After 170 hours playing the PC version of Skyrim, my thoughts.

[Kamen Rider Kuuga]

No, I won't be touching on the story. Mostly. As much as this will shock and amaze people, I do not play TES games for the plot, mainly because I have yet to find an actually good plot in any of them. The most I can say is that for scope, Daggerfall had the biggest.

 

Things that I FUCKING HATE about Skyrim;

 

Vanilla UI: Are you kidding me, Bethesda? What the fuck were you thinking when you took this sad excuse for a UI that was obviously designed for the shitty consoles, looked at it, said "Good enough!" and put it into the PC version?

 

Bethesda is no stranger to shit UI, but atleast they had something solid with Oblivion; being able to sort things by type, weight, attack/defense, all rolled into something that wasn't hard to navigate while at the same time being somewhat pleasing to the eye. But instead of keeping it, or god forbid, actually refining the damn thing, we get this horrific pile of shit.

 

Favorites: What was so wrong with holding a number key and clicking on an item to bind it to that key? Why do I have to go through your shit UI, press F on items I want to a key, then open another fucking menu so I can assign it to a key?

 

Binding grab to take: Is this just to spite those of us at low levels that used grabbing to drag items we wanted to steal into a corner that nobody could see so we could steal with ease?

 

Lack of classes: God forbid my character have any talent or profession that made him somewhat good at certain things before being caught and sent to Helgen.

 

Ever diminishing armor: I thought it was pointless how the number of armor pieces was reduced between Morrowind and Oblivion. I find it fucking moronic how now armor is made up of four pieces, with shields not counting at all toward perks.

 

Weapon skills: A sword is different from an axe, just as a mace is different from the two. Why roll them all into one handed? I had the same problem with Oblivion to Morrowind, but this is even more ridiculous.

 

Chameleon: I get why they did it, but still... LACK OF CHAMELEON MAKE ME WANT WANT SMASH!

 

Levitation still absent: See above.

 

No more custom spells: Do you hate the older games and fans that much, Bethesda?

 

Lack of oxygen meter: Why was this ever removed?

 

Slow horses are slow: I don't understand why they decided to make horses so goddamned slow!

 

Magicka, Health, Stamina: Fuck you, I want to play an RPG with actual stats.

 

Stamina bar: So sprinting and rolling makes me tired, but running, swimming and jumping don't...?

 

Dragon fights: The first couple of times were awesome. I'm now at over 50 dragon fights, and if I never saw another one until I fought that asshole Alduin, I would be happy. Leave it to a TES game to drive something as inherently awesome as FIGHTING DRAGONS so deep into the ground that I'm finding diamonds.

 

Mixed feelings with Skyrim;

 

Enchanting: I really do love how you can just disenchant items to learn enchantments. That said, I find it incredibly stupid how you need to be at max Enchant, and have a perk (and perks leading up to it) to be able to enchant the same item more than once. Instead, why not simply make each enchantment need its own Soul Gem? Or make each additional enchantment weaker than the last?

 

No birth signs: On the one hand, I find it to be very stupid that they removed this idea from character creation. On the other hand, much like in Oblivion, you can find stones that give you birth sign benefits at the expense of your previous one.

 

Lockpicking: Feels easier than Oblivion, but at the same time it's just a reskinned concept from Fallout 3 and New Vegas. If anything, I prefer the one from Morrowind, of all games.

 

Perks: To sum it up, in concept I really it, but in execution, it leaves a lot to be desired and can make things too easy with some of the overpowered perks (like doubling armor rating, or doing 15 times damage with a dagger in sneak).

 

Resource gathering: Yeah, it's nice to have an income from materials, and yes, it feels more rewarding to make things from the materials that you gather, but the way they did is so clunky, slow and ultimately limiting (especially ore mining).

 

Things I really like in Skyrim;

 

Alchemy: Not all simplification is bad, and this is one of them. I was never a fan of alchemy in any of the previous games... in-fact, Skyrim is the first game in the franchise where I have actually maxed out my alchemy skill.

 

Making use of both hands: What took Bethesda so long in allowing us to use two weapons? Or have an item and spell ready at the same time?

 

Dual casting: I have nothing but praise for this concept, and I want to fuck the person who came up with it.

