All Skyrim needs is...

[SajuukKhar]

Bethesda put Fawkes in Fallout 3. 'Nuff said.

I am under no impression that they ever attempt balance outside of level scaling.

Touche.......

I admit defeat.

 

[Soopy]

Hmm, I personally feel like you about Skyrim, but I've also seen people enjoy the shit out of it. I'm starting to think maybe we're playing it wrong.

Playing it the same way I've played TES since Daggerfall. I enjoyed every iteration up until Skyrim, still don't mind Oblivion on occasion. Skyrim is just a bit empty and dull.

I can look past the bogus combat and the complete and utter lack of substance. But the fact that you can run for an actual hour and see nothing but about 30 wolves that drop nothing, about half a dozen dragons that also drop nothing of value and you craft the best armour in the game if you're willing to wait for the merchants to sell you the materials. If they can add in the possibility of dragons or Champion bosses dropping really good unique weapons.

complains about Skyrim's bad combat and lack of substance

I really like Daggerfall, it's just that the combat was abysmal and the game's non-quest material is about as flat as its sprites.

That said, the only thing I'd add to Skyrim would be a spellmaker. The one from Daggerfall, actually.

At the time, Daggerfalls combat wasn't too bad. Skyrims isn't a great deal better 20yrs later...
And I thought it was obvious but content doesn't just extend to the physical representations of objects...

It's called a comparison, man. The point is that there's no real "meat" to the game outside of main and guild quests.

Also, gameplay doesn't get the "But it's old!" excuse. Platformers back in the day were just as awesome then as newer ones are now.

Skyrim's guild quests have even less content then Daggerfall though.

And "its old" is an excuse. Daggerfall had substantially less to work with as far as technology and processing power. Something allot of platform games don't have too much an issue with.

 

[Soopy]

That said, the only thing I'd add to Skyrim would be a spellmaker. The one from Daggerfall, actually.

The problem with the spellmaker, as Oblivion has shown, is that people will only ever use it to make abusively overpowered, low-cost spells.

though I still kinda wish it was back.

You don't HAVE to make massively overpowered spells. And that's no more broken then stacking enchantments in Skyrim. Balance isn't really necessary in a single player game. Fun is though.

Although in TES it has always been pretty easy to become godlike.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Skyrim's guild quests have even less content then Daggerfall though.

And "its old" is an excuse. Daggerfall had substantially less to work with as far as technology and processing power. Something allot of platform games don't have too much an issue with.

Have you ever actually looked at what Daggerfall's guild quests were?

Most of Daggerfall, and Morrowind's, guild quests were nothing but random, unconnected, "go here and kill X" quests that didn't build up to anything, or have any over-arching plot.

Skyrim's guild quests were on the other hands, mostly plot focused, with only one or two unconnected quests being thrown in.

Its like comparing anime to American cartoons
-American cartoons last for like.... 50000 seasons, but they only do so because they all suffer from Simpsons syndrome, were every episode is unconnected to the last, where nothing, and no one, ever changes, and nothing really happens.
-Anime on the other hand normally only lasts 13-26 episodes, because its all plot focused, and when you have a plot, and focus on it, shit gets done faster.

I would rather have shorter guilds that are all plot focused, then Morrowind and Daggerfall's guilds which were nothing but faffing about.

Skyrim is the first ES game that I actually cared about the guild, and my guild maters, because instead of just giving me "go here and kill 5 spiders" quests, everything they gave me had a plot, a focus to it, everything built on the premise of the guild.

 

[Soopy]

Skyrim's guild quests have even less content then Daggerfall though.

And "its old" is an excuse. Daggerfall had substantially less to work with as far as technology and processing power. Something allot of platform games don't have too much an issue with.

Have you ever actually looked at what Daggerfall's guild quests were?

Most of Daggerfall, and Morrowind's, guild quests were nothing but random, unconnected, go here and kill X quests that didn't build up to anything, or have any over-arching plot.

