Skyrim is worse than Oblivion in every way

[Gerrard]

My civilisation doesn't consider video games as its highest accomplishment.

I bet it's something completely fucking pointless, like landing on the moon.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

I did try replaying with that mod combination (and some others) but the result was that dragons either never spawned (mostly this), died instantly by piledriving the ground and leaving a kind of sad skeleton sticking vertically out of the snow neck-deep, died in one hit, or attacked a town eight at a time. The latter was... memorable, at least. Mostly for the thieves' guild boss shouting "I'VE FOUGHT OPPONENTS FIERCER THAN YOU" while being tossed around the canals repeatedly.

I'm not entirely sure what went wrong.

It does seem to affect their spawns, from what I've seen. But if anyone dies in one hit, it's the player. (I have 320 HP and 260 + 120 Dragonhide spell Armor Rating and Ancient Dragon on Adept was one-shotting me if he got an opportunity to bite me without blocking/warding etc.

By "one hit", I mean "one-word version of Fire Breath" one hit something went... terribly wrong. It was hilarious.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Reminds me of Whiterun's housecarl (the dunmer spellsword) desperately trying to rally the guards against the lvl20 dragon from Mighty Dragons.

Irileth: Don't let him take off! Keep him on the ground!

Dragon: *noms another guard's head*

Did you use BOSS and Nexus Mod Manager? The latter has a nifty "new mod version available" function.

 

[ohWOW]

Reminds me of Whiterun's housecarl (the dunmer spellsword) desperately trying to rally the guards against the lvl20 dragon from Mighty Dragons.

Irileth: Don't let him take off! Keep him on the ground!

Dragon: *noms another guard's head*

That was the only part of Skyrim, where I had some problems with defeating that dragon. 15 minutes of bow camping and then I rushed with some steel mace and got a neat kill cam.

Later I've learned how to use our immortal companion and horse to do the job for you.

 

[DraQ]

I have an idea of how to make dragons more menacing, but still manageable:

Set spawn frequency as low as technically possible without it being zero and give dragons ability to use all applicable shouts with very short cooldown, also give them minimal level of 30 or something.

Multiple followers mod recommended.

 

[DraQ]

-What really sucks is that this could have been an awesome spell which fit the game nicely...

(...)

This spell makes sense if you had great magick Power and could use this to "remote view" an object or person you were seeking.

I'd make it a bit of a short lived remote cam spell.

That would increasingly disturb the NPCs (with vague feeling of being watched) on repeated casting in the same area, making choice of when to use it and what to check important when wishing to maintain stealth.

Of course it would be a mysticism spell, which it should be even in its current incarnation.
I mean how is magically learning path to your goal illusion? Might as well be destruction or, I don't know, restoration.



One step forward, ten steps back, as usual.

The Mage Guild is a joke- I dont remember any real "benefit" from the questline other than a semi cool Mage Guild Leader House.

I would make the benefit instantaneous "immersive" line-of-sight teleportation from the roof of CoW. Would be both "awesome" and useful.

Except that, as far as I remember, the sidequests have nothing do with advancing in the guild, so you'll end up being the Grandmaster after a few quests anyway. The sidequests don't change the actual structure in any way.

If we discount the sidequests, then structure is about the same - line and line. OB has advantage of length, Skyrim of theme. Small amount of non-shit beats large amount of shit, even when "hi new recruit omg chosen one" is indeed ridiculous.

Advancing in the guild was mostly just cosmetic, but at least it was there. I also don't remember it being epic at all either, because most of the time you just slaughter trolls in some cave. The plot was almost nonexistent.

Really? Because I remember my first impression from OB guilds was how incredibly plot-centric they are.

They are linear sequences of pre-scripted events.
Apart from most recommendation quests MG has total of one quest not centered on beating them pesky necromancers upside the head, for example.
At least Skyrim's guilds have some randomized generic guild quests to get you sidetracked.

That's mostly just a question of writing, not structure.

Indeed, but it renders any structural advantage moot.

Freelance thievery still beats doing the same radiant quest over and over again.

It doesn't because of its pointlessness.

Just like in Skyrim. Doesn't have anything to do with structure.

Extreme linearity has a lot to do with structure and weeping while carrying idiot ball forcing you to behave like a total moron has a lot to do with being able to enjoy traversing this structure.

Also, I haven't played Skyrim's DB yet, but I don't think they can top OB's guild in terms of being retarded psychotic goth kids.

At the very least Skyrim gives you an opportunity to branch completely around the DB questline and do a (much shorter alas) questline of just offing the fucktards, which is very prominent difference in terms of structure.

The quests are exactly the same with all guilds, with hardly any variety at all. Radiant quests are just pointless because there's no kind of challenge to them. You just do the same thing over and over again in a slightly different town or house.

Was there any challenge to getting Ajira ceramic bowl from shop next door in Morrowind or fetching some Telvanni smokeskin sload soap in MW?

