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There's plenty of aspects of The Elder Scrolls series that is oft criticized and rightly so. For a series that is constantly biting off more than it can chew and seemingly never bothering with the chewing part (in this analogy 'chewing' equates to game testing/QA), it's certainly not above being called out for falling into the obvious pitfalls it seems so willing to lung itself into seemingly propelled entirely on hubris (in this analogy, 'pitfalls' are the various bugs/underwhelming mechanics). Still there's something to be said for that hubris isn't there? And so despite itself, the series is venerated I suspect largely because of it. But I think this obvious narrative the critics of the games have created overshadows a greater underlying issue that plagues the series and by proxy, all the Bethesda games on which this template is based and that is a lack of cohesive design.

I've only ever seen one review of the game that discusses the issue, pointing out the undercooked nature of the underlying mechanics of the game's combat and social interaction. Fighting doesn't amount to much beyond clicking the enemy until they die, and them doing the same for you. There's no AI to speak of beyond the occasional 'yield' from humanoids that you can't actually accept said yield from, leaving said enemy to regenerate enough health to go at you again ad infinitum, until you kill them as they lie their on their knees begging for mercy. The critique exposes the fact that even if the game hadn't been technically unpolished, it still would have problems from the standpoint of basic game design and having played the game, I heartily agree.

There appears to be this tug-of-war in how The Elder Scrolls are still tethered to the out-dated concepts of the D&D number-crunching tabletop games that informed their inception and the real-time simulated 3d world the games now take place in, leading to this Frankenstein's mess that is franchise's mechanics. Let me give you an example:

In Skyrim (as it appears to be the case for every ES game) your real-time actions stats are split into three basic bars: magic/health/stamina. The magic bar depletes as you perform magic, the health bar depletes as you get damaged and the stamina depletes are you perform certain physical actions (sprinting/jumping/attacking/etc). In Skyrim, there are various potions that can effect these bars in various ways, but the game also includes food that you can ingest that does the exact same thing...only less so. Food only restores health, however it doesn't restore as much as potions. Prepared food (cooked/stews/etc.) can restore and even regenerate both health and stamina at the same time, but since the game pauses when you do eat food/drink potions, this benefit is rendered completely superfluous. Food is cheaper, but it often weighs more because you have to carry more to equal the healing power of one potion and potions are so plentiful out in the world/dungeons anyway, there's no reason to ever buy either in the first place. In Skyrim, there's no reason to eat food...ever.

I think that can be fixed.

Stay tuned for Part Two: Armchair Game Design!

This post has been edited by Narratorway on 7th February 2013 06:14

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Well... change sure is coming, what with The Elder Scrolls Online 'n' all,
is that what you're after..?

This post has been edited by Blinge Odonata on 7th February 2013 10:28

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Well, I would say that, for most other games, some of those "undercooked" elements would not be tolerated. But in Elder Scrolls' defense, most games don't have such an expansive universe created for each game. So I think that people look over those problems to view the general picture as a great thing.

Now, personally I'd like to see them maybe even scale back the size of the world a bit and spend more of their energy diversifying it and making the stories more immersive.

As for the gameplay mechanics, I'm all for some changes. Perhaps instead of making so much food, to use your example, they could let you find full meals that could recover health or energy. Actually, with adding regenerating health, they could probably scale back or even eliminate potions, or maybe the potions could do something different. The gameplay though is something I don't feel qualified to criticize, because I think there are always things they could tweak in that department.

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Praise Be To Helix!

Actually, making naturally-regenerating HP and combining that with food preserving natural regeneration (or even speeding it) and potions giving much higher healing density but temporarily slowing or stopping regeneration would be a nice idea.

Note I haven't played any ES games. But I just think that this would be a nice way to differentiate magical and natural healing in RPGs.

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 9th February 2013 03:10

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current games (2024-02-19):
Fairy Fencer F ADF
Pokémon Perfect Crystal
Dex
Townscaper

finished so far this year:
Giral
Aggelos
Gato Roboto
drowning, drowning
New Super Mario Bros.
TMNT 3: Radical Rescue

tabled: Lost Ruins, Dark Devotion

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 8th February 2013 23:01)

Actually, making naturally-regenerating HP and combining that with food preserving natural regeneration (or even speeding it) and potions giving much higher healing density but temporarily slowing or stopping regeneration would be a nice idea.

