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

[sajuukkhar9000]

-Compared to Skyrim's system, Morrowind was needlessly complex, not saying it was complex is general, just that its level of complexity was needless.

The complexity in Morrowind didn't stop because it was artificially injected to be there, it wasn't complexity born out of deep systems that stayed complex because they were felinely deep, they were just poorly made, and the only complexity in Morrowind came out of the constant need to fight broken systems. Furthermore, the complexity of RPG's systems isn't what's important, what matters in an RPG is how much you can customize your character, and THAT can be done through very simple systems. A RPG's worth doesn't come from the complexity of its systems, it comes from the depth of its character building, and Skyrim offers far more then Morrowind ever did in that regard.

 

-Software demands are reduced by hardware when the game companies know the hardware that their main audience uses, and thus has to build around. It's an artificial reduction, but still, it's there

 

-True, however, graphics only influence gameplay in that having better textures makes the game look more realistic, and thus immersive. But again, there is still a LARGE difference between giving PC players 100 man battles, and giving console players 20 man battles, they goes just beyond graphics. to treat such a thing as graphics, is, again, disingenuous.

 

-Except, it was broken, and to claim otherwise is to ignore everything about how the system worked.

 

Also, magic feels like magic far more then past ES games, and despite your constant assertions that spells in base skyrim are "mundane" and "restricted" I have gotten far more use out of them then I ever did out of any of Morrowind's/Oblivion base game spells. It isn't perfect, but it's come a significant distance.

and despite the fact that you could combine them all together as you wished, all people normally did was make the same uber death spells, so it was vastly underused by most of the game players, and on top of that, in Skyrim I can combine Fear, stagger, and fire effects, all into the same spell, when I wish, so that level of effect combination wasn't lost.

 

-Well it didnt.

 

-Having 100 in all attributes, 100 in all skills, and a full set of glass armor, those werewovles in Bloodmon could very easily destroy armor in three hits, which playing as a melee character, happened often. You seem to wan to ignore how the game works and insted just blame it on others.

 

-Skyrim has a similar wilderness, because of how Bethesda designed dungeons, with many having high minimum levels like 20, an adventurer going into a dungeon with a level 20 min, while level 5, would get his ass kicked. It facilitates the same effect Morrowind had, but without the same drawbacks, yet another feature Skyrim vastly imposed on over Morrowind.

 

-I think you need to re-read my sentence, I never said meta-gaming was good, nor did I ever recommended it, all I said was that other games work in
the reverse way, and that I had to do it to prevent from falling into Morrowind's failings, nor did I ever say that you could become a god via meta-gaming in Skyrim, I said "in other games", Skyrim is not the only other game in existence, and other games =/= all other games,Nor did I ever recommended it, all I said was that other games work in. Don't try to inject things I never said into my posts.

 

-Sticking to a role is nice, but sometimes RP demands that you switch roles. In past games I couldn't play some mage apprentice who, after a terrible accident, decided that being a mage wasn't exactly up his alley, and decided to do what his father always said he should do, be a warrior. By forcing character into one role forever, you eliminate so many great RP opportunities.

 

-I expect that if I am a thief, who doesn't get caught stealing, that no one would know I am thief, and thus not treat me like one, you know, the game world using some form of logic. Unless you get caught, people have no reason to know, and thus no reason to treat you like, a thief. Which Morrowind's system did not follow.

 

Not really, alls guild conflicting does is arbitrarily deny you content for no other reason beyond FORCED replay value, because the same story could have been made with another faction taking the place of the opposing guild. It's the same cheap tactics that the game devs for Fallout pulled by making many "random encounter" zones with special content that you had almost no chance of finding in any one gameplay to force replay value when it shouldn't be necessary to replay the game for that.

 

-Dude, did you ever play the Tribunal expansion? The museum gave you so much money for artifacts, most of which were piss easy to get, that I could get enough money to basically buy all the skill trains I needed just be selling artifacts to the museum. It was so stupidly easy to get tons of cash in less then two hours time in Morrowind.

I meant that it fixed the easily exploitable skill trainers. Oblivion and Skyrim got rid of those guild reqs in favor of more realistic blocks. things like the pillar in that one Alyied ruin, or needing magic spells to break through walls in Sarthaal and Labrythian, Instead of some immersion breaking "you need 3 skills at X level to proceeded, they focused more on making you actually have to use some form of magic in the questline. Admittedly, you could get past those via staves, scrolls, potions, and whatnot, but logically you should, and it works out far better because of it.