 

Rune spells: Because I like making enemies hurt themselves!

 

Crafting: See dual casting.

 

Upgrading weapons and armor: See above.

 

 

I'm sure I'm forgetting some things, but that's how I feel.

 

TL;DR Stuff no one likely cares about!

[Remy]

Well they are dumbing their games down now, its clear that this is going only downhill from now on.

Just, in gods sake, dont let the kids use too much brain cells and instead hand everything to them, who would want a journal to read quest descriptions anyway, just point the way and let them press right/left mouse button for dem kills!

 

When you make puzzles, just in gods sake, dont let them work too hard to find the answer, better yet, make only one kind of a puzzle door with dat awesome dragon claw so even a retard can open it, we wouldnt want to frustrate the cod crowd now, wouldnt we!

 

Well pretty much agree with eveything you said, but we are just going in circles now...everything has been said regardless of this.

 

Im just waiting for some serious game studio.

[Jexsam]

Specifically regarding weapons skills, the perks relating to each weapon type's crit effect loosely equates to mastery or preference over one type than the other. So while the base concept is sort of ridiculous, it's not like you aren't capable of spec'ing into one type more than another.

[Guest Plastrader]

BaconMinion, I agree, but I feel the need of expressing my utter disapointment with this game.

• The UI
  It sucks so bad it makes me feel sick. One would have thought that Bethesda would have made a PC version by now, but no...
  Yes there's SkyUI but why should I be forced to use a community mod just to have some basic functionality?
  About hotkeys. Not only do you have to press F to "enable" the favorite and then yet another menu to bind it to a key. You can't bind dual wielding!
  Because its a console UI the dialogues are messed up and usually hangs so you need to start the conversation all over...
  
• Graphics
  Again, this is a console game so it runs in DX9 mode.
  Both of my computers hate DX9, and I understand them, DX9 was state of the art, lets see. Hmm. Not in 2011?
  Yes I know there's some graphic performance mods out there, but again, why?
  Take CIV 5 as an example, both games were released about the same time of the year. CIV5 has DX9 for really lousy computers and DX10-11 support for the others.
  
• Gameplay
  Because the graphics doesn't utilize the graphic card full potential the game feel sluggish and all combat is rather frustrating. You can't powerattack properly as the game doesn't recognize your keys beeing pressed.
  

 

These things annoys the hell out of me to the point where I've stopped playing it, part from testing out mods, mainly from this site.

 

I'm a stubborn old fool and have put 900+ hrs into the game just to try to enjoy it, and waiting for Bethesda to sort their stuff out, but that didn't happen.

 

However!

Skyrim is a good game in regards of story IMHO, but the above things makes me angry, and I don't want to be angry when I play games.

If one tries to ignore the fact that some quests doesn't end properly.

I won't say which ones as its a major spoiler.

 

I haven't and will never buy any DLC for this game, nor will I ever buy another Bethesda product.

Not that they care as they only see $$$ from the consoles...

 

So I'm hanging around here to see if and when there's some proper sex-mods available.

 

Final thoughts.

It seems the PC gaming days are all over

[polluxval]

lets put this in another perspective, should we?:

 

lets say pc gaming industry doesnt exists. yea, its almost impossible (well....), but lets just pretend it doesnt. so, for a console game, skyrim has a very friendly UI, nice graphics, more or less good story line, it does lack more classes but remember that pc doesnt exists (for this post) so the only elder scrolls released for consoles its oblivion (morrowind doesnt exists for consoles). we have to understand that they sacrificed gameplay for better graphics and a very big open world. as far as we can see, there arent many games made for consoles close to this one. so, everything seems all right for a console game.

 

you can say this game sucks rhino balls because you have a point of comparition, taking many many many pc games as examples (some from bethesda, many more from other companies). what im trying to say is that Bethesda forgot about pc, they only saw consoles (because of the money, the exclusivity, blabla). they worked on skyrim with the same idea of this whole post... "pc gaming, doesnt exists". after some time skyrim was released, they finally get it... "ohh, there is something called pc gaming industry... look at that... i have an idea... lets release the CK, so they can fix the bullcrap we made." watch carefully, every single detail, and eventually, you'll find the truth. dx9 graphics when they could do better, ui, simplified classes, console optimization... take for example the the ps3 version! it does have many issues because ps3 its most likely a pc and because they were blind with the holy light of microshit right infront of their faces.

