Poll: Skyrim: The Armour complaint.

[Saelune]

I like freedom. Choosing what I wear is freedom too. And fuck mods. Mods mods mods. How about we ship a game that is fine as it is so us non modders can enjoy it. Not everyone mods and not every problem should be answered with "mod it".

You...don't have to be a Modder to add mods. It's ususally quite easy.

And I'm not saying adding robe design mods to DA:O absolves Bioware of their sins! Yeah, sure they were too busy making 120 hours worth of high-quality story content to add a few extra robe designs. They are at fault. Doesn't mean we can't fix that fault ourselves as opposed to just bitching about it. Calm down lady.

Also, I'm sure Skyrim will have plenty of sneaky, stabby, gothic clothing.

*looks at my 360* Well...maybe not everyone is a PC gamer.

Well Bethesda pulled one of their best moves in my books by bringing player generated content into the console versions. And who said mods are just for fixing things? Is my Sauron armor a fix? No, but it's fucking awesome.

I dont like mods. I dont want them. You can have your cheesy armor, but Im fine (or atleast should be) with the game as is. I did not and still do not need mods to enjoy Morrowind. Everything looks nice and uniform, and my armor is whatever I want it to be. Not some hulking one piece.

 

[Loonyyy]

The only solution that they can do, keeping this system, in my opinion (there may be other, better solutions) is to add in more variety in the kit available to the player.

Well, to be fair, if you read the last line of the post from Bethesda, it actually says: "We can also make a lot more armors now, so the number and variation types are more than we've ever had." (which I just copy-pasted from the quote in the first post).
so, two pieces of armour become one... but you will get a lot more armours... so there's your solution found at least =]

Thanks for pointing this out for me, it's good to know. If they want to take out the option to make the complexity manually through the adding of multiple bits of kit (Which I find more fun anyway, it feels like you start with nothing and gradually upgrade everything), you should at least enable every possible bit of customisation previously available with the armours you make. That said, navigating shops with that much stuff could be tricky.

People: stop saying it's people bitching about change without understanding the other persons arguement. I'm not mad they've added dragons or with to make combat more visceral and enjoyable. I'm slightly concerned when they take out the detail. Someone earlier said that it's tiny detail. That's true, but it's said that perfection is lots of little things done well. While I may not agree with this statement, lots of little details add depth: The schedules and rituals of NPCs in Oblivion added depth. The way the world reacted to your accomplishments added depth (I never want to hear "Hail Hero of Kvatch" again though). Removing skills and options lessens depth.

Their system of making the player choose their skills through play is streamlining, letting the player learn and develop the skills they want.
The removal of more armour and abilities is "dumbing down" or the removal of gameplay. It gives the player less options. To make things worse, they've said, and this is Elder Scrolls, a PC classic and favourite, Skyrim is being developed with the consoles as lead platform, which won't help people from drawing the conclusion that this is an attempt to make the game more accessible.
The amount you care about this or are angry about this is entirely your affair.
I remain concerned but cautiously optimistic.

(If you want to ***** about "People don't like change" think of this: they did not have any obligation to use the existing IP. If I took over the Batman franchise from Christopher Nolan and Batman and my first act was to make a film killing Batman off screen and replacing him with a straight transvestite Neo-Nazi with AIDS which he is attempting to give to children through interpretive dance, as he struggles with accepting his own mortality, I would be making a change. Possibly a fascinating one (More likely a demented one). But by using the name Batman I envoked certain expectations, and the people who were upset by my film would be perfectly reasonable to be so. By using TES, they are trying to get the fans of the older games to pay attention and to buy the game. If you fail to acknowledge this, why did you make it a TES title, and not something new?

 

[WorldFree55]

Now explain to me exactly how they have been dumbing down the RPG elements of the game because i have seen little if not none of that at all. And your saying it's just for graphics? Have you read the improvements on the other areas of the game itself? Graphics was the last thing that was Betheda's mind in the six years of development of the game.

I was able to do that same thing in oblivion and I will do the same in Skyrim. What's the difference if you use a crossbow or a long bow? Your still getting the same result. Your character is going to be more unique here then the past games of the series including Morrowind.

