Skyrim is worse than Oblivion in every way

[Neeshka]

1) Not only will someone else find said content, but intricate details, min/max spreadsheets on how to deal with it, and YouTube videos about it would be posted minutes after release

why is this a bad thing ?
The same happens for a lot of single player games too with the perfect character build or party combination.

 

[Vb]

The quests feel monotonous, now that I'm a few more hours into the game. The dull writing tries in vain to provide some context to make me care. If not for some flavor C&C and lots of lore books to discover, the quests could be out of some random MMO. Bethesda said it wanted to make a spiritual sequel to Fallout 3 with Skyrim. I figured that it would look at New Vegas to design at least some interesting quests, but now I realize that expecting such from Bethesda was foolish of me.

Even the random hiking around is getting stale since I'm seeing more and more dungeons and loot that are scaled. Even then, the dungeons themselves are linear affairs with repeated puzzles, so the novelty has fast worn off. Playing a pure mage, the scaling for spells seems atrocious past a certain point, with the only band-aid solution being abusing enchanting for zero mana cost. Even then, the enemy HP continues to bloat up, so it might be best to finish the level-scaled main quest as a low level mage.

I've only completed the Mage and Companion guilds so far, and they've both been letdowns. The Mage guild was guilty of lacking any sense of rank progression, and the Companion's guild forced me to become a werewolf to continue with the questline. Funnily, one of the Companion guild NPCs told me that it was my choice to become a werewolf and that he won't press the issue, but the quest required me to become a werewolf anyway to progress. It reminds me of the Oblivion quests where NPCs would request you to not tell something to somebody else, only for you to find out that the blasted game gives no choice of even telling others.

Initially, I thought the game was dumb fun, but right now, I'll probably force myself to see through the cliched "chosen one" story and abandon the game. It isn't as hilariously broken on so many fundamental levels like Oblivion was, but it feels like a cure for insomnia at best. It's a pity, since the lore and world design being paired with the roleplaying possibilities of New Vegas could have made a potentially great game, rather than the brain-dead hack and slash game that we finally got.

 

[RK47]

Show me a MMO with enough depth of lore and "stumble upon" content that a single person can lose himself in it for hours and I'll be the first to sign up.

Spoiler

Such a thing is impossible, because 1) Not only will someone else find said content, but intricate details, min/max spreadsheets on how to deal with it, and YouTube videos about it would be posted minutes after release, and 2) It's logistically impossible to tailor make crap like that for players to have unique experiences in a game where an excess of a million players could potentially play.

But you're not even forced to read the guide. Those who chose to are probably abandoning exploration for the sake of quicker progression. Different players have different priorities. Amazing, I know.

 

[Zed]

If only character development would have at least one more dimension to it -- some stats or some path dependency, then I would be very happy with the game.

As it is now, I still think it's this year's best game. I still have lots to do and I'm 60+ hours into it. It's not just quantity either. I've enjoyed a lot of quests, encounters and characters. The A.I and the crazy amount of variables this game presents sure allows for some really stupid and silly (and sometimes very funny) happenings and bugs. But they also allow for some fun unpredictability in fights (especially outdoors at later levels) - and not just dragons swooping down from nowhere.

The game could do with some more choices. For quests with multiple solutions there are never more than two choices. Consequences are rarely meaningful, but there has been some choices that has led to certain followers being available, certain powers granted, different quest rewards and stuff.

I've never been much for mods, but I do think that mods will be able to fix a lot of the main issues I have with the game, namely the UI. It's fucking horrible.

Major negatives:
* user interface
* too easy to create a powerful character without even knowing what the fuck you're doing
* followers get stuck and are too slow
* guilds haven't really been satisfying. some things were just too forced - especially the companions and winterhold collage
* radiant AI quests could have been done a lot better
edit: * the game doesn't really respond very well to what a badass you are when you become more powerful (besides guards giving you annoying comments all the time)

 

[attackfighter]

Elaborate quests are the awnser... multiple paths, multiple stages, good amount of exposition and flavour. And aternatives to kill/fetch/deliver: investigation, sabotage, travelling...

Investigate = Fetch.

Sabotage = Kill.

Travel = Deliver.