Note I haven't played any ES games. But I just think that this would be a nice way to differentiate magical and natural healing in RPGs.

Yeah, I was thinking of something like that. That's a good idea. Like food increases metabolism or something.

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Praise Be To Helix!

DAMMIT GLEN! Whatever, I'm still posting it!

Ahem: Part Dos.

Remember when I talked about how The Elder Scroll series was being tied down by D'nD number-crunching? The fact that it has food in the games as a health restoration mechanic is a good example of this. In real life, food does not work that way. Now, the obvious retort is that 'it's a videogame...dude', but it doesn't really hold up in light of the fidelity of the game's world, the freedom of expression it allows and most importantly, the mechanics it establishes. What I'm trying to say is, the purpose of food in real life - to restore energy - has a mechanic analog already established in the game: the stamina bar. When I realized this, I started thinking about how the mechanics could be rearranged in the entire series and yet still remain true to the immersive experience the games strive for. I shall es'plain:

I would restructure the functions of these three bars. I would have the stamina bar not only represent extreme physical exertion, but all of it. In other words, any action would cost stamina...even standing still doing nuthin! As such the stamina bar would slowly deplete over time, just as our energy does in real life. As in real life, the level of exertion would determine the rate of depletion. Walking would increase the rate of depletion over standing, running would increase the depletion over walking, sprinting would increase over running, etc. etc. Once the stamina bar was completely drained, the character would pass out from exhaustion. In game, this would be like a forced sleep and he'd ragdoll where s/he stood. When s/he'd awoke, s/he'd have a small amount of stamina restored and their health would be depleted a certain amount. This could also be restructured so that completely depleted stamina would begin to deplete your health until you died, as it is in Minecraft, but I'd personally go for the first option.

Stamina however would have a much closer relationship with the health bar. Stamina would determine every aspect of health adjustments. The rate of health regeneration and damage received would be directly tied to the amount of stamina and conversely the damage you receive and how much health you have can increase the rate of stamina loss.

Eating food would no longer be a redundant mechanic, but the only way to reduce the rate of this stamina loss. Sleeping would no longer be simply a method of fast-traveling through time, but the only way to actually restore amounts stamina. There would now be an incentive to utilizing these mechanics for their intended purpose.

Now that covers the physical, but I also realized that even though I never really dabbled into the magical side of the game, it could also benefit from this kind of alteration:

In The Elder Scrolls games, it's pretty clear that magic is treated as a mental activity rather than an explicitly 'spiritual' one. Mages are the geeks of the Elder Scrolls world. The mages guild in Skyrim is called the College of Winterhold afterall. Point being is that while health and stamina cover the physical aspects of your character, it should stand to reason there should be similar structure set up for magic.

In this way, I'd add a 'mental stamina' bar. This would visually restructure the entire setup of the three bars so that health and stamina would be bound together as the physical aspect of your character and magic and mental stamina would be bound as the intellect. Magic and mental stamina would have a similar relationship with health/stamina. Mental stamina would not only control how powerful your spells were or how fast mana regenerated, it'd be a determining factor with the success of any intellectual activity in the game, such as speech, alchemy, enchanting, smithing, pickpocketing, etc. Sleep would restore mental stamina just like physical stamina and the reading of books that reduced the rate of loss. Food for the brain and all that.

Never let it be said I'm an optimist, so next chapter, I'll point out how this can all go terribly, horribly wrong.

This post has been edited by Narratorway on 9th February 2013 21:52

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So, I went ahead and read that review of Skyrim the guy made, and I have some things to say about it, as well as the original poster, but I'd like to point out the direction I'm gonna take here, which is, if you've ever read my ES posts in other topics, the same direction I always take:


Once again, I feel obligated to enforce my opinion of Morrowind as the pinnacle of the series thus far.

Quote (Narratorway)

There appears to be this tug-of-war in how The Elder Scrolls are still tethered to the out-dated concepts of the D&D number-crunching tabletop games that informed their inception and the real-time simulated 3d world the games now take place in...