Again, Dumbed down is the most overused word in any game nowadays. And i don't think most people here (including you) know what the word dumbing down a game even means. Skyrim is becoming more ROLE PLAY (which is what RPG means) then number crunching. This is not DnD or World of Warcraft. You will get to feel apart of the whole big world of Skyrim by making choices that would make yourself unique that would affect the landscape of the world and be able to be who you want to be and do whatever the hell you want. One armor slot is not going to change all that.

There are MUCH MORE good reasons for this action then that one trivial negative.

Well for one they're giving you less options to choose from, that definately hurts the whole role0playing aspect.

But everything aside the absolute worst offender in Bethesda's "role-playing" games is that they always force you to join specific factions, even in Morrowind.

*Morrowind - You have to side with the Empire and defeat Dagoth Ur and the Sixth House.
*Oblivion - You have to side with Martin and become his errand boy.
*Fallout 3 - You have to join the BoS and fight against the Enclave, even blowing up the Citadel is stupid as it doesn't represent joining the Enclave, neither does inserting the FEV into the purifier.
*Skyrim - Now we don't know much about story but we already know that you are once again the "chosen one" and by the looks of it you have to use your powers to kill the dragons ans uppossed big bad guy. Unless they pull another Oblivion/Fallout 3 and have some giant thing do all the fighting for us.

Not just that but even other factions in general. Morrowind had much more factions than Oblivion to choose from and even had decision making when it came to things like great houses and other factions that were enemies with each other. Then there's also the Bloodmoon expansion that had a plit main quest with two different paths.

Having more weapons means having a greater way of defining your character. Also you claim that Skyrim will allow us to be whoever we want, but hasn't it already been made clear that we are Dovakhiin, Dragon Born or whatever and that we are some prophecy and all that usuall fanatasy stuff?

Also I doubt graphics was low on the list of things for Bthesda to do, Pete Hines, the masterful PR manager he is, even came out once saying that anyone who thinks that graphics aren't important is an idiot and that graphics are the most important aspect of modern games...PR my ass.

Like I've said before, it isn't the actual greaves being removed that is bad, but what that represents.

less options to choose from? Like...pants?

That's like that with a lot of RPGs. In Boarderlands, i could never join the Atlas Corporation to retrieve the key into the Vault instead i have to always fight against them and everybody else. Dragon Age i always have to side with the Grey Wardens. Mass Effect i have to side with the alliance and the Lazarus, and so on and so forth. Those are pretty lame examples of lack of choice since most if not all RPGs have you mostly stick to the main storyline by siding with the core characters.

This is purely subjective. Did Morrowwind have more factions? Yeah yet i found Oblivion with the factions they had to be much more entertaining and have a larger effect on the game. Again, i don't see how there is any lack of choice in this.

Yeah, what's your point? No RPG really gives us a clear blank character to fully make your own history. In Fallout 3, you could be whoever you wanted to be but the fact was was that you were born in the Vault. Dovakiin is not your name, it's your blood. It's something that is inside of you that makes you able to talk to dragons and use dragon abilities from whatever race you choose your character to be.

No one said that graphics wasn't important. They have a certain worth to games absolutely, but only to an extent. Graphics NEVER come first (except the devs that made Crysis XD) in any decision to produce a game.

The removal of one armor slot is just what it is to make room for the other areas of the Elder Scrolls series that were in DIRE NEED of improving and so far, Bethesda has done a great job with that. In life, you have to weigh in your pros and cons. You take out one little annoyance to make room for something that will make this game more valuable in it's very core.

 

[ChupathingyX]

less options to choose from? Like...pants?

Yeah you clearly have no idea what I'm trying to say, this has nothing to do with the pants themselves, they just serve as a representation that Bethesda are making their games simpler and simpler and giving us less choice in how we role-play.

Also I didn't want to do this but you forced me to...Fallout: New Vegas.

Who do you play as in that game? The Courier.

A courier who works for the Mojave Express, starts off being shot in the head and now no intention of going back.

