Elder scrolls- two steps forward, two steps back?

[endtherapture]

I just think Skyrim is a pretty crap "RPG" when it has barely any reliance on stats.

But it's all about the IMMERSHUN. LOL.

Gotta look at it as more of a sim like experience, not an RPG.

That sucks. It's a vast fantasy world and people want to settle down and build houses and cook and be married and have children. Why? That's everyday life, I'd personally like an escape when I'm playing games. Hence why I enjoyed Oblivion so much, the world might have been more boring but I was doing loads of crazy things.

 

[endtherapture]

That sucks. It's a vast fantasy world and people want to settle down and build houses and cook and be married and have children. Why? That's everyday life, I'd personally like an escape when I'm playing games.

I agree.

Hence why I enjoyed Oblivion so much, the world might have been more boring but I was doing loads of crazy things.

You lost me when you got to this part.

Hahaha! Oblivion had more of a sense of epic adventure than Skyrim. The world felt much bigger, and the faction system was so much more in depth. Going from a rookie of the Mage's Guild to Archmage was actually a giant epic journey and there were loads of memorable quests, such as the guy who kidnapped people to hunt on that island in the dungeon, and you had to play an epic game of cat and mouse with him.

Skyrim, for all it's improvements, lost that sense of scale.

 

[blackrave]

Every game in the series had it's pros and cons
One thing I really liked in TES2 was limited ability to set background for your character (sometimes you could break your character, but it wasn't obligatory to set Advantages/Disadvantages)
Not to mention Climbing skill (with the right skill/attribute/spell set you can roleplay as Spiderman)
What I liked the most from TES2 was the MQ story- it wasn't as much about some great prophecy as it was about politics
Anyway I really hope that in TES6 they will look back at the good things (even if they were broken) from TES1-5 and uses/fixes them.

 

[charge52]

I really don't see how people can enjoy a game that isn't played by them but played by a proxy created by them. That's like making a clone of yourself to watch a movie, and then watching him watch the movie. Why not just watch the movie yourself?

Or like making a clone of yourself to read a book for you, whilst all you do is puppet his arms to make him turn the pages, and move his head up and down so he reads all the lines on the page. Why not just read the book yourself?

D&D style RPGs lack player involvement in most of the game's systems, and consist mainly of making a proxy, then watching the computer control most of your proxies actions against NPCs while you sit there and watch it throw randomly generated numbers at itself. Which pretty much defeats the entire purposes of it being a game.

So what you're saying is you don't like RPGs, you like action games, so this means RPGs are automatically shit because they aren't action games?

You don't have to like RPGs, it's all well and good if you don't, however this doesn't mean that RPGs are stupid, or that they should remove the aspects that make them RPGs to appeal to you. I don't like RTS games, I don't really see the appeal, but that doesn't mean they're stupid and they don't have to change in an attempt to please me.

He supports the homogenization of genres, is against diversity and wants ALL RPGs play like action games. (like we don't have enough of them already)

Man, I thought you were kidding when you said that, or exaggerating over personal grudge.

 

[Innocent Flower]

But you see.. skyrim could have been better! that's my point.


They could have had some semi competent writers rather than used the kids from the local primary school.

They could have given a fallout style attribute and perk system (choose attributes at the start). Perks don't replace skills which would have made people immensely happy. That would have both stopped the power leveling of the last games and stopped skyrim's problem of level 20 one handed and one perk being better than lvl 100 one handed and no perks (which is fucking ridiculous) optional traits or birthsigns wouldn't have hurt anyone either.

Weaponry in skyrim is hardly more varied than other games. You need ilogical PERKS to add slight bonuses like bleed. without said perks an axe behaves exactly the same as a longsword. Weapons should have become more diverse! i mean maces should provide huge knockback and recieve the least resistance from armour WITHOUT perks. Whilst spears are very versatile weapons and crossbows and throwing weapons are very different from bows (i know dawnguard added crossbows.. but it's a little late then isn't it?) Weapons are straight upgrades for one another. In morrowind a glass sword would weigh very little and was as good as ebony if ignoring durability. Skyrim? Glass swords are slightly better than elven so do a little more damage and weigh a little bit more and look different. Ebony weighing only slightly more than glass.

Enchanting and spell making could be perfectly balanced. But they did not do so? I mean...
With some enchantments.. Like chameleon.. only the strongest enchantment would be used. (40%+20%+15%=40% chameleon) or perhaps every subesquent enchantment is halved (57%)
some items having lower enchant values. A belt not having as much as an ebony gauntlet
Puting multiple enchants on an item detracts from each enchantment.
Spells can't be made with two effects that shouldn't be (fortify magicka along with nuclear winter or calm and fire)

Weapons and armour just simply shouldn't be made so good. It doesn't make sense that shit quality iron can become sharper than ebony. Surely sharpening iron so much would make it awful in durability whilst increasing the amount of iron on armour would make it very, very heavy. It would make some sense to allow for the creation of elven armour in a different metal. With shaders it would be doable visualy. But realy you shouldn't get more than a 50% increase from a sharpened or reinforced item.


And you know what? Those SMALL CHANGES would have made the game much more balanced and much more friendly to the rpg crowd. But instead we got extra unwanted shit. Unwanted shit is probably too extreme for some people so instead i will opt for 'systems that could have been better thought out'

One thing i forgot to mention was how shit stealth was in skyrim. it's neglected. Not to say stealth was in the last games was better... But in skyrim it's needed on about four quests and it's main purpose is to initiate combat with a powerful first strike.

