imperistan

If your stats are like that then you probably have some kind of a disease.

What I would do, first, is to get the Morrowind Overhaul 3.0 and install that first (it has options for maintaining a more vanilla feel). That will cover all of your bases and you can customize further from there. Play the game with just MO installed first so you can see what you like and don't like, and then go back and start adding different texture/model/graphics packs so you can have the game look exactly how you want it to. Morrowind Overhaul, while on its own isn't exactly for everyone, is undeniably the best place to start in regards to updating Morrowind's graphics.

^ Thank you. Indeed, it was the main point of that to allow just that. Non-combat as a meta-playstyle is almost never touched on by games in general, but particularly so when it comes to RPG's, whose non-combat choices almost always revolve around dialogue rather than actual gameplay. Beth's RPG's have come fairly close, but only because the level of freedom present allowed for hiding behind the conjured and/or your companions. Non-combat was never really fleshed out.

How to make something like this: http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/881991-youre-just-a-an-unimportant-piece-of-some-game-contains-major-spoilers/?p=7323067

Well that's Beth for you. Id just play through Dawnguard normally and then, after all is said and done, console away here immortality and slash away. Breaks the RP a bit, but seeing as there isn't much a choice that would be the best way to maintain it. You could try and rationalize it as her vampiric powers calming your character and preventing you from killing her (rather than her being arbitrarily immortal) if you need a roleplay reason to not strike her down the moment you meet here.