When you do the main quests you don't have to kill Benny, you can ally with him (to which he repays you in his own way) and later on when things start becoming more big you get to choose which major faction to join.

You get to choose if you're character is straight/gay/bi, a womanizer/maneater, cannibal, anti-government/pro-imperialist etc etc.

You even get to decide whether or not you know what a fish is.

To me the dire thing Bethesda need to improve on is decision making and allowing us to role-play, like I said it isn't the pants, it's what they represent.

 

[WorldFree55]

less options to choose from? Like...pants?

Yeah you clearly have no idea what I'm trying to say, this has nothing to do with the pants themselves, they just serve as a representation that Bethesda are making their games simpler and simpler and giving us less choice in how we role-play.

I can completely snip 98% of the quote's point too.

Again, removing "pants" does not in no way shape or form represent the WHOLE ENTIRE 800+ HOUR GAME is simpler or how we role-play. Because again, this action can now allow Bethesda to create a lot more armor different armor sets instead of a dozen same looking armor sets with either a +1 or +2 agility to it.

Also that whole point with New Vegas, again, the only thing you tackled on with Skyrim with that point was the fact that in Skyrim, your the last of your bloodline (dovahkiin) as a way of saying that you won't be able to choose whatever faction you want to join, whatever destiny you want to take on, and tackle games like Oblivion because you still had to side with that guy named Martin and still end up killing mehrunes dagon and become a hero. Or games like Morrowind or Fallout 3 for the same exact reason. Even with you using Fallout New Vegas as an example, why wasn't i able to do just screw every other faction in the game and do the hell i want with New Vegas's future instead of JOINING the likes of NCR, Caser's Legion, siding with Benny. What if i just wanted to have everything to myself? Wait, i couldn't do that either? Oh darn, my whole experience is ruined.

Even with some of the info that has been brought to the public's attention about Skyrim, we still have no clue what the story is going to be like, how the factions in Skyrim will come into play, who is causing this sudden presence of these dragons, and how i will be able to change the very economy of any village, city, or all of Skyrim. But i think it's safe to say that with major changes that are going to happen in Skrim, that almost every little (or not so little) thing you do in Skyrim will change how the story plays out in the rest of the game.

Edit: Good god i just looked at my recent posts and i should probably make a drinking game for every time i say the word "Skyrim" XD.

 

[CJ1145]

While I absolutely fucking despise polls that make people that pick one option look like idiots *coughcough* I hate this idea.

Seriously. It is so stupid I cannot even believe it. We've finally reached the point in video game technology where it is POSSIBLE to have all the little trinkets and pieces of armor and things like that appear on our characters, and now we're reverting to the one-piece sets that you would have expected back in fucking Diablo.

There's simply no justification for it, not any good ones. It's just lazy-assed game developers. I've never really even liked Bethesda, I just like their games. As a company they've always seemed kind of shifty to me, and this jut makes me a little more pissed that they can get away with things like this.

 

[ChupathingyX]

]

I can completely snip 98% of the quote's point too.

Again, removing "pants" does not in no way shape or form represent the WHOLE ENTIRE 800+ HOUR GAME is simpler or how we role-play. Because again, this action can now allow Bethesda to create a lot more armor different armor sets instead of a dozen same looking armor sets with either a +1 or +2 agility to it.

Huh? The only reason I snipped your post is to cut down on page size, what does that have to do with anything?

Like I said pants are a representation, doesn't matter how small it is, a flag can be used to represent an entire country, sometimes a flag is just a rectangle with a bunch of colours and can be just a small 40x20 cm piece of cloth, still serves as a representation of something.

Oh and you can take over New Vegas and screw it, that's the independent path with Yes Man.

Or if you want you could go around and start killing everyone, seeing as there are no essential characters except Yes Man. Unlike previous Bethesda games where characters were made invincible, well except of course for Morrowind.

 

[WorldFree55]

]

I can completely snip 98% of the quote's point too.

Again, removing "pants" does not in no way shape or form represent the WHOLE ENTIRE 800+ HOUR GAME is simpler or how we role-play. Because again, this action can now allow Bethesda to create a lot more armor different armor sets instead of a dozen same looking armor sets with either a +1 or +2 agility to it.

