Skyrim is worse than Oblivion in every way

[Wyrmlord]

Choices and consequences are just something from adventure games. If you don't pick up item X in area A, then you will be killed in area B. And so on. Because RPGs sometimes use soft adventure game elements (like the Glow from Fallout), it doesn't hurt to have a few adventure game features.

That doesn't mean every RPG has to be an adventure game. None of the 1980s RPGs were adventure games. Many 1990s RPGs were not adventure games. Just because one small sub-segment of RPGs has adventure game elements does not mean they all need to have them.

All this is akin to saying that Bloodlines was bad for not having any Jagged Alliance 2 style combat.

 

[hoopy]

Choices and consequences are just something from adventure games. If you don't pick up item X in area A, then you will be killed in area B. And so on.

That's not C&C, that's just a failure resulting in player death, no different from failing to dodge a goomba in Mario.

 

[Akasen]

A real example of C&C is making the choice of releasing a horrible game and completely selling out and then blocking the only threat to your rise to power. The consequence? Other than having now created a game that will now influence games in the future and probably cause major decline, NONE WHATSOEVER! Well, unless said threat decides to team up and make games that properly exemplify the genre in its many aspects and their games get popular.

Wait, where was I going with this?

Oh yes! C&C. It's simple, stab a guys bro and that guy will hate you for stabbing his bro. Blow up a colony of people and anyone who knows you did it should have an opinion about you. You decided to side with the peace loving hippies who are hoarding all the nuclear weapons and thus helping to spread peace across the land? Great! But it seems your hippie friends played Civilization as it would seem they realized that being the only people with nukes makes everyone else seem like a benign threat.

You know what? Let me cancel myself here with this quote.

This was never a series about choices and consequences, and people who bought Skyrim expecting C&C were wasting their time.

Can't beat that argument. Why shill cash/internet on a game that will fuck C&C anyways?

 

[DraQ]

Choices and consequences are just something from adventure games. If you don't pick up item X in area A, then you will be killed in area B. And so on.

That's not C&C, that's just a failure resulting in player death, no different from failing to dodge a goomba in Mario.

Wyrmie is malfunctioning, news at eleven.

AI design is teh hard.

 

[JarlFrank]

Hey Wyrmie, ever heard about something like internal consistency?

HURR YOU ARE THE ARCHMAGE BUT MAGE GUILD MEMBERS STILL TALK TO YOU LIKE YOU'RE A MERE RECRUIT

This doesn't have anything to do with meaningful Choice & Consequence (TM). This merely has to do with inner consistency and in-game logic. It breaks immersion not because it shows a lack of consequence, it breaks immersion because IT JUST IS SO UTTERLY DERP.

I don't need to have huge consequences for this, but removing or replacing some of the dialogue files shouldn't be too hard, right?

 

[Kaol]

Skyrim is fun for the most part but has a horrible themepark feel to it. Dosn't fulfill my requirements for an rpg really. More like an advanced dungeon crawler.

 

[racofer]

Choices and consequences are just something from adventure games. If you don't pick up item X in area A, then you will be killed in area B. And so on.

That's not C&C, that's just a failure resulting in player death, no different from failing to dodge a goomba in Mario.

Wyrmie is malfunctioning, news at eleven.

Hey Wyrmie, ever heard about something like internal consistency?

HURR YOU ARE THE ARCHMAGE BUT MAGE GUILD MEMBERS STILL TALK TO YOU LIKE YOU'RE A MERE RECRUIT

This doesn't have anything to do with meaningful Choice & Consequence (TM). This merely has to do with inner consistency and in-game logic. It breaks immersion not because it shows a lack of consequence, it breaks immersion because IT JUST IS SO UTTERLY DERP.

I don't need to have huge consequences for this, but removing or replacing some of the dialogue files shouldn't be too hard, right?

This. This is what that article I linked talked about. I'm not sure where Wyrmlord is coming up with his reasonings lately, perhaps the same place Skyway gets his facts from.

