[RANT] Why the hell can't we craft our own weapons and armor? (and upgrade them)

[King Robert Baratheon]

I think about this every time I play Oblivion (and sometimes even when I'm not playing Oblivion) and it bugs the hell out of me. I love creating and upgrading my own weapons in Skyrim. You come across smelters somewhat often in Oblivion so idk why we can't craft our own armor. I also think Morrowind should have let us do all of that. In Morrowind you can steal a bunch of ebony ore pretty early on from a mine (even though that means you probably will have to kill a bunch of guards) but the only way to use that ebony ore for crafting is to take it to a smith in Mournhold (the location of the Tribunal DLC). Also you can only use that ebony ore for crafting ebony armor (not ebony weapons). I could be wrong though.

I just had to vent about that because I feel like it takes a long time to do good damage with weapons in Oblivion. If we were able to upgrade them then it wouldn't feel like such a chore to kill certain enemies even when I have decent melee stats (blade or blunt skill).

[Valden21]

It's all about tech. With Oblivion, the tech wasn't advanced enough for the game to allow weapons and armor crafting without. Remember, this is a game from 2006. Skyrim did have it, because the engine the game used was more advanced, and could allow for the devs to implement that ability.

As for Morrowind, that game's from 2002. No way they're going to add crafting to it now. As a side note, it wasn't ebony ore that could be gathered for the smith in Mournhold, it was adamantite, it could only be gathered in the area underneath the city, and you were able to have him make weapons from it.

[IdealPoint]

Umm, with mods it's entirely possible to smelt ore and make weapons or armor from it in Oblivion and Morrowind. It doesn't have anything to do with tech. Scripts can very easily pull nuggets from your inventory and let you choose a piece of equipment to add. It would work just like crafting works in MMM. With a little more knowledge of setting up dynamic idles you can even make your character work at a forge and do a smelting animation.

My guess why Bethesda didn't add smithing is that in the vanilla game you get tons of crazy equipment from many generic enemies due to the way levelled lists worked. Glass, ebony, and even daedric wasn't rare at all. And it wouldn't have been very lore friendly as well. Smithing was a very specialized skill in the early elder scrolls games that wasn't common, and it's not like you are going to spend years learning the trade from a master just to make some armor for yourself.

[King Robert Baratheon]

引用自 Valden21：

It's all about tech. With Oblivion, the tech wasn't advanced enough for the game to allow weapons and armor crafting without. Remember, this is a game from 2006. Skyrim did have it, because the engine the game used was more advanced, and could allow for the devs to implement that ability.

As for Morrowind, that game's from 2002. No way they're going to add crafting to it now. As a side note, it wasn't ebony ore that could be gathered for the smith in Mournhold, it was adamantite, it could only be gathered in the area underneath the city, and you were able to have him make weapons from it.

Maybe that's true but the person above (IdealPoint) said that there are mods that allow crafting and I don't doubt it. Maybe i'll take a look at one of those one day. Also btw I was reading the morrowind uesp wiki page for raw ebony and it says "If you have the Tribunal expansion, you can use it to have Ebony Armor crafted for you by Bols Indalen at the Craftsmen's Hall in Godsreach." So I was half right. You CAN have that smith make you ebony armor from raw ebony, but not ebony weapons.

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Raw_Ebony

引用自 IdealPoint：

Umm, with mods it's entirely possible to smelt ore and make weapons or armor from it in Oblivion and Morrowind. It doesn't have anything to do with tech. Scripts can very easily pull nuggets from your inventory and let you choose a piece of equipment to add. It would work just like crafting works in MMM. With a little more knowledge of setting up dynamic idles you can even make your character work at a forge and do a smelting animation.

My guess why Bethesda didn't add smithing is that in the vanilla game you get tons of crazy equipment from many generic enemies due to the way levelled lists worked. Glass, ebony, and even daedric wasn't rare at all. And it wouldn't have been very lore friendly as well. Smithing was a very specialized skill in the early elder scrolls games that wasn't common, and it's not like you are going to spend years learning the trade from a master just to make some armor for yourself.

You do have some good points as to why they wouldn't include smithing though. In Skyrim maybe because we're dragonborn it's slightly more believable that within a short amount of time we (can) basically become a master blacksmith and know how to make ebony, daedric, and dragonbone equipment.

[gr1nie]

You should play Gothic instead. It had crafting back in 2001, as well as advanced AI for NPCs, with schedules and such.

[King Robert Baratheon]

引用自 Mitya：

You should play Gothic instead. It had crafting back in 2001, as well as advanced AI for NPCs, with schedules and such.

I've heard about that game every now and then and people seem to really like it. It's only 20 bucks on steam right now so I'll probably buy it soon. Edit: I wouldn't play Gothic instead though. It's not like i'm looking to replace Oblivion with another game.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/65540/Gothic_1/

The advanced ai has me intrigued and I already read a little bit of lore explaining what's going on in the game. I think it's pretty interesting and it gives a backstory as to how npc's and the main character gain access to ore and weapons. Also the graphics aren't bad for a game from 2001.


Edit 2: so Gothic has magic in it's universe? I know it's a fantasy game so I'm not too surprised but from the description explaining what's going on in the game plus the other screenshots I didn't really expect to see a mage in one of the promo screenshots: https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/65540/ss_e3b0df6f9377689f56391ab7748e94ab3b46648d.jpg?t=1533039524

[DrNewcenstein]

Arcania was good, too. What I liked about it over Oblivion was the seamless transition between areas; you went from outside to inside to underground without loading screens.

I only recall 4 loading screens beyond the opening: when you traveled to new lands, and somewhere near the ending.


As for crafting, it makes less sense that you can do all of that right out the gate in Skyrim, with no training. You can, for immersive purposes, go visit a smith and walk through a mini tutorial on it, but you're not required to. Same with Alchemy and Enchanting.

Oblivion's weapon and armor enhancements came in the form of being able to enchant nearly any known spell to any item, including detrimental effects on wearables and beneficial effects on weapons. Necklace of 100% Weakness to Magic and 33 pts Drain Life, Sword of Restore Health, Ring of Silence, Bow of Fortify Speed.