I really don't agree with this. I'll be the first to call out any plot centered on "you are the chosen one and you must save the world", such as indeed the plot in the main storyline (but hey at least it's a waaay better hook than Oblivion's sorry excuse). I've only played through two of the guild questlines so far, and neither of them had you as a chosen one, just a random contender who walks in and just happens to clearly be a good notch above everyone else from the get go, who eventually proves so badass as to rise to the top of the guild. It's not incredibly original, but it didn't struck me as clichéd either. Hell, at the end of the Thieves' Guild questline, you don't even end up as the leader of the guild.


I... I gotta say I really don't see how these two things are related, in any way that doesn't make every single design decision in games directly related. One is an arbitrary reward blatantly skewed towards one play style in a game explicitly conceived for all play styles to be more or less equal, the other is deepening the repercussions of player performance. So what play style is it you think would suffer compared to other play styles, and which should obviously have equal billing?


Ah, yep. That makes sense. I only picked one up because I really wanted to stay that way. I'm finding it pretty hard to play that way though, I'm way less awesome without all my equipment, even with the bonuses you get from shifting. I have to adopt a sort of hit-and-run tactic that sits somewhere between pleasantly challenging and a bit tedious.


That sounds rubbish. I don't remember having any real problems with a dungeon yet, I typically find it very easy to navigate and solve whatever puzzles they throw at me. I think they've been quite good at signposting the way forward in general, using differently coloured lights or those clever gusts of wind they have. In general I'm finding the dungeons so much more varied, well designed, and engaging than Oblivion's it's hard to put into words. In Oblivion it quickly came to the point where I would ignore every castle or ruin poking out of the ground with a heavy sigh: "Oh no, not another dungeon." In Skyrim I'm almost guaranteed to find something interesting when I delve underground, and that's a pretty amazing feeling in a game with so much damn content to explore


Steam says I've played for 65 hours now. I've done a little bit of the main storyline, finished two out of (I think) five guild questlines, haven't even picked sides in the war yet, and I only just got the "complete 10 sidequests" achievement. I can't believe how huge this game is.

Thieves guild: The guild is having a hard time and you afe the only one who can restore it to glory, cvosen one of sanguine or whagever the daedric god ks called
Mages guild: Chosen one of the psijic order!!!!
Dark brotherhood: Chosen one of sithis, nuff said
Main quest: Dovakhiiiiin
Smarrtphone typing r hard

Will prob make a more comprehensive post about my judgement of skyrim later today

I believe I've already said why and how it would suffer, but ok, let me explain why the situations are similar.

In skyrim, if healing is never free, then potions become a wealth-type resource. The more damage you take, the less of them you have, the less wealth you have, the less powerful you are. In deus ex, experience is a wealth type resource: the more of it you have, the more powerful you are.

This creates pressure towards playing in a fashion where you take nearly no damage, ever. This is perfectly possible in Skyrim, whether by specific tactics (sneaking, just like Deus Ex), bow and arrow and a lot of stamina, or simply doing a lot of easy quests, because hooo boy there's a lot of them. I also explained why fixing any of those things introduces an even bigger problem.

Consider diablo 2. If you advance too fast through the acts, healing potions become more of a necessity, and you essentially end up breaking your character untill you backtrack to lower-risk areas where they're less of a burden. Players who feel they're being punished for advancing too quick will feel pressure towards playing it safe.

Just as you felt pressure towards maximizing those experience point rewards.

If you don't allow players some equilibrium to outcomes of fights, they're going to gravitate towards the best outcome, sometimes to the detriment of their own enjoyment. Like DDL, swearing he will backpedal through the entire world if he can get free shots in on advancing enemies.

As it is, directly engaging enemies using a 2-handed melee character is just as viable as sneaking or archery, because you'll rarely have to use potions for most engagements as it is. If you made all the healing that character would need an expense? They would be much less viable. I can tell you from playing a melee character for quite a while that I had to buy potions and that they were a drain on my economy as is, but not so much that it became a problem.

Here's another point. Almost all games have some type of free healing to allow the player to recuperate. Most older shooters have healing lying around that you can't take with you. Left4dead and Max Payne have free healing in that you can only take a set amount with you, and the rest is free. The later stages of Diablo for melee characters are all about the lifesteal. Most RPG's allow you to rest anywhere.

The only genre that makes healing a consistent resource drain is survival games, or survival horror games - and Deus Ex, because that game belongs in every genre ever - and a considerable amount of those give you free healing as well (system shock 2, for instance).

And ok, maybe that's a mistake on the part of nearly everybody ever, or maybe only a few games would benefit from it and the designers of those games have made a mistake? But I don't think so. I think giving the player a set amount of freedom to handle things is absolutely essential for most games, because you just don't have that many options, and you need those that are there to be about equal. At the very least, I think I've argued why Skyrim is so different from the games that do it that the design would be a mistake.

I just found the blackreach yesterday and OMG.

