Skyrim Streamlining Removes Confusion, Says Bethesda

[A Pious Cultist]

The problem, he said, was that previous Bethesda games had asked players to make choices on skills and classes before they had proper understanding of what they did, which was less than ideal. "In our games or others' games, they give you a character menu and say, 'Who do you want to be, what powers do you want?' [Players think,] 'I don't know, I haven't played yet!'"



YES, YES, YES. While I'm sure I ultimately did much better in Fallout which had clearer choices, with Oblivion I never had a clue what would actually be worthwhile to level. I cant remember seeing any speechchecks? Am I missing out much? Does acrobatics actually do much? I have no idea even after several hours of play.

 

[mad825]

"In our games or others' games, they give you a character menu and say, 'Who do you want to be, what powers do you want?' [Players think,] 'I don't know, I haven't played yet!'

"What happens in Oblivion is you start the game, play for three hours, and then think 'I want to start over, I chose wrong.'

In the world of gaming, it called a fucking tutorial. Instead of reducing the quality of the game and "dumbing" it down, implement an optional tutorial either at the main menu or before the final stat building window.

See! It's not so hard!

 

[mrc390]

After all I have heard recently I'm not buying this game anymore. They've dumbed it down so much.. I'd never support a developer like that.

 

[Irridium]

...
Why couldn't they have just given each skill a short description when you highlight it?

 

[Hitman Dread]

I was saying that removing that mechanic in ME2 sounded like a good idea (I haven't played either because I'm not into third person shooters). I meant that removing a bad mechanic is fine, removing choice is not usually.

But that's not what they are doing. They aren't removing your ability to chose how to play the game at all, they are just letting you chose it via how you play the game. You can still level up similar attributes, you just aren't asked to make the decision on which attributes you'd like to focus on at the very beginning of the game.

...
Why couldn't they have just given each skill a short description when you highlight it?

Because that doesn't do a whole lot of good either. Even straight forward abilities like "swimming" can be meaningless choices. God forbid you chose that in the first Deus Ex. Even if you know what a skill set does, the player doesn't know how it'll be fully utalized in the game world, much less how much they'd enjoy that certain skill set.

 

[mrc390]

In the world of gaming, it called a fucking tutorial. Instead of reducing the quality of the game and "dumbing" it down, implement an optional tutorial either at the main menu or before the final stat building window.

See! It's not so hard!

Exactly, it's fucking ridiculous.

 

[Versuvius]

I wont rag on skyrim. Im still wanting it more than a troop the day hes come home to his wife but i DO like complicated systems and i do like having to redo things a few times to get the character i want like. Hell it took me 2 whole days of Arcanum playing the first town to hammer down a char i really liked (Elf necromancer). So maybe i will say this is a bad decision...but whatever. Beth has yet to really disappoint me.

 

[CD-R]

I had a feeling hand to hand in it's present form wasn't going to be around much longer. Unless your game is based around hand to hand or martial arts fighting, it's probably a waste of time to put it in. Still I was kind of hoping they were just going to incorporate hand to hand weapons like claws or wrist blades. It's weird they didn't considering Fallout 3 had several hand to hand weapons and New Vegas had even more.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

In the world of gaming, it called a fucking tutorial. Instead of reducing the quality of the game and "dumbing" it down, implement an optional tutorial either at the main menu or before the final stat building window.

See! It's not so hard!

Exactly, it's fucking ridiculous.

All of the Elder Scrolls games have tutorials....

What the developers are trying to get at it's hard for the player to tell within the first half an hour of the game what he wants to be or do for 200+ hours of gameplay.

 

[HaraDaya]

previous Bethesda games had asked players to make choices on skills and classes before they had proper understanding of what they did

...except that the target audience of this game, by which I mean RPG fans, already know and understand the systems involved in an RPG.

Good point except you don't know how good or beneficial the skills are in the game till you've tried it. Overall, melee combat in Oblivion was bland to the point were I didn't use it ever again. It took a few characters to come to that conclusion.

I hear they hired some people from the team behind Dark Messiah, which I still think is the game with the most fun first person swordplay. Hopefully this'll show.

 

[fun-with-a-gun]

Wouldn't it just be better to visually remove all the numbers and keep them hidden? If you want to be sword-guy, just pick up a sword and start hacking. You'll get buff and better at it while you're doing that.

And any mages out there should just study and use the spells they want.

Just give my swordwielding ability an invisible xp bar.

The problem with hiding numbers is that all of a sudden you don't know which weapon is the best or how much that enchantment will actually benefit you.

 

[DrakeLake]

You know, honestly, if they make their mod tools allow for new skill sets easily along with adding new weapon types (like spears), that would be rad, and would allow PC players to customize their experience, at least. I know there are problems now with armor because of the way they did it that likely can't be fixed (Seriously, it sucks when you do that! It's more fun finding all the pieces of armor!), but I don't see a problem with the other things I mentioned.

