Skyrim, where's the fun?

Woodsey

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lacktheknack said:
Woodsey said:
Most of the time I just enjoyed exploring.

The perfect mix would be Morrowind's openness and range of variety with Skyrim's world and Oblivion's quests.
... with Daggerfall's spellmaker. Can't forget Daggerfall's spellmaker.
And some Hubba Bubba.
 

Proverbial Jon

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Applejack said:
I thought werewolfness would help spice things up a bit but it makes me really weak.
That was my first reaction when I played as a werewolf. But if you have the Dawnguard DLC it adds a skill tree and leveling system to the werewolf power. Give it some time and feed on a few bodies and it actually makes for a pretty unstoppable wolf-man killing machine. Although that function should have been in the base game...

TopazFusion said:
I always wondered why a tiny part of me insisted that Oblivion was better despite the god-awful flaws the game had. It's so true though, Skyrim may play better but it's nowhere near as much fun as Oblivion, I just never noticed it before.
 

TrevHead

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CannibalCorpses said:
That was exactly the question i asked myself once i'd finished it...where is the fun? The combat is boring, the skill system is so broken it's laughable and half the quests have no worthwhile rewards. The exploration part of the game is the only redeeming feature and that always leads to a dungeon with a fractionally harder bad guy at the end with a skill book and a magical item or 2. The difficulty settings change nothing but how many times you have to hit something before it dies and how many silly pause potions/meals you consume in the process.

It's a modern game i'm afraid...visuals over substance, hype over quality...and sadly it will be considered one of the best games of it's time as a result.
Yeah this is what i've been afraid of as if yet to play Skyrim.

To me a good ES is all about exploration, loot & questing and since I want to play it on PC i've been putting off playing the game till I upgraded my GFX card. However judging by how crap Fallout 3 is with it's exploration, loot and questing i'll be better off waiting till all the DLC and high quality mods are out before playing it.

With F3 all the most interesting places were the DLC. If it the game would have been set in Vardenfall, only the ash wastes and mountain would have been in the game, all the other areas like the swamps and plains and faction towns would be DLC.

BTW how long is Skyrim's main quest? It's not as short as Fallout 3 is it?
 

charge52

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FelixG said:
charge52 said:
FelixG said:
Shadowstar38 said:
Skyrim on the whole is a victim of the hype machine. For a game with literally hundreds of hours to, I found it too dull to even get through 30.
A slight correction, players who lack an active imagination are the ones who I would say fell victim to the hype.

My imagination works overtime when I am playing the game, self narration in my head, thinking of my characters in their own way and their individual stories as they move through the world ect.

Not everyone can do that, and they are the ones who are failed by the game.
Er, so what your saying is that you have to write a story for the game world, or else there is nothing interesting? This isn't fucking minecraft, that is a flaw, if a game is so poorly designed that people have to imagine something else is happening than it is a bad game.
You dont have to, but you are a nameless, voiceless protagonist, its only a bad game if you go into it expecting something else, it is fine for what it is.

It is up to you what your characters motivations are, why you are doing what you are doing, not every game needs to hold your hand and tell you why you are doing what you are doing, thats fine for the majority of games, but not every game has to follow that model.
Why is it that so many other RPGs can establish a character while still giving you control over who they become, but skyrim can't? Also, I like how the Ultima games gave you a nameless voiceless protagonist, yet those games don't suck. It is not fine for what it is, because all it is is a failed attempt at making a RPG.
 

Rooster Cogburn

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charge52 said:
FelixG said:
A slight correction, players who lack an active imagination are the ones who I would say fell victim to the hype.

My imagination works overtime when I am playing the game, self narration in my head, thinking of my characters in their own way and their individual stories as they move through the world ect.

Not everyone can do that, and they are the ones who are failed by the game.
Er, so what your saying is that you have to write a story for the game world, or else there is nothing interesting? This isn't fucking minecraft, that is a flaw, if a game is so poorly designed that people have to imagine something else is happening than it is a bad game.
I think I'm at least partially with FelixG, but you aren't wrong either. If Skyrim had nothing interesting, yea, that would fucking suck. But the Elder Scrolls is a little Tolkeinesque in that it does not answer all questions. (Ideally) it gives you enough to get you interested and then lets your imagination fly. Skyrim is a virtual playground in the way Lord of the Rings is a literary one. I am not comparing the quality of Skyrim to the Lord of the Rings. I just think there is an interesting parallel in their approaches.
 

