Poll: Skyrim: The Armour complaint.

[Eclectic Dreck]

There are a number of issues.

Mechanically, that means fewer places to put enchantments. There was already one such reduction between Morrowind and Oblivion (one could wear standard clothes beneath armor and high quality clothing could hold a very good enchantment). While I prefer (from a style standpoint) to wear a unified look on my characters, I generally stay away from the many quality one piece armor sets the modding community made for Oblivion simply because they offer less flexibility when it comes to how badass my character is in the end. This reduces my ability to tailor my character on the fly fairly significantly. It also gives me fewer options when it comes to wearing the armor. For example, at high levels of skill, I can get enormous protection (e.g. max) from a helmet, shield and chest piece. This means I can choose to wear other armor parts because of how they look or how much they weigh rather than for how much protection they confer.


Cosmetically it makes a difference simply because people (not me generally) want the ability to mix and match. Much of the Oblivion community at this point seems to regard the game as an interactive doll design program. There are animation packs that give new poses, "armor" that is purely cosmetic, new races that do little more than shift a character look towards some fetish etc. There are also those people who just want the option of taking a cool chest piece and pairing it with cool greaves that aren't from the same set.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Well, for you the easy solution is to not make game-breaker spells and let everyone else have our fun. After all, it's a single-player game

Game breaking spells aren't the issue because casting spells yourself is an excercise in pointlessness in Morrowind. You've actually gone the opposite way to the point I was making. Wizards are rubbish.. atrociously rubbish.

If they are able to do the things we expect casters to be able to do (control minds, go invisible, fly, etc) they are always going to be overpowered in comparison to people who can't.

Except they aren't, because it's always going to be pointless to do those things yourself. By the time you become capable of casting powerful spells you could be capable of buffing your strength to 10,000,000 with potions.

And I'm not convinced there's a single "most powerful class" in Morrowind, because whether you break Morrowind with illusion magic, restoration magic, a +enchant suit, a chameleon suit, or alchemy, it's exactly 100% broken no matter how you achieve that.

Except that the optimal way to do all of those things relies on a single strategy.

* Make intelligence potions.
* Drink intelligence potions.
* Make overpowered enchantments.

Because of this, there's no choice between them. You may as well do them all. In fact, you may as well carry 40 different rings and just switch between them. It'll still be way more effective than, you know, actually casting spells yourself.

I find it enjoyable to be able to jump across a continent, control the minds of enemies, avoid threats by going invisible, insta-kill enemies with cool spells, permanently immobilize enemies with powerful curses, and cast strings of spells to increase my own power.

Until you run out of your pathetically small mana pool and have to stop for a rest, or fail at casting a basic spell because you'd had the temerity to actually run across the huge landscape instead of walking at a leisurely pace for half an hour. Unless of course you bothered to pack your hoard of enchanted rings, in which case knock yourself out.

Again, no choice. One optimal strategy, and everything else sucks by comparison.

Again, the issue is not that mages should necessarily be equivalent to the other classes. That argument falls apart because mages are gimped in Morrowind. They are unequivocably terrible except that many mage classes have access to the only two significant skills in the entire game, the only skills which actually matter.

Fuck casting fireballs or controlling minds or doing mage things. Heck, play a crappy hand to hand specialist who just happens to have alchemy, drink 100 strength potions and punch Dagoth Ur into fine paste, you're still way more powerful than any magic user who doesn't specialize in enchantment and alchemy.

I would actively love to see an RPG which said 'fuck it, we're going to make mages insanely powerful'. A game can do that and still be balanced, because the imbalance between classes is then not a flaw but an intentionally and potentially enhancing part of the gameplay experience. Heck, I'd love to see an RPG which takes place on a truly epic scale and in which your character can level cities with a single spell Exalted style. This isn't the issue.. what Morrowind has is not thematic, it can't be justified with any pretention to being an accurate representation of what the Elder Scrolls lore is like. It's just unintentionally bad design.

