You’re just a an unimportant piece of some game *Contains major spoile

[HeyYou]

Armor has nothing to do with how many NPCs can be on the screen at any one time. That is all about AI processing.

 

A modder over on the beth forums wanted to be able to do massive battles in morrowind. He was able to get upwards of 100 NPC's on screen at any one time, simply by stripping out most of their AI. They were not running around naked.

 

But, I should know better than to try and argue this point with you, after all, you are obviously a game designer, and know more than all the rest of us combined.....:rolleyes:

[imperistan]

Morrowind and Oblivion only beat out Skyrim numerically because all of its items had little, if anything, to make them different. All melee weapons in Morrowind were essentially just swords with different skins, whereas Skyrim gives them things like differing speeds, stagger levels, noise levels, and special effects via perks.

 

Whats really funny is that Morrowind and Oblivion could put all of these things on their weapons, and for the most part did. And what wasn't, wasn't impossible to do, just not in Beth's book of stuff to do at the time.

 

 

And besides that, if you're going to try and use that argument, then nothing makes anything different because its all just meaningless repaints and respecs of the basic armor, weapon, spell. Thats all any item in any of the games are when you get right to it, and everything beyond those basic differences make those items diverse. What Skyrim is doing is moving towards the less diverse end of the spectrum, not the other way around.

 

And this is most certainly true. The consolidation of skills, armor, and total removal of spellmaking and meaningful enchanting are the main culprits. Less overall diversity in items also does it, namely because of the consolidation of armor into fewer pieces.

 

I can create a far more unique set of armor in Morrowind than I can in Skyrim. Not only stat wise, but in terms of looks, weight, effectiveness, noise levels, etc etc. Not so in Skyrm.

[sajuukkhar9000]

Armor has nothing to do with how many NPCs can be on the screen at any one time. That is all about AI processing.

 

A modder over on the beth forums wanted to be able to do massive battles in morrowind. He was able to get upwards of 100 NPC's on screen at any one time, simply by stripping out most of their AI. They were not running around naked.

 

But, I should know better than to try and argue this point with you, after all, you are obviously a game designer, and know more than all the rest of us combined.....:rolleyes:

No, I'm not a game designer, but Matt Carofano is.

 

http://www.vg247.com/2011/07/06/skyrims-missing-tes-features-cut-for-the-same-reasons-as-oblivions/

"In Morrowind, players had to equip each piece of armour individually, while in Oblivion, sets were broken into fewer pieces. In Skyrim, each full set of armour is one item, according to lead artist Matt Carofano.

 

“This helps create armour styles that have the look we needed for Skyrim,” he said.

 

“In most of the Nordic designs we created, the upper armour would completely cover the lower armour, making it unnecessary.

 

“We get much better visual results combining those pieces, and it renders a lot faster too, so we can put more people on screen, so that was an easy tradeoff for us.

 

“We can also make a lot more armours now, so the number and variation types are more than we’ve ever had.”"

 

And yes, total number of armor pieces DOES affect the total number of NPCs on the screen, more pieces = more stuff to render, more stuff to render = more strain on the computer when making all these NPCs move, attack, walk, etc. etc. Less pieces = less stuff to render allowing for many times more NPCs to be on the screen, while only causing the same, or less, total strain on the computer because it has to render less items per NPC. This is BASIC game design.

 

Whats really funny is that Morrowind and Oblivion could put all of these things on their weapons, and for the most part did. And what wasn't, wasn't impossible to do, just not in Beth's book of stuff to do at the time.

 

 

And besides that, if you're going to try and use that argument, then nothing makes anything different because its all just meaningless repaints and respecs of the basic armor, weapon, spell. Thats all any item in any of the games are when you get right to it, and everything beyond those basic differences make those items diverse. What Skyrim is doing is moving towards the less diverse end of the spectrum, not the other way around.

 

And this is most certainly true. The consolidation of skills, armor, and total removal of spellmaking and meaningful enchanting are the main culprits. Less overall diversity in items also does it, namely because of the consolidation of armor into fewer pieces.

 

I can create a far more unique set of armor in Morrowind than I can in Skyrim. Not only stat wise, but in terms of looks, weight, effectiveness, noise levels, etc etc. Not so in Skyrm.