 

[Calcium]

Meh, I couldn't get into Daggerfall at all, and whilst Morrowind looked promising, the combat was just purely frustrating. Waking up to find I'm being attacked by something pinning me in my room with no possibility of defeating it or leaving the room due to my stats isn't fun at all.

If I could get past the combat, I imagine I'd really like it though.

I'm not sure whether I prefer Oblivion over Skyrim or vice versa. I certainly played Oblivion more, though I had a lot more time to, and I've never gotten bored of my character in Skyrim.

 

[Artemis923]

I put countless numbers of hours into Morrowind. The idea that you could go from being so weak the villagers could punch you out to an indestructible killing machine really made leveling fun and rewarding. The world was huge and had so much to do.

That's what I loved about the Elder Scrolls: you didn't need to do ass kissing favors for npc's the whole game. The majority of the time, I just spent exploring...and was amazed at what I'd find just over that next hill.


Oblivion felt empty and bland in comparison. The atrocious voice acting completely pulled me out of the game, I hated it. The combat wasn't as "bad" as Morrowind's, but by then I was so used to it that it didn't bother me at all. The quests and main story weren't as interesting or engaging, and I felt that exploring wasn't as rewarding as it used to be.

Still, I pumped about 50+ hours into the game, and it had its fun moments.

Skyrim...

Meh. The action tries to give this intense feeling of epic battles and thrilling moments, but it all just felt so dull to me. For such a graphically intense game, I think it just bothered me that the combat still consisted of "hit the attack button until enemy is dead. Drink potion/heal yourself. Repeat."

I beat the main questlines, and the game bores the shit out of me now. Sure, I have kewl armor and weapons and I do gross damage and I have all these perks...

...and I have nothing interesting to do with all of them. No "brewtal" bosses to go kill, nothing. Even jacked up to Master difficulty the game is piss easy. I only spent about 30 hours in it before I called it quits, and I can't find it in me to go back.

I played skyrim soon after it came out. I played daggerfall after i did 95% of skyrim.

Anyways. Most of you haven't even heard of daggerfall.

Don't kid yourself, bro-siedon. I played and loved Daggerfall when it was released in '96...along with Heroes of Might and Magic II and TIE Fighter.

But I'm sure you haven't heard of of either of those.

 

[SajuukKhar]

That makes no sense though - spears thrust, swords slash, axes chop, maces crush...that's just a physical property of the weapon - it makes no sense that it should be related to a perk. Instead you should have enemies that are weak to different types of damage - a lightly armoured character will be vulnerable to slashing damage, however a heavily armoured character will be vulnerable to crushing damage from maces and flails.

It does make sense that it is tied to a perk, otherwise then every character has access to the exact same thing from game start making all characters more homogenous. Also, it makes sense that it would require some amount of training to be able to know, and hit, armor foes with maces in a specific spot so that the maces damage "ignores" their armor, or how to use a sword in such a way that you utilize your swings better so you get "bonus critical damage" etc. etc. An average Joe who just swings weapons around wouldn't be skilled enough to get those "effects" to work.

Introduce stats that grow with your level/skills. Or just have skills score tied to weapon stats - for example having points in a certain skill will increase your damage with strength based weapons. Restoration magic could increase damage from holy/divine weapons etc. allowing cleric builds etc.

Leveling your magic skills actually does increase the number of charges you get from magical staves. It doesn't make much sense that leveling restoration would make you do more damage with a restoration staff, as the staff enchantment is like blue paint on a car, you may be master of paint but that wont magically make the paint any more blue, or turn red, it may let you spread the paint out more so you can have "more" by using what you have more efficiently though.

I just think Skyrim is a pretty crap "RPG" when it has barely any reliance on stats.

The entire game is reliant on stats.
- It doesn't matter how well you can spam mouse 1, if you don't have a high one-handed/two-handed/Archery skill, and perks, you won't win combat.
-It doesn't matter what badass armor you have, if you don't have a high heavy/light armor skill, and perks, you will die.
-Your ability to smith, do alchemy, and enchant, are entirely based on stats.
-All magic skills need perks in order to be viable past early-game.

But there aren't any non-vanilla spells in Skyrim. That's a completely unfair comparison.

When comparing a game that has X and Y, and a game that as Y you can only compare the Ys since it is the only thing both games have. It was a completely fair comparison because I only compared the things both games have.

 

[Eddie the head]

Gear should not be a progression system IMO, gear should be something you pick because you like it, which is what Skyrim moved to.

Sorry, but chain mail is inferior to plate armour and no amount of modification will change that fact.

Not true. Chain mail distributes kinetic energy much better then plate mail, meaning it blocks projectiles better. Any arrow, or magic attack with kinetic force, would have it's energy "absorbed" and thus not be as effective. So you can't say one is binarily better then the other. It would depend on what is being used.

 

[SajuukKhar]

And you know what? Those SMALL CHANGES would have made the game much more balanced and much more friendly to the rpg crowd.

The thing is though, most Elder Scrolls fan don't want that.

People who try to suggest forms of limitations like "only being able to smith certain armor types to only so high" or "can't make spells with contradictory effects" get flamed like mad on the official Elder Scrolls forums because its really a stupid idea.

If you don't want iron armor to go past a certain level then don't smith it that high, if you don't want a spell that does two contradictory things, then don't make it, if you don't want to put some uber-enchantment that gives you like +500 skill or something, then don't make it.

The game is made to be broken so that people who want to keep the game balanced can, and the people who want to become uber-god of unstoppable power/doom, can also. Why people feel the need to impose some uniform "balance" against everyone is beyond me.

Player choice > forced limitations.