 

[The-Epicly-Named-Man]

Who gives a sh*t? You know everyone will just want a full armor set anyway because of the stat bonuses (or whatever bollucks). It's hardly a game changer either way, what I want to know about is what you can actually do while playing, not flicking through menus, which is pointless if the changes it's meant to be making are only tweaking various kinds of uninteresting mechanics.

 

[dusk65]

Personally, I'm more worried about what changes (read: nerfs) they're going to make to the magic system.

You know what I missed in Oblivion that I really liked in Morrowind? Jumping. Jumping crazy ridiculous heights and distances. And alchemy. Mind, I still used Alchemy in Oblivion to fill a variety of roles, from offense, defense, disruption, healing, and turning middling food items into CASH. (SUCK IT KING MIDAS I RUN THIS TOWN) But I missed how that one time, I turned my Morrowind-ian Breton into a physical god by using/abusing an infinite Fortify Intelligence Potion trick I found. Even though it officially ended the game as I had known it, it completely changed how I played the game, which in turn made a game that was slowly becoming boring fun again. Another thing I missed was putting activated abilities onto wearable items. I had Jump Pants. They made me really good at jumping, and they were blue. A moment of silence for the Jump Pants.

in oblivion your jumping ability was was just controlled by your acrobatics skill. so if you wanted to a jump spell you just boosted your acrobatics by a few hundred and you could jump over town walls.

I agree about alchemy. Hope you can still use it to mess with your ability to do stuff in skyrim, although with the removal of attributes I'm not hopeful. I guess it depends whether they replace effects like "+20 speed/strength" with "makes you run faster/carry more stuff/do more damage"

Let me ask you, sir or madam: Did you play the third game in the Elder Scrolls series, Morrowind? In that game, there was actually a spell effect called "Jump" that magnified your ability to do exactly that by several magnitudes greater than any Fortify Acrobatics effect. On the one hand, I understand why they took it out. They made cities/towns with walls separate environments from the world map proper, so having people jump over the Imperial City wall to find not a city but a large blank patch of ground simply wouldn't do. And in addition, adding fast-travel obviated the need for the small but potent suite of travel spells (Intervention, Mark, Recall, Jump, and any others that I missed). On the other hand, I had a lot of fun jumping from the middle of a Morrowidian town to the top of the hill adjacent. Basically, if the jump required a Featherfall effect to keep from being lethal, it was a good jump. And coming as I did to Oblivion from a Morriwind point of view, I missed being able to do that.

Yeah I didn't use the jump spell in morrowind so I guess I never missed it (I used levitate instead, which I did miss). Fast travel in oblivion never bothered me much, I just didn't use it. Anyway, it sounds like they're bringing back some of the morrowind style travel options, which is a good move.

For a game that sets out to let you play the way you want to play, removing the different options for accomplishing the same result means you're restricted in how you play. In morrowind if you wanted to jump you could use the jump spell or boost your stats, in oblivion you could only boost your stats, now in skyrim since there's no stats to boost I'm not sure if there will be a way to do it anymore. As others have said its not the pants its what they represent.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

(I used levitate instead, which I did miss)

I missed levitate... making a weapon that cast levitate on your target when you hit them, resulting in them being flung up 100' in the air then falling was good for a giggle.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Meaning no disrespect, but to Hell with balance. Just because a game gives me the potential to break it in half with a well-placed infinite loop of effects doesn't mean I will, but I still want the option all the same. I may not use an item duplication bug to drown a city in watermelons, but I want the option. I may not "beat the game in 8 minutes" with a speed-run, but I want the option. I may never again use an alchemy exploit to put as many attributes as I can up in the billions, but I want the option. And on-topic, I may never commit the grave sin of wearing nothing but pants, but I want the option.

See.. I think you've missed the point of a role playing game.

A roleplaying game is based in a simple premise. Choice -> Consequence. This is what creates immersion, this is what lets you believe for a short period that you are a mighty sword or spell swinging hero and not a loser at a keyboard piloting a collection of well-textured numbers by remote control.