(Disclaimer, while this looks severely complicated, it really isn't. It only looks that way because I"m actually writing it all out. If I were to present this as an actual game demo, most of this would be happening in the background and would generally not be presented to the character directly. The way skills are grouped for instance are more for organizational purposes more than they are direct examples of how they would appear in-game) Okay, so here's my character development system. It works around the idea of giving a hardcore roleplayer the ultimate playground (by allowing for both combat AND non-combat characters, and allowing for the player to fully flesh out both kinds of characterss and advance through the game through either method), but while also not alienating someone who just wants to play the game for its quests, exploration, etc etc. Yes one can argue that doing that would make the vast majority of this "pointless" but that is far from the point of this system, and indeed, games in general. Based on GCD and its spiritual successor nGCD mechanically, this is how my character development system would work and be laid out. In this I also explain other systems (albeit in less detail) that would complement this system. Note: Not all skills, mechanics, etc are meant to be literal. They're just there for the sake of argument. The general idea behind this system is to break the classic RPG triangle by making combat and non-combat two distinct meta-playstyles. Instead of most skills being centered around combat and combined together, there would instead be 3 skill sets based on 3 different methods of interaction (of which combat is one) with the game world itself, with a 4th coming from what you do in the game. One would be centered around combat, another around labor (defined here as non-combat skills), and another around social skills (which would accompany the other two methods in their own way). Character level, rather than being one all-encompassing number derived from all your skills, would instead be something derived from two different character levels, which are in turn derived from the two main skill groups (Combat and Non-Combat), as well as attributes. Doing this allows the game to respond to both combat and non-combat characters when it comes to scaling, which alongside this system would be limited to semi-generic quest rewards and general loot (however, only up to a certain point where scaling cuts off). Enemy scaling (If it exists alongside this system, I haven't personally decided yet on whether that'd be worth it, and with the system I laid out below, it might not be) would only be affected by combat level, not your overall level (This is so non-combat characters aren't one-shotted if they run into enemies). As it is in GCD, attribute levels are derived directly from skills. Obviously, you level skills by using them. And as you level your skills, your attributes will raise automatically (I'd make it an option to require rest in order for your attributes to increase) based on what skills you are raising. For sake of argument, lets say every 3 skill points earned in any of an attributes child skills (as a combination or in one skill) would result in a 1 point raise for that attribute. There would be no hard caps (IE, you wont' stop leveling at 100), but when combined with the class system (that I'll explain next) balance (as well as the ability for this system to be enjoyed by any type of gamer) would be derived from the inability to become all powerful regardless of whether you're hardcore or casual, but while also still allowing you to do so if you intentionally work towards it, whether by meta-gaming or by playing the game SO much that you naturally come to that point (but again, not prematurely). Individuality would come naturally as a result of how you play the game, rather than the game forcing you and your character into any particular meta-playstyle. The roleplayer can play his role, the casual can just play, and the meta can sit and do his planning. To explain classes, I'm going to go ahead and lay out the skill groupings, and give an example: Skills of the Adventurer Skills of the Citizen Skills of the State Legendary Skills Perks would come in two flavors, skill specific and overall. Skill perks would be the basic skill trees we see in Skyrim, except designed to augment that skill's basic use rather than define it directly. Overall perks would be gained at overall level milestones and would be based on how you play. Now, classes would work based one one of two choices. You would either A, choose to have a class, in which case you'll gain starting bonuses but will level slower at first, or B, choose not to have a class in which you'll have no starting bonuses but will level faster at first. After a certain level milestone (say, 25) the two choices will become more deeper as your class choices affect your leveling more. If you chose a class, your specializations will start allowing those sets of skills to level faster while others level slower. If you choose to ignore it (or indeed, abandon your class) then you'll see all skills level slightly faster, but at a less rate than if you had taken up a specialization. The reason for this is that, after 25 levels of playing the game, supposedly you'd be fairly set in how you want to play your character. So you're given the option of creating a class based on that, having your choice to stick to a class be rewarded, and being able to continue to ignore it and still gain a bonus. However, these specialization bonuses would cap out once you reach the latter half of leveling (past, say, 65) and would start getting progressively slower as you continued to level until you reached level 100, at which point the xp gain could either continue to drop or would stop at less than the rate of leveling at level 5 (This would require play testing to decide on). Its basically a pyramid cap, rather than a straight soft or hard cap. The reason for doing is is so that character development can try to mirror what you'd be doing at each level milestone. In the beginning you'd be slow, still learning the game and finding your way around. In the middle you'd be picking up speed and excitement. In the end, you'd cap off as you find yourself fairly confident in your abilities and ready for any occasion. Now, lets look at some other things that would complement this: To make this even further viable as a system, one would need to see attributes fleshed out more so that they influence the world. Fallout 3 approached this with attribute checks. They should also influence how you interact with NPC's and even creatures. Indeed, attributes can be fleshed out to quite a lot, even to the point where they can both be beneficial and detrimental to you depending on what they're actually at. For instance, creatures can be intimidated by an imposing person (high strength), but they could also sense someone skulking around even if they're invisible (Low agility). Another idea I had was for dynamically random spawns (bad name is bad) for mobs that actually takes scaling out of the question entirely and makes the best compromise between a static world and a randomly generated one. Every area you go into will have a random chance of spawning different types of mobs, at different levels with every reentry (or more accurately, respawn) to that area. So in this way one could enter a cave and all you'd find is rats. You could come back a week later after killing them, and bandits have moved in. Clear them out, trolls have made a nest. Slay them, a dragon moves in. And so on forever. And the best part about this system is that if you enter an area and find yourself overwhelmed by that enemy (like say, you run into a den of Giants at level 1) then you could leave and come back to face down the enemy that scared you away when you're more powerful. And there would of course be the option to make static areas/dungeons so that quests are supported as well as for providing specific High level areas and specific low level areas for players to complete. Bleak Falls Barrow would be an example of a static, low-level dungeon. Skuldafn would be an example of a static high-level dungeon. Random mob levels could be as low to the point that they're basically butterflies for all the challenge they provide and as high to the point that you'd end up fighting essential demigods. The only scaling is that the random chance would be influenced by your combat level so that you don't run into demigods very much if you're not at least semi-capable at being able to face them, but that so you also don't keep finding rat dungeons when you've reached essential demigod status yourself. Balance in this system is had by the sheer fact that there is no guarantee that your uber-smithed-enchanted Daedric Sword of PWN will actually help you out. Now that isn't to say that things like smithing and enchanting wouldn't still need balance fixes but it does lessen the effects of such systems from being grotesquely overpowered compared to what you could face. I could put out more, but I've been slowly getting this put together over the past couple days and I feel its set up well enough to post it as is.

- Nonsensical. Right, coming from the person who apparently felt the need to dispute something I never even said and completely ignore the point I was making. Riiiggghhhhttt. - Again, disputing something I never said and completely ignoring the point. - No, they're not, and I've already shown why. - Yeah, when your character is a weakling. (And besides that, that was intentional. Tribunal and Bloodmoon are supposed to be end-game content, and as such, the difficulty was based in the end-game) - I did read what you wrote, and the implications were clear as day. (and with you continually flip-flopping on your opinions it isn't hard to make the connection anyway) But anyway, no Morrowind's system didn't only just work for hardcore roleplayers. That is disingenuous. - You can do the same in Morrowind, the only difference is that you didn't level, and that was Beth's fault for introducing the stupid idea of hard caps (as well as a class system that wasn't very well thought out, leveling wise) in the way that they did. But even with that issue, Morrowind at least made you work for it if you wanted to switch to doing something else. Made you earn it. Skyrim just hands it to you and doesn't even cares if it's exacerbating your ADD, with its only saving light being that if you did it too much you either ended up all samey (something people liked to complain about in regards to Morrowind) or a completely unsustainable mess of a character that can only succeed because Skyrim is easy as hell. - Apparently the Thieves Guild has the ability to render itself completely invisible to the outside world. I mean, its not like locals aren't going to know where the drugs and thugs are and that anyone seen hanging around them is probably one of them. - :facepalm: - I wasn't aware that broken game mechanics changed the fact that without them the game actually is hard. Gods forbid you actually play the game the way it was meant to without exploiting anything and find that the game isn't easy even if people, over time, have found multiple ways to exploit the game's mechanics. - :facepalm: - :facepalm: - When, precisely, did it become law that all items in a game adhere to every game mechanic related to that item's type? When exactly, in Morrowind, were you screwed because you didn't have Imperial Silver gauntlets? When exactly, in Skyrim, does my game become unplayable and stupid just because I want to use Nordic Steel Gauntlets with my Nordic Carved Armor? An Iron Helmet with my fur armor? The answer, is absolutely never. - :facepalm: - :facepalm:

