Dumbing games down

[SajuukKhar]

When it comes to weapon perks you only really need Armsman, Barbarian etc and your set there is no greater meaning to the way you use your weapons. In Skyrim all you have to do is block and spam attack. This is dumbed down to incorporate the newer players.

What greater purpose did the way you use weapons serve in Morrowind or Oblivion?

Morrowind - run up , spam attack, hope you hit because dice-roll randomly makes you not hit
Oblivion - run up, spam attack, make toast because the enemies have such monstrous HP that they take ages to kill
Skyrim - run up, spam attack, get fights over quickly because of less enemy HP

Its pretty much the exact same as it was in Morrowind, except no dice roll to make you randomly not hit for no explainable reason.

[Ragnarok]

What greater purpose did the way you use weapons serve in Morrowind or Oblivion?

Chop
This is the default attack. To Chop, all you need to do is start your attack while standing still, or you can run forwards and strafe left or right at the same time (a diagonal movement). You will raise your weapon and do a downward stroke at your opponent. Most weapons seem to deliver the most damage with this attack. The only weapons that do not work very well with a chop are Spear class weapons.

Slash
To perform a Slash, start your attack while moving to the left or right. You will swing your weapon sideways (right to left) instead of downwards. This is a good attack to use in close combat, as you will be more likely to dodge your opponent's attacks while moving to the side. Most weapons are good for slashing, the notable exceptions again being Spears. A few, mostly Long Blades, are best used with this attack.

Thrust
To perform a Thrust, start your attack while moving forwards or backwards. You will attack straight ahead with your weapon. This attack is good for keeping your distance from opponents, especially since you can start it while moving backwards, and always keep yourself out of range of their attacks. Most weapons do not do as much damage when Thrusting, but Spears are ideal for it. Most Short Blades also receive a slight advantage with this attack.

more weapon types, more categories, more of all that "useless" content

lol

[SajuukKhar]

Paralyzing Strike - Backwards power attack has a 25% chance to paralyze the target.
Savage Strike - Standing power attacks do 25% bonus damage with a chance to decapitate your enemies.
Critical Charge - Can do a one-handed power attack while sprinting that does double critical damage.

Attack while running backwards to paralyze
Run with weapons to do more crit damage
Stand still to do more power attack damage

Those fulfill the same roles the old chop, slash, thrust did.

I have ended up using those perks more then I did Morrowind's chop, slash, trust because those really didn't do much.

[Velvet LeChance]

Paralyzing Strike - Backwards power attack has a 25% chance to paralyze the target.

Savage Strike - Standing power attacks do 25% bonus damage with a chance to decapitate your enemies.

Critical Charge - Can do a one-handed power attack while sprinting that does double critical damage.


I could easily make the point that those give incentive to use weapons differently in the same manner as the old Morrowind Chop/slash/thrust

Run with weapons to do more crit damage
stand still to do more power attack damage
attack while running backwards to paralize

They had perks like that in Oblivion and weapons still did not have a greater purpose. Also you may paly trying to get critical hits but a majority of people just spam attacks just like in Morrowind

From what I heard about Morrowind you mist less and less when your skill level in that weapon rose. Also the reducing of the amount of skills you can use and the getting rid of the Atributes can be seen as dumbing down.

[SajuukKhar]

They had perks like that in Oblivion and weapons still did not have a greater purpose.

From what I heard about Morrowind you mist less and less when your skill level in that weapon rose. Also the reducing of the amount of skills you can use and the getting rid of the Atributes can be seen as dumbing down.

Weapons have never really had a greater purpose in TES though, its always just been "pick you poison", you cant dumb down something that wasn't in the game to start.


Why do you need a separate skills for blade, blunt, and axe, when you can put them into a single onehanded skill, and then put specialization trees into that skill for each one? Yes we have a numerical loss, in that one is less then three, but the properties that those skills served are still in the same, and thus we lost nothing mechanically.


The problem with the attribute system is that it killed long-term character diversity, Morrowind and Oblivion can be described as "start off unique but become the same" while Skyrim can be described as "start off the same but become unique".

As you played Morrowind and Oblivion, you would undoubtedly end up maxing all of your primary attributes, thus forcing you to put points into attributes you never used. The long term result of this is that as time went on all your different characters, be they mages, thieves, or warriors, would end up with similar attributes, and when all their attributes are similar, their class is meaningless because they are all doing the same damage, or have the same magicka.

