Skyrim: thoughts?

Desdan_Mervolam · Post by **Desdan_Mervolam** » Fri Jul 06, 2012 11:17 pm

Agreed. I'm still playing Oblivion, and I am getting to the point where even stupid highwayman bandits are wearing full glass plate and using Elven weapons.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sat Jul 07, 2012 1:07 am

That's different. Darth's referring to quest items which have different stats based on the level you are when you get them (and they don't level up with you without mods). What you're referring to is levelled creatures having different item lists as they level up. And on the higher end, those item lists being retarded, like bandits in the best armors in the game.

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Sat Jul 07, 2012 1:55 am

I meant what DSMatticus said, although I do agree that generic bandits randomly possessing Glass and Daedric shit is really stupid too.

Antariuk · Post by **Antariuk** » Sat Jul 07, 2012 12:48 pm

@Desdan: Ok, that was some serious brain fail on my part. Dunno what my mind was on when I read your comment.

Yeah, the "bandits in glass armor" thing is really annoying. Since equipment itself has no prerequisites, I guess that was the only way Bethesda could think of to attempt some sort of balance.

Wrathzog · Post by **Wrathzog** » Sun Jul 08, 2012 3:37 am

They thankfully fixed that in Skyrim. It was probably one of my biggest beefs with Oblivion. All they did was make leveling up one of the stupidest things you could do in the game.

Korgan0 · Post by **Korgan0** » Sun Jul 08, 2012 5:48 am

They made levelling up stupid in Skyrim or in Oblivion?

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Sun Jul 08, 2012 6:20 am

Oblivion; the game plays much better if you build your character so that you can completely control his leveling (i.e., so that he gains levels as slowly as possible).

Korgan0 · Post by **Korgan0** » Sun Jul 08, 2012 6:58 am

Yeah, I noticed that too when I played Oblivion. There are mods that kinda fix it, in all fairness, but it's still stupid.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sun Jul 08, 2012 7:52 am

Korgan0 wrote:There are mods that kinda fix it, in all fairness, but it's still stupid.

This really describes all of the Bethesda games since Morrowind, and even Morrowind may have been just as bad. It's far enough back for me that I might be suffering from the horrible disease nostalgia, so I withhold my judgment.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Sun Jul 08, 2012 9:20 am

Morrowind was indeed just as bad.

In Morrowind, your character leveled up by advancing their skills at a rate of 10 skill ups = 1 level up. Which is a reasonable enough way of handling level ups in a game without character XP. Except they went and fucked it up by tying your level based attribute bonuses to what skills you increased that level. What happened was when you leveled up, you were presented with a menu screen where you put points into your attributes. Sounds reasonable, right? No. Instead of giving you however many points to divide between your attributes how you saw fit, with each point increasing your attribute by 1, they gave you three stars which could be assigned to an attribute, and the increase that star gave to the attribute was based on how many times you got skillups in that attribute's related skills since the last time you leveled up. Getting your skillups in Axes and Heavy Armour meant that your choices were "Pick three from +5 Strength, +5 Endurance or +1 to any other stat" while getting your skillups in magic made your choice "Pick three from +5 Willpower, +5 Intelligence or +1 to any other stat." Stupid, right? Well, it gets worse:

If, instead of getting your skillups from fighting people or sneaking around or whatever, you spent a few hours running around lost as hell (not an uncommon experience in Morrowind) you'd train acrobatics and athletics instead of good skills like axes and destruction magic. Which meant that your attribute choices choices boiled down to "+5 Speed or +1 to anything else." Since speed was a useless dump stat, this meant you were basically forced to put off levelling up until you'd gotten some skill trains in skills tied to the attributes you actually wanted, which in turn, lowered your maximum attributes and max level, because you spent more than the minimum of 10 skillups on that level.

I mean, they also made it so that the attribute bonus to max health wasn't retroactive (so everyone smart started out with the max starting endurance for their class, even if they didn't plan to ever increase it again) and they also had useless stats like Luck (+1% to everything, but can only ever be increased 1 point per level, fuck you for beging a generalist) and Speed (Don't want to move at a snail's pace? Fuck you, blow some of your combat ability on it or read the gamefaqs page to find the magic boots that give you +200 speed) and they also had an infinite power loop in the form of "Brew a +Int potion, use increase Int to brew a stronger +Int potion, wash, rinse, repeat, get Int to over 9000, brew potion of 'Restore Health 2000 hp/s for the next ingame year'", but the levelling system really took the cake.