Skyrim's guild quests were on the other hands, mostly plot focused, with only one or two unconnected quests being thrown in.

Its like companing anime to American cartoons
-American cartoons last for like.... 50000 seasons, but they only do so because they all suffer from Simpsons syndrome, were every episode is unconnected to the last, where nothing ever changes or really happens.
-Anime on the other hand normally only lasts 13-26 episodes, becuase its all plot focused, and when you have a plot, and focuse on it, shit gets done faster.

I would rather have shorter guilds that are all plot focused, then Morrowind's guilds which were nothing but faffing about.

lol, the guilds in Daggerfall were just that. Guild halls with jobs to do. So of course it was just random shit.

Skyrims factions are the exact same thing with a derptastic story tacked on that were FAR too short.

 

[SajuukKhar]

lol, the guilds in Daggerfall were just that. Guild halls with jobs to do. So of course it was just random shit.

Skyrims factions are the exact same thing with a derptastic story tacked on that were FAR too short.

Which is why the guild's in Daggerflall bored me.

Skyrim's guild stories weren't great, but they were better for the simple fact they actually have a plot, and a reason for existing in the world, and a reason for giving a shit about it.

They may have been too short, but I at least enjoyed doing guilds for once.

 

[Soopy]

I do think Skyrim learned some of the wrong lessons from Oblivion. Anything you're obliged to do repeatedly is risky, whether it's fighting dragons or closing Oblivion Gates or just killing another one of those @#$%ing Cliff Racers. Having to do so more often doesn't make me feel more powerful or more responsible, just harried and irritated.

But I also think it did a lot right. I think the combat is some of the best Bethesda has achieved so far. While it's nothing arcade-like, I think it comes closer to the right balance between real-time skill and stat-based "push button until they're dead" than most of the series, and I'd ask everyone to remember that this is not a game that was designed with twitch-button fetishists in mind for a reason. If you make the combat a whirlwind of split-second timing and alienate 90% of the player base, you've just killed a popular series; congratulations.

I'd love to see them do a lot more with the idea of ecosystems. It's nice that the fox attacks the bunny and the wolves attack the fox and so on, but they could have done so much more. If the merchants in Whiterun had more gold or a wider assortment of goods because the Khajit merchant caravan could now get past the bridge with the bandits. If the sudden influx of player-crafted Dwarven armor started getting issued to the guards. If a new Archmage at Winterhold decided the College should have absolute control over Skyrim's soul gem mining. I think there's room for a much more dynamic game here.

I also really, really wish that a game with such a relative dearth of conversation options didn't have so many that led to the other half of the conversation saying something along the lines of "What kind of stupid question is that?" Um, the only kind I was offered on the tree, thanks?

And, y'know, bugs... It's ridiculous that the game got out the door with a bug in place such that being part-way through the "Join the Imperials" quest could make it impossible to proceed in the main storyline quest. C'mon, Bethesda! If you're only offering us half a dozen possible exchanges with characters anyway, having flags fail to drop on the major ones is inexcusable.

Over-all, though, I think it's a series that has mostly been improving over the last decade or so, and I look forward to seeing where it will go from here.

I'm inclined to agree with most of what you say. If it wasn't for the bugs. I could almost enjoy a 15minute slash and dash fest.

 

[Soopy]

lol, the guilds in Daggerfall were just that. Guild halls with jobs to do. So of course it was just random shit.

Skyrims factions are the exact same thing with a derptastic story tacked on that were FAR too short.

Which is why the guild's in Daggerflall bored me.

Skyrim's guild stories weren't great, but they were better for the simple fact they actually have a plot, and a reason for existing in the world, and a reason for giving a shit about it.

They may have been too short, but I at least enjoyed doing guilds for once.

How did they manage that?
The stories were almost nonsensical and fruitless. Nothing you did mattered in the slightest.