Huh? The only reason I snipped your post is to cut down on page size, what does that have to do with anything?

Like I said pants are a representation, doesn't matter how small it is, a flag can be used to represent an entire country, sometimes a flag is just a rectangle with a bunch of colours and can be just a small 40x20 cm piece of cloth, still serves as a representation of something.

Oh and you can take over New Vegas and screw it, that's the independent path with Yes Man.

Or if you want you could go around and start killing everyone, seeing as there are no essential characters except Yes Man. Unlike previous Bethesda games where characters were made invincible, well except of course for Morrowind.

Except a symbol of an entire country has much more impact then a game developer cutting...pants, to make room for a lot more customization in the other, much needed, aspects of the game.

Not really, you have to rely on Yes Man the same way you had to rely on House since if you take that road, Yes Man just becomes a goofy version of House (total Mainframe takeover ftw!).

Oh yeah Alchemy and Enchant was totally not the OP game where you could just steamroll the entire thing in 10 minutes. Yeah that definitly did not make you invincible in any way shape or form.

Now your just showing off your clear bias for a system from a game that has aged worse then Charlie Sheen's career. Which is ok to a certain extent, everyone has their own bias, but the way your coming about it at the moment is just making you a bit arrogant. Which i doubt your that kind of person.

 

[ChupathingyX]

Not really, you have to rely on Yes Man the same way you had to rely on House since if you take that road, Yes Man just becomes a goofy version of House (total Mainframe takeover ftw!).

Oh yeah Alchemy and Enchant was totally not the OP game where you could just steamroll the entire thing in 10 minutes. Yeah that definitly did not make you invincible in any way shape or form.

Now your just showing off your clear bias for a system from a game that has aged worse then Charlie Sheen's career. Which is ok to a certain extent, everyone has their own bias, but the way your coming about it at the moment is just making you a bit arrogant. Which i doubt your that kind of person.

But in the end you have control of New Vegas, Yes Man makes it so much more simpler for you. Also how is Yes Man anything like Mr House? For one, Yes Man is pre-programmed AI, House is...human.

Ok, you completely misunderstood what I just said. I was referring to NPCs, not the player character. In Morrowind every character could be killed, even Vivec. In Oblivion and Fallout 3 there are essential characters who are the ones that get knocked unconcious when you "kill" them.

Morrowind has lots of problems, Oblivion has lots of problems. From my posts, yes it does seem like I'm glorifying Morrowind but even I agree that Morrowind has a lot of problems, but in terms of role-playing it was generally better than Oblivion. Oblivion made the actual combat better (but not good) and it didn't have...cliff racers!

 

[WorldFree55]

Not really, you have to rely on Yes Man the same way you had to rely on House since if you take that road, Yes Man just becomes a goofy version of House (total Mainframe takeover ftw!).

Oh yeah Alchemy and Enchant was totally not the OP game where you could just steamroll the entire thing in 10 minutes. Yeah that definitly did not make you invincible in any way shape or form.

Now your just showing off your clear bias for a system from a game that has aged worse then Charlie Sheen's career. Which is ok to a certain extent, everyone has their own bias, but the way your coming about it at the moment is just making you a bit arrogant. Which i doubt your that kind of person.

But in the end you have control of New Vegas, Yes Man makes it so much more simpler for you. Also how is Yes Man anything like Mr House? For one, Yes Man is pre-programmed AI, House is...human.

Ok, you completely misunderstood what I just said. I was referring to NPCs, not the player character. In Morrowind every character could be killed, even Vivec. In Oblivion and Fallout 3 there are essential characters who are the ones that get knocked unconcious when you "kill" them.

Morrowind has lots of problems, Oblivion has lots of problems. From my posts, yes it does seem like I'm glorifying Morrowind but even I agree that Morrowind has a lot of problems, but in terms of role-playing it was generally better than Oblivion. Oblivion made the actual combat better (but not good) and it didn't have...cliff racers!