 

[charge52]

The entire game is reliant on stats.
- It doesn't matter how well you can spam mouse 1, if you don't have a high one-handed/two-handed/Archery skill, and perks, you won't win combat.
-It doesn't matter what badass armor you have, if you don't have a high heavy/light armor skill, and perks, you will die.
-Your ability to smith, do alchemy, and enchant, are entirely based on stats.
-All magic skills need perks in order to be viable past early-game.

- Have we played the same unmodded skyrim? You will win in combat if you spam mouse 1 regardless of whether or not you have invested perks in the weapons respective tree. The only way you could lose is if A) You are fighting a giant at level 1, or B) fall into a coma and forget how to open your inventory and drink a potion.
- Same as the top, whether you invest perks into the armor or not doesn't determine whether or not you will win, especially in your scenario where you have badass armor.
- This is the only part where I agree 50%, they are based on perks, not stats. You can have as high an Smithing level as you want, it's still perks that determine what you can do.
- Not really, the closest to this is needing magicka. Even level one spells can take down most enemies in the game, it takes longer at higher levels, but unless you somehow missed the boatload of health and magicka potions they never require perks to be viable.

 

[SajuukKhar]

- Have we played the same unmodded skyrim? You will win in combat if you spam mouse 1 regardless of whether or not you have invested perks in the weapons respective tree. The only way you could lose is if A) You are fighting a giant at level 1, or B) fall into a coma and forget how to open your inventory and drink a potion.
- Same as the top, whether you invest perks into the armor or not doesn't determine whether or not you will win, especially in your scenario where you have badass armor.
- This is the only part where I agree 50%, they are based on perks, not stats. You can have as high an Smithing level as you want, it's still perks that determine what you can do.
- Not really, the closest to this is needing magicka. Even level one spells can take down most enemies in the game, it takes longer at higher levels, but unless you somehow missed the boatload of health and magicka potions they never require perks to be viable.

-Yes I have, trying to take on Falmer warmongers, high level vampires, mid-high level dragons with a glass sword, and no perks, will make you loose, you simply cannot do enough damage to kill things with nearly, if not over, 1000 hp, when your sword only does 16 damage. they will out damage you, even if you have 80% damage resistance.

-Without perks Daedric armor only has 205 armor rating, and that is at 100 skill, which is so low that bandits with bows could hit you for over 200 damage, trying to kill anything like high level Falmer, vampires, giants, dragons, will get you killed.

-even with potion spamming, trying to kill a elgendary dragons with a 8damage firestream attack, will result in you dieing long before you kill them.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Oblivion doesn't have perks. Why are you using perks in your example of Skyrim spells?

X and Y.

Because the perks simulate the repeat of spells in higher classes that Oblivion had.

Like there being an apprentice, adept, journeymen... etc. etc. level fireball spell in Oblivion, is now replaced by the Fireball + augmented flames + other perks, spell in Skyrim.

The magic perk system in Skyrim fixed the notorious issue Oblivion had of there being way to many spells that clog up you spell list, and having like 1 out of every 8 of those spells be repeats of other spells, just with different damage.

 

[Joccaren]

It does make sense that it is tied to a perk, otherwise then every character has access to the exact same thing from game start making all characters more homogenous. Also, it makes sense that it would require some amount of training to be able to know, and hit, armor foes with maces in a specific spot so that the maces damage "ignores" their armor, or how to use a sword in such a way that you utilize your swings better so you get "bonus critical damage" etc. etc. An average Joe who just swings weapons around wouldn't be skilled enough to get those "effects" to work.

Eh, I'm going to disagree with you here. A giant hammer/mace will get the force of its attack through armour so long as you hit the opponent. Its why the weapon gains the perk - not because you have to hit it in a certain place, but because of how the weapon deals its damage. It doesn't try to cut through the armour, pierce it or otherwise damage it. It just tries to hit that armour, and transfer its kinetic energy to the person inside said armour.
And in what way would this make characters more homogeneous? It increases weapon diversity and still allows for archers, mages and such to go about their merry business. All it effects is warriors, and then only slightly. They can still improve in different directions, and use different weapons/combos primarily as well. If anything it lessens the homogenisation for early game as every weapon no longer does the same thing, and late game warriors will still be using their favoured type of weapon, so... yeah.
Of course, it does remove perks from the warrior trees [One handed/Two handed]. So, what to do with this? Add new perks that improve those bonuses the weapons already have, add new perks that unlock new things that you can do as the warrior [For example, the backwards/forwards power attack sort of things, but with different combos], or add new perks that do something completely different. In that way you increase weapon diversity, increase early game warrior diversity, and still allow for a different set of perks for warriors to have end game.

Leveling your magic skills actually does increase the number of charges you get from magical staves. It doesn't make much sense that leveling restoration would make you do more damage with a restoration staff, as the staff enchantment is like blue paint on a car, you may be master of paint but that wont magically make the paint any more blue, or turn red, it may let you spread the paint out more so you can have "more" by using what you have more efficiently though.

The way magic works in Skyrim is equivalent to paint on a car. Doesn't mean it has to be. Could be equal to your speaker system in the car. With worse speaker systems, you can't amplify the music the radio receives that much. Get an amazing speaker set and you can shake the neighbourhood with the sound you can create by amplifying what you're given by the radio. It can work with increased damage too.
By virtue of the 'Holy Weapons' comment, I also get the feeling that he's got weapons in mind that aren't in Skyrim. Things like Dawnbreaker, which is a Holy Sword of Meridia, only your level of a certain type magic determines how well you are able to wield the power within that certain magical artefact.

The entire game is reliant on stats.
- It doesn't matter how well you can spam mouse 1, if you don't have a high one-handed/two-handed/Archery skill, and perks, you won't win combat.

