Skyrim is worse than Oblivion in every way

[Manjuice Nutella]

http://www.imperial-library.info/content/skyrim-song-pelinal

*cough*

Exactly; actually Oblivion did bring something to the table, mainly in terms of books and also some of the lore (like Argonian Account, rather true to the PGE 1st Edition's 'extremity'), it was just too obfuscated with this retard-friendly censorship that only Skyrim more or less lifted to shine.

 

[Commissar Draco]

Imperial Legion in Skyrim are mostly Nords with Italians Imperials as officers, What I missed most in Oblivion was the total annihilation of Nibanese culture. IC should look like Rome from BBC Rome series; colorful, crowded full of exotic colors and smells something like Calcutta mixed with Venice. What we got instead was Victorian vision of Rome. Not to mention Colovia changed Macedonia into once again Victorian country side including those awful neo Gothic not-churches. They even axed out the cult of Ancestor Moths and turned such important places in lore like Sancre Tor into Another Dungeon.

This is why Bloodmoon is the last Bethesda game I consider canon. Everything after that is just bad fanfiction, or, in the case of Skyrim, passable fanfiction that nevertheless doesn't really hit the *real* thing.

Skyrim has some good lore book written by Michael Kirkbride and aside from mainplot it was fun game to play for first 20 hours or so before the setting begun to show it's popamole underside. Not to compare with Morrowind since I didn't even touched the DLCs but major improvement over turds like Oblibion. And yes buying it is supporting the .

 

[DraQ]

I would expect Cyrodiil's population to be mostly imperials (mostly distributed depending on their subrace), with a small dose of mostly well-assimilated outlanders ('cuz it's cosmopolitical and stuff). But there would also be "little %provincename"s with tight-knit communities of less assimilated people, foreign traders selling their wares, bringing pieces of their undiluted home cultures with them, and so on.

A lot of possibilities there for a Oblivion that would have been set completely on the Imperial City-island.
A slum full of Argonians in the harbor quarter. Orcish metalworkers in the quarter of the craftsmen. A Nord "village" outside of the city walls, etc.

So much wasted potential...

I don't even grasp their line of reasoning.


I mean:

Hey guys! We've made a TES game set on an island of Vvardenfell which is much smaller than entire province. It allowed us to scale it down considerably without it feeling too compressed. It gave us natural "soft" barrier in the form of sea. The game was full of original, freaky lore and weird environments. It sold fucking buckets!

So now we are making a sequel and decided to set it in Cyrodiil. It has a lot of established freaky lore and weird environments! It's capital is huge bustling city stuffed with much of aforementioned lore, built on several islands (and bridges connecting them), in the centre of large body of water.

I think you all see my point already, gentlemen...


*HURP! DA-DURP!*

We will try to make the whole, almost continent-sized province this time but squeezee it to below 20km^2! We will also throw out all the established cool stuff and fill it with distilled bland!

DAFUQ HAPPEN.

 

[IDtenT]

DAFUQ HAPPEN.

New show-runners.

 

[Commissar Draco]

DAFUQ HAPPEN.

New show-runners.

Oblibion sold better than Morrowind, you can't blame Beth shareholders and management for pushing more accessibility/streamlining if herp derp sapiens buy the new shit in millions of copies.

 

[DraQ]

DAFUQ HAPPEN.

New show-runners.

Oblibion sold better than Morrowind, you can't blame Beth shareholders and management for pushing more accessibility/streamlining if herp derp sapiens buy the new shit in millions of copies.

I'd actually give more credit than that to whomever makes decisions at beth, because on all grounds but mechanics we see the series doing a 180 degrees direction change between Skyrim and oblivious.

It seems someone there is capable of realizing (tie not tight enough?) that sales numbers alone doesn't say shit about the game, only expectations based on hype and its predecessor(s), and thus isn't valid 'goal function' for long-term viability of your business.

Case in point - Diablo 3.

 

[sea]

I have some questions about Skyrim and Dawnguard.

