I, too, greatly enjoyed Oblivion. It's not without its flaws, for sure, and the level scaling / lack of levitation&teleportation&spears is a bummer, but I spent many many hours playing it that I don't regret in the slightest. Shivering Isles, in particular, was a lot of fun. It had several important advantages over Morrowind (moving items, improved NPC AI, poison on weapons, spellcasting with shield+weapon, bigger dungeons) that help it to keep my interest. I didn't enjoy it as much as Morrowind, but I probably spent more hours playing it (though not many more).

Fallout 3, though... I couldn't really get into it. I tried to like it, I really did. But I just can't muster up any more enthusiasm for it than "meh." I had a great first playthrough, but it seems to have little replay value. I haven't tried NV personally yet, but I've watched several of my friends and it seems to improve some of the aspects, but it also seems to suffer from some of the same BlackIsle cruft that plagued Fallout 2 compared to Fallout 1.

What a coincidence. Me too! I already own NV, but I plan to buy the Ultimate just for the DLCs. And then I'm gonna get the Collector's Ed (the massively big boxed one), and finally the "DRM-free Ed" to be packaged into my Collector's Ed.

Maybe I'll try out the "send a note Bethesda's way with proof of purchase" thing and keep an eye for a response lol.

Now that was an insult.

I didn't know the answer before i asked here.

So now take that whino into your butt and shut the fuck up!

We were discussing matters by ourself in a respectable manner. You came here and made meaningless insults to us. Say something substantial or get the fuck out of here!

+1

Guys, honestly, I get people asking about Steam-exclusiveness of games all the time. There are lots of people around who don't buy dozens of games per year - some really only buy the next Civ game, or the next TES game. Games like Skyrim are exactly the products that trigger such questions, because of their vast reach.

I personally know more than a dozen people who expected Civ5 to be non-Steam if they bought it on retail. Most of them were quite disappointed when they found out that this wasn't the case. Some of them voiced their disappointment in forums. This process has repeated itself with Skyrim, and it will repeat itself for other games (with a similarly wide reach) in the future. There are still people to whom Steam-exclusiveness is a rather new concept, and these people will ask questions about it and re-live the disappointment that many others of us have already grown accustomed to. There's nothing wrong about that.

Insinuating that the thread starter was dishonest and had ulterior motives when starting the thread is, imho, not only unfair, but also quite rude. It's perfectly okay to disagree with the OP's disappointment, but there's no need for personal attacks like these.

You do know that's just your opinion, right? Because if it were some universal truth I might even care. But alas, I do not.

Since the OP knows so much about Steam and how much he hates it I think it's safe to say that he knows what Steamworks means and it also tells him so at the back of the box and a simple Google search would have been faster than starting a thread here. I don't mind that he hates Steam but atleast be honest about it.

I don't want to be rude to you but when a person says he wants to pirate a game rather than buying it (or just not playing it) then I don't give a damn if I'm rude or not to that person.
I'm pretty sure that it's universal to call a criminal for a scumbag but yes, "scumbag" is an opinion.

I consider myself very well informed when it comes to gaming and I wasn't sure that Skyrim was Steam only after asking on this form. Not every Steamworks title needs Steam (Borderlands, e.g.). So while Steamworks means in 99% of the cases that it has to use Steam it is not given. And as Psyringe made clear, it is especially unusual for a big brand name like TES to appear Steam exclusice (especially as Steamworks is mostly used on multiplayer). On top of that, up until a recent patch, Skyrim was actually quite playable without using Steam.

The only thing that was "outpointable" was the fact that he didn't post in one of the existing Skyrim threads. But it's not like we are running out of the internet...

And if he wants to pirate a game because we isn't happy with its DRM, that he has my full support (even though I like Steam). It's not like Skyrim is having a bad run when ot comes to sales.

Actually, _none_ of the people I was talking about in my previous post would have qualified for _any_ of the assumptions that you deem "safe to say". About 3/4 of them knew Steam, and knew that they wanted to avoid it. None of them knew what "Steamworks" was, the few that had heard the term assumed that it was just a synonym for Steam. None of them checked the fine print on the box because it simply didn't occur to them that a game bought at retail might _require_ Steam. None of them searched at Google about Steamworks, and even after learning about it, they of course asked me (or other people in forums) whether there really wasn't any way around that requirement. And this people is not atypical either. It might be atypical for people who have bought games on a regular basis during the past 2-3 years, but - and that was my point - not everyone does that.