No, but those quests awere important in building the right ambience. You don't get to do exciting and challenging shit when starting up as n00b in an organization. You do chores no one else can be arsed to do.

Yeah, but the stuff you find in Skyrim is still worthless compared to stuff you can make with decent crafting and enchanting skills.

If you prefer grinding shit at the forge instead of, you know, adventuring.

By this measure you can also grind fortify intelligence potions in Morrowind, make potions increasing your stats by over 9000 for the next 36000 years while also healing you completely in every engine tick and refilling your stamina and magicka, and roflstomp everything in game by poking it with your finger, without need for any gear.

I'm not saying that exploration is done right in Skyrim, but when I found my first suit of daedric in it without any loot affecting mods, it was one suit stowed in some Thalmor dungeon, at relatively high level and I couldn't find fitting gauntlets, or helmet for it for a long time, Although I managed to find a single Dragonscale armour in a roadside ruin, and I think two glass armours total in the same game (then I restarted due to extensive amount of mods I installed to tweak and improve various aspects of the game).

You don't even really have to look for anything because the Daedric quests basically force themselves down your throat.

That's a valid complaint, but I would take even completely unsubtle funneling over complete disconnection from the gameworld as it was the case in oblivious.
Morrowind quests and notable loot often had breadcrumbs of sort leading to them, although, of course, Morrowind funneling was very subtle, often verging on imperceptible. For example you could be hinted towards Boethiah's quest before you even left Seyda Neen for the first time.

Then you have the case of Skyrim daedric quests being simply better than Oblivious equivalents. Also in terms of structure - for example you can refuse Dagon's Quest instead of just stalling it with no consequence.

There were lots of quests in Oblivion that took place in towns and where you could do thing a bit differently depending on the time of day, your skills, Radiant AI etc.

There were few of them and quite a few had special measures preventing them being in towns form interfering with basic gameplay (late DB quests, for example).

Daily activity cycles did provide some opportunities, but they were mostly unused or heavily scripted to provide one definite path.

Besides, it's not like Skyrim lacks activity cycles for NPCs and the layout of its cities gives more opportunities for gameplay within.

You could bribe a guard to turn a blind eye when entering a house, or you could go through the back door, or you could pickpocket the key from the house's owner etc. Especially the DB quests had usually a few different ways to do them. It was not great or anything, but Skyrim has very little of this kind of stuff because quests usually take place in dungeons where you've only got one way to go. There are a couple of DB and TG quests that give you different options, but you could count them on one hand.

I don't recall many such instances in OB either.

Are you seriously saying there's more of this in Oblivion than in Skyrim? I remember a few cases of cutscene paralysis in Oblivion, but Skyrim uses it almost constantly, especially with the Thieves Guild.

Haven't done the TG, but in OB cutscene paralysis was effectively a band-aid for plotholes. See this quest in Bravil where some orcish fuck organizes hunts for two legged game.

It's not that far off. The NPCs may not have permanent brain damage but they're still on the level of five-year-olds mentally.

That's still a massive improvement.

 

[Carrion]

If we discount the sidequests, then structure is about the same - line and line. OB has advantage of length, Skyrim of theme. Small amount of non-shit beats large amount of shit, even when "hi new recruit omg chosen one" is indeed ridiculous.

The FG and the MG allowed you to choose in which order you did some of the quests, even though you still had to do all of them in the end. In the TG you had to gain rank before getting access to the later quests, even if that mostly came down to freelance thieving. I also can't understand what good you see about the theme in Skyrim's guilds as everything about them is either clumsy or just fucking retarded, the DB being probably the only one that was even remotely logical.

Really? Because I remember my first impression from OB guilds was how incredibly plot-centric they are.

They became plot-centric towards the end, but the early quests in almost all of the guilds were non-related to the plot or at least disguised so that they at first seemed like they were just usual job assignments ("person X has a problem with goblins, deal with it"). This was especially true with the Fighters Guild. In Skyrim, you usually get a plot twist in the first damn quest.

They are linear sequences of pre-scripted events.
Apart from most recommendation quests MG has total of one quest not centered on beating them pesky necromancers upside the head, for example.
At least Skyrim's guilds have some randomized generic guild quests to get you sidetracked.

Just making a wild estimate here, but the recommendation quests made up for almost half of the total amount of quests in the guild. Like I said, the Arcane University part is shit.

It doesn't because of its pointlessness.

It's not any more pointless than stealing the same cup from a dozen similar houses. It also gives you more freedom (robbing a manor is more profitable than robbing random houses) and more money, and you can just do a little bit of thieving on the side whenever you happen to visit a city instead of trying to do it all at once.

At the very least Skyrim gives you an opportunity to branch completely around the DB questline and do a (much shorter alas) questline of just offing the fucktards, which is very prominent difference in terms of structure.

Yeah, that's good, but how long is the other questline? Just curious, I never played it.