That place is...it's hard to put into words just what it is. Look forward to visiting it is all I'm going to say. It's a massive completely-non-linear dungeon. There's even a little explore quest that has you pick flowers all over to get you to check it out. It's also chock full of a particular kind of riches....bring a pickaxe is all I'll say.



The most annoying dungeon I've had was a part of the 3 sons amulet quest. The boss in one of those has a level 3 push shout and a disarm shout...and he spawns 3 clones of himself that are illusions, but can also use those shouts.

When you get tossed about by the push, you go to 3rd person ragdolling, and when you get disarmed, your weapon falls from your hands to the ground and escapes your quickmenu and your hotkey. If you finally do manage to run up to one of them (they're all on individual pillars raised above ground at the end of stairs), they will dissappear and reappear at the 3 other locations where you're not. GRMTHRFCKRGRRR.

Poor lydia also lost her default npc sword and bow, so now I have to keep her armed myself, and I permanently lost a good blade in the dungeon.

I really don't like the shouting guys, especially if it means losing my Ebony sword. I haven't brought an NPC with me, because in my experience, they get in the way of me killing stuff. On the other hand, they could distract the bad guys. Unfortunately I finished my talking dog quest, he was pretty awesome (i.e. immortal) and distracted a lot of foes while I went stab-stab with my sword from behind.

Thank you for demonstrating how easy reductionism is. Here's a summary of every videogame quest ever:

1. You have to do something.
2. It's not as easy as first expected!
3. But you manage it in the end.

Damn those videogames and their formulaic narratives. Oh, except that's the structure of 95% of all narratives. Go figure

Incidentally you are misrepresenting the Thieves' Guild questline. You become the only one who can restore it to glory once you prove to be such a badass - not to mention in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time - that Kahliah makes Nocturnal choose you and that other guy as her new champions. Same goes for the Companions questline: Kodlak pegs you as a badass the first time you walk in (not a stretch to assume it's because you're the Dova-fucking-khiin), so he fast-tracks you into the circle so you can help cure his condition. Then you just take over the guild after his death because nobody else wants the gig. The Chosen One indeed...

Like I said, I haven't played the other questlines yet. Did you do the Bard's College thing? Is that a whole guild questline too? I'm about to start the Dark Brotherhood questline, once I've got a house in Solitude (not that the two are related, that's just my current short-term goal).

Okay, I see your point, but you're ignoring several dynamics that completely separate these two things in order to make your point. First of all, if you miss out on XP in Deus Ex (or Human Revolution), it's gone for good. Once you've killed an enemy, you can't go back and knock him out for more XP. Once you've used a password on a PC, you can't hack it for more XP. The exception is that you can go back and kill everyone after sneaking past them, but you don't get less XP for bypassing enemies, you don't get any at all so that's slightly different. In Skyrim, there are many ways to regain health even without health regeneration. You can rest, you can use spells (I did say I would like to get rid of the super cheap healing spells though, so I'm not sure what the alternative could be), and there are potions all over the place. If you can't find any potions, you can always buy them, and if you have no money there are plenty of ways to make more that don't involve spending more health by fighting - though I freely admit most of those are a bit grindy. I firmly believe that removing health regeneration in Skyrim would not have the long-term effects that you describe, it would exclusively be felt in the short term... which is what I want.


If I were to remove health regeneration in Skyrim, I would probably make blocking far more effective such that flawless melee play would completely prevent damage. Block perfectly, and you take no damage, so you need no healing - just like you need no healing if you sneak perfectly because you never get in fights. You might also just increase the drop rate on health potions carried by enemies - as a ranged character, arrows are a resource, especially because you can't make them yourself. Did you ever feel hindered by that? No, because every fifth enemy or so will be an archer carrying around 15 arrows, and better arrows are generously distributed throughout the world. It's not like non-regenerating health is a new and unproven design idea, it used to be the norm and it's been used great in many many RPGs structured just like Skyrim.


Yeah and I have no problem with that, my problem is how easily available that free healing is in Skyrim. Letting the player rest to regain health is great, thumbs up. But the health regeneration is swift and constant, and the healing spells even swifter and completely free of costs.


Deus Ex has medbots.


Argued? Yes. Convinced me? No

...Did you follow my discussion with Jaedar?



Then why didn't you respond to those arguments?

Look dude, I may have interpreted Theives guild poorly, but both for mages and DB they literally come out and say: You are the chosen one. In mages guild it even goes as far as to say that you are the chosen one and the only one who can prevent THE PROHPECY!
Except sometimes, it is just as easy as expected.

And no, I did not do Bard's collage. And seriously, just using the CHOSEN ONE in the main quest is a bit *sigh* and cliche. Using it twice is "ehh, seriously?" Using it three times in the same game is just baffling and shows a complete death of creativity. Did I perhaps exxagerate when I said every guild? Yeah, quite provably. Do I still have a point? I would say so, yes.

Nope.


What arguments? I responded to the arguments I found pertinent to the matter. If you made other arguments elsewhere that you think I should respond to, well... I'll just have to take your word for it I guess.


