TES V: Skyrim

[backfire]

Okay so I now have this. My only question so far is... Why do they even bother letting you chose a hair style if every hat or helmet makes you bald?

[Luinbariel]

Okay so I now have this. My only question so far is... Why do they even bother letting you chose a hair style if every hat or helmet makes you bald?

And why does every male voice actor sound the same?

[Sogo]

I'm almost at the Hundred Hour Mark.

By the Nine.

[Dr. Zaius]

I sometimes run fraps while I play. I know I'll likely never watch the recorded video since it would take so long and there's usually always crazy shit happening in the game.

Catch some pretty cool and sometimes retarded shit, though. Cinematic kills, particularly beheadings and assassinations.

I also ran into the first dragon that's been legitimately bugged tonight.

[matter11]

tons of gold and hudreds of iron daggers later- dragon armor achieved. Also Luin, Idk what part of canada you're in or where it happens but do you  ever get to see real auroras?

also

Cinematic kills

got my first dragon cinematic melee kill today  8)

[Dr. Zaius]

[quote author=Dr. Zaius link=topic=5477.msg231902#msg231902 date=1322723669]
Cinematic kills

got my first dragon cinematic melee kill today  8)
[/quote]

I need to make a character that specializes two-handed weapons to check out those cinematic kills.

Also, I go to Aurora on occasion.

[backfire]

Alright lets go kill us some Skyrim Nexus. Steam Workshop's comin to Skyrim.

[Sogo]

Alright lets go kill us some Skyrim Nexus. Steam Workshop's comin to Skyrim.

That'd be cool and all, but the nexus has a dedicated mod manager/launcher for all your Bethesda games.

[Dr. Zaius]

[quote author=backfire link=topic=5477.msg231969#msg231969 date=1322795112]
Alright lets go kill us some Skyrim Nexus. Steam Workshop's comin to Skyrim.

That'd be cool and all, but the nexus has a dedicated mod manager/launcher for all your Bethesda games.
[/quote]

>same thing coming to steam
>implying it'll be unpopular
>foolishly proclaims himself a god

[Sogo]

[quote author=Sogo Payne link=topic=5477.msg231975#msg231975 date=1322797131]
[quote author=backfire link=topic=5477.msg231969#msg231969 date=1322795112]
Alright lets go kill us some Skyrim Nexus. Steam Workshop's comin to Skyrim.

That'd be cool and all, but the nexus has a dedicated mod manager/launcher for all your Bethesda games.
[/quote]

>same thing coming to steam
>implying it'll be unpopular
>foolishly proclaims himself a god
[/quote]

Main point being, I forsee most people sticking with the Nexus.

And when someone asks if you're a god, you say yes.

(Edit) after more careful reading, this seems like it'll be useful for people like in the below picture, but I'll stick with the Nexus, I prefer manual installs and Timeslip's managers.

[Dr. Zaius]

[quote author=Dr. Zaius link=topic=5477.msg231986#msg231986 date=1322801077]
[quote author=Sogo Payne link=topic=5477.msg231975#msg231975 date=1322797131]
[quote author=backfire link=topic=5477.msg231969#msg231969 date=1322795112]
Alright lets go kill us some Skyrim Nexus. Steam Workshop's comin to Skyrim.

That'd be cool and all, but the nexus has a dedicated mod manager/launcher for all your Bethesda games.
[/quote]

>same thing coming to steam
>implying it'll be unpopular
>foolishly proclaims himself a god
[/quote]

Main point being, I forsee most people sticking with the Nexus.

And when someone asks if you're a god, you say yes.

(Edit) after more careful reading, this seems like it'll be useful for people like in the below picture, but I'll stick with the Nexus, I prefer manual installs and Timeslip's managers.


[/quote]

Yeah I suppose. I'm lazy so if I use it it'll be through steam.

EDIT: this is a game changer

[Trace]

I'll just leave this here
The Elder Scrolls Adventures with the Dovahkids

[Dr. Zaius]

I'll just leave this here
The Elder Scrolls Adventures with the Dovahkids

Wh



What




Is this actually going to exist?


I just discovered an emptiness in my soul that only this can fill.

[backfire]

[quote author=Trace link=topic=5477.msg232168#msg232168 date=1323031300]
I'll just leave this here
The Elder Scrolls Adventures with the Dovahkids

Wh



What




Is this actually going to exist?


I just discovered an emptiness in my soul that only this can fill.
[/quote]

Same guy who made this.

