My thoughts - one week in

[prideslayer]

The tl;dr version: Skyrim sucks.

 

The long(ish) version:

- The plot is not engaging me at all. At the start, you're about to get executed, a dragon attacks, and you escape. Every person you meet initially, from both major factions, is a jerk. That is not a good foundation for 'caring' about what's going on.

 

- Buggy as hell.

 

-- The first playthrough, the textures went all nutty during the wagon ride, and I had to turn some settings down. Quad core Athlon II 635, GT240, 8GB, Win7 x64.

 

-- So far, about five random CTDs. Seemingly occur only when the game hasn't autosaved for an hour or so. Ugh.

 

-- The AI needs to SHUT THE HELL UP. Every person you walk past or stand near is constantly making stupid comments, even right over the top of 'important' story dialogue from another NPC when you are frozen in place and can't move.

 

-- The AI pathfinding is terrible. Dumb companion is constantly getting stuck in doorways and narrow caves.

 

-- Did I mention companion AI is dumb? "wait here" = "wander within 15-20 feet of here, alerting enemies and setting off traps."

 

-- Cannot 'push' NPCs out of the way. Walk into a little dead end room, your companion will stand right in the doorway and not move, cannot push. This is just about the only reason I ever use that 'push' shout -- to get an idiot NPC out of a doorway.

 

-- Dragons are far too easy to kill. I think I've killed 6 or 7 so far. They have a lot of HP but their damage output is terrible. Plink plink plink with a bow and they eventually die. The trolls are much harder, without a decent reward.

 

-- The UI is terrible. Navigating the level up perks thing is awful. Conversation selections often don't register / change as soon as you've clicked on them. Why are the tab menu left/right items reversed?? Magic is on the left but opens to the right, items is on the right but opens to the left?? Come on.

 

Those are just the ones that really irritate me so far.

 

I was really looking forward to modding this, and porting sexout, as soon as the tool is released. Now I'm not so sure, as I am quickly losing interest in the game as a whole.

 

I am disappoint. :/

[Shantotto]

I agree with all of the above though I'm not experiencing much in the way of bugs except for random CTDs (which I've gotten since the Oblivion version of the engine).

The NPCs never shutting up is something I haven't seen mentioned much and is something I agree with. It was so nice in New Vegas that people weren't constantly chattering everywhere. Of course there was the whole nuclear winter stuff but there was never that thing where NPCs will just talk over each other.

 

That said though, I am not disappoint in the game. There are plenty of problems but I think the world design alone is a huuuuge improvement from Oblivion and makes exploring all that more fun. I'm enjoying it quite a bit.

 

That said, I suspect that once I've seen most of the content, it will be hard for me to muster up the will to replay the thing. Like Oblivion, most of the actual quest content is on rails more or less. Will be fun to check out mods for the game though.

[prideslayer]

I've never played Oblivion, or any other TES game, so I have nothing to compare it to in that sense.

 

My first Beth experience was FO3, which I thought was a great game. FNV is a good game as well, but is something of a rehash. The FNV plot was better, but the FO3 music was *much* better . Butcher Pete FTW!

 

I'd put FO3 at a 4.5/5, FNV at a 4/5, and so far skyrim at maybe 2 or 2.5/5 personally.

 

I have really been looking forward to Skyrim from a LL/Sexout perspective. There are more varied humanoid races so animations will be easier, and there are more sex-friendly creatures as well. The changes to the scripting language sound great as well.

 

I will probably do the work to port anyway, as soon as the tools are released, but I am really feeling like I'm not going to complete the game proper, as it's just not holding my interest. So, it'll just become a perversion simulator to me I suppose..

[Morokh]

First of all Bethesda games are always a mess at launch, until some official patches are released, and even after some unofficial patches are welcome, so CTD and other textures not loading should disapear in time.

 

For the rest, I never use companions in games when I don't have to because it's always a source of trouble, and while I agree that the UI is a bit unresponsive at times, I just don't understand all the other complaints about it, especially about the skill/perks menu.

 

For Dragons I would have said the same because I play as a mage character, until yesterday ... I did not have any problems with dragons until I met this ice dragon, who kept 1 shot-kill me, be it by 'eating me' or catching me off the ground, lift me in the air and drop me from the sky ... and he had way more HP than usual, because even with all the guard shooting at him I had a hard time getting it down.

Seems like there is a diversity in the difficulty of dragons, cause I already fought an ice one before and did not get in so much trouble.

