Has Beth lost its edge on RPG gaming?

[bjornk]

Both Bieber and FO4 is bad and yes, people have become ignorant and tasteless.

 

Edit:

 

Bieber and the likes are the result of "dumbing-down for the masses" in the music industry, which possibly started back in the 50s or 60s with the introduction of television and gained a huge momentum back in the 80s, with the help of the "music television".

 

The same thing has been happening in video games industry. You see, "industries" are not interested in creating "high quality" products that last forever. They are only interested in maximizing their profits, both by putting less money/resources/effort/time into making things and selling them to as many people as they can.

 

 

[Yami X]

 

 

At the moment, there are 38,552 people playing Fallout 4 on Steam. That ignores the major markets of XBox One and PS4.

I have 400 hours in myself.

 

Care to tell us how many people are playing your favorite RPG - right now?

 

Bethesda must be doing something right.

 

 

The majority can be wrong.

 

Minority reports that claim to be right have hardly any impact on the commercial markets and almost none on consumer behavior that reflects the present zeitgeist. That leads us to the average lifespan of a gamer generation, approx. five years, it is said, and that ain't much. Then new, young folk enters the scene. For them the new games are developed, not for us who we came before. We must adapt or fade away, and on that very day all those precious moments we have will be lost in time, like tears in the rain. That's the way it goes, there is no other. With my 26 years I've thus seen three of these RPG generations and its getting more and more difficult to adapt to the minor changes that come with each gamer generation. I have to lower my sights permanently not to get sick by a perhaps romanticizing understanding of an idealized past. Have fun! Yeah, yeah or whateva.

 

lol, There is always another way.

 

You know what they say if you want something done right you have to do it yourself.

[TheOzoneHole]

I'm not prepared to go as far as bjornk and say that this is a result of a cultural "dumbing down" that started in the '50s and '60s.  (Personally, even though I'm in my late 20's I'm a huge classic rock fan, and I think most of the "modern" music is utter crap. Not all of it, just 99.5% of it.) If we've had a cultural dumbing down it started in the 2000s or even late 1990s. (Personally, I think it started in June of 2007.)

 

I also do not really agree with Jasemyne's assessment that everyone simply needs to adjust their tastes to what is popular now.  There is clearly a demand for "old-school" style RPGs or Obsidian would not have had the success with Pillars of Eternity that they have.  Additionally, the gaming market is actually more directed at people between 25-34 who have the most disposable income, especially among unmarried while males.  Yes, the interests of that demographic will change as the existing members age out and younger members age in, but I'm not sure that the differences in tastes are quite as large as we may think.  

 

Also I am not going to run out with a torch and ax calling for the heads of BGS employees (even Todd Howard, who at this point I view only slightly better than Peter "The Liar" Moleneu...Monleu... oh whatever, the French Fable guy).  What I am going to do is stop pre-ordering games.  I feel that if I'd taken the time to watch actual game play of FO4, I might well have decided not to spend the money.  I've stopped buying music without listening to it, or at least other work by the artist first, and I've stopped buying movies almost totally.  But I keep buying games without playing them or watching actual post-release video from sources that I find reasonably reputable.

 

And while I'd love to do what Yami says and "do it myself", with gaming that is simply not realistic.  Look at the amount of work being put into Skywind. Hundreds of people, over multiple years, and it is not done because they have to recreate the entire freaking game. Music, models, everything has to be rebuilt from the ground up.  Yeah, BGS or BethSoft may give them props for all that hard work (and hopefully some of those people will be able to get a job in games design or development from all that work) but I'm kinda surprised that they haven't gotten nasty-grams from Beth's legal department.  

 

In the end this isn't really something of "we're right" and "they're wrong"; I really did not like the last Hitman game (Blood Money was great, Absolution was an absolute failure), so I'm not going to give Square my business with the new Hitman game. It is that simple.  We tell the dev and the publisher that we did not like their product, and we do it in a manner that is polite and constructive, and then we simply do not buy their products unless they go back and make clear changes to their product and maybe not even then.  

Personally, I think that Beth needs to build their sandbox and then populate it with quests rather than creating the quests and building a sandbox around them the way they seem to have done with FO4.  Unless a whole bunch of people who feel the same way get hired by BGS and BethSoft, they will keep doing things the way they have been. 

