Elder scrolls- two steps forward, two steps back?

[Easton Dark]

Skyrim taking out weapon/armor repair and adding kill cams (archery and hand-to-hand being worth the full price of the game) automatically makes it better than Oblivion.

And since Morrowind's actual game play sucked weewees, Oblivion beats that.

Never played Daggerfall, but I've watched videos. Looks terrible.

It's progression and it's good progression!

 

[Phuctifyno]

Guys! This might be a revolutionary one, guys: I like all of the ones.

Different ones for different moods.

I decide which one I'm in the mood for, then I play that one, and not one of the ones I'm not in the mood for.

Sometimes I like the perky ones, and sometimes I like the spread-sheety ones.

If the new ones are made more accessible to attract more fans, that's cool. New peeps can work their way backwards if they're interested in more arcane, difficult, or complex ones.

Y'see (as is also true with music ones and movie ones), when a new one gets made, it doesn't evaporate all the old ones.

(though truthfully, it would be nice to see the old ones with the graphics of the new ones... maybe there are mods for that... idunno)

But all seriousness aside, Oblivion is the best one. Cuz Sir Patrick Stewart.

 

[Syzygy23]

This was a fabulous post and you are a fabulous person.

Might be pushing it with the one spell = fifteen spells bit but otherwise can't agree more.

One of the biggest fallacies I see with gaming in general is people trying to say "well there were 10 weapons types in X games, but only 5 in this one, so its dumbed down/simplified", when in reality, those 5 weapons in the newer game, do more mechanically then the 10 weapons from past games did.

I have to disagree with you here.

How many iterations of "Swing melee weapon" and "Shoot arrow/bolt" can there possibly BE?

Well, there's "swing melee weapon at seven different speeds" (dagger, sword, axe, mace, greatsword, greataxe, hammer), affecting DPS versus alpha damage, plus a question of whether a weapon can do extra damage more often (through plain damage or DoT) or do more damage than normal to armored opponents, not to mention perks that can add "does insane extra damage from sneak attack" or "added critical effects" (though I think that applies to all weapons but daggers).

Just because the ultimate action is the same ("press button to swing weapon") doesn't mean the effect is always the same That's like reducing the entire Destruction line of spells to "throw magic damage thing" (after all, what's the difference between an Apprentice flame and a Master flame but the size of the fire?).

I don't know if bows and crossbows have separate mechanics yet, though.

You either swing the sword or you don't. You can block with it if you want, but the game gives you shields that are superior.

Actually, my favorite character currently favors a single knife for a fighting style. Partly for the 30x sneak damage, but also because half the Block perks apply to any type of blocking implement, including the Matrix dodge and powerbashing perks. Even if I screw up stealth, I can still win fights by knocking people off balance and taking advantage of the dagger's incredible attack speed.

Ehhhh, alright, I'll give you that one. Does the Matrix dodge apply to blocking with ANY implement or just shields? I always thought it was a shield-specific effect seeing as it was under the Shield-perk tree.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Ehhhh, alright, I'll give you that one. Does the Matrix dodge apply to blocking with ANY implement or just shields? I always thought it was a shield-specific effect seeing as it was under the Shield-perk tree.

Unless the perk specifically mentions a shield, it applies to all forms of block. The matrix time slowing perk does not mention shield, just blocking, so it applies to all form of blocking.

Also, there is no "shield perk tree", the block perk tree affects all forms of blocking, not just shields.

 

[endtherapture]

The weapons all feel the same in Skyrim. Whatever I'm using, a mace, dagger, two handed sword etc. they all feel the same with the exception of if I'm using a shield or not, because they all just swing swing swing at slightly different speeds.

Skyrim needs to take a look at Dark Souls, where you have swords that swing, swords that thrust, halberds, spears, greatswords, rapiers, sythes, maces etc. which all have advantages and disadvantages.

Also you should use up stamina when you attack, so that there's no penalty for choosing a mage over a warrior.

And weapons are affected by your stats in Dark Souls. It's heavily action based, but there's weapon damage scaling from your stats - for example Katanas will scale with Dexterity and Greatswords will scale with strength- This is a great way to keep both action fans happy and also the people who prefer RPGs more, since stats still matter.

 

[bug_of_war]

Snip

Please. Save it. We've heard you spew all that nonsense before. Action games have been around forever. You lose all your creditability when you start with that shit again.

At least he is making points and backing shit up. You're just sitting there going, "It is different to an older game in the series, therfore not good". Dude, I'm not saying your opinion is wrong, but you need to show a reason other than time period difference. Back then, Daggerfall was huge, but it's age really shows. Skyrim however feels like a proper sequel whilst trying to look and feel like a new game.