 

[Syzygy23]

I agree, more variation of monsters. Right now it can be categorised as Bandits in shallow caves, dragur in large caves and Falmer in the deepest caves. With the occasional spider or vampire.

I would also have loved more minibosses, especially ones that weren't draugr. I'd love if it took the Greek Myth style singly unique monsters, like Medusa, the Sphinx, Cerberus etc. One of a kind beasts of weirdness and tentacles. Instead we just got various Draugr-warboss-supermurder-deathguards.

But what I really think Skyrim needs is better quests. More directional hunts, investigations that can be done through searching and logic, not just follow-the-radar-marker.

I would honestly prefer it if Skyrim had half the landmass, but twice the depth. I would love it if for the next Elder Scrolls they went for a smaller area, but packed it full of stuff so it actually became a proper living environment with tonnes of choice. As it is, immersion took second place to scale, leading to cutting corners (like not being able to make weather recognise walls and roofs, so all the snow and rain clips through when you are outside)

Most of what you described there can be found in Dragons Dogma, either sadly or hilariously.

Key word here is "Most", though.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

All Skyrim needs (IMO) is:
-To get rid of leveled loot and monsters and replace it with static loot and monsters
-To get rid of fast travel
-To get rid of marking places on the map
-To get rid of the stylized kills
-To bring back the skills they took out
-Remove voice acting and use the budget and time they use to do that do make a better story.
-Essentially be Morrowind

EVERYTHING there has quite literally been done through mods. Every single one.

Really, if you don't like vanilla Skyrim (which I happen to love), pick the game up on PC and go on a freaking mod spree, really is worth the money!

That is true but none of those mods will match the experience of a game designed that way from the ground up. Except maybe finisher moves. I can replace the leveled monsters and items with static ones but the map and the quests were designed for the original leveled experience, leaving me with very choppy and unpredictable progression. I can get rid of fast travel but, again, the maps and quests were designed with it in mind. In any case, you have to identify the problem before you can arrive at the solution.

All Skyrim needs (IMO) is:
-To get rid of leveled loot and monsters and replace it with static loot and monsters
-To get rid of fast travel
-To get rid of marking places on the map
-To get rid of the stylized kills
-To bring back the skills they took out
-Remove voice acting and use the budget and time they use to do that do make a better story.
-Essentially be Morrowind

You are aware that
-Morrowind was the only game to NOT have fast travel, something MANY old-school TES players hated.

-Morrowind also marked places on its map, as did Daggerfall.

-Having more skills for the sake of having more skills is not good gameplay design. Splitting One-handed into short blade, long blade, axe, and blunt does not bring any more complexity into the game because all the features of those skills skill exist within the one handed skill tree.

-Removing voice acting would not imrpvoe the story, if you go replay Morrowind you will notice that 95% of NPCs have the exact same set of rumors dialog copy-pasated into each of them. Removing voice acting would only turn the game from a game were voiced NPCs say the same insight over and over into a game were non voiced NPCs say the same thing over and over.

-You can disable kill-cams as it is, complaining about something you don't have to use is dumb.

He's just saying what he wants, that's not a crime lol. Morrowind's balanced fast travel system was effective for the smaller scale of the game. I miss it although I don't realistically expect another title to make use of it. Morrowind did place a lot of markers on your map, but it left most things for you to discover by other means. It didn't put literally everything on the map like other titles. This had an enormous impact on the gameplay. All right, some people hated it, but it was significantly different.

I always wished they would find ways to make the skills more unique. I agree pointless skills don't belong in the game but more skills is definitely on my wishlist. I really like how they organized the melee weapons as skills in Skyrim. The weapons that play the same fall under the same skill now, so the skill represents that playstyle, not a jumble of unrelated styles. And this way choosing between short axes, swords, and maces lets me specialize even further through gear choices in addition to skill progression and perks.

Just one more reason I think saying Skyrim didn't improve anything can be the result of tin ear.