[Crooltool]

 

lol, There is always another way.

 

 

You know what they say if you want something done right you have to do it yourself.

 

 LOL actualy, I made the decision that if I ever won the lottery, starting a gaming company was first on my list, not to "make me money" but to make the computer game *I* want.. fantastic RPGing, Easily Modded, Open World, Best Graphics possible without compromising  the previous 3 items, playable on a mid range PC. and no, I would not make a console version if it involved compromising any of the other goals in ANY WAY, I would want it to be the BEST PC game possible and I think consoles have a negative effect on it.

Give me a world, an economy of some kind, and a society with some rules, set in either a fantasy, or apocolyptic situation and let me go, Give me quests i can choose to do, or not. Give me FPS style combat, Give me Modded Sjyrim or FO/FNV style everything else.

After seeing bunches of PLAYER reviews, at this point, I have decided to pass on FO4. That may change after the modding community gets ahold of it. But if I want to play a predetermined character, I stick with Witcher 3 for now, CDProjekt has much better story writers then Beth, if i can't RPG, then I want to at least be entertained.

 

Skyrim is my first exposure to TES, but I played Fallout since FO1, I thought FO3 and FNV were "okay" as unmodded games go, but unmodded, I thought Skyrim sucked. It wasn't till I discovered Nexus and LL that skyrim became "interesting" to me, that led me to modding FO3/FNV and replaying it as Tale of Two Wastelands, and getting Oblivion and modding the hell out of it as well <never even fired up the vanilla version of Oblivion>

[afa]

Well I hope you aren't a baseball pitcher.

[remois]

As far as I know the dumbing down of beth series as started even before oblivion. Between daggerfall and morrowind a lot was cut.

Fact: Game changes with what the average gamer want according to them NOT what the fan-base want. And a lot of gamers hate spending a long time reading or listening through an extensive branching conversation which is at heart what made the first two fallouts great.

 

The fact is, game changes and even if we would prefer more story try to remember  what was cried about the most since Fallout3 in the series? Clunky combat! Wow.

And they listened now for fallout 4 they cry that its too action oriented and not enough rpg-y.

 

Now you have to accept that bethesda never made pure rpg even in the tes:arena era, they are action rpg. And that is what works. the Witcher is an anomaly as it kept both aspects alive but it's already based on a written story! They didn't have to develop the main scenario and such, so yes more ressource to reassign to other aspects of the game.

I didn't really liked f3. Fnv was better because it was closer to the original source, so nostalgia... As for f4 is a really good FPS set in the fallout universe I'd say.

[Torkya]

Fallout 4 and Skyrim are just 2 different "RPGs". 

 

Skyrim is pretty much the here is a world choose who you want to be and off you go.  You are free to create your own back story for the character, and that is part of the beauty of the game, which also makes it great for modders. 

 

The Fallout series in general is more of the here is a world and here is a story for your character, go be this person.

 

Both have different things to offer and both are appealing as escapism I do think that if they are guilty of anything its relying on the modding community to make their games great (and stable sometimes) rather than flexing the RP muscle they have to build something truly great, and then marveling at the ways modders bend the world to their whim.

 

The biggest bait and switch in rpg would have to be the Mass Effect series. Despite the claims not a single choice the player made as Shepard affected the outcome or the story arc for the following games.  Kill the Rachni queen in Mass Effect ... no problems we will just put a cloned one in for ME3... pfft it doesn't even change the dialogue significantly.

[Jazzman]

Fallout 4 and Skyrim are just 2 different "RPGs". 

 

Skyrim is pretty much the here is a world choose who you want to be and off you go.  You are free to create your own back story for the character, and that is part of the beauty of the game, which also makes it great for modders. 

 

The Fallout series in general is more of the here is a world and here is a story for your character, go be this person.