Was there any challenge to getting Ajira ceramic bowl from shop next door in Morrowind or fetching some Telvanni smokeskin sload soap in MW?

No, but those quests awere important in building the right ambience. You don't get to do exciting and challenging shit when starting up as n00b in an organization. You do chores no one else can be arsed to do.

Kind of like the recommendation quests in Oblivion's Mages Guild which you dismissed as BSB on the last page, or the early quests in pretty much every guild in Oblivion. The thing is, Skyrim has you doing the same Ajira's quest with minor variations for a few dozen times if you want to fuily upgrade the Thieves Guild regardless of whether you've just joined or whether you're Nocturnal's favorite person in the world. All the main guild questlines have is epic stuff that should never be given to a total novice, yet that's exactly what happens.

If you prefer grinding shit at the forge instead of, you know, adventuring.

By this measure you can also grind fortify intelligence potions in Morrowind, make potions increasing your stats by over 9000 for the next 36000 years while also healing you completely in every engine tick and refilling your stamina and magicka, and roflstomp everything in game by poking it with your finger, without need for any gear.

I'm not saying that exploration is done right in Skyrim, but when I found my first suit of daedric in it without any loot affecting mods, it was one suit stowed in some Thalmor dungeon, at relatively high level and I couldn't find fitting gauntlets, or helmet for it for a long time, Although I managed to find a single Dragonscale armour in a roadside ruin, and I think two glass armours total in the same game (then I restarted due to extensive amount of mods I installed to tweak and improve various aspects of the game).

Morrowind can be of course exploited in a billion different ways, but you either need to know the game really well or just have a really high-level character to do that. You don't need to exploit Skyrim because the game is balanced in such a way that even a mediocre craftsman/enchanter can make stuff that makes unique Daedric artifacts look like children's toys. I did most Daedric quests in the game but I don't think I found any real use for any of that stuff, even though I only grinded a little (because raising certain skills always requires a bit of grinding in TES games). The best thing you could find in Skyrim was an unenchanted sword or armor.

Then you have the case of Skyrim daedric quests being simply better than Oblivious equivalents. Also in terms of structure - for example you can refuse Dagon's Quest instead of just stalling it with no consequence.

I don't think they are that much better as both games have pretty unimaginative Daedric quests that usually come down to going to some dungeon and getting something (although it's the same thing in Morrowind and Daggerfall as well). Skyrim does have a few pretty interesting unique dungeons in a couple of those quests, and also some nice stuff like having to slaughter your companion for Boethiah, but the fact that those quests just fall on your lap diminishes their value for me. In Daggerfall or Morrowind you may play the game for a hundred hours before even realizing that stuff exists, in Oblivion you'll probably find out about it pretty soon but you still have to look for them a bit, and in Skyrim you get half of those quests without even doing anything.

I think one big flaw that Skyrim has is the lack of a sense of mystery, which really affected my will to explore the world. Like you said, in Morrowind a lot of the clues are hidden and you have to a lot of digging yourself. You may hear some random rumors about an underwater city, go check it out just for fun and then get a "holy shit!" moment. You may completely miss the vampire quests because of getting the corprus disease before even seeing a single vampire. It really gives you the feeling that you don't know the land or the game very well, and that it may have a lot more surprises in store for you. In Oblivion, a lot of that stuff is in plain sight as you constantly run into vampires, the Daedric shrines are clearly visible and the questlines send you into all the "cool" places anyway. Level-scaling and quest compass just add insult to the injury. In Skyrim, this is made even worse because a good chunk of that stuff is outright forced on you even if you try to avoid it. After a single playthrough (completed all the major questlines) I have no interest in playing the game again because I feel I've seen everything it has to offer.

Besides, it's not like Skyrim lacks activity cycles for NPCs and the layout of its cities gives more opportunities for gameplay within.

Maybe in theory, but definitely not in practice since there very little gameplay inside cities apart from radiant quests which usually come down to walking into a house and grabbing an object when no one's looking, or something equally lame.

Haven't done the TG, but in OB cutscene paralysis was effectively a band-aid for plotholes. See this quest in Bravil where some orcish fuck organizes hunts for two legged game.

Well, you might change your mind when you get around to finishing the Thieves Guild. I'd go as far as say that it makes less sense than any guild in Oblivion. It's just full of idiocy from the get go and just gets worse when it tries to make sense of all the nonsense that's happening, even though it also has probably the best quest in the game (which isn't technically even a Thieves Guild quest). It also has numerous (completely and utterly retarded) moments where your character is unable to do anything because there's a cutscene happening. It's horrible. Check it out.

 

[roll-a-die]

If we discount the sidequests, then structure is about the same - line and line. OB has advantage of length, Skyrim of theme. Small amount of non-shit beats large amount of shit, even when "hi new recruit omg chosen one" is indeed ridiculous.