 

-To take my argument out of context is disingenuous as well. I never said the means by which you attack enemies is pointless, I said the physical act of combat, as in the attack hitting enemies by your power of your characters is pointless. The means by which you do attack, be it magic, sword, or bow, does matter to your character, your character actually being the one to do the hitting does not. do not attempt to straw man my arguments.

 

-Luck is nonexistent, it's just bad gameplay design stemming from the game being so overloaded with weapons/armors that served no purpose, and merchants stock was so limited, that it became hard for them to carry a complete set of anything

 

-Hairstyles don't violate the game systems either, neither do most clothing mods, as the clothes work in the same way the rest of the clothes in the game do. so, again, all you have proven is that people make mods that fit within the game's systems, AND offer more variety, which your "incomplete armor sets that don't get perks bonuses" system does not do

 

-I can actually speak for all the people I have talked to over the years and who have agreed with me.

 

-Except, as point out before, because the difference between touch spells and cast spells was no negligible, there was no real difference. to say my way is boring is to say the other way was boring as well, because when in the thick of battle, and touch spell and a cast spell do the same thing, and work the same way, the only real difference is that cast spells work from a distance as well, up close, they play the same.

 

 

 

 

[Deleted1082189User]

I agree whole-heartedly with the OP. When I played Oblivion (I wasn't a Morrowind veteran, Oblivion was my first TES game), it was an engaging storyline. In the main storyline, you worked with people in a back-and-forth fight between two organizations that meant business, and you were on the losing side. You weren't the god of everything, whose voice rains down hell on the people you smite. You were just an excellent fighter, and you had the bravery and the skill to do what others generally could not.

 

When you fought with the Blades, the Blades fought with you. They invaded the gates of TES-hell, manning the tough stations and making sure it didn't destroy Tamriel. When you gathered your fighting force, you took the fight to the demons by uniting the various cities in a last-stand against powerful cultists who wanted nothing more than your destruction.

 

Here's Skyrim's approach: You're God's child and you have about 6 friends. Go scream at a dragon and make it go away. We won't be thanking you when you save the world. We will, however, appreciate it.

 

It was disappointing.

[imperistan]

- 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:

 

 

Funny how Skyrim's system manages to do everything Morrowind's attribute system did, but without the failings that meta-gaming in Morrowind caused. Morrowind's system only worked for hardcore RPers, and not metagamers, Skyrim's works for both, but thats because it was better designed.

 

 

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)

 

 

[sajuukkhar9000]

-Except Skyrim's system is a system of character development, and it offers more tangible development then Morrowind's......... so, your point is nonsensical.

 

-Right, its a restriction caused by hardware forcing game developers to limit the game in order to make it run.

 

-That argument is stupidly hyperbolic, there is a large difference between limiting games to what the most common piece of hardware is, and stopping progression totally because not every single person in the world has the average. Again, you make a totally disingenuous argument by treating two entirely unlike things as similar.

 

-I would have actually come up with the same ideas Todd and his "ilk" did, because they quite provably offer more character diversity, then the past systems did, and they have none of the past systems failings. Attribute systems, be they the Morrowind type, or the Fallout type, are fundamentally flawed, there is no fixing them, only applying temporary band aid solution that cover up the problems.

 

-I don't run mods either, the werewolves in bloodmoon, and many enemy NPCs in tribunal, can tear through a fully repaired suit of glass armor in seconds, even with the difficulty slider only around medium.

 

-I find that highly doubtful. I would like to see you take on boss vampires at level 1, without using some exploit.

 

-Please, for the love of god, actually read what I wrote. Taking that sentence completely out of context is why you are getting these backwards arguments.

--I said Morrowind's system only worked for hardcore RPers.

--I said Skyrim works for hardcore RPers, and meta-gamers.

--I said Skyrim's system is better deisgned becuase it works for more people.

However, that DOES NOT mean I think metagaming is good, I just said it works for both becuase it's better designed. Indeed, I was pointing out the two extremes, the hardcore RPer, and the metagamer, to show how Skyrim's system works for not only them, but everyone in between. Where as Morrowind's only works for the hardcore RPer, which not everyone, and indeed, not most people, are. It's ability to work for meta-gamers is a result of its working for anyone who isn't a hardcore RPEr as well, it's just a natural result of gaming the game's systems more efficient. Luckily, they mitigated a good of the meta-gaming issue by imposing perk point limits.

 

-You're actually not, I can get up to level 10-20 on my mage, and then switch to being a warrior, with ease. At least far more ease then could in Morrowind. It isn't perfect, and the perk reset feature should have been in th base game, but it's a vast improvement.

 

-Funny, I was never seen crawling into sewers, and the only time I talked to "shady people" was in the TG bases, which are full of TG members, and TG associates, who naturally wouldn't tell anyone I was part of the guild. so how exactly does anyone know again?