In an immersion-based game, you generally begin with a wide range of choices. The wider the better. In essence, you are defining a persona from nothing, so breadth here is important. The immersion in such a game stems, ultimately, from watching your character affect the world, and in turn how those choices affect your character, either mechanically or in terms of narrative. Ultimately, as your character does more and more, the world should affected by their actions and certain choices becoming foreclosed. Your rogue character cannot specialize as a wizard, your evil character carries the consequences of his evil actions. By the time the game ends, both your character and the world have been shaped by the experience. You know that your character is a noble hero, a vicious bastard, an indecisive prick or anything else he or she might be based on the choices they have made throughout the game.

A game which simply offers you choices without significant consequence, which is just a meaningless collection of options stacked together, is not a roleplaying game. If anything, it's a creativity tool. That's not an insult, people like creativity tools, but Morrowind isn't a very good one.

 

[FlammableHat]

Meh, personally the stats don't make too much of a difference to me, it's not an MMO, being able to one hit stuff doesn't really matter and isn't even that fun, I really enjoy when everything goes to shit on my stealth-user and I have to fight like a ************ just to get away. I never enchant any gear, create any spells or make any potions just for this reason. Being an unstoppable killing machine that takes no damage and wears a suit of armour that looks completely mismatched isn't amazing gameplay.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Game breaking spells aren't the issue because casting spells yourself is an excercise in pointlessness in Morrowind. You've actually gone the opposite way to the point I was making. Wizards are rubbish.. atrociously rubbish.

...

Except that the optimal way to do all of those things relies on a single strategy.

* Make intelligence potions.
* Drink intelligence potions.
* Make overpowered enchantments.

Haha, since when did magic items and magic potions stop being wizard things? Take the guy in this video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XChxLGnIwCU] - in Morrowind terms, he's just pissed because someone stole his +intelligence (for alteration/conjuration/alchemy) hat.

Also, you thinking mages are underpowered in Morrowind just tells me you haven't being creative enough with your spells. You can basically neutralize any threat in the game with the right illusion spell, or if that fails with flight. Or you can cast a spell that basically refills your mana pool by dividing it by zero. Or a spell that trains Restoration while allowing you to escape the confines of the mana pool that mere mortals have to deal with.

In Morrowind, there's really no point in overkill. If a strategy is enough to win any combat or overcome any physical obstacle, than that strategy is exactly enough kill, and anything after that is just showing off. Not that there's anything wrong with showing off - a +enchant suit (which you don't need intelligence potions to make) is pretty fun, too. In other words, there's more ways than a few to break Morrowind exactly as much as it needs to be broken, and plenty of those ways don't involve potions or enchantments.

But this is all a side issue. The core issue is this: why are you telling other people how to have fun in a single-player game? Who do you hope to convince, and what do you hope to accomplish? Let us have our fun, man.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

snip

I think the issue is that most of us who play in a more challenging way feel frustrated by the engine because to us it feels 'broken' there is no polish or constraints to it and as Evil said before it feels more like a physics engine than an RPG. Why should I bother with sneak when I can just 100% chamleon and lol my way around Tamriel? To me that makes the game less fun as I know if I took my character sheet online most people would say LOL why you bothering with that just do this and cheese.

It's like Ezio having a levitate spell... (The assassin not Eliza's dad)

I made a thread not long ago about me spawning arrows becuase I was frustrated with how many its was taking to do a dungeon. It looks like they have fixed the bow system, or attempted too. Now I am happy because it measn that the game is no longer 'broken' (Bethesda actually admitted that it was a problem) in that regard and I can feel comfortable speccing for that style.

I think this is what Bethesda are going for in their reimagining of the Elder Scrolls system. They don't want their game to be so 'breakable' or nonsensical. It's not something they intended.

 

[Werething]

I care so unbelievably little, it almost hurts.

People get worked up over such minute details.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

I care so unbelievably little, it almost hurts.

People get worked up over such minute details.