This was interesting to me, because I feel that there is a tug-of-war, between the D&D number crunching, and some other element, but I think the term "real-time simulated 3D world" could be defined more clearly, and specifically, as MMORPG's. I think MMORGP's and the fans of said games being the loudest and most numerous demographic of Elder Scrolls fans has a lot to do with the decline of the series.

I think it's important to mention that Morrowind was released in 2002, whereas World of Warcraft was released in 2004, which made it the only one of the "popular" ES games to be free of it's influence.

Quote (calitreview)

Acquiescing to fan demands in this manner proves that, at least, Bethesda does listen to its community, and they’re definitely learning from their previous works.

I think it needs to be said in passing that the reviewer mentions this "giving in" because he mistook the continuing open-endedness of the post main quest world, with pressure from fans because of their dissatisfaction with the way in which Fallout 3 ended with the main story. This forces me to call a bit of his credibility as an Elder Scrolls player into question, since every game in the series has done this. I'd go so far as to say the reason the Fallout 3 players were pissed is they had come to expect continuing open-endedness in a story after the main quest when dealing with Bethesda.

That aside, I think the fact that they do, in fact, listen to their fans is important to note. I know the reviewer cited bad example, but the statement itself is true by virtue of other examples. I also think it's important to note that there isn't room for everything, and like OP said, they're in a tug-of-war, precisely, I feel, because of this fan-service.

The review mentions that the game has a lot of stuff to do, but that the mechanics were "half-baked", which, yes, I agree with, but have little to do with why I enjoy the Elder Scrolls series. This brings me back to Morrowind, of course, which I'd like to outline a few things about here for clarity purposes:

In Morrowind the world was a completely solid, invariable mass from beginning to end. Besides guards, every single NPC in the game not only had a name, but besides that, could be killed and stay dead permanently. There were almost no random elements to that game, and yet I find that I clocked far more hours in it than any other ES game or Fallout. This, I think, can be explained by the fact that without the random element, the scarcity of great items went up exponentially. Anybody who's played Morrowind could tell you how ridiculously hard it is to get a fullset of Daedric equipment without shattering a prophecy and dooming the world to certain destruction, and getting stuck with a horrible zombie disease at the same time. Lookit him, lording his plot importance over you; practically daring you to kill him and destroy the world.

It also didn't help that an armor set used to be much more involved than it became in subsequent ES games, with a full set of armor containing 9 pieces of gear, plus rings, an amulet, and any clothing underneath. What I'm going for is, this page here, you will notice that the trend, despite the later games seeming to be bigger, is actually towards the direction of simplification.

How can this be? One might ask. Well, the reasoning is pretty simple, actually. By filing down the mechanics, while at the same time trying to expand the content of the world, they've actually given the player less to do, while at the same time creating a good deal of unnecessary waste.

For example, Skyrim. Huge game. Ridiculous amount of things to explore. Respawning dungeons mean you can go back to the same place twice and get your combat and looting jollies in. This would seem good, right? Well, it isn't. For one, the best items in the game are the one's you make, so already there's one less reason to check any random dungeon. In Morrowind, where there were probably less places to go, there was also a better chance of finding something better in any random cave. Furthermore, that something you found might actually be something useful that you can actually conceive of using. Secondly, with only FIVE pieces of armor to worry about (not counting the fact that you can't wear clothes underneath), that's four less things you need to be worried about finding, and therefore, four less things you would hope to come across a better version of in any given dungeon. While four might not seem like a lot, if you think about the amount of times you upgrade your armor at any given point in an ES game, even when there's only five slots, you'll see how much you're missing there. I can see why they got rid of this mechanic in Skyrim, since it would just make smithing a pain in the ass, but, again, smithing/enchanting is doubly bad in general, given it already trumps every piece of unique gear you find.