Do you know the different between a warrior, mage, and thief, with 100 in all skills and attributes is in Morrowind and Oblivion? Nothing, there is no difference because they all do the same damage, and get the same armor rating, and have the same magicka, etc. etc.

Now compare this to Skyrim, what is the diffidence between a warrior, mage, and thief with 100 in all skills and the same HP, Magicka, Stamina? A lot depending on what perks they take.
-warriors will be doing 2X as much damage with melee weapons
-Mages will be gettign greatly reduced spell costs and betetr summons
-thieves will be getting great bow damage, and an absurdly high pickpocket rate
And the other classes wont have the same benefits as the others because they dont have the same perks.

The removal of attributes enchanted character diversity, and I dont see how making character more diverse = dumbing down.

[Ragnarok]

haven't played skyrim so just talking about morrowind compared to oblivion, but from what I keep hearing I'm less than impressed, so let me ask this since smithing your own gear has already been brought up and discussed.

as usual, for all tes games, the best gear was daedric, so what does skyrim have to offer in the way of artifacts? y'know, the gear in morrowind that involved quests and even beat daedric gear?

assuming the helm of oryn bearclaw and the like still exists in skyrim, is it still the stuff dreams are made of or has it been nerfed to death?

[SajuukKhar]

Artifacts in Skyrim almost always have enchantments of some kind that are 100% unique to them, or that are incredibly hard to replicate.

The actual damage, or armor rating, of those items has gone down a lot so they aren't so absurdly overpowered, but you can smith them to make them as good, or better, then anything.

[Ragnarok]

so you can smith artifacts?

o_0

so when do you get to start spellmaking in skyrim?

lol

*edit*

also, didn't see crossbows, spears, throwing weapons of any kind, etc.

[SajuukKhar]

You cant "smith" artifacts, as in, make artifacts, but you can improve them via smithing. Almost every piece of weapon or armor, sans clothing, can be improved via smithing, a few were accidentally left out of the smithable list because of improperly assigned smith values though.


Also, as I am SURE you know, spellmaking was removed, most likely because of the rampant abuse.


Crossbows are in Dawnguard.

[Ragnarok]

so in other words, you can smith artifacts ...

o_0

and what abuse? they just decided to keep nerfing the magic system

now explain to me why my characters can't fly or teleport since Morrowind ... I'll be waiting ...

[SajuukKhar]

Well I thought you meant smith as in crafting out of materials, which you cant do for artifacts.

There was the rampant "I'm gonna make a spell that does like 50 damage every second for 10 seconds while the target is paralyzed, and ohh yeah it costs 10 magicka" that people did a lot in Oblivion. Spellmaking was way to OP, and broke the game's balance. though I wouldn't be surprised if spellmaking returnes in a future DLC.

Levitation Act
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Levitation_Act
Also because there is no need for it, and it would allow you to cheat dungeons, and break scripted events, and cities exist in different cells so it would look weird flying over them. Teleportation and levtation break way to many things in non-static worlds like Oblivion and skyrim.

[Velvet LeChance]

Unless you were hexediting your save that wouldn't cost 10 magicka. Armour and weapons can be smithed to be just as good if not better than Artifacts but as Sajuuk said most of the Artifacts have custom enchantments some being good, some being not so good. Yes magic has been considerably nerfed to the point that I'm not bothered with it.

[Ragnarok]

in other words, it's not a truly open world, as we all know too well. you go flying with the dragons and it might break the carefully crafted cardboard illusion ...

as far as spellmaking being OP, that didn't happen in morrowind. those powerful spells cost hundreds of magicka. having played a mage in oblivion, I can pretty much attest to the same fact in oblivion. it wasn't the spellmaking that was broken ...

as a matter of fact, the one thing that actually was prone to abuse since Morrowind was alchemy and it hasn't been touched. from what I keep hearing its STILL prone to abuse ... fortifying alchemy, enchant and smithing to heinous levels ...

power creep ... I can feel the MMO tendrils taking root ...

[SajuukKhar]

Unless you were hexediting your save that wouldn't cost 10 magicka. Armour and weapons can be smithed to be just as good if not better than Artifacts but as Sajuuk said most of the Artifacts have custom enchantments some being good, some being not so good. Yes magic has been considerably nerfed to the point that I'm not bothered with it.

The only form of magic that is really broken is destruction becuase the magic damage doesn't scale up.

