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[nenjin]

I don't think this quite the "resist the urge to fast-travel" argument. There doesn't seem to be much of a cap on what you can make to increase your skills either. As a Elven Smithing badass, you can just make leather bracers all day to make more skill. It doesn't force you to work harder or search more or anything, to get that higher skill.

And really, if fulfilling a goal Beth put in front of the player breaks the game they made, that should be their problem. I've gotten half a dozen glass things so far that I'm not using because I don't want to make the 10 points of blacksmithing it would take to modify them, because that would easily be three more character levels. And yet, they are all worse than the armor and weapons I've made for myself, which are a tier below them.

Enchanting, alchemy and blacksmithing are all part of this interwoven system that constantly feeds the player experience they didn't want. Exactly the same way Oblivion gave you experience you didn't want in the primary skills you picked for your class. Resulting, in that game, of doing stuff like building a class out of primary skills you weren't going to use. In Skyrim, it's more about whether you do blacksmithing, alchemy and enchanting at all. Without them, the game is a lot tougher. With them, you're drawn into becoming OP very quickly.

Really, there is no way to moderately approach Blacksmithing. You're either smithing to get the skill and the perk, or you're not smithing. The middle ground is the improvement phase on weapons and armor....but I've found you're still stuck needing around 10 points at a time to go to the next level of smithing quality. You end up smithing in leaps and bounds....and you make experience the same way when you're doing it. It could just be better IMO.

I'm gonna have to stop you right there and laugh for a little bit.

Ok, snark aside? Sliders. Effect, range, damage, area of affect. It worked, on that level. What it lacked, as always, was the time put in to carefully balance it. But at the very least, you could imagine cool shit, and make it. How boring has it been making items in Skyrim by comparison? Answer, really freaking boring. "Oh gee, should I go make a weapon with a single, crappy enchant on it? Or how about a ring with an enchant I'll never use." Spells lack pretty much any cool factor to them at all besides the visual effects. Tri-elemental effects? Damage spells with effects that aren't hard-coded by the eminently underwhelming "fire/frost/lightning" dichotomy?

If we include the fact shit was fun and had some depth in our definition of "worked", then yeah, both Morrowind and Oblivion enchanting "worked" compared to Skyrim.

[Criptfeind]

My smithing level is the same as the level of my other secondary skills. I am not sure why your smithing is so far ahead (or rather you have to work to keep it from being such) unless you are going out of your way to find things to smith with.

[nenjin]

unless you are going out of your way to find things to smith with.

When things with pelts for leather, and ingots, are core loot items, you don't have to work hard to find materials. My smithing level dovetails the level of gear I'm getting access to....and now that I'm seeing ebony and glass, I'm in the position of deciding whether to just go do it, or prevent myself out of some sense of propriety. I've been playing with the same set of armor since Level 15, more or less, trying to not smith my way to god hood. I could have had Legendary Elven Armor a long time ago....but I chose not to do it.

Plus, as a melee, blacksmithing is your bread and butter. It was written to be that way. Without some attention to blacksmithing, you can fall behind as a melee without knowing it.

[Duke 2.0]

Ok, snark aside? Sliders. Effect, range, damage, area of affect. It worked, on that level. What it lacked, as always, was the time put in to carefully balance it. But at the very least, you could imagine cool shit, and make it. How boring has it been making items in Skyrim by comparison? Answer, really freaking boring. "Oh gee, should I go make a weapon with a single, crappy enchant on it? Or how about a ring with an enchant I'll never use." Spells lack pretty much any cool factor to them at all besides the visual effects. Tri-elemental effects? Damage spells with effects that aren't hard-coded by the eminently underwhelming "fire/frost/lightning" dichotomy?

If we include the fact shit was fun and had some depth in our definition of "worked", then yeah, both Morrowind and Oblivion enchanting "worked" compared to Skyrim.

Yeah, sorry about that.

 

Sliders. Effect, range, damage, area of affect.

Hardly what I would call interesting. It still falls under two or three general classes of "touch spell that does mediocre damage", "ranged spell that does low damage" and "AoE spell that does hardly any damage and costs a ton to cast". No matter how you play with the systems before the spells would fall under those categories, independently of any balance issues that were present. Removing the downsides of those spells still leaves us with people who max damage at touch range, max as much damage but not as much for a ranged spell and AoE spells that don't feel as useful.