- ITT: Character development isn't a system within RPG's. - No, that's just building a game to run efficiently on a particular setup. Its not something that hardware does on its own. - If something like that is "unfair", then no developer should ever take advantage of better hardware and all progress should just stop because its unfair to everyone who hasn't caught up for whatever reason (or can't, because they're stuck using hardware that's going on 7 years old now). - For one, you're pretending that you're speaking for everyone again (Unless of course, you can prove it. Which you can't). Two, your lack of creativity using spellmaking isn't an argument against the system (Nor is the fact that you didn't have to use it). And three, try combining paralysis, shock, and fear magic in skyrim in one spell. Now do it with cure poison, cure disease, restore stamina and restore health. Now do it with fire, frost, and shock. OH wait, you can't. - According to who? The total idiocy that is Todd Howard and his ilk? Fact of the matter is their excuses fall apart once you actually sit there and put yourself in their shoes and think of how YOU would approach solving these issues. I put myself in that position and I see a variety of ways that could be developed to combine all of these features together. That ALONE shows that the dev's put little real effort into these systems, if they even did at all. - Still sounds more like a you problem. I don't have this problem at all (and this is without mods mind you) - There is not a single dungeon in Skyrim (and trust me, I've seen them all in my attempts to try and get into Skyrim like I was with Oblivion and Morrowind) that I couldn't survive at level 1. (at least, out of the ones I'd actually be able to access right out of Helgen anyway, which was the vast majority of them) - Let's take a look at what you actually said: Before this, you had indicated that metagaming was bad (I need only point to every time you start going off about how Morrowind is "complex" if you need proof). Now note the bold. By saying that Skyrim was better designed because you could meta-game better, you are in fact saying that meta-gaming is good. - Yes, because you're totally not forced into one role in Skyrim once you spend any time on it at all. - People talk when you're constantly being seen hanging around shady places and crawling into sewers. - These were never one character games. To do everything on one character is to miss the point entirely, even in Skyrim. - Note how I never disputed that you get stupid amounts of gold. And besides that, if you aren't cheating and playing on a difficulty other than -100 it is far from easy to get the majority of artifacts unless you're already stupidly good enough at the game to the point where you can negate all difficulty. Problem with that is that not everyone has spent nearly 3000 hours on the game and has gotten to the point where you can find your way around the island in your sleep and just merely imagine yourself playing the game and have it be nearly 85% the same exact experience. (Like I have. Yes, I have played Morrowind to absolute death) - All spells you needed for the quests either came in the form of readily available scrolls (That were literally available in the NEXT ROOM) or were level 1 spells that often you already had anyway. There are no blocks when the game hands you the keys to those blocks just by merely starting the game or having the sense to open up that obvious chest sitting right next to the door. - Its the same thing. - I wasn't aware some random inn proprietor should be carrying a full set of every level 1 armor in the game just because he happens to have bits and pieces of them. Frankly, its a damned miracle he even has as many armor pieces as he so often does. With any particular game I can see him have anything from almost a full set of Chitin (in fact I only ever see him missing the greaves and the shield. He always has everything else in my games) to a full set of iron, and if I'm really lucky, most of the steel set as well. That an innkeeper from some fishing village can have such a vast armory is amazing. - Incomplete armor sets don't violate anything. And again, you're being severely cold and calculating about this, when supposedly you were against being such a person. - Right, just ignore the cost differences and the fact touch spells are a boon for low level mages as well as high level mages that want to efficiently use magicka. On cast spells are a waste if you're only working with 200 magicka, and still a waste even if you're trying to efficiently create a MURDERDEATHKILL spell. Needlessly increasing the cost of your spell does not make it any more powerful, nor will the fact that you can cast at distance change that you're wasting magicka if you can do it up close. (Course to me it just sounds like when you played mages in Morrowind (and skyrim for that matter) you made them paper thin and could do nothing but scurry away if someone got close enough to you to wack you with a sword)

- 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.