Skyrim fails at consistency. It's unable to coherently demonstrate any event that transpires as you play, everything is pretty much immutable from the moment you start the game up until 200 hours later after you have completed most of its quests and, supposedly, considerably changed things in the realm of Skyrim. Many times I've walked around Winterhold, being the Archmage (something that happens after a pathetic succession of events, by the way) and people would ask me if I was there to join the College. And this applies to pretty much every other "important event" that took place in that game.

Another example is when I become the Guild Master of the thieves guild and some of the members still talk to me as if I were a mere rascal that just applied for membership in the guild.

 

[DraQ]

It's just a lack of enough ambient dialogue. But if you interact with the people in the College or Jorrvaskr or whatever, they will refer to you as Archmage/Harbinger/whatever.

They could've at least block particular ambient dialogue off after it stops making sense.

 

[racofer]

Is Skyrim Teaching Your Children How to Perform “Rim Jobs” and Other Homo Erotic Sex Maneuvers?​

"If you are a responsible parent, then the world of MMORPG first person shooters should be something of a foreign language to you. In games like Skyrim, players are teleported to far away lands that are cream filled with demonic spell crafting, violent shirtless blood shed and exposed not only Satanic critters, but bombarded with gay under tones of fecal fornication."​

...​

"The spells the player are taught are directly out of The Book of Wiccan and are far more dangerous than anything your child is watching on that Wizards at Waverly Place and Sabrina The Teenage Witch. When a player casts a spell, you will see the hand gesture is that of how homosexuals fling devil DNA juices at each other after a long night of fecal frenzy ass assassinations. This is subliminally teaching your children that they need to go in their rooms, demon whack their sin staff and produce sin milk into their hands and than fling it in the face of the first person they come in contact with after their taint tugging session."​

...​

SKYRIM LINGO: DOVAHKIIN – Is the supposed citizens of Skyrim, but is a code word that means:​

D – Dirty​

O – Orifice​

V – Violation​

A – Always​

H – Hurts​

K – Keep​

I – Injecting​

I – It​

N – Naiant​

...​

"Skyrim Jobs – Skyrimming is a street term the gays use when talking about applying their tongues to the outer rim part of another man’s sewer spout, while that man is being hung upside down. See the gays have weird fetishes and are close to Satan. Satan speaks to them and tells them news ways on how to experience demonic orgasmic sin. Satan has recently taught our fecal fisting bandits that if you hang each other upside down and let the blood rush to the head, the anal dumpster becomes more sensitive to touch and we all know gays wake up and fall asleep just day dreaming about sticking something up their own or someone else’s sewer hole."​

Fucking

 

[Wyrmlord]

Has anyone here ever achieved 100% reduction in spellcasting cost? What's it like? I haven't played Skyrim in weeks (or maybe months?), but I was considering an Enchantment focused Breton, just to see what it's like.

The last time I did a Skyrim experiment, I played an unarmed Khajit with enchanted gauntlets and heavy armour skill. Quite disappointing, actually, so it made me stop playing for a long time.

 

[JarlFrank]

Also, Wyrmie, about your comparison of Skyrim and Daggerfall on the basis of gameplay/challenge: there's a huge difference between the two.

First, Skyrim has much less RPG elements than Daggerfall had: Daggerfall had more skills, it had stats, it had the strengths and weaknesses you could add to your character. Skyrim has... skills and perks that usually boil down to getting + % weapon damage. Daggerfall has a lot of different armor slots, together with clothing slots, that can all be enchanted, so there's a lot more loot variety. Skyrim has... torso, head, hands, feet, and two jewelry pieces (what the fuck is up with only being able to wear A SINGLE ring anyway).
For someone who loves developing their character, Skyrim really pales in comparison to Daggerfall's possibilities.

Also, the dungeoneering is different, too. Daggerfall has huge dungeons to explore (which are sometimes too large and don't have any logic to their design, granted) with multiple pathways of exploration. Skyrim's dungeons are usually strictly linear, with not even some side-rooms to check out, just a pretty straight line to follow. For me, this is not real dungeon crawling. I want to explore a dungeon, and that's impossible if it's a straight line because then there's nothing to explore - you just follow the line and see everything anyway.

