Why with every new game in elder scroll series a lot of content is cut out?

[UIE First Citizen]

So Elder Scrolls II Daggerfall had extensive, I mean extensive, character creator options compared to the following games in the series.
Morrowind pales in comparison to Daggerfall when it comes to skills, creating unique characters, etc.
Daggerfall had one massive flaw that environments were generated as you explore them.
In Morrowind, you got this feeling of getting stronger since there was no level sync you felt stronger every time you level not weaker.
In Oblivion, they eliminated medium armor skill; not to mention the number of guilds was cut by half plus removing the requirements to advance in a specific guild.
Skyrim reintroduced level scaling to a degree but they also removed aspects like character attributes like strength, luck, etc. Not to mention permanent star signs.
With every game in ES franchise, it is harder and harder to create unique characters.
In Morrowind if i went and created a fighter-type archetype character I couldn't advance in mages guild or Televani Great House because of skills requirements. I take it back, it was possible but I would have to spend a ton of gold on learning specific skills.
In Oblivion, on the other hand, i could become the archmage of the mage guild despite not being experienced in any type of magic, which is absurd.
Why exactly with every new game set in Tamriel, the new game is stripped down compared to the previous one?

[Soldner42]

a lot of Questions that only the Devs and Designers can answer you.
That being said, the most obvious Answer one could come up with would be, Games getting more Casual.
Bethesda probably didnt expected People to have multiple Playtroughs in for example Skyrim.
So they made is Casual, so that everyone can do what they want. No matter if they suck or not. Or if it makes sense or not.

[armageddon]

You forgot a very important feature was loss of the attributes like strength, constitution, agility. Those really made your character different from other ones and also really made you feel like that character. Classes, birthsigns are also very important things while still being able to make custom classes. The warrior, thief, mage stones is their idea of birthsigns believe it or not that or placing the skills like they're birthsigns...
Let's also not forget how much armor slots were lost. Arena had like a whopping 15 slots for armor pieces.

By all this you can expect Elder Scrolls 6 to be stripped down further.

[alexander_dougherty]

Because that is what Todd does.... It's just about all Todd does, he looks at what the previous game had and asks "What can I cut?".

Hopefully someone at microsoft will force him to put stuff back in, after all microsoft love features.

[theo]

Originally posted by UIE First Citizen:

Morrowind pales in comparison to Daggerfall when it comes to skills, creating unique characters, etc.

Morrowind got rid of some features, but added many that Daggerfall didn't have.
Morrowind expanded alchemy and enchanting systems; added them as character skills, as well as armorer; added lockpicking and repair tools with varied quality; added armor skills and types, added spears, crossbows, thrown weapons and overall more weapon and armor variety; made the way weapons and armor work more complex - different attacks with indivudual damage spead, weapon reach, etc; added a ♥♥♥♥ ton of new items and item categories, added NPC disposition system and expanded dialogue system, etc, etc.
Sure when you launch Daggerfall and start a new game it meets you with a more impressive character creation screen with more options you can spend hours playing with but if you ever got past it - which many people didn't lol - you quickly discover it doesn't tell the full story. Ways you can interact with the world in Daggerfall and put all those character skills and feats to use are pretty much limited with dungeon crawling. Can't even go outside and gather herbs, have to farm alchemy ingredients from random dungeon loot.
They're just two very different games.

Originally posted by UIE First Citizen:

Daggerfall had one massive flaw that environments were generated as you explore them.

Not exactly but ok


Past Morrowind indeed everything was simplified more and more because that's what new gamer demographics wanted. Same reason most people nowadays don't want to read long texts such as this one.

[Jamie]

Because its too complicated for the average joe.

[Rez Elwin]

Todd wanted the games to become more accessible, streamlined, and mainstream. Thus we get continually watered down RPG mechanics is favor of "do whatever you want" gameplay.

[Sairek Ceareste]

As big as an ocean but deep as a puddle seems to be the trend for a lot of games now-a-days, though 2023 was thankfully a decent change from that aside from a couple game outliers.
...Like Starfield.

