Skyrim isn't dumbed down. Purists are.

[veegsta]

To me, there's a difference between dumbed down and streamlined. With Oblivion, I felt that things were far too "cookie-cutter." For the most part, you HAD to level skills a certain way, or you would be overwhelmed by the enemies that scale better than you did. Yes, that took planning and you had to be specific about it, but that doesn't exactly equal depth. With Skyrim, I feel like I have a ton of freedom to level how *I* want to. That, to me, is what depth is all about it. Versatility and reward, not a ton of stats I don't even care for just to be on par with ridiculous scaling.

 

That's all. :)

[Deleted3158906User]

Any way this is an endless argument...

 

Indeed. It's all a matter of personal preference and it's a single player-game. Do what you want and don't worry about what others are doing. Why debate it in a forum?

Because people think others want to hear what they think. :rolleyes:

[dreamingof2004]

There is nothing wrong with Skyrim you just kinda have to judge it on its own. By itself its a great game that im enjoying to its fullest but when you start comparing past TES games its easy to be critical of Skyrim and I dont blame people for being critical of a game they paid for.

[Lachdonin]

I agree that classes are a pointless relic that TES clung onto for too long because of their relavence in other RPG styles. I most certianly am glad they are gone, and i never followed them anyway.

 

I also love the new leveling dynamic and perk system. So what if i'm a 'warrior' class, mixing potions should still account for something. At the same time, just increasing the skill offers nothing in the way of unique talents, its the same for everyone. This is a role the perk system fills in nicely, meaning 2 level 100 Alchemists can be radically different.

 

I do, however, miss the range of skills, and think that the diminishment over the last 2 games is not the right way to go. Morrowind had far more specialisation, all of which was purely asthetic. At 100 skill, 1handed swords, axes and maces were all pretty much the same anyway. But you could power into one particular type of weapon for nothing other than thematic reasons, and i feel that type of dynamic would be even better placed in Skyrim, with the potential for dual weilding.

 

I also miss my armour grades... Studded Leather can hardly be considered in the same category as Hide, or even boiled leather (regular Leather armour). The Magic system, too, seems to have lost a good deal of its capabilities. With no spell crafting, no custom enchants and a massively decrease spell list, i just get the feeling the've rendered Magic back down the the Morrowind Level of being something of a second fiddle.

 

Still, overall i think the style of play in Skyrim is a vast improvement over previous models. And this is comming from something of a videogame elitist.

 

 

Oh, you know what i REALLY miss? A functional item placement system... Gods, how i long for the drag-and-drop system of Morrowind...

[Deleted472477User]

Did someone summon Mustakrakish?

 

I don't know. I used to think the TES games were getting dumbed down, and in some ways, yes, they are. I'm all for anything that makes the games rich, complex, and deep. These things aren't gained through playing a spreadsheet, though. They're done with engaging writing, NPCs who say and do believeable things, and not subjecting the player to discussions about mudcrabs, the Fighter's Guild, and mudcrabs joining the Fighter's Guild every few minutes :P

 

Daggerfall had one hell of a plot! Very mature (not just in the R rated sense, but in the sense of not dumbing down for the masses too) and exciting. Morrowind did too. People complained Morrowind was dumbed-down from Daggerfall, but for the wrong reasons in my opinion. (I don't think that make dungeons much more navigable instead of designed like bowls of spaghetti is dumbing down!) I do wish it had kept the holidays, and the way that Daggerfall had of handling Daedric Prince summoning (You had to be highly ranked in the Mage's Guild, pay a ton of gold, AND do it on the correct summoning day. Even then, there was a chance that you'd get nothing, or that Sheogorath would show up instead. This made it more exciting and challenging to me.)

 

I'm an old school gamer. I've played computer games since 1986. So yeah, sometimes I get some nostalgia for the 'good old days' creeping in. But when I take off the rose-colored glasses, I can see how truly awful in their own way some of those games were. Bard's Tale (the old version, not the one where you play a bard) had tons of artificial difficulty that was beyond stupid, but just because game devs have figured out ways to make games challenging without resorting to combats with nine groups of ninety-nine zombies does not equal dumbing down :P

Edited November 24, 2011 by nyxalinth

[Jackal2233]

For the most part, you HAD to level skills a certain way

 

Yes, for those 5x multipliers, same as oblivion. Skyrim has a much better system then that.

Some mods in oblivion even fixed it, and Skyrim has incorporated those ideas. But everyone has different tastes, but ffs please people, wait till the CK comes out then you can mod it to however you like.