Then, the difficutly. I often read you praising Skyrim's challenge. Well, personally, I switched difficulty back to normal when I noticed that filler combat in draugr crypts takes ages to get over with because of the level scaling (yeaah 3 draugr deathlords in a row) and the fucking HP bloat on higher difficulties. HP bloat is not challenge. It's tedium. Challenge is finding a lich in a Daggerfall dungeon even though you're still relatively low level, are low on mana, have to find out that he has a resistance against your only dmage spell, and the only weapon you have that can hurt him is an ebony dagger and your skill with short blades is shit. You frantically try to dodge his spells and use your resources as effectively as you can in order to survive this encounter. Challenge is about encountering a strong enemy and having to figure out the best way to defeat him with your character.
Skyrim's HP bloat is not challenge. It boils down to hitting an enemy 20 times before he falls down, all the while walking backwards so you won't get hit or just drinking tons of insta-heal potions. When even the simple filler combat in a dungeon boils down to chucking 5 potions and having to deal out 20 hits which makes combat against a single enemy last half a minute, it's not challenge, it's tedium.

 

[flushfire]

Has anyone here ever achieved 100% reduction in spellcasting cost? What's it like? I haven't played Skyrim in weeks (or maybe months?), but I was considering an Enchantment focused Breton, just to see what it's like.

pointless tbh. magic is just not strong enough especially at higher difficulties. you can get 25% reduction in 2 different schools per gear, so depending on what perks you take you can have 2-4 at 100% reduction but since magic doesnt scale you're better off filling that enchantment slot with a weapon damage enchant and then proceed to one-shot everything.

 

[Wyrmlord]

Also, Wyrmie, about your comparison of Skyrim and Daggerfall on the basis of gameplay/challenge: there's a huge difference between the two.

First, Skyrim has much less RPG elements than Daggerfall had: Daggerfall had more skills, it had stats, it had the strengths and weaknesses you could add to your character. Skyrim has... skills and perks that usually boil down to getting + % weapon damage. Daggerfall has a lot of different armor slots, together with clothing slots, that can all be enchanted, so there's a lot more loot variety. Skyrim has... torso, head, hands, feet, and two jewelry pieces (what the fuck is up with only being able to wear A SINGLE ring anyway).
For someone who loves developing their character, Skyrim really pales in comparison to Daggerfall's possibilities.

I don't disagree.

Also, the dungeoneering is different, too. Daggerfall has huge dungeons to explore (which are sometimes too large and don't have any logic to their design, granted) with multiple pathways of exploration. Skyrim's dungeons are usually strictly linear, with not even some side-rooms to check out, just a pretty straight line to follow. For me, this is not real dungeon crawling. I want to explore a dungeon, and that's impossible if it's a straight line because then there's nothing to explore - you just follow the line and see everything anyway.

I don't disagree. But given that the world of Skyrim is cratered with dungeons, it's not that much of a problem for me.

Then, the difficutly. I often read you praising Skyrim's challenge. Well, personally, I switched difficulty back to normal when I noticed that filler combat in draugr crypts takes ages to get over with because of the level scaling (yeaah 3 draugr deathlords in a row) and the fucking HP bloat on higher difficulties. HP bloat is not challenge. It's tedium. Challenge is finding a lich in a Daggerfall dungeon even though you're still relatively low level, are low on mana, have to find out that he has a resistance against your only dmage spell, and the only weapon you have that can hurt him is an ebony dagger and your skill with short blades is shit. You frantically try to dodge his spells and use your resources as effectively as you can in order to survive this encounter. Challenge is about encountering a strong enemy and having to figure out the best way to defeat him with your character.
Skyrim's HP bloat is not challenge. It boils down to hitting an enemy 20 times before he falls down, all the while walking backwards so you won't get hit or just drinking tons of insta-heal potions. When even the simple filler combat in a dungeon boils down to chucking 5 potions and having to deal out 20 hits which makes combat against a single enemy last half a minute, it's not challenge, it's tedium.