Very more alike than you think. The huge part that Yes Man and House have in common is that both of them want POWER. And both of them need YOU to acquire that power. Power and control of New Vegas.

I agree with that part, I too found it very annoying that there were certain characters i could not kill even if i used one of my created OP destruction spells and they would get up looking like nothing happened to them. But at the same time, it was pretty comical too lol.

Again, I find that statement purely subjective since that is a matter of opinion. IMO, i found Oblivion to have a lot more Role-Playing elements then Morrowind did. Your correct though, both had their own share of problems that were better then each other. Hell i could go and post a very detailed observation on my take of Oblivion and Morrowind. Hell i even thought Daggerfall had certain elements in their game that were done better then the last two. But wait a minute were talking about Skyrim here.

I guess i will just say my REAL opinion about whenever there is a certain outrage, complaints, observations, etc. On hyped up games that are not out yet.

Back in 2004, as I'm sure you know, before Fable 1 came out, Lionhead promised many things to their game that did not end up exactly coming true. A long and incredible story that would take your breath away half-way through the game, vast depth, very open-ended gameplay, Skin pigmentation varying from sun exposure, planting a seed and watching it grow into a tree over time, etc. You get the point, some of which if not most did not come true in the final product.

Now when i got Fable, i never actually read or have heard any of these promises of potential content. I just got the game because of what I've seen from the videos, from the features it really did have, and well...because it looked pretty damn awesome. And in the end, it was money well spent. I loved game for what it did have and had my own gripes for whatever problems it also had. But overall, the game was my drug and played countless hours on it.

However, there would also be people who have paid a lot of attention to that kind of coverage, coverage for what peter said that would end up being lies or whatever the game DID NOT have. The game overall still got positive reviews and really high ratings anyway, but there would still those people that go into what we call "nerdrage" over some of the "what's not in it" features and completely debunk the game for it. Like it's all of a sudden the worse game ever for it. Would i be pissed if i heard some of what peter said at the time? Perhaps, i won't doubt that possibility because it has happened before with other games. But I look at games for what they DO HAVE that would claw me away the $60 dollars. The features it did have that would entertain me and make me play the game for hours on end.

I would continue from then on to always look at it from that point of view and i will always look at it that way. Because if all you do is look at the game for what it doesn't have, then you will end up refusing to see any of the good things that a certain game does have. Bad games are games that don't have much going for it. They have little if not any good qualities about the game itself, not because it didn't have me be able to jump higher then a raccoon.

So what I'm trying to say is, for whatever game developer decides to add or remove on their product, the game they have worked on for 2 or 3+ years (in Skyrim's case 6 years!), decide on it if that ends up being the right decision when the game finally comes out. I mean lets gets real here, You and I know were both going to get the game the day it releases. I know i will be waiting on the midnight line to purchase it. And i think there is a good chance that were both going to love it anyway, no matter what Bethesda decides to add or remove (unless of course the game really is trash XD). But judge it for what it has and if the features it does have is worth the money, worth the praise it's been getting since the trailer, then so it shall be. But if it's not, then it's because the game itself does not have the features that interest you. That way, for whatever game you do get, that you do love or hate, I swear you will never be disappointed. You will also be within good reason to be mad if the game really ends up sucking XD.

I know this is a really long post but i encourage people to read the whole thing anyway, including you Mr. ChupathingyX

 

[Karathos]

It's unbelieveable how gamers can always find the most trivial of details, completely blow it out of proportion and then proceed to cry an entire ocean of tears about it. Are you honestly listening to yourselves?

Waah waah waah, Bethesda made me unable to choose what kind of pants I wear, this game is ruined because once you remove pants what's the point? They removed this - what's stopping them from removing everything else?! D:

Be more paranoid guys, seriously. It's a worldwide anti-pants conspiracy setup by the New Pant Order. If I was a religious man, I'd go "Jesus christ have mercy!". But I'm not, so I'm just going to go with "Ahahaha oh wow... :')".

 

[ChupathingyX]

I know this is a really long post but i encourage people to read the whole thing anyway, including you Mr. ChupathingyX

I always read long posts, I don't believe in that tl;dr crap. If someone writes a long response then they want you to read it all.

