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Skyrim - Bethesda, you should be very, very proud.

abija

Prophet
Joined
May 21, 2011
Messages
2,892
Stagger is better because it stops the opponent from attacking for a few seconds, which usually gives you enough time to finish him off and reduce your dependency for potions.
And stagger followed by normal is even better if your stagger power is high enough (it's based on damage done I think, some opponents are barely hindered in swing ability while others stop attacking enough to land 2-3 hits).

It's not a new way to fight since you do these things anyway: you stand and fight, you charge when the situation calls for it, you retreat while swinging. Perks simply add effects to these actions. Power attack while moving backwards and get a 25% chance to paralyze your opponent. Why? Because. It doesn't require you to do anything different, like doing a different attack (using different keys, and hopefully trading that paralyze chance for less damage or defense or using all stamina). You do the same shit but now you cause extra effects.
Except without that perk you don't even have a chance to charge when the situation calls for it. Side power attacks are also really slow moves and you need a reason to execute one, given by that aoe with perk.

Vault Dweller said:
If only it took that long. If only you had to do it in 3 stages a-la Gothic: anvil, water bucket, sharpening stone. Then it would truly take hours.

I usually teleport to the starting town, go to blacksmith's store near the gate, sell my junk, buy his iron ingots and leather (without running around and checking other stores). Then you click on the anvil, select iron dagger, and click on it 20-25 times. When you do it for the first time it's enough to raise your skill by about 15 levels, if not more. The whole thing, from buying ingots to gaining 15 skill levels takes less than a minute.
Smithing by itself is not even close to broken, even adding vendor bought potions and +smith gear.
Compare 100 smithing with 100 2h, you get a 50 dmg legendary daedric warhammer instead of doing 60 dmg with a normal steel warhammer.

Yeah the professions are 100% dumb (you don't even need to bother to get mats, you can just buy everything after a certain level) and the only way to actually progress your char after your combat skills are done, but acting like they totally break the game balance wise it's a bit far fetched.
 

Dantus12

Educated
Joined
Oct 26, 2010
Messages
235
So far I agree with Jasede and Twinfalls, not that it's relevant from a 2010 member, also pardon my English.

It looks like a agenda, right now from people that:
a)never played the game and never would
b)not just abused the smithing/mechanic ,but failed at grasping perks distribution,and distributed 10 perks in smiting.

Class:Fail warior:

100 smithing up to Dedric,He never went anywhere, He didn't explore anything, went straight from Riverwood maybe after a minor quest or two to Whiterun.
He never encountered even a basic bandit , a troll, or another Dragon , He's cool and Has Dragon Plate Armor.
Fail warrior wears Dragon Armor and a sword that does maybe 20 dmg.
He has problems however with money, ore, soul gems, souls, ingredients and pretty much everything.
So He crafts more , levels up more, but now He can pay for training a few points in say- one -handed. Mostly He's cheating carry weight now because He needs money.

After training one -handed He goes to a dungeon, meanwhile the Draugrs are Restless, Thrall , and a few Scorges for good measure. None of them was crafting daggers and leveled up in one major skills , their skills went up in all skills, sword 0ne-two handed , archery, block...
Fail warrior goes back and crafts even more to pay for training in say-block, He pays for training , selling the high end items gave Him a few levels more however because of speech and enchant .
He enters the nearest cave, the Draugr are now Wight, Scourge and Overlord , fail warrior goes back somewhere to craft even more because the Draugr's have all their skills up, so fail warrior crafts more items to pay for training in say -conjuration or whatever. And so fail warrior....

Class :Half way decent warrior
He wandered slowly around, killing a few things, His blocking ,armor , one handed skill went up altogether - yay- 25 in one handed, killed a few wolves , a few bandits.entered a mine nearby a gathered a few samples of ore and pelts . He gets Lydia the Late , improves Her Sword/Armor and His own weapon and armor, but doesn't craft 150 daggers , in a cave nearby He found a decent bow for Her,the end Draugr- just one was Restless, She was able to deal sufficient damage to Him and half-way decent warrior came out with maybe 100 gold+the quest reward , now He can put a enchant on Him self and Her maybe a fortify archery , and be good for a few levels of exploration.