Not really. I can manage most fights in vanilla Skyrim without being hit, and when I am hit I just chug a potion, or tank it with my ridiculous health - which is attainable through finding health bonus loot without even putting points into health, though of course not to the same extent.
More to the point, if you don't have any points in one-handed/two-handed/archery, the fights might actually be fights rather than 1 hit kill fests.

-It doesn't matter what badass armor you have, if you don't have a high heavy/light armor skill, and perks, you will die.

Not really.
Armour caps out at around 80% damage reduction. It is possible to get this just from armour alone. You don't need skill in heavy/light armour, you just need to have money to buy the gear - and money is everywhere.

-Your ability to smith, do alchemy, and enchant, are entirely based on stats.

They're based on perks that are unlocked by doing something over and over. The stats do little to nothing [Smithing I'll give allows you to upgrade weapons more], and the perks are what do pretty much everything for those skills.

-All magic skills need perks in order to be viable past early-game.

Not really. No matter the magic or skills you just need patience for it to be viable late game, and you can get some pretty mean loot drops that do away with any need for levelling those skills too.

Might I also point out that you've actually accurately labelled these things as what they are - SKILLS. In an RPG context, these are seperate from STATS. The three STATS that exist in Skyrim are Health, Magicka and Stamina, and all they do is directly influence their namesake by 10 each level for one of them [With stamina also increasing carry weight].
A cry for STATS is a cry for things like strength, that will increase your damage with all melee weapons, your carry weight, how much damage you can block and how far you can draw back a bow [In other games it would also influence whether you could wield heavier weapons or not, but that doesn't really fit with TES], or Intelligence that increases Magicka regen, spell potency, how quickly you improve skills and how much potions effect you.
This allows greater diversification of characters, and the only downside is it requires a bit more thinking. You don't even have to make anything chance based, but they effect your character so that your incredibly strong Nord who is pro with one handed weapons doesn't have to had spent his life using two handed weapons to deal a heavy blow that knocks an enemy down - he just uses his raw strength.

When comparing a game that has X and Y, and a game that as Y you can only compare the Ys since it is the only thing both games have. It was a completely fair comparison because I only compared the things both games have.

Besides the point that vanilla in moddable games generally means "Without mods" rather than "Without using what is in the game to make something" [I.E: The potions you can craft in Skyrim aren't vanilla from the way you're saying this, yet they ARE in the vanilla game], In the context of this argument, I don't quite agree.
The argument was that Oblivion had more spells than Skyrim. You said otherwise. All that gets compared here are spells. Not whether Bethesda designed them or they were designed using the spell making mechanic. If you decide that a perk that increases damage in Skyrim counts as extra spells, increased damage spells thanks to perks/things used in spell crafting count as extra spells too.
If the argument was simply which game had more Bethesda-Made spells, your statements might hold a bit more ground, but from what I could tell it was just spells that were mentioned, not whether they were Bethesda made or in game player made.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Eh, I'm going to disagree with you here.

It makes characters more homogenous because you are taking a special effect that only Warrior has, and giving it to Thieves and Mages. It's like if Mages had a perk that give fireballs a AOE effect, and instead of making it a perk, you just gave all fireballs the aoe effect by nature. You are taking away an effect that only one class has, which gives them a difference from the other classes, and giving to everyone, meaning everyone has the same effect, and making everyone more homogeneous.

The way it is now, the game has weapon diversity, by letting people pick the special effect they like most, making their preferred weapon type better then the ones, and it allows character diversity by giving that character effects other characters dont have, and if they do add more perks to replace those perks, people will just sit there and say "waa we want THOSE effects to be in weapons at the start also". It's an endless cycle.

The way magic works in Skyrim is equivalent to paint on a car. Doesn't mean it has to be.

Weapons like Dawnbreaker get their power from the Daedric lords who created them, it still doesn't make a lick of sense for your magic skills to influence the power of an artifact made by a god. That system just doesn't make sense with how magic works in the Elder Scrolls universe, and doing a retcon of that magnitude would piss off so many people.

The Not really. I can manage most fights in vanilla Skyrim without being hit,

Well first off, even with 100 smithing, and the dragon smithing perk, the highest you can smith a Dragonbone sword, the strongest sword in the game, up to is 75 damage, and that's with 100 one-handed skill, and all +damage perks applied. Without those perks, its more like 35. Mid-level bandits have 300+ HP, and mid-level versions of everything else, such as Falmer, and Draugr, have even more HP. The only way the game can turn into a one hit kill fest is if you alchemy exploit your smithing skill to some ungodly level.

Also, even with 400hp, 80% damage resistance, and 45% magicka resistance, most high level enemies such as Draugr Death-Overlords, Falmer Warmongers, and Ancient-Legendary dragons, still take large chunks of HP out with only a hit or two. Unless you do some major potion spam, which is in itself an exploit, they will kill you long before you can kill them, if you are using a one-handed weapon without perks.

Not really.
Armour caps out at around 80% damage reduction. It is possible to get this just from armour alone. You don't need skill in heavy/light armour, you just need to have money to buy the gear - and money is everywhere.

100% wrong. With 100 heavy armor skill, and no perks, a full suit of Daedric armor + shield, the best armor in the game, only reaches 205 armor rating. The cap of 80% damage resistance is only achieved at 567 armor rating. It is 100% impossible to reach the armor cap without perks, and/or major smithing, and even with every single heavy armor perk, Deadric armor only gets up to 530, meaning you HAVE to use smithing, even with all heavy armor perks, to reach the cap.