-Merging skills is negated by the fact that each skill does more, and has a specialization for each weapon type. Morrowind and Oblivion worked on a system of 1 skill = 1 thing, the thing being an increase in weapon damage, whereas Skyrim's 1 handed skill has five separate paths, one for each weapon type, a path for dual wielding, and two paths for power attacks. So where Mororwind/Oblivion's skills only did one thing, make that one weapon types damage higher, Skyrim's skill trees allow for differing paths, allowing for far greater specialization, and customization, that none of the past ES games could match.

 

-The consolidation of armor pieces allowed for armor perks such as matching set, custom fit, deft movement, and wind walker to work effectively, or even be viable. Where Morrowind/Oblivion's armor skills, again, only did one thing, make armor better, Skyrim does like 5 things, and on top of that, the merger of armor makes each armor pieces more important, more detailed, and allows for more NPCs on the screen.

 

-I will half give you spell making, which was only removed because they couldn't find a way to make it work without ruining the magic feel, but they have said they are working on it. However, Skyrim's perk system, once again, trumps the diversity of Morrowind and Oblivion because of the ways we can argument spells with perks, a spell in Morrowind and Oblivion was the way it was forever, spells in Skyrim can get increased range, new effects like stagger, the ability to turn people into dust, the ability to dual cast, etc. etc. and all of it is at the hands of the user. Skyrim's spell system offers far more meaningful choice in which to augment spell's abilities. Even the most basic fire spell in Skyrim can be augmented into nearly 20 different spells based on what perks you take, Morrowind and Oblivion could offer no such thing.

 

-How was meaningful enchanting removed again? because I have been able to create far greater enchantments, with far greater control over the levels of said enchantments, with Skyrim's perk system, then I ever could in Oblivion/Morrowind. Not to mention that, because of dual enchanting, skyrim has the same total number of enchants as Mororwind, meaning a skilled enchanter could easily make something just as good, and with perks easily better, then anything in Morrowind.

Edited February 8, 2013 by sajuukkhar9000

[imperistan]

“In most of the Nordic designs we created, the upper armour would completely cover the lower armour, making it unnecessary.

 

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.

 

This is BASIC game design.

 

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.

 

-Merging skills is negated by the fact that each skill does more, and has a specialization for each weapon type.

 

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.

 

o where Mororwind/Oblivion's skills only did one thing,

 

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.

 

-The consolidation of armor pieces allowed for armor perks such as matching set, custom fit, deft movement, and wind walker to work effectively, or even be viable.

 

This was always possible. Always.

 

Skyrim's spell system offers far more meaningful choice in which to augment spell's abilities. Even the most basic fire spell in Skyrim can be augmented into nearly 20 different spells based on what perks you take, Morrowind and Oblivion could offer no such thing.

 

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.

 

because I have been able to create far greater enchantments,

 

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.

[sajuukkhar9000]

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.

http://images.uesp.net/8/89/SR-item-Wolf_Armor_Male.jpg

http://images.uesp.net/7/75/SR-item-Imperial_Light_Armor_Male_01.jpg

http://images.uesp.net/b/b2/SR-item-Ancient_Nord_Armor_Male.jpg

http://images.uesp.net/c/c3/SR-item-Dawnguard_Heavy_Armor_Male_01.jpg

I'm not really seeing the way to cut this into two considering that the skirt part is part of the upper part, cutting it into two makes no sense. An even remotely casual glance at skyrim's armor designs shows that a large number of them have skirt like parts connected to the upper armor that cover up a good deal of the greaves area, many to the point that removing the greaves area would be hardly noticeable.

 

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.

Yes they have............ really, what you just said amounts to "no one has proven that rendering two objects that have to clip with one another puts more strain then one item that doesn't clip with itself". That's a basic of computer graphics.

 

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 comes not from total number of objects, but how much those objects can do, and Skyrim's does more in one skill then Oblivion/Morrowind did in three. To say it is less diverse is false, in every way it can be.

 

The lack of effective diversity between the weapon types has nothing to do with them all being tied to the same skill, it has to do with the way the specializations are calculated affect the game world. Which I do admit the implementation was bad, very much so, armor piercing means little because no enemy has enough armor to make it worthwhile, and bleed+criticals do nothing because the extra damage is calculated by the weapons base damage, not the damage you get from skills +perks.

 

However splitting weapons into different skill would NOT fix this, it would just make all three perk trees share the exact same +damage, and power attack perks, with the extra specialization branch also tacked on there, and it would have the same problems we have now, but instead of having one skill tree that does 3 things, we would have three skill trees that do one. What needs to be done is to give enemies higher armor ratings, and make the bleed/critical damage be calculated by the weapon's damage after perks and skill is calculated.

