An Analyzation of Skyrim and Oblivion and their failings in Character Progression

[bug_of_war]

I think Skyrim did it pretty good. You start off as a somewhat weak prisoner in a time where in which two large powers have had a complete role reversal and the people of Skyrim have decided to try and reclaim their land for themselves. This means that we are thrown into a chaotic environment where in which most things want you dead. So the way I see it, the quick progression from weak to powerful fits with the story quite well.

While it is stupid that making 500 iron daggers will make you an expert smith, you need money and patience to level that skill to 100. Also, the fact that good armor and weapons are rarely found means that the dagger trick helps players make weapons they want to use. I find this much better than, "Wait till you are at the end of the game, then you can use good weapons" or "You are not a high enough level to use that", I would hate it if my character (who is a fully grown bulked to all hell Nord) was unable to use something just cause the points aren't there, physically he looks like he could kick a tree in half.

So yeah, Skyrim's character progression isn't perfect, but it's damn close. And to those who are saying "character progression? but I am a silent protagonist! there is no progression", shut up. Most people love Gordon Freeman and he's a silent protagonist, hell he's more quiet than any Elder Scrolls character.

 

[teebeeohh]

the reason you are so powerful in skyrim is because there is no equipment deterioration and everything regenerates.

stamina regenerating makes sense but i was always a fan of health and mana not regenerating unless you equip items that help you with that or use potions.
i guess they wanted for everyone who played the game, even those who don't spend a lot of time in it, to feel like a total badass and i understand that, i just would have liked a hardcore mode.

 

[ischmalud]

Here's the sad truth: the most fun I have in Oblivion comes from whenever I ignore the fact that I can smith and enchant my own items and live off of the land.



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see thats the problem right there - IF u did the same in skyrim it be a lot different but i cant do i did the same thing. Min/Maxing to the extreme and it makes for some entertainment but actually led me to quit skyrim the first time i started it as a firemage since i could double-barrel-fireball nuke every dragon but the fire dragon (what a shock ) at not even lvl 24.
this time i build a very sneaky dagger user - well u gotta go with bows to begin with but once u got the sneak skill up there OH LORDY - backstab one shot on a dragon i shit u know - bevor u say u cant sneak up on a dragon, shadow warrior can anyway. so now i got a char that i put 40+ hours in and im facing the same issue as i did with my mage
think ill explore the entire map this time and than jsut put in 30minutes and finish the storyline since im guessing thats what it would take for this char

 

[RedDeadFred]

It's kind of true though. I think everyone knows at this point that the crafting skills are OP as hell when used in combination with each other (even by themselves they are borderline OP). If you know this and you don't want your end game to be super easy, why use them? It's not different than having access to the console. You can simply /kill things but there's no challenge in that so you don't use it (at least I don't).

I'll tell you what I told the other posters who've made that argument; if it isn't the developer's job to provide balanced gameplay whose is it? In the case of The Elder Scrolls it becomes readily obvious, the modders, and this status quo is essentially doing nothing other than encouraging lazy game design. I'll say it again -- Skyrim was a 6/10 until the modders got their hands on the developer's kit.

From a roleplaying perspective though, becoming OP with amazing equipment kind of makes sense. If you become a master blacksmith, it kind of makes sense that you should be able to make the best weapons in all the land or improve the best unique weapons into even better killing tools.

Not really, we already know who canonically is the best blacksmith is Skyrim. From a roleplaying perspective, it doesn't make sense that you could supplant him in literally a few weeks.

I guess I would just rather them give us no restrictions and let us create godly characters if we want to. I do wish they could have made some kind of extra hard core mode though instead of having us implement our own restrictions. As you said though, there are mods for that.

Eorlund Grey-mane can only train you to level 90 smithing. That kind of implies that he himself is only at that capability. This is the same for all master trainers. They are all great but in order for you to become the best at a skill, you must learn and train on your own.

 

[SajuukKhar]

It gives a better sense of background, focus and constraints to the player. A class system provides a better mechanical means of preventing overpowered characters.

I dont really believe that it gives a better sense of background, it only forces a background upon you because you want to play a certain playstyle. With the old class system I HAD to be some form of warrior before the game began, I couldn't just be some guy who BECAME a warrior because of the situation I was in.