Yeah, dude, but you said it went for all the guild questlines, and it doesn't go for any of the ones I've played so far. I guess I'll get back to you once I've played the Dark Brotherhood questline, I won't be joining the mage guild or the bard's college with this character, though, so that'll have to wait. Maybe don't use the word "all" if what you mean is "some"?


Yeah but I'm talking in narrative terms, where complications tend to arise, as otherwise it's a pretty dull plot.


Sure, but would you rather have somebody else be the chosen one like in Oblivion? Hey, this guy played by Sean Bean is going to save the world, and since you were passing by, you can help him out! Yeah the whole chosen one plot is played out and they could've picked something better, but it works for me. And if you want to make your points better in the future, stop exaggerating.

The fact that you are implicitly able to become master of all the guilds while ALSO being some sort of main-quest 'saviour' (I'm guessing?) is so inherently stupid from a realism perspective that it'd be nigh-on impossible to shoehorn that in convincingly anyway.

"Once in a lifetime, a chosen one is born..."

"Once in a lifetime, a master thief arises.."

"Once in a lifetime, a born magus claims his destiny..."

"Once in a lifetime, a true warrior reveals his strength..."

.....

"And sometimes they're all the same fucking dude."

I am planning on making a Bard-Thief character for my next playthrough, now that should prove hilarious. Not that the next playthrough will be anytime soon, at the rate I'm going right now ...

Yeah, that's... yeah. I've taken it upon myself to mitigate this structural problem by only doing half the guilds with one character, and then I'll do the other half with another character. If Bethesda had had slightly larger testicles, they would've made some of the guilds mutually exclusive - the Thieves' Guild and Dark Brotherhood tend to fit well in one playthrough, and with the way the fighter's guild (ie. the Companions) is represented this time around, it doesn't grate with those either, but joining the mage's college after becoming the leader of the Thieves' Guild seems a bit weird. Maybe tying membership to skill prerequisites wouldn't be a bad idea.

But I understand that locking content isn't part of their design philosophy, and I respect that* - I'll just take matters into my own hand then. I guess it's okay to leave the player with some of the responsibility for maintaining a coherent story.

* Although there's a war going on this time where you have to choose between two factions. Not sure how many mutually exclusive quests are involved with each of those two options. Also, the Nord/Forsworn fight in The Reach seems like it might involve a faction choice, but I'm not sure yet?

Well theres the problem. I could make the pertinent arguments again, but it would be an almost exact rehash of what I went over with Jaedar...

The discussion sprang from a comment Jaedar made. We talked about potions, resting and health regeneration. I'm sorry, but if you didn't go through that, we've been talking completely past one another on several points.

For instance the issue of life regeneration is one we go over here:








I'm sorry if I come off as arrogant. Not every word I write is worth hanging on. I'm a little wasteful with my words, is what I'm saying. Just, in this case I had presumed we were on the same page with this, and I thought you were talking potion only healing versus some capped amount of free healing..free healing, which I think is all equivalent.

All free healing is essentially equivalent, because, well, take Deus Ex. The first time you're playing, if you know theres a medbot somewhere on a level, you'll gladly run all the way back to it if it saves you 2-3 medkits, maybe even less. If you make it harder to get at, you're either making the player who doesn't get it feel like he's giving something up, or you're boring the player who does get it. This is also why when Skyrim was compared with Morrowind I said the systems are the same, because players will simply rest all the time rather than throw potions and money away, effectively providing between-fights regeneration just like Skyrim. Baldurs Gate series, Planescape Torment. Icewind Dale. Fallout 2 has regen-via-resting too, though there is a (really long) timer on that so it's not completely free. Which is why I earlier asked, show me an open-world game that doesn't have free regeneration (the only example I know of is fallout 1).

So if there's any free healing at all, either the healing you can carry is really easy to come by, or the player will jump through hoops to get at it...and neither makes the ton of potions you carry around go away, but one would make all the boss fights significantly easier and really devalue the potions as a going-all-out mechanism.

Skyrim has it right, at least from a non-sneakers perspective, because you really love those potions, you're not wasting your time to get at the free healing because it simply comes to you, and you can always go into a fight head first, even a boss fight, which makes a lot of sense if you're playing as a hotheaded fighter rather than a dastardly sneak. You can also save yourself if you fuck up, since potions are combat-usable.

Maybe you shouldn't say always when you mean tend to


You're totally right about this though. Morrowind handled it quite nicely, both with the skills and the fact that guilds would occasionally have opposing goals regarding some things. some mage quests would go against Telvanni, thieves and fighters guild were opposed, and the three houses were exclusive too.

It's just a bit silly when you can become archmage, supposedly the most knowledgeable and magickaly able person in Skyrim, without knowing anything and only needing to be able to cast the starting spells in destruction.

Being the chosen one of a single faction, or no chosen one would be perfectly acceptable(although the former is pretty cliche).