 

I could add to your list that some creatures are way overpowered/resilient, especially compared to dragons (guards, Horses, Giants, Mammoths), that the reduced number of attributes, kind of leads to uninteresting loot, the weakness of the textures, and the clumsy shadows ...

 

But in the end even with all those flaws, the game is just brilliant and a massive improvement over Oblivion in so much aspects, that I really don't care so much.

[wunderbar]

What kind of Dragons have you been fighting? Blood Dragons? The ones at the word walls? Just wait til you find an ice dragon, those ass holes have one-shot cinematic-type deaths, just like you.

 

I haven't experienced a ton of bugs, myself. Although the game has just closed on it's own about 3 times, for no real reason.

[prideslayer]

Haven't seen any one-shot dragons yet, and I honestly don't know the different 'types'. They've all been fire breathing. Two or three were 'named', one 'talked' to me -- kept yelling about 'feel my voice' and stuff. The others were just.. random. I'll be running cross country and I see one in the sky somewhere in the distance, so I run to it and kill it.

 

Char level is 16 or 17, mainly dual-wielding warrior, with a bit into magic. Clairvoyance is super useful given how obscure the paths are from one place to another -- after you've run your entire magicka basically empty once (I think I'm sitting on 150 or 160), waiting for the engine to find the path for you.

 

As for the perk trees, I just... can't seem to navigate it nicely. Using the scrollwheel and mouse is a disaster, and WASD is only slightly better. Why did they have to make it all "3d"?

 

You can't see what one is or does without selecting it.. sometimes 'back' takes you back one, sometimes it takes you all the way 'out' to the top level discipline selection. Sometimes left/right takes you where you expect it, otherwise it doesn't.

 

I'd really like a normal 2D perk tree/list.

 

I know I'm in the minority when it comes to not really liking this game, but I just had to vent. It's not that it's super buggy, but it's filled with a ton of little annoyances that combined make the experience more tedious than it is enjoyable.

 

When I bought a house, did it give me some kind of marker or any clue about where it was? No. When I got married, did my wife walk out of the wedding while I was "stuck" listening to inescapable NPC dialogue? Yes, and I have not seen her since.

 

It's beautiful, I will definitely agree with that, and definitely has some potential given a patch or two and some mods, but right now it's just annoying.

[Dee383]

CTD,s On A Vanilla Game Sounds Like Lack Of Testing ...

 

Well From What Ive Read So Far Skyrim Is Not The Game I Was Expecting.

[Guest Jezzy]

I like the game as much i liked Fallout New Vegas so far. I have no perf. issue but I do have some CTD... can't wait for the mods to roll in tho

[Tregarin]

For those having trouble with dragons all of a sudden, you have to bear in mind that they have 50% resistance to either fire or ice... and a 25% vulnerability to the opposite. (ie: -50% damage from fire, +25% damage from ice... or vice versa)

 

And no, the type of dragon isn't given by it's name... so an Ice Dragon could be resistant to fire.

 

So, any spellcaster out there who's flinging fire and not doing much damage would be better served by switching to ice instead. (same with enchanted weapons...)

 

If you don't want to fuck about with that shit, use Lightning spells/weapons... it does standard damage.

 

 

Oh, and the fuckers auto-level... in 10 level blocks. You'll go from fighting level 10 Dragons (the lowest level dragons... the bastards!) and finally getting them to be easy kills, then suddenly having a level 20 Dragon biting your bollocks off no matter what you do. (and the leap from 20 to 30 is painful... more than I expected, to be honest)

 

 

 

And, for my thoughts on the 1 week in thing... a lot of times the thing has just closed without warning, I've had auto-saves/quick-saves not actually happen and I've run into some strange issues with the graphics rendering... like half a lake not having water being rendered, but having the fish swimming where the water should be. Add in the Inventory selection by mouse being totally broken if you dare read a book, the difficulty with selecting perks, the way that even using the keyboard to choose an option in dialogue sometimes doesn't fucking change it (yes, I've asked the same question of someone 4 fucking times because nothing would shift the fucking highlight to a different line... I left the conversation, shouted them to Oblivion, then reloaded to try again. It was enjoyable) and you get something quite broken.

 

Yes, it's a good game... but it's got a lot of problems. If I didn't know better, I'd say it was coded by Obsidian... (yes, I feel it is as buggy and broken as FNV was at launch...)