Antariuk · Post by **Antariuk** » Sun Jul 08, 2012 9:54 am

Interesting. I played Morrowind only a few hours or so, and didn't remember that at all. Now we know were they got the bais for Skyrim's potion/crafting loopholes from...

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sun Jul 08, 2012 1:17 pm

Exploits are something in a game I'm willing to tolerate. They're somewhat unavoidable, and ones like that are very easy not to use. But yes, remembering the unmodded levelling system, it was indeed god awful.

talozin · Post by **talozin** » Sun Jul 08, 2012 2:02 pm

Doom wrote:Oblivion; the game plays much better if you build your character so that you can completely control his leveling (i.e., so that he gains levels as slowly as possible).

Even more stupidly, you can complete the entire game at level 2 by just making your primary skills skills you never plan to increase. I think the only reason I didn't do it at level 1 was because you have to level up at some point to be able to complete the main quest.

Aryxbez · Post by **Aryxbez** » Mon Jul 09, 2012 3:36 am

Yeah, in Oblivion ye didn't want to go past like level 3-5 or so, only time or two ye might level up in Oblivion, is if you're seeking to join the Brotherhood. Since you need to sleep at least two times to get into that faction. So in that world, the protagonist NEVER sleeps. Although I guess in most of those games, the protagonist is pretty good about traveling far distances and doing that anyway.

Good god, sad to hear that the Morrowind system was "worse" than Oblivions. How people can credit Oblivion for being like "the best RPG ever!" is beyond me. Of course, I'm referring to the people who made Kingdom of Amalur: the Reckoning, who as I hear, a city now owns the game IP itself due to it flopping or something.

Another minor complaint of mine toward Oblivion, was 26lb Silver Swords, SERIOUSLY, even better, is that there was a weapon that's "worse" than that sword, is a mace, wielded by Daedra (Dremora) and is FOURTY TWO POUNDS. Jeebus, probably helps those swords above were wielded by guards that sounded like they were voiced by the Incredible Hulk half of the time. At least, if you're going to make 40lb maces, give them the power of such, ripping through enemies as finishers, cutting stone, and blowing up doors into pretty splinters, and so forth.

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Mon Jul 09, 2012 5:14 am

The fact that the basic system was worse in Morrowind was more than made up for by the fact that the setting and story of Morrowind were way more interesting than those of Oblivion.

Oblivion was so super generic.

That and the aforementioned leveled equipment were what made it so much less fun than Morrowind for me.

Aryxbez · Post by **Aryxbez** » Mon Jul 09, 2012 6:51 am

Darth Rabbitt wrote:The fact that the basic system was worse in Morrowind was more than made up for by the fact that the setting and story of Morrowind were way more interesting than those of Oblivion.

Oblivion was so super generic.

That and the aforementioned leveled equipment were what made it so much less fun than Morrowind for me.

Never really played Morrowind all that much, believe just the intro, and then ended up swimming somewhere, killing some sea creatures in a cave I shouldn't have for some future quest (or so I was told), and melee combat being kinda lame. As I recall, it had MMO like gameplay (especially if ye were to zoom it out to a 3rd person perspective), where fighting was just series of motions with misses/hits, former didn't match the animations so much for, and how shields blocked on random (read: never). However, from what it sounds like, it's kinda like the "3rd edition" of Elder Scroll games. That aesthetically, or conceptually, it's really AWESOME, but the actual gameplay/rules of it all, were pretty much balls.

Also, the quoted poster reminds me I should go check out their super awesome thread on the Elder Scrolls campaign I absolutely adore!

NineInchNall · Post by **NineInchNall** » Mon Jul 09, 2012 7:40 am

Darth Rabbitt wrote:Oblivion was so super generic.

Not compared to Skyrim.

Istred · Post by **Istred** » Mon Jul 09, 2012 8:35 am

Was there ONE thing in Oblivion that was less generic than in Skyrim??

Blicero · Post by **Blicero** » Mon Jul 09, 2012 12:38 pm

Istred wrote:Was there ONE thing in Oblivion that was less generic than in Skyrim??

The Dark Brotherhood questline was probably better in Oblivion. And Oblivion had a couple of nice sidequests (the painting one, the one where you get trapped on a ship) that were probably more unique than just about anything I encountered in Skyrim.

But the world of Oblivion was much more generic than the world of Skyrim.

crasskris · Post by **crasskris** » Mon Jul 09, 2012 12:43 pm

Istred wrote:Was there ONE thing in Oblivion that was less generic than in Skyrim??

Oblivion, incidently. Ironically, a game more or less completely set in Oblivion, as the name of the game indicates, might have been a lot more interesting.