The FG and the MG allowed you to choose in which order you did some of the quests, even though you still had to do all of them in the end. In the TG you had to gain rank before getting access to the later quests, even if that mostly came down to freelance thieving. I also can't understand what good you see about the theme in Skyrim's guilds as everything about them is either clumsy or just fucking retarded, the DB being probably the only one that was even remotely logical.

Really? Because I remember my first impression from OB guilds was how incredibly plot-centric they are.

They became plot-centric towards the end, but the early quests in almost all of the guilds were non-related to the plot or at least disguised so that they at first seemed like they were just usual job assignments ("person X has a problem with goblins, deal with it"). This was especially true with the Fighters Guild. In Skyrim, you usually get a plot twist in the first damn quest.

They are linear sequences of pre-scripted events.
Apart from most recommendation quests MG has total of one quest not centered on beating them pesky necromancers upside the head, for example.
At least Skyrim's guilds have some randomized generic guild quests to get you sidetracked.

Just making a wild estimate here, but the recommendation quests made up for almost half of the total amount of quests in the guild. Like I said, the Arcane University part is shit.

It doesn't because of its pointlessness.

It's not any more pointless than stealing the same cup from a dozen similar houses. It also gives you more freedom (robbing a manor is more profitable than robbing random houses) and more money, and you can just do a little bit of thieving on the side whenever you happen to visit a city instead of trying to do it all at once.

At the very least Skyrim gives you an opportunity to branch completely around the DB questline and do a (much shorter alas) questline of just offing the fucktards, which is very prominent difference in terms of structure.

Yeah, that's good, but how long is the other questline? Just curious, I never played it.

Was there any challenge to getting Ajira ceramic bowl from shop next door in Morrowind or fetching some Telvanni smokeskin sload soap in MW?

No, but those quests awere important in building the right ambience. You don't get to do exciting and challenging shit when starting up as n00b in an organization. You do chores no one else can be arsed to do.

Kind of like the recommendation quests in Oblivion's Mages Guild which you dismissed as BSB on the last page, or the early quests in pretty much every guild in Oblivion. The thing is, Skyrim has you doing the same Ajira's quest with minor variations for a few dozen times if you want to fuily upgrade the Thieves Guild regardless of whether you've just joined or whether you're Nocturnal's favorite person in the world. All the main guild questlines have is epic stuff that should never be given to a total novice, yet that's exactly what happens.

If you prefer grinding shit at the forge instead of, you know, adventuring.

By this measure you can also grind fortify intelligence potions in Morrowind, make potions increasing your stats by over 9000 for the next 36000 years while also healing you completely in every engine tick and refilling your stamina and magicka, and roflstomp everything in game by poking it with your finger, without need for any gear.

I'm not saying that exploration is done right in Skyrim, but when I found my first suit of daedric in it without any loot affecting mods, it was one suit stowed in some Thalmor dungeon, at relatively high level and I couldn't find fitting gauntlets, or helmet for it for a long time, Although I managed to find a single Dragonscale armour in a roadside ruin, and I think two glass armours total in the same game (then I restarted due to extensive amount of mods I installed to tweak and improve various aspects of the game).

Morrowind can be of course exploited in a billion different ways, but you either need to know the game really well or just have a really high-level character to do that. You don't need to exploit Skyrim because the game is balanced in such a way that even a mediocre craftsman/enchanter can make stuff that makes unique Daedric artifacts look like children's toys. I did most Daedric quests in the game but I don't think I found any real use for any of that stuff, even though I only grinded a little (because raising certain skills always requires a bit of grinding in TES games). The best thing you could find in Skyrim was an unenchanted sword or armor.

Then you have the case of Skyrim daedric quests being simply better than Oblivious equivalents. Also in terms of structure - for example you can refuse Dagon's Quest instead of just stalling it with no consequence.

I don't think they are that much better as both games have pretty unimaginative Daedric quests that usually come down to going to some dungeon and getting something (although it's the same thing in Morrowind and Daggerfall as well). Skyrim does have a few pretty interesting unique dungeons in a couple of those quests, and also some nice stuff like having to slaughter your companion for Boethiah, but the fact that those quests just fall on your lap diminishes their value for me. In Daggerfall or Morrowind you may play the game for a hundred hours before even realizing that stuff exists, in Oblivion you'll probably find out about it pretty soon but you still have to look for them a bit, and in Skyrim you get half of those quests without even doing anything.

I think one big flaw that Skyrim has is the lack of a sense of mystery, which really affected my will to explore the world. Like you said, in Morrowind a lot of the clues are hidden and you have to a lot of digging yourself. You may hear some random rumors about an underwater city, go check it out just for fun and then get a "holy shit!" moment. You may completely miss the vampire quests because of getting the corprus disease before even seeing a single vampire. It really gives you the feeling that you don't know the land or the game very well, and that it may have a lot more surprises in store for you. In Oblivion, a lot of that stuff is in plain sight as you constantly run into vampires, the Daedric shrines are clearly visible and the questlines send you into all the "cool" places anyway. Level-scaling and quest compass just add insult to the injury. In Skyrim, this is made even worse because a good chunk of that stuff is outright forced on you even if you try to avoid it. After a single playthrough (completed all the major questlines) I have no interest in playing the game again because I feel I've seen everything it has to offer.