The above is exaggerated there are still places the player shouldn't be, there are caves that don't level lot, there are those that do, just picked up Orcish armor in a cave that previously had only steel. After lots of testing now playing pure mage, I'm not much of a melee type and having lots of fun.

So the game is exploitable , like nearly every RPG I played, and it has problems, technical problems that directly affect skill mechanics, bugs bigger and smaller but nothing that isn't fixable or broken in terms of gameplay mechanics , unkillable monsters for example without reloading are bugs .

When someone gets 2 blades of woe, both- the mask of Clavicus Ville and the axe , than its not a exploit of game mechanics it's a abuse of broken quest mechanics that are not even remotely meant to be there like that. Jumping in Morrowind to get acrobatics high is a mechanics exploit. Abusing bugs is not.
Fail stealth goes around and casts muffle , adds items via console , adds gold via console and suddenly has high illusion and sneak, he can magically open master locks without investing in lock picking why would He :
tilde, clicky on door/ chest type - unlock -easy as pie, but He can decapitate people, and make You tube videos

The game is good for a focused player, a player that wants to play a focused class, a Dedric smiting pure mage -shouldn't be even taken into consideration ,and mage can do smithing if He wants, but after lots of work in the game world-the unnecessary thing like properly leveling up and exploring. Everything can be found including Dragon Armor not to mention that the hunting for Dedric is more fun then.

A Illusion focused thief ,casting right behind the character he's trying to rob without the silent casting perk -amazing,why even have a Illusion focused thief wearing light armor, when a Illusion focused stealth character should wear clothes.
So proper usage of major skills is important , choosing preferences and sticking to them makes the game enjoyable.

I will not compare the game with Morrowind, my absolute fanboyism of the game is preventing me from doing so, but the game
is very good so far.

Personal positives:
Quest randomization, NPC randomization, Bethesda's ability to deduce the need for "love in the detail"(cheesy I know),some choices feeling major nearly eradicating a settlement with two quest lines, the Dark brotherhood-the other option.
Non combat skill checks, persuade, Lore, intimidate , faction checks , some minor, but good thing they are there, level requirements for some quests , NPC's knowing everything lolz inducing:

Heavily encumbered and moving in snail tempo :
"You carry lots of junk around, maybe visit Arnleif and Sons Trading Company," Generally the Radiant AI being very aware,small things like finding a certain Graybeard
shouting from the top of the monastery and shacking a entire mountain, plenty of potential for focused players with the factions. Things like fishing and wood hacking making sense for potions and money even if the system is still wearing diapers .
Improved animations,VA, character creation, and texturing, dungeons that are having a great vibe within the limits of a sandbox .Giving 1 gold to beggar and getting a+ 10 speech boost...

Some truly great quests one in the Mage guild for Morrowind fans ,Dragons and Dragon shouts.
The shouts are so helpful that its not even fun surrounded:Is ,Wurl or Fus Roh Dah and enjoying the emptiness and time for preparation.
The main antagonists starting with T being a faction that is ignored now but has lots of potential, great books, and miscellaneous quests that are worth doing because the reward is sometimes a skill point and a interesting location not accessible without the quest.
General quest layout is good , giving a very important thing to me -freedom, being generally well written but lacking scale or
positive quantity.
Combat is fun, not complex but difficult and interesting, in many cases dependent on proper preparation and Companion management.

Personal negatives:
Removal of some skills like blunt , balance problems in destruction, minor, hitting the player between 27-31 level but getting better later.
Lack of Lore bombs , Oblivion's problem , lack of dialogue and quest writing , lack of faction specific choice variety, being forced to be either evil or ignorant at moments .
General problem of Dovakhiin is a errand boy at moments, not because of the quests but because of the lack of reactivity from quest givers.
So the game is not Morrowind , but Morrowind dint have the amount of VA that cost money, plus the foreign language translation again with VA that per translated written word costs 1 $ + paying the foreign VA's. And even Morrowind was sometimes lacking in the reactivity department but still the stupid things in it :
"I haven't seen a Breton in such a grand outfit i quite some time,"pointless, predictable but still great and such thing being there, its great to show that someone was arsed back then and was arsed now to implement such things.
The dire need for the return of Unarmed skill in proper manner ....