I love Demigod. Funnest game ever.

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

- 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: 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)

-A game shouldn't have to be modded to be enjoyed. As I've said, there is no other game like Skyrim that isn't made by Beth (or based on work by Beth, in the case of NV), so if we want a fully open world game with the level of freedom and life that an Elder Scrolls game has, all we have is an Elder Scrolls game. And if that ES game isn't stacking up, then we're screwed out of an experience we've come to love until such time that mods have completely changed the game into somethi. Nbetter. Not only should that not have to be the case, but it also means that for someone whose waiting for those mods to be fully, they ed, they are going to be waiting for several before it happens. -In this case, the power of my computer is irrelevant. If its a 5 FPS difference on one computer, thats what its going to be on another when the variables changing are not dependent on hardware. 100 bandits with armor and 100 bandits without armor (presuming vanilla assets that is) are going to take up the same resources regardless of hardware. -Please oh please point out where I said actual content would be locked out because you're on a console. A different number of generic NPC's in large battles is no different than the textures being different, and if its unfair that pure graphical options are different between platforms then the High Resolution Texture Pack shouldn't exist because it isn't fair to consoles. -Semantics. -You're missing the point. Again, I am not suggesting pointless addition of pointless crap. And I'm going to cap it for you: I WANT MORE, I WANT MORE THAT DOES MORE, AND I WANT MORE THAT MEANS MORE. Don't straw man me by saying I just want a 1000 pebbles when I very, VERY clearly want a 1000 iphones. -1. People who whine like that are irrelevant. 2. If you do it right, you can limit spellmaking and balance it out and maintain its usefulness at the same time. These things are not exclusive from one another, and the very basic point of doing so is acknowledging that games shouldn't be a pushover. You should have to WORK if you want to be powerful, but you shouldn't make that work something that makes you have to grind either (IE, by the end of a playthrough one should be either very near or plainly crossing that threshold into being powerful). And do note that I didn't suggest that a new mechanic for it be created, but that the same mechanic be, simplistically speaking, re-skinned. And besides, there will always be people who look to cheat, exploit, and do whatever dirty trick they can to win. You can't change that, and ruining mechanics trying to prevent it just makes things worse. The point is to stop these exploitations from being able to be achieved by someone who is just playing, not meta-gaming. Thats what you refuse to see about this. They're trying to combat meta-gaming by limiting what you can do when you're just playing, rather than limiting what you can do when you meta game. Its literally putting out a fire by lighting another one, except the other fires still roaring as much as ever and the new one's now burning more homes than the other one was. -I don't think you understand that certain systems can in fact reach a point where they're more than adequate and DON'T need to be developed any further, and more than that, that Beth actually reached any of these dead ends. All of the excuses they've given since Morrowind came out for cutting things either amounted to: A. Being legitimate because it wouldn't be feasible to develop that mechanic. (This really only happened between DF and MW. Namely the axing of a lot of skills that, to develop them, would require 3x as much time as they had) OR B. Being completely illegitimate because they fall apart once you sit and think about it. Fact of the matter is, much of what they cut could in fact have been fixed and/or developed more. Few of these systems couldn't have had anything done for them, and for the most part those systems that couldn't were all axed in between DF and MW. - Problem is that most of the mechanics since Morrowind were pretty much just fine the way they were. Yes there were problems, but they should have been fixed. It is plain bad game design to cut mechanics just so you can spend all your time on graphics and new mechanics. (or 2 years on one specific creature, which, while worth the time spent, obviously shows how much more time was spent on them compared to the rest of the game) -Gods forbid the game doesn't just hand things to you. -No, you don't. If said armor isn't affected by said perk, then too bad. If you can't afford or find a fully matching set, then deal with your mismatched set of armor until you can. RISE AND OVERCOME. ;) - Netch and Imperial leather are types of leather, thus they're leather armor. They go together. Fur and bearskin are the same thing, just one's a bit hairier. They go together. Newtscale is a form of lamellar armor (or at least, it looks like it) it goes with Imperial armor. (or leather. That works as well) -The spells already in the game are boring. And more than that, again you use the argument that you can augment spells in Skyrim, but yet refuse to acknowledge that you're stuck with these augments unless you happen to have Dragonborn. Not so with spellmaking, where spells can be changed as you need to and that you're never forced to be forever stuck with that spell, regardless of whether you want it to work the way it does or not. -Bad mages are mages that can't tough it out in the thick of battle, even without a wall of iron between you and your enemy. Not ones that make the most efficient use of spellmaking. -They weren't broken.

That doesn't mean that you should ignore them either. And I'm still waiting on your reply btw to when I proved you wrong that armor pieces had any significance to performance.