Besides, it's not like Skyrim lacks activity cycles for NPCs and the layout of its cities gives more opportunities for gameplay within.

Maybe in theory, but definitely not in practice since there very little gameplay inside cities apart from radiant quests which usually come down to walking into a house and grabbing an object when no one's looking, or something equally lame.

Haven't done the TG, but in OB cutscene paralysis was effectively a band-aid for plotholes. See this quest in Bravil where some orcish fuck organizes hunts for two legged game.

Well, you might change your mind when you get around to finishing the Thieves Guild. I'd go as far as say that it makes less sense than any guild in Oblivion. It's just full of idiocy from the get go and just gets worse when it tries to make sense of all the nonsense that's happening, even though it also has probably the best quest in the game (which isn't technically even a Thieves Guild quest). It also has numerous (completely and utterly retarded) moments where your character is unable to do anything because there's a cutscene happening. It's horrible. Check it out.

I'll save him the trouble, you can find an incredibly indepth article on it, here, http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=14422 TL:dr it's shit and the devs who worked on it should be lined up and have dobermans issue castrations.

I will point out though that this is one area where had the not called it thieves guild, it would make more sense. Rogues Guild, might have made it better. Because a rogue isn't always stealing things.

 

[ohWOW]

In Skyrim, being a rouge is all about stealing the same golden cup from hundred of different houses. The more golden cups you steal and bring to that chick - the higher rank you get.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Skyrim is definitely flawed, but I have the impression you go out of your way to make the experience as boring as possible.

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

In Skyrim, being a rouge is all about stealing the same golden cup from hundred of different houses. The more golden cups you steal and bring to that chick - the higher rank you get.

Oh my.

Apparently Bethesda thought everyone was too stupid to to untangle the threads of this thuddingly obvious frame-up. This is not the last time they will underestimate the intelligence of the player.

Well, they sure know their audience.

 

[Carrion]

In all fairness, you can do other things instead of just stealing the golden cup. You can also plant a false cup in someone's house, which is exactly the same but with a tweeest. You also have quests where you have to steal three different cups instead of just one. Then there are quests that are basically the same as Oblivion's freelance thieving, except that you have to steal all stuff from a specific town. Grabbing a single potion from an alchemist's shop is usually enough to complete those quests and make the citizens of that town realize that the Thieves Guild is alive and well and should be feared. I think there was a pickpocketing quest as well. Anyway, those quests don't bring you any advancement, but if you do enough of them in every city you get special quests that are kind of neat and bring some actual benefits to the guild, like new traders.

I think I did about five radiant quests for the Dork Brotherhood, and as far as I remember I had to kill the same guy at the Solitude stables three times. I wonder what he did to piss off the Night Mother in such a way... The Companions send you to small towns to fist fight people (and there might've been some dungeon crawling stuff as well), and I don't even remember what the hell the College radiant quests were about.

 

[DraQ]

The FG and the MG allowed you to choose in which order you did some of the quests, even though you still had to do all of them in the end.

If I understand correctly you can also choose the order in at least DB in Skyrim.

In the TG you had to gain rank before getting access to the later quests, even if that mostly came down to freelance thieving.

"Mostly"?

Besides, rank doesn't matter if all you do is sitting on a rail. If anything, Skyrim's procedural filler quest generation would actually allow rank mechanics to be used correctly.

I also can't understand what good you see about the theme in Skyrim's guilds as everything about them is either clumsy or just fucking retarded, the DB being probably the only one that was even remotely logical.

I don't mean plot.
I mean something subtler - ambience and doing what you signed up for.

For example dealing with arcane in CoW as opposed to chasing necromancers, possibly with hammr instead of spells.

Whether their plots were retarded or not CoW felt wizard-y as opposed to retards play pretending inquisition, Companions felt like band of warriors as opposed to guild of exterminators endangered by derpier guild sinister exterminators, and so on.

In Skyrim, you usually get a plot twist in the first damn quest.

That's true if a bit exaggerated.

Just making a wild estimate here, but the recommendation quests made up for almost half of the total amount of quests in the guild.

Gods be praised. I never made it to the end anyway.

It's not any more pointless than stealing the same cup from a dozen similar houses.

Actually, it is.

Psychologically it's better to be given a more focused goal (steal particular item) than a more abstract one (raise X septims) but restricting methods to the least efficient ones (by stealing pointless shit from pointless people).

It's also better in terms of design effort, because it predictably involves a small number of complex locations that allow for more variety mechanically, than great number of dead simple ones.