 

[Mid Boss]

Hey guys,

As I've made apparent in previous posts I'm not a huge fan of Skyrim. I picked it up again today just to smack some things over the head and watch them turn dead for a little while.

And of course its the same old story, march for ever. Find next to nothing of interest and gain very little.

But that got me to thinking. If you ignore that Skyrim is (IMO at least) a poor TES title. All it really needs is some new or more monster spawns and the possibility to find some powerful loot (more so then what is possible to craft).

Add in some champion MOB's and there we go, a reason to actually venture out into the wilderness. It's not perfect, but it wouldn't be a detriment.

What do you think?

More monsters?

Just like every Skyrim problem, there's a mod for that.

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/9694

There you go. Over 100 more monsters and they update often with more.

I play on the 360. My laptop will run a heavily modded Oblivion, which has a 10x more content and 10x the graphical quality of the vanilla Skyrim, yet Skyrim won't run faster then slideshow spec.
It was okay on the 360 besides the lack of anything to do, until I downloaded Dawnguard and Hearthfire. Now it doesn't work for more then 5mins before it to chugs and freezes.

Try one of these.

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/6387
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/15123
http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/10014

Not sure which one will solve your problem though. So trial an error.

 

[MrBenSampson]

I really don't like how the shopkeepers never have powerful, unique items. Also with regenerating health, and equipment never breaking, you can actually play through the entire game without visiting any of them. I have a mountain of gold, and the only thing I use it for is bribing people.

In Oblivion, it was an accomplishment when I no longer had to make routine trips into town. I could mend my own gear, and take care of my wounds. Before that I had to loot everything I could get my hands on, just to fund my adventuring. The only stuff I loot in Skyrim is arrows, gold, ingots/ore, lockpicks, soul gems and health potions.

 

[SajuukKhar]

How did they manage that?
The stories were almost nonsensical and fruitless. Nothing you did mattered in the slightest.

How were the stories nonsensical and fruitless?
-Companions gave you Lycanthropy, easily one of the most OP things in the base game, made even more OP with Dawnguard.
-The Dark Brotherhod gave you the shrouded armor, a really great stealth based armor, and a crap ton of cash for killing the emperor.
-The Thieves Guild gave you Nightengale armor, a pretty good sneak based armor, along with some of the most OP powers in the game via nightengale blessings.
-The college of winterhold got you the Archmage robes, probably the best mage robes in the game, and the staff of Magnus, a pretty good staff.

On top of that I don't see how any of the stories didn't make any sense

Companions: you find out they are werewolves - they bribe you with lycanthropy to keep your mouth shut - you hunt some werewolf hunters with them - you find out the boss doesn't want to be a lycan so you get the stuff that can cure him - the werewolf hunters retaliate for your previous attack killing Kodlak in the process - you free Kodlaks osul with the cure you found.

College of winterhold: you join up, go on an expedition, find some magical orb, you try to get info about the orb, you get told the orb is uber dangerous and needs to be stopped so you have to find the staff of magnus, you do stuff to find the staff, you return and put down Ancanno before he screws up the planet

Dark broterhood: You join up, find out they have are having a hard time, the night mother shows up, you find out you are he listener, you end up gettign a contract to kill the emperor, you do a series of quests that are aimed at taking out the emperors defences and secuing a route into his residence, you get betrayed, the DB base gets destroyed, the Night Mother tellyou to go on, you kill the emperor, you get a crap ton of cash.

Thieves Guild: Starts off doing several quests to get some protection money from people, and secure the Thieves guilds last big client, Maven, Holdings, you find out the person behind the attacks on Maven is an ex-guildy you killed the last guild master, you hunt her down only to find out that it was really the current guild master who did it, you help her find proof of her innocence, you take it to the guild who asks you to hunt down mercer, you make a deal with the htives guilds patron nocturnal to get powers to help you beat mercer, you track mercer down and kill him.