Well, we have had this discussion before, and we got nowhere, but I still dont see a reason to prevent OP characters that much, it should be the player's choice if they want to be OP or not, not something that is decided for you.

The same is true regardless, it's a fact of the The Elder Scroll gameplay. If you reach level twenty in Skyrim playing a warrior and decide you want to become a mage, well, you're screwed. Skyrim doesn't allow you to reset and reapply stats and perks.

Dragonborn mended that problem.

Not only that, but Skyrim's perk system gives you far more time to dick around with different playstyles for the first few levels, before perking up a lot, to see what you like. It's far more lenient then past games.

That's not what I said, your statement that the economy of The Elder Scrolls essentially cannot be fixed is what you appear to be claiming is axiomatic. Which is false as I can point to several mods which do fix the economy of the game.

I have never seen a mod truly fix ES economy, only make it slightly harder to get tons of cash.

While it is stupid that making 500 iron daggers will make you an expert smith, you need money and patience to level that skill to 100.

They actually altered how smithing is done many patches back. Smithing now works on a "the value of the item you smith determines how much EXP you get", like how alchemy and enchanting work, so at higher levels, the old iron dagger exploits become useless, or at least, it becomes SIGNIFICANTLY harder to level, as you get so little EXP that it takes forever to level.

 

[Risingblade]

They shouldn't have put regenerating health into Skyrim. To me that seems like the biggest flaw in what is otherwise a classic game. Removing regenerating health would have meant that each fight would have had more weight, sure you could circumvent it by restoration spells, potions or even waiting an hour, but just making your health magically come back after every fight kills the survival aspect of the game.

Also what happened to the Repair skill?

I get the feeling that Bethesda wanted to improve the flow of the game, but in doing so they made your character totally untouchable as there was no consequence for fighting.

Whilst this would be at the detriment of flow, your character in Skyrim could be made a lot more vulnerable with weapon and armor deterioration and a lack of regenerating health. A bit of tweaking, lets say have enemies re spawn if you use the wait function and it restores little health, and also make it so you can only repair weapons and armor in a town or city. No longer would you be able to blindly rush your opponent you'd have to weigh up a potential encounter and see if it was worth fighting.

That sounds like it would just make dungeon diving too much of a hastle to deal with

 

[Tomaius]

Maybe. An optional hardcore mode with the features I outlined would have been nice. But I guess thats what mods are for.

 

[Launcelot111]

Analysis. Not Analyzation. The word is analysis.

Anyway, I was all for the change in the leveling system and the removal of attributes. Their effect on your character was a little unclear, and in Morrowind/Oblivion, the method of improving them involved way more metagaming than I like (I can't level up until I get three more points of alteration so I can get the x5 intelligence bonus). Instead of focusing on those numbers, we just get a choice of health, mana, or stamina, which was essentially the result of most of those old attributes.

As for major skills, Skyrim ignores them, but the skills you use the most level up fastest, and as your level goes up, further increases in these high skills will give a bigger reward towards your next level, so your de facto major skills are your most important for leveling purposes. The metagaming ideal in Oblivion was to use worthless skills as your major skills so you could control exactly when you level up after getting better stat multipliers through the skills you actually use.

Regenerating health is the logical extension of regenerating mana allowing for infinite healing spells, and I'm glad they added it after all the time in Oblivion I spent waiting for mana to replenish so I could use my crappy hearth heal spell over and over.

Anyway, I love the Elder Scrolls series dearly, but it's always had a tenuous balance between its skills and its enemies. Look at Morrowind hand-to-hand as compared to the might of Oblivion or Skyrim sneaking. Or just behold how helpless any poorly build mage, warrior without an enchanted weapon, or absolutely any NPC is against a will-o-wisp. Oblivion's stat system did nothing to improve that situation. Skyrim was a valiant try to fix it, but there remain skills that are simply easy mode. Every Elder Scrolls game has a point where I get sick of fighting and turn the difficulty to zero and hack through everything just because the combat gets in the way of my exploring and sightseeing.

 

[MammothBlade]

"The player uses at least two or more various systems of character ability in order to progress from being a weakling at the start of the game to being a relative demigod by the end of the game."

