Skyrim is worse than Oblivion in every way

[waywardOne]

http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/13377/article/skyrim-redguard-dlc-is-a-hoax/

Welp looks like its a fake.

The good news is someone's making a game based on the show Breaking Bad! It's really expensive, though.

 

[Horus]

Furries are too exotic for the mainstream, they'll probably save Elsewyr and Black Marsh for last. Unless Bioware were to take over the series.

They would make it in 100 year forward and say that most khajiit were massacred by elves to justify why the elsewyr is populated by every species(mostly human of course no one wants to rp a furry otherwise it would be awkward to install nude mods.).

 

[DraQ]

There was nothing, absolutely nothing medieval about Oblivion.
It was just generic Forgotten Realms stuff. But not medieval.

Maybe he misspelled "mediocre".

Then again, you did invest heavily in non combat skills in a game mainly centered around combat.

HALP MY TWIG-ARMED DIPLOMAT MERCHANT IS BEING RAPED BY THE MINOTAURS

Shit design is shit design.

Besides, speechcraft and personality were powerful in Morrowind (speechcraft was OP, in fact).

High speechcraft allowed you to get what you wanted with minimum hassle from non-hostile NPCs, personality improved initial reactions and could stop marginally hostile NPCs from attacking, especially in conjunction with reputation. Most of high level hostiles were either NPCs, confined to dungeons and generally optional areas or both, and mostly bypassable.

 

[JarlFrank]

It'll be all curve swords and camels and sand. Can't wait to see how they shoehorn dragons and wordwalls and all that other retarded shit.

Wow, Redguard looks pretty good. I need to play it one of these days.

 

[Carrion]

Besides, speechcraft and personality were powerful in Morrowind (speechcraft was OP, in fact).

Considering how potentially gamebreaking so many of the other skills were, Speechcraft wasn't particularly good. The benefits of becoming the master of Speechcraft and, say, Sneak, Acrobatics and Security were not that great when even an average Illusion-Alteration mage could charm anyone, turn invisible, levitate anywhere and open any lock. Still, Speechcraft definitely had its uses.

The worst thing about Oblivion's level scaling was the way it reflected on the gameplay. To make a good character you had to play the game in the most boring way possible, hacking and slashing your way through everything. If you took a bit more interesting route and went with stealth and diplomacy, you'd gimp yourself pretty effectively. Morrowind naturally didn't have this problem.

 

[Kahlis]

Well, you could try and argue whether a game is more balanced if all the skills are more or less equally applicable to various circumstances, but we'd never get anywhere in ranking them and many people seem to not mind older games where some skills get very little use. In party-based RPGs there's kind of that enjoyment in spreading your party members' builds out in the hopes that in all situations there will be at least one person with an ability or item you can fall back on. And even then it's not like every locked door has an option for every single class to be able to open it. I feel as though that would kind of cheapen the significance, and it'd just be a fake "flavor" choice. Though then again in some of these games you're pretty much guaranteed to have your party covering all the bases, so maybe in the end that isn't much different since you're still always getting through.

I know this all doesn't translate over too well when we're talking about a single player RPG, and in a series designed for people who want to 100% the game with a single character don't like replay value/being locked out of any content. That's probably what it's mostly about, how people feel about having different amounts of things they can accomplish in one play session or character.

I really hate how Bethesda justified the removal of attributes as being because of Oblivion's levelling system. Sure there were always people making mods to reduce the grinding in the previous games, but what made it really bad in Oblivion was their stupid level scaling, not the attributes. Not to mention the expectation that to get anywhere in the game's quests you pretty much had to do fighting, and thanks to horrible loot scaling it wasn't like you could just have weak characters hang onto powerful items for the fights they had to get through like in Morrowind or Fallout.

 

[DraQ]

Besides, speechcraft and personality were powerful in Morrowind (speechcraft was OP, in fact).

Considering how potentially gamebreaking so many of the other skills were, Speechcraft wasn't particularly good. The benefits of becoming the master of Speechcraft and, say, Sneak, Acrobatics and Security were not that great when even an average Illusion-Alteration mage could charm anyone, turn invisible, levitate anywhere and open any lock. Still, Speechcraft definitely had its uses.

Well, acrobatics was very useful if you prefered low-contact combat.

Sneak allowed you to bypass or backstab pretty much everything and everyone, and, failing that, it allowed you to pretty much vanish in plain sight.
Security was merely badly balanced, because most locks were too easy and all traps were low level for some reason.
There was definite overlap between security, alteration, mysticism and alchemy, but no single skill from that group made any other redundant. For security to be pointless, you needed both alteration and either alchemy or mysticism (or enchanted stuff).