 

[SajuukKhar]

The weapons all feel the same in Skyrim. Whatever I'm using, a mace, dagger, two handed sword etc. they all feel the same with the exception of if I'm using a shield or not, because they all just swing swing swing at slightly different speeds.

Skyrim needs to take a look at Dark Souls, where you have swords that swing, swords that thrust, halberds, spears, greatswords, rapiers, sythes, maces etc. which all have advantages and disadvantages.

Also you should use up stamina when you attack, so that there's no penalty for choosing a mage over a warrior.

And weapons are affected by your stats in Dark Souls. It's heavily action based, but there's weapon damage scaling from your stats - for example Katanas will scale with Dexterity and Greatswords will scale with strength- This is a great way to keep both action fans happy and also the people who prefer RPGs more, since stats still matter.

Well that is mostly because you either
1. Don't have the perks that unlock that weapons special bonus power
2. The weapons bonus power is unfortunately limited to the weapons base damage only, so the effect it adds are minor and hard to notice.

I don't think making attack cost stamina would be a good idea. Oblivion did that, and it turned the game's combat boring, because it made the game even more potion chuggy. Do you really want more potion spam in Skyrim?

Also how would that stat based system work in Skyrim, it has no attributes. I actually would really like to hear it.

 

[mohit9206]

i am a newcomer to elder scrolls series with skyrim being my first elder scrolls game so i cant say whether this game is an.improvement or not over previous games in the series.
but i can say i wasnt impressed by skyrim. i played about 25 hours and couldnt play anymore.
reasons being am a sucker for a well told deep story that skyrim lacks.
next the combat is dull with hack n slash as i played as a warrior nord.
next the big selling point of the game ie the dragons are immensely boring and one dimensional .
most of the npc's are also dull and one dimensional.
most of the quests are dull boring fetch quests, kill that or get that stuff.
the levelling system is boring and overly complex.
the items collecting is boring.
the graphics are great.
but graphics cannot save skyrim

 

[endtherapture]

The weapons all feel the same in Skyrim. Whatever I'm using, a mace, dagger, two handed sword etc. they all feel the same with the exception of if I'm using a shield or not, because they all just swing swing swing at slightly different speeds.

Skyrim needs to take a look at Dark Souls, where you have swords that swing, swords that thrust, halberds, spears, greatswords, rapiers, sythes, maces etc. which all have advantages and disadvantages.

Also you should use up stamina when you attack, so that there's no penalty for choosing a mage over a warrior.

And weapons are affected by your stats in Dark Souls. It's heavily action based, but there's weapon damage scaling from your stats - for example Katanas will scale with Dexterity and Greatswords will scale with strength- This is a great way to keep both action fans happy and also the people who prefer RPGs more, since stats still matter.

Well that is mostly because you either
1. Don't have the perks that unlock that weapons special bonus power
2. The weapons bonus power is unfortunately limited to the weapons base damage only, so the effect it adds are minor and hard to notice.

I don't think making attack cost stamina would be a good idea. Oblivion did that, and it turned the game's combat boring, because it made the game even more potion chuggy. Do you really want more potion spam in Skyrim?

Also how would that stat based system work in Skyrim, it has no attributes. I actually would really like to hear it.

That makes no sense though - spears thrust, swords slash, axes chop, maces crush...that's just a physical property of the weapon - it makes no sense that it should be related to a perk. Instead you should have enemies that are weak to different types of damage - a lightly armoured character will be vulnerable to slashing damage, however a heavily armoured character will be vulnerable to crushing damage from maces and flails.



It depends how fast the speed of regen is - if it's as fast as it is in Dark Souls I don't see a problem there because it is fast enough to not need to swig potions every 10 seconds, but slow enough that button mashing will get you killed quickly.

Introduce stats that grow with your level/skills. Or just have skills score tied to weapon stats - for example having points in a certain skill will increase your damage with strength based weapons. Restoration magic could increase damage from holy/divine weapons etc. allowing cleric builds etc.

I just think Skyrim is a pretty crap "RPG" when it has barely any reliance on stats.

 

[endtherapture]

I just think Skyrim is a pretty crap "RPG" when it has barely any reliance on stats.

But it's all about the IMMERSHUN. LOL.

Gotta look at it as more of a sim like experience, not an RPG.

That sucks. It's a vast fantasy world and people want to settle down and build houses and cook and be married and have children. Why? That's everyday life, I'd personally like an escape when I'm playing games. Hence why I enjoyed Oblivion so much, the world might have been more boring but I was doing loads of crazy things.

