Skyrim is worse than Oblivion in every way

[Admiral jimbob]

How exactly do assassins cope with dragon fights?

 

[Gord]

The thing is, that guy is probably not even an assassin but an mage that backstabs.
I'm pretty sure he couldn't pull this off without invisibility, which is pretty strong in combination with the muffled steps spell (or boots in that case), even with 100 sneak.

Now I would lower the multiplier for daggers a bit, 15x seems excessive, and maybe make it harder to cast invisibility so you can't just spam it.

Still it seems pointless to me to complain that you don't have to care about sneaking anymore once you have those two spells on top of your maxed sneak-skill, this is pretty much what I would expect - that I'm truly undetectable.
Especially as such a character is basically a glass cannon - once you are spotted by a close enemy you are pretty much dead.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

sheogorath is dogshit, who wrote this retard...

The fucking voice actor is an annoying faux scottish bellend as well. i actually think it's in the game to purposefully piss me off.

 

[abija]

Still it seems pointless to me to complain that you don't have to care about sneaking anymore once you have those two spells on top of your maxed sneak-skill, this is pretty much what I would expect - that I'm truly undetectable.

Except you don't need any spell because the muffled effect is on items and you're not undetectable, you are a full blown stealth ninja superman.
There are 2 main issues, the backstab bonus is too much (30x) and can be done as power attacks with 2 hands. You can even do 2 backstabs before your buff is removed and the opponent turns. Being able to 1shot enemies is fun, being able to 1shot ANYTHING as part of your normal build, is broken. Plenty of stuff you can fix, like not being able to do power attacks or instantly removing sneak bonus when you do dmg.
Secondly, sneak acts basically like stealth you can roll and facestab without being detected. First part of this video depicts exactly how you do the dungeons, spam roll and 1 shot enemies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-0_U5eIWVo.
Also, last scene from this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skJqwr9Hbp0, 2 targets close to each other, 2 sneak attacks and that was without max sneak or with +sneak items iirc.
And if you are spotted (as in you actually bump into an npc :p) , you roll away behind first corner and disappear, gg.

 

[Gord]

Being able to 1shot enemies is fun, being able to 1shot ANYTHING as part of your normal build, is broken.

It is a very specialized min/max build, targeted at maximized sneak damage. Wouldn't call it a "normal" build.
I've got the impression that a certain type of gamer is pretty OCD when it comes to powergaming builds - basically they believe that this is the only valid way of playing a game/character and then complain because their overpowered build ruined the difficulty. Although it might be a valid point that it is relatively easy to achieve in that case (if you don't mind still needing to level sneak a lot).

Not sure if you should balance the game around builds like this, but some adjustments to sneaking wouldn't hurt.

 

[abija]

I didn't have a very specialized build since it was my first run. I had pickpocketing and lockpicking high and I dipped in various random shit at start. So yeah, in terms of what someone would do when playing an assassin you could call it normal.
That guy in the movie with illusion spells and no 1h perks sure as hell doesn't have a true specialized build either.

Unlike some builds where you abuse various stuff (including companions on master which are basically a walking exploit if you put good gear on them) or where you have to pay extreme attention not to level up anything not usable in combat or you get raped by the level scaling, this one is just broken by default.

 

[Stabwound]

40 hours played and I have to say that I'm pretty much bored with it, even though I've barely seen 10% of the content I'd guess. I get bored with almost every game at this point, so it doesn't mean the game is bad.

I'll admit that I fell for some of the hype. The game IS fun at first, but the game play is really repetitive and the dungeons are atmospheric but boring. I praised them at first, but it's true that every one is just a long corridor with a one room offshoot once in a while.

Blah blah blah. I don't even feel like getting into the other reasons I'm bored of it. I''ll probably play it once in a while, but I don't understand how people have put 150+ hours into it already.

 

[1eyedking]

http://kotaku.com/5861891/watch-two-women-play-skyrims-haunting-theme-on-violin-and-piano

I raged. FFS it's almost 2012 and people still cannot into music.

Humanity is hopeless.

 

[eric__s]

sheogorath is dogshit, who wrote this retard...

The fucking voice actor is an annoying faux scottish bellend as well. i actually think it's in the game to purposefully piss me off.