-The point is that the Creation Engine is still just Gamebryo and still has a lot of the original issues thats made Gamebryo so problematic over the years. (and this is only made worse by the mods Beth has piled onto it over the years) In all honesty Gamebryo should have been scrapped by now, as there are better engines out there (and better ones that could be made) that do and can do exactly what gamebryo does but better. Cryengine (Look at what Skyrim could look like using the Cryengine: And I'm sure you've seen the actual port of Oblivion's landmax into the Cryengine 2) being a prime example. The Source Engine in comparison has become better with each iteration and fixed what was problematic in the past.(IIRC anyway, I never really followed the Source Engine) And my computer can handle Skyrim just fine, but it can also keep a modded Crysis going at a consistent 50FPS as well. Thing is is that not everyone has such a powerful computer, and not only that, but if you have a multi-gpu setup consisting of two or more cards that, on their own, can handle Skyrim just fine then you're not likely going to see much a difference. That goes both ways.

Hooray, someone gets it! :dance: But anyway, A fair point. Personally, I think the largest a single anarchy could ever get was at a national level over an area approximately the size of France. And that's if everything is absolutely perfect and/or the cogs all fall into place just right as time goes on. Realistically, large scale anarchy would consist of mostly separate anarchic nations spread out over a large area, rather than one, large, combined anarchic nation. And practically, it'd have to be created using the state's consent (Perhaps the greatest challenge presented to anarchists) and alliance, if only until such time as that anarchy can become a fully separate nation that is able to stand its ground against most any internal or external threat. Without securing those two crucial things, that nation is most assuredly doomed to be consumed either by the state it carved itself out of, or some other one invading it. (if it doesn't collapse on its own that is, but thats a mostly separate issue) It may very well be, however, that anarchism in general won't come about until the idea and implementation of the state is already collapsing on a global scale. But this is partly why I'm an not an anarchist. I don't want to wait, and autarchy is far easier to establish. This goes back to the ideas of mutualism and voluntaryism, as well the general advocacy of personal responsibility. In being an anarchist, it is the responsibility of that person to help maintain the kind of society he is in favor of, without any coercion to do so. To be a part of an anarchic nation and not help maintain it is only a luxury that will only ever be enjoyed by those that are inconsequential to the operation of that nation, and, for the most part, do not call upon the services society can provide. This is why I argue in favor of anarchism despite the fact that I don't agree with it, because only within anarchism could someone such as myself be left completely alone and yet not be forced to live in secret nor under any of the rules that I cannot accept to follow directly. Any compensation asked by that society in return is something I can directly agree to give or not to give. This is not the case in the status quo. (though in my case the only reason I pay taxes at all is more because I absolutely adore where I live and would hate to have to leave it for any reason) Even despite human nature, for the most part humans are good, and much of what is commonly showed to be something that will break anarchy, so to speak, are more cultural issues than they are ones of genetics or natural behavior. And where these things overlap anyway, often times one exacerbates the other. People raised to be complete :devil: are obviously going to have the more horrible parts of human nature show through them, while people raised to be one step below a living saint aren't likely to have the less than desirable parts of their nature come out. (Its absolutely nice to actually move forward for once, though for how long IDK)

A leader does not have to be a ruler. If your ability as a leader is so little that you need the iron fist of authority and coercion to lead your people then you are no leader. And more than that, if you as a leader are so fearful that you will try and force your position regardless of what the people think of you and want of you, then you are, again, no leader. I didn't think I was talking about a tyrant or a control freak of some type. I was talking about the basic structure of social groups and the propensity for those more affluent to evolve into a leadership position. That really doesn't strike me as tyrannical, but in some cases does occur. I was wondering if the formation of such an individual constitutes the basic form of a government. They would not need to have physical, just be persuasive, Is it not human nature to collect into groups and if so, would not the formation of said group work against the concept of anarchy? It would only work against it if we are talking about individualist anarchy. IE, where there truly are no binds between individuals and whose relations only amount to that of impersonal neighbors (Which doesn't necessarily have to be chaotic) rather than that of a full on society or community of people. And again, anarchy(anarchism) does not mean the absence of government, just that of the state, a different form of government.