 I would like more effects, but Skyrim seems to have gotten a brilliant idea of having different styles of casting magic. Streams, bolts, runes on the ground, different ways of applying the damage. It was ultimately the thing that the previous games lacked. They even differentiated fire/lighting/ice aside from resistances by giving them effects on other stats, which helps make these normally mundane abilities interesting to use.

 I'll agree that they didn't go down that road enough and that more intertwined implementation to enchanting would be nice, but magic appears more interesting now than the previous installments. Sliders for some basic attributes isn't that interesting, nor would I accept them as a definition of 'depth."

[Shadowlord]

So I climbed to the top of the world: http://steamcommunity.com/id/trafalgar/screenshot/613842889519116541

And I found:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

rare ore, ebony and (IIRC) malachite, 6 each, which makes 3 ingots each.

I've mainly been making either iron daggers (buying iron ingots or ore is pretty cheap if I don't have any), using my own leather for leather strips, and improving them all for additional skill at less cost than making more would take, or making leather bracers.

While I had a ton of petty souls, I also enchanted the daggers, which was quite profitable (and boosted my enchanting skill, but I still can't make anything useful compared to the enchantments I find in the wild). I haven't tried buying petty soul gems with souls, although I have a ton of empty ones and really would need only to soul trap some things, it's just incredibly inconvenient (I haven't found anything with a soultrap enchantment).

(So I can make glass stuff now, although I haven't yet. I haven't seen any ebony or glass stuff for sale yet either, or any glass loot besides a dagger, although I've been buying the ingots needed for glass)

[nenjin]

I'll agree that they didn't go down that road enough and that more intertwined implementation to enchanting would be nice, but magic appears more interesting now than the previous installments. Sliders for some basic attributes isn't that interesting, nor would I accept them as a definition of 'depth."

I'd call being able to make a spell that is a ranged AOE fire explosion that drives everyone berzerk while damaging their speed depth of control. Getting the best soul gems to power the craziest multiple effects was the reason to do that stuff. Compared to.....getting an extra 5 to 6% on the single effect most people will be able to do in Skyrim.

It may have added a different method of spell casting (while removing another, completely valid casting method), but what do they let you do with it? Nothing. The HP DoT, the Stam damage, the Magicka Damage, you can't single out these things and make them stronger. You can't make poison-based damage spells, charm spells, spells designed to sap specific stat.

It's super infuriating when I find scrolls that do stuff like "burn undead and make them flee for 30 seconds" and I'm like "why the hell did you take away the ability for us to do this! It's right there, staring us in the face!"

If the hand-crafted content were so amazing, I would gladly give up the freedom to generically produce our own stuff. But it's not. Not even close, unless you're counting how stuff looks. And the stuff we're left to produce on our own is a sad, sad shadow of better times. Sure, Skyrim provides you enough for the ride to level 30. But then it pretty much stops cold in its tracks.

[Leatra]

Sliders. Effect, range, damage, area of affect.

Hardly what I would call interesting. It still falls under two or three general classes of "touch spell that does mediocre damage", "ranged spell that does low damage" and "AoE spell that does hardly any damage and costs a ton to cast". No matter how you play with the systems before the spells would fall under those categories, independently of any balance issues that were present. Removing the downsides of those spells still leaves us with people who max damage at touch range, max as much damage but not as much for a ranged spell and AoE spells that don't feel as useful.

How to turn your excellent mage into a terminator in Oblivion:
1. Cast %100 weakness to fire and make it last for four seconds
2. Cast %100 weakness to magic. 3 seconds.
3. Cast a fire spell with your remaining magicka
You can make it all AoE or touch too.

You have to be pretty good at Destruction and have a huge amount of magicka for that though.

[Duke 2.0]

 I already agreed with you about implementation, and again Morrowind was never that good. The concept behind the design decisions, of limiting the number of abilities they had to work with in designing the game helped make spell use in general easier. The old flexible system was still very clunky and the only thing it had going for it was the number of effects you could combine.

 Whether it's a successful implementation does not concern me. I am simply supporting the idea that it is an advancement over the older systems. Lessons were learned, flaws were addressed, new issues came fourth but they will be drastically different issues than what previous games had to deal with. The whole system feels a lot less clunky and players can use it without feeling impotent or looking up ways of maxing everything out being the only two options.

[nenjin]

The whole system feels a lot less clunky and players can use it without feeling impotent or looking up ways of maxing everything out being the only two options.

Just feels too far in the opposite extreme for my taste. You get grossly overpowered quickly just humming along playing by the rules. And you'd never need a wiki or even a deep understanding of the game....because there's no mystery. The biggest mysteries in game are hard-coded shouts and spells.

