Extra Punctuation: Too Many Options in Skyrim

[Zom-B]

Oh Yahtzee, if only you knew that there isn't too much to do in Skyrim, but rather it's a shoddy RPG that simply wasn't playtested for balance with too many useless auxiliary features. Are there any leading online pseudo-celebrities on gaming sites who's specialization is in RPGs who will reveal Skyrim for the massive failure it is?

I found that "mummy" as opposed to "mommy" was a nice touch.

I'm not saying I completely disagree, but how is Skyrim a "massive failure"? Clearly, from a sales standpoint it is not. Nor from a publicity/popularity standpoint (go to any gaming website, I guarantee at least one story on the front page will be about Skyrim). It's not a failure from an open world standpoint either. There's tons of places to go, things to do and stuff to see. There's lots of choice in character builds as well. There's also dozens and dozens of quests to complete.

The only things that I so far see as a failure of the game are the terrible combat system. Apparently the crafting system is easily abused, which could be considered a failure, I suppose. And obviously, since we are talking about a Bethesda game, it runs on a crummy, buggy engine.

Honestly though, how do you qualify Skyrim as a massive failure? It definitely has problems, it's definitely overrated, but it delivers fun and it delivers a pretty darn deep and varied RPG experience.

 

[Electrogecko]

I was interested in hearing about how Skyrim has extreme degrees of quality and difficulty depending on the play style, but as was said earlier, we were distracted by nose sliders.

 

[JET1971]

The only sliders i used was the presets, that was enough variety for me on character creation with the face.

As for having too many choices when playing? well shit thats what i love about Elder Scrolls, you can do 400 hours and not touch the main quest but do other quests or just mess about collecting crafting resources while going from one dungeon to another. Yes i always have a pickaxe with me and yes I am getting tired of finding iron ore.. 316 iron ingots sitting at home, and every jewel I find dropped onto the floor in my house. lately I have been collecting skulls and dropping them off in the Solitude market area. makes a helluva racket when I run through. I think im going to do soul gems in Whiterun next since i have a few hundred of them and will only be using grand or azura's star from now on.

One thing I dislike about Skyrims quests is some of them force you to join a guild to complete because something you need can only be retrieved during a guild quest or you get the guild start quest without actauly wanting it. i dont like sneaking and I despise picking locks so NO I DONT WANT TO JOIN THE THIEVES GUILD!!! lol...

 

[Trippy Turtle]

Holy crap he almost stole my name. My first character was called Hamface McGee.
Anyway I kind of wish you got to see your character more. Perhaps when they talk to an npc it shows their face?

 

[BreakdownBoy]

It is very reasonable to encounter a foe that is too strong for you in an open world such as Skyrim, I faced this in my first play through when I tried becoming a 'jack of all trades', but instead of quitting I decided to create a new more focused character, this ended up being more fun and fullfilling, also I save often. Yahtzee there is a shield that does a great job of blocking magic and the fact that you are using the Skyforge steel axe means you have week equipment (go to YouTube and find some better stuff before you attempt too many crypt excursions).

Also Yahtzee, playing a character that is a pussy which gives into peer pressure (werewolf situation) is not the games fault.

Also if you can't enjoy a game like Skyrim then you should find a new past time, seeing as gaming is not for you.

 

[BreakdownBoy]

To join the thief's guild you have to sneak, lock pick and pickpocket all in one setting. Also if what you need(want) is in the guild then do it to get it, and go off. The thief's guild won't be giving you their special armour if you aint part of the club. Don't understand your griping about that.

 

[fanklok]

Yahtzee Yahtzee Yahtzee, you silly silly man. You didn't use Enchanting and/or Smithing very much did you? You may as well have been fighting that lich barehanded and in your skivvies.

 

[Sean Deli]

You know what is faster than Rainbow Dash?
The point of Yahtzee's article flying over commenters' collective head.

Does Skyrim has a cubic crapton of options? Yes it does.
Does it result in some of the options being obviously unbalanced (as in - pathetically weak or ridiculously overpowered)? Yes it does.
Can we assume that "MOAR options" line in development schedule caused vital diversion of resources from "balance the existing options"? Yes, we can.

There are sandbox games that just dump you with endless possibilities and tell you to go eff the world up using them.
And there are action-driven epics, that tell you the story, using an interactive media of gaming. (actually - it tells you several stories - that's what non-linear plots are for) Those are obviously more tightly controlled by the developers and give much less freedom to the player.
There are also railbound FPSes/jRPGs, that control the player stricter than an OCD girlfriend.