You are overstating Daggerfall's difficulty and understating Skyrim's, even though Daggerfall is obviously on the difficult side.

Liches in Daggerfall are not a problem, because if you have 30 HP/level character or even a decent fighter character, the liches AOE spell will kill him when you stand next to him in close range and may take half or three-quarters of your health at worst. If you wish to speak of Daggerfall's challenge, you could do better than choose liches. How about wraiths and scorpions who can paralyse you?

Skyrim does not have HP bloat as it's only means of challenge. In fact, I invite you to check the HP statistics table on UESP - HP/damage bloat has modest effect with difficulty change. The real challenge comes from stagger effects of attacks that leave you unable to fight back. A good fighter is able to temporarily paralyse your character. This means that even as a strong character taking on three slightly weaker enemies in Skyrim, one of them staggering you means you are dead. Similarly, when draugr use Dragon Shouts, they leave you on the ground and allow everyone to kill you. There is also big challenge from the fact that a well armoured character is equipped to deal with most normal attacks, but melts like butter next to other types of attacks, because he does not have a Ward spell. Vice versa for mages. But most important of all, both normal fighter and mage characters get killed easily by Forsworn Briarhearts (with both good armour and magic resistance), because Briarhearts use poison attacks. You can resist poison attacks mainly if you are a thief/assassin type of character, since their guilds provide armour that protects against poison. And so on. I'd say they did a decent job mixing in various types of attacks that affect the player in different ways in different situations.

Not to rag on Daggerfall, but that game didn't have as much variety in types of attacks used by enemies. You could give yourself Critical Weakness to Fire, Frost, Shock, Poison, and Disease, and be confident that it will never be a real problem. If Skyrim had Daggerfall's Disadvantage system, you'd know you are in a world of hurt when you give yourself Critical Weakness to Poison and leave yourself vulnerable to Forsworn and spiders.

 

[JarlFrank]

I don't disagree. But given that the world of Skyrim is cratered with dungeons, it's not that much of a problem for me.

It is for me though. What fun is it to trudge through dozens of dungeons that all feel the same and all follow the same design formula: a straight line with - if you're lucky - a boss at the end and maybe a sidequest centered around it. Quantity is NOT a replacement for quality. I'd much rather they'd condensed the same amount of space they now have for dungeons into half as many, but larger and more complex, dungeons. It would make exploration infinitely more rewarding.

*the part about the challenge*

Well, I won't deny that Skyrim has a nice variety of enemies, and that each has stengths and weaknesses that can get you fucked.

However, the game does suffer immensely from HP bloat on higher difficulties, as well as from level scaling that is luckily not as horrible as Oblivion's, but still a gamebreaker for me. I go into a dungeon and know that - if it is a draugr dungeon - there will be several high level draugrs in there because I am high level too. And having to hack away dozens of times until an enemy falls down, even if I use a weapon he's vulnerable against, is not really my idea of fun. The "high difficulty = enemies do more damage and have more HP" design philosophy of Bethesda is not the best way to handle difficulty, quite to the contrary.

 

[Wyrmlord]

Aren't there Restoration spells that cause draugr to run away from you or get on fire? Saves you the trouble of fighting them.

 

[Wyrmlord]

If you have to hack twenty times on a higher level draugr, it means you didn't improve your weapons through smithing. If you level up smithing on par with your main weapon skill (rather than cheese smithing to 100 immediately, to keep the game reasonable challenging) all enemies will fall in two power attacks at most, save perhaps draugr death overlords or named minibosses. But those can be softened up with certain shouts.

This is entirely correct.

I do not recall enemies that required even 4 hits.

 

[Grunker]

lol u didnt take this skill cant u see into the future lol

 

[Gord]

lol u didnt take this skill cant u see into the future lol

You see, this is an interesting point related to game design you are making here.
Does the difficulty of a game have to be balanced around "bad" builds, or do you make it challenging (and potentially hurt gameplay for those that fail to do it) by demanding that the player optimizes his character somewhat?
Basically you are asking for something that is commonly associated with here, i.e. making a game in a way that every retard can play it right away and will never be punished for a bad decision in character design or for failure to explore the possibilities the character system offers you.