Yes dude, it is seriously the worst thing in the game. When I think of unbelievably stupid game shit, the very first things that come to mind are that Little Rascal town, the vampires in the subway and the comic book hero town in Fallout 3. The Sheogorath segment replaces them completely. The actual gameplay isn't even clever or anything, it's just shooting at stuff with that staff, except it's narrated by the Mad Hatter. Just awful.


I guess I have mixed feelings about the game. It's better than Oblivion in most ways, but it's also pretty dumb at parts too. I don't mind the loss of stats so much because perks more than make up for them and even the roller coaster dungeons are OKAY most of the time. The biggest problem, other than the horrid dialogue and writing, is that the world is so static. People just stand there and look at walls like they did in Oblivion. Nobody reacts to anything, even really basic things like jumping on them or putting a bucket on their head. People are just billboards for quests and items, and it's unfortunate because I think the game could be pretty good.

I feel like the game is this blank slate, the absolute minimum for an open world RPG. It's an adequate attempt but isn't stellar in any area.

Also, the very first Bard College quest you do, where you write a poem by selecting from a group of verses, is a straight up copy of the poem quest from Barkley Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden. Pretty wild.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Yeah. I've been enjoying Skyrim, but Sheogorath's quest was fucking terrible.

 

[Data4]

I haven't gotten to Sheogorath, but I've read that Wes "I did all the male voices in Oblivion" Johnson did his voice. That's reason enough to avoid the quest(s).

Also, just got around to dungeon diving the Dwemer ruin containing the Elder Scroll. Easily my favorite dungeon in the game so far.

 

[baronjohn]

 

[Luzur]

i put him on the throne when he was dead, now the new Jarl sit on his lap, leaning into him.

Ulfric naked and the JArl in some kind of nord rune armor BDSM gear.

 

[circ]

What a LARP sim.

 

[malko_sundervere]

Well...
I'm fucking sick of this game now. I've become completely burnt out on it. After my fifteenth dungeon, I realized that *all of them were exactly the same fucking thing*, and there weren't any interesting puzzles or labyrinthine corridors to distinguish them and make them more fun. The loot has been completely unexciting, owing to the easy availability of excellent weapons and armor in places that AREN'T dungeons, and the combat has gotten so fucking tedious - shoot, wait 'til they stumble, run back, shoot, stumble, run back, shoot, eat a dick, fucking WINNAR!!!!111. And then, sometimes, get close, chug thousands of potions with absolutely no penalty at all, and left click repeatedly until the bad guy's little life bar stops being there.
At first I enjoyed the exploration and dungeon exploring, but then I began to learn that there was nothing unique about the dungeons besides "they look slightly different." Brought down to an abstract level, ALL of them are just a linear, straight corridor that end in a boss (maybe), a chest, and a passage straight back. I stopped having fun with the dungeons at that point.
The questing was always fucking terrible. They were railroaded to hell and back, and the factions were uninteresting and barely interacted in any conceivable way. I stopped doing quests after around level 27; I decided it wasn't worth the extra time. The one quest I *did* do, which I found just because I walked into a random dungeon, fucking glitched out. I was supposed to give a scroll to some bitch, and she stood there like someone in the sky gave her entire body a stroke. I just killed her and stole three gold, just to get the quest out of my log via failing it. Mind you, I wasn't ALLOWED to kill her until I *had* the fucking scroll, for whatever stupid reason. I did the Companions and the Thieves' Guild, and neither finished either's quest chains because I didn't want to deal with more tired, linear bullshit.
I got sick of the bullshit AI. And the generic, dull, 'epic' music, more uninspired than any bowel movement I've ever produced. The ugly-as-shit textures; in spite of the fact that my computer could easily handle much, much better textures, the game is only beautiful if you don't look at anything individually, because they just COULDN'T include better textures.
Thirty hours down the drain, as another thread was titled. This game is, perhaps, worse than my original judgment of "mediocre." I thought "okay, this must be at least a decent game, because it managed to hold my attention, and I kind of want to play it," but I've realized that it's actually insidious, in a way; I've just realized that I fucking hated every minute of that time I spent, and gained absolutely nothing by playing it. A complete waste of time, and the only conceivable way I can imagine you playing it for much longer than I did is by LARPing.
But, egh... Fellate the hell out of Skyrim, but I still don't think you guys are talking about the same game. If ever a game better embodied complete and total *boredom* in video game form, it's Skyrim.