So pardon the long post, and for the tl;dr people I like the game so far, not like Morrowind which I replayed 2 days before Skyrim came out , and did the same for Oblivion back then, the shock that Oblivion without Knights of The Nine and SI created didn't occur with Skyrim , I see that as a good thing, maybe I'm just getting casual and the aging process lowered my standards.
 

Teepo

Scholar
Joined
Jun 24, 2011
Messages
892
Obviously Twinfalls was trolling. Even if he likes the game, he obviously exaggerated his own opinion.

One word I would use to describe Skyrim is thoughtless.

First off, the game is unfinished and untested. Basically they should have released the game 12\12\12 and used the extra year to finish this game.

The designers behind the game are lazy. Instead of designing a world with an early game, mid-game and late game, they opted to level scale which from their point of view was less work, but it's probably not. Doing it properly at least, not the half assed Bethesdea way.

They made level scaling so that they could... put more time into other things. What things they put more time into, I do not know. They probably just tried doing everything at the same time, and a lot of it, and as a result the actual details of the content is very untested.

I just don't understand how they couldn't just see as they were designing it that Destruction magic stops getting stronger at level 35, and everything else increases in power at such a speed and amount that the actual enemies can't even touch you. I thought you planned that shit before hand.

I have a question. Were there perks in Oblivion?
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
Dantus12 said:
So far I agree with Jasede and Twinfalls, not that it's relevant from a 2010 member, also pardon my English.

It looks like a agenda, right now from people that:
a)never played the game and never would
b)not just abused the smithing/mechanic ,but failed at grasping perks distribution,and distributed 10 perks in smiting.
Clearly. If someone criticize a game as majestic as Skyrim in any way, they either haven't played it or played it wrong. It's the only logical explanation.

So the game is exploitable , like nearly every RPG I played, and it has problems, technical problems that directly affect skill mechanics, bugs bigger and smaller but nothing that isn't fixable or broken in terms of gameplay mechanics...
The gameplay mechanics are a real treat, I agree.

Some truly great quests one in the Mage guild...
Truly. The Mage Guild questline sets new standards. Thank you, Bethesda!
 

Qwertilot

Novice
Joined
Feb 8, 2011
Messages
36
The perks are all new - 'replacing' attributes - so probably unsurprising if fairly broken.

And yes, balancing a level scaled game isn't at all easy. You're basically forced to ensure that the X logical ways to set about fighting people all hold up in a fairly linear fashion as character level scales and keep them scaling up to very high levels. Terrifyingly hard compared to just ensuring that everybody can manage the toughest stuff at some level or other.
(and from a fair few of the complaints it does seem clear that there is non trivial scaling in there even if much better than Oblivion!).
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
abija said:
Except without that perk you don't even have a chance to charge when the situation calls for it. Side power attacks are also really slow moves and you need a reason to execute one, given by that aoe with perk.
Let's look at Diablo 2 (as a game that did a lot of things right). Yes, I understand that it's a different game, but we're talking about mechanics here. To make playing a pure melee fighter (barbarian) more interesting and exciting than clicking on enemies until they die like it was in the first game, you have a number of different options:

1. Default attack
2. Different battle cries (no need to list them separately).
3. Bash/Stun (let's say that it's the power attack in Skyrim)
4. Leap attack
5. Concentrate (would have fit Skyrim perfectly)
6. Double Swing (would be nice if dual wielding was a skill or a perk)
7. Frenzy (another perfect attack mode for Skyrim)
8. Whirlwind
9. Berserk (another perfect attack mode for Skyrim)

These are different attacks that have different effects and have different mana cost. Skyrim needs something like that. It needs an option to use different attacks that would change damage, attack speed, defense, accuracy, stagger chance, prevent from falling back and disengaging chance, etc and have different stamina costs. Without such system, all you have are power attacks. You play the game with all two-handed perks the same way you would without a single perk, whereas I would prefer to have some real options there.
 

