Skyrim Streamlining Removes Confusion, Says Bethesda

[Pierce Graham]

Sorry, but just because you don't like those skills doesn't mean no one does. I always used acrobatics and athletics, the others, not so much. And yes, adding isn't always good, which is why I said improving, as well. Removing things instead of trying to improve them isn't good designing. It's just being lazy. Bethesda is just trying to dumb down games, and while it may have fewer skills than Oblivion, I predict people are still going to whine and complain about it, and Elder Scrolls 6 will be even dumber. 7 will be dumber still. And so on.
But I agree with your Fable 3 idea. It was terrible.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

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.

I think they have completely removed that feature I could be wrong though. I think Todd Howard mentions it in an early interview.

 

[Gottesstrafe]

Wasn't that the whole point of that giant tutorial level at the beginning of Oblivion? I mean, they gave new players an ENTIRE dungeon to test out the new mechanics and skill sets to determine what you did and didn't like. They even gave you an option at the end of the dungeon to change your stats if you weren't satisfied with your first choice. How many chances do you really need anyway? Does the game have to bring up that magical stat altering menu up five times before people can be bothered to make a decision? Are there really people who play through the entire game up to the final boss before deciding that maybe they would've had a more enjoyable session playing a Conan-esque warrior or chain-lightning shooting mage than some whispy looking alchemist?

I'll be the first to admit that sticking entirely to one moral alignment or character class mindset can become tedious at times (you know, if you like to put artificial restrictions on yourself or something), but why should one aspire for that "perfect character of no regrets" on the first run anyway? Isn't that the point of replay value? A chance to take all my "What if"s and missed opportunities and combine them into some amalgamation with the semblance of a new character?

 

[pwnzerstick]

I remember that they said that they were going to remove the mysticysm school of magic because ALL magic is mysticysm. I thought that was hilarious. But I'm not worried about this, because anyone who says the depth of an RPG is based entirely on how many different slightly skills you can modify really needs to get their head out of the 90's. I would say, and certainly in Bethesda's case that a huge amount of their depth is in exploration in an extemely detailed world with you being able to choose how you interact with the characters
in this world. Because lets not for get its Role playing i.e. playing as a character whose action and decisions have consequences, not number playing.

 

[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.

Can't it be both?

Athletics was actually described in the stats sheet.

But seriously, all it really does is change the speed at which you run. Yet, if you choose a warrior or sneaky build, instead of customizing from scrtach, odds are you have this as a governing factor and have to level it up to level your character, whether you like it or not. Like acrobatics, it's pretty much useless, and can make the skill selection unecessarily complicated. It's defaulted on every warrior/rogue class. And yes, while going back because you want to try something different can be fun, going back and restarting the game 10 hours in because you can run faster instead of hurling firebolts is kind of a pain in the ass.

Not to mention that perks and dragon shouts will likely add and compensate any lost depth here and introduce new characteristics and skills. Which is a fair trade off, IMO.

Well, no. In Oblivion you set your main skills to skills you never use so that you won't level up so fast and cause almost all of the lower-level monsters to disappear which would render quite a few quests un-solvable.

But that's actually a problem with Oblivion's ass-tastic leveling system, instead of the actual skills themselves...

But I get what your saying. I don't really have a problem with getting rid of useless skills. But I still can't see how it's really confusing. Annoying yes, but confusing? I don't think so. Then again I've been playing these games for a long-ass time. So maybe that's the reason, I don't know.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Because I totally was getting into Morrowind, then I saw the hand-to-hand option. That was just too confusing for me - how am I supposed to decide whether I want to hit someone with a spell, a pointy bit of metal, or a fist? That's just too many options, man. So I went crying back to Farmville.

 

[Hyper-space]

snip

That's not entirely true, i had been playing some RPG's before Oblivion and when i started playing it, i didn't know how each play-style (stealth, magic, archery and stuff like melee) would pan out and had to start the game again a couple of times in order to find what i liked most. Giving players the option to shape their character as they go along instead of arbitrarily making the player choose (with no frame of reference on how the gameplay would be) right away.

Really, you will still be able to make a Battlemage character or whatever, whether or not you choose it right away or as you go along. This is a non-issue really, it doesn't hinder veteran players or people who have played oblivion before (Morrowind gave you no frame of reference whatsoever when it came to Oblivion) and it helps newcomers make an informed decision, instead of assuming that they have any prior knowledge on how the gameplay is.

I like how many people seems to know exactly the game is going to be. I mean how can you even say that this is a bad or a good thing, have you guys played it yet? If so can you tell me how you got your hands on a copy?

The thing is, you don't even have to play the game to know that this won't diminish the experience. Its just that traditional RPG fans hate anything that differs from the CRPG formula (which makes me wonder why they are not playing CRPGs instead of regular RPGs).

 

[Erana]

OK, fine. Make the mothership games all action-y. It works well enough.

But please, start making the games for each race again, and give the IP to your traditional RPG-oriented developers. I really want to play the Eye of Argonia!
And making both action-sandbox-RPGs and more traditional ones would mean there's something for everybody.

 

[Warped_Ghost]

As long as we do not get a Dragon Age 2 I will be extremely happy.

 

[BloodSquirrel]

...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.

The problem is that Oblivion was so incredibly counter-intuitive that even RPG fans would be put in a bad spot. The best way to build your character in Oblivion was actually to pick skills that you would never use for your class- that way, you could increase the skills that you *did* use while staying at a low level (thus keeping the game from scaling past you). Also, letting your skills increase organically was a bad idea because of the way stat points worked- you actually wanted to make sure that you raised skills that were based off of different stats so that you got the most out of your stat points when you leveled.

That's what Skyrim really needs to fix.

 

[T8B95]

"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!

Yes, and if you had a tutorial for every skill in Oblivion, it would be three hours long and be really fucking boring. I shouldn't have to take a tutorial for every skill in the game before I start playing. This way I can play as I go, and learn the skills as I play, instead of having a glossary on hand before I start. There is a tutorial in Oblivion, it just doesn't begin to scratch the surface of everything that is there.

I really can't see why people are defending classes and character selection. Elder Scrolls has always been about going where you want and being who you want in amazing worlds. This new system looks like it's set to take full advantage of that.

Oh, that's right, people just love to *****.

 

[Amondren]

Well I'm interested how they are going to go about that but nevertheless it seems like a good idea on paper.

 

[hieiwrath]

The idea of choosing how u are going to play the game before u play the game was kinda flawed.
So Im looking foward for this new way.

 

[Atmos Duality]

I never had that problem in Oblivion.
I'm unsure how anyone could really confuse the skill sets in Oblivion; apart from maybe one or two magic types, they all say what they do right there in their name.

They might be streamlining the skill selection, but if they're continuing to remove your overall set of choices (as they did from Morrowind to Oblivion), then that just means that they're boiling your archetypes down to 2 or 3 character types total while presenting the illusion of choice (do you hit things, blast things, or do a bit of both?).

Bethesda is indeed making an omelet here. But which eggs are they breaking?

And making both action-sandbox-RPGs and more traditional ones would mean there's something for everybody.

"The demands (and wallets) of the many action gamers, outweighs the demands of the few role-players."

 

[SoopaSte123]

Speaking as a person who never got very far in Morrowind because I kept making new characters again and again, fixing the problem they've described would be a godsend. Whether they can pull it off or not is another story.

But yes, leveling up skills like running and jumping by doing them repeatedly is also a nightmare for people like me. Removing athletics and acrobatics and making running speed and jumping speed standard would be a step in the right direction.