Skyrim isn't dumbed down. Purists are.

[BleedingCrown]

I've been hopping around Nexus for a few years, from game to game, and I don't know if its my imagination or not, but there seems to be a level of hostility and unfriendliness among the Skyrim crowd that I haven't encountered before. Of course every game has its core of negative, antisocial guys who consider themselves the 'elite' and think everyone else is beneath contempt. Just seems more prevalent here.

[oldspice2625]

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.

 

THANK YOU.... SOMEONE WHO UNDERSTANDS AND IS NOT A LOYAL FANBOY...

 

from the bottome of my cold, dead heart in this Dremora encasing, I thank you.

 

You expressed everything I needed to say. I loved Telekinesis too, it was the bread and butter of a mage. A lot of people hated oblivion. I played the main quest through and all the other quest lines through and had about 500 hours invested in my characters before i even stepped foot on Nexus. I love the class sytem, it reminds of of what I am, and sets perameters on what I should and should not level up first, it gives me an idea of how I need to level up.

 

If people had trouble with oblivion's level up system... i'm sorry, you must obviously need help making a custom class... you can make your own.

 

I almost always went: Thief Sign, +5 Luck, +5 Endurance, with my major skills being ones I could easily control like Armorer, Alchemy, Illusion... one for each attribute and did the 5/5/1 method of leveling up... I quested in between and had plenty of time for Immersion... some people are just not good at RPGs though. That's fine.

 

Mages were destroyed in this game. I know the nords don't like magic, and this game is set in their home... but there are almost no presence of mages. YOu get a rogue mage here and there, but most are bandits IN THE SAME GOD FREAKING DARN ARMOR... Where did that go? The enemies shop at walmart or something? Wtf is that? Thanks for giving me a system where I can not make money from dungeons later on and have to enchant crappy armor with my precious soul gems to be able to make a profit to afford the expensive crap I need.

 

 

This game could have done so much better for magic, it failed... realize this.

 

 

Enchanting leaves me with little to enchant with... DUMBED DOWN. Only like 3 useful things to enchant vs the many oblivion and the predecesors had to offer... potions, again, little to do... magicka, stamina, and HP... all my poisons, ingredient lists, potion recipes for nothing... I only need those three... OH JOY.

 

Where are my five effect potions? Where is Silence with illusion? Where is detect life? Where are all the custom spells at? Where is the mages guild? There is none except a crappy mages college that has like five quests and you are done... wtf? Seriously? You people are fine with this? None of you has a problem with the utter LACK of immersion through side guilds?

 

Dark Brotherood is a JOKE... you become listener in FIVE SECONDS. What is that? Theives guild... other guilds... dont recognize your status, no fame/infamy. That's some crap right there.

 

 

Sorry that i'm ranting but my god, this crap is rediculous. If you are a thief, you have godmode on, if you are a warrior, you are golden... if you are a mage... prepare to die a lot or cheat with the console until you get Master Robes of Destruction and max out your percent decrease bonus for destruction spells.

 

i'll get flamed no doubt, but THANK YOU

 

DarkGenius... YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

[hymhym]

 

DarkGenius... YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

 

You can add my voice to yours. The thing I am most glad about Skyrim? The fact that I decided to make my and old geezer warrior smith for my character long before the game was even released. If had wanted to play a mage character (or anything but an old rough looking geezer) I would have sorely been disappointed.

[Vindekarr]

I've been hopping around Nexus for a few years, from game to game, and I don't know if its my imagination or not, but there seems to be a level of hostility and unfriendliness among the Skyrim crowd that I haven't encountered before. Of course every game has its core of negative, antisocial guys who consider themselves the 'elite' and think everyone else is beneath contempt. Just seems more prevalent here.

 

No, it's not your imagination-a lot of new folks have come to the site for Skyrim mods, and not all of them read the ToS, apparently. For some reason Skyrim's forum just seems to be much more tense and ragey, maybe it's just because of the much wider appeal sucking through more blowhards, but I miss the old villiage pub days of the Nexus, it's still a great site, but I really don't like the ragey fightpicking a lot of the new lads are bringing in.

[JimboUK]

I've been hopping around Nexus for a few years, from game to game, and I don't know if its my imagination or not, but there seems to be a level of hostility and unfriendliness among the Skyrim crowd that I haven't encountered before. Of course every game has its core of negative, antisocial guys who consider themselves the 'elite' and think everyone else is beneath contempt. Just seems more prevalent here.

 

No, it's not your imagination-a lot of new folks have come to the site for Skyrim mods, and not all of them read the ToS, apparently. For some reason Skyrim's forum just seems to be much more tense and ragey, maybe it's just because of the much wider appeal sucking through more blowhards, but I miss the old villiage pub days of the Nexus, it's still a great site, but I really don't like the ragey fightpicking a lot of the new lads are bringing in.

