Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Originally Posted by Thrasher
For the same reason, the previous incarnations had weak character development systems. Perks are the only hope.

I can agree with that. It didn't bother me much in Morrowind because the training was so expensive and the learning so slow that it was very hard to max everything and by the time you could you probably did everything in the game. Oblivion made it too easy to level skills up, making it less of an issue and easier to max it all.

That said in both those games you were by far more likely to pick some core skills and concentrate on them than you were to max everything. You created the kind of character you wanted in your mind and did the things they would do. At least I did that.

Actually, if you play all the expansions with Oblivion it was VERY easy to max all your skills. In the end every PC became the same. Bad design.

I agree in Morrowind that this wasn't the case so much. That's another reason why I think it was was a better game.

I'm like the Doc, I usually stick to my chosen skills. I usually stop playing the character before capping all those skills too. I love making new characters.

I never completed all the available content in Morrowind or Oblivion with a single character either. Actually, there's a lot of things I haven't done in Morrowind and Oblivion, mostly related to factions I never bothered joining…

Originally Posted by Thrasher
Actually, if you play all the expansions with Oblivion it was VERY easy to max all your skills. In the end every PC became the same. Bad design.

I really don't agree with this. If you gamed the game, it was easy. If you roleplayed your character, it was nearly impossible. My alchemist really didn't have any reason to cast any of the spells that he could make potions for. In hundreds of hours of play, his restoration and alteration skills hardly budged. My warrior never leveled up any of the mage skills much, because he focused on weapons, etc.

Oblivion was a game that if you didn't stay true to roleplaying, was very easy to metagame to become super-powerful. I did this many times too. It's great fun! At its most basic, Oblivion is a game that empowers the customer to play how they want to play. Some can't resist metagaming, because the engine allows it, then they want to blame the game because of their lack of restraint.

I remembered discussing this point when Oblivion was released. The level up system was open and went well for players who disciplined themselves into roleplaying their characters. A side effect of not rpg your character was also to let you fall behind the scaling world as people got their attributes points scattered on irrelevant characteristics. I did not have troubles with that as I tried to roleplay the character.

Other players request a more coercive system. Any degree of freedom is one given to them to munchkin their character. The new system should satisfy more players, those who feel the urge of exploiting, they should be more constrained. And the others who managed not to break their character should not feel a difference.

Originally Posted by crpgnut
I really don't agree with this. If you gamed the game, it was easy. If you roleplayed your character, it was nearly impossible. My alchemist really didn't have any reason to cast any of the spells that he could make potions for. In hundreds of hours of play, his restoration and alteration skills hardly budged. My warrior never leveled up any of the mage skills much, because he focused on weapons, etc.

Oblivion was a game that if you didn't stay true to roleplaying, was very easy to metagame to become super-powerful. I did this many times too. It's great fun! At its most basic, Oblivion is a game that empowers the customer to play how they want to play. Some can't resist metagaming, because the engine allows it, then they want to blame the game because of their lack of restraint.

Why would you design a character that became weaker as you AND the world levelled up. That is completely contrary to the concept of character development. If you purely roleplay, you're screwed. And that's why Oblivion's system is broken.

Well, I did level a skill to keep me on a level playing field: destruction. I was quite able to kill creatures of my level and above due to the mixture of potions and the destruction skill. If I would have played an alchemy only dude, I'd agree with you 100%. You can gimp your character in Oblivion, I won't argue that at all.

Khajiit and Orc!

Oblivion vs Skyrim:
Khajiit
Orc

Very nice! or rather raooooorr!

Originally Posted by azarhal
Khajiit and Orc!

Oblivion vs Skyrim:
Khajiit
Orc

Good god those look so much better. No comparison. Might be the first ES game I think actually doesn't need a mod for better head models.

I'm also glad they ditched the Gamebryo engine. Truthfully, I always had to jump through hoops to get Gamebryo games working decently and had nothing but headache from them.

Originally Posted by Motoki
Might be the first ES game I think actually doesn't need a mod for better head models.

+1 !

Environments look great too (as usual). I'm really looking forward to this… of course, I've been fooled before!

Faces look definitely better, though, well, the ones in Oblivion were really bad.
I still like orcs from a 6 year old Morrowind mod the most .



In other news: "The eight attribute categories from the previous Elder Scrolls game, Oblivion, have been cut out. Now you only have to worry about your Magicka to cast spells, Health for your hit points, and Stamina, which serves as a limiting factor when pulling off axe slashes and mace bashes in combat."
http://pc.ign.com/articles/116/1162158p1.html

So the character development system is now entirely skill/perk based it seems.
If the skills/perks are given proper depth and in-game context it might work well I guess.
Personally I really disliked how skills interacted with attributes in Oblivion and Morrowind anyway so I don´t consider it a bad case of "dumbing down" per se.

Of course, it's "streamlining" not "dumbing-down"

I never liked the Khajiit after Daggerfall, but wow, the Skyrim Orc is… um…
…wow.
Guess I gotta take a cold shower now.

I just had a webgasm after reading all the most recent previews. Losing attributes will seem weird, but I'll get used to it I guess. I hope we have some numbers somewhere in the game. I like numbers that get bigger and bigger all the time

levitate! levitate! levitate! (maybe if I say it often enough it will appear…no?) Sorry to see attributes go, they added welcome 'flavour' I think. I saw no mention of the regular guilds - although I saw 'faction' mentioned. Are those the same? I'm asking because i really loved the mage guild quests in Morrowind and Oblivion - in Oblivion they were much more interesting than than the main quest. 20 hrs for the main campaign? Sounds short, but how long was the Oblivion main quest? Spend far more time exploring and doing guild quests…

Originally Posted by Thrasher
Of course, it's "streamlining" not "dumbing-down"

Yes, it may be. It simply depends on implementation.
In the context of TES games, getting rid of attributes and making deeper skill/perk system might end up as an improvement of the character development system since, at least in Morrowind and Oblivion, attributes felt rather redundant anyway and were badly tied to levelling.
Making attributes suck less would obviously be another solution, sure.
I also wonder how this decision will affect itemization.

Personally I´ll reserve judgement till more comprehensive info on skills/perks is available.
Also, it´s not like multiple layers of stats are necessary requirement for good action rpgs.

Well the whole character development system was quite fucked up in both Morrowind and Oblivion. One solution is to get rid of it entirely. There's streamlining, for ya! Just remove all RPG elements while your at it. And add an awesome button. It's called "play" on my DVD player.

Originally Posted by Thrasher
Actually, if you play all the expansions with Oblivion it was VERY easy to max all your skills. In the end every PC became the same. Bad design.

I agree in Morrowind that this wasn't the case so much. That's another reason why I think it was was a better game.

Ouch totally wrong, well if you mean 100 ok but you don't need 100 and then end with 90 in most important skills and other quite above 80. Morrowind had a bad system design allowing easily abuse of it, and get each time 5, it was even worse because it was by taking care to not setup your class with focus on important skills.

Well anyway I don't like the Morrowind/Oblivion system and even less the boring train/use approach.

Originally Posted by Thrasher
Well the whole character development system was quite fucked up in both Morrowind and Oblivion. One solution is to get rid of it entirely. There's streamlining, for ya! Just remove all RPG elements while your at it.

I´m not quite sure what´s your point.

Skyrim´s character development is supposed to include manipulating 3 stats, 18 skills and 280 perks. So while they´ve removed/simplified one layer (attributes), they´ve also added more to the other (perks). There´s also the dragon shout thing.
Depending on what kind of perks are there and how they interact with other game systems, the character development might as well end up being more complex than in Morrowind or Oblivion.