1. Who at Bethesda thought it would be a good idea to force the player through not just one, but two massive outdoor levels, with no useful maps, no map markers, and indeed no real points of reference? Who also decided to make these maps dark and difficult to see in, and feature lots of maze-like and convoluted layouts? Did they seriously think that wandering around directionlessly to find MacGuffins in these places, killing trash mobs every 2 minutes, would be fun?
2. So if the Forgotten Vale is a place completely devoid of sunlight, why does the message "Your vampire blood boils in the sunlight" appear when I explore it?
3. Apparently, the Snow Elves are old elves that were almost wiped out... but there's one that is still alive, and has been guarding a holy shrine for thousands of years. Okay, maybe he really has lived that long, but if so don't you think the Forgotten Vale would have become a tourist attraction by now?
4. Also why can't I ask the Snow Elf "holy shit you've been living alone for like a thousand fucking years, why are you not insane? what do you even eat?"
5. Why is the Vampire Lord form so bugged to shit? Half the time when I transform, I end up transforming twice in a row and I can't revert back because the game strips the special Vampire Lord abilities from me. Also it always takes like 5 seconds for it to register me wanting to turn back to normal form.
6. Speaking of, Vampire Lord fucking sucks. It's weaker than your regular character in all probability, it forces you into third-person mode, the controls are awkward and unresponsive, the "bats" ability is too limited to be useful, everyone attacks you so it's useless for anything but clearing out trash mob dungeons, and you can't even pick up loot so you either have to constantly switch forms (see bugs above) or clear out a dungeon and then run through it a second time to pick up anything. What a useless piece of shit. And this was the headlining feature?

Also, I am using stealth significantly in Skyrim for the first time. It is fucking hilarious how easy the game is once you get stealth over 80, you can literally just walk up to people and backstab them and nobody else seems to care/notice. It's an insta-win button. You can also chain sneak attacks if you don't insta-kill something, so you get five "hidden" stabs at them when you're standing right in their faces. Broken much?

The game also seems to have some sort of binary system for detection. Outdoors, I am almost always detected while sneaking (even by the Falmer, who are BLIND), but as soon as I enter an indoor area, suddenly I'm a goddamn ghost.

 

[IDtenT]

These questions are not to dissimilar to, What can change the nature of man?

 

[DraQ]

Bethesda

Answer to your questions.

Also, I am using stealth significantly in Skyrim for the first time. It is fucking hilarious how easy the game is once you get stealth over 80, you can literally just walk up to people and backstab them and nobody else seems to care/notice. It's an insta-win button. You can also chain sneak attacks if you don't insta-kill something, so you get five "hidden" stabs at them when you're standing right in their faces. Broken much?

The game also seems to have some sort of binary system for detection. Outdoors, I am almost always detected while sneaking (even by the Falmer, who are BLIND), but as soon as I enter an indoor area, suddenly I'm a goddamn ghost.

Get Requiem.

 

[Gord]

I have some questions about Skyrim and Dawnguard.
Who at Bethesda thought it would be a good idea to force the player through not just one, but two massive outdoor levels, with no useful maps, no map markers, and indeed no real points of reference? Who also decided to make these maps dark and difficult to see in, and feature lots of maze-like and convoluted layouts? Did they seriously think that wandering around directionlessly to find MacGuffins in these places, killing trash mobs every 2 minutes, would be fun?

Not really worse than linear corridors with trash mobs every 2 min, imho.
Also in the valley itself you can use the shrines for fast-travel.

So if the Forgotten Vale is a place completely devoid of sunlight, why does the message "Your vampire blood boils in the sunlight" appear when I explore it?

Is it? I wasn't aware that it should be, because once I reached the valley it sure was sunny.

Questionable writing, game design and bugs

 

[sea]

Requiem makes the gameplay really slow-paced, it bloats enemy HP like crazy, leveling takes forever, etc. It has a few positive changes but the entire conversion as a whole... well, I'm not a fan.

Is it? I wasn't aware that it should be, because once I reached the valley it sure was sunny.

Yeah I found that out later, it was in perpetual night for... like, several hours while I was exploring it, so I just assumed it was all black as midnight constantly because of the weird glow-in-the-dark animals and plants, and Falmer and the PROPHECY or whatever.

Also, Dawnguard is so nonsensical I can't even fucking comprehend it. Mindless jargon about prophecies, magic artifacts that have never been mentioned before and never will be once the DLC is done, characters who I *think* are supposed to have shocking plot twists and stuff but none of it makes any sense and just raises more questions than answers (ancient evil Snow Elf vampire MADE THE PROPHECY ALL ALONG GASP... who the fuck cares?), etc. It's also pretty sad that the ultra-special bow that is supposed to be a godly artifact does significantly less damage than my homemade Ebony bow with a 10 damage fire enchantment. What the fuck, Bethesda?