Well, Fallout4 follows the traditional way to play a role as an actor in a theater, on a stage in ancient Athens or in a set for a Hollywood movie doesn't matter. Play the scripted role good, become one with the lead and you might get awarded with an Oscar which makes you a celeb, right? Having said that, different to the widespread understanding in the gamer scene, if the player switches his gender in game, or the physical appearance of the character role over and over again, the role to play doesn't change for a iota - he remains the scripted protagonist and plays that role bound to the main quest with its limited choices to the bitter end. Here one plays the role of a father or mother in a dystopian tragedy. As the mother of a baby boy myself I almost felt predestined to play the lead in Fallout4. However, playing a parent is already the reason why so many (especially young) players dislike the main story - they dislike the parental responsibility behind, as Sigmund Freud might have muttered, something Bethesda has apparently underestimated.

 

In Skyrim one has started in a role that follows the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde theme, a schizoid character, the 'two in one' that has to overcome the evil beast within, the other Me, the dragon Alduin first to enter a New (open) World to be created as the player may see fit. At least that's what I remember after all those years since release. Skyrim is thus largely a mythological karaoke in the given Norse landscape that calls for individual improvisation by the protagonist as the Einherjar, the lone hero chosen by the Valkyries that fly to battle (here, the dragons as blood relatives) and that survives the many brave in battle to please the goddess Herja, the 'she who devastates', that grants the passage to Valhalla, the other-earthly 'Hall of Battle', in game the Hall of Valor ('Hall of those who do battle') in Sovngarde, the 'Land of those that sleep', the dead heroes that may live forever, the line of your people that are feasting with the gods. I killed many a brave with the battle axe back then in the Ninth World of Lore where the Norse gods keep the 'weapon of war', the Hammer of Thor, I'm pretty sure.

[TheOzoneHole]

I had a whole long post written out, but I'm going to just sum up my feelings with one picture from 9gag.

 

 

 

 

That is what I feel every time I play FO4. And I'm sorry, but that is not how a story that is intended to be over-arching should feel. 

[TheOzoneHole]

Forbes posted an interesting article about Fallout 4. While it does not touch on the abilities of BethSoft or BGS to make a game, I feel it is an interesting take on the story. There are game spoilers in the article, so if you haven't finished the game, I'd skip the article for now.

[Guest Mogie56]

I'm not sure any of the writers at Forbes are actually on planet earth or have ever even seen a video game. and the only delusion is in his own mind. what a waste of 2 pages.

[TheOzoneHole]

I didn't say it was good Mogie, I said it was interesting. 

 

Maybe we'll get lucky and someone will tell us that the FO4 we got was a delusion. 

[Zor2k13]

I have tried and tried to become interested in playing F4 again since some new DLC is available now but the game is just too lame and boring I can't do it. I know that I will have to put up with the terrible bugs for merchants and the OCD settlement building and the terrible story and the annoying npc like preston and mchomo. I actually can't stand this game at all, the power armor stuff is just not enough to compensate for all the problems. There will be a few more DLC for this "game" and then nothing else they won't fix anything like broken merchants that leave after a few game days or don't appear at all or appear dead and stripped. They will leave ALL of that to the unofficial patch guys as usual.

 

The only thing I might play soon is dark souls 3 but if I run into more BS from DS1 in that game I will stop playing it. Other than that game, all we have coming out is another shitty COD game and deus ex again. Deus ex had better be a really long game like days and days long to finish I hope it doesn't have some shitty multiplayer or whatever. After that game we won't have anything else this year except political crap elections and money problems that are worse than what we have now.

 

I don't expect the next ES game to be any better than F4 and they will probably put another devs dog in the game just to annoy us. Magic will suck even more and the bugs will be even worse but I'm sure it will link to jerkbook and twatter and a bunch of other shit and be buggy as hell for two years minimum.

 

The more important question than the op question is, what happens when the unofficial patch guys get tired of fixing bugfestas failures? Nobody can fix these as good as those guys and when they are gone thats it no more good fixes only bad fixes.

[Jazzman]

What do settlers have in common with some players, huh?

... They'll never stop to complain a bit. Disgusting, or is it?

[Zor2k13]

More like really sad lol.

[Frel]

 

 

At the moment, there are 38,552 people playing Fallout 4 on Steam. That ignores the major markets of XBox One and PS4.

I have 400 hours in myself.

 

Care to tell us how many people are playing your favorite RPG - right now?