They're based on perks that are unlocked by doing something over and over. The stats do little to nothing [Smithing I'll give allows you to upgrade weapons more], and the perks are what do pretty much everything for those skills.

and perks are part of the skill itself.

Not really. No matter the magic or skills you just need patience for it to be viable late game, and you can get some pretty mean loot drops that do away with any need for levelling those skills too.

Nope, magic at higher level is worthless without perks, unless you exploit enchanting to get 100% cost reduction, but that is an exploit.

Trying to kill a Dragur Death overlord, with ebony weapons, while your just shooting your 8 damage magic stream, and it has over 1,000 hp, will get you killed longer before you can kill it, Unless you potion spam.

Might I also point out that you've actually accurately labelled these things as what they are - SKILLS. In an RPG context, these are seperate from STATS. The three STATS that exist in Skyrim are Health, Magicka and Stamina, and all they do is directly influence their namesake by 10 each level for one of them [With stamina also increasing carry weight].

Well first off, raising your health/magicka also increases your health/magicka regen rates. Health and Magicka do more then just raise your total pool.

Secondly, attribute systems in Elder Scrolls, and indeed in other games like Fallout, are flawed. Raising your special skills in Fallout by 1 or 2 points via implants, and the intense training perk, has very little, if any, noticeable to your character. It's only through extreme attribute gouging, like lowering a special to one, or raising it by 4 points, that any real noticeable changes take place.

The same is true in past Elder Scrolls games. As you leveled up, you got bonuses to your attributes, based on how many skills points from skills in that attribute you raised. Due to all of a classes skills only taking up 3 of the 8 attributes, one would eventually get to a point were all of their main attributes were maxed, and so they had to raise their minor attributes to continue leveling. This resulted in all characters having several maxed attributes, and many others in the 70s, and while a difference of 30 points may seem like a lot the way stats were calculated mad it not really that big of a deal. The difference between the magicka given at 100 INT, and 70 INT, was 60, and that was the cost of maybe two mid-high level spells. The difference between a mage who had mastered INT and Magicka, and a warrior with a INT of 70, was TWO SPELLS.

My Oblivion Warrior and Mage characters with 10 in all skills, and 70-100 in all attributes, played exactly the same, had practically the same damage, practically the same magicka, and the basically the same armor protection.

My Skyrim characters on the other hand
-Warrior, has access to three special power attacks, does twice the damage, has several special weapon bonus, has twice as much armor protection, and isn't slowed down by wearing armor.
-Mage, can fire nearly 10X as many spells as my warrior, can heal many times as much, cna use illusion spells on monsters my warrior could never dream of

The simple fact of the matter is attribute systems only impose conformity amongst different characters, and the "diversity" supposedly brought by them exists only the displayed number, and not in the real mechanics behind the game. This is true of past Elder Scrolls games, it's true of Fallout, is it true of ALL games with attribute systems. It is best to just strip it out, merge the effects attributes governed with those skills, and allow for true character customization.

The removal of attributes only increased the real diversity of characters in Skyrim by 10-fold, and bringing back attributes would be a significant step backwards.

Besides the point that vanilla in moddable games generally means "Without mods" rather than "Without using what is in the game to make something" [I.E: The potions you can craft in Skyrim aren't vanilla], In the context of this argument,

Vanilla spells are spells that exist in the game at rlease.

The things listed are not spells but spell effects, I will admit Oblivion has more vanilla spell effects then Skyrim, but in terms of vanilla spells, it does not.

 

[Innocent Flower]

I can't tell if you're serious or not. that's the most... wrong argument iv seen.

Real logic, gameplay... what comes first?

Logic
It makes no sense to have 100 skill and no perks being less effective than 20 and two perks. In some skills (iv looked in the creation kit)such as enchanting there is NO increase in enchant power from leveling said skill up.

Axes do cause people to bleed. You don't need a message from the stars to let you make people bleed with axes. It's just stupid. Infact most pointy things should be able to make you bleed and including a few blunt ones. perhaps less than an axe- but a katana slash across the chest should result in a little blood trickling out don't you think?

and it just doesn't make sense to have such massive jumps. Like suddenly learning to do 15x damage with sneak attacks or gaining 100 extra carrying capacity.


On gameplay

We could have already had incredibly diverse rolls if granted a fallout style 'choose stats at start' and not increasing them without a perk or enchantment throughout the game. (no multipliers at the end of a level)

But what about the people who level up who can attain many perks but can only choose one? why must they choose when they've worked hard on many skills?

Half the perks are completely useless. the other half are vital. There isn't actualy many that are a 'perk' Rather than a gamechanger or useless.

 

[SajuukKhar]

snip

Gameplay comes before everything in a game, everything. Just like movies do what makes the movie better, not what is necessary logical in the real world.

If Jame Bond villains followed logic, the movies would be over, and Bond would be dead, because the badguy would just shoot him, instead of leaving him in some easily escapeable trap. The movies not following logic is what makes them better, and more exciting.

Games are GAMES first, and logical second. Just like movies are movies first, and logical second, and books are books first, and logical second. Media should do what makes it more exciting, not what is "logical".
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Also
-It makes no sense that a warrior who is heavily trained in one-handed weapons, by having a crap ton of perks, and a mage who isn't, by having no perks, do the exact same damage, with the warrior only having a slight increase in weapon bonus powers.

Making weapon damage primarily focused only on skill, instead of perks, only forces homogenization as it removes real differences between character types, and instead turns the difference between a warrior, and a mage, into trivialistic "the warrior does slightly more bleed damage", instead of "this warrior does twice the damage with one-handed weapons then this mage."