Now, if OB's freeform thievery would instead involve getting items of individual worth surpassing some values, then it would make a decent freeform quest and it would make more sense in universe - because stealing 200 pairs of peasant pants isn't quite as impressive as nabbing countess' necklace.

Yeah, that's good, but how long is the other questline? Just curious, I never played it.

Haven't played it either, but at least it's an actual choice. You can truly refuse joining a faction by destroying it instead of just postponing it, possibly indefinitely.

Kind of like the recommendation quests in Oblivion's Mages Guild which you dismissed as BSB on the last page, or the early quests in pretty much every guild in Oblivion.

It might have something to do with OB guilds' lack of ambience. MW early quests felt like chores, OB's like pointless tests or like nothing in particular.

Morrowind can be of course exploited in a billion different ways, but you either need to know the game really well or just have a really high-level character to do that.

Not really. Grinding alchemy is even more trivial than grinding crafting in Skyrim.

You don't need to exploit Skyrim because the game is balanced in such a way that even a mediocre craftsman/enchanter can make stuff that makes unique Daedric artifacts look like children's toys.

You can grind massive amounts of cash with alchemy in MW, then use it to get similarly powerful enchantments without even having crafting skills in Morrowind.

I'm not saying that Skyrim is not to be criticised, because it's as fine example of beth's "one step forward, ten back" trademark strategy as any other game in the series they made after DF (only this time it's actually enjoyable instead of being an abysmal turd like OB). I'm saying that it shouldn't be criticized unfairly for example when the same aspect is even more broken in another game which is set as role model.

The best thing you could find in Skyrim was an unenchanted sword or armor.

Yes, the game lacks unique loot, but not being showered with daedric gear is still an incline and being able, but not guaranteed to find a piece of random high level gear can still drive some exploration.

but the fact that those quests just fall on your lap diminishes their value for me. In Daggerfall or Morrowind you may play the game for a hundred hours before even realizing that stuff exists, in Oblivion you'll probably find out about it pretty soon but you still have to look for them a bit, and in Skyrim you get half of those quests without even doing anything.

Indeed, but after already playing MW and DF you already know those quests will be there in Skyrim, while raking repetitive wilderness for map markers was not what I would find exciting in OB.

True, you could get some locations by talking to malformed tubers in OB, but it's hard to do such a thing willingly.

I think one big flaw that Skyrim has is the lack of a sense of mystery, which really affected my will to explore the world. Like you said, in Morrowind a lot of the clues are hidden and you have to a lot of digging yourself. You may hear some random rumors about an underwater city, go check it out just for fun and then get a "holy shit!" moment. You may completely miss the vampire quests because of getting the corprus disease before even seeing a single vampire. It really gives you the feeling that you don't know the land or the game very well, and that it may have a lot more surprises in store for you. In Oblivion, a lot of that stuff is in plain sight as you constantly run into vampires, the Daedric shrines are clearly visible and the questlines send you into all the "cool" places anyway. Level-scaling and quest compass just add insult to the injury. In Skyrim, this is made even worse because a good chunk of that stuff is outright forced on you even if you try to avoid it. After a single playthrough (completed all the major questlines) I have no interest in playing the game again because I feel I've seen everything it has to offer.

True, but there is one thing MW and Skyrim do that you have almost touched in the above paragraph that oblivious does not - connecting their stuff together, telling stories through environment and so on.

Skyrim may be severely dumbed down, it may drop heaps of obvious leads on your lap for no reason, but it still feels like a world.

Oblivious felt like a bag with random shit thrown in - there was no structure to the gameworld as a whole.

Maybe in theory, but definitely not in practice since there very little gameplay inside cities apart from radiant quests which usually come down to walking into a house and grabbing an object when no one's looking, or something equally lame.

Sounds like your independent thievery in OB.

Well, you might change your mind when you get around to finishing the Thieves Guild. I'd go as far as say that it makes less sense than any guild in Oblivion. It's just full of idiocy from the get go and just gets worse when it tries to make sense of all the nonsense that's happening, even though it also has probably the best quest in the game (which isn't technically even a Thieves Guild quest). It also has numerous (completely and utterly retarded) moments where your character is unable to do anything because there's a cutscene happening. It's horrible. Check it out.

I'll get back to you when I do.

 

[Luzur]

 

[Carrion]

If I understand correctly you can also choose the order in at least DB in Skyrim.

I don't remember, honestly. There may be a quest or two where you get a number of different targets you can take out in any order, but the questline itself follows a stricly linear path.

Besides, rank doesn't matter if all you do is sitting on a rail. If anything, Skyrim's procedural filler quest generation would actually allow rank mechanics to be used correctly.

It would, but it doesn't.

I don't mean plot.
I mean something subtler - ambience and doing what you signed up for.

For example dealing with arcane in CoW as opposed to chasing necromancers, possibly with hammr instead of spells.