That's not to say that Skyrims system couldn't be improved (a lot in some instances).

 

[Grunker]

So a bad build is any weapon build not involving smithing? lol yes that's optimizing right there the player's that didn't see that when they made a character are obviously completely retarded amirite

For your point to be true, you'd have to be able to calculate builds. You know, have the rulebook, be able to within reason see the difference between builds. You know, transparancy in the system. That's what makes builds "good" as opposed to "blindly lucky."

So fuck this

Does a games difficulty have to be balanced around "bad" builds, or do you make it challenging (and potentially hurt gameplay) by demanding that the player somewhat optimizes his character?

It has nothing to do with Skyrim. You have no idea of knowing beforehand that smithing will make the best weaponry, or that magic is shit because it doesn't scale. Compare this to old D&D-games where you can at least read the system.

One of cRPGs biggest sins - and that goes for good ones too like Frayed Knights for example - is a complete lack of transparancy in their system. And you cannot ask a player to make quote-unquote good builds when he has little to know idea in advance what stuff ACTUALLY does.

 

[Gord]

Not at all, there are more ways than just smithing to achieve that goal.

By the way, you are right about transparency in games.
However, I'd say that even in a system that has a more clearly defined set of rules and a good manual to learn them, you will still need a certain amount of experience with the game to get a good character.
Something that sounds good on paper does not necessarily work in game. But that's probably another problem with crpgs in general, that there's often a gap between intentions and outcomes.

 

[Grunker]

However, I'd say that even in a system that has a more clearly defined set of rules and a good manual to learn them, you will still need a certain amount of experience with the game to get a good character.

To get the best? Maybe. But if you have read the entire system/manual and it has transparancy, your character will be based mostly on your ability to correctly analyse that system. Therefore, if you get punished for picking incorrectly, unless it was impossible to foresee (picking anti-spell resistance in a game where no spell resistant creatures show up) you will have "deserved" your punishment. And then it's not just guess-work.

 

[oscar]

Skyrim's fun until about level 15. Then combat becomes a breeze.

 

[SquidLord]

They are both better then any game in the Ultima series that wasn't developed by Looking Glass Studios, but thats setting the bar at ankle height.

 

[Average Manatee]

Finally got around to actually playing this, impressions:

!. Environments are really nice and designed well. Really wish there was more depth other than "places with snow" vs "places with shittons of snow" though. While a big step up from Oblivion it still lacks in variety compared to the other ES games. The few areas that divulge from the snow landscape are usually fantastic to look at.

2. Dungeons have a lot of really nice set pieces, but would it kill Bethesda to throw a non-linear area every now and again? Also, the heavy scripting in a number of quests totally screw over stealth characters when the next area requires you to kill something before it opens up.

3. Level scaling is totally back. What retards said it was changed? It's only been made slightly less obvious because instead of fighting bandits in daedric at lvl 30 you fight uber bandits in iron at lvl 30 with the exact same stat upgrades either way. The only improvement from oblivion is that there is a floor below which certain enemies won't go, but that does little except prevent the embarassment of lvl 1 characters beating everything.

4. Hand crafted quests are of good quality, but far too few. Guilds in Morrowind had 30+ quests each, and there were something like 15 guilds/factions to choose from. Skyrim has 6 guilds, many of them being finishable in as few as 7 or 8 quests each. Guilds in Morrowind could have as much depth as the main plot line and take days to finish, Skyrim's are a 2 hour job at best. Is Bethesda afraid that ADD-tards will be upset if they can't become a werewolf from the super-secret society of werewolfs after finished exactly 1 guild quest (+ 1 radiant quest) from the very first city you reach?

4b. The "Radiant Quest" system actually is pretty nice though. It could use some more development but its not the laughingstock that Radiant AI was. Level scaling is the bigger issue screwing this up.

4c. Quest locations are absolutely screwed up. Morrowind was great in how you started off with quests that barely ventured out of town, slowly expanding to cover more and more ground (and dangerous areas) as you developed your character. Skyrim's quests have you popping all around the map every 30s. Combined with the level scaling of everything, this makes everything feel a lot smaller and like more of a children's playground than an actual world.