Skyrim tries to pull an "epic sandbox RPG" and this causes some half-baked product along the way.

The game is still very good, it still deserves all the sales it generates, just that it could be so much better if it sacrificed some of it's "you can do ANYTHING" options in favor for more polished gameplay/story/environment design/etc. Not sacrifice TOO much and lose the traditional TES charm, but still sacrifice a little.

And developers obviously looked in this direction - just compare list of skills between Morrowind and Skyrim: magic schools, armor classes, weapon types - everything was streamlined.
But what they took in terms of core gameplay (player customizable spells - gone), they added in ... other things (butterflies? REALLY???)

So yeah, this took awhile and I got work to do. Ta-da.

 

[Strazdas]

you found skyrim hard? oh my, we got a winner here.
Wait, werent you the one talking about games should be a challenge, which skyrim is not?

ok, letting that slide, you cant have too much choices in game. i have said before and im repeating it again, i ahvent found a game where i could do everything i want yet. (and stop responding about "life", no i cant fly in life, i cant teleport in life, go troll somewhere else)

I have to agree that some face costumization become pedantic, but as long as there is a "randomize" button im fine with it. i either randomize or make a christian bale face anyway. however i think it is good thing because there are people that like to make them similar to real people.

 

[BreakdownBoy]

Oh Yahtzee, if only you knew that there isn't too much to do in Skyrim, but rather it's a shoddy RPG that simply wasn't playtested for balance with too many useless auxiliary features. Are there any leading online pseudo-celebrities on gaming sites who's specialization is in RPGs who will reveal Skyrim for the massive failure it is?

I found that "mummy" as opposed to "mommy" was a nice touch.

I feel sorry for you, if you are unable to enjoy Skyrim for what it is then you must suffer from sort of genetic defect that prohibits the fun signals to activate in your brain.

My condolences. (I could've just said "haters gonna hate", but that would've been to obvious)

 

[awdrifter]

Becoming a werewolf is freaking awesome! You just need to get a certain item that'll allow you to have unlimited transformations. As for the character sliders, I want more options! I still feel like my character looks ugly, I would welcome more options to make the character look exactly how I want.

 

[kingmob]

I just used the facial presets they have in there, didn't bother mucking about with sliders. Pick a face, pick a hairstlye, pick tats, go. Strangely, the male orc preset facial preset (the default one) reminds me of Vinnie Jones for some reason.

And yeah, you can totally level yourself into an early grave if you don't watch out. I think there's some obscure combat/non-combat line we're meant to level up with, but Bethesda forgot to tell us what it is. I say this because my stealth character quickly got mutilated by creatures he just couldn't cope with, whereas my combat focused characters have found the fights almost underpowered.

It is the stupid levelling along system. It may be 'better' than oblivion, but it still doesn't work. I understand they put it in to make the game more accessible, but the cure is worse than the disease in this case.
At this point I can hardly win any fight without feeling like a cheat. Maybe a sneak character is just underpowered, I dunno.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

I just used the facial presets they have in there, didn't bother mucking about with sliders. Pick a face, pick a hairstlye, pick tats, go. Strangely, the male orc preset facial preset (the default one) reminds me of Vinnie Jones for some reason.

And yeah, you can totally level yourself into an early grave if you don't watch out. I think there's some obscure combat/non-combat line we're meant to level up with, but Bethesda forgot to tell us what it is. I say this because my stealth character quickly got mutilated by creatures he just couldn't cope with, whereas my combat focused characters have found the fights almost underpowered.

It is the stupid levelling along system. It may be 'better' than oblivion, but it still doesn't work. I understand they put it in to make the game more accessible, but the cure is worse than the disease in this case.
At this point I can hardly win any fight without feeling like a cheat. Maybe a sneak character is just underpowered, I dunno.

Sneak is a weird one. My assassin character has that 'daggers do 15x sneak attack damage' perk and is wielding the Blade of Woe, so for single opponents I get a one-shot-kill cutscene against any opponent you care to name. But if there is more than one enemy in a given area ... well let's just say it doesn't end well. So it's a strange combination of being massively overpowered against an individual, but almost crippling against a group.

I know I'm nit-picking here as I've always been more of a 'hit 'em in the face with an axe' kinda guy anyway so my stealth characters are almost always made for a sense of completeness rather than any real desire to play a sneaky bugger, but hey...

