Editorial 10 Things About Skyrim That Might Suck

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: Bethesda Softworks; Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

<p>The Geekly News <a href="http://www.thegeeklynews.com/2011/07/10-things-about-skyrim-that-might-suck/" target="_blank">gathered a list</a> of things which might or might not suck in Skyrim.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>The dumbing down of my RPG</strong><br /><br />27 skills in Morrowind. 21 skills in Oblivion. 18 skills in Skyrim. Let me jump over a house, goddammit! This is a disturbing trend that is evident in most big RPG franchises nowadays. Less skills, less customization, less&hellip; everything&hellip; in the ungodly name of &lsquo;streamlining&rsquo;. Now, I&rsquo;m all for cutting to make a game better. Which this may do. It might be that they have ferreted out the exact skills that were pointless in Oblivion and kept in all the ones that are useful and fun and made sense in your character progression.<br /><br />But I guarantee people are still gonna bitch that they can&rsquo;t jump over a house with their acrobatics maxed. Or beat the tar out of everyone in the game with Hand to Hand. I might not notice they&rsquo;re missing, but I&rsquo;m sure some people will.</p>
</blockquote>

 

[Excidium]

Just 10?

 

[Rivmusique]

No minimap

This might not be to everyone’s tastes, but I prefer a minimap to the compass. The compass is just so half-assed. Most of the time in the previous games, I didn’t know what the markers were even for, so I just ignored it entirely. Occasionally I’d decide to use it and end up going towards the wrong quest marker. Bah. Give me a minimap please, or at the very least, make my map marker and/or quest markers unique so I can tell them apart. Why is this so hard?

Surely he isn't suggesting that the quest compass was too difficult to use? That the game needs a better hand holding system? No, I must be misunderstanding...
...
Please?

 

[deuxhero]

No, I felt the same way about the compass's icons for caves and buildings (So there's some kind of building that way? In the middle of a city? Who cares!? It also wound up blocking the directional markers, making it a fairly useless compass), they were too vague to be of any point.

 

[Teepo]

This article had me depressed so, I found something to cheer us up.

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/elder-scrolls-v/1163735p1.html

10 reasons why Skyrim will be the best TES ever.

 

[catfood]

Well it looks like not all game journalists are cock sucking tools, some of them can actually form a critical opinion on a game based on current information. Maybe there is hop yet.

Todd, we know you believe in your game. And I’m sold, really. I’ll buy it. But when the hype machine begins in such earnest more than 6 months in advance of release, I start to get a bit squirmy. I know it’s probably going to be good. Heck, it’s probably going to be really damn good. But the higher my expectations mean that they’ve got a lot farther to fall if I’m disappointed.

Or maybe not.

 

[Jools]

Won't be able to play it until next summer anyway, and by then the modders will have fixed it.

 

[Teepo]

You lose all credibility if you're honest. You have to be as nice as possible to actually not be dismissed by fanboys as a hater.

Any idea what three skills are being dropped?

On reddit, some person says "in those previous games, the extra skills were just useless clutter. It was a pain in the ass navigating everything in morrowind."

I wonder if that's true.

 

[catfood]

One of them is mysticism, that much I know. There will probably be some that are combined such as acrobatics and atheltics, but I'm not sure.

 

[Jung]

You couldn't even jump over a fence in Morrowind.

 

[Coyote]

11. 11. 11. 1111111! Hooh! Haah! I can practically hear millions of gamer geeks chanting at their desks, viewing screenshots, hands on their.. uhh.. mice. 11! Hooh! 11! Haah! 11! Dragonbornnnnnne!

what.

 

[villain of the story]

Won't be able to play it until next summer anyway, and by then the modders will have fixed it.

Like that time they fixed Morrowind and Oblivion and Fallout 3, right?

That is unless what you mean by "modders fixing a game" is nudes/rape/prostitution mods

 

[Mastermind]

You couldn't even jump over a fence in Morrowind.

No, YOU couldn't. I could jump over half of Vvardenfell with the right magic.

 

[Jung]

You couldn't even jump over a fence in Morrowind.

No, YOU couldn't. I could jump over half of Vvardenfell with the right magic.

I'm talking about jumping, not flying.

 

[catfood]

You do know that jumping was governed by acrobatics, right? And that the higher your skill in acrobatics the higher you could jump, right? And there was also a spell that boosted it even further, right? Right?

 

[Mastermind]

You couldn't even jump over a fence in Morrowind.

No, YOU couldn't. I could jump over half of Vvardenfell with the right magic.

I'm talking about jumping, not flying.