 

-It has nothing to do with doing everything in one playthrough. Really, this statement has nothing to do with what I said at all. All I said was that the tying of guild questlines together enforced artificial replay that didn't need to exist there. They are two entirely unrelated things.

 

-Dude, Morrowind can be beat in 16 minutes, without wrathguard, because the game is so broken, and so easy to exploit. You can get through almost any dungeon at level 1, and get all the artifacts in about 2-3 hours time, because the game was simply broken.

 

-Wow, so, a quest relating to the MG involved people who had scrolls? and those scrolls happened to include the ones you might need? GASPS! Mages
having scrolls! the horror! The lack of Logic! Also, considering that all higher level spells are, are just more powerful versions of level 1 spells, its kinda hard to make a block that requires anything higher then a level 1 spell, and even if they did, one could just go out and buy a staff/scroll/potion/enchanted item, and get through it anyways.

 

-No it isn't, the method in which you do combat, and your ability to determine if you hit and miss in that combat, are two entirely separate things. Its like saying that picking what color war you want, and if that car drives itself, or if you drive it, are the same thing. Once again, you make a wholly disingenuous argument.

 

-Who said ANYHTING about an inn kepper? im talking about the armor merchants in Balmora, Ald'rhun, and Sadrith Mora.

 

-They violate all of the games armor set mechanics, and the perk mechanics, because they don't fit into them. Even cutsom armor sets come as complete, or at least some with decoy item to make it complete without it showing up on your character, so that they can take advantage of the game's perk mechanics.

 

-Any low level mage should be able to get enchants that negate the cost difference easily, and higher level mages should be able to get it even EASIER. The only way to not be able to negate it is though some serious self-nerfing on a large scale, which, while an option available to you, does not negate the normal use's workings.

 

-Actually, in both Morrowind and Skyrim, I played various mages, from heavy armor wearing, near tank like mages, all the way to the more generic paper thing mages, used the same tactics in both, touch spells never had a purpose in Morrowind, unless you were a bad mage, or bad enough to miss, a lot, and I do mean, a lot.

 

 

 

 

 

[imperistan]

- 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:

[imperistan]

(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

 

 

 

These compose of your offensive and defensive combat skills.

 

• Weapon Skills
• Armor Skills
• Magic skills
• Shield use (both offensive and defensive)
• Rogue skills (things like dodge, parry, etc. Basically your offensive based stealth skills)
• Horse Fighting (would encompass all combat types from horseback)

 

 

Skills of the Citizen

 

 

Crafting and General use skills

 

• Smithing (which would encompass all weapon and armor crafting of all types)
• Weaving (For clothing)
• Alchemy
• Enchanting
• Fishing
• Cooking
• Athletics and Acrobatics (These two may or may not be combined with Dodging)
• Climbing
• Woodcutting
• Horse Riding
• Etc

 

 

Skills of the State

 

 

 

Basically, skills that would augment either meta-style.

 

• Speechcraft
• Mercantile
• Tactics
• Leadership (would basically be tied to an overhauled companions system, where leadership would directly influence how you interact with companions, what you can command them to do, etc)
• etc.

 

 

Legendary Skills

 

 

 

Quest specific skills that can only be unlocked through quests or other similar means.

• Thu'um (the Obvious one)
• God related skills that grant specific abilities based on the gods that grant you these powers. Talos' Skill would be based around combat and warfare, Hermaeus Mora for magic, Mephala and Namira for assassins and thieves respectively, Zenithar for crafting etc etc.

 

 

 

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.

Edited February 12, 2013 by imperistan

[HeyYou]

-Compared to Skyrim's system, Morrowind was needlessly complex, not

saying it was complex is general, just that its level of complexity was

needless.

 

In your opinion. I LIKED the Morrowind system better. It got simplified for Oblivion, and then gutted for Skyrim.

[blackninja50]

@imperistan I like your leveling system, it really lets you play the game however/whatever you want and is the first leveling system I have seen that allows for more then just killing. Edited February 12, 2013 by blackninja50

[imperistan]

^ 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.

[sajuukkhar9000]

 

Spoilered due to these posts getting long as all hell.

 

 

-You said "in this thread, character development isn't a system within RPGs". Which is false entirely, as character development is a system in RPGs, its the entire main system of RPGs, and given that I had said Morrowind's system was needlessly complex, and that Skyrim's was better, your point seemed like a very clear jab that skyrim's systems offer no character development, which I pointed out that it did.