 

The skills being merged into one did nothing to lessen diversity, all it did was put all the keys on a keychain, instead of having them thrown about, and splitting the skills would do nothing to increase diversity, just make the skill list bloated with unnecessary/redundant skills.

 

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.

There's also a big difference between putting in a incomplete feature, and holding off until you are reasonably sure that the feature works well, guess which one makes for a better game?

 

Assassins Creed is also nowhere near the size of Skyrim in terms of overall content, comparing the two is like trying to compare how CoD can increase the number of features in it, while Minecraft 2, assuming it was made, cut some features in order to make to rest of the features more deep. Comparing how a small game, such as CoD, or AC, can add features, while much larger game, such as Skyrim, or Minecraft, remove features, in sequels is disingenuous, and totally ignores the stations the games are in.

 

This was always possible. Always.

Possible yes, but possible =/= practical, and something being impractical can make it nearly impossible.

 

In all of my time playing Morrowind, the only times I can ever recall having a full suit of armor, was at the end-game time, when I bought glass armor, throughout the rest of the game, I was lucky to have an almost complete set of armor, let alone a fully matching set of armor. The 8 piece armor system in Morrowind, when combined with the large list of incomplete armor sets, and total number of armors, made getting a full matching set of armor nearly impossible, which makes the implementation of many light/heavy armor specific perks impractical.

 

20 different fire spells is just 20 different fire spells.

You really shouldn't be able to do that period, if it was possible to make spells like that, then Vivec would have been killed long ago. That was probably part of the reason why it was removed to begin with, no one should be able to make a "healing spell that repelled the dead, calmed my enemies, and gave people a bit of luck for their trouble?", its just broken.

 

Furthermore, "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.", I can chose what spells I want to cast, i can chose when exactly when I want to cast my spells, and with perks I can control how powerful my spells are.

 

snip

All touch spells did was cause an effect when you interacted with someone...... it's literally the same thing as enchants that do damage to enemies when your sword hits them, which is in the game. As for "on cast" all that did was allow you to cast an on touch of on target spell, it was so redundant, and Skyrim has both on touch and distance spells.......... so really, losing on cast is losing something the game already did.

 

Furthermore, as you pointed out Morrowind also had enchant limits on armor pieces, crippling the power of each enchantment unless you had a full suit of daedric armor, trying to put multiple enchants that actually did something was pointless, sure you COULD load up like 10 enchants on an item, but each of them would be so weak they would be useless. Skyrim on the other hand offers you the ability to put two enchantments, and max out the power of both, on an item, thus offering a greater ability to enchant things to a useable effect.

 

So, while I will concede the fact that Morrowind let you have more enchantments, the way the enchantment rating on armor worked made putting any more then two pointless as they got stupidly crippled. Having more enchantments on an item means nothing if the enchants do nothing, which was the crux of Morrowind's enchanting system.

Edited February 8, 2013 by sajuukkhar9000

[HeyYou]

Armor has nothing to do with how many NPCs can be on the screen at any one time. That is all about AI processing.

 

A modder over on the beth forums wanted to be able to do massive battles in morrowind. He was able to get upwards of 100 NPC's on screen at any one time, simply by stripping out most of their AI. They were not running around naked.

 

But, I should know better than to try and argue this point with you, after all, you are obviously a game designer, and know more than all the rest of us combined.....:rolleyes:

No, I'm not a game designer, but Matt Carofano is.

 

http://www.vg247.com...s-as-oblivions/

"In Morrowind, players had to equip each piece of armour individually, while in Oblivion, sets were broken into fewer pieces. In Skyrim, each full set of armour is one item, according to lead artist Matt Carofano.

 

"This helps create armour styles that have the look we needed for Skyrim," he said.

 

"In most of the Nordic designs we created, the upper armour would completely cover the lower armour, making it unnecessary.

 

"We get much better visual results combining those pieces, and it renders a lot faster too, so we can put more people on screen, so that was an easy tradeoff for us.

 

"We can also make a lot more armours now, so the number and variation types are more than we've ever had.""

 

And yes, total number of armor pieces DOES affect the total number of NPCs on the screen, more pieces = more stuff to render, more stuff to render = more strain on the computer when making all these NPCs move, attack, walk, etc. etc. Less pieces = less stuff to render allowing for many times more NPCs to be on the screen, while only causing the same, or less, total strain on the computer because it has to render less items per NPC. This is BASIC game design.