Now you're just being inane. I really don't see the relationships between any of those quest types and furthermore I think you're confusing the definitions of some of them. For example "fetch" quests aren't simply quests where you obtain something - they're quests where you obtain something and bring it back to the quest giver, the way a dog fetches a stick for it's master. And "kill" doesn't mean "act in such a way that negatively affects something" so I don't see how sabotaging can be categorized as a "kill" quest. Traveling vs. Deliver? Well, you travel when doing a deliver quest (same with all quests really) but I'm not talking about the means but the ends of such a quest. A delivery quest is simply to take soemthing somewhere, like a package, where as a traveling quest could be about traveling to a different city in order to avoid hostile law enforcment in your current city, for example. They are not the same.

They are all variants of the same underlying structures. I do like the idea of multiple paths/stages, exposition and flavour, and of course altering game states that reflect the results of each quest and/or a combination of the results of many quests with multiple branching paths. This is difficult to develop though, and while interesting, would probably bore your average joe. Using one's brain, while awesome for you, me, and the Codex in general, is probably the last thing that will sell a title.

Last time I checked Fallout, VtMB and PS:T all sold enough to make a profit.

It's the same analogy that graphics sell because players can perceive the difference, while underlying structural differences don't sell anything because it requires an investigative mind to determine the subtle differences during player choice. The player can perceive the simple reward for the simple linear quest path they follow. This makes it easy to understand and somewhat extrinsically rewarding, yet repetitive (conditioning at its best). For people who like intrinsic rewards (self learning, knowledge, etc) the fetch, kill, deliver just isn't rewarding. Still, these people are few and far between.

I've never heard that structural differences don't sell. I've heard from Bioware and Bethesda that more complicated game structures don't sell 'cause retards don't like them, but I've never heard anyone say structural differences in general cannot affect sales in a positive way. As far as elaborate quests vs. simple quests go, I have no idea what the masses would generally prefer, however I do know there is a market for the more elaborate quests so it's not like they're an impossibility. I'd owe their current scarcity to the incompetance of current RPG devs, rather than to a lack of demand.

 

[Gord]

Last time I checked Fallout, VtMB and PS:T all sold enough to make a profit.

Unfortunately in our corporate-capitalisitc industry "sell enough to make profit" is not the way to go, it's "make as much profit as possible". Cater to the masses - if a product with worse quality sells much higher quantity that is the way to go. Fuck those elitist old-school gamers that get upset because your game can now be played by pre-schoolers and the most demanding challenge is double-clicking the icon.


That being said, after about 30 hours of Skyrim, it is still nice, but seemes like a bit of a mixed bag at times.
Overall I like it, or else I wouldn't have played for so long. It is true that a lot of the quests are simple fetch/kill, but there are some quests that are done rather nice, imho. I liked e.g. Sanguines quest, which was somewhat entertaining, if not exactly very complicated - still it involved a few speech-checks to bypass the fights. Many side quests have multiple stages, so it's not just "deliver item x to person y" and get a reward (although those are present).
One might certainly criticise that the occasional nice quests get drowned in a sea of forgettable ones - then again you are not forced to do them, but the game certainly gives you something to do if you don't mind quests overall being more quantity than quality.
I hope there will be a mod that gives you more options to refuse a quest AFTER you heard what it is about - I might be inclined to help some guy find some shit he needs, but when I then see that it is some MMO-like "find 25 giant dicks" my motivation to do it is about zero.

While the balance so far is ok for me, the game forces you to play according to your characters strength and weaknesses - my sneaky thief and his bow get badly raped at close range if I don't watch out. I'm contemplating hiring a companion as a meat shield.
I guess for a second walkthrough I will install some mods to reduce speed of leveling a bit (probably one that forces you to improve more skills per level, so you are relatively stronger - should reduce the impact of level-scaling a bit more).

Bugs - it's made by Bethesda, of course there are bugs. I didn't have much technical problems, a CTD every few hours and some missing textures/disappearing walls.
I encountered a silly AI bug where the npcs stopped reacting to me shooting them as long as I stayed far enough away from them (which was not very far at all), but this seemed to be linked to the location, or at least I have not seen it again.

Finaly, it's of course true - if you have explored 20 nord burial chambers with draugr they start to feel a bit same-ish. It's not nearly as bad as Oblivion, as the dungeon design is miles ahead, but if you expect a game with only a few dungeons that are diverse and very well done, obviously TES games are not the way to go for you. TES has always been about lots of quantity with some rarer moments of high quality in between.
The things that really bother me in Skyrim should be fixable by mods:
If I measure the quality of a TES game by the number of mods I need to even consider playing it I would put it somewhere close to Morrowind, which so far was the most enjoyable unmodded TES game for me.