But I have to agree with NineInchNall, too a degree, the only province less interesting than "viking land...now with dragons!" would have been High Rock. And I bet that will be TES 6, since "exotic & challenging" < "bland and easily identifiable" when your main concern is selling product.

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Mon Jul 09, 2012 2:54 pm

Skyrim's genericness doesn't bother me as much, probably because it reminds me of Bloodmoon, which I really liked.

And it at least tried to go back to the moral ambiguity of Morrowind, where you could justify (in-character, if not out of character) joining or not joining any of the political factions and genuinely believe in why you were helping them (I prefer Stormcloaks for basic desire to upset the status quo in any game I play that offers the choice to do so as much as possible.)

I must admit that I find the Thalmor to be the most loathsome faction prominent in any of the games so far, since they combine the "hate everyone who aren't them" of the Dunmer in Morrowind with the "are making everyone in the game world a boot-licker to or filled with (poorly hidden to completely open) contempt of the foreign devils" of the Empire in Morrowind (then again, the Thalmor are not a joinable faction anyhow, and I think they're going for that angle) and really want one of the Skyrim expansions to be a chance to really take them down more than massacring a base or two.

I'm really fucking hoping that the next Elder Scrolls is either in Akavir (unlikely) or Black Marsh (significantly less unlikely) since flavor-wise both are rather mysterious and awesome-sounding.

And yeah, melee combat in Morrowind was ridiculously boring, but you could make up for this by levitating and raining down ranged weapons or ranged spells (few opponents can counter that, and it's kind of fun to levitate around.)

Dammit I miss levitating, even if I completely understand why it was taken out.

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Mon Jul 09, 2012 3:25 pm

Yeah, Morrowind's level-up was shitty. It's even worse than Grek says though.

To get that +5 stat up, you need to increase skills based on that stat by a total of 10. Which means that playing naturally you won't get +5 Strength and +5 Endurance, you'll get a choice of +4 Str, +2 End, +2 Int, +3 Will and +2 Speed.
You aren't forced to level up immediately and can level up two or more levels at once. Which completely sucks because all the skill levels for increased stat increases only count for your first level up and all others during the same sleep are all +1 to all stats.
Not all stats have the same number of skills. Which means that Endurance only has spears and heavy armour (based on my memory, may be more), and you have a chance of never being able to pump Endurance or other stats up to a reasonable level.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Jul 09, 2012 3:26 pm

I'm actually playing (modded) Morrowind right now, because fuck it. And yeah, the leveling system was arguably worse than Oblivion, but let's be clear, the actually leveled enemies where less so.

So in Morrowind, you actually had a reason to level up. And that sets it far an above Oblivion and Skyrim in that sense.

Also, I can't say for sure, because obviously I'm not playing with unmodded leveling, but I think that if you raised a miscellaneous skill ten points, then a minor and major ten, you could get +5 to 3 stats.

As for the next Elder Scrolls, I want it in Elsweyr.

Voss · Post by **Voss** » Mon Jul 09, 2012 3:39 pm

Darth Rabbitt wrote:And it at least tried to go back to the moral ambiguity of Morrowind, where you could justify (in-character, if not out of character) joining or not joining any of the political factions and genuinely believe in why you were helping them (I prefer Stormcloaks for basic desire to upset the status quo in any game I play that offers the choice to do so as much as possible.)

Really? I couldn't justify either faction because they were both filled with complete morons. Not that the decision actually had any meaningful effect or consequences anyway, so whatever. I just ignored it completely until I was bored enough to complete the content.

I'm really fucking hoping that the next Elder Scrolls is either in Akavir (unlikely) or Black Marsh (significantly less unlikely) since flavor-wise both are rather mysterious and awesome-sounding.

I fully expect them to follow the Thalmor sub-plot (as boring as that is- Racists are Bad, really? How shocking and insightful); and so expect elder scrolls 6 to be WoodElfLand and 7 to be HighElfLand. I expect them to ignore the homelands of the cats and the lizards, unless they really think sales of TES: Furryland and TES:Lizardcock are really going to bring in some cash.

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Mon Jul 09, 2012 3:50 pm

Oh, both were filled with morons, sure, but at least that was better than Oblivion's "these are the totally super good guys and these are the super bad guys, and fuck you you can't join the super bad guys except for the Dark Brotherhood (which was admittedly fucking awesome to play through.")

I guess that being able to get involved with Tamriel's politics at all just seems refreshing after the "lol no" of Oblivion, stupid or not.