White_Lama

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Don't see why people find the game boring to be honest, I've been playing it since the release night and got a few hundred hours on different characters.

Have yet to find anything that bugs me, makes me bored or just makes me not wanting to play the game.

Maybe I just like the Elder Scrolls to much to find flaws in the games.
 

00slash00

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the combat is elder scrolls games has always sucked. in skyrim you kinda have to make your own fun. i mean not to the extent that you do in minecraft, but theres not really any long term goal and doing random quests is only fun for so long. thats why i keep making new characters and have to take a break from skyrim every few months. i have logged about 200 hours into that game so obviously i enjoy the game and consider it worth the money, but if you play it a lot it can get boring pretty damn fast
 

Rooster Cogburn

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charge52 said:
Why is it that so many other RPGs can establish a character while still giving you control over who they become, but skyrim can't? Also, I like how the Ultima games gave you a nameless voiceless protagonist, yet those games don't suck. It is not fine for what it is, because all it is is a failed attempt at making a RPG.
Skyrim cannot establish a character because then there would be an established character. As for the rest, Skyrim is an awesome RPG.
 

charge52

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Rooster Cogburn said:
charge52 said:
Why is it that so many other RPGs can establish a character while still giving you control over who they become, but skyrim can't? Also, I like how the Ultima games gave you a nameless voiceless protagonist, yet those games don't suck. It is not fine for what it is, because all it is is a failed attempt at making a RPG.
Skyrim cannot establish a character because then there would an established character. As for the rest, Skyrim is an awesome RPG.
Except for the lack of stats, uselessness of skills, lack of differences in race choice, lack of any specialisation, lack of any important choices, and the fact that you aren't really playing a role, yeah, awesome RPG.
 

jehk

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The best part of Skyrim is allowing the player to establish his or her own characters. I can understand if that's not your cup 'o tea but calling that bad is asinine.
 

Rooster Cogburn

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Proverbial Jon said:
Applejack said:
I thought werewolfness would help spice things up a bit but it makes me really weak.
That was my first reaction when I played as a werewolf. But if you have the Dawnguard DLC it adds a skill tree and leveling system to the werewolf power. Give it some time and feed on a few bodies and it actually makes for a pretty unstoppable wolf-man killing machine. Although that function should have been in the base game...

TopazFusion said:
I always wondered why a tiny part of me insisted that Oblivion was better despite the god-awful flaws the game had. It's so true though, Skyrim may play better but it's nowhere near as much fun as Oblivion, I just never noticed it before.
I think whoever made that image just forgot how much of Oblivion was spent in caves and dungeons. Skyrim has things that happen in the world to about the same degree as Oblivion did. I could make my own image and just reverse the names and list outdoor events in Skyrim. I don't think Skyrim is anywhere near Morrowind quality. But despite ultimately liking Oblivion I will never look back on it with nostalgia for the good old days lol.
 

DoPo

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Applejack said:
DoPo said:
Magic is somewhat meh. Destruction magic with Impact is pretty much made to troll the enemies. Skill grinding the magic is annoying, though.

If you have the game on PC, I'd suggest mods. If not...the Divines help you. When I first played the game, after I was a couple of hours in or so, I realised I wasn't having fun. All the quests consisted of "go to X location, kill stuff, come back" and they made me trek all over the place to pad the length. I even questioned if I ever liked previous TES titles, since if they were all like this what had I been thinking. But I got over it. I mean, I remembered that Morrowind was actually fun to play. And I just stuck to bigger Skyrim quests - guilds, daedric, etc. Also mods. And now I'm waiting for Downguard (saving up money...) to play some more.
I tried magic for a few hours and it feels like I'm spraying people with a weak fire extuingisher. Not really what I was expecting, can I make spells later?
No, actually you can't. Which sucks majorly but there you go. I believe there are mods to allow it, though. And the first spells are quite crap, especially if you're levelled up already. What you need is the second damage spell (firebolt has the cheapest cost of the three) and Impact - when you do a two handed firebolt, the enemy is staggered. By the time they can move again, you would have launched another spell. It's permastun for as long as you have mana. Annoying when you haven't levelled up Destruction but when the spell cost gets low enough, you automatically win 1 vs 1 battles, while few opponents (2-3) are still easy with the right timing and maneuvering.

