Skyrim is worse than Oblivion in every way

[Broseph]

I tried Requiem a while back when it was first released and even gave the creator some feedback. Wasn't bad at the time but I couldn't really get into it. Something about the "immersive" text descriptions and the lack of concrete information for perks (i.e. numbers) bothered me, but I think he added an option to toggle that later. I'll give it another go eventually.

 

[Kahlis]

You can add as many combat rebalancers, monster overhauls and survival mechanics as you like. Fact of the matter is I still can't take that game seriously when the quests, factions and writing are so atrocious. I think there is a mod in the works for the NPCs, but I don't know anything about quests.

But they do suck. Then again, I never use Illusion or Restoration, (in my current playthrough, hopefully the last ongoing, I've added Conjuration though, and with new effects in ASP 3.0, it's relatively impressive), and his vision regarding Magic is almost completely overshadowed by ASP and it's multitude of spells and effects, so I'm not bothered that much with this.

I'm currently playing an "agent" character in Morrowind that can fight with staves but mostly relies on Alteration and Illusion in combat. I can hardly do any damage at all right now, but utilitarian movement spells and the ability to snare enemies by burdening them until they're no longer able to move or otherwise demoralizing/blinding them is always amusing. For battles that I have to win, I drain their fatigue and try to dispatch of them before they do me. Morrowind combat isn't the most exciting affair, but at least the enemies often have enchanted equipment or are capable of using spells other than fireball.

Then I see how PCGamer has managed to publish an entire feature about "homg im playing an illusionist in skyrim srs creative playstylezzz its ur gam play it how u want", when each entry is basically an extremely hyperbolic retelling of how he jumped around shooting the Frenzy spell at everybody while trying not to get killed. People really have low expectations these days. I feel as though the amount of spells in Skyrim are so few that they could be fit into two of the Morrowind schools.

 

[Luzur]

i really want to murder that man.

 

[JarlFrank]

That is one horrible lisp.

EDIT
"They were not built to keep people out, but actually to keep the draugar from leaving. Wow, that is some deep stuff!"

 

[ohWOW]

How is waitress asking you what can she do for you actually lore friendly?

Fucking morons.

 

[DraQ]

You can add as many combat rebalancers, monster overhauls and survival mechanics as you like. Fact of the matter is I still can't take that game seriously when the quests, factions and writing are so atrocious. I think there is a mod in the works for the NPCs, but I don't know anything about quests.


I'm currently playing an "agent" character in Morrowind that can fight with staves but mostly relies on Alteration and Illusion in combat. I can hardly do any damage at all right now, but utilitarian movement spells and the ability to snare enemies by burdening them until they're no longer able to move or otherwise demoralizing/blinding them is always amusing. For battles that I have to win, I drain their fatigue and try to dispatch of them before they do me. Morrowind combat isn't the most exciting affair, but at least the enemies often have enchanted equipment or are capable of using spells other than fireball.

Then I see how PCGamer has managed to publish an entire feature about "homg im playing an illusionist in skyrim srs creative playstylezzz its ur gam play it how u want", when each entry is basically an extremely hyperbolic retelling of how he jumped around shooting the Frenzy spell at everybody while trying not to get killed. People really have low expectations these days. I feel as though the amount of spells in Skyrim are so few that they could be fit into two of the Morrowind schools.

Well, to be fair you couldn't just provoke infighting using illusion in Morrowind.
Modded Skyrim (more lethal combat, improved AI, more spells, rarer quality loot) can easily get quite interesting and fun when it comes to tactics.

Also, burden is horribly ineffective and inefficient against enemies in vanilla MW.
Player is often running with inventory nearly at capacity but the enemies generally don't.

 

[Shadenuat]

I'm sold on mudcrabs and sujamma so I guess I'll have to get me at least somewhat competent character in Skyrim... again

Any MUSTHAV mods nowadays, like fixes and graphical enhancements?

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

I'm sold on mudcrabs and sujamma so I guess I'll have to get me at least somewhat competent character in Skyrim... again

Any MUSTHAV mods nowadays, like fixes and graphical enhancements?

What kind of character you want to use? For overhaul, both Requiem or Skyrim Redone are for the better overall; I prefer SkyRe, and it's more customizable as well. It changes quite a lot but from "again" I take you've seen vanilla.

If you want to focus on "warrior" then get Duel - Combat Realism. If "mage" - Apocalypse Spell Package. I recommend doing a mage for the awesome blast/playing a demigod factor.

