While I'm enjoying the game as a whole (360, as it happens), there are a handful of design choices that range from odd to quite annoying. I've not researched them, so some may have workarounds or other mitigating factors that I'm not aware of. If anyone can show me the developer's justification for the decisions or correct my misunderstandings, it would be appreciated.

First, what the hell happened to acrobatics, athletics, and agility? I understand why they would want to limit some of the ridiculous applications that past games have had (such as being able to leap to game-breaking heights), but removing these skills altogether doesn't strike me as a good solution. So far, I've not noticed any ability to level running speed or jumping skill. The mincy little jump is pretty useless so far. I'd like to be able to clear boulders, hop across water, or take to town roofs, but there's no indication that the game will allow for it. Speech-craft seems stricken as well, unless I'm missing the prompt to manipulate NPCs' dispositions.

The leveling system feels much more restrictive than it used to. I enjoy the "learn by doing" approach, but Skyrim limits itself to only that method of improvement. In Oblivion, for example, I could level the character and spend points upgrading skills that I didn't use frequently. If I found magic of little use, I could level the shit out of my stealth, bows, and blades and spend some of the earned points beefing up magic stats until they reached a point which made them useful. I don't care for magic, but the occasional spell to utterly sodomize an enemy is nice. It seems that in this entry, I'll be forced to spam said spell and grind levels.

The map is complete shit. An open-world game should never have a map buried in menus. There's no reason not to have a map button; the "wait" button should be used to go directly to a map while waiting can be accessed via menu or as a button command in the map. Does anybody use "wait" more often than they use a map? That aside, the map itself is a pain in the ass. The 3D adds nothing of value, and odd, restricted turn navigation is needless. 3D maps may work in a handful of games that take place in multi-story buildings, but a flat map is almost always better; one can see everything clearly with exact reflections of distance (as opposed to the foreshortening effect in 3D).

The favorites quick-menu is an interesting idea, but its implementation is a bit awkward. Switching from a bow to a dagger, for example, requires pulling the menu up, equipping the dagger, and then unequipping whatever spell or shield the system automatically selects for the other hand. The system would work really well if they also allowed a toggle hotkey. Left and Right on the D-pad don't seem to be doing anything, so why not let them switch between two left and right hand setups (much like the Oblivion system had with magic and weapons)? The frequent pause to dick around with the small menu break immersion. I tend to go stealth with bows, and the quick press of a button to switch tactics without interrupting the play if I'm caught would be handy.

The inventory has similar issues. There was an admirable intent to streamline the menus, but there doesn't seem to be a reason for nixing everything about the previous iteration's setup. The tiered inventory is easy to navigate, but there's a lot of unused space in those menus that could go to presenting more information, or at least a view of your character that can give a quick reminder as to what you have equipped.

I like the streamlined HUD, but I'd rather see options. Life, stamina, & mana bars are fine as they are, but it'd be nice to enable information icons, e.g., diseases. I went at least a couple of hours with a disease, and there may have been some fleeting text on the screen (such a thing would be easy to miss), but I had no significant indication until I got into a town and was described as a bit peaked. This complaint is admittedly very minor, but there are other, similar HUD/presentation issues I've noticed that affect the information given to the player. Most of them aren't a problem for me, as they relate to things with which an Oblivion player is familiar, but there are some odd choices with respect to those new to the games (such as the game's failure to let players know how to move objects and adjust camera distance).

While complaints so far have been about changes from the previous entry, there's one aspect of all the Bethesda RPGs that's always been a cyst on my ovary: Why the hell do I have to sell 5 of the same item individually? It seems that, almost without fail, I have 5 of ten different items to sell. The quantity slider should appear if you have three or more items, so selling is the most efficient. Another annoying aspect of trading is that the selection bar changes when you are down to two items, i.e., to sell both of item x, you must sell one, then move the bar back up to the other to sell it. These nuisances are small, but they add up when making several trips to sell off accumulated junk. Any game that has a looting/economy system should be designed to sell things quickly with as few commands as possible.

As I said, I quite like the game; by no means should this thread imply otherwise. There are simply some elements of the design that stick out largely because most elements are so well executed. From nit-picks (HUD options), to minor disappointments (no agility-building), to unsightly pains in the ass (shitty, inconvenient map), I'm curious as to why these things were done the way they were and interested to find out if there are solutions or negations to my qualms (perhaps easy answers I've thus-far overlooked).

I agree with you in regards to the map being 3D, it is almost useless, a flat map like in Oblivion would have been nicer, especially considering all of the treasure maps you find strewn across the world. How am I supposed to see specific roads on a 3D map that is covered in clouds/fog, and I can't even zoom very far in.