Be aware that the final level spells are flashy and sound powerful, but most of them are outdone by lower level ones, because of their huge cost and casting time.
 

cerebus23

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because skyrim isn't much fun maybe? i play yhr game for maybe a evening or two then find some game breaking bug, or just look at my quest book with 500 quests i could not care less about doing because most of them are just trek 3/4 across the map to kill some stuff somewhere, or i just get bored and play something else.

hell i have yet to even finish the main quest, how much i was impressed by skyrim, oblivion i finished twice, fallout 3 once, fallout new vegas twice, so i get open world games, oblivion was way overhyped but despite its even buggier nature, worse animations, and other glaring faults it was a hell of alot more interesting and fun to inhabit than skyrim.

heck without mods the world of skyrim is about as static and boring as you can find, especially considering the nature of the world you are in with several sides struggling for power, without mods like wars in skyrim where is all this tension? where are the battles for the country? for all the conflict in skyrim they could not have done less in the game to actually show it.
 

woodaba

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Rooster Cogburn said:
woodaba said:
Mirroga said:
All I can say is, if you're not into Skyrim it's either you never liked the RPG setting or you simply don't play too many games in different genres.
Or we can realize that Skyrim is essentially a lobotomized version of Elder Scrolls designed specifically to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Some people do have opinions outisde the realm of your comprehension, ya know.
Nah. Skyrim is a good example of streamlining as opposed to dumbing down. It's less complex than Oblivion in superficial and super tedious ways but more sophisticated where it counts.
Please tell me where Skyrim is more sophisticated than Oblivion. And don't say Story/Quests or I will HURT you. Not really. Symbolically.
 

theultimateend

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Rooster Cogburn said:
Skyrim is a victim to the hype machine in the sense that people forgot how much Oblivion sucked (for an Elder Scrolls game). Skyrim is awesome.
200+ hours on Skyrim and I dunno...

I like...really like it. Whenever another game fails me I can hop into Skyrim and enjoy myself. I have hundreds of screenshots up on Facebook from my adventures.

Basically I think people expected too much and I'm not sure any of that is Bethesda's fault. Everything I knew about the game from B was met with flying colors.

Plus you can mod this game to hell and back and it stays stable. I can't recall the last time I crashed :X.

Walter Byers said:
The best part of Skyrim is allowing the player to establish his or her own characters. I can understand if that's not your cup 'o tea but calling that bad is asinine.
People just need extremes. I suspect that extreme or hyperbolic stances on things arouse dopamine production better than level headed objective-ish honesty.

Anything wrong with that? Not really, just a matter of shrugging it off when someone says "X GAME IS TERRIBLE BAD UNFUN TIME!"

Different strokes for different folks, the best you can get from these kinds of threads is circle jerks one way or another. Which again is fine but mostly unproductive outside of reward hormone production.
 

Edl01

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I loved morrowind, I found oblivion incredibly average, I really like skyrim. Sorry I disagree on the fact it is boring and i don't find the combat that easy on my mage were near everything kills me in one or two hits so I have to kite the big creatures like a madman, I like the skills and the perks and contrary to most people I didn't have the problem with to many dragons, in fact I very very rarely saw dragons while playing skyrim which is the oposite opinion of most people but I still think Skyrim as an RPG is top of the line in quality.
 

Rooster Cogburn

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charge52 said:
Rooster Cogburn said:
charge52 said:
Why is it that so many other RPGs can establish a character while still giving you control over who they become, but skyrim can't? Also, I like how the Ultima games gave you a nameless voiceless protagonist, yet those games don't suck. It is not fine for what it is, because all it is is a failed attempt at making a RPG.
Skyrim cannot establish a character because then there would an established character. As for the rest, Skyrim is an awesome RPG.
Except for the lack of stats, uselessness of skills, lack of differences in race choice, lack of any specialisation, lack of any important choices, and the fact that you aren't really playing a role, yeah, awesome RPG.
The lack of stats is a godsend. I literally used to mod Oblivion to accomplish substantially the same thing, long before we knew where Elder Scrolls V would take place. Stats added nothing to the game but agony and tedium while stopping me from building my character the way I wanted and at my own pace. They didn't contribute tough decisions or force me to make choices, they just meant I had to literally tally up hundreds of skill increases on a piece of paper to make the most of my character and kill myself if I ever leveled the wrong one by mistake. This is what I mean about superficial complexity vs. real sophistication and meaningful choice. You can't just pile up a bunch of horseshit and expect something good to result. What matters is how the elements work in tandem to create interesting systems with meaningful choice. The way the skill system was designed made the stats redundant. The skill system and the perk system together are fantastic. They accomplish everything stats were supposed to and more without tying an anchor around my character's ballsack.