 

[Shadenuat]

Well I'm not generally in the mood for but some okayish challenge is welcome, I just don't want to stare at lightning storm chunking dragon half a minute while wearing -100% Destruction cost anymore. I finished Skyrim playing mage playing Expert/Master without armor and being one shotted every ten minutes - I already had an experience. So I will probably play a more generalist spellsword (or maybe a Divayth Fyr archetype - lots of magic and tanking armor), as I never really experienced hand to hand in Skyrim much.
I'm also interested in better performance/fuck blur/fuck post processing/fuck horrible console lightning mods.

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

Requiem is more lethal than SkyRe, but SkyRe isn't exactly steamrolling either, especially if you don't invest in a lot of Health and avoid savescumming. The "challenge" is rather proportional to your skill of keeping an enemy at bay; and with mage/spellsword (and thus "mage" style since you have no shield) you'll find yourself blasting enemies away with waterfalls, rolling around on conjured bridges, teleporting around the place, time locking or paralyzing enemies. Especially since you'll probably want to save perks from trees like Heavy Armor for Alteration or Conjuration (you'll need it for your Daedric Armor if you want to avoid grinding Smithing). "Categorized Favorites" is a must, as you will be rapidly swapping utility spells and different effects.

Playing pure "melee" character is generally very repetitive and doesn't allow for much in the way of tactics (it's not exactly Dark Souls combat system either), but I recommend making a Battlemage/Spellsword character. Keep in mind the emphasis will be generally on "Spell" part though.

 

[Gord]

Shadenuat:

SkyRe was very challenging for me until I reached ~level 25. However, at the time I also upgraded to a newer version, which apparently changed esp. magic damage a bit. Might also be that eventually you simply "outgrow" most enemies. Haven't tried the newest version, though.
As long as you don't care restarting with a different character I'd recommend testing SkyRe (or Requiem) and switching if you don't like it. There's an alternative start mod (Live another life) that allows you to skip Helgen and directly start at different positions according to the chosen background. Quite handy for testing mods that require a restart.
I don't know much about performance-boosting mods. There's one called "Hialgo Boost" or something like it, which is dynamically adjusting settings according to your fps and the situation you are in.
For lighting purposes I use Realistic Lighting with Customization, which makes for generally better lighting with darker nights and interiors and better colours. You can customize it or use presets.
Blur can be deactivated with ini-Tweaks, iirc.
For better performance, tweaking shadows can help, too. I use this settings:

Spoiler

iBlurDeferredShadowMask=8
Will blur your shadows, masking the low resolution of the shadows a bit.

fInteriorShadowDistance=2000.0000
Interior shadow distance, doesn't have a overly strong effect for me.

fShadowDistance=2750.0000
Exterior shadow distance. This one is pretty important. Larger values obviously mean shadows visible further away, BUT it also means the quality of the shadows will be reduced.
Additionally it can have a significant impact on performance. Lower values will give you much better performance, as it means the pc has to calculate less shadows.
So: low values mean good looking shadows and good performance but as you don't see them far away it might look strange when they appear while moving.

iShadowMapResolution=2048
shadow resolution + overall smoothness. I leave it at 2048 as higher values give a significant loss in fps for indoor scenes.

iShadowMaskQuarter=4
Impacts how "crisp" your shadows are. Lower = less detailed, 0 disables indoor shadows. Too high will crash the game.

And, from the display section in Skyrim.ini:

fSunShadowUpdateTime=0.0000
How fast the shadows move when sun position is updated (0 means they jump, reducing jittering)
fSunUpdateThreshold=0.5
How often the shadows update relative to the sun movement. Set to zero for constant updates.

 

[Broseph]

Can anyone confirm if the Dragonborn DLC is any good? I've been planning to get back to the game just to test out some mods, but I've pretty much exhausted the base game content at this point.

 

[Crispy]

Dragonborn's only out for X-Box right now.

You don't own an X-Box, do you?

 

[Broseph]

No, but I don't keep up with these things.

I do own a PS3 though. Though I rarely use it.

 

[Kahlis]

I'm guessing there's lots of lore exposition dumps about the Tribunal and Dunmer and stuff, so that the Skyrim kiddies can feel like they're a part of some super intellectual TES fanclub that can talk about Bethesda's last reasonable game without having to actually muster up the attention span to play it.

 

[Broseph]

Probably lots of Ultima IX style retarded protagonist questions, like the base game has. Skyrim has a lot of really derpy dialogue: stuff I'd imagine a 12 year old saying when faced with these situations, not a grown man who's supposed to be Dovahkiin, FFS.

 

[Kahlis]

God yeah, every time I think of the Dovahkiin I imagine some sort of machismo man-child with the attention span of a 12 year old, and I realize it's because of the writing style and the way the fans act him out.