Trivialising character progression for the sake of "real-world logic", especially in a fantasy game, is generally considered bad game design.

-Actually, daggers go from X3 critical damage, to X6 with the backstab perk, to X15 with the Assassin's Blade perk. One could argue that the X15 should be brought to X12 to match the previous doubling from X3 to X6 that backstab provided, but daggers ARE supposed to be the uber-stealth-skill weapons, but the point is that it isn't a single jump from X3 to X15.

Also, it doesn't make much sense in the first place that I can carry like 15 battle axes either, that I can get 100 more carry weight is no less inconsistent with "logic" then what I could carry in the first place, and changing the carry system to were you can carry like 15 battle axes kinda negates the whole "loot " aspect of the game.

-The Fallout style of attribute system is also broken, as I mentioned before. Having a difference of one or two points doesn't actually change much in your character, it is only through extreme STAT manipulation, like dropping Charisma to 1, that any real change takes place. It is better, and offers more real change in your character, in the long run, to remove attributes entirely, and just make all of their effects into perks.

Also, forcing people to pick their attributes, that are unchangeable, at the beginning of the game, requires that the player have some psychic foresight about how the game works, in order to prevent themselves from making a build that isn't viable. I don't know about you, but most people I know dont have pre-cognative powers.

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But what about the people who level up who can attain many perks but can only choose one? why must they choose when they've worked hard on many skills?

What? I am sorry, but this makes no sense. I dont know what you were trying to ask.

-The only perks I have found "useless" are the lockpcking ones, all other perks from all other skill trees have use depending on your character's archetype.

 

[Joccaren]

It makes characters more homogenous because you are taking a special effect that only Warrior has, and giving it to Thieves and Mages. It's like if Mages had a perk that give fireballs a AOE effect, and instead of making it a perk, you just gave all fireballs the aoe effect by nature. You are taking away an effect that only one class has, which gives them a difference from the other classes, and giving to everyone, meaning everyone has the same effect, and making everyone more homogeneous.

Thieves and mages aren't going to use that though. A mage is going to use their spells, and a thief is likely to use either a bow or the daggers for the sneak attack bonus, or just sneak past without a care. Spellswords might use weapons, but they'd have unlocked those perks anyway as a part of that build.

The way it is now, the game has weapon diversity, by letting people pick the special effect they like most, making their preferred weapon type better then the ones, and it allows character diversity by giving that character effects other characters dont have, and if they do add more perks to replace those perks, people will just sit there and say "waa we want THOSE effects to be in weapons at the start also". It's an endless cycle.

There is no weapon diversity outside of the speed of strikes and the proportional damage. There is class diversity in that a 'warrior' class is able to gain special bonuses when using certain weapons, but the weapons themselves have no such inherent value. They are merely spam-click objects that behave pretty much exactly the same.
And don't try a slippery slope fallacy. Its the same as me saying that you getting your way in Skyrim means that you'll be crying for weapons to be locked to classes for diversity in the next Elder Scrolls. Simply because your view on this subject revolves around tying something to a class doesn't mean that's your view for everything. Likewise, so long as there is weapon diversity, what reason is there to call for special warrior styled attacks or upgrades to those perks to be made available from the get go?

Weapons like Dawnbreaker get their power from the Daedric lords who created them, it still doesn't make a lick of sense for your magic skills to influence the power of an artifact made by a god. That system just doesn't make sense with how magic works in the Elder Scrolls universe, and doing a retcon of that magnitude would piss off so many people.

Eh, I'm not going to argue about lore, but I don't think it would be too outlandish for one to be able to amplify the magic sent out by an item with their own magic. Even if it is the power of a Daedric Prince, its only a tiny portion of that power - as is evidenced by the rather pitiful bonuses overall, likely in the name of balance.

Well first off, even with 100 smithing, and the dragon smithing perk, the highest you can smith a Dragonbone sword, the strongest sword in the game, up to is 75 damage, and that's with 100 one-handed skill, and all +damage perks applied. Without those perks, its more like 35. Mid-level bandits have 300+ HP, and mid-level versions of everything else, such as Falmer, and Draugr, have even more HP. The only way the game can turn into a one hit kill fest is if you alchemy exploit your smithing skill to some ungodly level.

One hit kill fest might be a little bit of an exaggeration. Anything that didn't scale with your level is a 1 hit kill fest. Everything else dies in about 10 seconds anyway thanks to Duel Wielding Power Attacks, and if you have it the Elemental Fury Shout its closer to 2 seconds. It ends up as 35*4*1.5=210 damage per power attack, not including criticals, enchantments or anything else. 35 base, 4 attacks in the dual wield power attack [One left, One Right, One both], and 1.5 multiplier for it being a power attack.

Also, even with 400hp, 80% damage resistance, and 45% magicka resistance, most high level enemies such as Draugr Death-Overlords, Falmer Warmongers, and Ancient-Legendary dragons, still take large chunks of HP out with only a hit or two. Unless you do some major potion spam, which is in itself an exploit, they will kill you long before you can kill them, if you are using a one-handed weapon without perks.

This really is a question of how bad you are at dodging. If you stand still, yeah, you're screwed. As said, enemies rarely hit me. If you can master the timing of the attacks in a battle, you can dodge a fair portion of them and greatly lower your damage recieved for the fight. Let us not also forget the faithful meatshields - Lydia/Other companion, your horse and your dog. Whilst generally useless in a fight, their tendency to just run in and get attacked distracts enemies for long enough for you to take on at least one, and after that they periodically return to get their ass kicked so you can dodge some more attacks.
Also, in what way is chugging potions exploiting? Yeah, its OP as all hell. You don't exploit anything to do it though. You just drink potions in your inventory, as it seems pretty clear Bethesda intended for you too. The only way it would be exploiting is if you Alchemy crafted tons of potions of +10,000 health or something, or otherwise get the system to work in a way that wasn't really intended. Thanks to the way potions work, they're pretty obviously meant to be chugged en mass when you need them. There's not really any need to set them up like they have been otherwise.

and perks are part of the skill itself.