Mr House does not want power, he wants to control Vegas, control Vegas so that it remains the same as it was before the bombs fell. Yes Man is an AI who was programmed to help whoever wanted his help in taking over New Vegas from Mr House. You have to remember Mr House was the one who saved NV in the first place, he loves NV, it along with robots are his life and most cherished things in life. You also have to consider that the NCR and the Legion also want power, but in different ways and how they go about it is different.

But this isn't a New Vegas discussion so moving on...

Yep we agree, good.

So could I, but, like you said it is subjective so I won't bother, I'd rather say how New Vegas is better than Fallout 3, but I won't.

Okay now I've never played Fable and never really interested me but I see what you're getting at. You prefer to look at the good things in a game and accept the bad things, but you don't let them cloud the good bits. That's fine and as long as you accept that the game has bad things is good because it means you aren't some fanatical fanboy.

To your conclusion;
No I won't be getting Skyrim day 1, I'll probably be too busy playing Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One and Resistance 3, but I will buy it eventually. Also I really lost respect for Bethesda for what they did to the Fallout series with 3, I could go on forever about how bad it is but I won't because thankfully they hired Obsidian to make New Vegas. Yes I agree you can't judge a game that hasn't been released, however, you can predict or assume what it will contain by looking at the developer's track record. Bethesda always force you to join specific factions and their games do have less and less options as they go by, that is a fact, whether or not this is a good or bad thing is entirely up to you.

Thank you, I hope I passed the audition.

 

[Eventidal]

More equips does not equal more depth. You can nitpick all you want about not being able to wear a right glove without the left or not being able to wear ridiculously mismatched pants and shirt, but the gameplay is unchanged. You really think that the loss of one armor piece is going to equate to less enchant ability overall? Or the loss of Mysticism means no more Mysticism moves? Or being able to actually allocate skills/stats where you want them is going to somehow hamper your enjoyment of the game? Or taking out athletics/acrobatics means you can no longer enjoy your SUPER SLOW world exploration?

They are making sure the depth is still there. They're streamlining the process, taking out unnecessary crap so that the end user experience is one less padded and muddled with tons of extra stuff. You can argue all you want that 11 pieces of armor is better than 5, but I suppose that means you want to be able to fully customize every equip including shirt, pants, underwear, top and bottom armor, gloves, arm bands, shoulder plates, pauldrons, codpiece, lower leggings, boots, 2 rings per finger, 1 ring per toe, earrings, hat, feather (in hat), scarf, eyewear, mouth accessory... you get the point. If you take it to its logical max, you end up with a game so buried under interface and masses of items, your enjoyment is hampered by the insane amount of crap you end up with. Sometimes I've felt that way about both Morrowind and Oblivion. Never have I wanted to mix up top and bottom armor, and never did I feel like clothing under my armor in Morrowind was ever even there. I only ever mixed clothing, and if the clothes look alright in Skyrim, I'll have no issue there, either.

Just play the damn game and enjoy it. If it really gets on your nerves, mod the thing. It's not like we're not all already looking for things we want to mod in.

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

*looks at my 360* Well...maybe not everyone is a PC gamer.

Well...maybe you should've said so in the first place deary.

It's a little weird how you stated at one point that you like freedom... but are so staunchly against mods. If that other guy wants to play as Sauron, who are you to call that cheesy?

I don't mean to be rude but, mods offer you the freedom to play the game in ways that the dev just can't afford to let you. Whether that be for engine, time or lore constraints.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

There are a number of issues.

Mechanically, that means fewer places to put enchantments. There was already one such reduction between Morrowind and Oblivion (one could wear standard clothes beneath armor and high quality clothing could hold a very good enchantment). While I prefer (from a style standpoint) to wear a unified look on my characters, I generally stay away from the many quality one piece armor sets the modding community made for Oblivion simply because they offer less flexibility when it comes to how badass my character is in the end. This reduces my ability to tailor my character on the fly fairly significantly. It also gives me fewer options when it comes to wearing the armor. For example, at high levels of skill, I can get enormous protection (e.g. max) from a helmet, shield and chest piece. This means I can choose to wear other armor parts because of how they look or how much they weigh rather than for how much protection they confer.