 

Whats really funny is that Morrowind and Oblivion could put all of these things on their weapons, and for the most part did. And what wasn't, wasn't impossible to do, just not in Beth's book of stuff to do at the time.

 

 

And besides that, if you're going to try and use that argument, then nothing makes anything different because its all just meaningless repaints and respecs of the basic armor, weapon, spell. Thats all any item in any of the games are when you get right to it, and everything beyond those basic differences make those items diverse. What Skyrim is doing is moving towards the less diverse end of the spectrum, not the other way around.

 

And this is most certainly true. The consolidation of skills, armor, and total removal of spellmaking and meaningful enchanting are the main culprits. Less overall diversity in items also does it, namely because of the consolidation of armor into fewer pieces.

 

I can create a far more unique set of armor in Morrowind than I can in Skyrim. Not only stat wise, but in terms of looks, weight, effectiveness, noise levels, etc etc. Not so in Skyrm.

-Merging skills is negated by the fact that each skill does more, and has a specialization for each weapon type. Morrowind and Oblivion worked on a system of 1 skill = 1 thing, the thing being an increase in weapon damage, whereas Skyrim's 1 handed skill has five separate paths, one for each weapon type, a path for dual wielding, and two paths for power attacks. So where Mororwind/Oblivion's skills only did one thing, make that one weapon types damage higher, Skyrim's skill trees allow for differing paths, allowing for far greater specialization, and customization, that none of the past ES games could match.

 

-The consolidation of armor pieces allowed for armor perks such as matching set, custom fit, deft movement, and wind walker to work effectively, or even be viable. Where Morrowind/Oblivion's armor skills, again, only did one thing, make armor better, Skyrim does like 5 things, and on top of that, the merger of armor makes each armor pieces more important, more detailed, and allows for more NPCs on the screen.

 

-I will half give you spell making, which was only removed because they couldn't find a way to make it work without ruining the magic feel, but they have said they are working on it. However, Skyrim's perk system, once again, trumps the diversity of Morrowind and Oblivion because of the ways we can argument spells with perks, a spell in Morrowind and Oblivion was the way it was forever, spells in Skyrim can get increased range, new effects like stagger, the ability to turn people into dust, the ability to dual cast, etc. etc. and all of it is at the hands of the user. Skyrim's spell system offers far more meaningful choice in which to augment spell's abilities. Even the most basic fire spell in Skyrim can be augmented into nearly 20 different spells based on what perks you take, Morrowind and Oblivion could offer no such thing.

 

-How was meaningful enchanting removed again? because I have been able to create far greater enchantments, with far greater control over the levels of said enchantments, with Skyrim's perk system, then I ever could in Oblivion/Morrowind. Not to mention that, because of dual enchanting, skyrim has the same total number of enchants as Mororwind, meaning a skilled enchanter could easily make something just as good, and with perks easily better, then anything in Morrowind.

 

Bethesda interview with a gaming magazine touting how their new game is "better" because of missing content. That's pretty funny. Not to mention weak. It's a PR piece trying to shine a turd.

[ripple]

http://www.vg247.com/2011/07/06/skyrims-missing-tes-features-cut-for-the-same-reasons-as-oblivions/

"In Morrowind, players had to equip each piece of armour individually, while in Oblivion, sets were broken into fewer pieces. In Skyrim, each full set of armour is one item, according to lead artist Matt Carofano.

 

“This helps create armour styles that have the look we needed for Skyrim,” he said.

 

“In most of the Nordic designs we created, the upper armour would completely cover the lower armour, making it unnecessary.

 

“We get much better visual results combining those pieces, and it renders a lot faster too, so we can put more people on screen, so that was an easy tradeoff for us.

 

“We can also make a lot more armours now, so the number and variation types are more than we’ve ever had.”"

 

First, that '...according to...' is not a direct quote, and as a paraphrase by the author of the article, it's completely vague and entirely nonsensical at face value. A "full set of armour is one item..."? What? In Fallout 3/NV, typically yes, in Skyrim, no. I can only imagine the author of the article misinterpreted....