 

Bethesda must be doing something right.

 

Justin Bieber has currently 2 songs in the US top 10 so he must be doing something right....

 

This is very subjective but if we "turn" games to music for me FO3 would be Led Zeppelin, FONV would be Deep Purple and FO4 is Justin Bieber.

Now there is no point in arguing if Bieber makes good music or not. The problem is that after Zeppelin and Purple people expected something like AC/DC. They got something quite different instead. Hence the negative feelings. 

 

P.S. Don''t even look at this if you are a Fallout fan :-)

 

P.P.S. Considering the trend I'm more worried that after Jethro Tull (Oblivion) and Pink Floyd (Skyrim) we are going to get Richard Clayderman when the next TES is released.

 

 

 

There is an awful lot of elitism around these days. Just because I can't stand Justin - and I suspect you feel the same way - that does not invalidate the likes and desires of an awful lot of people. What those screaming kids like is just as valid as what we like.

Same for Fallout - you might not like the current iteration, but a lot of people do. That does not mean they are stupid, or "not true to

the lore" - it just means their taste is different than yours. Still valid - but different.

 

Your whole argument is kind of flawed in the context of the OP namely "did Beth lost its edge in term of RPG"

first you put steam play numbers as it is the ultimate metric. If it was the case then all games would be just a clone of Call of duty or Dota. And good luck having innovation in such situation: diversity is good; uniformity (such as imho what happened with FO4) is bad in the long term.

It is interesting that the post that first mentionned the steam numbers made it compared to older RPG (skyrim, older fallouts and Witcher 2 as I recall) when omitting more recent RPG iterations such as the witcher 3 or even Dark Souls II (and I bet DS III, if intial impressions are true will blow fallout 4 out of this list). I know that Witcher 3 steam may not be representative as many people got in on GOG but still a comparison between those two would be more fair than Fallout 4 vs a  game that is now 5 years old (especially that Fallout 4 got a new DLC which probably bump those numbers)

 

Then comes your conclusion about Fallout and putting in people mouth that the large number of people that play it are "bad". I did not see anything like that in the thread. What I can say though is the large positive feedback I got from these people that do enjoy Fallout has little to do with RPG. These people are not bad but clearly they do not care with the core that makes an RPG (and no levelling up is not its core; at least not alone).What matters is character building  (even more than a story) and previous Fallout and the TES games were both very good at it, the witcher -- despite you being stuck on a single predefined character -- is also pretty good at it, and so are the soul games (although in its own very special way as your interaction with the world is very limited). Fallout 4 ? not so much

 

Lets take an example: how do you become a cannibal in Skyrim vs Fallout 4 (both games give similar benefit to such "skill"):

  - in skyrim you bump into a quest that leads you to discover that you were a cannibal all along ... you just muted this parted of you

  - in Fallout 4 you level up and get the skill into your skill tree

 

One give you a background that helps you further your character background and refine the role you play, the other gives you the skill in a platter for your convenience. You may use it for role play but mostly you will use it as a tool that allow you to be fed while not having to keep part of your inventory burden with plenty of food. 

 

yes many people enjoy Fallout 4, and yes it is a pretty good game like the biggest hits of POP music are pretty good, now do I enjoy modern pop ? not really but there's a lot more genre of music to satisfy my taste. And Fallout 4 is definitely more a POP song than a RPG. And I sure hope that it is not the trend Beth follow for the next TES. As a matter of fact I will probably wait few weeks before buying the next Beth "RPG" so I have proper feedback on whether it is a nice sandbox like Fallout 4 or they tried to have something closer to what I enjoy (hopefully the success of the witcher 3 got their attention)

 

 

 

 

[Zor2k13]

Fallout 4 is a dam hamster wheel.

[DocClox]

The thing that usually gets ignored in these "RPG" threads is that "RPG" means something different to almost everyone who posts. For example:

• For some people it's anything where you gain levels by killing monsters for XP.
• For some people it's anything which lets you imagine yourself in the role of the protagonist.
• For some people it's all about choice and consequence and nothing else matters.