See, I don't really like this. The game should stay difficult enough to be fun. But the difficulty might transition from tough enemies to challenging skills. So, you've learnt a powerful fireball spell. There's a catch, you need to know how to use it effectively. You need to have the right knowledge and skill build to employ it to its full potential - not just your character, but you, the player. And that will cost you other skill opportunities, for which you will need to compensate. Players should only be able to become truly powerful by mastering their characters' skills and their own interaction with the game world.

 

[Murmillos]

While it did nothing, I did miss having the Class label. Perhaps they should have the option not to have one, or later change it (with gold of course) if you felt it necessary .. but a Class label felt nice. I know many people who do "role play" hard in Oblivion games. They know what type of character they want to be, and will use only the tools that character is 'allowed' to have (is set up to use).

This is an RPG, so taking out optional role playing aspects baffles me. Besides, you can skill up any tree up to 100 (tho some like smiting may be impossible to do now), and not put a single perk in it, so starting out +15 one handed instead of +5 one handed makes little difference in the long run.

 

[RedDeadFred]

I guess I would just rather them give us no restrictions and let us create godly characters if we want to. I do wish they could have made some kind of extra hard core mode though instead of having us implement our own restrictions. As you said though, there are mods for that.

I don't, because I play video games to be challenged and find this sort of pathetic pandering to casuals to be insulting to my intelligence.

Eorlund Grey-mane can only train you to level 90 smithing. That kind of implies that he himself is only at that capability. This is the same for all master trainers. They are all great but in order for you to become the best at a skill, you must learn and train on your own.

Gameplay/Story-Segregation, I'm not a fan of it either but there you have it. It doesn't change my earlier statement in the slightest.

Easy now. No need to try and escalate this. This, become as OP as you want or apply your own restrictions actually benefits the most serious roleplayers for this game. It allows you to make your character exactly how you want. Maybe you want him to be some measly hunter who never goes beyond leather armor but eventually becomes a master archer. Maybe you want to abuse everything to it's fullest because you want to RP a god. You can do that. They aren't "pandering to casuals" they're just keeping as many options open as possible. And before you tell me that I'm one of the only people who does this amount of roleplaying in these games I'll just save you the trouble and tell you that you're wrong. There are many threads about this in various ES forums and even some wiki entries on it.

As far as your other point goes, no where does it say in the lore (I did a quick scan of the wikis so I could have missed something) that you can't become a better blacksmith than Eorlund. Considering Bethesda wrote pausing the game to go through your inventory and even the console into the lore there really isn't much gameplay/story-segregation. The only issue where this is noticeable is concerning magic. Magic takes a lot more effort in the lore than actually in game.

 

[BakedZnake]

Just want to say Fallout 3 and especially New vegas had better build your own class system than either of these 2 games, just a shame that all 4 of these games are buggy sh*ts

 

[SajuukKhar]

What background does it force on you? The only thing it does is give you sense that you've been doing something other than dicking around all your life.

What if I wanted to be a guy who just dicked around his entire life?

That isn't true in the slightest, there are several classes who lent themselves towards a character who was essentially a noncombatant; healer, monk, pilgrim, thief and acrobat to name a few.

And then you were stuck in THOSE classes, and not given the chance to be a guy who was a non-combatant, but BECAME a combatant because of the events in the game.

It's poor game-design, deliberately allowing players to create overpowered characters demonstrates a lack of commitment to game balance which results in worse experiences for players who don't want to be overpowered. It isn't possible to beat Skyrim playing a non-combatant, compare that to New Vegas. If you decide to level combat stats later, well, have fun.

No, it shows a commitment of the game designers to make a game that anyone can play in the way they want. Also, someone has beaten Skyrim with zero kills, its called illusion magic.

Half of that problem, and in a completely unintuitive manner. It still isn't possible for you reset stats, so you're going to spend the next few levels grinding for both exp and cash for the trainer.

How is it unintuitive?

Also, if you have to grind for cash, or EXP, your playing the game wrong

It's arguably worse, if you spend enough perks on skills you don't want then by the end game you'll often find you don't have enough perks to complete your desired build without grinding in the long trek to the level cap.