And yes, I really miss my elemental piercing line of spells, that stacked a bunch of weaknesses while doing small bits of elemental damage. If Bethesda could have taken what they did with Blacksmithing and applied it to spell crafting, to make spell SMITHING, I think we all would have enjoyed ourselves.

[Duke 2.0]

 I think the game being too easy is a general complaint over the sum of all features. This game really is a sort of reactionary rubber band snap. Previous games had issues that made them too hard and took a while to advance through the clunky mechanics. This one appears pretty easy and is very quick about advancement.

 Goes to show what a ficke beast game balance is.

 And yeah, I understand being disappointed over the band snapping too far in this direction. It's still a system with obvious flaws, but hey, at least they are different flaws. I remember Oblivion had a major magic mod that added a ton of effects that were kind of weird and didn't mesh too well. Hopefully any mods for adding effects this time around will have a more stable base to work with.

[Cthulhu]

Oh god oh man oh god oh man oh god

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I just summoned Ohdaviing and used him to fight an enemy dragon.  The enemy dragon landed, Ohdaviing was hovering, it breathed ice, he breathed fire, at the exact same time.  You know that picture where there's lasers and stuff flying out of the guy's computer monitor and he's like "fuuuuuuck!"  That is exactly what happened to me.

[Raddish]

I finally have the game.  Well I got it yesterday but whatever.  Playing on the master skill and the game is actually challenging at points, although I am probably not hat well specced to make it as easy as people seem to find it.

Seems to me that I have to be very quick on my reactions as it is to keep myself alive in combat, moving from blocking to attacking and avoiding and stuff.

[Tellemurius]

Oh god oh man oh god oh man oh god

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I just summoned Ohdaviing and used him to fight an enemy dragon.  The enemy dragon landed, Ohdaviing was hovering, it breathed ice, he breathed fire, at the exact same time.  You know that picture where there's lasers and stuff flying out of the guy's computer monitor and he's like "fuuuuuuck!"  That is exactly what happened to me.

Screenshot that damnit!

[Cthulhu]

I didn't get to it in time.

Also, ohgodohman again:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I got the ebony blade.  It's bad.  Not bad like weak, the damage is pretty low for a two-hander but it has huge lifesteal and when fully empowered people you hit don't care that you're killing them (So you can kill neutral characters without making them hostile).  It's bad as in holy shit this is what a Daedric "gift" should really be like.  It's blessed by Mephala and feeds on betrayal.  To restore it to full power you have to kill people who care about you.  Questgivers, companions, that sort of thing.  You have to kill a bunch of them.

Like I said, the Daedric quests in this game are awesome

I think I'm going to join the thieves guild and kill the guys hanging out there.  At first I was going to kill Lydia and some companions but I killed Tilma the Haggard and all of the non-circle companions, including Eorlund, and Lydia, and the sword still wasn't sated.  Part of me wants to do it the right way (I don't care about the thieves guild and I'm not going to do their quest line on this guy, so killing them isn't really betraying anyone) but it's just not in my blood to murder all my friends like that.  If I can't do it to the thieves guild I'm not going to be able to do it at all.

EDIT:  Spoiled edited.

[Gunner-Chan]

And you'd never need a wiki or even a deep understanding of the game...

I've been staying out of this discussion since I already know it's two diffrent but equally valid viewpoints. But I'm just going to say I find this as a plus. I personally like that the game system get's the hell out of my way and lets me enjoy the game how I wanna play. This is the same reason I'm finicky with tabletop RPGs since I prefer to freeform RP so the rules won't ground me to doing things I don't want.

In my opinion, needing a wiki is a huge, huge downfall of a game. Yes DF too. Third party documentation being required is a bad thing in my opinion.

But anyway... I think I've broke the 50 or so misc objectives mark. I have no idea how many there are but I don't think I'm even all that much into the game given I've only visited a couple of holds. At that I've only found two daedric quests so far, both of them have been very cool as of this point.

Spoiler: Azura quest spoilers (click to show/hide)

I particularly like that I got to take the star from Azura and change it's fate. Something that's pretty much unheard of to do in lore. Not to mention going INTO the star was awesome and I got some Daedra hearts out of it. Not sure what they do in this game yet but I'm sure it's useful. Seriously though I was starstruck when I saw the innards of the star. They got the otherworldlyness and dreaminess of the place just right in my opinion.

Edit: fixed up for broken tags. What the hell me?