 

-You have no point, you keep dodging the issue that software has to be built to run on the hardware it's on and thus hardware limits the software, which you keep denying, and I keep pointing out is false.

 

-Except you haven't, all you have done is repeat some easily disprovable arguments as to how it can be "fixed".

 

-100 in all skills, and all attribute, with over 700 HP, and a full set of glass armor + Kagrenak's tools =/= weak. Also, both expansions being made for high end gameplay does not negate the fact that enemies did stupidly high damage as to break even some of the most powerful armor in a few hits. Its like trying to defend a game who makes a boss that can three hit you and spams attack every other second as fair because ":its high level gameplay"

 

-The only implications are the ones you created in your mind, furthermore, I haven''t flip-flopped on jack, you keep trying to weasel my arguments into something they aren't in order to make it appear that I have. And yes, Morrowind's system did work that way.

 

--First off, Bethesda was not the one to introduce hard cap, hard caps have been in RPGs for ages.

--Secondly, hard caps ensure gamers can become too unbalanced by limiting the total maximum fo stats like damage, and armor rating, a capless system would be broken at its core because people oculd just exploit it to get stats at crazy high levels.

--Thirdly, due to the un-level scaled nature of Morrowinds world, one could easily just go back to some starter areas, and just re-do easy dungeons/pay skill trains gold to their skills to crazy high levels. You didn't have to work for it at all in Morrowind. Skyrim's leveled world, and limits on skill trainers per level, actually does what you claim Morrowind does, but actually does it unlike Morrowind.

--Fourthly, due to the limit on perks points, and the total number of perks, its hard to become samey in Skyrim unless you pick nearly the same perks, as the skill level itself does nothing for your skill. Again, I think you are confusing Skyrim with Morrowind were getting all your skills to 100 actually does make your samey.

 

-Nice straw man. Firstly, no one sees you around them, that's the point, I entered the bar without being seen, and leave without being seen. Your entire argument falls flat on its face when you add in the fact no one sees you.

 

-Well what I said did have nothing to do with doing everything on one playthrough, so your assertion that did it makes no sense, and I will point it out.

 

-Morrowind? hard? what game are you playing? The level of gold/enchanted items/powerful artifacts that they throw in your face every other quest makes the game a cakewalk. The only way Morrowind can be hard is if you ignore 99% of the game content, and dont use the systems in the game at all. You didnt even need to exploit the game to make it easy, it was just piss easy as-is.

 

-Yes because pointing out that people in the MG have scrolls, and that them having scrolls, including the ones you need for a quest, is facepalm worthy? seriously? so what? you expect them to never have scrolls? or remove all the scrolls from the game just so they can force it to where you need to be a mage with magic skill to advance in guild quests? because you haven't offered a solution to the problem.

 

-You can keep on using that silly little icon, but it doesn't change the fact that the method by which you do combat has no bearing on if you should be the one determining if you hit or not.

 

-Actually, without the armor bonuses from Skyrim's perks, you will get mowed down pretty fast. Ive actually put on a heavy armor chest piece with my light armor set and because I didn't get the bonuses my armor rating was only like 300ish, and those level 50 Draugr deathlord and their ebony bows, and the Falmer bowmen for that matter, tore through my HP so fast it could make your head spin. Without those armor perks, you are screwed as you level up.

 

It didn't matter in Morrowind because Morrowind's armor was largely pointless, it was just a raw +protection stat that didn't work with the rest of the armor pieces, which was a flaw of Morrowind's system.

 

And becuase Skyrims system lacks said flaw, armor pieces being the same is VERY important, unless you cheat and exploit smithing to some ungodly level.

 

-Well it is true the only way for the magicka difference between touch and normal spells to be noticeable is if you ignored all of the game's enchanted items, which there were a lot of, and they were thrown in your face.

 

 

(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)

The biggest problem I see with this leveling system is that since noncombat skills like smithing, alchemy, enchanting, cooking, etc. etc. all serve to boost combat skills, removing their connection to combat skills, by treating them as a wholly separate skill group, can cause a massive disruption in gameplay balance when combined with your two character levels system.

 

Assuming enemy scaling is in, and is based on combat skill alone, If a character focuses almost solely on crafting skills, they will be able to vastly improve their weapons/armor to uber-high levels, and when combined with the fact that, since they haven't leveled combat skills at all, most enemies will be lower level/very weak, it makes the character into a walking abomination of a god-like being with uber-smithed/enchanted stuff. What your system does is essentially take the crafting abuse of Skyrim's systems, but removes any and all penalties you get in Skyrim for doing so because of the leveling scaling system.