It also makes the armour 20% cooler. and welcome to the Escapist btw

 

[Kahunaburger]

snip

I think the issue is that most of us who play in a more challenging way feel frustrated by the engine because to us it feels 'broken' there is no polish or constraints to it and as Evil said before it feels more like a physics engine than an RPG. Why should I bother with sneak when I can just 100% chamleon and lol my way around Tamriel? To me that makes the game less fun as I know if I took my character sheet online most people would say LOL why you bothering with that just do this and cheese.

It's like Ezio having a levitate spell... (The assassin not Eliza's dad)

I made a thread not long ago about me spawning arrows becuase I was frustrated with how many its was taking to do a dungeon. It looks like they have fixed the bow system, or attempted too. Now I am happy because it measn that the game is no longer 'broken' (Bethesda actually admitted that it was a problem) in that regard and I can feel comfortable speccing for that style.

I think this is what Bethesda are going for in their reimagining of the Elder Scrolls system. They don't want their game to be so 'breakable' or nonsensical. It's not something they intended.

Here's the problem, for me: the ability to make 100% chameleon or whatever isn't what makes the game easy to break. It's interesting magic (whether you express that through potions, spells, or enchantments) that make the game easy to break. For instance, levitation eliminates all ground-based melee enemies as a credible threat, invisibility and sneaking eliminate all enemies as a credible threat, calm/control/flee creature/person eliminates everything but undead/daedra as a credible threat, and turn undead eliminates undead as a credible threat. But a game without these options is going to be a lot more boring, as is a game that doesn't allow you to stack effects in creative ways.

And honestly, if the lack of constraints (i.e., you can fly around if you want to, or go invisible whenever you feel like it) are what makes Elder Scrolls games unique. Throw in the same constraints you'd see in a different RPG, and you're honestly strictly better off playing Deus Ex, Fallout: NV, Mount and Blade, Witcher 2, or Dragon Age: Origins.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

snip

I think the issue is that most of us who play in a more challenging way feel frustrated by the engine because to us it feels 'broken' there is no polish or constraints to it and as Evil said before it feels more like a physics engine than an RPG. Why should I bother with sneak when I can just 100% chamleon and lol my way around Tamriel? To me that makes the game less fun as I know if I took my character sheet online most people would say LOL why you bothering with that just do this and cheese.

It's like Ezio having a levitate spell... (The assassin not Eliza's dad)

I made a thread not long ago about me spawning arrows becuase I was frustrated with how many its was taking to do a dungeon. It looks like they have fixed the bow system, or attempted too. Now I am happy because it measn that the game is no longer 'broken' (Bethesda actually admitted that it was a problem) in that regard and I can feel comfortable speccing for that style.

I think this is what Bethesda are going for in their reimagining of the Elder Scrolls system. They don't want their game to be so 'breakable' or nonsensical. It's not something they intended.

Here's the problem, for me: the ability to make 100% chameleon or whatever isn't what makes the game easy to break. It's interesting magic (whether you express that through potions, spells, or enchantments) that make the game easy to break. For instance, levitation eliminates all ground-based melee enemies as a credible threat, invisibility and sneaking eliminate all enemies as a credible threat, calm/control/flee creature/person eliminates everything but undead/daedra as a credible threat, and turn undead eliminates undead as a credible threat. But a game without these options is going to be a lot more boring, as is a game that doesn't allow you to stack effects in creative ways.

And honestly, if the lack of constraints (i.e., you can fly around if you want to, or go invisible whenever you feel like it) are what makes Elder Scrolls games unique. Throw in the same constraints you'd see in a different RPG, and you're honestly strictly better off playing Deus Ex, Fallout: NV, Mount and Blade, Witcher 2, or Dragon Age: Origins.

But since you can do that there is no point to playing the game properly....

Do you see what I'm saying.

Why even bother playing a more challenging (or realistic? not sure if that's the best word) way when there is a 'better' way of doing it. It just makes you feel like a schmuck.

I want to have to work for boss kills and progression. Because for me that is what 'the game' is. Being able to cheese though everything and you may aswell play the game on 'god mode' (If games still have those...*tries to rehide age*)

 

[Kahunaburger]

But since you can do that there is no point to playing the game properly....

Do you see what I'm saying.