 

[Stabwound]

I didn't read all of that, but what I did read I mostly agree with. The game is kind of misleading in that the first 10 or so hours are pretty fun, but then you realize the next 200+ hours are the exact same as those first 10, just repeated over and over again. There are hundreds of quests but almost no motivation to complete them, and each consecutive dungeon becomes more of a slog. Bethesda's attempt at nonlinear dungeons was pretty terrible with Oblivion, but it's hard to say if the crazy straw dungeons of Skyrim are better or even worse. They look prettier but they're boring as all fuck.

I think you about summed it up with one word, though: boring. The game is just boring after you've run through a quest line or two, because you've basically seen everything it has to offer.

 

[turul]

Well...
I'm fucking sick of this game now. I've become completely burnt out on it. After my fifteenth dungeon, I realized that *all of them were exactly the same fucking thing*, and there weren't any interesting puzzles or labyrinthine corridors to distinguish them and make them more fun. The loot has been completely unexciting, owing to the easy availability of excellent weapons and armor in places that AREN'T dungeons, and the combat has gotten so fucking tedious - shoot, wait 'til they stumble, run back, shoot, stumble, run back, shoot, eat a dick, fucking WINNAR!!!!111. And then, sometimes, get close, chug thousands of potions with absolutely no penalty at all, and left click repeatedly until the bad guy's little life bar stops being there.
At first I enjoyed the exploration and dungeon exploring, but then I began to learn that there was nothing unique about the dungeons besides "they look slightly different." Brought down to an abstract level, ALL of them are just a linear, straight corridor that end in a boss (maybe), a chest, and a passage straight back. I stopped having fun with the dungeons at that point.
The questing was always fucking terrible. They were railroaded to hell and back, and the factions were uninteresting and barely interacted in any conceivable way. I stopped doing quests after around level 27; I decided it wasn't worth the extra time. The one quest I *did* do, which I found just because I walked into a random dungeon, fucking glitched out. I was supposed to give a scroll to some bitch, and she stood there like someone in the sky gave her entire body a stroke. I just killed her and stole three gold, just to get the quest out of my log via failing it. Mind you, I wasn't ALLOWED to kill her until I *had* the fucking scroll, for whatever stupid reason. I did the Companions and the Thieves' Guild, and neither finished either's quest chains because I didn't want to deal with more tired, linear bullshit.
I got sick of the bullshit AI. And the generic, dull, 'epic' music, more uninspired than any bowel movement I've ever produced. The ugly-as-shit textures; in spite of the fact that my computer could easily handle much, much better textures, the game is only beautiful if you don't look at anything individually, because they just COULDN'T include better textures.
Thirty hours down the drain, as another thread was titled. This game is, perhaps, worse than my original judgment of "mediocre." I thought "okay, this must be at least a decent game, because it managed to hold my attention, and I kind of want to play it," but I've realized that it's actually insidious, in a way; I've just realized that I fucking hated every minute of that time I spent, and gained absolutely nothing by playing it. A complete waste of time, and the only conceivable way I can imagine you playing it for much longer than I did is by LARPing.
But, egh... Fellate the hell out of Skyrim, but I still don't think you guys are talking about the same game. If ever a game better embodied complete and total *boredom* in video game form, it's Skyrim.

I could get along with shitty textures, shit AI, hell ... even the shitty UI, IF there is a game behind all that broken technical stuff, AS LONG AS there is something great gameplay and fascinating story and sense of accomplishment throughout the game.
This is not what pisses me off, because - in my book - it's ok to be incompetent and not very skilled at technical difficulties and implementing visuals so everyone is satisfied.
Sure it helps to make a visual experience of someone's idea. Just like movies. Actors get an award if they portray a specific character and it leaves a memorable moment as you watch, or directors, who can create a visual representation of what they had in mind, when they made the movie.

What I can't get passed is incompetence of having an idea. Or acting like having an idea, a fantasy, but they really don't.