I'm loving the game, but I hate how I must dig through menus for EVERYTHING. Why not give me a basc status screen where I can see my physical condition? Why make me dig through the magic menu? That's just dumb. 

I agree with most of what you said, but since it's such a fucking awesome game, I don't mind any of that

I agree that the HUD has been minimalized a little too much. I miss having spell and status timers on screen and spells of the same school look identical on screen now, which can sometimes make identifying exactly which restoration or conjuration spell (etc) you have active. I also agree that the map is hard to use. I have a hard time identifying roads and have already blindly driven myself into a mountain or two trying to take the shortest route. I also can see the point about the quick select menu... I tended to pause in Oblivion and Fallout 3 when I wanted to use a healing item (or 10) anyway, but it's nice to have toggle hotkeys too. The PC version does have 8 hotkeys in addition to the quick menu and direct key bindings to the map, spell, skill and inventory screens, so It doesn't really affect me. Otherwise, the only thing I miss from the menus is inventory sorting and I don't miss the clunky 2 layer tabbed interface, so I think the UI is a win overall.   

I actually like all the character leveling changes. I can sympathize with the level designers about limiting everyone to the same default jump height, it seems to be one of those things they didn't always take into consideration which made exploits more likely. Oblivion lost the levitate and fly powers from Morrowind for pretty much the same reason. I've always seen Acrobatics and Athletics as trap stats anyway (since you can basically never escape from enemies once you've drawn them...) and I find that increasing your stamina lets you sprint longer, which is a reasonable replacement for Athletics. Speechcraft is still a real skill, though the speech minigames are gone (and good riddance). Instead it is primarily increased through buying and selling goods, and you will occasionally see some persuade, intimidate and bribe dialog options appear Black Isle style. This is a positive hold-over from Fallout 3 in my opinion, The persuade, bribe and haggle subsystems in Morrowind and Oblivion were all a tedious waste of time.  

I don't miss the base stats at all. I never noticed them in Oblivion except when I was leveling up, and I always took the biggest numbers or the stats that drove my primary skills. I never used any of the leveling guides, so as a consequence levels 17-25 were a nightmare for me. As with Athletics and Acrobatics, they seemed to be more of a trap for new players and an exploit path for experienced players... If you want to level up skills without using them find someone to train that skill, It's much more affordable in Skyrim than in Oblivion. I've outright purchased at least 4 levels this way so far, though I admit I may be a little under-equipped at this point :)

I feel slightly ashamed to admit that I accept any design decision because it's FUCKING SKYRIM

the only thing i agree with you on is the god awful world map.

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/

Oh wait.

Yeah the map is really cool when you first open it up, but when you actually try to use it to find a road or something its terrible.

Gotta disagree with you on the leveling system though. I think that's where the game waaaaaaay improved. I love how you start out as a blank slate and your character forms around your actions, which means you will be good at exactly how you play. I remember in oblivion, I rolled a warrior, but thought a destruction or healing spell would be useful. I didn't put character creation points in them, but I still used the skills a fair amount in the beginning, but I felt they never ever got stronger. It got to the point where I didn't even bother because healing spells barely healed anything. But in Skyrim my character is exactly what I want.

@DrPockets000 said:

I feel slightly ashamed to admit that I accept any design decision because it's FUCKING SKYRIM

Don't be ashamed! You are part of the solution to people who would rather every RPG be Morrowind and be not fun for a majority of players.

@BoG:

Some of the interface changes are good, but they weren't mutually exclusive with the former emphasis on providing as much information as possible. The over-sized model of the kettle that rotates over so much of the inventory screen could easily have been scaled down for comprehensive stats.

@ChaosDent:

I do get the point on jumping as exploitation goes, but I think that neutering the jump as they have is an over-correction. Allowing jumping increases that let one maneuver the landscape more easily without circumventing game limitations would have been a better call. I don't care for having to walk all the way around some five-foot-tall escarpment that I'd be able to get on top of anyway. I mostly want to do the same shit I already do with a bit more efficiency. I never saw it as a stat-sink insofar as I never had to spend any points on it to get the desired 8-10 foot leap. With Skyrim's gimp-jump, there may as well not be a jump button at all; the character could just mantle onto that small rock contextually. There's surely a good middle-ground.

The speech mini-game could get tedious, but I found it convenient to occasionally negotiate or bribe a vendor for price benefits if I intended to buy or sell a large quantity. As the stats go, I was quite the opposite with Oblivion. I knew that my stealth, bow, and acrobat skills would max out on their own through near-constant use, so I could spend the points to try out different play styles.