-I actually got curious and booted up Skyrim, and I spawned for myself 100 bandits, which all had all their equipment slots full for the most part. The game ran fine at a fairly consistent 40FPS. So, then I went back into the CK and made a new bandit that was completely the same as any other bandit, just without any equipment. I went back into the game and spawned that bandit 100 times. My FPS raised by an average 3-5. (note this was in Whiterun, so the bandits all promptly entered combat. They weren't just standing around.) My computer is powerful, but a difference like that between the two cases is absolutely insignificant (Honestly, if you're going to get caught up in trying to save that amount of FPS, then your computer probably can only just barely run the game as a whole), and further, proves that equipment being rendered on an NPC is for the most part irrelevant. The FPS differences could easily be reconciled by having the graphics options dictate how many NPC's can spawn at once, which is actually perfect because almost all cases in Skyrim where so many NPC's are present on screen at once (where it actually becomes a real concern to try and save FPS), its a case of the vast majority of them being generic and, not only that, they're NPC's that you're not only expected to not even want to loot, but also really can't. (IE, Civil War battles) This also doesn't stop them from creating one-piece suits for these generic, mass-spawned NPC's. 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. -And the difference is? -That kind of expansion is just poor game design. And more than that, don't straw man me. You know damn well I'm asking for for substance, not just meaningless expansion and development. The two are not exclusive. -They clearly did when the excuses they give for not including certain things fall apart once you sit and think about it logically. Logically, if your system for spellmaking is a problem balance wise, then clearly the idea should be to limit the abusive or problematic parts of it. Intoduce a cap on certain problem effects, either directly through a hard cap, or indirectly through a soft cap in the form of exponential increase of costs. Both solve the the problem of balance in the system, one by simply stopping the ability to abuse altogether, the other by requiring the player to put a MASSIVE amount of work into obtaining the absurdly powerful. And concerns over "spread sheety"? Not only is that just silly altogether, but you can remove the spread sheet aspect entirely and still maintain the spellmaking we had. Either create a new menu altogether for spell making that doesn't use numbers to convey what you're doing, or, better yet, make spell making a mini-game of sorts. He says that spellmaking takes the magic out of magic, well, lets make the player delve into the real spellmaking. Make whats implied in the creation of a spell the actual process of it. I can't think of a way to design such a game atm, but its still a far more interesting idea than "Eh, lets just cut out the idea entirely". And as for the physical aspects of magic? It was awesome to have this in Skyrim, but there was nothing stopping these things from being introduced to spellmaking, and indeed could have made it even more interesting. Does your fire spell have more force or heat to it (difference between an explosion and a wall of fire)? Is your frost spell more emulating of a blizzard, or a deep freeze? Your lightning spell more debilitating or destructive? Etc etc. Cutting the system out entirely is just lazy, there's no way to dispute that unless the system was SO unbelievably broken and fundamentally flawed from the very basics of that system that it would have be completely redesigned from the ground up to fix it (Which isn't the case here, at all). -Someone's forgetting that there are more than 3 AC games, and more than that, you're ignoring as well that Beth has had their entire history to continually develop their original ideas, just as the AC team did. Beth has refused to do so, and instead just cut what isn't working from each successive game, leaving the few things that either A, haven't been cut yet, or B, do work as is, or C, are completely new. Ubi didn't do this (With the exception of AC3, which, as I said earlier, I think was more because of the new engine) and instead did the complete opposite. The amount of content in either of the games is irrelevant. Beth has been doing these large-content games for years now, just as Ubi Montreal has been doing small-content games for years. The amount of content became irrelevant to the progression of mechanics once they already established they could even deliver a game of that size at all. -I can get most, if not all of a full set of iron armor right in Seyda Neen. -Someone isn't thinking very much. All of the incomplete armor sets in Morrowind share some kind of similar or exact material with another set. And this is completely ignoring that not every piece of armor needs a matching set. -In morrowind you pretty much can, as spellmakers are all over the place. In Oblivion you couldn't, but that didn't matter. If you even remotely knew how to travel efficiently, it wasn't hard to get in front of a spellmaker/altar within a few minutes, if it even took that long. Sure, it didn't help when you were deep in a dungeon, but thats a good thing. Gods forbid the game present me a challenge where I'm not prepared and can't exactly just scamper away and come back. -In morrowind I can create thousands of different spells, and more than that, I'm not stuck with them. If you augment your fire spells in Skyrim, you're stuck with what they do. If I don't like what my spells are doing in Skyrim, I'm out of luck. But in Morrowind, I can just delete that spell and start from scratch. And I can create a fire spell that does fire damage, can stop someone cold and root them to the spot, cause them fear, calm them down and do whatever I want. You say you're giving more in Skyrim, but yet I can do everything Skyrim can (excepting physical stuff, but that's not doesn't outweigh what Morrowind spellmaking could do) and more. And on top of that, I have the complete and total freedom to do as I please. To take back a choice and start over, and all without any unnecessary and redundant back-travelling to some god awful realm from a DLC. -That was the point. Touch spells cost the least at the cost of putting your mage in danger. Touch spells were the bread and butter of the sorcerer type of player, who used heavy armor defensively and spells offensively. Someone who was good at the game could easily take advantage of the extra power touch spells can give a mage. Fact of the matter is, spellmaking (among other things) allowed for being a mage to be one of the most creative playstyles ever, as you could very nearly create just about any kind of mage you wanted. This is not possible in Skyrim, no matter how hard you try to overblow small mechanical differences. -Now whose the one being cold and calculating? And besides that, again, its a matter of creativity. For instance, weakness spells make it completely possible to only need 1-2 points in a spell effect (especially the high cost ones) for it to come out to having to same power as one you set to be 20-20. And then of course, 1-21 is better to have than 20-20, and allows for more effects while maintaining much of the same power. And as for armor enchantments, a lot of effects only need 1 point in them for them to work just fine, and those that don't can be combined between all of your armor pieces for the effect desired. And this is all without breaking the game using RVM to get 10-1 enchants. And the thing about Morrowind's enchanting was that most items had way less EP than they should have, namely because enchanting had no limits otherwise. (the fix should have been to limit enchanting, not make items have absurdly low EP numbers)