For example:
How do you explain this:
There is a town somewhere in Skyrim and appearantly they are being bothered by some guy in armor wants to buy up the land, because the silver mine needs protection, but the town mayor or whatever the hell can't provide the necessary protection. Ok, the guy in the armor is some silver-brother whatever clan who plays the role of the mafia.
Anyway, so he took over the mine and won't let the town folk work and I supposed to either kill him or make him give up the mine.
So I enter and I talk to him, and appearantly all he needs is 360 gold and he leaves.
Being successful, I return to the town and the mayor is all happy and gives me a 1000 gold in reward.

WTF??

I thought these fucks were poor! He could have easily paid off the armor mafia guy , having that much gold!
This is what I call, absolute zero logic and I kinda feel offended, because Bethesda thinks everybody is a fucking idiot. Well maybe I am for playing the game this long.
Maybe they think, if you are stupid enough to play the game, you are stupid enough to accept what its offers and everything in the game is "leveled" to the mentally retarded player.
I can't find another explanation for this, because even a simple person with a simple average intelligence would think, that this is kinda fucked up.
And this is only one out of the thousands of similar cases in the game.
So in a summary, a severely broken and bug ridden game with a 6 year old AI engine, and completely idiotic and shallow gameplay behind it, with absolutely no imagination whatsoever.
Ok, to be fair, the one who designed the terrain layout and the plan of the visuals have something going on, but neither the story writer, nor the technical programmers have any competence whatsoever.
And Todd Howard should be the one being beheaded when the game starts, someone should mod that in.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

some dark elf wanted me to retrieve his shitty bow.

"Thank you friend, i can't offer much but please accept this as a reward"

he proceeds to hand me fucking rubies, emeralds and even a fucking diamond...

 

[Commissar Draco]

You're fucking elven fagot for trying to reason with him... I just failed speach test, killed them, looted their corpses and took the reward... Mayor doesn't have your speach skills and he's civi not adventurer/fucking kiling machineYou are, the Rascist Nord mercs from Blackwa... Err Silver Hands who wanted force him to sell mine to Silverbloods would just take the the money from him and stay. Nobody refuses the Hero TM persuasion and lives.
Incompetent/lazy Authorities/NPCs are in all CRPGs including much loved Fallouts and Arcanum. My favorite quest: find missing person in Broken Hill: 5 minutes of optional talking/ walking and poping ants you find them in cave 5 years old would find and you're rewarded with scoped riffle worth 2500 Gold (and soon with Marcus) Those are the loosers you get your XP and loot from in all RPGs. If you want to bitch about Skyrim don't pull Skyway on us.

Skyrim has many real flaws like level scalling, Dragon Races, horrible UI and lack of wider C&C.

 

[Gord]

I can kinda understand they changed the rewards from Morrowind, which were almost always shitty after level 5 or so, but it just doesn't make sense to scale every last petty quest.

Btw. are there any beggars that give you rewards?

 

[halflingbarbarian]

I can kinda understand they changed the rewards from Morrowind, which were almost always shitty after level 5 or so, but it just doesn't make sense to scale every last petty quest.

Btw. are there any beggars that give you rewards?

Yea:

Spoiler

The beggar in Solitude. Retrieve his helmet from a cave but the reward is a skill boost, not monetary.

 

[Lingwe]

On the topic of fucked up rewards I get 100 gold for clearing an entire cave of bandits and their leader, but get 500 gold for delivering (aka fast traveling) a note from some farm to the Jarl of the town. Wtf.

The other major fuck up on Bethesda's part is removing the spell timing counters. I can't see when the he'll my shield spell is going to run out so I am either renewing it too early or casting it too late after ive been hit again. Same with the muffle spell, conjuration, other illusion spells etc. All so Bethesda can show of their fancy little pictures and the Xbrickheads can run around shouting "how immersive! It's like I'm really there!".

 

[Majestic47]

some dark elf wanted me to retrieve his shitty bow.

"Thank you friend, i can't offer much but please accept this as a reward"

he proceeds to hand me fucking rubies, emeralds and even a fucking diamond...

That's nothing.
One evening, in a tavern in some little known place in Skyrim...
'Can you deliver this letter to a friend of mine?'

Sure.

I turn around, ready to exit the tavern when I noticed the arrow pointing to the guy sitting literally one table away from him. I hand over the letter and got 500 gold out of it.