What I’m driving at, essentially, is that the ES games were conceived of as these D&D number crunching games. With the insane amount of spells that used to be present (perhaps some of you may recall Alteration not only being useful, but the best school of magic in the game), the larger amount of EQ options (from pieces of armor to larger varieties of weapons), the lack of fast travel making it necessary to walk places, the fact that walking places could have you stumble upon the most amazing items of the game, the way the world used to be intermeshed to the point where it was impossible to complete every single faction, essentially what all this adds up to is a game where collecting stuff and doing things is no longer about mechanics. It was the classic idea of exploration for the sake of gaining items and abilities that would actually make you a more powerful character, rather than just a sense that you had completed something.
The refocus of the ES series into things like combat mechanics, and things like useless food all strike me as WoW elements. Rather than make a bunch of half-assed mechanics the focus of the game, the half-assed mechanics used to be the means to the game, and not the end.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is the ES creators need to re-focus priorities and stop trying to please all the people all the time, because it just doesn’t work, and ends up pissing off everyone. The MMO fans are mad because the MMO mechanics put into the game are broken (for example, the food, which I’m told actually has a use in WoW), and the D&D numbers crunchers are pissed because their world exploration has been ruined by the fact that it’s become exploration for explorations sake, and item collecting has become collecting for collections sake, rather than for the purpose of finding things that increase your powers, since you never need to dive a single dungeon in Skyrim to have the best equipment in the game.


This is a lot of the reason why I both dread ES online, but also feel like it brings some degree of hope to the series. While I probably won’t play ESO, it is my hope that by actually making an MMO, they can focus on pleasing the MMO fans, and for ESVI, they can refocus on what the series used to be about.

This post has been edited by MogMaster on 10th February 2013 01:02

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If you've been mod-o-fied,
It's an illusion, and you're in-between.
Don't you be tarot-fied,
It's just alot of nothing, so what can it mean?
~Frank Zappa

Sins exist only for people who are on the Way or approaching the Way

But you could steal all Divayth Fyr's stuff, and a bunch of other very high tier armour and weapons, without dungeon crawling either. Enchantment isn't half as overpowered in Skyrim or Oblivion as it is in Morrowind, where you can use enchantments to become completely invisible, or do anything you want to any character in the game without killing them or even upsetting the guards. I'm sure chat is quite bored by now of hearing how I always leave Divayth standing around in his underpants while I stroll around in his gear, all while he's perfectly fine with this.

I do broadly agree that in a lot of ways, Morrowind was the high point of the series, but Skyrim barely falls short - and if you think it's because the game mechanics were broken, it's just because you didn't choose to break them in Morrowind. The game which restricts you most from abusing it is Oblivion, and it's that restriction that caused most of the fun to evaporate. The rest of the fun wandered off because of how bland the world, dungeons and plains felt, which is vastly improved in Skyrim, although like you I liked the static loot system of Morrowind - but doesn't that just encourage you to game the system by prioritising the dungeons you visit? Again, it depends how much you choose to take that path.

The whole concept of Daedric smithing is total heresy though, for sure. They should've made Daedric the strongest and only unsmithable tier and made drops super-rare or tied to particular quests for Daedric lords.

On NP's suggestions, I'll say what I said in chat: they're interesting ideas and I'd like to see what could be done with them, although at the same time, I am not massively dissatisfied by how things work now. There used to be such a thing as non-numbered TES spinoffs (in the form of proper games, rather than weird portable stuff) and that would seem like a sound venue to test some of these things out, if not in the MMO itself.

On the subject of the MMO, though, do understand that this is not being developed by the people who brought you the rest of TES and Fallout 3, but by a completely different studio. If it's a raging success, I'm sure some ideas will filter through to the series proper, but otherwise I doubt it will in any way change the direction of the successful existing series. Calling for a return to Morrowind beyond what already happened in Skyrim (to very good effect) is likely to fall on deaf ears: it may not please every Morrowind alumnus, but Skyrim is probably pitched about right for a modern audience. And please, let's not get too upset about some bugs and glitches here and there: Bethesda kept the patches flowing pretty readily to make up for it, and I'd much rather have something of the grand scope of Skyrim than some pint-sized but thoroughly QA'd dullfest. I'm all in favour of putting some more depth into the main quest, but to focus on it at the expense of any other element would be to take the TES out of TES.

Quote (MogMaster @ 9th February 2013 17:49)

This was interesting to me, because I feel that there is a tug-of-war, between the D&D number crunching, and some other element, but I think the term "real-time simulated 3D world" could be defined more clearly, and specifically, as MMORPG's.