[Armitage]

For me Skyrim is just like Oblivion, it gets better with age and mods. I remember getting Dragon Age : Origins, finished it once then didn't bother with it till some semi good mods came out for it. Then didn't stop playing it for months on end.

 

Number of problems which have been highlighted in this thread i get also (even had CTD 4 times in a row just going to Riften and reinstalled a number of times due to some mods messing up npc and body textures) but i half expect it from a Bethesda game.

 

Skyrim to me atleast is alot more interesting then Oblivion, but i do miss the mods (Vampire ones my main miss right now)

 

Oblivion to me wouldn't have kept me playing as long as it did if it wasn't for the odd few mods which i couldn't live without. Skyrim in time will just be the same.

[Mud]

Only one CTD so far in 72 hours of play. I do find walls flickering in and out of existence sometimes, though, like in Riften Jail. But I went into Skyrim expecting much worse, given Beth games' track records and the instability of Oblivion.

 

Yeah, NPCs totally need to shut the hell up. Running around the blacksmith at Whiterun, trying to forge ingots or improve armor or I don't claim to be the best blacksmith in Whiterun, Eorlund Greymane's got that honor. Man's steel is legendary. All I ask for is a fair chance.

 

Yes, dragons are easy early on because they scale with you. At low levels they'll be pretty easy, and trolls will pose more of a problem than they will. But then you start leveling up and encountering Frost Dragons, Blood Dragons, and eventually some Elder Dragons... Frost Dragons have used the execution sequence on me when I still had half health left, making going in for the melee kill much more threatening. And their breath attacks start to hurt, too.

 

By the way, on the companions being in your way, you do know you can tell them to move to a specific spot so you can pass? Hold down the activate key to get a targetable Wait Here function, activate on the spot you want him to move to, then press the cancel key to get him to follow you again.

[prideslayer]

Number of problems which have been highlighted in this thread i get also (even had CTD 4 times in a row just going to Riften and reinstalled a number of times due to some mods messing up npc and body textures) but i half expect it from a Bethesda game.

 

I haven't bothered with any of the mods yet, and likely won't until (at least) the FOMM type manager is released for them. I can't live without it.

 

I expect that will be done pretty soon though, it doesn't require the CK or anything like that to work since it's just copying files around and stuff.

 

Before FOMM I screwed up my FO3 install a bunch of times, not remembering what to delete or where the stuff went, so I just don't bother any more. Even if I download a bare ESP from somewhere, I put it in a data directory, zip it, and use FOMM to manage it.

[prideslayer]

By the way' date=' on the companions being in your way, you do know you can tell them to move to a specific spot so you can pass? Hold down the activate key to get a targetable Wait Here function, activate on the spot you want him to move to, then press the cancel key to get him to follow you again.

[/quote']

 

I'll keep that in mind, but the shout works and is quicker to activate. It has the added bonus of going past/through them and maybe hitting a few mouthy NPCs as well.

 

I didn't mention the walls disappearing, but I've had that a few times as well in different places. I've also had the background behind the perks 'sky' become bright pink (like the old .GIF transparency color) and stay that way until I quit and reload.

 

Of course I don't usually have to quit. It'll quit for me when it's had enough.

[Loveryus]

I think that Skyrim isn't much fun... It's more like work. The addiction is only triggered by the many possibilies and discoveries in the game. My job suffers from playing. Since I bought it, it would suck to stop playing it at all.

[dewguru]

I like Skyrim. I enjoy it a lot. Way more than I enjoyed Oblivion, almost as much as I enjoyed Daggerfall when it was released.

 

I've a console and PC version.

 

I've logged more than 60 hours on the Xbox and only 7 on the PC (my main reason for getting it on the PC was for when mods finally come out).

 

The Good:

 

- Best looking visual world and models in a TES game yet

 

- Lots of dungeon variety, not obvious early, but now I seek them out to see what new layout, puzzle, traps, critters I'll find in them

 

- Dragons are cool, a little easy early, but they get scary later

 

- Voice acting is improved and more varied. Instead of the same 5 voices, its more like the same 15 now.

 

- Crafting, I love it although I can see where some may hate or avoid it all together as collecting resources can be time consuming.