I'm sure many of these things could be solved via PC mods, but I don't generally care for PC gaming.

There's a map button on PC.

Is there not a way to remap one of your controller buttons to that?

I agree with most of what you said, but since it's such a fucking awesome game, I don't mind any of that 

Also, athletics  was a pointless skills, i mean you would always run, so what's the point in having athletics. Plus on PC you could just press q to continually run, aim your character at a wall and wait till it reaches 100. I think they should have kept acrobatics though.

@DrBendo said:

The leveling system feels much more restrictive than it used to. I enjoy the "learn by doing" approach, but Skyrim limits itself to only that method of improvement. In Oblivion, for example, I could level the character and spend points upgrading skills that I didn't use frequently. If I found magic of little use, I could level the shit out of my stealth, bows, and blades and spend some of the earned points beefing up magic stats until they reached a point which made them useful. I don't care for magic, but the occasional spell to utterly sodomize an enemy is nice. It seems that in this entry, I'll be forced to spam said spell and grind levels.

Well, first of all, you didn't spend points to upgrade skills in Oblivion - skills were only leveled by using them. You're referring to leveling up your attributes. Without getting into it too much, the whole system by which you leveled up attributes was horribly backwards and punished the player for playing their role naturally. You had to game the system in the most obtuse ways to min-max your attribute levels, and it was really a lose-lose situation because if you played naturally, you lost out on attribute levels and weren't getting the most out of each level-up (which was problematic with the enemies leveling with you), while the power leveling alternative was a constantly annoying drag in its own right.

Furthermore, leveling up your attributes, even if you power leveled and got full +5 modifiers for three attributes at every level-up, had an extremely incremental effect on your proficiencies in those attributes, and it just wasn't either very fun or very functional a system. You definitely couldn't make yourself proficient in skills you weren't using just by leveling up your attributes a bunch. For example, you could choose to never use magic while you continually leveled up willpower (magicka regen rate) and intelligence (magicka reserves), and you'd still have to grind your magic skills with low level spells in order to use spells that required higher skill levels.

All that aside, the idea in Skyrim is to enforce role-playing a little more, and this is largely accomplished through skill perks and their level requirements. You can't get most of the perks for a skill if you don't continue to level it and reach the level requirements for them, so you're encouraged to play to a specific skill set more than in Morrowind or Oblivion, which had little real character development to speak of and allowed you to pretty easily be a complete master in everything. Role-playing is as much about choosing your limitations as it is your proficiencies, and if you don't really have to choose any hard limitations, then you're not making very meaningful choices that impact and enrich your gameplay.

Skyrim enforces limitations a little better than its predecessors, and rewards building a focused skill set much more. The thing about limitations in role-playing is that they're (meant to be) there to emphasize what you can do, not what you can't. No, you can't throw some hefty fireballs around if you don't focus more on destruction, because you chose to focus on other things instead. If being able to do so is important enough that you'd spend time grinding to do it, then maybe you just need to think about how you can adjust your skill set to be able to do so naturally - if you're going stealth a lot, then why not make use of the runes for traps to build your destruction skill. If the fireballs don't seem so important, though, then try to appreciate the value in the skill set you do have and take advantage of that more, figure out how to diversify and enrich that playstyle as much as you can instead of branching out beyond the scope of your build.

After one nights play (about 8hrs) the main thing I could do with is and easy way to switch between bow, magic & dagger, dagger and shield and two handed weapon. It is a pain to have to go into the menu each time...unless I have missed something - I still haven't investigated what favourites is yet.

Mining. Yawn

@DrBendo:

I like the fact that they took out Athletics, Agility and Arobics, because now I dont have to jump every where, and i can spend perks on more importent things.

Personaly i think this leveling system feels less restrictive, you can do any thing, but must practice. I realize it isnt new, but it feels new.

I agree that the map needs work. I dont mind that the map is 3d, but it could use less clouds. and a local map that you didnt need to go through 5 menus to get through.

I like the quick menu as opposed to the quick slots that were in the last game, but the left and right direction, selection should have been sets that i agree with.

This was a worry of mine when they showed off the new menu. It needs a way to sort by weight, and value.

The bottom part of the hud i have, for lack of a better word, gotten used to. Personaly I would much rather just check the menu to see if i had a desies, also people you talk to will let you know if you are not looking good.

My only complaint is that the inventory can not be sorted or broken up into categories. It would be nice, for example, to have Swords under Weapons grouped together. As it is right now, comparing items can be a pain since the inventory is listed alphabetically which means you often have to scroll past several items to compare two of the same thing (two swords, for example).

Also, the map isn't buried in menus. You can get to it in less than 2 seconds.