Cosmetically it makes a difference simply because people (not me generally) want the ability to mix and match. Much of the Oblivion community at this point seems to regard the game as an interactive doll design program. There are animation packs that give new poses, "armor" that is purely cosmetic, new races that do little more than shift a character look towards some fetish etc. There are also those people who just want the option of taking a cool chest piece and pairing it with cool greaves that aren't from the same set.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Well, for you the easy solution is to not make game-breaker spells and let everyone else have our fun. After all, it's a single-player game

Game breaking spells aren't the issue because casting spells yourself is an excercise in pointlessness in Morrowind. You've actually gone the opposite way to the point I was making. Wizards are rubbish.. atrociously rubbish.

If they are able to do the things we expect casters to be able to do (control minds, go invisible, fly, etc) they are always going to be overpowered in comparison to people who can't.

Except they aren't, because it's always going to be pointless to do those things yourself. By the time you become capable of casting powerful spells you could be capable of buffing your strength to 10,000,000 with potions.

And I'm not convinced there's a single "most powerful class" in Morrowind, because whether you break Morrowind with illusion magic, restoration magic, a +enchant suit, a chameleon suit, or alchemy, it's exactly 100% broken no matter how you achieve that.

Except that the optimal way to do all of those things relies on a single strategy.

* Make intelligence potions.
* Drink intelligence potions.
* Make overpowered enchantments.

Because of this, there's no choice between them. You may as well do them all. In fact, you may as well carry 40 different rings and just switch between them. It'll still be way more effective than, you know, actually casting spells yourself.

I find it enjoyable to be able to jump across a continent, control the minds of enemies, avoid threats by going invisible, insta-kill enemies with cool spells, permanently immobilize enemies with powerful curses, and cast strings of spells to increase my own power.

Until you run out of your pathetically small mana pool and have to stop for a rest, or fail at casting a basic spell because you'd had the temerity to actually run across the huge landscape instead of walking at a leisurely pace for half an hour. Unless of course you bothered to pack your hoard of enchanted rings, in which case knock yourself out.

Again, no choice. One optimal strategy, and everything else sucks by comparison.

Again, the issue is not that mages should necessarily be equivalent to the other classes. That argument falls apart because mages are gimped in Morrowind. They are unequivocably terrible except that many mage classes have access to the only two significant skills in the entire game, the only skills which actually matter.

Fuck casting fireballs or controlling minds or doing mage things. Heck, play a crappy hand to hand specialist who just happens to have alchemy, drink 100 strength potions and punch Dagoth Ur into fine paste, you're still way more powerful than any magic user who doesn't specialize in enchantment and alchemy.

I would actively love to see an RPG which said 'fuck it, we're going to make mages insanely powerful'. A game can do that and still be balanced, because the imbalance between classes is then not a flaw but an intentionally and potentially enhancing part of the gameplay experience. Heck, I'd love to see an RPG which takes place on a truly epic scale and in which your character can level cities with a single spell Exalted style. This isn't the issue.. what Morrowind has is not thematic, it can't be justified with any pretention to being an accurate representation of what the Elder Scrolls lore is like. It's just unintentionally bad design.

 

[The-Epicly-Named-Man]

Who gives a sh*t? You know everyone will just want a full armor set anyway because of the stat bonuses (or whatever bollucks). It's hardly a game changer either way, what I want to know about is what you can actually do while playing, not flicking through menus, which is pointless if the changes it's meant to be making are only tweaking various kinds of uninteresting mechanics.

 

[dusk65]

Personally, I'm more worried about what changes (read: nerfs) they're going to make to the magic system.