 

[endtherapture]

That sucks. It's a vast fantasy world and people want to settle down and build houses and cook and be married and have children. Why? That's everyday life, I'd personally like an escape when I'm playing games.

I agree.

Hence why I enjoyed Oblivion so much, the world might have been more boring but I was doing loads of crazy things.

You lost me when you got to this part.

Hahaha! Oblivion had more of a sense of epic adventure than Skyrim. The world felt much bigger, and the faction system was so much more in depth. Going from a rookie of the Mage's Guild to Archmage was actually a giant epic journey and there were loads of memorable quests, such as the guy who kidnapped people to hunt on that island in the dungeon, and you had to play an epic game of cat and mouse with him.

Skyrim, for all it's improvements, lost that sense of scale.

 

[blackrave]

Every game in the series had it's pros and cons
One thing I really liked in TES2 was limited ability to set background for your character (sometimes you could break your character, but it wasn't obligatory to set Advantages/Disadvantages)
Not to mention Climbing skill (with the right skill/attribute/spell set you can roleplay as Spiderman)
What I liked the most from TES2 was the MQ story- it wasn't as much about some great prophecy as it was about politics
Anyway I really hope that in TES6 they will look back at the good things (even if they were broken) from TES1-5 and uses/fixes them.

 

[charge52]

I really don't see how people can enjoy a game that isn't played by them but played by a proxy created by them. That's like making a clone of yourself to watch a movie, and then watching him watch the movie. Why not just watch the movie yourself?

Or like making a clone of yourself to read a book for you, whilst all you do is puppet his arms to make him turn the pages, and move his head up and down so he reads all the lines on the page. Why not just read the book yourself?

D&D style RPGs lack player involvement in most of the game's systems, and consist mainly of making a proxy, then watching the computer control most of your proxies actions against NPCs while you sit there and watch it throw randomly generated numbers at itself. Which pretty much defeats the entire purposes of it being a game.

So what you're saying is you don't like RPGs, you like action games, so this means RPGs are automatically shit because they aren't action games?

You don't have to like RPGs, it's all well and good if you don't, however this doesn't mean that RPGs are stupid, or that they should remove the aspects that make them RPGs to appeal to you. I don't like RTS games, I don't really see the appeal, but that doesn't mean they're stupid and they don't have to change in an attempt to please me.

He supports the homogenization of genres, is against diversity and wants ALL RPGs play like action games. (like we don't have enough of them already)

Man, I thought you were kidding when you said that, or exaggerating over personal grudge.

 

[Innocent Flower]

But you see.. skyrim could have been better! that's my point.


They could have had some semi competent writers rather than used the kids from the local primary school.

They could have given a fallout style attribute and perk system (choose attributes at the start). Perks don't replace skills which would have made people immensely happy. That would have both stopped the power leveling of the last games and stopped skyrim's problem of level 20 one handed and one perk being better than lvl 100 one handed and no perks (which is fucking ridiculous) optional traits or birthsigns wouldn't have hurt anyone either.

Weaponry in skyrim is hardly more varied than other games. You need ilogical PERKS to add slight bonuses like bleed. without said perks an axe behaves exactly the same as a longsword. Weapons should have become more diverse! i mean maces should provide huge knockback and recieve the least resistance from armour WITHOUT perks. Whilst spears are very versatile weapons and crossbows and throwing weapons are very different from bows (i know dawnguard added crossbows.. but it's a little late then isn't it?) Weapons are straight upgrades for one another. In morrowind a glass sword would weigh very little and was as good as ebony if ignoring durability. Skyrim? Glass swords are slightly better than elven so do a little more damage and weigh a little bit more and look different. Ebony weighing only slightly more than glass.

Enchanting and spell making could be perfectly balanced. But they did not do so? I mean...
With some enchantments.. Like chameleon.. only the strongest enchantment would be used. (40%+20%+15%=40% chameleon) or perhaps every subesquent enchantment is halved (57%)
some items having lower enchant values. A belt not having as much as an ebony gauntlet
Puting multiple enchants on an item detracts from each enchantment.
Spells can't be made with two effects that shouldn't be (fortify magicka along with nuclear winter or calm and fire)

Weapons and armour just simply shouldn't be made so good. It doesn't make sense that shit quality iron can become sharper than ebony. Surely sharpening iron so much would make it awful in durability whilst increasing the amount of iron on armour would make it very, very heavy. It would make some sense to allow for the creation of elven armour in a different metal. With shaders it would be doable visualy. But realy you shouldn't get more than a 50% increase from a sharpened or reinforced item.


