Gaming "Divines Smile On You, Friend" - The Elder Scrolls Thread

Honestly, while I totally get the other people's frustration with that, I've always found it to be interesting. It gives the game more replayability when you decide to play a game as a different class or as a class of your own creation. It gives a sense of history to your character which I've always thought was the entire point behind roleplaying games.

That's what irks me about the "blank slate" that Skyrim takes. Apparently, you're playing as someone who, up until the very moment the game starts, had been encased in formaldehyde and an absolute burden on society for decades. The person simply hasn't gained any skills or has little to no expertise in anything until you start playing the game. It really makes the first 15 levels or so a chore because everyone's going to be playing those first 10-15 levels a few different ways (warrior, mage or rogue and Akatosh help you if you choose to hybrid class early on) whereas in Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion, there were a myriad of different playstyles depending on the class (or even background, in Daggerfall's case) that I chose. I know it isn't streamlined or marketable but it's what makes RPGs so interesting.

 

Thing is I'm perfectly capable of cooking up my character's history without some fixed slate of "things what I am specialized in" replete with the requisite trap options and useless skills which always seem to infest those systems. I like flexibility.

Also it's funny you opt to complain about your character in Skyrim being "an absolute burden on society for decades" because as some inconsequential unknown prisoner who probably got arrested for stealing a rutabaga from their neighbor's farm or accidentally stumbling upon the wrong partisan conflict, you probably are. If the system modeled "mediocre farmer of no consequence" in its skill tree you'd probably start with a solid 30 ranks.

Edit: That said not every RPG needs to toss out classes, I've got no beef with them in party-based videogames where you'd probably end up clearly delineating roles of your own volition anyway. That's hardly the realm into which ES falls, however.

 

Pfff, you're just jealous of my mad farming skills, bro.

My problem is that it literally puts you into that all the time. What if someone DOESN'T want to start out as a "mediocre farmer of no consequence". There's plenty of lore-friendly histories that can be made for a character that is in the position of a prisoner.

 

True, but I think there's still a class free fix there where they just let you choose which skills get starting bonuses rather than having them bundled in your race. Basically the custom class option from Morrowind but without the burden of locking you into "preferred" skills or what have you down the road.

 

I loved scroll-duping in Oblivion to increase my stats to godlike level. Then once my appropriate magic skills reached 100, I could create an enormous fireball of destruction that could kill anything nearby. It was a lot of fun to kill dozens of people at once in the streets of Imperial City.

 

One thing that stands out in the new Syrim is how much they've gone away from a desolate hellish wilderness and opted for a more vibrant, living world sense of style.

 

Which is odd since you usually hear the devs describe Skyrim as a wilder and more violent place. You would think the game mechanics and overall atmosphere would do this more. They certainly did this well in many areas but I wish that applied more to the area of game mechanics as well.

 

Well, it's still a frozen hell Talos, just a far better looking one where you stick axes in people's heads!

 

If there's anything that I want to return to the series from Daggerfall and Morrowind, that would be the weapon and armor/clothing variety. The sheer amount of different weapon and armor types you had in Morrowind was awesome. Also, the return of robes/surcoats (that you can put over armor) and cloaks as a part of the vanilla game would be nice. It just seems odd having them not be a part of the game.

 

There must be more novels in the Elder Scrolls universe. I was reading Legend of Sigmar by Graham McNeill the other day and I always wondered whether or not Tiber Septim should get the same treatment. A novel written about the warrior who unified Tamriel, forged an empire and ascended to godhood. It's rife with potential.

 

i'm just sad that they aren't actively working on TES 6 per pete hines. they don't think the technology is there to do what they're wanting, so it might be a while. though i'm curious what technology they want to exist first.

 

Maybe they'll finally either overhaul the Gamebryo engine or use a different one entirely.

 

Not working on a new one, but they do have ideas about what they want to do. I think they might have a lot on their plate, and if so, then they should farm out some of their work to another company to work on a project or two. That would free up their work and concentrate on the issues they might be experiencing.

