User blog comment:Draevan13/Why the Elder Scrolls ISN'T being dumbed down...much./@comment-208.68.193.3-20140122182227/@comment-68.103.150.203-20140207230856

Increasing the difficulty only goes so far, and magic doesn't seem capable of keeping up with melee, even with the most powerful spells. Also, the game doesn't give you proper directions to reference without markers. It was designed to be played with them.

Skyrim was made for a different type of gamer. I dont believe in some 'casual conspiracy', but I do believe game makers try to draw the largest audience, and the audience for games is much larger, and consequentially, less technically savvy on average, than 14 years ago. That means shying away from complexity in favor of accessibility. I never had a 'holy crap' Scroll of Icarian Flight moment in Skyrim. That told me worlds about the type of mechanics Morrowind was using, and I was in love. Organic, mostly open ended systems that I could do some good theorycraft on, and make truly wonderous effects. Skyrim is all gamey and confining in it's mechanics. As two dimensional in its gameplay as its story. Had they copied much of Morrowind's sytems (minus the bugs), and had Skyrims combat, the game wouldn't have sold half as well, even if fans praised it. Would have been too CRPG for the modern audience to have ever reached 20 million copies sold.