And you know what? Those SMALL CHANGES would have made the game much more balanced and much more friendly to the rpg crowd. But instead we got extra unwanted shit. Unwanted shit is probably too extreme for some people so instead i will opt for 'systems that could have been better thought out'

One thing i forgot to mention was how shit stealth was in skyrim. it's neglected. Not to say stealth was in the last games was better... But in skyrim it's needed on about four quests and it's main purpose is to initiate combat with a powerful first strike.

 

[Calcium]

Meh, I couldn't get into Daggerfall at all, and whilst Morrowind looked promising, the combat was just purely frustrating. Waking up to find I'm being attacked by something pinning me in my room with no possibility of defeating it or leaving the room due to my stats isn't fun at all.

If I could get past the combat, I imagine I'd really like it though.

I'm not sure whether I prefer Oblivion over Skyrim or vice versa. I certainly played Oblivion more, though I had a lot more time to, and I've never gotten bored of my character in Skyrim.

 

[Artemis923]

I put countless numbers of hours into Morrowind. The idea that you could go from being so weak the villagers could punch you out to an indestructible killing machine really made leveling fun and rewarding. The world was huge and had so much to do.

That's what I loved about the Elder Scrolls: you didn't need to do ass kissing favors for npc's the whole game. The majority of the time, I just spent exploring...and was amazed at what I'd find just over that next hill.


Oblivion felt empty and bland in comparison. The atrocious voice acting completely pulled me out of the game, I hated it. The combat wasn't as "bad" as Morrowind's, but by then I was so used to it that it didn't bother me at all. The quests and main story weren't as interesting or engaging, and I felt that exploring wasn't as rewarding as it used to be.

Still, I pumped about 50+ hours into the game, and it had its fun moments.

Skyrim...

Meh. The action tries to give this intense feeling of epic battles and thrilling moments, but it all just felt so dull to me. For such a graphically intense game, I think it just bothered me that the combat still consisted of "hit the attack button until enemy is dead. Drink potion/heal yourself. Repeat."

I beat the main questlines, and the game bores the shit out of me now. Sure, I have kewl armor and weapons and I do gross damage and I have all these perks...

...and I have nothing interesting to do with all of them. No "brewtal" bosses to go kill, nothing. Even jacked up to Master difficulty the game is piss easy. I only spent about 30 hours in it before I called it quits, and I can't find it in me to go back.

I played skyrim soon after it came out. I played daggerfall after i did 95% of skyrim.

Anyways. Most of you haven't even heard of daggerfall.

Don't kid yourself, bro-siedon. I played and loved Daggerfall when it was released in '96...along with Heroes of Might and Magic II and TIE Fighter.

But I'm sure you haven't heard of of either of those.

 

[SajuukKhar]

That makes no sense though - spears thrust, swords slash, axes chop, maces crush...that's just a physical property of the weapon - it makes no sense that it should be related to a perk. Instead you should have enemies that are weak to different types of damage - a lightly armoured character will be vulnerable to slashing damage, however a heavily armoured character will be vulnerable to crushing damage from maces and flails.

It does make sense that it is tied to a perk, otherwise then every character has access to the exact same thing from game start making all characters more homogenous. Also, it makes sense that it would require some amount of training to be able to know, and hit, armor foes with maces in a specific spot so that the maces damage "ignores" their armor, or how to use a sword in such a way that you utilize your swings better so you get "bonus critical damage" etc. etc. An average Joe who just swings weapons around wouldn't be skilled enough to get those "effects" to work.

Introduce stats that grow with your level/skills. Or just have skills score tied to weapon stats - for example having points in a certain skill will increase your damage with strength based weapons. Restoration magic could increase damage from holy/divine weapons etc. allowing cleric builds etc.

Leveling your magic skills actually does increase the number of charges you get from magical staves. It doesn't make much sense that leveling restoration would make you do more damage with a restoration staff, as the staff enchantment is like blue paint on a car, you may be master of paint but that wont magically make the paint any more blue, or turn red, it may let you spread the paint out more so you can have "more" by using what you have more efficiently though.

I just think Skyrim is a pretty crap "RPG" when it has barely any reliance on stats.

The entire game is reliant on stats.
- It doesn't matter how well you can spam mouse 1, if you don't have a high one-handed/two-handed/Archery skill, and perks, you won't win combat.
-It doesn't matter what badass armor you have, if you don't have a high heavy/light armor skill, and perks, you will die.
-Your ability to smith, do alchemy, and enchant, are entirely based on stats.
-All magic skills need perks in order to be viable past early-game.

But there aren't any non-vanilla spells in Skyrim. That's a completely unfair comparison.

When comparing a game that has X and Y, and a game that as Y you can only compare the Ys since it is the only thing both games have. It was a completely fair comparison because I only compared the things both games have.