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

[Remy]

Havent tried the mod, i guess ill check it out, thank you for the tip.

I was refering to the vanila skyrim though, im aware there are mods, but usually dodging should be a part of the core combat and this shows how skyrims ceators dont care.

As for the combat, have you tried the TK combat mod, works well for me. http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/29137

Edit: idk if its just me, but the site is makin some odd magic to my text after the update :x

[Kamen Rider Kuuga]

And here's some other things I hate about Skyrim;

 

Chop wood, get married: The marriage system in Skyrim is a joke. You can quite literally chop up two pieces of fire wood, sell it to a woman, put on your Amulet of Mara and then you can marry her. She doesn't care if you have a 50,000 Septim bounty in her hold, that you're a homeless vagabond or an Imperial/Stormcloak in an anti Imperial/Stormcloak area. You chopped wood for her once, so clearly you're the best choice she has!

 

Mine ore, become Thane: I wasn't aware that selling ore to somebody was enough to be considered helping a person to get a Thane title until, in Dawnstar, I did sell some Quicksilver Ore and was told that I completed helping the people and could become Thane now. This isn't helping somebody, it's a goddamned business arrangement!

 

See fox run down stairs, see fox die from falling damage: In no other game have I ever seen a Snow Fox run down some stairs and then die instantly because it was going too fast and took falling damage.

[arrow72]

Sounds like a pretty horrible game

[Remy]

Not really horrible, i had fun on my first play, wich was arround 30+ hours, but the game is awfully shallow in everything...from combat to magic to quests...everything feels it lacks big time..simply put, the game is rushed.

[Kamen Rider Kuuga]

Sonic 2006 was rushed, Rockman X6 was kind of rushed; Skyrim is a mix of being lazy and trying to grab even more of the general audience.

[thatTESguy]

One word: mods. I actually honestly have forgotten what the skyrim UI looks like without SkyUI. As well as what skyrim itself looks like without ENB and company.

 

At least for single player games, there's a community dedicated enough to fix everything (within the realm of possibility, and sometimes even beyond (*SE, Deadly Reflex, Oblivion stutter remover, etc))

[Remy]

One word: mods. I actually honestly have forgotten what the skyrim UI looks like without SkyUI. As well as what skyrim itself looks like without ENB and company.

 

At least for single player games, there's a community dedicated enough to fix everything (within the realm of possibility, and sometimes even beyond (*SE, Deadly Reflex, Oblivion stutter remover, etc))

Indeed modding community is dedicated, but only for so long until they start to get bored fixing the same issues over and over in their next games.

 

I think bethesdas vision of a moddable game is that you can put in new armors, because those are the only mods the game doesnt have a problem with...im very interested what new engine they going to get on their next game, but i have a feeling even that wont help.

[Warnova]

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;

 

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

Console command FTW! I gave most horse a 100 point speed boost. 120 for Shadowmere.

[Kamen Rider Kuuga]

Console is only for getting out of being stuck because of bugs and increasing NPC weight. And maybe getting clothes.

[Ravana]

I'm glad I was never the blind fanboy that would immediately discredit every negative view of Skyrim, as if it were some holy grail. I can safely and happily say I completely agree with your post, especially on the things that you hated.

 

Having gone back just recently, installed Morrowind, and really sunk some time into it, it really did have some excellent little perks that really got me hooked into it, and made me wanna actually develop a character and play with all the little features it had. Skyrim... Feels lacking in some ways; the custom spells, especially. That's a shot to my magic-loving heart And in the 200+ hours I've put in between Fallout 3 and New Vegas, the lack of my 1-8 Hotkeys frustratingly slows down my combat.

 

If there's one thing I fanboy about though, it's that I'm glad it's the PC version. The flaws that I've found in the core game are nothing that can't be fixed with some community effort or a quick trip to UESP Wiki and a console code.

[CrimsonOmegaLance]

I'm just waiting for a competitor to step into the scene.  So I can point and laugh at how bad it is compared to TES.

[Absurdity]

I'm just waiting for a competitor to step into the scene.  So I can point and laugh at how bad it is compared to TES.

If the developer, whoever it may be in the future, considers the actual old and current TES gamers feedback/criticism (which seems to be rare nowadays) and don't try to make the game for a goddamn console and just do a lazy ass port to PC then it shouldn't be that hard to kick Skyrim's ass.

[Kamen Rider Kuuga]

The biggest joke ever: Imperial Legion questline. Seriously, they put zero effort into the thing; it's nearly all capture forts based on the same old tired "Kill all enemies (whatever percent left)" thing they'd driven into the ground with Whiterun.