[OldMemes.biz]

Everyone gets this wrong about Daggerfall's dungeon generation.

No, they were not procedural the way people assume procedural.

They were randomly generated WHEN THE GAME WAS DEVELOPED. But once randomly generated, they were set. As in, every named dungeon location in Daggerfall is going to look exactly the same on a PC install in 2024 as it would have in 1994, on every single install.

[Darzai]

Bethesda is like EA now. They are not about making games anymore, but building monetization systems. So they will cut costs where they can (both content and quality).

[Freeman]

To appeal to a larger audience of people, and thus sell more copies.

[UIE First Citizen]

Originally posted by ✟The Gent✟:

Because its too complicated for the average joe.

It wasn't too complicated, for average joe in 2002, when morrowind was released. Did people become more stupid as time passes. In 2002 i was in my teenage years and i had no trouble understanding any of the mechanics, system or any stuff that morrowind introduced.

[UIE First Citizen]

Originally posted by theo:

Originally posted by UIE First Citizen:

Morrowind pales in comparison to Daggerfall when it comes to skills, creating unique characters, etc.

Morrowind got rid of some features, but added many that Daggerfall didn't have.
Morrowind expanded alchemy and enchanting systems; added them as character skills, as well as armorer; added lockpicking and repair tools with varied quality; added armor skills and types, added spears, crossbows, thrown weapons and overall more weapon and armor variety; made the way weapons and armor work more complex - different attacks with indivudual damage spead, weapon reach, etc; added a ♥♥♥♥ ton of new items and item categories, added NPC disposition system and expanded dialogue system, etc, etc.
Sure when you launch Daggerfall and start a new game it meets you with a more impressive character creation screen with more options you can spend hours playing with but if you ever got past it - which many people didn't lol - you quickly discover it doesn't tell the full story. Ways you can interact with the world in Daggerfall and put all those character skills and feats to use are pretty much limited with dungeon crawling. Can't even go outside and gather herbs, have to farm alchemy ingredients from random dungeon loot.
They're just two very different games.

Originally posted by UIE First Citizen:

Daggerfall had one massive flaw that environments were generated as you explore them.

Not exactly but ok


Past Morrowind indeed everything was simplified more and more because that's what new gamer demographics wanted. Same reason most people nowadays don't want to read long texts such as this one.

Like i said i never played daggerfall. If i got this wrong my bad.
When i saw daggerfall character creation and how many options it had, I was just stunned. Probably i would have a different opinion if I were to play Daggerfall.
Sometimes i wish internet wouldn't explode as it did. At least in the past you played the game, nowadays you just check for any problem you may have in game via google.

[Uthur]

If I remember correctly, lorewise the reason why magic is becoming simpler with each game is that magic is slowly drying up from Tamriel as the ages pass but will suddenly gush forth anew at the end of time.

That's what I remember of the lore for why magic is becoming lamer, as for the rest: every company that do major series of games usually overhaul one or more gameplay elements every iteration of a series as they try to release a game that is distinct from their previous games as some people would have no reason to buy the same game that was released previously (except in the case of sports games which follows their own set of logic). A good example is the Final Fantasy series that seems to have a different progression system with each game (like FFX with the sphere grid thing).

[UIE First Citizen]

Originally posted by Rez Elwin:

Todd wanted the games to become more accessible, streamlined, and mainstream. Thus we get continually watered down RPG mechanics is favor of "do whatever you want" gameplay.

I would argue that this makes games less accessible. If a game is streamlined it will cater to a specific audience and if you are not part of that audience the game is not for you.
Morrowind so had this do whatever you want mentality but it wasn't watered down.

[UIE First Citizen]

Originally posted by Freeman:

To appeal to a larger audience of people, and thus sell more copies.

The main reason games sell more copies nowadays is first of all marketing, secondly, gaming is now socially acceptable and it wasn't in the past. 20 years ago word gamer meant "geek, unpopular, etc". If game companies had so much money to develop a game in the past that they have now, they would be bigger, better, etc. I remember how many great companies went bankrupt because they didn't sell enough copies.