 

[Freelance Henchman]

Redguard, please.

I got this yesterday since various people did in fact seem to enjoy it, and so far it feels generally less retarded than Oblivion. The interface is an absolute clusterfuck though, unless I'm missing something.

 

[Ulminati]

The interface IS a clusterfuck. The only thing you've apparently missed there is that everyone's first post about skyrim after they've played is mentions how awful the UI is.

But yeah. It's surprisingly slightly above mediocre. It has its moments, it has a lot of derp. But in the end it balances out to something that's sort-of entertaining. Which is more than can be said about nearly every major release this year. And that the least painful RPG experience of 2011 should've come from Bethesda - the closest thing the Codex has to an antichrist - is flabbergasting.

Now hire Obsidian again to give Skyrim the FO:NV treatment! (And wait for mods to fix the worst of the bugs).

 

[Satan]

. It has its moments, it has a lot of derp. But in the end it balances out to something that's sort-of entertaining. Which is more than can be said about nearly every major release this year. And that the least painful RPG experience of 2011 should've come from Bethesda - the closest thing the Codex has to an antichrist - is flabbergasting.

No, go fuck yourself. I'll take Human Revolution or Twitcher 2 any day over Skyrim.

 

[Gerrard]

Level scaled unique items

Fuck you Todd.

Also

I like how the last verse is basically "THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST DO RETARD", because this is the only riddle that isn't "match images to the ones on the wall behind". Really showing that target audience.

 

[attackfighter]

Last time I checked Fallout, VtMB and PS:T all sold enough to make a profit.

Unfortunately in our corporate-capitalisitc industry "sell enough to make profit" is not the way to go, it's "make as much profit as possible". Cater to the masses - if a product with worse quality sells much higher quantity that is the way to go. Fuck those elitist old-school gamers that get upset because your game can now be played by pre-schoolers and the most demanding challenge is double-clicking the icon.

If game devs wanted to make as much profit as possible, it'd be prudent of them to cater both to the thronging masses as well as the niche groups. Nothings stopping them from trying. The only reason they don't is because incompetent producers killed off all the devs who were catering to niche audiences. It has nothing to do with viability or maximizing profits, it's simply due to incompetent retards running the show.

 

[Freelance Henchman]

Funny: I was just thinking "wow my waify female character can apparently carry 300 pounds of weight which translates to like 5 sets of steel armor, maybe I can find a mod to reduce the carry weight to something saner" and at the moment there are only mods that completely remove weight encumbrance.

 

[Eyeball]

There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with boring-ass fedexes, kill quests or fetches. The trick is in how you package them.

Skyrim fails pretty hard at this, IMHO. 90% of the questgiver intro dialogues go something on the lines of "Oh hey bro, I lost my bike keys, could you get them for me? I think I left them in this zombie infested ancient crypt halfway across the continent."

With non-crappy writing, this might actually have turned out to be halfway appealing.

 

[Gord]

If game devs wanted to make as much profit as possible, it'd be prudent of them to cater both to the thronging masses as well as the niche groups. Nothings stopping them from trying.

Well, the producers/publishers stop them. In a way they are probably what's "wrong" with gaming.
I put that in quotation marks because we think something is wrong, but I guess the overwhelming majority of gamers thinks otherwise, as do the publishers who rake in the money.
But honestly, do you really think they could make a game catering to both audiences at once?
I would certainly like to see that, but I'm doubtful.

 

[attackfighter]

If game devs wanted to make as much profit as possible, it'd be prudent of them to cater both to the thronging masses as well as the niche groups. Nothings stopping them from trying.

Well, the producers/publishers stop them. In a way they are probably what's "wrong" with gaming.
I put that in quotation marks because we think something is wrong, but I guess the overwhelming majority of gamers thinks otherwise, as do the publishers who rake in the money.
But honestly, do you really think they could make a game catering to both audiences at once?
I would certainly like to see that, but I'm doubtful.

That 'overwhelming majority' of gamers is largely ignorant to the going ons of the industry, so you can't say they endorse the industry's state. Publishers aren't people, so they don't hold opinions on things either.