 

Oh I'm sorry! There's atleast five things not using that; where you have to sneak into a fort, save prisoners and THEN kill everybody, go into Windhelm and SOLVE THE MOST COMPLEX MAZE EVER to get into the castle and the first fort you ave to get, which is just... kill every bandit. Then there's kill the courier and capture the cart... by killing everybody. This is a goddamned MAJOR QUESTLINE and they seriously couldn't come up with anything better for the bulk of it than capture forts?

 

Imagine if Oblivion had an over arcing plotline that was just boiled down to "Reclaim all the forts for the Legion to help with the Oblivion Crisis!", who the fuck would have actually wanted to play that?

 

Well, okay, now that I think of it, that might have made more sense for Cyrodiil... but the point remains! It's lazy and took no fucking effort for something that's been building since the you were escaping from Helgan.

[reae]

I don't know about you guys, but when I'm beggining to see such flaws and, even more, bitching about it, it means, that I finnaly have layd my hands on something worth some attention. If said game doesn't make me angry, it's time to move further. You are sounding, as if Oblivion was perfect,or Morrowind, or Daggerfall. Sorry, none of them were. Oblivion had shitty high-level gameplay, totally nuts items (Mundane Ring anyone?) and boring dungeons. Morrowind...shitty combat (wiff, wiff, wiff, oh, somebody hit), broken alchemy, some unbalanced questlines (Telvanni and Redoran?), stability issues (once I was finishing Bloodmoon and in final maze game keep hanging every 2 minutes), UI was also far from perfect. I won't say a word about DF, as I've played only for a few hours. Skyrim is lacking few things, already mentioned.

 

Finally, I'm taking, that Skyrim wasn't first TES for many of us. That along makes it inferior to Morrowind (my case), Oblivion and Daggerfall. I wish you guys more such awful Skyrims, if they are worth around 170 hours or more

Slighty OT, but it was mentioned: yup, Civ5 has shiny graphics, too bad, it's not even close to Civ4 in terms of gameplay. But my first Civ, was one played on Amiga, so my opiniuon is heavly biased.

[Remy]

All of the tes games had their flaws, everyone who played them knows that, the bitching here is mostly about bethesdas direction leaning towards console kiddies, everything is simplified for them...ofc if we would hate the game we would have just moved away, we are bitching because we are dissapointed, wich is one of the things some fanboys dont get.

Its dissapointing to see bethesda slowly taking the rpg aspects out with each release and turning it to an action game for low attention spanners.

 

You can simply play the game for what it is and it is fun for a while, but its hard to ignore it, especially when you consider how great the game would be if they wouldnt be so damn lazy, going for cash grab.

 

What good is a whole world space, if the only thing you do is hiking and pushing action button from lvl 1 to 80 (or w/e the max lvl i, never got past lvl 25), where is the depth thats supposed to be a core pillar to make the world believable...skyrim is really just good for testing mods.

[Guest]

That was a well done post, however one thing you did not mention was the god awful journal and quest system. In Skyrim journal entires are so sparsely detailed that it is extremely difficult, neigh, NEAR IMPOSSIBLE to complete quests without using the fucking quest marker. You get a quest that tells you to find the shrine of Boethiah? How about go into your journal for some help? Sorry! but all the journal says is: "Locate the Shrine of Boethiah" and practically NO ONE  (if any) has the option in dialogue to tell you where it is! The player is forced to play with this hand holding immersion breaking arrow to do even the most simple of quests! In Oblivion, you were able to get away with avoiding the quest markers either by not setting that quest as active or by removing it with mods, but you have no choice in skyrim! This is one of the most severe cases of dumbing down that I've ever seen in ANY game. It's despicable as the game treats the player as if you were a complete moron with no ability to use your brain or figure out things on your own (which is actually what most newbie TES "fans" are nowadays). Skyrim is NOT an RPG, it is a sandbox game with some (very weak) RPG elements. It is an AMUSEMENT PARK made to entertain at the most basic of levels. There are no thought provoking quests, events, choices, and NPCs like before, these are replaced by the most basic, boring, and bare-bones versions of those things. And yet this game STILL gets universal appeal. That in it of itself boggles my mind and makes me shake my head in disgust. 

 

Some may think that I'm over reacting, however this is coming from a person who is seeing one of his most favorite franchises turning into a hollowed husk of what it once was (and is sub sequentially upset by that), and I'm without a doubt not alone in this. 

[Kamen Rider Kuuga]

That's because, in general, quest markers don't bother me. Yeah, yeah, zOMG N00B!!!!!!!!!1111 and all, but I like my quest markers. Ever since it took me hours to find the Cavern of the Incarnate in Morrowind with all the information given in dialogue, my in game map AND using online maps, I have been a fan of quest markers in general. Call me crazy, but I don't find being lost for hours looking for one cave and feeling so much frustration that I wanted to rage quit fun.