Personally, I'm old school enough that I expect a role-playing game to have a degree of collaboration in the story. The game tells me where I am and how the world responds to my actions. I decide who I am, what I want and how I feel about the outcome of my actions. That's where I find Fallout 4 lacking as an RPG: it seems to be constantly telling me who I am supposed to be, what I am supposed to want and how I'm supposed to feel.

 

Now, as a few have already observed in this thread, this has been hashed and rehashed a few times already, and a lot of people have taken the time to explain to me that it's not all about me, and that a lot of people find F4 meets their role-play needs quite nicely. And that's fair enough.

 

That said, other people being content with the level of RP support doesn't make it any better a game from my point of view.

 

Of course, my satisfaction (and that of others with similar expectations to my own) doesn't matter much if the sales figures keep going up. We won't know for sure until the we see how the next couple of games sell. This one sold on expectations set by F3, FNV and Skyrim. The next one will probably be a TES game and will still benefit from Skyrim. The next Fallout will be based more on people's memories of this thing. Then we'll get an idea of how design decisions here affected sales.

 

It's entirely possible that they've managed to broaden their audience, albeit and the expense of alienating a few old fossils like myself. That's fine. If they can keep pulling that off, they'll eventually make more money that EA. And make shittier games into the bargain. Or maybe not: I may be pleasantly surprised.

 

I do know I'll be watching the next couple of Beth games with interest if not actual enthusiasm.

[TheOzoneHole]

I'm going to throw some gas on the fire with this question:

 

Which is a better RPG, Pokemon (any of them) or Fallout 4?

[spoonsinger]

I'm going to throw some gas on the fire with this question:

 

Which is a better RPG, Pokemon (any of them) or Fallout 4?

 

Obviously it's a trick question. The answer is 'Hungry Horace Goes Skiing'. It has outdated boring game play and it's all down hill.

 

[Eth4rlad]

I just have the feeling that western RPGs are going the wrong way entirely. Both Bioware and Bethesda, who are supposed to be the "giants" in regards to western RPGs have designed their latest titles like MMOs. Timesinks and Moneysinks. Instant Gratification and feedback loops.

 

Story becomes secondary to mechanics. Take the Minutemen for example. Do a mission to unlock a new Settlement that gives you more missions. Collect ressources and craft items to protect Settlements that give you missions so you can unlock more settlements that you need to protect. It's a closed loop that serves no purpose besides keeping you busy.

It makes sense in MMOs because the designers have a vested interest to keep people playing as long as possible but in a Singleplayer Game it's pure bullshit. But i guess people like it considering they buy it.

[Kaz Aanh]

I just have the feeling that western RPGs are going the wrong way entirely. Both Bioware and Bethesda, who are supposed to be the "giants" in regards to western RPGs have designed their latest titles like MMOs. Timesinks and Moneysinks. Instant Gratification and feedback loops.

 

Story becomes secondary to mechanics. Take the Minutemen for example. Do a mission to unlock a new Settlement that gives you more missions. Collect ressources and craft items to protect Settlements that give you missions so you can unlock more settlements that you need to protect. It's a closed loop that serves no purpose besides keeping you busy.

It makes sense in MMOs because the designers have a vested interest to keep people playing as long as possible but in a Singleplayer Game it's pure bullshit. But i guess people like it considering they buy it.

This what made mgs5 terrible experience for me. Forced open world grinding with repetitive copy pasted content.

And story god damn, kojima whyudothis

 

Ground Zeroes was fantastic, brilliant map design, no motherbase bullshit , cinematic experience , only prologue in the pp was great later it was just a downhill

 

Settlements to me feel like content fillers to keep player busy like you said, a cheap way to extend the game playtime. It would be cool if they added something more and rewarded the player for rebuilding the wasteland and becoming a Commonwealth NCR with you being the leader, imagine the possibilities like deploying your own army and altering the game ending. Making the commonwealth great again. Food and happines mechanics feels very basic, I'd love to see some trading between NPC villages and all that stuff, hiring mercenaries, random global events that would require your attention etc. You know to make feel player important in the world and have some kind of relation to his villages.

 

This what would be amazing, I gave up with rebuilding stuff and made my own little comfy house and kept it for myself only with few guards walking around. Its like they put settlement 1 week before the fallout 4 release. I do enjoy building/aesthetics/cosmetics stuff but this system is very limited and feels very basic.