 

for me, it is a hate-love relationship with Bethesda. even if they give me crap, i still play it. why? thats the funny part... i really dont know!!

[Kamen Rider Kuuga]

Skyrim doesn't feel any bigger or more open than Cyrodiil, though. If anything, it feels less open because of all the fucking mountains.

 

WHICH IS WHY THEY SHOULD HAVE BROUGHT BACK LEVITATION!

[Remy]

@polluxval

I dont really believe that, if pc wouldnt be a good business they wouldnt have bothered with it at all.

They might say consoles are the main cash cow now, but because of the mods, their games are so overhyped, that people jump on anything they put out, so they must get good money from pc gamers also.

 

@BaconMinion

Yeah i been seriously missing that spell in skyrim, you stand on some big mountain and think how awesome would be to levitate, or make some slowdown falling (the feather spell?).

[vashar]

As a console player:

 

It's funny to see you guys complain, with all your mods and actual hotkeys.

[Remy]

As a console player:

 

It's funny to see you guys complain' date=' with all your mods and actual hotkeys.

[/quote']

Thats because mods dont fix whats already broken in the core.

[CrimsonOmegaLance]

And through all this rage, you still put hundreds of hours into Skyrim. Why? Because despite it's downsides, it's still a good fucking game and probably the best in it's current genre.

[Kamen Rider Kuuga]

I'd still take Oblivion over Skyrim. Fuck, I'll still take Daggerfall over Skyrim.

[Absurdity]

And through all this rage' date=' you still put hundreds of hours into Skyrim. Why? Because despite it's downsides, it's still a good fucking game and probably the best in it's current genre.

[/quote']

Which isn't hard because almost all other recent RPGs suffer from the same casualization.

 

Just watch

Although he doesn't say that Skyrim is a bad game he in depth explains alot of what is wrong with this game and/or gaming in general nowadays.

[Kamen Rider Kuuga]

If Skyrim was a truly bad game, I wouldn't have spent 170 hours playing it! It's just that the game IS deeply flawed, and it SUFFERS for it. Bethesda made some jaw dropping stupid changes that confuse and confound me to no end, and NO AMOUNT of saying "those damn consoles!" can convince me that they were needed.

 

The sheer fucking cliff of things removed or changed is second only to how Morrowind dropped so much from Daggerfall that it was staggering, while Oblivion stabilized and tried desperately to add back some of the stuff Morrowind ditched. Then Skyrim comes along and says "Nah, fuck that noise!" and drops a lot from Oblivion.

 

This is NOT a case of simplification for consoles. This is a case of them not wanting to put in effort.

[polluxval]

@polluxval

I dont really believe that' date=' if pc wouldnt be a good business they wouldnt have bothered with it at all.

They might say consoles are the main cash cow now, but because of the mods, their games are so overhyped, that people jump on anything they put out, so they must get good money from pc gamers also.

[/quote']

 

i think you didnt get what i was trying to say.

 

while "making the game" (scripting, planning, texturing, whatever...) bethesda had a very specific design, based 100% on consoles. look oblivion for example, it was a pain in the ass to navigate trough the UI on the xbox360 and without a mouse. what im trying to say, is that they gave us (pc gamers) the console-game design exactly as it was (almost no change was done), at the same time, gave us the CK so we could make a personal pc conversion.

the best example is: SKYUI.

they knew pc gamers/mod community would do a great job, sooo... why bother doing X when mod community will do that for them and free of charge?

also they got a very nice business/arrangement with STEAM. thats why steamworkshop exists. didnt you see it? its clear as water.

[Remy]

@polluxval

I dont really believe that' date=' if pc wouldnt be a good business they wouldnt have bothered with it at all.

They might say consoles are the main cash cow now, but because of the mods, their games are so overhyped, that people jump on anything they put out, so they must get good money from pc gamers also.

[/quote']

 

i think you didnt get what i was trying to say.