 

[Arppis]

Just saying... Skyrim doesn't actualy give you much options when it comes to quests. You can't decline completely at most quests and only way to get it off your quest list is to go with the game's one way to solve it, or stop doing the quests. Atleast that's how it usualy goes.

Sure there are some quests where you can choose. But for example that werewolf questline. I can say "I'll think about it", but I wanted to say clear no and then leave. So they are still standing in that cave, waiting for me to come there.

And there was this quest where you got framed for murder and corrupted guards come arrest you. You can resist the arrest if you want. But when I did and murdered the whole town worth guards, made my way into this place where the true killer is (or the one who ordered them). I COULDN'T GO THERE BECAUSE THERE WAS PLOT WALL IN FRONT OF ME! I read the quest log and it said: "You have to surrender to these guards so you can walk in the jail, lol!".

I could have gotten same result with just going rampage. Why can't I do it my way? Ah well, I just went to "do quest mode" then and forget about trying to immerse myself.

Great game, but bit too linear in that way. :3

 

[Eisenfaust]

I only ever tend to use the werewolf transformation for assassinations and speedy traveling... though the roar function was handy in a fight... RUN IN FEAR, MY PRETTIES, WHILE I SLASH YOU IN THE BACK! MUAHAHAHAHA!

 

[The Lugz]

Firstly,

we need a yahtzee doll that yells 'need a slider here' when you pull it's tongue


also, i quite enjoy having a full customisation of my character
personally i picked an Argonian so whatever the sliders do i wont be looking like a generic average human anyway so it's nice to be able to morph it to what i think looks like an anthropomorphically correct humanoid lizard, because lets face it the game designers don't spend 6 years tweaking the model files they spend it coding the game-play so it works
I've seen tech demos that are the labour of love of a small group of designers and they look photo-realistic at least, and well beyond hd video at their best
( want to zoom in on a hair cell? go ahead. )

the fact you can tune your experience to how you want it can never be a bad thing
for people concerned with role-playing immersion and customisation
it's exactly like saying rebinding the controls is a bad thing because why bother? it works as is

it's the same reason you can even own a house at all in one of these games let alone sort all the crap you own in it into neat piles lets's face it you don't need to sleep so why have a house? it's 'too-many houses' in fact why even have towns? why have quests? why have a game? your brain is better anyway.
it comes down to the same neuroticism that drives people to buy £3000 gaming tables because it's simply the best artistically carved thing you can get even if it isn't perfection

maby your personal character sheet says you got hit in the face by a falling tree and you want to look like you have a broken jaw and a massive scar down you cheek that looks like it was set with medieval techniques?
( random example, i know there's wood chopping in the game so it's entirely possible to rpg as a lumberjack )

it's the exact same as ordering all your weapons by colour enchant in a basket you stole from the prince because it's the only one loosely weaved from pure gold so you can see the enchant glows through it
it gives you and your house character, and it shows some neurotic dedication to the game
same as making your face look how you want it

what i'd like is a massive set of sliders for how my houses look, their total dimensions and have a price plus or minus for extra rooms, storage, larger rooms ect and a slider that adjusts the plot of land i can use to build it on and what it's made from
perhaps, i want to live in the biggest marsh swamp building if i make a huge Argonian or a tiny golden castle if i made a tiny knight by the name of lord farquaad

so, too many slider options for customisation.. not even close in my opinion!

 

[Jezzascmezza]

Glad to hear that I'm not the only one who isn't a big fan of the massive amount of sliders.
I can never be bothered fiddling with them all, because I'm just so anxious to start the damn game.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

I personally don't use them because I'd rather spend that time playing the game, but there are always people that want them in there. All I can say is whoever thought of the randomise option, thank you.

As for your quest you got stuck on, why oh why did you not simply turn the difficulty down, at least for that quest until you got out of that cave.

And lastly...

I sort of accidentally got into the quest where you become [A werewolf] officially.

What is this quest called so I can avoid it.

this sounds pedantic. just sayin.

Hi new guy, I see you've just met Yahtzee.

 

[sinterklaas]

I thought the Extra Punctuation was going to be about too many options? Instead we get a rant about overpowered companions, an impossible quest and the character creation system...

 

[Something Amyss]

I thought the Extra Punctuation was going to be about too many options? Instead we get a rant about overpowered companions, an impossible quest and the character creation system...

Yahtzee evidently got distracted in the middle of his rant.