 

But personally, for me, Skyrim has come a LONG way. From minor details such as leveling mods in Oblivion to the most simple details of ridding the glowing enchantment from armor. They found a balanced path and chose it, anyone would have done the same.

[Handofbane]

The "dumbing down", while it could be applied to the lack of stats/numbers, seems to apply more to a few other things. The numbers can be gotten by with/worked around/ignored. The really tragic part of the dumbing down process was the removal outright of customization as far as spell choices/creation of new spells, and the ability to customize your armor/clothing through more wearable item slots. While I understand the argument "we don't want to overwhelm people", it's very hard to argue that it cannot be called dumbing it down for the masses.

 

Things like the UI fall more under an massive failure of consolization than dumbing down, though the removal of any buff/debuff list from the HUD leans more towards dumbing down. The lack of more skills/stats can be an annoyance for some, but it is not totally game-breaking, and likely will see a change via mods down the road (after all, we got a full conversion of Oblivion from the skill-bar levels to XP per kill/quest, this can't be too much more complicated). I am not going to get into a full UI discussion again, though, as that has been discussed to death in many other threads what is wrong and what needs to change for K/M users.

 

All that said, Skyrim is still a good game, good enough to have drawn close to 100 hours played out of me, and I haven't even finished the main quest yet.

[dorkSIDES]

Did...you just write this to start arguments?

That's like 80% of the threads in here. :whistling:

 

Agreed.

Goliath if you don't want dissenting opinions on something-which I would add is not fact on either side of the spectrum and fully opinion based-then don't make pointless threads calling people fools.

 

I think the game has got depth over other RPG's, see how I even agree with you and still find you to be a bit of a d(!)ck....

[DarkGenius]

Nice rant Goliath978, but reminding that "Purists" are also important for the future of TES sequels. Remember that.

 

Did you see what they did with Magic? They just destroyed it, I can't say that Skyrim is faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar better than Oblivion or Morrowind, because these two have many things better than skyrim, still, skyrim is revolutionary. There is many spells that I'd never have expected from a TES Sequel, like transmute, Wards, Runes and such. But Bethesda disappointed me, as I play mostly as Battlemage, Sorcerer and Mage. The Spells sistem, the whole magic system is left off. They say there are over a hundred spells, there's no such thing! there only stronger versions of vanilla spells, and some are annoying miscellaneous like the Telekinesis. You don't know how much I loved mysticism.. Telekinesis was my beloved spell.. they KILLED IT.. I used it for opening doors, catching stuff from distance and throwing it there, placing this here and that there. Do you know what Telekinesis do in Skyrim? We lift stuff with KILLING Intent. It's no longer a tool, its a weapon. That really made me say "I expected more" Did you people Join the Bards College? You can do Nothing more than recover a few instruments and do a Exploring in an Dungeon (I hope they make an DLC for that faction, to add more stuff, like the ability to use instruments that was my whole point of joining that faction)[

 

There's no Spellcraft in this game, I.. can't express my disappointment with it.

Made me feel like there's no place for mages in skyrim, y'know? spell system is disrespected, telekinesis which was a tool for exploring, attack and distracting is useless, y'know you could place something on the ground and and lift it with telekinesis, throw it to make Enemy NPC go searching it, while we ambush them. In Oblivion.

 

Not disrespectful of Nords, there can't be only warriors on this game, As the Arch-mage of Winterhold college said, and I quote it. Magic is True Power, "it deserves proper respect and study". Not because you're a Dragonborn, that doesn't mean they can do a Game only for Warrior/Thief Class. So, you can cast a few spells? Yes, few..

 

Also, now that we are all about rant about something, the mods for Oblivion.. do you people don't get disappointed? to have more Reskins, vanity mods than immersive, lore-like and quests?

There are a few mods in The Elder Scrolls Oblivion that are Immersive, you can see Middas, that mod changed the whole magic system in Oblivion, As a sorcerer I like to have the ability to create my undead servants, use reagents to create atronachs, conjure Deadra servants do my bidding. There are mods that do that in Oblivion, Like Dark Arts and a few new. But most of them are abandoned, why? the "ModBase" of Oblivion turns around: Retextures, Vanity items and Armors/Weapons, there's not much immersive strength of lore on most of them. Today I saw an mod for Skyrim, which adds Fallout 101 numbers on Iron Armor. Will this disaster happen to skyrim too? Have the entire modbase around Retextures and Vanity Armors?

 

Share your opinion people, I know some of you thinks the same.

 

Sincerely,

 

DG.

Edited November 24, 2011 by DarkGenius

[HaikenEdge]

Your bold is loud homes.