And I never said they'd maximize profits by making games that cater to all audiences at once. I said they'd maximize profits by catering to niche groups. They could do so by producing entirely different games aimed at specific niche markets. Troika's games are proof that this could be profitable, so long as publishers are willing to provide funding.

 

[crufty]

I wonder if some folks complaining about quests need to play more.

There's two flavors, one...the radiant style. I don't really mind procedural type stuff. I am not sure how procedural it is, what changes. I would actually love it if these lead to procedural dungeons. I agree these appear to be the weakest.

Two, the human designed stuff. Some of the ore interesting quests I have done looked, on the surface, like the standard fedex! There is also some self referencing "humor" fetch quests etc.

there are the custom one offs. Not so much radiant, but more multiple path, small scale, local to a town stuff. Some of these lead to other quests. Go talk to bob and get my stuff. Bob is feeling blue because his xyz has abc. So kill abc.

Finally, you have faction and finally the main plot.

Each one is a little more advanced, a little more detailed. The majority of everything is pretty linear, but not all. I also do not activate quests with the quest compass, so in that regard the challenge can be significant at times.

I really have not seen a lot of level scaling. I am level twenty and the best loot I found in this one dungeon area was 8gp. Which was appropriate considering it had skeeters and a lunatic, so there shouldn't be piles of dwarven armor etc.

I also appreciate how the smaller villages don't have inns or serious markets.

 

[Gord]

That 'overwhelming majority' of gamers is largely ignorant to the going ons of the industry, so you can't say they endorse the industry's state. Publishers aren't people, so they don't hold opinions on things either.

The point is that the majority of gamers seems pretty satisfied with the games they get, so to them the industry is doing just right. And publishers are made of people, with people making decisions, which do hold an opinion on things

And I never said they'd maximize profits by making games that cater to all audiences at once. I said they'd maximize profits by catering to niche groups. They could do so by producing entirely different games aimed at specific niche markets. Troika's games are proof that this could be profitable, so long as publishers are willing to provide funding.

Again, this is not what they are interested in. "Niche" markets are void of interest to major labels/publishers, as there is not enough money to be made. I'm sure they could make profit, but if they get to choose between a project that could net them 10 million and one that gives them 100 million, guess which one they will choose?

Best hope (aside from indies) is some smaller publisher directly focusing on a niche market - see Paradox.

 

[attackfighter]

That 'overwhelming majority' of gamers is largely ignorant to the going ons of the industry, so you can't say they endorse the industry's state. Publishers aren't people, so they don't hold opinions on things either.

The point is that the majority of gamers seems pretty satisfied with the games they get, so to them the industry is doing just right. And publishers are made of people, with people making decisions, which do hold an opinion on things

The majority of consumers were pretty satisfied with black and white photography back in the day. It wasn't until they were offered something better that their standards improved. Same can be said about most industries. Uneducated consumer units don't hold valid opinions on things.

As for the executives of publishers: you aren't privy to their thoughts. If they were truly satisfied with the amount of cash they make, they wouldn't be pushing DLC and marketing to ever higher levels. The fact is that they're interested in making more cash, they simply lack the intelligence to realize that they could make more cash by acknowledging niche markets.

And I never said they'd maximize profits by making games that cater to all audiences at once. I said they'd maximize profits by catering to niche groups. They could do so by producing entirely different games aimed at specific niche markets. Troika's games are proof that this could be profitable, so long as publishers are willing to provide funding.

Again, this is not what they are interested in. "Niche" markets are void of interest to major labels/publishers, as there is not enough money to be made. I'm sure they could make profit, but if they get to choose between a project that could net them 10 million and one that gives them 100 million, guess which one they will choose?

Best hope (aside from indies) is some smaller publisher directly focusing on a niche market - see Paradox.

They could choose both projects, nothings stopping them. Also they aren't necessarily the ones embarking on the projects themselves, in the case of Troika they could've simply been contracting an outside studio.

 

[Luzur]

the only interest the bigger game making companies have really is raking in the biggest cashpile for the stockholders/CEO's, not make good games.

its been some 15-20 years since a game company really put some heart/soul into their games.