Why even bother playing a more challenging (or realistic? not sure if that's the best word) way when there is a 'better' way of doing it. It just makes you feel like a schmuck.

I want to have to work for boss kills and progression. Because for me that is what 'the game' is. Being able to cheese though everything and you may aswell play the game on 'god mode' (If games still have those...*tries to rehide age*)

Well, the nice thing about Elder Scrolls is that it supports both of those playstyles. That's sort of what makes it unique. If you take out stuff like levitation, invisibility, calm spells, stealth, alchemy, destruction spells more interesting than "do X damage to Y" and so on, then it's basically just a worse version of Mount and Blade.

And more to the point, it's a single-player game. More options are never bad in a single player game, because anyone who doesn't want to experience those options can choose not to use them.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

But since you can do that there is no point to playing the game properly....

Do you see what I'm saying.

Why even bother playing a more challenging (or realistic? not sure if that's the best word) way when there is a 'better' way of doing it. It just makes you feel like a schmuck.

I want to have to work for boss kills and progression. Because for me that is what 'the game' is. Being able to cheese though everything and you may aswell play the game on 'god mode' (If games still have those...*tries to rehide age*)

Well, the nice thing about Elder Scrolls is that it supports both of those playstyles. That's sort of what makes it unique. If you take out stuff like levitation, invisibility, calm spells, stealth, alchemy, destruction spells more interesting than "do X damage to Y" and so on, then it's basically just a worse version of Mount and Blade.

And more to the point, it's a single-player game. More options are never bad in a single player game, because anyone who doesn't want to experience those options can choose not to use them.

But that's my point, they are there. So you feel like an idiot for doing things the proper way when you could just be making things easy for yourself.

I don't know it just kind of ruins the game for a me a little that the game is so easily breakable.

 

[Kahunaburger]

But since you can do that there is no point to playing the game properly....

Do you see what I'm saying.

Why even bother playing a more challenging (or realistic? not sure if that's the best word) way when there is a 'better' way of doing it. It just makes you feel like a schmuck.

I want to have to work for boss kills and progression. Because for me that is what 'the game' is. Being able to cheese though everything and you may aswell play the game on 'god mode' (If games still have those...*tries to rehide age*)

Well, the nice thing about Elder Scrolls is that it supports both of those playstyles. That's sort of what makes it unique. If you take out stuff like levitation, invisibility, calm spells, stealth, alchemy, destruction spells more interesting than "do X damage to Y" and so on, then it's basically just a worse version of Mount and Blade.

And more to the point, it's a single-player game. More options are never bad in a single player game, because anyone who doesn't want to experience those options can choose not to use them.

But that's my point, they are there. So you feel like an idiot for doing things the proper way when you could just be making things easy for yourself.

I don't know it just kind of ruins the game for a me a little that the game is so easily breakable.

But how does that affect you at all? That would be like saying that I feel like an idiot for playing an Elder Scrolls game when I could be playing Minecraft. The possibility that you can play an Elder Scrolls game multiple ways is kind of the point of the game, and taking out stuff like levitation, invisibility, calm spells, stealth, alchemy, and so on just so that people feel more comfortable playing the game a certain way makes absolutely no sense to me.

 

[Dalek Caan]

I am bit annoyed but I will be fine, played Fallout 3 and still thought that was awesome. No reason why Skyrim can't. I am sure I will get over it.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

But since you can do that there is no point to playing the game properly....

Do you see what I'm saying.

Why even bother playing a more challenging (or realistic? not sure if that's the best word) way when there is a 'better' way of doing it. It just makes you feel like a schmuck.

I want to have to work for boss kills and progression. Because for me that is what 'the game' is. Being able to cheese though everything and you may aswell play the game on 'god mode' (If games still have those...*tries to rehide age*)

Well, the nice thing about Elder Scrolls is that it supports both of those playstyles. That's sort of what makes it unique. If you take out stuff like levitation, invisibility, calm spells, stealth, alchemy, destruction spells more interesting than "do X damage to Y" and so on, then it's basically just a worse version of Mount and Blade.