Dantus12

Educated
Joined
Oct 26, 2010
Messages
235
Vault Dweller said:
Dantus12 said:
So far I agree with Jasede and Twinfalls, not that it's relevant from a 2010 member, also pardon my English.

It looks like a agenda, right now from people that:
a)never played the game and never would
b)not just abused the smithing/mechanic ,but failed at grasping perks distribution,and distributed 10 perks in smiting.
Clearly. If someone criticize a game as majestic as Skyrim in any way, they either haven't played it or played it wrong. It's the only logical explanation.

So the game is exploitable , like nearly every RPG I played, and it has problems, technical problems that directly affect skill mechanics, bugs bigger and smaller but nothing that isn't fixable or broken in terms of gameplay mechanics...
The gameplay mechanics are a real treat, I agree.

Some truly great quests one in the Mage guild...
Truly. The Mage Guild questline sets new standards. Thank you, Bethesda!

Ah, yes selective reading ability + 25 .
Amazing and Wurl away, nothing there on this planet that could ever have the potential when new to expand upon, unless it's indie of course.
The world shall tremble and the game will sell even less. Impact and influence .
 

abija

Prophet
Joined
May 21, 2011
Messages
2,892
@VD
Except they chose to use a limited melee skillset because they also have the shouts for variation?
Or probably the real reason is their brains got all scrambled trying to fit it into the movement + 2 buttons control scheme they had decided on.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
It could have worked the same way shouts work: open the shouts menu, select a shout, use the same button to use it.
 

Turjan

Arcane
Joined
Mar 31, 2008
Messages
5,047
Teepo said:
I have a question. Were there perks in Oblivion?
Not in the way as in Skyrim, but skills had automatic skill perks at skill levels 25, 50, 75, and 100. See here.
 

DraQ

Arcane
Joined
Oct 24, 2007
Messages
32,828
Location
Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody
Twinfalls said:
...and a vast improvement in game mechanics on Morrowind.
For instance?

Quests.
Quests are not mechanics.

I'm not asked to fetch mushrooms for the Mages any more. I'm told to get out and do stuff. And it's OK if that's going to a dungeon and finding something. That's what it always was in Daggerfall, remember?
Daggerfall's approach to quest design was actually vastly inferior apart from time limits, guild advancement and better handling of failure.

The quests themselves were mostly shit, especially how glaringly did the formulaic approach shine through them:
Almost every quest in Daggerfall ever said:
Go to %dungeonname find %questtarget and %actiontype it. You have %timelimit days to return after the task is done. Should you succeed, you will be rewarded with %reward.

Plus, Morrowind quests at least allowed for some token freeform approach.

Combat. Combat in Morrowind is clunky and awful. It was backwards even on a physical action level from Daggerfall's mouse strokes.
Disagreed. Interface,
speed attribute's influence, undead damage modifier for blunt weapons, physics (ironically) and dual wielding were pretty much the only parts where DF's combat has any edge over MWs. Also, spell absorption had one desirable nerf in DF - it required the character to be able to acommodate absorbed magicka.
Sure, Morrowind's combat had extremely bad presentation (animations, lack of dodge anims, sounds) and could benefit from extra moves (or at least different attacks having circumstantial advantages with given weapon), but it had stagger (attribute and weight dependent), RNG dependent hit locations for armour calculation purpose, damage reduction system that was as good as it can get with just a single variable, unified inventory system where NPCs actually used what they had on themselves, and so on.

Skyrim's is leagues better. To-hit rolls are more than made up for in the variety of actions (staggers, active blocking, perk shots)
I think not having any sort of failure mechanics is inherently wrong in a game with use-based character growth, and will consider any opposing opinion invalid unless someone proposes good and sensible (as in not artificial) system for limiting obvious skill grinding abuse not involving failure mechanics.

and the improvement in scaling (yes, it seems to me Skyrim has less scaling than Morrowind.
Quite a feat given that Morrowind has no scaling, and only limited levelling affecting only certain containers (for example smuggler crates could start with steel weapons and some herbs and end with dwemer weapons and some gems) and certain creatures, but there was still randomization involved.