The other forms of magic are quite usefull though.
-Conjuration is pretty OP once you put some perks into it. Dremora can kick ass.
-Illusion is really nice for stealth characters
-Restoration is good all around
-Enchating is really OP

in other words, it's not a truly open world, as we all know too well. you go flying with the dragons and it might break the carefully crafted cardboard illusion ...

as far as spellmaking being OP, that didn't happen in morrowind. those powerful spells cost hundreds of magicka. having played a mage in oblivion, I can pretty much attest to the same fact in oblivion. it wasn't the spellmaking that was broken ...

as a matter of fact, the one thing that actually was prone to abuse since Morrowind was alchemy and it hasn't been touched. from what I keep hearing its STILL prone to abuse ... fortifying alchemy, enchant and smithing to heinous levels ...

It is a open world, it just has scripted events.

Actually it did happen in Morrowind and Oblivion, while both games were in thier prime I can recall a great deal of threads across forums about how easy it was to exploit spellmaking and make really OP spells.

And yes alchemy is still exploitable, I wouldn't be surprised to see it gone in a future game.

[Velvet LeChance]

Actually with the old Restoration bug in Alchemy you could smith weapons with a few million attack. With Spellcrafting I really don't see how people would've been able to cast these huge spells without the permanent enchantment bug or hex editing there save, which really wasn't the fault of spellcrafting.

Destruction is usually the most used form of magic.
Restoration is definitely not good all round.
Enchanting was poorly implemented.

[SajuukKhar]

Actually with the old Restoration bug in Alchemy you could smith weapons with a few million attack. With Spellcrafting I really don't see how people would've been able to cast these huge spells without the permanent enchantment bug or hex editing there save, which really wasn't the fault of spellcrafting.

Destruction is usually the most used form of magic.
Restoration is definitely not good all round.
Enchanting was poorly implemented.

How is resoration not good all around? The guardian circle spells let you walk through ruins while only having to fight the highest level Dragur, and healing spells can heal for 300Hp for low magicka cost, well for a mage. Great healing, very useful anti-undead spells, useful wards that block damage, both melee and spell.

Enchanting is only bad if you exploit it, I dont see anything wrong with non exploit enchanting.

[Velvet LeChance]

Once you get the proper perks Illusion basically replaces restoration helping you not to have to face even the highest Draugr. Spellbreaker replaces wards at level 10 or so. Alchemy is a lot better to use than restoration healing in my opinion. It also takes a really long time to level.
You can get 0 spell cost without exploiting the skill. They should put a cap of around 50 % cost reduction via enchantments.

[SajuukKhar]

Once you get the proper perks Illusion basically replaces restoration helping you not to have to face even the highest Draugr. Spellbreaker replaces wards at level 10 or so. Alchemy is a lot better to use than restoration healing in my opinion. It also takes a really long time to level.
You can get 0 spell cost without exploiting the skill. They should put a cap of around 50 % cost reduction via enchantments.

The thing is though, the system you describe means having to specialize in two different skills AND use a heavy armor shield.

Also, Spellbreaker has a ward of 50, the highest restoration ward has a ward of 80, Spellbreaker is worse then the best restoration ward, AND it means using armor. Spellbreaker is overall worse then the best ward spell.

Furthermore just going restoration means you dont have to carry around potions, or alchemy ingredients, all the time. Combined with the fact that restoration spells not only heal HP, but with a perk, stamina as well, that's combining two potions into one. I dont know of any non exploit potion that you can make that heals 300 hp and 300 stamina at the same time.



Also I totally agree with you on the spell reduction cap.

[Velvet LeChance]

Wards cost a huge amount when used over time and you do not need to carry around spell breaker the whole time or invest in any of its perks you just need to take it out when the time calls. Not many spells do more than 50 pionts of damage to you.

I leave my alchemy ingredients in a container so I don't have to carry them around with me seeing as you can only make potions in fixed spots although It cannot restore 300 points in one go no ones stopping you from chugging two potions.Alchemy is also a great source of money and has numerous other very useful effects.

[SajuukKhar]

Wards dont cost that much magicka when you have 100 restoration skill + perks, and if you go restoration for healing and anti-undead powers you will have those perks anyways. So you can carry around a big shield, or invest some perks into a mage skill, which you would already be doing as a mage, and get three befits in one.

When I have the chance of investing perks in restoration, which gives me three different advantages, I dont see the need for alchemy at all.
-The game already throws so much money at you, you will never need to make potions for cash.
-Restoration saves me money as I never need to buy alchemy ingredients or potions, and some alchemy ingredients are rare and expensive.
-Until you get to 100 alchemy skill, all home-made potions always have a negative effect on them, while restoration heals dont.
-Alchemy is one of the slowest skills to level
-You still have to carry around potions, which takes up space better used for other loot.