 

The players total level, when determining enemy scaling, should actually be determined by adding the combat and crafting skill levels together, and then diving the number by something, depending how how much to weight you give each one. Considering that crafting, be it in normal RPGs, or MMORPGs, often accounts for the majority of a player's total possible damage, the players total "Skills of the Citizen" level should be slightly over half of what determines the level of enemies a player faces if we even want to maintain the notion of balance, it would be better to make the player's total level determined by a 60/40 split between combat and crafting, with crafting by the 60.

 

Furthermore, when we combine this with the "as you use skills your attributes go up" system, we run into another problem. Since people will abuse the crafting skills like mad, as they always do, all the attributes tied to those skills will go up to high levels, and when we combine that with the fact that because of this crafting system abuse, combat will be a stupid easy cake-walk, we run into the fact that people's combat attributes would ALSO be sent up to super high levels because they have such god-like gear they can plow through everything, thus leveling up their combat skills, and combat attributes, in a breeze.

 

 

 

As for your class/no class system, the underlying problem in with it is this.

-If you pick a class, you have to make all the non-class skills effectively a major grind in order to level in order to keep it from being to easy to break the class and become a meta-gaming god character. However, because of this, you are effectively forcing all people who take the class to play the exact same way as the only skills that they can level are whatever the classes pre-set skills are.

-If you pick the no-class option, and thus have all skills level at the same rate, but at a slower rate then a classes pre-set skills do, you either have to make it a total grind or else it will be too easy to get all your skills to high levels despite the slower leveling speed. That, or you have to throw off all pretense of trying to prevent that from happening, and then when put next to the class system, it ends up turning the class system into nothing more then getting a fancy title next to your character's name, and a negligible raise in level speed.

 

And when given these two options, the second one will be picked far more then the first.

 

 

As for some other tidbits

-Making perks not "defining the skill" like they are in Skyrim only causes perks to fall into the same trap perks in Fallout 3/New Vegas do, in that they become so negligible that the difference having them/not having them becomes nonexistent because they just dont DO anything big. Having perks that "augment" skill is turning perks from a +20% damage perk, into something like a +5% damage against X enemy type perk. However, unless the system is designed to make you need to take that perk, taking the perk is pointless because you will always be able to do enough damage to kill things anyways, and at that point, taking that perk really doesn't help define your character in anything but the most trivialistic of differences.

 

It's effectively changing the game from having player 1 be able to kill a dragon in 20 hits, and player 2 being able to kill a dragon in 10, because of perks, into something more akin to having player 1 kill a dragon in 20 hits, and player 2 killing the dragon in 18 hits, because of perks.

 

 

-And while I do like some of the ideas you have for attributes, such as being able to be detected even when invisible because of low agility, or being able to intimidate creates by having a high strength. The problem is that perks/skill already do that, or can be made to do that.

 

The intimidate perk in the speech skill tree could be modified to do that, and being detected even while invisible is something that is affected by sneak skill/perks, and if you take that out of the skills/perks, either entirely, or partially, and throw it into attributes all your doing is making the skill itself less and less powerful, and less and less useful, by stripping out mechanics from it to varying levels in order to keep balance. It would be far better to have those things handled by perks instead of perks/attributes, because if its just in perks, you can give those perks are far greater, and far more noticeable, levels of power then having them spread across multiple systems.

 

Having a perk that does 100 something is far more noticeable, and defining, then having a perk that does 50, and an attitude that does the other 50, or having a perk that does 33, a skill that does 33, and attribute that do 33 of something. Every time you spread something out, you dull it down however many times you spread it out.

 

 

-And while I do greatly like the idea of "dynamically random spawns", it to runs into the problem that, unless you remake every dungeon like 10 times, it simply feels cheap.

 

Imagine a cave full of rats, you kill those rats and then bandits move in, now, unless there are bandit tents in the cave, it really doesn't feel like bandits moved in, just that they are standing around in a cave, now imagine a giant takes over the cave, well, one would expect the giant would smash up the bandit tents, so there should be some smashed up bandit stuff in the cave, now imagine the Flamer move in, they need to set up tents also, but then a dragon comes, so now we have Falmer, bandit, and giant stuff all over the cave.

 

The problem with this system comes from the fact that in order to make it work well, Bethesda would have to design the same cave like 100 times in order to get every possible combination of inhabitants, and the stuff they would set up/leave behind correct. Which just isn't feasible.

 

Now, they could do it in a set, but VERY limited, chain, in which it goes rats -> Bandits -> Falmer, but the chain would have to end at some point, and if you killed everything at the end of the chain, would the chain reset? or would the last thing in the chain just stay there.

Edited February 13, 2013 by sajuukkhar9000