 

THAT SAID, it is a bit lazy that they don't even bother to actually give you even the slightest actual directions to locations, not even a major city where it's near. They could kind of get away with it being excused for the "radiant" quests (oh look, something that actually bothered to take from Daggerfall; random quests), but there isn't any excuse for quests that have a definite location in mind.

 

But that's the overall theme of Skyrim; Bethesda being lazy. It's almost like took a lesson from Square Enix and figured that they don't have to put effort into the game because the franchise name alone will sell copies.

[CrimsonOmegaLance]

But that's the overall theme of Skyrim; Bethesda being lazy. It's almost like took a lesson from Square Enix and figured that they don't have to put effort into the game because the franchise name alone will sell copies.

 

 

Color me crazy, but Oblivion's launch did not get the same fanfare that Skyrim's did.  Skyrim didn't sell copies because it was an Elder Scrolls game, it sold copies because you FUCKING FIGHT DRAGONS.  Skyrim made TES a 'mainsteam' game name which is a huge plus in Bethesda's books.

 

I'll leave you with this:  James Cameron basically said this to Neil Degrasse Tyson after NDT complained about a historical inaccuracy in the movie,  "Titanic made a crapton of money.  Think how much more money we could have made if we included *blank* in it"

 

 

Anyway, has the game gotten worse over the years? Yes/No. Is it still kickass? Yes.  Has Bethesda gotten lazy? Hell no.  Has it been 'dumbed down?' Of course it has.  I'd rather have the game be 'dumbed down' then improved by mods than the other way around.  It improves the accessibility of the game, which improves sales, which will improve the next products.

[Absurdity]

 

But that's the overall theme of Skyrim; Bethesda being lazy. It's almost like took a lesson from Square Enix and figured that they don't have to put effort into the game because the franchise name alone will sell copies.

 

 

Color me crazy, but Oblivion's launch did not get the same fanfare that Skyrim's did.  Skyrim didn't sell copies because it was an Elder Scrolls game, it sold copies because you FUCKING FIGHT DRAGONS.  Skyrim made TES a 'mainsteam' game name which is a huge plus in Bethesda's books.

 

I'll leave you with this:  James Cameron basically said this to Neil Degrasse Tyson after NDT complained about a historical inaccuracy in the movie,  "Titanic made a crapton of money.  Think how much more money we could have made if we included *blank* in it"

 

 

Anyway, has the game gotten worse over the years? Yes/No. Is it still kickass? Yes.  Has Bethesda gotten lazy? Hell no.  Has it been 'dumbed down?' Of course it has.  I'd rather have the game be 'dumbed down' then improved by mods than the other way around.  It improves the accessibility of the game, which improves sales, which will improve the next products.

More sales don't necessarily improve the next product *cough* callofduty *cough*.

[Kamen Rider Kuuga]

I would argue that TES was mainstream before Skyrim, but meh. My concept of mainstream is likely vastly different from others.

 

Kickass is not a term I would use to describe Skyrim; I would still call it lazy, because Bethesda was fucking lazy with the game. Imperial Legion quest line is a perfect example. The "puzzles" are another. The fact that they didn't make a new UI for the PC is yet another. Bethesda got lazy with this game, end of story, and then the fans have to mod it to make it less lazy. Which Bethesda then takes and adds to the game anyway.

 

Hearthfire? A mod. Spears? Mod. Dragon mounts? Mod. The metric ton of bug fixes? Mo- oh wait, Bethesda barely fixes anything. The product will, I promise you, not improve. Once a company learns it can be lazy and still rake in cash, they will keep being lazy until they reach a point where even the new people are like "Okay, shit is getting lazy now.", which will be several games down the line.

 

I sound like a grumpy old man, even though zOMG N00B status because I love Oblivion, I hold the controversial opinion that Morrowind is vastly overrated and suffers from FF7 syndrome AND I freely admit to 230 hours in Skyrim enjoying the one thing they didn't get lazy on; having a decent sized map that I can explore (despite having so few enemies, but that's a problem with TES as a whole). But I can't blame Skyrim solely on this; Morrowind removed so much from Daggerfall, Oblivion removed more things from Morrowind (while trying to re-add things), then Skyrim removes even more.

 

The next actual TES game will remove yet more, and so on until it becomes not TES, but generic WRPG #3543.

[maload]

i think  Bethesda  know what is skyrim.

 

 it is  grade c - game . they dont want to create good rpg game like dragon age or  good action -game like unreal tornament.

 

you know i have chat with people around the world , they said skyim is  good game.

 

but at the end , they ask me if i know a good website to download sex-mod or  big-boob  mod or something like that .

 

that s how people play a game this age .  they  need more big texture , more big boob  ,

 

not much people ask why they cant combine 2 magic , why they cant choose weapon-technic .