The only really advantage I can see in alchemy is if I wanted to make exploit potions, and I really dont. restoration really gives me far more benefits, not to mention the new spells added in Dawnguard, then I could ever see alchemy as giving me.

I mean, I can see why you would like alchemy, but I think your previous assertion that Restoration was poorly implemented isn't right.

[Velvet LeChance]

Can all be made as early as level 1
Blue mountion flour and wheat: fortifys and restores health. No negative effects.
Chaurus Eggs and Ice Wraith teeth/Vampire dust:Invisbility. No negetive effects.
Elves Ears and Spider Eggs:Fortify Marksman. No negetive effects.

Extra cash is always good and can be spent on more ingrediants.

Alchemy is a lot faster than Restoration and its not that slow if you combine Giants Toes, Blue butterfly wings and Blue mountion flowers. which are all common ingrediants around Whiterun so very easy to collect(Well except the giants toe but they can always be bought and Giants aren't that hard when you get to about levle 10)

potions are at 0.5 each. You can leave most of your potions at home and only restock if you need to. Also if money is so easy to come by what's the need for more loot ?

[SajuukKhar]

I can just use the basic restoration heal, no ingredients or potion weight required
Chaurus eggs, vampire dust, and ice wraith teeth aren't exactly everywhere, and I doubt you will be able to fight the monsters that drop them at level 1.
Elves ears are common, spider eggs are not as much, and again, fighting giant spiders at level 1 isn't the easiest thing to do.

When you already have 100,000+ gold cash really isn't that meaningful.

Alchemy, enchanting, and smithing, are probably the three slowest skills to level. I can power level restoration in less time then it maxes to max either of those.

Why would I NEED potions at all when I can just use restoration spells?

The loot comment was more directed to early-mid game leveling, I can waste space with potions are save a couple of pounds for something more valuable. late game loot is pointless no mater what you have done.


We have also gotten very off-topic again. Well I guess the validity of certain skills is evidence one way or the other if the game is "dumbed down" or not.

[Huntershound]

I wouldn't say Conjuration is OP. I really enjoyed having my massive team of undead following me around everywhere in Morrowind at the snap of my fingers. I don't know about post DG but having at max two conjured creatures has been a pretty big smack in the face to the necromancer looking to mass undead army everything.

Skyrim feels a little dumbed down but It's mostly the lack of lore for me as well. There is plenty of it to be sure but I really miss the feel of accomplishment I had in Bloodmoon too from either getting gifts from Hircine or actually constructing Raven Rock or just getting the Thrisk, Revised book and having your name added at the bottom. I'm not entirely sure exactly whats wrong with it but something is missing. Not having spellcrafting really hit me hard and felt like a huge loss at first but it's becoming kind of like a dead relative, just that lack of uniqueness. I do dislike the "walled"(separate celled) cities, regardless of levitation. Other than some of the more horrendous bugs and my pet peeve with the nerfing of the Cuirass of the Savior's Hide lol I have to say it's still a respectable game and I do enjoy it.

[Spiney]

Cam, people are just debating. Calm your tits.

I don't know about dumbed down, but I certainly feel theres some of this "mainstreaming" going on. I mean perks, killcams, beheading, are all just popular ideas from other games reapropriated into Skyrim. Sure it gets more sales, it can add to the combat experience, while drawing from ither aspects however.

[Mattbott]

times have changed. There is a general increase in accessibility which skyrim has over morrowind which has seen a simplification of many aspects of the game mechanics and loss of some details, but there has also been a move of the games depth and sophistication into other areas. I find Skyrim locations and encounters every bit as engaging as morrowind but the pleasures in Mw were more hard won and so more satisfying (but far fewer imo). But that's what we have come to expect now because technology gives us immediate gratification and you cant blame TES for moving with the times. They wouldnt be able to make computer games any more if they hadn't

Skyrim is imo the best game of its kind out there. Morrowind was the best game of its kind when it was out, the difference between the two is the difference between society now compared with society then. I dont think it is a difference in quality, cos i know my standards are as high now as they were then and my enjoyment of TES5 is as great as with TES3 and 4

the beauty of having these older styles of game is they all exist and are available, so anyone can rediscover them if they find current games dont cut it. I find my attitude to games changes every year or two, a game i find naff now might well be amazing in a few months' time, but it's still the same game

i am sure we will be posting about how TES10 is so shallow compared with skyrim and oblivion etc