 

I guess mods will fix it probly but heh its not like you should say "Its okay Beth-san we are gonna fix it for free btw ) dont exhaust yourselves "

[Varamayne]

 

 

Would the best modders get together and make a good Fallout or Scrolls style game?

 

I would think funding would be pretty simple through kickstarter, as long as the idea for the game is sound of course and I've seen some pretty crap ideas get backing so.....

 

 

 

You mean like Unwritten: Echos of Twilight? They ran two kickstarter campaigns, and as far as I'm aware both failed.

 

 

Yeah both failed, watched both presentations, seemed interesting, but I've got to be honest and say that there wasn't anything that particularly grabbed me about it, maybe that's why they didn't get the backing they wanted.

 

 

Have to say everything there looks generic as heck... like some cheap LotR spinoff. Where did all the creativity suddenly go?

 

[TheOzoneHole]

 

 

 

Would the best modders get together and make a good Fallout or Scrolls style game?

 

I would think funding would be pretty simple through kickstarter, as long as the idea for the game is sound of course and I've seen some pretty crap ideas get backing so.....

 

 

 

You mean like Unwritten: Echos of Twilight? They ran two kickstarter campaigns, and as far as I'm aware both failed.

 

 

Yeah both failed, watched both presentations, seemed interesting, but I've got to be honest and say that there wasn't anything that particularly grabbed me about it, maybe that's why they didn't get the backing they wanted.

 

 

Have to say everything there looks generic as heck... like some cheap LotR spinoff. Where did all the creativity suddenly go?

 

 

 

I got the impression that the idea was that, since everyone on the team had made mods for TES games, they could make a TES game that was better than the TES games that were being made.  I know Gopher pushed for them on his YouTube channel, and I can't really say why they failed, but I do think that a lot of people, myself included, were more inclined to wait-and-see with them than with other, more well known or established studios and/or franchises. 

[Varamayne]

I'd like to chime in and add to the topic myself. Been thinking of making my own but since this one is still active might as well contribute instead of flooding the forum with one and the same. I'll divide my rants into sections.


Voice acting...

Possibly the biggest pet peeve for me. why did they decide to go this route!? but the answer is simple... for commercial reasons, right? This is, in my fairly uninformed and unprofessional opinion, one of the biggest reasons why Beth games are losing their 'edge'. Did they have any to begin with? Dismiss me as someone who is wearing nostalgia goggles, but I do consider Morrowind to be a masterpiece. The dialogue options were immense. Unfortunately Beth themselves did not take advantage of it much. It is true that most of the NPCs gave you generic copy paste answers. But the potential was there. I remember my favourite mod, Vampire Embrace, made so much good use of it that no vampire mod to this day can match the sheer depth... and its not the modders fault, its because the newer games have been streamlined. You could have options based on your attributes. This cannot even be done anymore because we don't even have attributes. Remember that escaped slave quest where you could instantly resolve the issue by either being Argonian or having 90 intelligence and thus being knowledgeable of their language? The possibilities were endless, really. So many variables, and come on, they weren't that hard to program if they were just sidequests.

I think that voicing everything in a TES game is just downright idiotic. If this were some action series with a completely linear story filled with a bunch of cutscenes(and beth doesnt ever even do these in their games, and when they do they're really subpar) where your goal is to just beat a 6 hr(not counting the copious cutscenes) rollercoaster campaign, fine. Those games are like cheap blockbuster movies, you watch them once, you get a bit of entertainment, if any, and you don't touch them again. Sometimes semi-open world games can afford to fully voice everything too because most generic NPCs are just puppets.

But in an elder scrolls game, every NPC can be interacted with. Even the generic bandits, if you use a charm spell. So what kind of an idiot decides that it would be a good idea to voice all 1k+ unique NPCs? On top of that, they use only 6-10 voice actors save for some truly unique NPCs. Except in Skyrim the emperor did not get a separate actor this time. How is it immersive that everybody sounds the same? Not to mention the voice actors aren't even that good.

