. But yes, many bad decisions have been made over the last 250ish years. Making MORE of them doesn't help. Poppycock. That would be more than half of ALL the known Legions in all of TES. Imperial Legion =/= Roman Legion. if it did, we'd be looking at between 45,000 and 60,000 Legion troops in Skyrim, which is absurd. That's more than half the population of one of the largest cities on the continent, and pushing the best estimates for the population of one of Skyrim's major holds. The behaviour of the Legion, and the references they make regarding rank, also indicate that Legates operate on a far smaller scale, more akin with a modern company meaning their comparative rank would be between a Captain and a Major. Which would put them more on the scale of a Roman Centurion. Why would Mede commit his forces to a foreign war, when the current political climate in his own borders would see every would-be king, fuedal lord and rebel rise up when central oversight is off stomping through Dominion farms. The situation in Skyrim is a prime example of why the Empire hasn't, and won't, invade the Dominion. Mede lacks sufficient political support to ensure the Empire's stability while it's armies are present, let alone on foreign soil, and has no real ability to solidify his position (lacking, as he is, a giant stompy robot). But an argument that something can happen, despite no historical precedence for it and no justification for it's occurrence beyond wishful thinking, is a far better one. The Dominion views Ulfric as essential to the Stormcloak cause, and the Dossier makes it clear they they were willing to directly interfere to ensure he didn't die. We then see Elenwyn at Helgen, when the Empire is about to execute him. That alone is suspicious enough, but the cut content has her demanding custody, citing the Talos ban under the White Gold Concordant, and Tullius refusing. She then threatens to inform the Emperor of his treachery, before Tullius turns around and walks away. Now, again, from what i've heard of the sound files, this was probably cut because it kinda sounded like crap. But the implication is pretty clear. The Dominion tried to take custody of Ulfric. Whether they had a Plan-B in case Tullius refused or not isn't clear, and the only indication is Elenwyn and some Justicars hanging out around Helgen after the opening sequence, but i personally think that's more a technical layover of having her there for the intro and not an indication of anything story related. Still, combined with the Dossier, it's pretty obvious that they were trying to prevent Ulfric from being executed. He does them no favours by being dead, or in jail, so the only reasonable assumption is that they planned for him to 'escape' after they took custody. Not so much in the case of the American Revolution. The rebellion was practically over, before the English withdrew and left what basically amounted to cleanup in the hands of Hessian mercenaries. This only served to galvanise support for a failing rebellion, as the Germans drank and looted, culminating in the Crossing of the Delaware and a resurgence of Washington's rebels (against a bunch of drunk mercs who barely put up a fight). Had England not been forced to commit it's own military elsewhere, the rebels would have lost.

Community goodwill? Bethesda has never HAD community goodwill. Every time they release or change something, the community gets into an uproar. Morrowind ruined TES, and the editor is nothi.g but an excuse to release an unfinished game! Oblivion ruined TES and made modding harder (some claimed impossible, with voice acted NPCs)! Fallout is just Oblivion with guns and doesn't fix anything! Skyrim ruined TES (again) and makes nodding harder (again!). And all the while "This game is a buggy mess!". Bethesda has been successful despite an extremely vocal and often toxic community with every release. Not because they make good games, not because Modders smooth out the wrinkles, but ultimately because you are hard pressed to find similar games elsewhere. No matter how you look at it, Bethesda games don't fit into normal RPG or Open World dynamics. Even supposedly competing games, like Inquisition and Wild Hunt, are radically different experiences. Bethesda doesn't thrive on community good will. It never has, because it doesn't exist. The community begrudgingly accepts changes, it doesn't embrace them with an optimistic willingness. But Bethesda offers an experience and model that is difficult to find elsewhere, especially cross platform.