 

 

or if it is not about sex  , i heard some boy talk about how " look real"  of the game more than how good game s sytem.

 

if game are good by itself  , they dont even need   mods ,

 

ok they may need  some fixed bug.

 

modder is for fun ,for adding more detail to a game.

 

it  is not for  fixed   problem of   game company .

[CrimsonOmegaLance]

@Absurd If COD wasn't released every single year by alternating companies, I'd say it would still be a good genre.  There are examples on both sides of the fence of this type of game I guess, I was thinking of Halo&Bungie, Mass Effect, or StarCraft.

 

@ Rest of Post:

Someone please PLEASE name me another game/company that is doing better than Skyrim/Oblivion in this field.  I'm taking modern games, past 5 or so years.  From what I have been seeing from these posts is that people are comparing TES games with themselves and not with their competitors.  I haven't seen a post that says, this game has this concept and Bethesda couldn't even do that!

 

Hell, is there even another open world RPG that can be fully modded?  Assassins Creed/GTA4 are open world games but not RPGs.  Witcher/Witcher2 I heard were very good (haven't played yet though I should), but still haven't achieved the popularity of Skyrim.  Dragon Age: Origins was very RPG-like, but the company distanced themselves from the D&D gameplay in the hack&slash sequel of DA2.  Mass Effect was a solid RPG but had a very linear plot, and consisted of levels rather than an open world.

[maload]

@Absurd If COD wasn't released every single year by alternating companies, I'd say it would still be a good genre.  There are examples on both sides of the fence of this type of game I guess, I was thinking of Halo&Bungie, Mass Effect, or StarCraft.

 

@ Rest of Post:

Someone please PLEASE name me another game/company that is doing better than Skyrim/Oblivion in this field.  I'm taking modern games, past 5 or so years.  From what I have been seeing from these posts is that people are comparing TES games with themselves and not with their competitors.  I haven't seen a post that says, this game has this concept and Bethesda couldn't even do that!

 

Hell, is there even another open world RPG that can be fully modded?  Assassins Creed/GTA4 are open world games but not RPGs.  Witcher/Witcher2 I heard were very good (haven't played yet though I should), but still haven't achieved the popularity of Skyrim.  Dragon Age: Origins was very RPG-like, but the company distanced themselves from the D&D gameplay in the hack&slash sequel of DA2.  Mass Effect was a solid RPG but had a very linear plot, and consisted of levels rather than an open world.

 

 

empire385 even da2 are better and have fun more than skyrim.  you said da2 are better than da origin so  i dont have anything to post.

 

i would not say skyrim is  bad game , i say it is simply game for  pop market.

 

and for open world or something like that , it is good  to have a big map .

 

but  i dont play a game just for "  look at a nice skin of women  , look at the star   , nice water   , sent a sword to old man "

 

i dont said it is bad . but it s not  " legend   game  ,  super game of the year  ...

[Kamen Rider Kuuga]

I don't play a lot of newer games, much less WRPGs. If it's newer and has an RPG element to it, it's almost always a strategy game. About the only game that comes potentially close to what you want is Sacred, but that game was released in 2004.

 

But so fucking what? I don't need to compare Skyrim to other games outside of TES to tell you that Bethesda is getting lazy. Yeah, TES games are generally mod friendly; big fucking deal! That doesn't make the game, and company, any less lazy!

[Remy]

@Absurd If COD wasn't released every single year by alternating companies, I'd say it would still be a good genre.  There are examples on both sides of the fence of this type of game I guess, I was thinking of Halo&Bungie, Mass Effect, or StarCraft.

 

@ Rest of Post:

Someone please PLEASE name me another game/company that is doing better than Skyrim/Oblivion in this field.  I'm taking modern games, past 5 or so years.  From what I have been seeing from these posts is that people are comparing TES games with themselves and not with their competitors.  I haven't seen a post that says, this game has this concept and Bethesda couldn't even do that!

 

Hell, is there even another open world RPG that can be fully modded?  Assassins Creed/GTA4 are open world games but not RPGs.  Witcher/Witcher2 I heard were very good (haven't played yet though I should), but still haven't achieved the popularity of Skyrim.  Dragon Age: Origins was very RPG-like, but the company distanced themselves from the D&D gameplay in the hack&slash sequel of DA2.  Mass Effect was a solid RPG but had a very linear plot, and consisted of levels rather than an open world.

Divinity 2: The dragon knight saga for example (http://www.divinity2-saga.com/index.php?rub=home) , alot more polished action rpg then skyrim in my opinion, with actual dragon fighting system, where you turn yourself into a dragon with plenty of air combat.

Altough the world isnt so open as skyrims, its still pretty big and this game is also running on gamebryo engine and isnt riddled with bugs like skyrim.

 

If the game would have been more open and moddable it could have easyly topped skyrim in any way.