Actually I've never played an MMO and I certainly wasn't referring to their game mechanics when I said 'real-time'. If anything, the number-crunching is even more pervasive in that genre than TES ever was.

To clarify, 'real time' refers to how closely the actions on screen match the actions the player took to create them as well as how closely the actions the game takes in responding to the player. Think the difference between FFVI's combat mechanics and Secret of Mana's. TES presents worlds that are dynamic, interactive and responsive in an immediate manner. I'm just saying its mechanics should reflect that.

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So let's talk about how all this can blow up in my face.

For one, it would alter a fundamental aspect of the games' resource management mechanics. Up to this point, restorative elements in Skyrim - potions and food - were an issue of simple math. You have 100pts of health, received 50pts of damage, took a potion that healed 25pts. You now have 75pts of health. Easy. But now the system is an issue of rates and percentages. You had 100pts of health, but the battle decreased your health by 25pt and increased your rate of stamina drain by 50%, which reduced your health regeneration by 10%. Now you have food that will reduce your rate of stamina drain by 25%. That's a much harder math problem to figure out. You no longer will be able to determine by a quick glance just how much the item you carry will aid you now. Yes, it's more in line with how the real world functions, but are people willing to give up on the easier number crunching...especially if it becomes a backdoor mechanic? There's also the issue of books, which in-game are a fun distraction, but not required in any mechanical way except to increase certain skills and even then, you have just have to open the book and can then drop it before turning one page and while reading the books in Skyrim are a fun distraction if you're into the lore, making them a requirement without allowing the option for a short-hand "I read this book" click of the button would...well, let's just say I think it'd be poorly received. Rightfully so.

Another issue is the problem of item management. Skyrim already has a simple binary mechanic where if all the items you're carrying reach a certain threshold, you instantly become over-burdened and are unable to move but very slowly until you relieve yourself enough to reach back below said threshold. It's very perfunctory and allows for abuse so blatant, it's not really considered abuse. Integrating item weight into these stamina management mechanics would severely reduce the total weight from items your character can tolerate carrying and therefore significantly reduces the ability to carry all the valuable treasure waiting to be looted in them thar dungeons and while I personally wouldn't mind this sensible restriction in the name of a more immersive play experience, I can certainly see jimmies being rustled if people can no longer run around with twenty some-odd greatswords in their backpacks should they choose.

But the biggest hurdle is the fundamental alteration of level design. Skyrim - the actual land itself - functions in many respects like a massive hub world for the dungeons/caves/etc that inhabit it. The nature of it means the difficulty has to remain pretty evenly spaced throughout the world, but for those aforementioned dungeons and caves - especially the more intricate ones - there's an innate escalation that occurs the further you delve into these places that is controlled by the developers through the level design and enemy placement. When combined with the system described above, there's going to be this inevitable feeling of resentment towards the game as you begin a dungeon at your strongest, and the dungeon is 'weakest' - thus wasting your strength - and then end it when you've used up your strength and the dungeon's just hit it's boss-battle stride. This is compounded if you don't actually know the length of the dungeon and how much time you'll be investing and therefore how weak you'll be at the end of it. Increasing difficulty over time is a fundamental aspect of game design and this system compounds that concept to a level that's unfair to the player.

This can be mitigated by allowing 'save points' in the game. Needless to say the entire system would require the ability to set up a camp or at the very least a sleeping bag, and having sections of a dungeon or cave be 'cleared' of enemies to allow the ability to set up camp for resting and such would go a long way towards mitigating the issues I mentioned. Skyrim's dungeons (and caves especially) also incorporate certain aspects of this concept already in their level design and layout, such as large areas divided by tight corridors and occasional situations where beds from bandits/previous explorers are already available. The problem is it would still halt the flow of play, requiring a pace-breaking sleep session in between chamber battles instead of a smooth journey from point A to boss B. The truth is, this is a wide reaching alteration that would require a lot of work to finesse for every dungeon and crawlspace the games have to offer and in this particular area, it's a lot of work to get around, with no guarantee of success.

Yet despite all that, I still think it's worth exploring just for the immersive possibilities and the incorporation of mechanics that - currently - don't serve much of a purpose.

This post has been edited by Narratorway on 12th February 2013 17:38

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