Saturday Morning Watchmen

[Bonesinger]

Main point being, I forsee most people sticking with the Nexus.

Yeah, for all the creepy as fuck loli rape/sex, child murder, and generally awful mods. I'll take steam workshop over nexus any day.

[Versus]

[quote author=Sogo Payne link=topic=5477.msg231994#msg231994 date=1322802543]
Main point being, I forsee most people sticking with the Nexus.

Yeah, for all the creepy as fuck loli rape/sex, child murder, and generally awful mods. I'll take nexus over steam workshop any day.
[/quote]

[Gasman]

FUS RO DAH!!!

[KorJax]

EDIT: Warning, I accidnelty lost track of time and made a huge post... TL;DR: 4 things skyrim flopped on IMO



So I've been thinking about some of the worst points of Skyrim and how they rank up with the worst of the older TES games to conclude that Skyrim is probably not any better than the older ones with the sum of its parts (or just slightly), but will easily be the best with mods.

Heres the big issues that make Skyrim a big flop for me from a game design perspective:

1. Questlines for factions. Terrible, and structured like a mini-COD style experience. First of all I wish they'd get rid of this whole "faction questline" thing, because nto only is it a shit tonne of work to do right, it means the further you try and push that mantra, the farther it gets to being a faction. Morrowind did it best, if abit slowpaced and badly explained and explored. You felt like you were in a faction in MOrrowind. IN Oblivion, it wasn't as good faction wise but at least each questline had some level of meat to it that made it feel deserved to get to the top. And each faction still had some level of perks to being apart of it, not mention their own guildhall in each city that served as a home away from home if you will.

Skryim takes the same inferior faction formula as Oblivion, and instead of refining it and making it better, it severly cuts it down. Faction questlines can be totally beaten in hours, which makes you feel like you didn't deserve to be head of faction, you can still be a master of all factions, even if you have ZERO skill in what the faction is catered to (i.e. I can be arch mage of the college without using magic hardly at all), etc.

Granted the questlines have arguably much more interesting stories and premises than what Oblivion offered. However from a pacing and gameplay standpoint, they are the worst in the series by far. Especially since there is only one "guildhall" in the entire province for each faction. They don't feel like factions in other words, and feel like slightly enlongated side quests. Not to mention you have zero perks for being apart of a faction compaired to not being apart of one, sans one or two here and there. If you were in the mages guild in Morrowind you had easy access to their teleportation between towns, you could take advantage of discounts in enchanting (since most good enchanters were apart of the guild this was great), a lot of top teir spells were only avalable from members of mages guild, and they only would let you use their services if you too were in the guild and of-rank, etc.

Here, there aren't really ranks at all and theres no structure, and you don't need to use the skills the faction is designed around to succeed in it. It's total unfulfilling rubbish, and doubly so when you find out your the harbinger of the fighter guild within hours of joining.

2. Radient Story Quests are way too unorganized and overboard. In other words, Bethesda thought it would be a good idea to give you every quest under the sun as often as possible and as soon as possible. I literally avoid entering settlements and towns I've not been to yet because of the fact that I know I'll be bombarded by quests as soon as I enter.

They really should have let players end quests from their journal if they never wanted to use them (i.e. why do I have a quest to join theives guild if I do NOT want to be a theif, that I can't get rid of simply by entering the town of Riften?).

And it kind of makes the world feel less belivable knowing that each area of each space will have some kind of major problem that involves you, as soon as you discover it. I don't have a problem with cool "scripted" events happening to new and cool places. But for the love of god, if I get drunk and find myself in a shrine to a town I've never been in before, don't script a busy market-scene murder quest to (unrealistically) happen in the middle of the night right as soon as I leave said shrine when I alreayd have 20 quests and am just looking to get out of the city.

And what gets me? Half of the NPC in the world that aren't tied to legitmate quests all have a little task you can choose to do, as if Bethesda was afraid of players running out of things to do. Nevermind my plate already being full.

The solution to this is simple. Just like how you pace and balance the flow of an actually written story to be interesting over time, they really needed to pace and balance the flow of quests from their fancy new "Radient Story" quests, and make the rewards something that won't just make me go "Really? I travel 400 miles to kill some beast for 100 gold when I am in full daedric?"