 

The same thing happened when Fallout 3 was released, the place suddenly filled up with newcomers who couldn't discuss anything without insults and abuse. Give it a month or two and they'll have moved on to the next shiny thing and we'll be left in peace.

[Vindekarr]

I hope so, I'm not complaining, but this isn't Quake Of Battlefield or CallOfField 3, we aren't enemies here so it'd be nice if folks could leave the bad tempers at the door. As for Skyrim, I really think they made an appreciable improvement over an already very strong foundation. Does it cure cancer, give you doomsday pecs, slice bagels, and wash your car at the same time? hardly, but it's a good game, a very good game, and it's everything an ES game means to my generation of gamer,

 

I'm enjoying it immensely, it's the first game for years where I've actualy been motivated to sit down somewhere and take a break. So often now you're rushing about everywhere at maximum speed, because you have to. Capture the flag! kill fifteen boardragonwolflizardcliffracers! make me a sammich! fight badimus mucho! Well sometimes I like to take a break, give my hands, which sometimes get sore holding something as small as a mouse, a rest, and have a cold drink while soaking in the scenery. Skyrim allows that, and frankly, I'd say from the vistas in places like Darkwater Pass, encourages it. Not enough of that in action games anymore.

 

And as for the characters-I've heard a lot of flak thrown at the way character, female especialy, look here, but not everyone wants to play as a 3/4 naked underage anime catgirl, some of us just want to play as people, and I'd always rather be an "ugly old tranny-looking witch" than the afforementioned obsurd creature, and if you've ever been to somewhere like Norway, Finland, Russia, Canada or anywhere else with permafrost, you'll notice a distinct lack of 3/4 naked underage catgirls, the weather's so cold the ears tend to fall off. :mellow:

Edited November 25, 2011 by Vindekarr

[ginnyfizz]

Now now Vindekarr, don't YOU start throwing out the "naked underage anime catgirl" thing as well. That's what the rabid fanboys/new ragers that you deplore are doing. YOU are much better than that.

 

I would certainly agree that the community is getting nastier. I have been labelled as a racist and xenophobe simply for pointing out that one of the dumbed down things about Skyrim, namely the chargen sliders, stops me from making female elves that IMO don't look like males, based on the observations of my fifty years that tell me that women of any race don't have longer chins and jaws as do males. Admittedly I haven't seen any elves at the bottom of my garden (not even when completely ratted) but you get the general point...

 

Yes, I HAVE been to Sweden, right up to the Arctic circle, and I can confirm that the people are not wizened old trolls despite the harshness of the climate. Quite the reverse in fact, they seemed rather good looking. One person I met there was 102 when she died and still beautiful. It simply does not automatically follow that harsh climate = craggy people. Hence what Bethesda are doing is stereotyping, and then removing choice.

 

Anyway...yes, magic is crippled, I could not believe that I had to dismantle something to learn an enchantment in order to enchant something else. I have a ton of soul gems after forays into Dwemer ruins in particular, but doing something with them is quite another story. I agree with the other points as made by previous posters, wot no telekinesis, spellcraft...the list goes on.

 

And after all the hoohah about the Oblivion Main Questline being too short compared with the incredibly deep one in Morrowind, what do we get with Skyrim? All questlines ridiculously short. IDK who Bethesda are catering to, but it seems to be people with short attention spans.

[lolozori]

you forgot to include daggerfall, so i suspect you never played it or any good rpg and don t know what you talk about.

Skyrim is dumbed down like oblivion was and like morrowing was.Magic system sux, no wall climbing, houses often have no roof access for thief, guild quest are short and seem not finished once you get guild master.

 

 

 

also

Daggerfall>morrowind>skyrim>oblivion

Edited November 25, 2011 by lolozori

[nick20404]

I remember in Daggerfall you could buy houses (allot of houses not just 1 per city), put your money in banks (gold had weight in daggerfall so you couldn't carry 10000000 pieces of gold without being weighed down) You could take loans out and sell your houses, boats you could sail on, horses that you could fight from, carriages you could ride you could bash down doors with your weapons and a slew of other things that have been removed and dumbed down to the state which we are at now, In daggerfall Argonians\kahjits could not wear shoes because they had non human feet and they couldn't wear helmets because of there non human shaped heads, you could have separate gloves on each hand you could wear a steal glove on the left and a fur on the right. I could go on for pages on how dumbed down the series has become but really if you haven't played the older games there's no point in even debating it. Edited November 25, 2011 by nick20404

[falloutreign]

I prefer vanilla Skyrim to oblivion really I do, including the skill and level systems regardless of simplification. Although the lengths they go to nudging players towards the factions and other interesting finds is dumbing down to an extreme; I don't know if anyone can argue that.

 

On the magic system, I don't think its dumbed down at all, I don't think its any easier than its predecessors but I may be a minority here. However I still think its a horrible implementation, lacks any real form of customization and depth. It is also insanely weak compared to any other class type (except against dragons.)