And abilities in most RPGs are unlocked at each level. Does this mean your level is what determines how many spells you know in that game?
No. Whether you've put your level up points into abilities does, and the same holds true for Skyrim. The only thing that changes is what exactly it is that prevents low level players from getting the high level spells. In most other RPGs its Stats, in Skyrim its your Skill level.

Nope, magic at higher level is worthless without perks, unless you exploit enchanting to get 100% cost reduction, but that is an exploit.

Is it efficient at higher levels?
No, but even with perks its not - it just takes too long to kill things.
With or without perks it is possible to use magic and get through the game well enough. Its just very time consuming, which holds for both magic with and without perks.

Trying to kill a Dragur Death overlord, with ebony weapons, while your just shooting your 8 damage magic stream, and it has over 1,000 hp, will get you killed longer before you can kill it, Unless you potion spam.

Done. Kite, kite, kite, kite, kite, kite, kite - repeat for ages. Occasionally dragon shout stun it. Takes a lot of time, and if you just stand still you're dead, but really, in an action game you shouldn't be standing still. If you are, you're doing it wrong. You kite the enemy, send magic at it, and wait until its dead. You're out of mana? Wait till it comes back. If you're even a moderate level though you should have a lot of magicka from putting points into Magicka upon levelling up. 10 levels and your capacity doubles. Thats without perks or increases to that magic class's skill.

Well first off, raising your health/magicka also increases your health/magicka regen rates. Health and Magicka do more then just raise your total pool.

That is because Health/Magicka regen is % based. The more health you have, the more you'll regen. Far as I can tell increasing Health/Magicka doesn't change that % heal rate, merely the amount it heals thanks to giving you more health. Could be wrong though, and it increases health regen by 0.1% or something [Increasing it by 1% would allow you 85% health regen per second at max level, so I'd be extremely surprised if it got that high] I'll check the Creation Kit later.

Secondly, attribute systems in Elder Scrolls, and indeed in other games like Fallout, are flawed. Raising your special skills in Fallout by 1 or 2 points via implants, and the intense training perk, has very little, if any, noticeable to your character. It's only through extreme attribute gouging, like lowering a special to one, or raising it by 4 points, that any real noticeable changes take place.

The same is true in past Elder Scrolls games. As you leveled up, you got bonuses to your attributes, based on how many skills points from skills in that attribute you raised. Due to all of a classes skills only taking up 3 of the 8 attributes, one would eventually get to a point were all of their main attributes were maxed, and so they had to raise their minor attributes to continue leveling. This resulted in all characters having several maxed attributes, and many others in the 70s, and while a difference of 30 points may seem like a lot the way stats were calculated mad it not really that big of a deal. The difference between the magicka given at 100 INT, and 70 INT, was 60, and that was the cost of maybe two mid-high level spells. The difference between a mage who had mastered INT and Magicka, and a warrior with a INT of 70, was TWO SPELLS.

My Oblivion Warrior and Mage characters with 10 in all skills, and 70-100 in all attributes, played exactly the same, had practically the same damage, practically the same magicka, and the basically the same armor protection.

My Skyrim characters on the other hand
-Warrior, has access to three special power attacks, does twice the damage, has several special weapon bonus, has twice as much armor protection, and isn't slowed down by wearing armor.
-Mage, can fire nearly 10X as many spells as my warrior, can heal many times as much, cna use illusion spells on monsters my warrior could never dream of

The simple fact of the matter is attribute systems only impose conformity amongst different characters, and the "diversity" supposedly brought by them exists only the displayed number, and not in the real mechanics behind the game. This is true of past Elder Scrolls games, it's true of Fallout, is it true of ALL games with attribute systems. It is best to just strip it out, merge the effects attributes governed with those skills, and allow for true character customization.

The removal of attributes only increased the real diversity of characters in Skyrim by 10-fold, and bringing back attributes would be a significant step backwards.

So, basically, because Bethesda has done a poor job of Stats in the past means they are a flawed concept?
Seriously, from the way that's described, Bethesda fail at the mechanical side of games. They can make the world, but the mechanics they just can't do. In most games there is a noticeable difference between a mage and warrior class, even if you were to remove the fact that they are unable to gain each others skills by virtue of their class.
For one, remove limits on how many points can be put into each skill. Then reduce the number of points given on level up to 3 or so, and have each skill start with maybe 10-12 points in it. Have each point increase to a Stat provide a marked increase to a value. One point in Wisdom gives 10 more mana, as an example. Then one level nets you 30 more wisdom at max, though generally you'd probably only get 10 or 20 as you'd put points into intelligence for increased potency as well. A level 10 warrior with 10 intelligence and 12 wisdom will not be able to use spells near as effectively as a level 5 mage with 23 wisdom and 17 intelligence - the mage has a 110 mana bonus for one, as well as bonuses to spell potency.
Its not an issue with the system, its an issue with how Bethesda fail to balance it, like they do everything else.

Vanilla spells are spells that exist in the game at rlease.

The things listed are not spells but spell effects, I will admit Oblivion has more vanilla spell effects then Skyrim, but in terms of vanilla spells, it does not.