 

Second, it has nothing to do with what HeyYou said. HeyYou's point is that the real strain on the Creation Engine's stability is rendering ( R)AI. It's nice that Skyrim's engine (according to the article's author, supposedly) made rendering armour in game more efficient, but that was never the reason why Oblivion, Fallout 3/NV, and Skyrim sandboxs all have the population density of a small hamlet. You can have a game with 20 'Immersive Armour' like mods installed (and no other mods) that distribute so many armour pieces to NPCs via leveled lists that every bandit you encounter wears something entirely different from each other, that game will still be 100% more stable than another game running just Warzones or ASIS with increased spawn.

Edited February 8, 2013 by ripple

[imperistan]

snip

 

- 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.

 

All touch spells did was cause an effect when you interacted with someone...... it's literally the same thing as enchants that do damage to enemies when your sword hits them, which is in the game

 

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)

 

sure you COULD load up like 10 enchants on an item, but each of them would be so weak they would be useless.

 

So?

[sajuukkhar9000]

snip

-Oblivion and Morrowind also had them there unnecessarily, nor could they handle as many NPC on the screen at one time, nor were the armors able to be made with as much detail per piece as Skyrim armors, and for Morrowind armors the perk system would have been to improbable to work out. That you could potentially put in more work to separate them still doesn't negate the fact that separating them causes more drawbacks then benefits, and indeed, the overall design of the armors helped them come to the realization of how stupid it was to have these as separate pieces to begin with.

 

 

-Actually, HeyYou said that armor has NOTHING to do with the amount of NPcs on the screen at one time, not that AI processing costs more.

Armor has nothing to do with how many NPCs can be on the screen at any one time. That is all about AI processing.

I never denied, or tried to refute, the claim that AI processing cost a lot, however, you cant exactly play a game with the AI off, you can play a game with a lower number of armor pieces though.

 

 

-Except they weren't pretending like they were creating something new?

 

And no, the fact of the matter is, consolidating weapons into one skill does NOT render them all different colors of the same weapon, because all weapons in all RPGs share an upgradeable base damage, with their diversity coming from some special attack powers, and making all the BASE damage of weapon go up via one skill, instead of separating base damage into 3 skills, doesn't negate the ability of developers to increase those weapons special powers via perks in meaningful ways. Nothing, and I do mean nothing, about Skyrim's skill system made weapons less diverse, or prevents the devs from making the weapons more diverse ten if the skills were separate. Constant expansion only relates bloat, and tacked on BS that doesn't actually do anything.

 

 

-Except they didn't just cut it out of some lack of desire to develop it. You seem to have a very odd view of Bethesda, acting like they just went "hey, should we take a month or so to make spellmaking?" and then the guy who asked to the question, along with everyone else in the room, starts smiling because they get the joke, and all yell "Na, screw that". When nothing could be farther from the truth.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsY_10xiVAs&feature=player_embedded

"Todd: “Yeah, spellcrafting is a real wildcard. Something that we’ve done a lot. And there are pluses and minuses to it. We’d like to find… we have some ideas that we really like on how to solve that, and I don’t know where that’s going to go. But the thing that we DON’T like about the previous systems that we’ve done, is it becomes very “spread-sheety.” It takes the magic out of magic. You got to see the game, but your listeners haven’t. There’s a bigger emphasis on how the magic physically acts. Just a spell like fire; there are different spells for how the fire moves. Like putting down a rune that explodes when you walk over it. Or fire you can spray that lingers on the ground, like you’re spraying a wall, and you can spray the ceiling. Or fire that travels like a flamethrower out of your hands. Or a fireball that you charge up and throw and it explodes at a distance. So our main goal is to make magic feel like this arcane powerful thing. And once it goes into a spreadsheet in the game where you can just say I want something at this distance and this power, it removes the illusion of like how this stuff actually works. So we have some ideas of ways around that, but we don’t know where those are going to go yet. We do have the benefit of, we’re really, really happy with how the magic plays in the game, both visually and mechanically. And then being able to do it with both hands. There are opportunities there for combinations and things you can do without getting into the spreadsheet aspect of it. Which I do know some people like, but it does take away from the impact of the spells that you’re finding and mechanically how they work.”"

 

 

-Except the time spent on it isn't proportional.

Oblivion: 2006

Fallout 3: 2008

Skyrim: 2011

 

AC1: 2007

AC2: 2009

AC3: 2012

Ubisoft had anywhere from two to three years to perfect and polish a game that has 1/100 of Skyrim's content. Whereas Skyrim didn't start large production until after Fallout 3 was done, giving them about the same about of time as it took to make AC3, to make a game that has 100 times more content. To say the time spent is even remotely proportional is just disingenuous.