 

Yea there was an old Morrowind/TES thread when that game was new and that thread was all kinds of spectacular back then. Nothing can compare to Morrowind even today it was so great.

 

JEDI-SOLO Not many modern RPGs compare to either Daggerfall or Morrowind, honestly.

 

Thought I'd stimulate some conversation here:

Favourite deity/religion in the series?

I'd probably go with the Tribunal, probably the most fully fledged religion, with saints, history, holy sites, an entire infrastructure.

I also really like Hermaeus Mora, his cthullu-esque nature, his endless quest for knowledge, especially after Dragonborn.

Ps, I really hope that the datamined Vvardenfell expansion for ESO is officially announced soon. Though I do still have to complete Eastmarch, the Rift, Craglorn and all of the Daggerfall covenant before I start on the DLCs.

 

I have to agree that the Tribunal is probably the most developed as far as religions go.

Although, while we're on the subject of the role of religious factions in this game, I don't know why you can no longer become an actual member of a cult or religious faith in the Elder Scrolls series past Daggerfall and Morrowind. Not to mention the removal of things that should have been an actual part of games like Oblivion when it came to organizations like the Imperial Cult.

 

I hope these vids I've been watching are inaccurate in saying we prob won't see VI till 2021. This 6 yrs from Skyrim is already killing me enuff. 10 will be hell.

 

New Morrowind expansion for ESO announced:



Trailer's pretty cool, though as with most cinematic trailers, practically useless at showing us any of the game content. Makes me wish for an animated ES tv show though.

Also: Bears! In Morrowind! What madness is this!

Edit: The new design of Baar Dau is a bit odd. What was wrong with old meteor? I wonder what Old Vivec will be like, as it seems to be very different, like Almalexia was.

I do have a new background now though:

 

I really need to get out of Lit or 'Fic more ... I didn't even know this was here.

Enjoyed the trailer for ESO: Morrowwind, but I can't do MMORPGs. I got hooked on a MUD in college that resulted in me neglecting my studies, so heaven only knows how a MMORPG would kriff up my life.

And Oblivion - as fun as it is - is vastly more difficult (in good ways!) than Skyrim. Each has its benefits and drawbacks (custom spell-crafting in Oblivion is a welcome luxury, while Skyrim really feels like 200 years after the metaphorical apocalypse of the Oblivion Crisis - who knows how much was lost when the Arcane University and the Mages Guild was hit? ).

That said, Skyrim rocks with the full set of DLC. I've found that if you go Nord warmage, focusing on an early Restoration ramp-up, you'll likely have an easier time of taking on undead (which, tbf, is probably 50-60 percent of the enemy population in Skyrim). Nords' 50 percent cold resistance tends to balance out draugr preference for frost spells, while the ramp-up in Resto lets you tap the more potent anti-undead spells from Dawnguard earlier (Sun Fire, Vampire's Bane, and Stendarr's Aura).

I'm hopeful we'll see something about ES VI soon. One would think that the gaming companies would realize that the MMORPG market's packed at the moment, while console replayability is a positive.

 

I've no intention of playing ESO. When it was new I knew a lot of people who were just irate with it lore wise and tore it down on content. Idk anyone who still plays it. The ES show sounds like a good idea though with the tech today. They could do along the lines of what FF Kingsglaive did. I'd watch it

 

Oh - ack. Apologies. I meant Elder Scrolls 6, not some sort of Elder Scrolls virtual reality show.

 

Happy 15th anniversary of Morrowind!

 

I've found Miraak (and by extension, Hermaeus Mora) to be a far more compelling antagonist than Alduin. That probably wouldn't have been the case if they focused on fleshing him out more and increased the urgency of his presence.

 

Miraak was awesome! His design, his voice, his backstory, obscured as it was. All really interesting.

Alduin always just felt like a big bad for the sake of being bad. Which was kind of the point, seeing as how we was supposed to eat the world, but it wasn't exactly that stimulating.

I liked Harkon in Dawnguard more interesting than Alduin too, his plan to block out the sun was interesting, and I like his warped family dynamics.