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[Putnam]

Jiub, IIRC, became Saint Jiub after driving the cliff racers out of Vvardenfell.

[MorleyDev]

Basically he became really memetically popular as the first person you meet in the game, with a lot of mods turning him into a companion (one even disabled the main quest and turned him into the Nerevarine!). So Bethesda have been using him as small fan service ever since by giving the double fan service of him being mentioned as a Saint Juib who drove the Cliff Racers out of Morrowind, and having his ghost appear in Dawnguard.

[Neonivek]

As long as more people like the game than dislike it, then it is considered a success.

I am actually going to disagree with that. Many artists recognise that there is a large difference between something that is "Good" and something that is "popular". While there is certainly nothing to be ashamed about when you make something popular, or to be popular, it isn't nessisarily a success just because a lot of people bought it and mildly liked it.

Things can be a financial success but a critical failure and a lot of the time these differences start to appear over time as the people migrate and everyone left are people who would pay close attention.

in streamlining away it's problems (which even I admit they definitely have done with Skyrim), they also removed a lot of the things Morrowind got right. Now, even if this wasn't done to appeal to those "damn dirty casual players" it's still a problem. I would love to see a game with the engine of Skyrim, but with the depth of Morrowind or even greater depth. But I doubt it's possible.

Streamlining when done right is about doing away with details and mechanics that didn't need to be complicated. Streamlining done wrong (from a critical point of view) is when they remove depth and complexity.

Honestly I have no hatred for casual players but I really dislike how much the market is "Lowest common denominator" right now. Where everything needs to be distilled from any sort of challenge, complexity, or depth and made plain.

I know someone once challenged that old games didn't actually have depth but it was rather an exception... but I have plenty of games where it didn't pull any punches and you needed to know what you were doing and some were in fact "Triple A" games.

There really isn't anything wrong with Skyrim but it is a trend that will, to me, only get worse until even the casual players will get bored of it. Skyrim is fun but it shows how much the series has lost. The most impressive thing in the game are the invisability mechanics (which I still awe over) and quite a few of the missions would have been considered great missions no matter what game it was in.

Yet I feel like everything that was great and done well in Skyrim was something they are going to continue to streamline. For example Light and Heavy Armor being seperate skills? Well they are exactly the same as far as the game is concerned but can we simplify it further?

-I need to be careful what I say and not let my depressive side dictate this... because Skyrim is very impressive and my issues are definately not with the game in general. Yet I do honestly think that every problem introduced in Skyrim is only going to get worse. I do think the next game in the series, that isn't the MMO, will only get more bland.

[PanH]

Well, Jiub is the guy who wake you up in the boat at the very start. The first npc you see, he's a prisoner too, and he's the one that ask you your name. And I just realized that Jiub = St Jiub.

And yea, Morrowind directions ... lots of them were wrong, sometimes it was even the opposite.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

I recently downloaded Daggerfall.  I entered one room in the starting dungeon...and died without seeing what attacked me.  Only one thing to do.  Try again.

[fqllve]

I know someone once challenged that old games didn't actually have depth but it was rather an exception... but I have plenty of games where it didn't pull any punches and you needed to know what you were doing and some were in fact "Triple A" games.

*cough* Pretty sure that was me. And I would definitely argue that there weren't any AAA games back then as PC games were very niche.

Honestly I have no hatred for casual players but I really dislike how much the market is "Lowest common denominator" right now. Where everything needs to be distilled from any sort of challenge, complexity, or depth and made plain.

That's because the market is wider. This is what happens when a medium achieves mainstream acceptance.

Anyway I don't really feel like Skyrim was dumbed down. Pretty much every change seems to have reasons other than appealing to a wider audience (like removing acrobatics to not have huge city walls or getting rid of the completely broken leveling system) except for spellmaking, and I'm hoping Bethsoft has considered the widely negative reception to magic in general in the game and changes it for the next.

[Neonivek]

I would definitely argue that there weren't any AAA games back then as PC games were very niche

Kings Quest 6 was what could be considered a "Triple A" unless it has a definition and isn't "relative".

That's because the market is wider. This is what happens when a medium achieves mainstream acceptance

I'm well aware. It is a shame though.

Doesn't make it any less annoying.

except for spellmaking

Balance as well they didn't have the animation budget.

I don't really feel like Skyrim was dumbed down

It was just very simplified and to me it will likely continue to be simplified. Heck I wouldn't be surprised if "Single and Two handed" weapons became ONE skill tree in the next game.

[GalenEvil]

Spellmaking was my favorite part of Oblivion. I haven't played previous TES games to Oblivion but have heard that even its magic system is less in depth than a previous installment. Not seeing spellmaking in Skyrim made me sad, but I guess it's understandable since the peoples of Skyrim aren't to hot for mages.

[Vattic]

But shouldn't you be able to bring up any topic you know about with anyone? I figured that was why they were all the same.

(Should probably have replaced "options" with "replies") Should they reply with exactly the same block of text word to word? It gave the strong feeling that all the npc's just derived most of their conversation from a common set, and made many of the characters seem like generic NPC #n. It heavily dehumanised many of the characters for me, turning them into robots.

Plus it also littered the chat window with redundant conversation options.