 

[Bahamut]

Heh for first couple of hours i was even enyoing this game, but now explorations becomes boring, so far all quests where total crap, i come to one location, and leave with tons of banal shit boring quests, jebus WoW quests look good in comparion to this

 

[Gerrard]

The quests are so linear it fucking hurts.

For a super retarded moment see the Forsworn quest in Markath, at the end I enter the shrine and there are guards waiting for me with "STOP! YOU HAVE VIOLATED THE LAW" and if you choose "resist arrest" there is no way to further do anything with this. And they have a fucking immortal NPC with them.

Then if you go out and go into the mine, there's a door that simply cannot be opened (no interaction).

 

[Xi]

Now you're just being inane. I really don't see the relationships between any of those quest types and furthermore I think you're confusing the definitions of some of them. For example "fetch" quests aren't simply quests where you obtain something - they're quests where you obtain something and bring it back to the quest giver, the way a dog fetches a stick for it's master. And "kill" doesn't mean "act in such a way that negatively affects something" so I don't see how sabotaging can be categorized as a "kill" quest. Traveling vs. Deliver? Well, you travel when doing a deliver quest (same with all quests really) but I'm not talking about the means but the ends of such a quest. A delivery quest is simply to take soemthing somewhere, like a package, where as a traveling quest could be about traveling to a different city in order to avoid hostile law enforcment in your current city, for example. They are not the same.

No. All of those quest variants involve the same underlying structure. Go some where and "investigate" then return with what you find. Go some where and "fetch" something, then bring it back. Go "sabotage" something. Go "kill" something.

They are the exact same structural quest designs with different themes. If you can't see this, then you might also think that shows like CSI: Miami have different structural stories every week - when in fact, it's the same structural story layout with different characters, albeit doing the same type of shit. Someone is killed, followed by an investigation, followed by interrogation of suspects, followed by a plot twist, the end.

My point is that if you look at the structural differences, those quest types are identical. Sure, the surface differences, such as the theme of the investigation, the reasons to sabotage, etc, may seem different, but at there roots they are exactly the same.

Last time I checked Fallout, VtMB and PS:T all sold enough to make a profit.

Eh, all of those studios went out of business. Sure, the games sold decently well, but I don't think any of them broke a million world-wide sales. I think Fallout and PS:T offered the most variance and nuance in quest design, but often they were following the same structural quest design as fetch/deliver/kill too. Though Fallout had branching elements, and PS:T was a fantastic philosophical mindfuck.

I've never heard that structural differences don't sell. I've heard from Bioware and Bethesda that more complicated game structures don't sell 'cause retards don't like them, but I've never heard anyone say structural differences in general cannot affect sales in a positive way. As far as elaborate quests vs. simple quests go, I have no idea what the masses would generally prefer, however I do know there is a market for the more elaborate quests so it's not like they're an impossibility. I'd owe their current scarcity to the incompetance of current RPG devs, rather than to a lack of demand.

They don't sell because people cannot perceive them. It's one thing to read about them, and it's another thing to see (graphics) the differences. IMHO, people prefer a challenge based on their own personal ability. It has to be relatively difficult, but possible to over come. That's the sweet spot according to psychological research in personality. Everyone is on a different level in terms of skill, so, you develop to the lowest common denominator, or your largest demographic. This is why Skyrim is simplified mostly. It wouldn't be much more difficult to make the character development even more elaborate, but it would cause frustration among the main sub-set of purchasers.

 

[hoopy]

The quests are so linear it fucking hurts.

For a super retarded moment see the Forsworn quest in Markath, at the end I enter the shrine and there are guards waiting for me with "STOP! YOU HAVE VIOLATED THE LAW" and if you choose "resist arrest" there is no way to further do anything with this. And they have a fucking immortal NPC with them.

Then if you go out and go into the mine, there's a door that simply cannot be opened (no interaction).

An immortal but seemingly inconsequential NPC made me uninstall. The game was practically goading me into killing him, but I couldn't. It was extremely frustrating and completely killed whatever sense of freedom the game gave me.

To my knowledge the only immortal adult NPC in New Vegas is Yes Man, and that's just because he's a failsafe that lets you finish the game even if you've killed every non-respawning creature in the world. There's even a logical reason why he can't be permanently killed.

But Bethesda cannot into such advanced design.

 

[Zed]

C&C in Skyrim

http://i.imgur.com/ki5gP.jpg

 

[Luzur]