I was attacked by bandits on a stone bridge high above a river. My shout knocked the chief (the toughest one) back and with a follow-up sword blow he staggered further and fell off the bridge. I then managed (just) to kill the other two behind him (it's a narrow bridge - entirely believable as it's superbly designed and rendered), and was ready to move further on - only to find myself struck from behind and killed. The bandit chief had fallen into the river, swum out, climbed back up and two-handed me from behind.

That shit never happened in Morrowind.
That shit could very well happen in Morrowind apart from lack of effective means to knock someone off a bridge and high likelihood of him getting stuck on something on his way back. I do remember reavers falling off a bridge in my old Bloodmoon playthrough, and the AI in Morrowind had ability to navigate the terrain as long as it didn't get stuck on something due to discrepancy between pathfinding and collision detection.

Other than that I've heard that the enemies still cannot jump.

As for the rest of mechanics I call bullshit - stats, especially connected spells draining or buffing them greatly enriched the gameplay in Morrowind, repair is a must have in game with glass weaponry, you and stuff like levitation was also a great asset. Plus, you had spellmaker at your disposal, in Skyrim you can merely emulate the simplest of self-made spells by firing both barrels and you can't, for example, drain someone's agility to make them easy to knock down.
 

Raapys

Arcane
Joined
Jun 7, 2007
Messages
4,960
Can't believe people are actually arguing in favor of Skyrim. The game has a good atmosphere( which Morrowind also has) and visually better combat, that's basically it. Rest of it is either shit or, in some cases, average. It's Oblivion all over, just even more dumbed down.
 

fusrodah

Novice
Joined
Nov 26, 2011
Messages
5
Location
Skryrim
Skyrim rules

Skyrim is great game!
It feels actually like your in there when the gamepad rumbles during action.
And who cares about boring stats and stuff?
Stupid geeks.
I just wanna see finish moves that were sorely missed in oblivion.
Im not even sure if that game was real 3d because it lacked these realistic shaders.
Its like the torches shade the walls and your character casts shaders and you can
also hide in them.

Anyone who understands the importance of shaders loves skyrim.
 

Twinfalls

Erudite
Joined
Jan 4, 2005
Messages
3,903
DraQ said:
Quite a feat given that Morrowind has no scaling

No.

stuff like levitation was also a great asset.

You mean the way you were the only person in all of Vvardenfell who could levitate? So you could float above your enemies and destroy them at your leisure while they all clunked about below with their awesome animation?

Anyway - wasn't trolling with the OP. But it seems I was too fulsome by half with praise. Perhaps its simply the fact that TES has been fished out of the gurgler since Oblivion, though it's still wet it seems. I yield to the Codex, but I'll play on and see how it goes.

Oddsaresomethingyoulikeverymuchsuckswhy?becausethisisrpgcodex.
 

Majestic47

Learned
Joined
Nov 9, 2011
Messages
432
Eh, I can excuse that actually. I was in cloud 9 when I first booted up the game. Aside from the facepalming dragon attack cum prisoner escape - the whole game seemed so much more alive than any of the previous predecessor.

Step into Riverwood and if you're not impressed by the amount of living NPCs, just getting by their daily lives, smithing, chopping wood, children playing games....then I guess nothing can please you.

Of course, that's before I discovered smithing is broken and enchantment is dumbed down as hell. And leveling from crafting is as retarded as usual.
 

curry

Arcane
Joined
Jan 10, 2011
Messages
4,010
Location
Cooking in the lab
Re: Skyrim rules

fusrodah said:
Skyrim is great game!
It feels actually like your in there when the gamepad rumbles during action.
And who cares about boring stats and stuff?
Stupid geeks.
I just wanna see finish moves that were sorely missed in oblivion.
Im not even sure if that game was real 3d because it lacked these realistic shaders.
Its like the torches shade the walls and your character casts shaders and you can
also hide in them.