And more to the point, it's a single-player game. More options are never bad in a single player game, because anyone who doesn't want to experience those options can choose not to use them.

But that's my point, they are there. So you feel like an idiot for doing things the proper way when you could just be making things easy for yourself.

I don't know it just kind of ruins the game for a me a little that the game is so easily breakable.

But how does that affect you at all? That would be like saying that I feel like an idiot for playing an Elder Scrolls game when I could be playing Minecraft. The possibility that you can play an Elder Scrolls game multiple ways is kind of the point of the game, and taking out stuff like levitation, invisibility, calm spells, stealth, alchemy, and so on just so that people feel more comfortable playing the game a certain way makes absolutely no sense to me.

It's like there is a god mode in the game and if you don't use it then you are moron becuase why would you make the game hard for yourself while everyone else is breezing through it with 100% chameleon or whatever.

Whereas if the game is 'fixed' it make it more satisfying to play it 'properly'.

I really don't know how else to explain my point...

Lets say Minecraft, an actual scenario I saw on these forums

Say 'guy A' makes a server and he and his friends build a town and then 'guy B' says why are we mining for everything when 'guy A' can just spawn it for us.

Guy A says 'Well thats not playing the game properly'... and the rest of the server say 'well we are leaving then becuase that's what everyone else is doing'

It's like that but with 1 person....bad analogy? probably... but I'm not sure how else to explain.

 

[CoverYourHead]

I dislike it, now I can't be topless, and that was one of my favorite things about my thief! Sneakin' around and robbing people wearing only pants and a hood, it was awesome! And now we can't be topless vikings! It's terrible!

 

[Kahunaburger]

But since you can do that there is no point to playing the game properly....

Do you see what I'm saying.

Why even bother playing a more challenging (or realistic? not sure if that's the best word) way when there is a 'better' way of doing it. It just makes you feel like a schmuck.

I want to have to work for boss kills and progression. Because for me that is what 'the game' is. Being able to cheese though everything and you may aswell play the game on 'god mode' (If games still have those...*tries to rehide age*)

Well, the nice thing about Elder Scrolls is that it supports both of those playstyles. That's sort of what makes it unique. If you take out stuff like levitation, invisibility, calm spells, stealth, alchemy, destruction spells more interesting than "do X damage to Y" and so on, then it's basically just a worse version of Mount and Blade.

And more to the point, it's a single-player game. More options are never bad in a single player game, because anyone who doesn't want to experience those options can choose not to use them.

But that's my point, they are there. So you feel like an idiot for doing things the proper way when you could just be making things easy for yourself.

I don't know it just kind of ruins the game for a me a little that the game is so easily breakable.

But how does that affect you at all? That would be like saying that I feel like an idiot for playing an Elder Scrolls game when I could be playing Minecraft. The possibility that you can play an Elder Scrolls game multiple ways is kind of the point of the game, and taking out stuff like levitation, invisibility, calm spells, stealth, alchemy, and so on just so that people feel more comfortable playing the game a certain way makes absolutely no sense to me.

It's like there is a god mode in the game and if you don't use it then you are moron becuase why would you make the game hard for yourself while everyone else is breezing through it with 100% chameleon or whatever.

Whereas if the game is 'fixed' it make it more satisfying to play it 'properly'.

I really don't know how else to explain my point...

Lets say Minecraft, an actual scenario I saw on these forums

Say 'guy A' makes a server and he and his friends build a town and then 'guy B' says why are we mining for everything when 'guy A' can just spawn it for us.

Guy A says 'Well thats not playing the game properly'... and the rest of the server say 'well we are leaving then becuase that's what everyone else is doing'

It's like that but with 1 person....bad analogy? probably... but I'm not sure how else to explain.

So wait... does that mean you don't want people in Minecraft to be able to make servers that spawn stuff if they want to? Honestly, if it doesn't affect the way you play, why ask to have it removed? The whole "I don't like this feature that I can choose not to use, so take it away from people who are having fun with it plox" argument is not something I get, TBH.