Fair enough. I hadn't a PC at release and only played it later with a huge list of mods installed. Either a mod changed the dialogue or I just didn't remember.

[alexandertnt]

I know someone once challenged that old games didn't actually have depth but it was rather an exception... but I have plenty of games where it didn't pull any punches and you needed to know what you were doing and some were in fact "Triple A" games.

I thought that was me... But thats because its true. Get a list of old games from a website like mobygames or something, pick games totally at random (to avoid selection bias) and see how many good "deep" games you get. Not many (hope you like Tetris ). You would also probably find plenty of modern games that suck by doing a similar thing. good/deep games are the exception.

I wouldn't be surprised if "Single and Two handed" weapons became ONE skill tree in the next game.

I miss Acrobatics and my rapid leveling of it (thanks, Quake ). Actually Acrobatics could have had some fun/interesting perks in the current skyrim system. I hope they dont remove more since Skyrim's system is already "running on a skeleton-crew" (because it was the best way I could think of to word it).

I recently downloaded Daggerfall.  I entered one room in the starting dungeon...and died without seeing what attacked me.  Only one thing to do.  Try again.

Why does everyone keep dying on the first dungeon? I got through it first try without issues. I would have to guess that I got lucky since everyone else keeps dying.

[ShoesandHats]

I recently downloaded Daggerfall.  I entered one room in the starting dungeon...and died without seeing what attacked me.  Only one thing to do.  Try again.

Why does everyone keep dying on the first dungeon? I got through it first try without issues. I would have to guess that I got lucky since everyone else keeps dying.

No, I didn't have much trouble with it either. It makes it a lot easier if you choose the option in character creation that gives you an ebony dagger right from the start.

[WillowLuman]

One thing in Skyrim that seems to have gotten in fact more in-depth and much better than the previous games is the stealth. Distracting people by firing arrows, invisibility, traps. It's amazing.

I actually really like Skyrim's magic, though I still regret the loss of spellmaking. Mages in oblivion were incredibly underpowered, enchanting being the only powerful thing they could do. The enemies gained in hitpoints and resistances much faster that a mage could gain in magical damage or magicka efficiency. Morrowind, in contrast, would let you become godlike if you made it past initial rockiness in magic.

[pisskop]

Skyrim looks better and plays smoother, but I don't care about my characters.  In morrowind and to some extent Oblivion (mods really helped.  things like real fatigue and hunger and the removal of leveled lists) I spent time planning my character and watching him grow.  They played differently and had weaknesses.  Skyrim characters felt like all I did wad change sprites.  once I mastered the vanilla (and then mod) combat mechanics I actually played as a peasant (no armour, a shield and axe) quite well.  It was fun. . . but I didn't play for the character any more than I played Diablo II for them. I played to say I did.

His best point I never realized is how much I miss weapon wear and layered clothing.  Added depth.

As to armour skills i think that's one thing they never got right.  In Morrowind Daedric fullsuit weighs ~500lbs, yet at maxed out skill protects only as well as glass weighing less than a quarter that?  In Skyrim the armour system is even screwier, with each extra ap providing more protection than the last.

When they streamlined it into a variation of Fable I found no reason to invest 100+ into an action character.

[Devling]

I recently downloaded Daggerfall.  I entered one room in the starting dungeon...and died without seeing what attacked me.  Only one thing to do.  Try again.

That's the Dwarf Fortress spirit!
Losing is Fun!

[alexandertnt]

I spent time planning my character and watching him grow.

Spoiler: rant about RPG's in general (click to show/hide)

This is one of the things I do not like/get in RPG's. I don't want to plan out my character, I just want to play and "my character" can evolve naturally as I do so.

And I have never had the illusion of my chatacter growing - the stats system in most RPG's are super simple and generalise characters to a handful of integers (which are rendered straight onto the screen, noless). I cannot associate my characters various abilities with arbitary numbers, and when those numbers increase it is very obvious the effect that has - my character does not get stronger, but instead a higher value goes through a function to calculate how much HP to subtract from the integer representing the enemies HP.

TES games were better with this (With D&D games like Neverwinter Nights being the worst, right down to printing the maths they used onto the screen) but this is one aspect I thought they had been improving over the series - hiding the numbers so I feel more like I am playing a character in a possibly-believable world, rather than a world made out of statistics (especially with the combat change between Morrowind and Oblivion. I just can't see my character missing what clearly hit).

I do wish characters in Oblivion/Skyrim had more weaknesses though. preferably not of the "+15% fire damage" type though, since again with the statistics. Why not just say "X is vunerable to fire" - I don't need to know the exact value (I will get used to the vunerability as I play).

Also some people who play RPG's often go on about how much more "in depth" or even "True Scotsman" that this type of RPG gameplay is. Its more deep as a statistical machine, but it does not add more depth for "Playing a Role of a character in a Game" for me.

It is of course my opinion and people will definetely have different tasts in this regards. I also rarely put in over 20 hours into a game (including Skyrim) except for a very small number of long-played games.

One thing in Skyrim that seems to have gotten in fact more in-depth and much better than the previous games is the stealth. Distracting people by firing arrows, invisibility, traps. It's amazing.

I agree. Stealth is quite fun and has only been improving with each game.