Also: I sided with the archer guy in the first town. He offered paid training. I trained and trained and trained, when I'm ready to leave town, I decide to recruit him. Seeing him dressed in a regular civilian clothes, I decide to craft some leather armor for him. When I want to hand over his leather in trading screen, I noticed 1500 gold...all my training payment with him. That's when I realize this guy is probably giving me free training up to rank 50 archery.

 

[Neeshka]

Did 2 of the Markath quests both of which are facepalm-worthy.

1. Quest where there is a murder; you investigate and find out about a forsworn conspiracy. Eventually after some shitty lore all the guards turn hostile. Now apparently you are supposed to accept and go to jail and *not* genocide the guardic population of markath.
Either way I killed all the guards and somehow the jarl died/disappeared. And now the quest events all vanished and I'm not sure what happened.

2. "steal statue" from talos temple - to get into the temple you need to pick a lock. Picking this lock turns the unkillable priestess inside hostile and brings in guards. WTF ?
Anyway I tried this again after doing (1) above; now picking the lock didn't make her hostile but I had to kill all the priestesses inside.
Went back to the beggar for a 20 gold reward. Uh yeahhhh okayyy.

3. I'm still completely confused about how giants and level scaling in general works. Maybe It's just bad game balance, dunno.

 

[made]

2. "steal statue" from talos temple - to get into the temple you need to pick a lock. Picking this lock turns the unkillable priestess inside hostile and brings in guards. WTF ?
Anyway I tried this again after doing (1) above; now picking the lock didn't make her hostile but I had to kill all the priestesses inside.
Went back to the beggar for a 20 gold reward. Uh yeahhhh okayyy.

You're clearly just trolling and pulling a skyway for KKK. It's not the game's fault you have no idea how to play it. That's actually one of the best quests in the game and even has multiple solutions:

On top of killing everyone you can also sneak past the priestesses (with 0 points spent in sneaking), grab the statue and turn it in for a 20gp reward. Or, if they catch you sneaking around (or you just decide to come back later for the lulz) the priestesses (who by their own admission usually kill any male found in their sanctum, except this once) offer you a quest to fetch a child from a nearby village who just so happens to be their next high-priestess-to-be. Upon returning with the girl (which involves performing another menial task for the parents or persuading them with 0 points spent in speech) you are rewarded with an awesome power from their goddess.

The quest is second only to my favorite one during the banquet in the Thalmor Embassy, during which you have (presumably in addition to killing everyone) the option to convince (with 0 points spent in speech) one of the Thalmor leaders in Skyrim and chief of what appears to be their SS to create a distraction ("Trust me. I just want to play a prank on everyone.") while you slip away unnoticed to do your mission. This is only possible, however, if you've previously performaded a menial task for him, otherwise he won't trust you enough. You can also fetch a drink for one of the other party guests and he'll do the same for you, without the need to convince him (Beth left this option in as a fall back for players who have less than 0 points pent in speech). There is even C&C, because afterwards the above-mentioned Thalmor general is not exactly happy with you tricking him (and slaughtering all the guards in his base) and will refuse to give you further menial tasks as a consequence.

 

[Neeshka]

Well lockpicking instantly brought in guards and turned the npc hostile most of the time. When I came back later lockpicking did nothing.

I probably could have sneaked past the priestesses on the inside.

The main problem is that lockpicking randomly attracts guards; sometimes it does sometimes it doesn't. Even If I do lockpick and kill all the guards; it doesn't really seem like a big deal either.

Basically lockpicking and stealing seem extremely buggy or unpredictable in the game and whether or not there are consequences isn't always clear. Items in houses are completely randomly labelled "steal" whereas others are not. Similarly entering houses is frequently weird and npc's call guards for no reason occasionally.

I do agree that skyrim has the very occasional absolutely amazing quests.

My personal favorites probably are most of the daedra quests.

1) getting drunk, investigating and then getting taken to a daedra zone. This is possibly the best and most beautiful zone in the entire game so far.
2) daedra inside pelagius' mind
3) daedra dog and his master
4) Shadowgreen cave quest (with spriggan and bears) - don't really remember the quest details but again, the place was incredibly atmospheric and a pleasure to explore.
5) The Staff of magnus quest - The psijic order stuff was very well done.

And yes the thalmor embassy infiltration quest with the distraction element was pretty top notch.

 

[made]

And yes the thalmor embassy infiltration quest with the distraction element was pretty top notch.

Yes. My thoughts exactly.