So on top of hogging resources, mainly money and time, making it rather hard to go back and make the changes in dialogue because you'd need the actors again, along with many other complications, voice acting also hurts modding. In order for a mod that introduces its own NPCs or lines to fit in seamlessly into Skyrim or Oblivion, it needs to have its own voice acting. I've not played or seen a single mod that matches the professional quality of Beth's voice acting. Most modders and their voice acting friends aren't even English. Neither do they have professional studios at their disposal. this was never a problem in Morrowind. You could be a mute and you could still make a follower with the most indepth personality if you really wanted to. And since for many people modding is what keeps the game alive in the first place this is a big deal. At least to this small minority that loves to pimp their game with mods.



TLDR voice acting has taken away a lot of potential depth and development of other features beth could have poured their resources into, not to mention it has hurt modding

Other RPG elements...

I really miss attributes. Never understood the idea behind culling all that and leaving us with just health, magicka, and stamina. I suppose it made things easier for them.. ? Less hassle? Nngh. As for classes, I don't mind losing them much, I do like the idea of allowing the player to define their character based on what skills they use.

Another problem is the game's balance. it is shit and has been shit since morrowind. Destruction mages have been gimped forever and they just dont LEARN. As a melee character in skyrim you have a total of 4 WAYS to boost your damage, skill, perks, blacksmithing, enchanting. Destruction has absolutely nothing. Nothing. What kind of an idiot is responsible for balancing this game there? It takes absolutely little to no effort to make sure that destruction damage scales with similar factors and they didnt even bother doing that. And that's the least of all problems, playing a mage in the base game is dull as heck, not even mentioning the shitty questline because I prefer to pretend it doesn't exist. They've removed the main factor that made playing a mage semibearable in previous games which is spellmaking. they've culled a lot of interesting spell effects since morrowind and added absolutely nothing new to compensate for it, or at least nothing memorable that comes to mind. Playing a pure mage is close to impossible in the base game, at least if you're like me and you want to play at a higher difficulty.

Speaking of higher difficulties that's where you realise there is only one playstyle you can adhere to which is sneaky archery. And that's because unlike in some other games like Dark Souls, you cant really dodge or anything.. not to mention bandits can arbitrarily killcam you even as you backpedal flawlessly. Combat mechanics in the base game have no learning curve at all. There's nothing you can do to personally improve, it is all based on passive numbers. Well, this has always been the case with their games, on the other hand.

And then every character inevitably ends up the same. The game itself doesnt really 'limit' you in any way so the player himself has to deliberately limit his character's growth in order to feel like his role fits a certain niche instead of becoming a demigod that is capable of anything and everything. That's very bad game design as far as RPGs go. Couldn't they have looked at 3.5 DnD or similar systems? I like that my mage character can wear heavy armour if she chose to but to impose absolutely no limits feels like laziness on their part. It takes much less effort this way instead of trying to figure out how putting more points into a certain stat could affect the progression of secondary stats etc.

Enchanting in skyrim is bad. very bad, and gamebreaking. What is up with all the dull passive boosts?

Did I mention countless CTDs, corrupted savegames, and gamebreaking bugs that often happen even without mods?


Bottom line as to why I'm so annoyed with Bethesda is because I don't see any significant improvements in their newer games. A lot of flaws from previous games transfer over. A lot of features are removed and remain uncompensated. the mistakes they've made with Morrowind and even Oblivion could be overlooked but if they made the same mistakes in Skyrim and even Fallout 4 to a degree then they're clearly not learning. Morrowind has much more content and replay value compared to Oblivion and Skyrim and I'm pretty sure they had fewer resources when making that game... and less experience. If I had to choose which game I'd play unmodded I'd say Morrowind > Oblivion > Skyrim.

but one thing that skyrim has and previous TES games didnt is proper crafting(although alchemy was arguably better in Morrowind). You can finally craft armour, chop wood, cook meals. It can be pretty fun, and I don't even mind that food doesn't really have any specific advantages. They could've maybe added something, like food reducing fatigue if the character goes on for too long without sleep or whatever but it was a step forward nonetheless. I hear Fallout 4 has an even more indepth crafting system for guns, and that it is pretty neat despite other flaws of the game but I haven't personally played it.