Whether their plots were retarded or not CoW felt wizard-y as opposed to retards play pretending inquisition, Companions felt like band of warriors as opposed to guild of exterminators endangered by derpier guild sinister exterminators, and so on.

I disagree. CoW is just a boring relic hunt like everything else in the game. You've got the Eye of Magnus but the game never really does anything with it. The Companions questline forces you through some truly terrible shit that has little to do with actually being a fighter or a warrior, and there really should've been a way to just exterminate the fuckers when the big twist is revealed (in the first actual fucking quest, no less). How exactly is it better than any guild in Oblivion? Like has already been said, the Thieves Guild has nothing to do with being a thief. The Dark Brotherhood is alright but could've used a few more actual assassination quests to balance things out a bit as that questline too is a bit too plot-centric. Gameplay-wise there are few differences between the guilds.

Actually, it is.

Psychologically it's better to be given a more focused goal (steal particular item) than a more abstract one (raise X septims) but restricting methods to the least efficient ones (by stealing pointless shit from pointless people).

It's also better in terms of design effort, because it predictably involves a small number of complex locations that allow for more variety mechanically, than great number of dead simple ones.

Now, if OB's freeform thievery would instead involve getting items of individual worth surpassing some values, then it would make a decent freeform quest and it would make more sense in universe - because stealing 200 pairs of peasant pants isn't quite as impressive as nabbing countess' necklace.

But that's exactly what you can do! You can break into a manor or a castle, grab every piece of jewelry you can find and be done with it. If you're just stealing pants or something, it's no wonder you find it pointless and tedious.

Not really. Grinding alchemy is even more trivial than grinding crafting in Skyrim.

That's a lie. Grinding alchemy to decent levels in Morrowind can easily take hours unless you have it as a major skill or sit inside Nalcarya's shop buying all of her ingredients every time she replenishes her stock. In Skyrim you can raise crafting by multiple points in a matter of minutes, and all of the required resources are free and more or less unlimited.

You can grind massive amounts of cash with alchemy in MW, then use it to get similarly powerful enchantments without even having crafting skills in Morrowind.

Sure. The thing is, if you take this route you still cannot surpass the enchantments you find in certain unique items. You can abuse Fortify effects and so on for maximum cheese, but how many hours will you spend playing the game before realizing that you can actually do that? You can fuck up Skyrim's balance even with mediocre enchanting skills, without even actively trying to break the game. The system has fewer loopholes, but it is even more unbalanced.

I'm not saying that Skyrim is not to be criticised, because it's as fine example of beth's "one step forward, ten back" trademark strategy as any other game in the series they made after DF (only this time it's actually enjoyable instead of being an abysmal turd like OB). I'm saying that it shouldn't be criticized unfairly for example when the same aspect is even more broken in another game which is set as role model.

Fair enough.

Yes, the game lacks unique loot, but not being showered with daedric gear is still an incline and being able, but not guaranteed to find a piece of random high level gear can still drive some exploration.

Maybe, but I don't remember a single piece of unique equipment that I would've actively used in the game. Maybe the Nightingale armor to hide my fucking ugly Dunmer face.

Indeed, but after already playing MW and DF you already know those quests will be there in Skyrim, while raking repetitive wilderness for map markers was not what I would find exciting in OB.

Why do you even need Daedric quests? You could just say "fuck them" and have something new instead, or completely revamp the concept and make it feel fresh and genuinely interesting. Skyrim feels just so safe, formulaic and predictable. It's the opposite of Morrowind in this respect.

True, but there is one thing MW and Skyrim do that you have almost touched in the above paragraph that oblivious does not - connecting their stuff together, telling stories through environment and so on.

Skyrim may be severely dumbed down, it may drop heaps of obvious leads on your lap for no reason, but it still feels like a world.

Oblivious felt like a bag with random shit thrown in - there was no structure to the gameworld as a whole.

Yeah, I can agree on that. Still, I don't see Skyrim really as an improvement over Oblivion. It is a much better game, yes, but it also feels more like a skeleton of a TES game than an actual follow-up to anything. It borrows something from Oblivion, adds in a bit of Morrowind, removes everything it sees as unnecessary (including attributes, numerous skills and pretty much every interesting spell in the previous games), makes some minor improvements here and there, and comes off as a more focused yet much simpler game as a result. The only times it really grabbed me was when it directly ripped off Morrowind or did something based on previously established lore. If you judge Skyrim by its own merits, there's not much that's worth praising.

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

If I understand correctly you can also choose the order in at least DB in Skyrim.

I don't remember, honestly. There may be a quest or two where you get a number of different targets you can take out in any order, but the questline itself follows a stricly linear path.

The Dark Brotherhood is alright but could've used a few more actual assassination quests to balance things out a bit as that questline too is a bit too plot-centric. Gameplay-wise there are few differences between the guilds.