No one said that this is what happens within anarchism. Feel free to go back and look over the system I laid out. And yet you say this as you continually refuse to acknowledge that anarchy has more than one definition. Right, I am the one that is most assuredly putting his fingers in his ears. :rolleyes: This is actually very true and goes back to what I was talking about earlier, the differences between true anarchists, fadarchists and general psychos. There are indeed social aspects to anarchism rather than just political. Its just a shame that no one ever goes too far into them (nor even entertains the idea that they exist)

This doesn't work once you realize TMII had absolutely nothing to do with parts of the legion being left in Hammerfel. That was his General and his General alone who decided to do that, who in all likelihood probably would have been hanged (Or was, I don't think it was ever said what happened to him) had the Emperor found out he had intentionally weakened the army he had called upon.

A leader does not have to be a ruler. If your ability as a leader is so little that you need the iron fist of authority and coercion to lead your people then you are no leader. And more than that, if you as a leader are so fearful that you will try and force your position regardless of what the people think of you and want of you, then you are, again, no leader. Not really, because a topic title is just lead in to the actual, detailed question. (Or rather, its supposed to be. In this case it most certainly is.) And if you're going to continually put a form of anarchy that isn't even being talked about here as the crux of your argument then I'm not going to respond to you anymore.

- Called an armored skirt. And besides that, even in Morrowind and Oblivion there were a multitude of designs that did just as these armors did, but yet they still had greaves and other leg armors. And as for Skyrim specifically, prime example is fur armor. There already exists in the game a variant that literally cuts the armor in half and still makes sense as armor. The same can be applied to every armor, with only slightly more development on the legs depending on the armor. (Hide/Studded for example, would need something under the skirt for it to make sense really, but even then, that problem exists even now) -According to who? You? Fact of the matter is is that you've been told multiple times that AI costs far more resources than armor pieces (which I agree with), and thus far you've refused to prove otherwise. -I would argue that consolidating skills for no other reason than to pretend you're creating something new is unnecessary and, indeed, redundant. You don't solve the problem by just consolidating things into each other, you solve it by making those individual things do more while still maintaining their separation. Fact of the matter is is that when you consolidate weapons skills into one skill, you end up rendering all those weapons just differently colored variations of the same weapon. There is no difference between swords, maces, and war axes because they're all just one-handed weapons, all governed by the same skill and for the most part the same perks. It doesn't matter if the system was just merely copied over to the individual weapon skills (Which btw is a glaringly simplified way of doing it), the mere fact that a mace would have an actual, discernible difference and seperation from a sword would create far more diversity than is present now in Skyrim, even if the systems governing the two are the same. The mere separation is enough for the basics of it. And from there you can expand on those skills, make them do more and allow for true specialization into a weapon. Consolidation doesn't make for diversity, expansion does. -No one's arguing for incomplete features. Thats something that's pissed me off all through Bethesda's history. But that doesn't mean that incomplete features already implemented in the previous game should be abandoned just be cause you wouldn't develop it. -I already said that AC was a simple game. I was just using it as an example that features CAN in fact be maintained and expanded on. It doesn't matter how small the AC games were, because the time spent between the games in that series and the time between Elder Scrolls is proportionally similar. Where Assassin's Creed had little to expand on and little time to do so, the ES games have had a lot to expand on and quite a bit of time to do it as well. What Beth has been doing however since Morrowind (and Daggerfall, and Arena, but the former three games were in a very different situation compared the latter 3) is, rather than expanding on whats there, just cutting mercilessly (and often times the cuts were things that were actually pretty well developed as a feature, but just needing expansion) while adding EVEN more fairly half-assed features. Every step Beth has made forward is met by 3 steps back. This does not progress make. -So what you're saying is that you were bad at Morrowind? Okay, that's interesting. I remember in Morrowind that it was mindbogglingly easy to get and maintain a full set of armor. Only Daedric was the real pain in the ass to get as a full set, and that was intentional. Yes there were incomplete armor sets, but that's no excuse, particularly when a lot (Hint, virtually All) of the incomplete armors can easily be made a part of one of the basic sets. -You do realize how powerful one has to be to cast even one of those spells right? And you also realize how powerful one's character has to be to defeat Vivec, right? The power we as the PC possessed wasn't something readily available to the common rabble. And broken is just a matter of opinion. What's broken to you is a goal to another. And this isn't even mentioning that for the most part, much of the really powerful spells you could make tended to either A, require you to be REALLY good at the game (at which point you deserve the power regardless), or B, require you to abuse certain systems past their intended limits within the game. Or, in certain cases, both. Again, cutting doesn't solve the problem, it just takes the problem away so it can be ignored, which is pure laziness. -I wasn't aware it was possible in vanilla Skyrim to chose your perks on the fly, allow yourself to to cast 3 or more different spell effects at once, and in what order. You really are just grasping here, trying to prove that Skyrim has more spell diversity than Morrowind did. What if I don't want to use weapons? And this is completely ignoring why touch spells were so important to the aspiring mage. (I'm starting to think you barely played Morrowind at all, if you even did) So?