 

The Bad:

 

- Companions standing aimlessly in doorways. I want to say that Fallout had this problem when it first came out and it ended up getting patched to where you could push them so hopefully the same happens

 

- Not finding success with a melee focus on Master level, could be that I simply suck, but I'm hitting walls right about level 20 on my melee characters, although my magic strong one is still holding their own

 

On the Fence:

 

- The new dialog feature. I'll like it at times as I like to look around sometimes when listening to what a person is saying. It also frustrates me at times like when I'll be talking to someone and an NPC bumps me away from the person I'm talking to (which isn't fair that I can be moved but my companions can't) leaving me far away and possibly with random NPCs standing between us who want to spout their inane babble. Luckily this hasn't happened enough for me to hurl my controller yet.

 

The Lucky:

 

- So far in my 7 hours of PC play I've had zero crashes and my Xbox play has been stable too (although a friends did something odd when he went to save - it didn't save and took him back to the main menu)

[Tam]

I have to agree about the dragons being too easy early on, and it just feels wrong to see them get taken down by random creatures and and of course 2 shotted by giants. I'm going to try to start a new game and see if I can avoid them spawning by not progressing the main quest at all until I'm lvl 12 or so.

 

More than enough other things to do until then. When the npc who you follow out of Helgen says "we should split up" I'm going to take his advice and head east to Riften

[Woohoo]

My first impression was... less than favorable. It's grown on me since then.

 

The atmosphere is really good. Almost on par with Morrowind, which is still my favorite Bethesda game. I find myself exploring and dungeoneering quite a bit more than I did in Oblivion.

 

The visuals, in general, are great. The low res textures are annoying and some of the design choices irk me (still stuck with LotR movie style Elvish armor) but I can live with that. The vast landscape of Skyrim is beautiful. On a related note, creating an attractive character is significantly easier.

 

The writing is still not on par with a great RPG like NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer but it's getting better. The voice acting is a huge leap forward.

 

Combat sucks less. Melee still feels skateboard-y but it's much better than Oblivion's.

 

LOT'S of potential for Lovers style modding.

 

 

 

On the downside, I hate the interface. Some people aren't bothered by it and, sure, you can get used to the quirks of it but the sheer laziness of the PC porting gets under my skin. There's so much wasted space and just bad design choices. This is an A+ title with an interface that, as shipped, wouldn't respond to mouse input half the time. Something as simple as equipping a dual cast spell proved insanely hard because, once equipped, you have to perform strange rites to dead gods to get a spell out of your left hand. (That lasted until I figured out that assigning spells to hotkeys would allow me to over-ride the spell in my left hand. Still, not cool) The skill tree is an atrocity. It looks cool, sure, but a similar effect could have been achieved without forcing me to scroll through the damn thing, one skill at a time. Just make it a constellation shaped chart. The interface is a shot right in the daddy-bags for PC gamers.

 

The dragons are boring. Even the ice ones. The one hit kill didn't make them challenging, it just made me feel like my melee character was getting the shaft. Until I figured out the trick. Just get your companion to aggro the dragon! The great lizards are such pathetic weenies that you can wail on them with impunity and not worry about your companion dying. Or just play a mage/archer.

[ronttu]

I have no complaints about difficulty or gameplay in general, but I do agree that the UI is retarded. It's unresponsive, and at least for me, I can't always tell what option in a dialogue is highlighted, no matter what I do, using mouse in stores sometimes randomly just closes the shop for no reason, and sometimes getting to a perk in the skill tree requires a few hours (or so) of navigating. Also, I had a dual-wielding character, whose both weapons worked fine, until I upgraded them.. After that, I could only favorite ONE of them (they were separate in inventory), and they'd show up in favorites menu as a stack of 2, until I put one in hand and the other disappeared.

[Guest Loogie]

I'm with Pride. I don't enjoy this game. I find it just as vapid as Oblivion and Fallout 3. All those games were to me, as Pride so eloquently put it, are perv simulators. That's why I'm sticking with an NV - a real Fallout game that the community has turned into an awesome perv simulator.

[ethylalcohol]

Am I only one who don't like "dual handed system" ? I mean,

- one-handed weapon > you may block

- two-handed weapon > yes, you may block

- dual-handed weapon > sorry, you can't

WTF!!!

- one-handed weapon with magic in off-hand > you should hold your shield instead of sword

Where is my battle mage?

- two-handed weapon need healing > drop your gigantic sword before using your spell or else, potion.

Ah, my magic gladiator is dead by now.

 

Seriously, I find myself comfortable in Oblivion more for spell casting with sword in my hand.

[LordJerle]

For those of you complaining about standing companions, hold the activate key, then when the crosshair starts spinning, press activate, and your companion will go there. As long as you can see the floor behind your companion, it'll save some time and trouble.