I don't see how you can say
-Killing off a group of werewolf Hunters, adnd freeing a guy souls from damnation
-Killing the Emperor of Tamriel
-Stopping a madman from blowing up the planet using a magic Orb
-Bringing back the Mob to rule over the nations crime ring
Amounts to nothing.

 

[Soopy]

Fruitless, because they give you nothing useful that you can't make yourself in about 1/4 the time. The Nightingale armour looks cool. But its really no better then anything you can make.

The Werewolf form is weak as piss. My character is stronger with a sword...

The DB questline was alright though.

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

Here's my one big gripe about Skyrim (and oblivion while we're at it.)
The enemies scale to your level. This is complete and utter bullshit. It's like they made the game so that f'ing five year olds could play it. I can kill a dragon at level 10? A DRAGON?! Bullshit.

Bethesda, take of the kiddie gloves.

 

[Mariakko]

All Skyrim needs (IMO) is:
-To get rid of leveled loot and monsters and replace it with static loot and monsters
-To get rid of fast travel
-To get rid of marking places on the map
-To get rid of the stylized kills
-To bring back the skills they took out
-Remove voice acting and use the budget and time they use to do that do make a better story.
-Essentially be Morrowind

You are aware that
-Morrowind was the only game to NOT have fast travel, something MANY old-school TES players hated.

-Morrowind also marked places on its map, as did Daggerfall.

-Having more skills for the sake of having more skills is not good gameplay design. Splitting One-handed into short blade, long blade, axe, and blunt does not bring any more complexity into the game because all the features of those skills skill exist within the one handed skill tree.

-Removing voice acting would not imrpvoe the story, if you go replay Morrowind you will notice that 95% of NPCs have the exact same set of rumors dialog copy-pasated into each of them. Removing voice acting would only turn the game from a game were voiced NPCs say the same insight over and over into a game were non voiced NPCs say the same thing over and over.

-You can disable kill-cams as it is, complaining about something you don't have to use is dumb.

Not to mention the fact that static loot and monsters is idiotic, do you not recall how bad it was in Morrowind?

do you not remember going through some epically long cave, beating things that were like 10 levels above you, only to have the final chest contain a low level magic ring, and some worthless food?

There was no point in doing Morrowind's dungeons because the loot was always terrible, all Morrowind was, was a game were you find out the locations of the best items beforehand, get them, and then never touch a dungeon again.

at least in Skyrim I am slightly motivated to go dungeon exploring because I know that, unlike Morrowind, the loot will actually be useful to me for my level.

-I was not aware that Morrowind was the only one not to have fast travel. I don't care if the old school TES fans hated not having it, I loved.

-I did mark places on the map, I wish it didn't. (I do enjoy drawing my own maps)

-The old weapons skills were great for role-playing, The armour skills were great for role-playing, and acrobatics was fun.

-That's probably true that won't improve the story a whole lot, but that I still say the time used could be put to better use, like story, content, more dungeons, fun, etc.

-Was not aware you could turn them off, thank you.

I remember nothing of the sort. I do remember going through long dungeons and getting crappy rings (that I hoarded anyway) but it was an adventure none the less. I play the game to adventure and role-play and have fun not to get the shiniest items and most gold. You can go into a dungeon having no idea what you might find and it would be a surprise when got them, although when you said "you find out the locations of the best items beforehand" it sounds like you played with a walkthrough and FAQ beside you.

All Skyrim needs (IMO) is:
-To get rid of leveled loot and monsters and replace it with static loot and monsters
-To get rid of fast travel
-To get rid of marking places on the map
-To get rid of the stylized kills
-To bring back the skills they took out
-Remove voice acting and use the budget and time they use to do that do make a better story.
-Essentially be Morrowind

EVERYTHING there has quite literally been done through mods. Every single one.

Really, if you don't like vanilla Skyrim (which I happen to love), pick the game up on PC and go on a freaking mod spree, really is worth the money!

I thought this thread was aimed at Vanilla Skyrim (with the expansion packs/DLC included). I do have it on PC and I will mod it next time I feel like playing it, Which I doubt will be very soon.