And to top it all off the plot is such a ridiculous railroad. So I'm supposed to kill Lord Hakron, vampire leader? Okay, sure. Because the... prophecy is bad, or something, because it'll make the sun go away forever if completed? And the game assumes I'm not okay with that? Wait, what are the requirements to the prophecy anyway? And if we can "rewrite the prophecy" as we are doing in this quest then how is it even a prophecy anyway? So anyway, we need to kill Lord Hakron, because Serana says that he will kill us if we let him complete the prophecy. So... what, we need to kill him no matter what, anyway? So what's the fucking difference?

And wait, Serana is just assuming that Lord Hakron will kill me, or more specifically, kill *us*, which means that not only am I being railroaded, but I am being railroaded because the game writers assumed I give two shits about Serana, even though she's more annoying than anything else (constantly pointing out the obvious and restating what JUST HAPPENED in the story), and she screws up my stealthy play style by constantly resurrecting corpses and stumbling over traps. And I guess I'm supposed to care about her because she's a girl? With boobs and stuff? Are you fucking kidding me?

Wait, hold on a sec. So if our entire goal is to kill Lord Hakron to stop him from using Auriel's Bow to complete this prophecy, then please fucking explain to me,

WHY ARE WE FUCKING ON THIS QUEST TO RETRIEVE THE FUCKING BOW IN THE FUCKING FIRST PLACE?

I still have no idea what the fuck is really going on in this story. Character motivations don't make sense and the entire quest we are on is based upon the presumption of a girl who doesn't like her father and may be imagining his intentions or making them up to justify killing him. And that would actually be a good twist, except I don't think the writers actually had that intention in the first place.

 

[DraQ]

Requiem makes the gameplay really slow-paced, it bloats enemy HP like crazy

Wat.

No, seriously - wat.

 

[Sul]

Requiem makes the gameplay really slow-paced, it bloats enemy HP like crazy

Wat.

No, seriously - wat.

He must be mistaking the lower damage done by bows against armored characters with HP bloat.
I didn't liked Requiem. As Sea said it makes the gameplay too low-paced, while this isn't a problem itself the entire structure of the game wasn't made to be like that. ffs they pit you against draugr in the first side-quest you would normally receive, I don't want to wander aimless for 5 hours until I can do any quest.
SkyRe merges much more naturally with the vanilla gameplay mechanics.

 

[IDtenT]

TES has never been about combat. Combat is only a means to an end.

 

[XenomorphII]

Requiem makes the gameplay really slow-paced, it bloats enemy HP like crazy

Wat.

No, seriously - wat.

He must be mistaking the lower damage done by bows against armored characters with HP bloat.
I didn't liked Requiem. As Sea said it makes the gameplay too low-paced, while this isn't a problem itself the entire structure of the game wasn't made to be like that. ffs they pit you against draugr in the first side-quest you would normally receive, I don't want to wander aimless for 5 hours until I can do any quest.
SkyRe merges much more naturally with the vanilla gameplay mechanics.

The problem with SkyRe though is that it is getting increasingly stupid on the magic side of things (Illusion and Restoration have been mangled pretty badly at this point). Though I do still use it

 

[DraQ]

He must be mistaking the lower damage done by bows against armored characters with HP bloat.

Well, if you want to use some skill (like archery), you pump it and put perks into it.

I wouldn't say that the gameplay is too slow paced. Levelling is indeed much slower, but it was mental in vanilla, other than that gameplay is much faster (because most battles don't involve any meaningful HP buffers on clean hit), save for the situations where you're covering behind a rock and desperately think what to do with constantly plinking rain of arrows.

I didn't liked Requiem. As Sea said it makes the gameplay too low-paced, while this isn't a problem itself the entire structure of the game wasn't made to be like that. ffs they pit you against draugr in the first side-quest you would normally receive

Difficulty of draugr varies greatly with your build.

IF you're primarily bow and arrow type, or light armour melee without means to take the heat off you, they are arguably your worst nightmare in Requiem.

Heavily armoured sword+board type, or destruction mage, or even conjurer summoning bodies to occupy the archers? Not so much.

I consider this kind of varying difficulty good - for example if you have good poison resistance, you will roflstomp spiders, if you don't and have to go melee - my god...

It's much better than every build roflstomping everything with exactly same difficulty and mostly same approach.

If everything else fails, get a follower with skills complementing yours.