You know what I missed in Oblivion that I really liked in Morrowind? Jumping. Jumping crazy ridiculous heights and distances. And alchemy. Mind, I still used Alchemy in Oblivion to fill a variety of roles, from offense, defense, disruption, healing, and turning middling food items into CASH. (SUCK IT KING MIDAS I RUN THIS TOWN) But I missed how that one time, I turned my Morrowind-ian Breton into a physical god by using/abusing an infinite Fortify Intelligence Potion trick I found. Even though it officially ended the game as I had known it, it completely changed how I played the game, which in turn made a game that was slowly becoming boring fun again. Another thing I missed was putting activated abilities onto wearable items. I had Jump Pants. They made me really good at jumping, and they were blue. A moment of silence for the Jump Pants.

in oblivion your jumping ability was was just controlled by your acrobatics skill. so if you wanted to a jump spell you just boosted your acrobatics by a few hundred and you could jump over town walls.

I agree about alchemy. Hope you can still use it to mess with your ability to do stuff in skyrim, although with the removal of attributes I'm not hopeful. I guess it depends whether they replace effects like "+20 speed/strength" with "makes you run faster/carry more stuff/do more damage"

Let me ask you, sir or madam: Did you play the third game in the Elder Scrolls series, Morrowind? In that game, there was actually a spell effect called "Jump" that magnified your ability to do exactly that by several magnitudes greater than any Fortify Acrobatics effect. On the one hand, I understand why they took it out. They made cities/towns with walls separate environments from the world map proper, so having people jump over the Imperial City wall to find not a city but a large blank patch of ground simply wouldn't do. And in addition, adding fast-travel obviated the need for the small but potent suite of travel spells (Intervention, Mark, Recall, Jump, and any others that I missed). On the other hand, I had a lot of fun jumping from the middle of a Morrowidian town to the top of the hill adjacent. Basically, if the jump required a Featherfall effect to keep from being lethal, it was a good jump. And coming as I did to Oblivion from a Morriwind point of view, I missed being able to do that.

Yeah I didn't use the jump spell in morrowind so I guess I never missed it (I used levitate instead, which I did miss). Fast travel in oblivion never bothered me much, I just didn't use it. Anyway, it sounds like they're bringing back some of the morrowind style travel options, which is a good move.

For a game that sets out to let you play the way you want to play, removing the different options for accomplishing the same result means you're restricted in how you play. In morrowind if you wanted to jump you could use the jump spell or boost your stats, in oblivion you could only boost your stats, now in skyrim since there's no stats to boost I'm not sure if there will be a way to do it anymore. As others have said its not the pants its what they represent.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

(I used levitate instead, which I did miss)

I missed levitate... making a weapon that cast levitate on your target when you hit them, resulting in them being flung up 100' in the air then falling was good for a giggle.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Meaning no disrespect, but to Hell with balance. Just because a game gives me the potential to break it in half with a well-placed infinite loop of effects doesn't mean I will, but I still want the option all the same. I may not use an item duplication bug to drown a city in watermelons, but I want the option. I may not "beat the game in 8 minutes" with a speed-run, but I want the option. I may never again use an alchemy exploit to put as many attributes as I can up in the billions, but I want the option. And on-topic, I may never commit the grave sin of wearing nothing but pants, but I want the option.

See.. I think you've missed the point of a role playing game.

A roleplaying game is based in a simple premise. Choice -> Consequence. This is what creates immersion, this is what lets you believe for a short period that you are a mighty sword or spell swinging hero and not a loser at a keyboard piloting a collection of well-textured numbers by remote control.

In an immersion-based game, you generally begin with a wide range of choices. The wider the better. In essence, you are defining a persona from nothing, so breadth here is important. The immersion in such a game stems, ultimately, from watching your character affect the world, and in turn how those choices affect your character, either mechanically or in terms of narrative. Ultimately, as your character does more and more, the world should affected by their actions and certain choices becoming foreclosed. Your rogue character cannot specialize as a wizard, your evil character carries the consequences of his evil actions. By the time the game ends, both your character and the world have been shaped by the experience. You know that your character is a noble hero, a vicious bastard, an indecisive prick or anything else he or she might be based on the choices they have made throughout the game.

A game which simply offers you choices without significant consequence, which is just a meaningless collection of options stacked together, is not a roleplaying game. If anything, it's a creativity tool. That's not an insult, people like creativity tools, but Morrowind isn't a very good one.