 

while "making the game" (scripting, planning, texturing, whatever...) bethesda had a very specific design, based 100% on consoles. look oblivion for example, it was a pain in the ass to navigate trough the UI on the xbox360 and without a mouse. what im trying to say, is that they gave us the console-game design exactly as it was to the pc and, at the same time, gave us the CK so we could make a personal pc conversion.

the best example is: SKYUI.

they knew pc gamers/mod community would do great job with mods, sooo... why bother doing X when mod community will do for it for us, free of charge?

also they got a very nice business/arrangement with STEAM. thats why steamworkshop exists. didnt you see it? its clear as water.

Oh sorry about that then, i misunderstood and thats exactly how i feel about it too...they wouldnt bother with pc at all if there wouldnt be something they would gain from it, as i said before.

Modders fix their game and it hypes the game in the process, wich in return sells their future games all the more...good strategy indeed.

 

I dont mind such strategy, what bothers me is the halfassed lazy work they put out...well nothing we can do about it really...therefore im just waiting for some other game studio that would take this seriously.

[polluxval]

@polluxval

I dont really believe that' date=' if pc wouldnt be a good business they wouldnt have bothered with it at all.

They might say consoles are the main cash cow now, but because of the mods, their games are so overhyped, that people jump on anything they put out, so they must get good money from pc gamers also.

[/quote']

 

i think you didnt get what i was trying to say.

 

while "making the game" (scripting, planning, texturing, whatever...) bethesda had a very specific design, based 100% on consoles. look oblivion for example, it was a pain in the ass to navigate trough the UI on the xbox360 and without a mouse. what im trying to say, is that they gave us the console-game design exactly as it was to the pc and, at the same time, gave us the CK so we could make a personal pc conversion.

the best example is: SKYUI.

they knew pc gamers/mod community would do great job with mods, sooo... why bother doing X when mod community will do for it for us, free of charge?

also they got a very nice business/arrangement with STEAM. thats why steamworkshop exists. didnt you see it? its clear as water.

Oh sorry about that then, i misunderstood and thats exactly how i feel about it too...they wouldnt bother with pc at all if there wouldnt be something they would gain from it, as i said before.

Modders fix their game and it hypes the game in the process, wich in return sells their future games all the more...good strategy indeed.

 

I dont mind such strategy, what bothers me is the halfassed lazy work they put out...well nothing we can do about it really...therefore im just waiting for some other game studio that would take this seriously.

 

there i completely agree with you.

 

i just hope fallout 4 its atleast optimized for dx11...

[Monsto Brukes]

Guys . . . you're bitching at the wrong people. Do the math...

 

Oblivion was on xbox360 and did well. Skyrim was announced and fans lost their minds. So then MS swooped in screeching "Exclusivity! Guarantees! High percentages!" with a Publishers Clearinghouse giant posterboard check and the next thing you know, skyrim is Games for Windows... and there's your culprit right there.

 

The reason that kb bindings have double duty is because skyrim needs more than 12 'buttons'. The reason the UI just plain sucks is not because it's console-centric, but becasue GFW dictates that it be designed with console preferred. Truly, there's tons of games that exist in both worlds that have a UI that is nice on both, but not perfect on either. Skyrim is apparently good on console and assblow on pc. Thanks GFW!

 

I dare anyone to find me a Games for Windows game that doesn't have exceedingly fucked up controls and UI on pc. GTA4 is a perfect example. The entire about 20 hours I played that game, i was fighting the controls... just couldn't get a handle on it. skyrim as well.

 

But... Saint's Row the 3rd? Plays beautifully... Oh look... I can use both GP and kb/m at will? drive with GP and run n gun with kb/m without batting an eye? what they can do that? YES. It's a fucking computer, it does what you tell it to do. So tell it to use 3 usb items all at once big fucking deal, microsoft.

 

Don't blame Bethesda. Blame Microsoft.

[Veta]

 

Just watch

Although he doesn't say that Skyrim is a bad game he in depth explains alot of what is wrong with this game and/or gaming in general nowadays.

 

Absurd thanks a lot for the link ,it really helped me with some of my thoughts on the series .

[Guest Plastrader]

Just watch

Although he doesn't say that Skyrim is a bad game he in depth explains alot of what is wrong with this game and/or gaming in general nowadays.

Thank you for this, it was well worth the ~33 minutes it took to watch and listen. Its just too bad I can't comment on the video itself.

 

So basically they i.e developers of today drop the R from RPG and make it a "Playing Game"...