If you're complaning about the mouse and the interface, I'm wondering why you're even bothering using the mouse for the interface. Keyboard's faster, has been for ALL TES games, and it's less likely to glitch anyway. The movement keys double as arrow keys in the menu.

There's a simple solution to getting one shotted by a giant... Dodge. Seriously, it's lore friendly and actually makes tons of sense. If you're having a giant weighted club swung down on your head, it's gonna squish you. Dodge behind the giant and hack at his knees. Always works for me.

Unfortunately, I've never had the experience of getting one shotted by a dragon, so I'll take your word on that >.>

[dysfunkshunal]

LOL, this reeked of a troll-thread, but since your post count is rather high, I guess I'll give you the benefit of the doubt when you use a harsh, single-faceted adjective like "sucks" to sum up this game that clearly does not suck. This game is clearly going to be Game of the Year. And I'm pretty sure that title isn't bestowed on games that "suck". Unless I missed an exit and ended up in Backwards-Land.

 

Anyway, clearly you are way in the minority. I've logged 77 hours and just can't stop playing. But some of the issues you raised I've encountered and they were mildly annoying but forgivable when you realize the sheer scope of a game like this. If you can't look past these things, then you must be seriously disappointed at every game that is ever released ever. And that must suck.

[prideslayer]

It was a rant/vent, not a troll thread.

 

I have really been looking forward to Skyrim for a long time. I am the (new) FalloutNV Sexout author, and was very much looking forward to porting it to Skyrim with the new scripting capabilities they say are going to be available in the CK.

 

I am honestly just annoyed at a pile of small pet peeves that, in their entirety, make the overall experience "suck" in my opinion.

 

I'm a programmer by trade. I have a pretty solid grasp of what something of this scope takes to write and test, but I'm also fully aware that releasing software with such annoying bugs (or oversights) stinks of a lack of playtesting or common sense -- nothing to do with the scope of the project.

 

You can't tell me nobody @ beth nor any of their outsourced playtesters (everyone outsources this) said "hey, it would be nice if the NPCs weren't shouting at me every 2 seconds just because I'm standing nearby." Same goes for how poorly the menu and perks stuff behaves with the mouse. Actually, it applies to almost every one of my gripes.

 

I'm still planning on the SexoutNG port, but it won't be the all encompasing time sink it had the potential to be, which will keep most of my FalloutNV peeps very happy I'm sure.

[gregathit]

Well, hopefully prideslayer Beth & Steam don't rollout a bunch more F'd up updates like this latest exe patch with the "big" update that is coming in the near future. Not holding my breath on it however.

 

Truthfully, I wish they would just leave well enough alone and release the damn CS so modders can fix the game and get rid of all those little things that are bugging folks... Strange that modders always have to "fix" the game but that seems to be the trend so why fight it....

 

Personally I have thoroughly enjoyed the game and with the tweaks have had an extremely stable game thus far.

 

As always I look forward to anything you end up doing in Skyrim and will continue to enjoy your work in FNV

[Shantotto]

I have stopped playing at the moment.

 

With the large amount of content and how long the fun lasted, I feel it was easily worth the money. But it's one of those games (like other TES entires IMO) where, once the initial, magical shine of the world wears off... There's not much left. Quests are often very straight-forward, with little or no chance to affect them in any meaningful ways. The addition of the fed-ex quests doesn't add particularly much. Dragon fights aren't exciting anymore.

 

Again, I feel the game is a huge step up from Oblivion which was one of the most tepid experiences I've had in a game with such a big scope overall. Skyrim is culturally interesting, with many interesting sites to see and explore. But once you've seen the majority of the world and the sights, there is very little left to hold my interest.

 

I don't think these games are for me. I see people actively discussing which house is the best and how they collect things and all I can think of is... well, that just sounds boring to me.

 

I like roleplaying. I like making up character concepts that make their way through the world, using the skills they have at their disposal. The problem with Oblivion and Skyrim as well is that, there are also no barriers put around the player as consequences for what you do. Nothing you do ever matters in any meaningful way. It doesn't matter that I've done the Dark Brotherhood or that I'm head of the Thieves Guild or what-have-you. It doesn't matter that I want to kill Ulfric Stormcloak because I can't do it at my own leisure, I have to wait until a quest "allows me".

 

It's a great sandbox game as long as one talks about exploring the world (and not mentioning the level scaling which still needs a lot of work) but it's a failure to me once one starts to look for interesting design in the quests themselves.