 

[RustlessPotato]

When I first started playing Skyrim I was quickly overwhelmed with all the quests and by doing them one by one and quickly had a burnout. Then I started roleplaying and I find it amazing. I'm a console player myself, even though I played Morrowind and Oblivion on the PC. It's true what they say though, mods can really help you roleplay with the game. For example, I played as a Kahjit assassin in Oblivion and there was a mod that could make me do saltos and very acrobatic and stylish combat.

One complaint I Have with Skyrim, as well as all the other games (and yes, there is a mod for that) is population. How is the Imperial city imperial if there's only 20 people in it . With skyrim I had that feeling less, but it was there nonetheless.

Another thing is that I have less of a happy feeling when get a weapon in Skyrim or Oblivion than I had in Morrowind. Special weapons really felt special.

So yeah, roleplaying and mods can help. That's why I'm going to upgrade my pc , because even with all its flaws, Skyrim still is a great game.

 

[jollybarracuda]

I think there's three big things Skyrim needed to do to make it a much deeper and overall more rewarding RPG:

1) Stop having us level up the more we do something. Look, i know it's a good idea on paper, but when actually playing, it makes the whole thing just too...meh. I think lockpicking is the easiest way to describe why i think this system sucks. By simply playing through the game and picking locks as i go along i can eventually, after 20 hours, maybe less, pick master level locks without putting a single point into the lockpicking tree. Since the game has you level up a skill by doing it, and then letting you put a skill point into whatever area you want, it ended up being pointless putting anything into the lockpick tree. This should instead work whereby I cannot unlock anything above novice until i get the perk that lets me unlock apprentice locks, and so on. This is desirable since it now means that my experience will be different from someone who put points into lockpicking, rather than the only difference in our experience being how many lockpicks we broke before we unlocked the door. Plus, this would encourage Bethesda to put more valuable items in higher level locks.

2) Use the epic enemy variety at your disposal, Bethesda. Someone posted earlier that everything can be summed up by bandits for shallow caves, draugr for medium caves, and falmor for deep caves. That's just pathetically basic on Bethesda's part. Where's the caves overrun by minotaurs? Bethesda has such awesome enemy variety in their previous games, where's that all at in Skyrim? You're supposed to add things to sequels, not remove things, especially something as important as enemy variety.

3) Use a more random, Diablo-esque style loot system. Probably the most apparent problem with Skyrim is its lack of any interesting weapons. Sure, the actual designs are cool, but once you find a glass sword or something, thats it - game over - nothing else worth finding. The only weapons that ever appear with any decent magic properties are useless iron weapons. This means that if you manage to find some great equipment early on, you'll be stuck using that for ages. And the unique weapons you can get from certain quests never seem to be as good as what you already have. I feel like Skyrim has this great potential to be the best loot-hunting game ever with its huge open world and countless caves to go spelunking into, but without anything fun to find, it just becomes stale.

 

[Andy of Comix Inc]

Good combat. Proper good combat. And slightly less uncanny valley-ish residents. I mean, it's a marked improvement on Oblivion, but that's not exactly hard.

Failing that... I think co-op. Co-op would likely save Skyrim's faults.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

You don't HAVE to make massively overpowered spells. And that's no more broken then stacking enchantments in Skyrim. Balance isn't really necessary in a single player game. Fun is though.

Although in TES it has always been pretty easy to become godlike.

You don't HAVE to, but that's all most people did with it. And it's not just about it being overpowered. The idea of it was to make magic more interesting by making it wide open, personalized and customizable. In practice people just picked their favorite overpowered spell that worked in most situations. They were using fewer spells, not more. Spell-making was having the opposite of the intended effect. So now that's it gone and magic is a little more structured, many people are actually working with more tools than they were before.

I sympathize if you were actually putting spell-making to good use, but like attributes I can understand why it's gone.