Without interrupting your sweet intercourse; I completed DB in Skyrim, I have to say it sucks. It's a cheap ripoff from Oblivion (!!!!!) - do with this fact what you want, but if the game has to be inspired by Oblivious, which done it better, we have a serious problem.

It's more plot-centric that Oblivious counterpart; for the worse - if you want a spoiler, you

Spoiler

assassinate Emperor Titus Mede II who visits Skyrim for the lulz; and is even more retarded when you're an Imperial, or if Stormcloaks won the War. The preparation for such an undertaking is not without complications, but before you kill him, Emperor concludes that "it's destiny lol", and everybody's happy.

. Mathieu Bellamont, or whatever, from DB in Oblivion was just better. But then again, DB was one of the few things in OB that were passable -- there aren't even any alternate ways with bonuses in Skyrim version. Duh.

Other than that, it rips most of other Oblivion's gimmicks and things, including Lucien Lachance's Ghost follower, "Sithis devotee -- reluctant skepticist -- say nothing" conversations, Blade of Woe, or Shadowmere.

Also, I haven't played Skyrim's DB yet, but I don't think they can top OB's guild in terms of being retarded psychotic goth kids.

I assume by "retarded psychotic goth kids" you mean Radiant conversations like "you had a bunny, it was so adorable when you crushed its little skull mwahahaha"?

How about that - there's a child vampire in Falkreath Sanctuary that looks exactly like those other children-clone-automatons in Skyrim (as UESP quotes, "I'm just a little girl! The Dark Brotherhood killed my mama and papa, and then they took me captive! Please, please help me! Rather convincing, don't you think? In truth, I'm no more a little girl than you are. I was once, of course. Three hundred years ago. Vampirism tends to keep one remarkably... fresh."), and engages in Radiant conversations like "-that old man wanted to gibe me a candy, you can imagine how pleased I was when I saw his terrified eyes ahahah -oh you little brat, how adorable you are uahahaha". Others are your usual murderous fuck-ups, some are jealous about you being Night Mother's chosen (of course). And then there's Adoring Fan Part 2 A.K.A. Poor Cicero...



^I like how the player's response on the screenshot is "?" Yeah, actually, there is.

tl;dr its shit dont bother

 

[Jaesun]

Japan discovers Skyrim and Modding tools for it: (LINK IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK) http://eelog.jp/thread/skyrim-ero/16

 

[Luzur]

this looks interesting though.

 

[roll-a-die]

this looks interesting though.

my eyes crossed from how stupid that guy sounded.

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

this looks interesting though.

Hope it will morph to something like Elsweyr The Deserts of Anequina for Oblivious.

 

[Luzur]

my eyes crossed from how stupid that guy sounded.

well he started Elder Scrolls with Oblivion, as he said himself.

so it cant be helped.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

I have to agree with the OP, even though I never played Oblivion.

I bought Skyrim like a half year ago but couldn't really get into it. I still feel very butthurt about wasting good money on something due to immeasurable amounts of hyping, and I bought into it. But hey, we all make mistakes once in a while.
Today I installed it again with RCRN 3.5, but had to quit and uninstall after ~10 minutes. This whole fucking thing is not a game, but just a boring sandbox with shallow characters and bland quests. This was the first and last time I ever bought a TES game, unless you fags think Oblivion is worth a try.

Fallout 3 was about the only competent game so far I've played from Bethy.

 

[Zewp]

In my opinion, Oblivion only barely manages to be better than Skyrim. Still not worth playing.

 

[Eyeball]

I have to agree with the OP, even though I never played Oblivion.

I bought Skyrim like a half year ago but couldn't really get into it. I still feel very butthurt about wasting good money on something due to immeasurable amounts of hyping, and I bought into it. But hey, we all make mistakes once in a while.
Today I installed it again with RCRN 3.5, but had to quit and uninstall after ~10 minutes. This whole fucking thing is not a game, but just a boring sandbox with shallow characters and bland quests. This was the first and last time I ever bought a TES game, unless you fags think Oblivion is worth a try.

Fallout 3 was about the only competent game so far I've played from Bethy.

Well, not all games can be as awesome as Max Payne 3, can they now?

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Bugged shit. A quest in the winterhold college got stuck because you are supposed to let another apprentice cast a spell on you, and I absorbed it. The journal just tells you to wait until she's ready for the second step, so I just walked away assuming everything was going okay. Good thing I have the console. Remember when they used to playtest games? That was cool.

On the other hand, I had an epic two-step fight shortly after. Dragon in his lair, followed by dragon priest suddenly coming out of the ground near the word wall. Even leveled up during the fight, for a proper anime experience

I need...more...POWAH!

Also, when arriving in Winterold, a guard suddenly draws his sword. I turn back and notice a werewolf was stalking me into the town. I ready my spell, and...a dragon comes out of fucking nowhere, swoops down and launches the doggie into a nearby rock, one-shotting him. He then loses interest and flies away.