Anyone who understands the importance of shaders loves skyrim.

so whose alt are you again?
 

Twinfalls

Erudite
Joined
Jan 4, 2005
Messages
3,903
Vault Dweller said:
Skyrim took you to the north, which isn't as cool as Morrowind but way better than Oblivion. Unfortunately, there is little left from the original character system. If anything, Daggerfall and Skyrim are at the opposite ends of the TES spectrum. Daggerfall's all about dungeons and numbers. Skyrim's all about the world. That's why I don't question the realism of Daggerfall, no more than you'd question the world of Nethack, but question the world of Skyrim because it's the main feature.

Can't argue, and this is what it boils down to. We differ to this extent: I think the world is better than you do, and the dungeons and numbers are not as bad as you do. Part of the reason is quite obviously that I'm a lot more fond of TES than you are - a personal preference thing so it's moot of course. But yes I agree as I said above, I was too eager to heap praise on Skyrim. It was I admit based on a single character type.

But the fact remains: TES has at the very least been preserved with its lore and world in good shape, and gameplay in OK shape. Unlike Ultima and the rest of them.
 
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MCA
DraQ said:
Disagreed. Interface,
speed attribute's influence, undead damage modifier for blunt weapons, physics (ironically) and dual wielding were pretty much the only parts where DF's combat has any edge over MWs. Also, spell absorption had one desirable nerf in DF - it required the character to be able to acommodate absorbed magicka.

Sure, Morrowind's combat had extremely bad presentation (animations, lack of dodge anims, sounds) and could benefit from extra moves (or at least different attacks having circumstantial advantages with given weapon), but it had stagger (attribute and weight dependent), RNG dependent hit locations for armour calculation purpose, damage reduction system that was as good as it can get with just a single variable, unified inventory system where NPCs actually used what they had on themselves, and so on.

Attacks directions have different modifiers in Daggerfall. Also, there's no dual wielding. You can "dual-equip" but attack with only either at any given time. Anyway, MW's combat was a poor evolution of DF's so saying shit like "blah blah was the only parts DF had any edge" is redundant.
 

DraQ

Arcane
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Twinfalls said:
DraQ said:
Quite a feat given that Morrowind has no scaling

No.
Examples or GTFO.

I don't mean levelled lists, I mean scaling.

You mean the way you were the only person in all of Vvardenfell who could levitate?
No, I mean the Vvardenfell was one of the few places that put third dimension into exploration.

Besides, IIRC, I've seen Itermerel cast levitation once during his escort quest, though I don't really know why.
 

Black

Arcane
Joined
May 8, 2007
Messages
1,872,592
Roguey said:
There's nothing or very little here for people who don't care about or need more than just exploration and lore.

Exploration is only good if you can explore interesting places. Are there such interesting places in skyrimjob?
A good example, I think- the Glow: enemies are there but you don't even have to fight the vast majority of them, the player characters has only heard rumours about it and promises of TECHNOLOGY. Then there's Zax and a shitload of backstory.

I don't give a fuck about exploring dungeons that are made of enemies + phat lewt.
 
Joined
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Most of the caves or dungeons have a flavour backstory. It doesn't connect to anything else but it's there, in notes or books or the inhabitants chatting up about stuff particular to that cave and sometimes, just the way items & dead bodies are set up to suggest a past event. It's a nice touch.
 

RK47

collides like two planets pulled by gravity
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28,396
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Dead State Divinity: Original Sin
Hell, there's hand placed loot at well. Found a troll and 2 dead stormcloaks while hiking. After the fight, found an order to clear a 'slight disturbance' on the stormcloak. Looks like the commander underestimated the threat and got killed. Also dived in as Argonian and searched a shipwreck with no worries. Fun. Except there's less valuables unlike Morrowind. I kinda wish they have a massive wreck site for me to explore. Would've been cool to find an underwater dungeon entrance like one in Morrowind.
 

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