So am I. There is a spel effectl that boosts jumping and you can fortify acrobatics to further boost it. Nevermind that a high level acrobatics char should have no trouble jumping over a fence without magic.

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

I remember jumping over houses with 100 strength, acrobatics etc

 

[Bluebottle]

You couldn't even jump over a fence in Morrowind.

No, YOU couldn't. I could jump over half of Vvardenfell with the right magic.

I'm talking about jumping, not flying.

Yeah, sorry but Mastermind is right on this one. Buff your acrobatics skill and you can easily jump a house, add enchantment in to the mix and you can cover half the island (assuming you've also got a slowfall to prevent the inevitable pavement pizza).

 

[Jung]

You couldn't even jump over a fence in Morrowind.

No, YOU couldn't. I could jump over half of Vvardenfell with the right magic.

I'm talking about jumping, not flying.

Yeah, sorry but Mastermind is right on this one. Buff your acrobatics skill and you can easily jump a house, add enchantment in to the mix and you can cover half the island (assuming you've also got a slowfall to prevent the inevitable pavement pizza).

If you say so. I just remember selecting acrobat as a skill and only being able to jump 3 inches. I was rather disappointed.

 

[Machocruz]

More diplomatic "criticism."

No wonder any one in their right mind would write off this medium and industry as childish dross.

 

[Shannow]

You couldn't even jump over a fence in Morrowind.

No, YOU couldn't. I could jump over half of Vvardenfell with the right magic.

I'm talking about jumping, not flying.

Yeah, sorry but Mastermind is right on this one. Buff your acrobatics skill and you can easily jump a house, add enchantment in to the mix and you can cover half the island (assuming you've also got a slowfall to prevent the inevitable pavement pizza).

If you say so. I just remember selecting acrobat as a skill and only being able to jump 3 inches. I was rather disappointed.

There was even a joke where you found a dead body with some flasks and a journal in the wilderness. If you drank one of the potions your jumping skill would be boosted to over 9000! (actually 3000, IIRC) for a few seconds. If you then jumped you could cross half the island in one jump. Only the effect would be lost before you landed, thus killing you. I found that funny...

 

[Bahamut]

Character while being a Werewolf was good jumper and damn fast too

 

[Machocruz]

And sorry, there is no defense for streamlining these skills. Who is this, or any asshole to say what skills are pointless or not? If a player used it and had fun with it, then it wasn't pointless.

Instead of designing the game world to accommodate all possibilities, which would be the thing to do (ie Daggerfall being designed to accomodate the climbing skill), they opt for the lazy, bland approach.

 

[catfood]

You couldn't even jump over a fence in Morrowind.

No, YOU couldn't. I could jump over half of Vvardenfell with the right magic.

I'm talking about jumping, not flying.

Yeah, sorry but Mastermind is right on this one. Buff your acrobatics skill and you can easily jump a house, add enchantment in to the mix and you can cover half the island (assuming you've also got a slowfall to prevent the inevitable pavement pizza).

If you say so. I just remember selecting acrobat as a skill and only being able to jump 3 inches. I was rather disappointed.

Yeah, well you only get a benefit from it once it reaches 50+, and at 80+ travelling is a lot faster if you jump while running. I agree that low level acrobatics is kinda useless, but the high levels are extremely useful. Plus, at high level you can also "move around" while in mid-air.

 

[catfood]

And sorry, there is no defense for streamlining these skills. Who is this, or any asshole to say what skills are pointless or not? If a player used it and had fun with it, then it wasn't pointless.

Instead of designing the game world to accommodate all possibilities, which would be the thing to do (ie Daggerfall being designed to accomodate the climbing skill), they opt for the lazy, bland approach.

The main problem with streamlining skills is that no matter how much you delete and compress them you ALWAYS end up with some skills that are vastly more useful than others. It may sound well in theory that you're trying to weed out the bad ones, but in reality it only has detrimental effects with the overall experience.

My optimal way of doing it would be:

1) Either try and fix those useless skills

or

2) Leave them as they are

Bethesda goes the third route, which is removal of "useless" skills, which is the worst of the bunch. Not only are the remaining ones imbalanced, as they will forever remain in a CRPG*, but they take away the main joy of any RPG (at least for me): character customization. The more races, classes, skills, spells an RPG has the more fun it is for me, and I'm sure I speak for everyone else here as well.

* I say CRPG because they are limited by what the game designers imagination, ability and time managed to incorporate into a game. I haven't played a lot of PnP, but from what I could tell is that the only limit is the people's imagination and so, with the right idea, any feature present can be made useful.