In that case niether your increase fire damage or stagger things are extra spells, as they are simply spell effects too. The individual spells are just "Flames" or "Frost" or W/E, simply adding a new effect to them doesn't change that.

 

[Joccaren]

Also
-It makes no sense that a warrior who is heavily trained in one-handed weapons, by having a crap ton of perks, and a mage who isn't, by having no perks, do the exact same damage, with the warrior only having a slight increase in weapon bonus powers.

Making weapon damage primarily focused only on skill, instead of perks, only forces homogenization as it removes real differences between character types, and instead turns the difference between a warrior, and a mage, into trivialistic "the warrior does slightly more bleed damage", instead of "this warrior does twice the damage with one-handed weapons then this mage."

If it is based off skill, you'd assume that warrior would have a much high one-handed skill. As such, his damage would be much higher as well. The mage would probably only have the default 15 one-handed skill. If they had a decent one-handed skill, they're no longer a mage. They're a battlemage/spellsword and should be good at using one-handed weapons as well as magic.
Really, all the perks do is make it so your strength increases in jumps rather than gradually over time. That 20% bonus damage could have been added at 1% per level for the first 20 levels. Hell, I think it is, its just there as an additional sudden jump in power.

Also, forcing people to pick their attributes, that are unchangeable, at the beginning of the game, requires that the player have some psychic foresight about how the game works, in order to prevent themselves from making a build that isn't viable. I don't know about you, but most people I know dont have pre-cognative powers.

Agreed on this. Stats should have a certain level of them chosen at the start, but be mostly gained through playing the game. In this way you might build your character wrong initially, but be able to turn out well once you understand things and start applying your points properly. Of course, adding items, spells or quest rituals to reset your stats and allow you to select them again also works, but can be easily exploited and thus should only be allowed to occur once, or should be very expensive.

What? I am sorry, but this makes no sense. I dont know what you were trying to ask.

Basically its along the lines of people who level up destruction magic, alchemy, smithing and one handed, gain a level, and can only gain a bonus in one of them because of that. Should not a small bonus be applied to each instead of a large jump to only one?
Of course, some stats do gain a small bonus from levels without perks, but for the majority its either utterly unnoticeable or non-existent.

-The only perks I have found "useless" are the lockpcking ones, all other perks from all other skill trees have use depending on your character's archetype.

Useless perks largely depend on what you're playing. Playing a one-handed sword user that duel wields? Many of the one handed perks involving axes or maces are useless. The majority of other trees are useless - magic, two handed, block, archery - ect, and a number of armour perks [Iron fists as an example. Sure it helps in the occasional brawl, but really, when are you going to be seriously fighting without a weapon?], or things like the speech perks that increase your sell price and decrease buy price [You're already swimming in money and struggling to sell stuff because all the merchants are broke, what use are those perks?]. If you become Thane of a hold the ability to bribe guards is generally useless, unless you go on a mad killing rampage or get yourself into a situation where bribing them is impossible or impractical.
Dependent on how you play, the majority of perks are useless on any given playthrough. When you've filled up the perks that are useful to you, you're left with points that do nothing 'cause you put them into things you nearly never use. I'm at level 30 in my current playthrough and its already almost at that point. I have 8 points left to spend that will actually help me. After that, its all just a matter of "Here will do", or even "I can put a point here so I'll do it" rather than "This could help me, so I'll improve it".

 

[SajuukKhar]

snip

-That Thieves and mages use it or not is irrelevant. A mage who picks up one-handed weapons late in his life, aka after he has used all of his perks, should NEVER be able to match the damage a trained warrior, who has spent his entire life training with a sword, aka who has put perks into one-handed. It makes zero sense, and even then there are still plenty of mage character that use one handed, and they should not be able to do as much damage as a warrior.

-Actually, one handed, and two handed, weapons have different reaches, with two handed weapons having 30% more reach then one handed weapons, and each type of weapon, axe, mace, swords, has it's own chance to stagger enemies when using a power attack.

-Dual weilding is meant to be the strongest means of damage, but it comes at the cost of not being able to block, and thus taking more damage. its a tradeoff.

-Not everyone uses a meatshield companion, and then again, abusing the game's systems to your advantage is a choice you make, and that's fine, but people who play the game normally, and dont abuse the game's systems in a similar way, have different results.

-I am not sure of the point you were trying to make about perks/abilities in other RPGs anymore.

-Having to spend 10 hours to get through one dungeon because magic does so little damage is not a viable means to play the game, you will never get it done at that rate.

-Even with 200 magicka, and 100 destruction skill, the most basic flames spell still costs 8magicka a second, giving you 25 seconds, at most, of use. And since the flames spell only does 8 damage a second, which gives you only 200 damage, less then 1/5 of a Dragur Death Overlord's health, and the fact that it takes nearly two minutes to fully regen your magicka while in combat, means its going to take AGES just to beat one guy. It is not a viable way to play the game, as it takes far to long to get through anything. Being able to do it =/= viable.

-No your not wrong when it comes to health/magicka regen.

-No, it has nothing to do with BETHESDA's ability to do attributes, it has to do with attribute systems in ALL games. Every single game with attribute systems has the exact same flaws, putting points into yur attributes does very little to effectively make your character better, it is only through MASSIVE point differences do any real changes take place. The difference between characters in games with attributes is mostly only in the displayed numbers on the screen, however, under the hood, when you actually calculate out all the damage resistances, or critical chances, etc. etc. you will find that there is little real difference between your character.

-No, that isn't the case at all, your not making any sense. A fireball spells, and a fireball spell with an added fear effect, are two different spells. A level 10 magnitude fire spells, and an 11 magnitude fire spells, are the same spell because they dont have different effects.