There's 80 possible perk points in the game, the average build is only supposed to be use 50 of those. You should have PLENTY of perks, even after wasting some, to fill your build.

Which is something of a miracle given how broken the economy is.

It cant be broken if its working as designed. You just dont like it.

 

[ResonanceSD]

The blink skill in Oblivion kinda broke the game for me. I got it early on, and ended up levelling it quite high. Then anytime I needed to close an oblivion gate, I blinked into the realm, spent most of my time invisible, running past enemies, WHICH LEVELLED UP MY SNEAK, and then closed the gate.

-_- yeah, the game got pretty boring after that.

 

[Launcelot111]

The blink skill in Oblivion kinda broke the game for me. I got it early on, and ended up levelling it quite high. Then anytime I needed to close an oblivion gate, I blinked into the realm, spent most of my time invisible, running past enemies, WHICH LEVELLED UP MY SNEAK, and then closed the gate.

-_- yeah, the game got pretty boring after that.

What does blink do and how do you get it and how have I missed it after hundreds of hours into Oblivion?

On a related note, I love the point with sneak where enemies can't even find you while you are actively attacking them with a warhammer

 

[ResonanceSD]

The blink skill in Oblivion kinda broke the game for me. I got it early on, and ended up levelling it quite high. Then anytime I needed to close an oblivion gate, I blinked into the realm, spent most of my time invisible, running past enemies, WHICH LEVELLED UP MY SNEAK, and then closed the gate.

-_- yeah, the game got pretty boring after that.

What does blink do and how do you get it and how have I missed it after hundreds of hours into Oblivion?

On a related note, I love the point with sneak where enemies can't even find you while you are actively attacking them with a warhammer

Spell tome

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Spell_Tomes

Invis for 5 seconds on self. boosts with level in illusion.

 

[Flare_Dragon123]

I guess to me, I was playing through the Thieves guild and was essentially forced into a situation where I had to fight.

I could've gone through literally every other quest in the line, never once touching a combat skill, never once buying a decent weapon, and the game does this check thing where it felt so entirely forced, that it was a bit game breaking to me.

"The player uses at least two or more various systems of character ability in order to progress from being a weakling at the start of the game to being a relative demigod by the end of the game."

See, I don't really like this. The game should stay difficult enough to be fun. But the difficulty might transition from tough enemies to challenging skills. So, you've learnt a powerful fireball spell. There's a catch, you need to know how to use it effectively. You need to have the right knowledge and skill build to employ it to its full potential - not just your character, but you, the player. And that will cost you other skill opportunities, for which you will need to compensate. Players should only be able to become truly powerful by mastering their characters' skills and their own interaction with the game world.

^
This type of gameplay is what makes Demons Souls/Dark Souls so fun to play, because all of that other stuff literally means next to nothing if you cannot play it correctly. Instead, the gearing and stats serve as a function of just giving you more hits until you die, a function you do not need if you know what you are doing.

However, that type of gameplay only works if your willing to make each hit from an enemy that punishing. If you go out of sync in Dark Souls there is a clear reward (better equipment earlier) whenever you survive and master the enemies you have to get through. Doing it in order decreases the difficulty only in that you don't die as fast, and can probably kill them easier.


But I don't think that style of gameplay would really translate to the Elder Scroll Series as well. In fact, when you consider the options and combat styles and abilities within something like Dark Souls, the Elder Scrolls games kind of look bland in comparison.

But at the end of the day, Elder Scrolls is about traditional systems, levels, classes, skills, and stats. Dark Souls is about knowing what you're doing.

While it would be nice to see Dark Souls, Elder Scrolls edition, it kind of kills the spirit of the game. A free roam Dark Souls, in many many ways, would never work.

Elder Scrolls on the other hand, just needs to take the semi-leveled area system from Skyrim and work it around a bit, look at Fallout 3, and balance the two extremes into a juicy equal whole.

 

[SajuukKhar]

But at the end of the day, Elder Scrolls is about traditional systems, levels, classes, skills, and stats. Dark Souls is about knowing what you're doing.

The Elder Scrolls games are really not about a traditional RPG experience.

Its about exploring a world.