This falls apart once you look at all of their designs and realize you can split the armor in half and still call the lower half some variation of leg armor. This is a case of the excuse following the decision, not the excuse requiring the decision. And yet no one has substantially proven that more items rendering puts more strain than the same amount of items just combined into one. You can shout about this and that, but real numbers pulled straight from the game are the only truth here. And this is completely disregarding HeyYou's last post, which is quite true. Doesn't change the fact that its still less diverse, nor does it automatically make those "specializations" actually mean anything. You can spec into axes all you want but you can still pack just as much of a wallop with a sword so long as its held with the same number of hands. Diversity isn't delivered by changing stats and colors around. Its delivered by allowing certain items and certain skills to do something that is wholly different from what another skill or item will do, and more than that, doing something that another item or skill can't. Diversity in weapons goes out the window the moment the same amount of damage is pumped out by several items, but there is no substantial difference between how those items do it. Bleeding loses all relevance past level 10, mace's ability to ignore armor is pointless because all other onehanded weapons can still punch through the armor anyway, and criticals have never amounted to anything more than a power attack without the stamina loss. These items are not unique from one another, because damage figures out to be virtually the same across the board (The differences being far to minimal to care about, even for someone who crunches numbers) and because they are all governed by the same skill, making them less diverse all on its own simply because they all become one-handed weapons, not maces, axes, and swords. Yes, good game balance is achieved by generally allowing all goals to be achieved regardless of your choice of path to that goal, but when the choice amounts to nothing more than a choice of favorite color, then there is no substantial choice. You're just coloring your objective in different shades of grey. There's a big difference between cutting something just because you didn't develop enough, and developing something so that it has more to it than you originally had. Guess which one makes for a far more interesting game. It isn't impossible to advance a game forward and leave nothing behind. Assassin's Creed,granted while being a relatively simple series, largely maintained all of its original components from the original game , and kept that going for each successive game, each game's new features appearing in the next. Only AC3 broke the record on that, and that was largely because of the new engine, I think, more than anything else. This was always possible. Always. 20 different fire spells is just 20 different fire spells. I want my fire/ice/shock/poison kill ball of death back. I want to be a will power mage again where I could out magic Vivec, Mannimarco, half a dozen mages, and then some all at the same time with 100 magicka, which is now impossible without spellmaking. Where is my kill and disappear spell? My healing spell that repelled the dead, calmed my enemies, and gave people a bit of luck for their trouble? My paralyze spell that made the targets invisible, virtually blinking them out of reality? My basic cure all spell that was a boon in the wilds of Cyrodiil? Its not enough just to make the individual spell effects do more. Truly diverse spells can only be had when we can control exactly what we are casting, when we cast it, and how powerful it will be. With the lack of on touch and on cast enchantments, as well as the strict limit of two enchantment effects per item (Morrowind allowed you to put as many enchantment effects as you wanted provided you had a strong enough soul and your item was powerful enough to hold them all. And do remember there were more possible items that you could have on you that were enchanted in Morrowind, so no, Skyrim in no way whatsoever has even remotely the same enchanting power as Morrowind or even Oblivion did) makes this an outright lie.

Its probably possible to attach the Bloodskall script (i'm almost certain its a script rather than an enchantment. I'd have to look at it in the CK) to a different weapon and have it work out generally the same. And then from there its just a matter of changing the color the effect (and possibly duplicating it so it doesn't replace the original) itself and bam.

If that's the same mod I'm thinking of, there should be a sword or 2 in the Steel section that can be made using those different parts.