Besides, there was one neat, athough underutilized use of security - forgery in form of resealing sealed messages.

The worst thing about Oblivion's level scaling was the way it reflected on the gameplay. To make a good character you had to play the game in the most boring way possible, hacking and slashing your way through everything. If you took a bit more interesting route and went with stealth and diplomacy, you'd gimp yourself pretty effectively. Morrowind naturally didn't have this problem.

Indeed, although oblivious had more problems with its skills.
Speechcraft was effectively redundant, because you could boost disposition to reasonable values via wheel-of-derp regardless of skill, and if that didn't suffice (rarely) - everyone accepted bribes.
Security was even more pointless because you could pick any lock at any level without wasting lockpicks (if you knew how and were patient enough to not cut your face with broken DVD at your second lock) AND could get IWIN skeleton key.

 

[G.O.D]

Furries are too exotic for the mainstream, they'll probably save Elsewyr and Black Marsh for last. Unless Bioware were to take over the series.

You mean too exotic for Bethesda. If they would choose Elsweyr or Black Marsh they would, you know, have to be creative and think of an original setting and stuff, instead of generic medieval/viking shit like the last two TES games.

There was nothing, absolutely nothing medieval about Oblivion.
It was just generic Forgotten Realms stuff. But not medieval.

My characterisation was poor, looking back at some pictures. I remembered some mundane elements (like Skingrad and the guards) that struck me as medieval, and went herp derp medieval, without giving it much thought.

I was making a point (that it was generic, uninspired shit) and had to choose a word.

There was nothing, absolutely nothing medieval about Oblivion.
It was just generic Forgotten Realms stuff. But not medieval.

Maybe he misspelled "mediocre".

Well thanks for the faith, DraQ

It is more appropriate though

 

[JarlFrank]

Actual medieval pics:

I'd fucking love a game with architecture like that.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Shit design is shit design.

Besides, speechcraft and personality were powerful in Morrowind (speechcraft was OP, in fact).

High speechcraft allowed you to get what you wanted with minimum hassle from non-hostile NPCs, personality improved initial reactions and could stop marginally hostile NPCs from attacking, especially in conjunction with reputation. Most of high level hostiles were either NPCs, confined to dungeons and generally optional areas or both, and mostly bypassable.

And this is partly responsible for the game becoming easymodo walking simulator after you acquire a modicum of fighting skills. Why should I worry about pissing off someone if I can kill everyone in the room before they reach for their weapons?

Not that I support how Oblivion handled it, but neutering the danger of combat by making it almost optional isn't great design either.

 

[Machocruz]

This should just be (another) Morrowind thread. Way more interesting game to talk about. That first dwemer ruin you visit, the one guarded by Snowy Grandad, beats anything ES has had since, unless you count some of the Ayleid ruins with Oscuro's overhaul mod. And it's the first damn major dungeon crawl in the game.

Never made a mage in MW. Is it viable? (found mage thread) I've stuck to fighters and fighter/thief hybrids. How fun/viable is a purer thief type character?



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[Horus]

This should just be (another) Morrowind thread. Way more interesting game to talk about. That first dwemer ruin you visit, the one guarded by Snowy Grandad, beats anything ES has had since, unless you count some of the Ayleid ruins with Oscuro's overhaul mod. And it's the first damn major dungeon crawl in the game.

Never made a mage in MW. Is it viable? I've stuck to fighters and fighter/thief hybrids.



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There are already couple of those if you want to them.

 

[DraQ]

This should just be (another) Morrowind thread. Way more interesting game to talk about. That first dwemer ruin you visit, the one guarded by Snowy Grandad, beats anything ES has had since, unless you count some of the Ayleid ruins with Oscuro's overhaul mod. And it's the first damn major dungeon crawl in the game.

Well, content is often frontloaded.

But then suddenly Urshilaku Astral Burial.

Or Hilbongard's Forge.

Or that tomb with ship.

Never made a mage in MW. Is it viable? (found mage thread)

It's viable and arguably most fun way to play the game as long as:

-you have magicka multiplier, if not racial then at least from birthsign. Atronach or Apprentice is preferable and should allow for successful magery with any race.
-you can be arsed to build your own custom spells and understand how individual effects interact with each other and remaining mechanics.

 

[Machocruz]

This should just be (another) Morrowind thread. Way more interesting game to talk about. That first dwemer ruin you visit, the one guarded by Snowy Grandad, beats anything ES has had since, unless you count some of the Ayleid ruins with Oscuro's overhaul mod. And it's the first damn major dungeon crawl in the game.