Therefore, I regard your now repeated insult towards the OP as factually unfounded (as well as increasingly rude).

And do you think it's a good thing if everyone in a forum chooses his own rules of when he should allowed to be rude? What if I say "If someone baselessly accuses a follow forum member of dishonesty then I don't give a damn if I'm rude or not to that person."? Can you see how such notions lead to a spiral of flame wars, that could easily be prevented if people just chose not to be rude in the first place?

No, it's not universal. "Scumbag" is a term that roughly means a morally corrupt person. Morality is completely subjective while the laws of any given area are objective.

It's pretty much acceptable nowadays to object to certain laws and ignore them. Just think of people who have tried cannabis. By smoking pot they have broken the laws of most western countries, yet a lot people do realize that said laws are unfounded and therefore that transgression will be ignored among those people.

That you call pirates scumbags is nothing more than your opinion, and it's irrelevant what any country's laws state on the issue.

....

Anyone coming with a, I quote: either knows about games being tied to Steam (especially the big AAA titles where that has been pointed out in numerous articles) and what that means or can't claim for himself to be factual at all.
While I won't call the OP being dishonest and just wanting to start a bash-thread, I also wouldn't condemn anyone of getting that picture.

What I find really disturbing, is how said guy is being called out of being rude without ANYONE even taking offense in "whino into your butt / shut the fuck up! / get the fuck out of here!"
Objectivity surely looks different in my book.

How many of those 3/4 own / have Fallout: New Vegas for the PC?

Like it or not, but there's a reason why Bethesda put out the original Oblivion completely DRM-free (not even a disc check) but went the SecuROM way with the Oblivion GOTY version. I'll let you figure it out on your own why....

Probably none, though I don't think it matters. Even if they had it, they probably would have expected Skyrim not to be Steam-only, for a number of reasons (TES being a different franchise, previous TES games having had no such restrictions, not knowing that both games have the same publisher, assuming that Skyrim was supposed to be more accessible for customers like them, etc.). Not all reasons are valid for all of these people of course. But in general, I've found that my rarely-gaming friends and acquaintances expect a new iteration of a series to be "more of the same, but improved", they usually don't expect things to become worse and more restrictive - and even if they do, they would have looked for disimprovements in terms of gameplay, not in terms of distribution.

Oh, I did. However, since he was the one being attacked, I chose not to address it yet, hoping that he would see for himself that such a style of defense wasn't necessary. I would've called him out if he had continued in this fashion - because having been attacked obviously doesn't give someone a free pass on rudeness either -, but so far he didn't.

That I don't immediately call offensive behavior out doesn't mean I approve of it. :) I can see how this might make my statement seem less objective though, and perhaps I should have mentioned it in post #51 already. But at this time I pretty much thought I was just stating the obvious in order to close the discussion, so I kept the post brief and to the point.

fear my wrath, for my oblivion addiction, once cured, has been awakened from its long slumber. now go and suffer the consequences.

- TES being a different franchise - if you're interested in a specific francise like TES here, most gamers are also more or less following what other games that developer puts out. As much as an avid gamer of the GTA series would be at least somewhat interested in RDR or L.A. Noire, as much one interested in TES would be on F3 and F:NV.
Not to mention that we're talking about a 5 year development cycle here. But they were only following the output for the TES series and not at all interested on anything else from Bethesda? All those years?

- previous TES games having had no such restrictions - Oblivion GOTY SecuROM against Steam. 'nuff said.

- not knowing that both games have the same publisher - .... .... let's assume this is the case. Let's assume they buy games so rarely (about 1-2 per year?) that this happens. Yet those rarely-gaming friends and acquaintances have a distinct opinion of not wanting to have anything to do with Steam?

With all due respect, I find that hard to believe. Every one of those points for it's own. Even more that this is a wide spread approach for the majority.