Also:

So what happened to Vivec then? Is he still chilling with the Daedra? Knowing him he's probably blown up Mehrunes Dagon with his MUATRA by now.

 

[DraQ]

God yeah, every time I think of the Dovahkiin I imagine some sort of machismo man-child with the attention span of a 12 year old, and I realize it's because of the writing style and the way the fans act him out.

Also:

So what happened to Vivec then? Is he still chilling with the Daedra? Knowing him he's probably blown up Mehrunes Dagon with his MUATRA by now.

Wasn't Vivec vagued away to accommodate both him being killed by Nerevarine and not?

 

[Brayko]

You know I really hate it how objects in Elder Scrolls IV and V look bigger than they should, they're fucking zoomed in or something. Looking at those stairs really gives the impression of a whole lot of nothing. Morrowind never really had that problem if I recall, the world was far narrower.

It's like it was designed to just stare at like a retard.

 

[Kahlis]

Everything from Oblivion onward looks "inflated" to me. From the fatsuit armors to the giant plasticine castle walls. I really hate that aesthetic and could never quite put my finger on what's responsible for it. I think it partly comes from Bethesda bevelling everything or adding more inconsequential edges and subsurfaces than necessary.

Everything was a lot more classicized in Morrowind. Jagged, angular chestplate armor with exaggerated abdominal muscles on them. Lean and savage-looking Clannfear and Daedroth with mens' bodies like something out of Egypt. That walk. Then come Oblivion, everybody gingerly jogs with their arms ahead of them like they're schoolgirls, and the Daedroth look like inflatable alligator balloons. I don't understand it.

Wasn't Vivec vagued away to accommodate both him being killed by Nerevarine and not?

I don't know anything about him beyond what they last said in Oblivion, that he was "taken" by the Daedra. I guess that's what it is, and with Vivec being as crazy as he is I wouldn't be surprised if he decided there was no hurry to get back any time soon.

 

[Broseph]

Everything from Oblivion onward looks "inflated" to me. From the fatsuit armors to the giant plasticine castle walls. I really hate that aesthetic and could never quite put my finger on what's responsible for it. I think it partly comes from Bethesda bevelling everything or adding more inconsequential edges and subsurfaces than necessary.

Everything was a lot more classicized in Morrowind. Jagged, angular chestplate armor with exaggerated abdominal muscles on them. Lean and savage-looking Clannfear and Daedroth with mens' bodies like something out of Egypt. That walk. Then come Oblivion, everybody gingerly jogs with their arms ahead of them like they're schoolgirls, and the Daedroth look like inflatable alligator balloons. I don't understand it.

Oblivion looks like a cartoon, but Skyrim isn't so bad. Still, it looks a lot more, say, videogame-ish than Morrowind did. With the graphics overhaul, Morrowind almost has a photorealistic look to it and that goes beyond the textures and models and such - it's just the art style they were going for.

 

[Brayko]

it looks a lot more, say, videogame-ish

WTF

 

[Kahlis]

Yeah, that late 90's and early 2000's aesthetic where everything was kind of trying to be photorealistic is extremely nostalgic to me. The colors, the lighting, it's always felt more "real" to me than the stuff in later games. Even with texture replacers and higher poly models, it feels a lot different from Skyrim.

WTF

Everything looks really off to me in Skyrim. I think maybe the texture resolution hasn't improved as consistently as poly count or something. Also lots of grunge overlays which don't tile very well, leaving screenshots very visually noisy and murky.

 

[Broseph]

Yeah, that late 90's and early 2000's aesthetic where everything was kind of trying to be photorealistic is extremely nostalgic to me. The colors, the lighting, it's always felt more "real" to me than the stuff in later games. Even with texture replacers and higher poly models, it feels a lot different from Skyrim.

 

[Shadenuat]

I checked SkyRe and Requiem both carefully but it seemed to me that instead of tweaking features they really went into the realm of baldur's gate Tactics mod. So I prefered to mix and mash something more orthodox. So far I combined Stop Level Scaling with Dueling, Balanced Magic, Deadly Dragons and better Economy. I'm getting raped like no other day and run away if there are more than two enemies now

Realistic Lighting with Customization,

This one is pretty neat, although it was very dissapointing when I figured out that, unlike Morrowind, where most light sources were placeable objects (lamps, torches), in Skyrim they are statics so you can't even grab a lamp from the table and use it as a light source. So I can't see shit while getting pincushioned from dark by archers and mages. One of the many little design flaws consoles bring.
And there are still some horribly bright spots sometimes. Only time I truly enjoy looks is when it's raining.

Most of the magic mods seem insane. I wish people just carefully re-make Morrowind magic and bring spell constructor back.