 

Furthermore, Skyrim's perk system doing everything the attribute system did, but without its broken flaws, the Skyrim smithing system doing everything repair was supposed to do, without its flaws, increasing the beliveability of characters by giving them routines, voices, and the ability to actually respond to thing that happen in the game world, instead of standing rotted in one spot mindlessly all day every day, I'm really not seeing where they took all these steps back. Skyrim shows, if anything, that they knew the problems with their past games, and tried to fix them, and succeeded to a large extent, that is not going backwards, that is going forwards.

 

 

-After going to every merchant from Gnisis to Seyda Neen, I was lucky to be able to find a complete armor set from the merchants, and no,you could not make virtually all, or even most, of the incomplete armor sets part of another basic set because they had very clear different styles, and materials. Unless you are really trying to claim that if they had made something like an incomplete glass set that you could just throw that with bonemold.

 

 

-You didn't need to be powerful at all, as you yourself pointed out, Morrowind and Oblivion's spellmaking system was notoriously broken, and easy to exploit, allowing spells to be made that could kill pretty much everything in the game, that cost nothing to cast, and that's all but the most serious of hardcore RPers, a very small minority of the game's total population, ever used it for. I used a warrior to make a spell with pretty much no cast that paralyzed and did so much damage over time only the highest tiers of monsters could not die from it, and I could spam that thing like mad. And again, they HAVE tried to fix the problem, despite your implications that they just cut and ran.

 

 

-I wasn't aware that you could just make spells at any place and time you wanted in Morrowind/Oblivion either. And with my fire spells, stacked with impact, I can shoot fire that does fire damage, staggers, and causes fear.

 

And in terms of base game spells, Skyrim does offer FAR more diversity because of how I can augment my spells with perks, Morrowind's spells stayed the same forever, with Skyrim, I can turn one spell into potentially 20 different ones.

 

 

-If you were an aspiring mage, you shouldn't be running up to enemy NPCs and touching them, as a mage would have considerably low health, and almost no armor, to where doing so would result in your getting killed. In over 500 hours of play mages in Morrowind, across multiple mage characters, I can safely say that touch spells were always the most useless, as on self, and on target, spells always did the same thing, and more effectively because I didn't have to run up to my enemy to use them.

 

 

-Having the ability to do something in a game means nothing unless its useful, and unless you can make those 10 enchants all worthwhile, you shouldn't care that you no longer have the ability to do something that didn't help you in any way, because it didn't help you in any way.

Edited February 8, 2013 by sajuukkhar9000

[HeyYou]

Skyrim runs on pretty much the same engine as Morrowind did, with some tweaks. The engine has 'evolved' somewhat, over time, but, it's still basically the same pile of crap that morrowind ran on. Now, HARDWARE has gotten SIGNIFICANTLY more powerful in the same time period. Please note, that the hardware requirements for subsequent games kept going up. (and the graphics got better too.....) Sure, armor may have a minor impact on framerate.... but, that's it. Minor. AI, on the other hand..... has ALWAYS had a MAJOR impact on framerate. Justifying reducing the number of armor pieces to help increase framerate is silly. (I have a more appropriate word... but, not for the forums....) It would have made much more sense to improve the efficiency of the rendering engine.... but, beth seems incapable of making ANY improvements there. The engine doesn't make good use of multi-core processors, or multi-vid cards either. Both technologies that have been around since BEFORE the release of Oblivion. If Beth wanted to do something to improve framerate, they missed out on two EXTREMELY powerful opportunities.

 

Also of note: When Skyrim was still in development, Beth STATED FLATLY that is was an "all-new" game engine. That is most certainly NOT the case.

 

I would also point out that there is essentially zero difference between a mace, and a sword. Sure, the player can use perks, that give the different weapons a bit of an edge, but, NPC's can't use perks. So, that mace wielding bandit might just as well have ANY one-handed weapon, as to him, it makes zero difference. Didn't seem to matter to beth that a bashing weapon vs. slashing weapon will do different types/amounts of damage given the same attack style. (these were differentiated in morrowind, something that was lost in Oblivion. of course, in morrowind, you could MISS. Not so since then.)

 

But, once again, I am wasting my breath here..... I think I just respond for the minor mental exercise it presents, and in the hope that others might learn something interesting. You seem firmly convinced that skyrim is the next best thing since sliced bread, and beth can do no wrong. You don't happen to work for beth do you? Paid shill perhaps?