5. Character system as a whole is improved thanks to perks. They tend to be well balanced and give a good feeling of substantial leveling bonuses that you don't see with a bare-bones raise-by-use skill system (my main problem with such a system).

5b. Gutting stats is absolutely retarded. The first perk (with 5 levels each) in the tree is always a "do this +20% better" ability, essentially serving the same purpose as stats would have except now a 100 skill one-handed weapon user has 0 bonus to using two-handed weapons even though by all logic his agility and strength should make him quite deadly with them. Here, an easy way to fix this: Put back stats, don't level them normally on level up any more, instead simply make the first level of each of these skills give +10 to whatever they would normally derive from. Problem solved.

5c. Gutting skills has some good and bad. Good in that stupid stuff like axe/long blades/short blades/blunt weapons are changed into two handed and one handed. The latter has real tradeoffs to be considered (shield vs non-shield), the former basically all have the same range of function (TES isn't Demons Souls, you push a button and swing until they die). Speechcraft + Mercantile was another good decision. Bad decisions include things like not being able to jump high any more. Might as well make it a 2D game H&S game, pretty much the only use of jumping now is to scale cliffs you shouldn't be able to or to get on a rock and abuse the AI.

5d. No more character customization at the start is ridiculously stupid. At least give us 30 skill points to distribute wherever we like or something. The "class stones" as a replacement for actual classes is horribly meta-gamey, considering how simple it is to fast travel back and enjoy a +20% to alchemy growth before crafting potions, +20% enchanting growth before enchanting, then switch right back to warrior mode for the other 90% of the game.

6. Combat is much improved overall. There is actually something to do other than "click until they die" or "click while walking backwards until they die". Not quite up to the depth of the respective Morrowind/Oblivion mods, but at least Bethesda is making progress, and its tied into character progression with perks nicely.

6b. Balance, especially with regards to level scaling, is totally crap (even by TES standards). Hitting things with pointy sticks gets ~+300% bonuses from perks/skill and automatically get stronger weapons as they level up (also lol smithing). Magic spends most of their perks and skillpoints making spells not cost infinity mana to cast, the greatest damage buff they can get is +50% to a single element (which ironically boosts weapon enchantment damage as well). Has there ever been a TES game where magic was more of a joke?

6c. Dragons are an absolute joke. You would hope they would constantly strafe towns and destroy things. Instead they land most of the time and you just smack them with pointy sticks. It's pathetically easy to max your resistance to whatever the dragon has even at low levels, making them entirely unchallenging except as a 3k HP life bar. Its also hilarious when a lone bear easily demolishes a dragon, I await TES 6 where the land gets invaded by bears and shit actually gets fucked up.

6d. Dragon Shouts? What are those for? Does anyone actually use them?

Overall, I would give Skyrim a 7/10. For reference, Daggerfall and Morrowind I rate at 9/10 and Oblivion at 4/10.

Someone take what I wrote, throw in witty jokes, funny pictures and quotes that make Todd look stupid so we can get an Official Codex Review™ already.

 

[Wyrmlord]

lol u didnt take this skill cant u see into the future lol

Easy there.

What's among the very first things that happen when you leave Helgen? You meet a blacksmith, and are directed to a quick tutorial with him. What's the very first thing you do in Riverwood, the town with the said blacksmith? Most likely, in order to make money, you'd hunt animals, collect a dozen pelts, fashion several pieces of hide armour in the smith's place and sell it to him for a lot of money. That's the principal way of making money to buy spells from the very first store you find in the game - Riverwood trader. And if not that, you may ask for jobs in the inn...and be directed towards the nearby Embershard Mines. Which also contains a tutorial on mining, smelting, and smithing.

The manner and style in which you are - say - railroaded right at the beginning does indicate that smithing is to be a principal skill and mining is a core activity. Both are needed for securing the basic safety of the player character, because you are told you can't always rely on base level equipment.

None of these required foresight. The game directly hints and directs you this particular way.