I.E. Don't make it so the game decides to pile on more quests when I alreayd have 3-5 going on. Don't pile my misc. to-do list with MORE shit to do when I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do with what I already have. Don't have every sinlge location you can visit on the map have stuff happen as soon as I get there that forces ANOTHER quest on me. Instead, make it so such "special" events are semi-random occurances that only happen if you are a certain level, have gotten to a certain point in the game, or only  have a few quests on the book. The whole situation is just like the stupid "Dark Brotherhood Attack" in Tribunal (where as soon as you load that expansion to MOrrowind, you will have an assassin attack you every night with decent gear on, even if you just started a new character). Except this time its happening with every quest in the game instead of with an assassin guy spawning to kill you every time you sleep.

And again, have certain style quests only become avalable for players with certain levels/strengths. Don't give me bullshit "Kill an animal in a guy's home" quests that are hilariously 4th wall breaking and have terrible rewards when I am the leader of YOUR GUILD and level 30. It's like Level Scaling from Oblivion all over again, except instead of the player never having a feeling that his character is progressing level and stat wise, now its the player never having the feeling that he is progressing anywhere quest wise.

Bethesda are too afraid of making content that some players will never see in one play through, even though thats terrible design and going away from that mantra of game design is what makes games like Deus Ex so damn good.


OKAY TIME TO MAKE THE NEXT TWO SHORT:

3. Bad balancing with the perks. Many are designed to circumvent what a skill is supposed to do (i.e. why the fuck is there a perk for Heavy Armor to be weightless, and who thought that was balanced?), some are just uninspiring, yet OP (see: entire smithing tree), and some enitre skills are useless to invest time or perks into (Speech and Lockpicking for example). They cut out what makes the skills unique with how they balanced perks and what the skills do, while not really improving on the formula Oblivion had at all. This makes Skyrim one of the most shallow RPG experiences in an elderscrolls game to date, when it could have easily been the most interesting and fun if they had just designed their perks/skills to be much better, deeper and more meaningful.

4. Dragons aren't scary, and they can often spawn too much. AKA they are only scary during your first five levels, when after that they get piss easy and spawn way too much later on. This is a shame because they are such awesome enemy types, but bethesda's complete lack of design skill in such areas like pacing, flow and balance make them into almost annoying distractions like Cliff Racers.



Holy shit I got carried away there.

The good news is that Bethesda's world and dungion design are among the best here, and the combat FEELS great, even if it might be totally unbalanced in some areas, such as Destruction being worthless at high levels and smithing+enchanting being boring grinds that give you OP gear. The lore is great, the atmospehre is great, and everything that is almost impossible to fix with mods is pretty stellar. Its just a lot of the game design stuff and balancing and flow that suffer greatly.

[Dr. Zaius]

Bear(bare?) with me. Not trying to be a dick, just organizing this into smaller bits so I can keep track of everything.

EDIT: Warning, I accidnelty lost track of time and made a huge post... TL;DR: 4 things skyrim flopped on IMO


1. Questlines

2. Radient Story Quests are way too unorganized and overboard.
Bethesda are too afraid of making content that some players will never see in one play through, even though thats terrible design and going away from that mantra of game design is what makes games like Deus Ex so damn good.

The pacing may be flawed, but it works like a double edged sword. If you don't want to do all of the quests that get piled onto you (and I'll admit they do stack up obscenely fast) then don't do them until you're ready to. I took my sweet ass time [spoiler]returning the skeleton key[/spoiler] just because I wanted to use it and go do other stuff.

The questlines for the guilds are much shorter, yes, but the writing for the quests in this game is top notch. So that's a trade off I'll accept. Style over substance.

To respond to the last sentence, there was a ton of stuff in Oblivion I never saw, and there will be a TON of stuff in Skyrim I never see. I've seen some things in Skyrim that other's likely won't ever see. Bethesda hasn't made an error here, they still went pretty deep with the content. That's what makes these games so good.

3. Bad balancing with the perks.

True. Perks make the level scaling not matter at all. My next playthrough will probably consist of no crosshairs, no tickmarked quests, and no perks.

4. Dragons aren't scary

Also true. I'm pretty disappointed about this. Too many, too easy.


I see where you're coming from though. With such a huge game, there's bound to be flaws (glaringly so, in some cases).

[backfire]

Agreed with those points for the most part, especially the "being bombarded with quests" bit. I'm at a point where I'm terrified to even talk to anyone because I'm paranoid they'll just give me another quest to add to my current pile. I mean I like the content, but I'm a little overwhelmed here.