Have they mentioned anything other than bows for non-magic ranged weapons?

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

Their have been cases where streamlining has made things less confusing without sacraficing any of the depth, Shogun 2 did this beautifully, but those are rarities. Bethesda, you better tread carefully and really know what your doing.

 

[lord.jeff]

I like the idea but it could easily go wrong, Oblivion level system had it's problems so it's good that they're changing form that. I myself won't miss hand to hand and a few other skills because I never used them or at least tho a point that the skills would level.

 

[PrinceOfShapeir]

I think -four- skills have been removed. Dear God, people. Four. And what are these four?

1: Hand to Hand - Okay, who really cares? Hand to Hand was useless in Morrowind and Oblivion anyway.

2: Mysticism - yeah, hasn't really been so much 'removed' as 'integrated into other spell lists' Why? Because Mysticism wasn't it's own magic set, it was just 'Yeah, all this other crap over here...'

3: Acrobatics - Okay, so I don't have to bunny hop everywhere? What's the downside?

4: Athletics - So now at early levels I don't move at a snail's pace? What's the downside?

 

[Ranylyn]

On the one hand, I feel the outrage is blown out of proportion.

On the other hand, "streamlining" has somewhat ruined the RPG genre for me.

Classic RPG: Weapon, Shiuld (If applicable) Helmet, Body armor, Gauntlet/ring.
Modern RPG: Weapon, Accessory Type 1, Accessory Type 2.

I call the modern RPG method "the FF7 formula" because that was the first game I played to have such a dumbed down equipment system. I blame it for me being the only one to care about defense these days. People got used to it and because of it, RPGs have degenerated into "kill them first, kill them fast" which is a crappy formula since it renders things like poison and other DOTs useless.

That said, let's look at Morrowind.

Helmet
Torso
Gloves
Shield
Right Pauldron
Left Pauldron
Greaves
Boots
Robes (you could wear them over armor)
Rings

Now let's look at Oblivion

Helmet
Torso (includes pauldrons)OR Robes
Gloves (Several robes negate gloves)
Greaves (Cannot be worn under robes)
Boots (Several robes negate boots)
Shield
Rings

Now let's look at Skyrim

Helmet
Body (Chest, Greaves, and Pauldrons as one item)
Gloves
Boots
Shield



You see my point. They diminish the customizing from too many angles. First off, via enchanting, Morrowind had more potential, as they also removed more effects like Levitation, HP regeneration, and the like from Oblivion (You could cast an HP regen spell but couldn't get passive gains from armor) Secondly, from an aesthetic standpoint, what if you only wanted, say, a single heavy pauldron on your robe, atop light armor? I was rolling with that for quite some time, actually.

Streamlining IS bad, and you can blame the modern mindset of gamers for it.

 

[Arluza]

You just might have made people angry by putting the word 'Streamlining' in the title and article.

/sarcasm

This won't affect my decision to buy Skyrim at all. I have faith in Bethesda, and if they say it will be better, I agree. Call me a sheep if you want, I couldn't care less.

I wouldn't say you need faith. Bethesda sticks to one genre of gaming, open world RPGs. They have proven they can do them WELL for 15 years. I'd say that the evidence shows Bethesda can make another good game, because their track record supports it.

 

[OtherSideofSky]

previous Bethesda games had asked players to make choices on skills and classes before they had proper understanding of what they did

...except that the target audience of this game, by which I mean RPG fans, already know and understand the systems involved in an RPG. That's the beauty of creating a game in this style is that you can have the target audience be people who undestand and are experienced with the material already; you do not introduce new gamers to an RPG to start with.

To make a counter-argument, I'm planning to buy Skyrim and I've never played this kind of RPG before. I played a couple of JRPGs years ago, and I watched a friend play Baldur's Gate as a kid, but it's not even remotely the same thing. I'm not a "new gamer" by any stretch of the imagination, but I AM new to the genre, and I'm pretty sure a lot of people are in the same boat. Every one of these things is going to be someone's first game, and it's unfair to penalize them for not being psychic. If they sell only to people who are already veteran players, their sales can only go down because that group can only shrink if they don't make games accessible to new people.

Personally, I'm glad to hear that they won't be asking you to make decisions about things before they've explained what those things are. It just seems like a nice thing for them to do. Now I just have to figure out if I can get this to run on my laptop...

Oh yeah, I heard somewhere that one of the previous Elder Scrolls games let you play as a dinosaur. Is this true and do they still let you do that?

 

[Slayer_2]

Gamers - excuse me - people, will always complain about change. And if things don't change, they also complain... Lose/lose for Bethesda.