 

[sea]

I agree that the gameplay tweaks are positive, in spirit. However, when you start out in Requiem you are thrown at bandits, draugr etc. who will completely curb stomp you even with decent starter equipment. I found the only way to get to a level where you can start to have fun/compete (like 15-20ish) you basically have to either do tons of grindy fetch quests without combat, or steal a ton of shit and then sell it to spend on skill trainers.

Problem is, Skyrim is not Gothic. The "get your ass kicked when you start out" approach is not how the game was designed at all. Same goes for combat tweaks. Gothic is mostly about 1 on 1 or at most 1 on 4-5 fights, but Skyrim has you regularly cleaning out dozens of enemies, sometimes all at once. The combat mechanics are shallow and spammy but they kind of have to be in order to enable you to compete with the hordes of trash mobs you will fight. Granted, it's not like you can't succeed in Requiem,, you just have to think about combat more (better use of stealth, distractions, summons, etc.) but I don't know if I want to play an 80+ hour game with the pace stretched out to make everything take two or three times longer than they already do. And of course if you add, say, Warzones to Requiem, well, you're basically just fucked.

If Skyrim were more like Morrowind and you had smaller dungeons, combat against fewer but stronger enemies, and a more balanced difficulty curve with more low-level monsters to gain XP on (not just mud crabs and wolves), it would work much better.

 

[IDtenT]

I agree with sea here. Mods can't just increase difficulty and assume that the game will follow.

 

[DraQ]

Granted, it's not like you can't succeed in Requiem,, you just have to think about combat more (better use of stealth, distractions, summons, etc.) but I don't know if I want to play an 80+ hour game with the pace stretched out to make everything take two or three times longer than they already do.

The thing is they don't. You need to think more but combat is resolved much faster due to everything dealing MASSIVE DAMAGE!!!1 completely overwhelming HP buffers. It isn't slow, it just kills you if you do anything stupid.

It feels more like TES-themed tactical shooter with builds and stats, less like hitting the button repetitively and watching enemy health bar decrement.
It's a change for the better.

 

[sea]

Just gotta put up with being raped by dickwolves for a while, then? I played Requiem maybe 5 hours with a new character and just couldn't get into it. I'd rather have some of its tweaks but in a more modular format.

 

[DraQ]

Just gotta put up with being raped by dickwolves for a while, then?

Just GTFO and walk the other way if you see multiple wolves at lvl1. Same with bandits unless you're confident that you can take them out and have superior positioning (kill anyone who looks like archer and then whoever approaches). And block/dodge/interrupt instead of tanking.

Besides it isn't that different from low-level Morrowind, where at low level entering cave could mean a burly Nord bumrushing you and killing you with two consecutive blows of a massive steel hmmr (first blow knocking you flat and helpless).

Cliffracers murdered you, most bandits murdered you, kagouti murdered you, skeletons murdered you (especially archers), bonewalkers drained your strength and then murdered you, while ghosts murdered you slowly while completely ignoring your weapons.

 

[Shadenuat]

Morrowind missions were a lot less about finishing lines through tombs though. You could pick flowers, collect for charity...
...shit, I now remember I played almost a pacifist run into it and actually had marginal success with that character. (means - easier leveling without getting raped by wolves and bandits)

 

[DalekFlay]

Who at Bethesda thought it would be a good idea to force the player through not just one, but two massive outdoor levels, with no useful maps, no map markers, and indeed no real points of reference? Who also decided to make these maps dark and difficult to see in, and feature lots of maze-like and convoluted layouts? Did they seriously think that wandering around directionlessly to find MacGuffins in these places, killing trash mobs every 2 minutes, would be fun?

Those areas are such a bizzkill. Also Blackreach from the main game. Skyrim is not a game meant to be played in huge areas with no map.

That said I got by okay.

 

[DraQ]

Morrowind missions were a lot less about finishing lines through tombs though. You could pick flowers, collect for charity...

Then again, first MQ mission was delving into dungeon full of smugglers. Second - a dungeon full of undead.

...shit, I now remember I played almost a pacifist run into it and actually had marginal success with that character. (means - easier leveling without getting raped by wolves and bandits)

I need to make a destruction using near-pacifist once.

Anyway, apart from very few obligatory kills, you could make a very effective nonlethal or noncombat character in MW - HTH, disabling spells, avoidance...

 

[Shadenuat]

Ring of permanent invisibility...