Skyrim Streamlining Removes Confusion, Says Bethesda

[Russian_Assassin]

Removing hand to hand was a stupid move. How will I punch people now? Why won't I be able to do something as simple and natural as punching someone in the face?!

 

[Pierce Graham]

I miss games like Morrowind, that actually had some complexity to them. Games these days are getting so dumbed down for the legion of idiots that play them, I see the slow downhill slide of Bethesda games: from Morrowind, dumbed down to Oblivion, down to Fallout 3, down to New Vegas, and now Skyrim. Removing skills, classes, abilities because of whinning idiots who probably aren't allowed anything sharper than a crayon for fear that they'll stab themselves in the eye.
PS: People were honestly confused by Oblivion? Seriously? So what, they were confused by Blade? Marksman? Light armor? Alchemy? Every single skill couldn't have been any more straightforward.

 

[GameMaNiAC]

Finally. I remember picking longswords in Morrowind wanting to use them most. But then I saw how more powerful blunt weapons are, later on in the game and I felt the urge to start over but I couldn't as I was quite far into the story.

 

[Hitman Dread]

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

If you want to make enemies. . . try and change something.

 

[Pierce Graham]

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?

The point is that they keep removing skills. Sequals are supposed to ADD or IMPROVE, not remove all the time. Consider how many skills the Elder Scrolls had. Then they removed a bunch from Morrowind in Oblivion. Now more from Skyrim. So what? come Elder Scrolls 6, we'll only have three: Weapons, Armor, and Magic? Because Bethesda will have removed them all?

 

[Duskflamer]

Has the general gaming public truly gotten to the point where their attention span is shattered if they don't make their dream character on their first try? Trial and freaking error people, you try something and if it doesn't work you go back and try again! I made dozens of characters in Oblivion and even though some sucked stat-wise I enjoyed every moment of playing them.

From what I've seen so far the actual system may not be as bad as this sounds but the explanation just screams oversimplification. Sure, yea, I don't want to just blindly make characters for the sake of trying things out and ONLY for trying things out, but if the game is so simple that by the time you're choosing your abilities you know everything about them...that just doesn't sit well with me.

 

[electric_warrior]

Streamlining- good
Dumbing down- bad

It doesn't seem like they're getting rid of anything necessary vital, so it's streamlining and not dumbing down and is, therefore, good.

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?

I literally could not give two shits about these skills, I never used them. Who finds themselves in a situation where even being good at hand to hand is useful? I was a mage and I didn't use mysticism, acrobatics didn't make sense and athletics was just unnecessary as I ran everywhere anyway. Getting rid of these things is a good thing, shedding the fat is a positive thing.

 

[Irridium]

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

That doesn't detract from the fact that a few skills (like athletics which were gained by walking) were pretty fucking useless.

Ok. But he didn't say they were removed because they were useless. He said they were removed because they apparently confused people.

 

[Pierce Graham]

I predict that Skyrim will just be another bland, generic, run of the mill game that the public seem to want. No big ideas or features, just dull repetitive crap. R.I.P gaming, for you fallen into the trap of being Streamlined.

 

[Nulmas]

*sighs*

You know what, Bethesda? Create a good tutorial.

Or, better yet, a good manual. I miss game manuals

 

[rt052192]

I always like having more choices. But they're absolutely right about Oblivion forcing you to choose your skills before you have any idea what real impact they'll have. I think I created 3 characters before I had one with a mix I was happy with.

I couldn't agree more. My first character usually isn't all that good no matter which RPG I play. It usually takes a few play throughs to get a real grasp on how to fully exploit the game and make a kickass character.

So, Maybe this "streamlining" will work. I mean, really though, before we jump the gun let's see how it plays out.

In Bethesda We Trust.

 

[SomeBritishDude]

Honestly I don't disagree with him. In Oblivion I begun the game, played for maybe 3 or 4 hours and though "Wow I've fucked up, let's try again." The only reason I didn't do this with Fallout 3 is I made a point of looking online and finding out what are the best skills to go with before I bought the game. I shouldn't have to do that.

I personally prefer the idea of just playing and working out with time what's the best skills and play style for you. I don't think you should have to dumb things down to do that.

It does feel now-a-days that the RPG genre as it used to be is dead. Now it's all shooters and action adventure games with RPG elements. Seriously, there aren't that many more customization options in say Mass Effect 2 than there is in Call of Duty multiplayer. As someone who can't get into Hardcore RPGs thats fine for me, but I feel a lot of people are losing their favourite genre.

 

[searanox]

Ah, Bethesda, always taking the path of least resistance. "The character system was too complex and players were having trouble with it, so rather than doing a better job of teaching players to understand the system, we've simply removed options instead. Also, we still don't have ladders in the game because or lead programmer is a toaster."

Brilliant design mantra, guys, pretty soon your games will have been reduced to the winning Awesome Button formula BioWare so successfully employed in Dragon Age II... hope you have the money to pay off all those journalists as well!

 

[Atheist.]

Stop taunting us with news about the damn game. I just want it in my hands.

 

[getoffmycloud]

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.

so you would happily sit through a tutorial explaining all 21 skills from oblivion every time you started the game would you?

 

[electric_warrior]

The point is that they keep removing skills. Sequals are supposed to ADD or IMPROVE, not remove all the time. Consider how many skills the Elder Scrolls had. Then they removed a bunch from Morrowind in Oblivion. Now more from Skyrim. So what? come Elder Scrolls 6, we'll only have three: Weapons, Armor, and Magic? Because Bethesda will have removed them all?

That's not true, not true at all because more is not always better. Take the pirates of caribbean films, the first one was pretty good, but the subsequent ones added so many plots and subplots that they ended up being garbled, over complicated and generally worse. What a sequel is about is improving, like you said, which can include pruning things that don't work to make the overall game better. Take hand to hand. Who ever actually used hand to hand and cared about it being there? And who ever felt that athletics and acrobatics improved their experience of the game? No one, that's who. I'd rather they focus on the parts of the game that actually matter and leave what has been shown to be ancillary behind.

And mysticism isn't being gotten rid of, its spells are simply being shifted to other areas.

Equally, for every tiny, insignificant part they remove they add something that totally kicks ass and improves the game. WOuld it be better if nothing was removed? Maybe, but the benefits of having those things are far outweighed by what it would take to include them.

An example, however, of a game where streamlining killed the fun was Fable III. What they did there, however, was totally eviscerate the game, whereas Bethesda are just trimming the fat a little to make room for better and more important things.

 

[Duskflamer]

In my eyes the removal of 'the create a spell' system is a good thing becuase people just used it to be cheesy. It was also very mathmatical and to me maths -//- magic. I'm okay for the dnd sytem to be doing its stuff backstage but for maths to be in your face making your fireballs is just nasty to me.

Waitwaitwaitwaitwaitwait, how did I not hear about this until now? Creating custom spells was and remains my favorite part about playing Oblivion, and unless the spell system for Skyrim is somehow more complex than "Fire damage X points on target/touch for Y seconds," there's no reason to remove that feature! It was entirely optional, if you didn't want to bother with the custom spells you could buy pre-made spells from NPCs!!

No joke here, this might be a breaking point for me, I'm not sure if I want to buy into Skyrim if I'm not going to be able to tweak my mage's spell arsenal like I could in Oblivion.

 

[jshap243]

know what? great!

honestly i think people throw around the term "Streamlining" too much over things that really don't qualify. They're making it a little bit more operable. good for them.

besides, if you do wanna call it streamlining, every good swimmer knows a bad streamline loses a race