Hah, indeed.
It's generally how I play most games. I work on one character and make him as powerful as the game will allow (I get fed up repeating the same quests if I start multiples). I can see what you're saying, though. Skyrim isn't a game where you should just expect to be able to make the ultimate God character. The problem I have is that I was exposed to the freedoms of Morrowind first, and now I expect other games in the series to live up to its experience. Morrowind allowed me to make that character, an unstoppable warrior/assassin/battlemage who could wield anything he fancied.
I should just build a bridge and get over it, Skyrim isn't Morrowind. No matter how badly I want it to be (Dragonborn didn't help my situation, they teased me, those stinkers).
I welcome the return of the restricted perk tree in future games, but I agree that it needs a reshuffle.
Let me ask you a related question, since you have Morrowind experience. I started playing TES with Oblivion. And among the (many) criticisms of Oblivion was that the quest lines no longer conflicted, as I heard they did in Morrowind. You could complete every quest line with a single character, and as you said make them powerful in every way the game allows. As I understand it, in Morrowind the Great Houses were in conflict with one another, and each was essentially a faction. But once you joined one you couldn't join another - they were diametrically opposed. So you could not join every faction with one character; if you wanted to do them all, you had to reroll a character. Is that about right?
Skyrim took a baby step in the direction of unique factions, in the Civil War quest line. But the impacts are largely cosmetic; the actual quests are identical between the sides and there's no real gameplay impact after. Just stuff like different Jarls in place, or changes in the town guard. Maybe some rubble in different towns.
Dawnguard is a bit more consequential, even if the main quest follows the same arc and events. There's unique stuff on each side. So one player can't do everything - you have to reroll. I see Dawnguard's structure as being a partial response to that critique of Skyrim and Oblivion.
You want the ability to make a character who can max out every skill, as in Morrowind. How did you feel about having content - quests - you were locked out of, and had to reroll to experience? (This is predicated on my understanding of Morrowind being correct; if it's not then it's a more abstract question.)
I kind of see Skyrim's leveling/perk system as being akin to locking players out of quests because of decisions they make. With factions/quests, you are locked out of
content because you decided to join one side of a conflict, and thus can't do the other; that's the Morrowind/Dawnguard model. With Skyrim's leveling/perk system, by making a choice to focus on some skills, it means you can't experience others at full power. So you don't lose content (well, you do in the case of the master magic quests), but you lose abilities, which impact gameplay. In either case, you have to roll multiple characters to experience everything.
Given the issue of the leveling perk system restricting your ability to craft a character you want, I was wondering what your thoughts were on that question.
I see the two areas being related. I've been wanting to see more unique content made available based on the decisions we make. But that is in some ways more restrictive to what players can experience. That tension between consequences and freedom is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. I come down on the side of wanting more consequences/unique content based on my decisions. But then, that's almost entirely because I like to reroll characters. For people who do not, it's just a restriction on the content they get to experience.
Edit: I really didn't mean for that to get so long. :lol
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