Well, content is often frontloaded.

But then suddenly Urshilaku Astral Burial.

Or Hilbongard's Forge.

Or that tomb with ship.

Should make it clear I meant that it hasn't been beaten in the following games. There are more impressive locations in MW itself. There's a temple in the sky ffs. And kids wondered how anyone could think Oblivion was massive decline.

And what about a pure thief character? I know stealing stuff is fun in the game, but is there any point to not making a hybrid class?

 

[DraQ]

And what about a pure thief character? I know stealing stuff is fun in the game, but is there any point to not making a hybrid class?

I don't know, stealth mechanics is pretty rudimentary in MW.

Still, it's hard to come up with a build that doesn't work in MW, so why not?

 

[Broseph]

And what about a pure thief character? I know stealing stuff is fun in the game, but is there any point to not making a hybrid class?

I don't know, stealth mechanics is pretty rudimentary in MW.

Still, it's hard to come up with a build that doesn't work in MW, so why not?

Is it possible to totally avoid combat in Morrowind?

 

[Jaesun]

Yes. Uninstall.exe mod.

 

[Andyman Messiah]

Just don't mistake this mod for Bethesda's official uninstall feature. It's broken and often leaves behind files and registry entries. The mod you need is called VS Revo Uninstaller Pro.

 

[Broseph]

 

[Xavin]

lol, Jaesun is a cool high brow bro because he enjoys Mass Effect unlike the Morrowind plebs that also enjoy 99% of the same exact games he does anyway. I love this site, btw.

At any rate, I'm a huge Morrowind fanboy, and if I recall correctly, doing the main quest "properly" requires you to only kill Dagoth Gares, the leaders of Redoran/Telvanni/Erabeninsum, the Urshilaku ancestral ghost, and of course Dagoth Ur. There are two alternate paths that allow you to bring that down to just Dagoth Ur. IMO, that's really no worse than most other storyfag WRPGs, such as Arcanum with its four mandatory fights. I'm pretty sure the faction quests, with the exception of Morag Tong for obvious reasons, have a similar ratio of non-violent quests to mandatory violence ones.

 

[Jick Magger]

I love this site, btw.

Eww, what a faggot.

 

[Xavin]

I love this site, btw.

Eww, what a faggot.

Well, I suppose that's better than "'Sup, Drog?"

 

[Sceptic]

At any rate, I'm a huge Morrowind fanboy, and if I recall correctly, doing the main quest "properly" requires you to only kill Dagoth Gares, the leaders of Redoran/Telvanni/Erabeninsum, the Urshilaku ancestral ghost, and of course Dagoth Ur.

You don't need to kill the leaders, since you can bypass the entire Nerevarine/Hortator series of quests by having high enough reputation. I don't remember if you need to kill the ghost. Dagoth Gares is definitely the first guy you NEED to kill to progress with the MQ.

There are two alternate paths that allow you to bring that down to just Dagoth Ur.

Depends. The "back door" one also requires you to kill Vivec. The "cheese the fuck out of alchemy" path is I think the only one that only requires you to kill Dagoth Ur.

Technically you're not "killing" Dagoth Ur in combat anyway though.

I'm pretty sure the faction quests, with the exception of Morag Tong for obvious reasons, have a similar ratio of non-violent quests to mandatory violence ones.

Depends on the factions. Fighters Guild have a lot of kill quests because, you know, Fighters Guild. Thieves Guild have a few towards the end, otherwise they're very much a nonviolent path (and some of the kill quests could done without the killing if you'd done other quests first). Temple IIRC had no kill quests.

 

[abnaxus]

Temple IIRC had no kill quests.

You need to kill Raxle Berne at one point.

The Imperial cult charity and ingredient gathering are wholly non-violent.

 

[DraQ]

You should be able to scrounge up necessary 50 reputation without killing anyone or anything (which unfortunately prevents doing Sleepers Awake), but it will require joining a lot of factions and doing a lot of quests, while refusing to do some (Imperial Cult, for instance allows you to plain out refuse to complete some quests and skip them, in some other cases - like Temple and MG you shpuld be able to switch to different quest giver for given faction to avoid being forced to do violent quest).

I haven't tested it, but it might be possible to pickpocket the bow off the wright (in case you'd be arguing that fighting and banishing a fucking ghost counts as killing).
In that case you'd be able to complete the MQ only killing Dagoth Gares directly and indirectly Dagoth Ur.