 

What if someone wrote a paper on how good RPG's teach casual gam.. err kids the value of taking responsibility of their actions?

As it seems most take everything very casual, even raising their kids.

 

Lets just hope that someday the gaming industry awakes from this haze they're in now and thinks "WTF are we doing?!"

[Absurdity]

Lets just hope that someday the gaming industry awakes from this haze they're in now and thinks "WTF are we doing?!"

Sadly that will never happen as long as enough people buy their games (which will be the case because the majority of gamers nowadays are casual gamers) and they keep making loads of money.

 

They would either need a miraculous change of heart from "MONEY!" to "Hey guys, how about we make a game we can really be proud of instead of trying to milk gamer's pockets for a half assed game?"

 

Or even casual gamers start to realize that the quality of games is gradually suffering and stop buying everything a game company spits out.

[leddis3]

On the UI, I remember before Skyrim came out I said on other forums that the UI looked like total garbage in the previews.

Of course I got yelled at for "being negative". Lo and behold, I was 100% right. What a nasty, clunky mess it was. Thankfully SkyUI came along fairly rapidly and fixed that problem.

 

One thing that really bugs me about Skyrim is: No spell cast key. No yes, using the hands to cast is nice, but what if I want to use a two handed sword and a heal spell? I have to switch between them like an idiot, whereas in the other games I can use both hands for a weapon and cast a spell at the same time.

[Remy]

On the UI, I remember before Skyrim came out I said on other forums that the UI looked like total garbage in the previews.

Of course I got yelled at for "being negative". Lo and behold, I was 100% right. What a nasty, clunky mess it was. Thankfully SkyUI came along fairly rapidly and fixed that problem.

 

One thing that really bugs me about Skyrim is: No spell cast key. No yes, using the hands to cast is nice, but what if I want to use a two handed sword and a heal spell? I have to switch between them like an idiot, whereas in the other games I can use both hands for a weapon and cast a spell at the same time.

 

You would get yelled for that even now, there is so many blind fanboys everywhere.

 

The whole combat/magic "system" just feels outdated and lacks any sort of vision or direction, its that kind of a combat you would expect to see in games from the 90's.

Its basicaly the core of a combat system, that you have in any action game, but they didnt bothered to expand it further,

like normally action games do...thats why no matter if im lvl 1 or lvl 100 i still feel like im playing Gustav the farmer swinging his pickaxe,

because there is no sense of progression in combat...you have a few clunky attacks and lame magic and thats it....

for a game that's supposed to give you hundreds of hours, its lameness par excelence.

 

I think this is one of the main reasons why i cant play this game for more then 30min, because i know that no matter where i get, i dont feel any progression and since skyrim is all about combat...

No depth whatsoever.

 

That vid from Absurd perfectly demonstrates at what audience they aiming.

[leddis3]

True, it feels awfully clunky especially when compared to a game like Dragon's Dogma which handles combat and companion AI extremely well.

In Dragon's Dogma you climb a monster and hack at it's body parts, in Skyrim you stand in front of a dragon and frantically hit the mouse button. Honestly if it weren't for mods I wouldn't bother with Skyrim much at all.

[Remy]

True, it feels awfully clunky especially when compared to a game like Dragon's Dogma which handles combat and companion AI extremely well.

In Dragon's Dogma you climb a monster and hack at it's body parts, in Skyrim you stand in front of a dragon and frantically hit the mouse button. Honestly if it weren't for mods I wouldn't bother with Skyrim much at all.

 

Oh yeah dragons dogma has some really awesome combat, you can clearly see the makers were taking great care to make it fun, while in skyrim the combat is for the sake of being there and same is with magic.

When i first saw skyrim, i was imagining a more interactive approach to combat....especially the dragons...not one of such level as dragons dogma, but not mindless button mashing, turns out they didnt bothered.

 

The funniest thing about this is... we are in 2013 now and bethesda still didnt even discovered dodging, a simple addition to a combat system, but addition that makes it more engaging, so when they finally discover it and add to the combat system, that will be proly in 2016 for their next game...so by the time their games get their combat system on the level of todays games, i will be an old hook.

[leddis3]

Have you tried elysees' SSS mod? It's not perfect and once again it's modders doing Bethesda's job for them but it makes combat a lot more fun.