There are no useless skills and they are all fun. The races do have differences. It's a good balance because your race will change the way you play, but it won't necessarily define your class, which defeats the point of having a choice. EDIT: Upon reflection, while I don't agree with you completely, I do wish there was more to distinguish the races from each other. There is an asston of specialization and I agonize constantly over the important choices. Don't know what you are on to there. I can't tell you how many times I have thought to myself "If I only had a few more skill-points..."

And you aren't playing a role? You're the goddamn Dovahkiin. Plus whatever role you want to be. People write long essays and freaking fanfiction about their characters' back-stories. Personally, I prefer the mystery of not knowing what happened before. The story is about fulfilling prophecy, really, not a character study. I like to think what happened in my past isn't as important as how I fulfilled the prophecy. But that's the whole point, there have to be strategically placed blank spots for your imagination to step in.
 

Burst6

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Here's the reason why i don't like skyrim.

1) The combat. It's horrible. I got bored of skyrim's combat almost instantly. The spells have no punch to them (unless you get that perk that gives certain spells punch, but even then it's not that good), the melee combat is repetitive and based far more on luck and mashing buttons, and sneaking is OP. When i became a thief it's not because i wanted to sneak around, it's because i 1-shot everything so that pretty much removed the horrible combat.

2) The story is very.. meh. I can forgive a bad or nonexistent story (i love Monster Hunter and Dragons Dogma), and i'm not saying skyrim's story is that bad, but it doesn't help the rest of the game out too much. For me it hurt it. I was very bored by it. When a story aspect came along trying to slow me down i just wanted to skip it. I don't normally skip the story (i watched every single MGS cutscene and codex scene out there all the way through), but here i wanted to so bad.

3) The animations are horrible. This ties in with the combat in a way. If you want to make it feel like your movements and attacks have weight, you have to have the proper animation. Skyrim doesn't. Bethesda has problems with animation. This is a company that couldn't add a diagonal run animation to their early modern gen games. Everything is badly calibrated and you and your enemies slide along the ground all the time. The graphics can be breathtakingly beautiful, but if i see a bear sliding along a rocky path it'll ruin it for me.
 

charge52

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Rooster Cogburn said:
charge52 said:
Rooster Cogburn said:
charge52 said:
Why is it that so many other RPGs can establish a character while still giving you control over who they become, but skyrim can't? Also, I like how the Ultima games gave you a nameless voiceless protagonist, yet those games don't suck. It is not fine for what it is, because all it is is a failed attempt at making a RPG.
Skyrim cannot establish a character because then there would an established character. As for the rest, Skyrim is an awesome RPG.
Except for the lack of stats, uselessness of skills, lack of differences in race choice, lack of any specialisation, lack of any important choices, and the fact that you aren't really playing a role, yeah, awesome RPG.
The lack of stats is a godsend. I literally used to mod Oblivion to accomplish substantially the same thing, long before we knew where Elder Scrolls V would take place. Stats added nothing to the game but agony and tedium while stopping me from building my character the way I wanted and at my own pace. They didn't contribute tough decisions or force me to make choices, they just meant I had to literally tally up hundreds of skill increases on a piece of paper to make the most of my character and kill myself if I ever leveled the wrong one by mistake. This is what I mean about superficial complexity vs. real sophistication and meaningful choice. You can't just pile up a bunch of horseshit and expect something good to result. What matters is how the elements work in tandem to create interesting systems with meaningful choice. The way the skill system was designed made the stats redundant. The skill system and the perk system together are fantastic. They accomplish everything stats were supposed to and more without tying an anchor around my character's ballsack.

There are no useless skills and they are all fun. The races do have differences. It's a good balance because your race will change the way you play, but it won't necessarily define your class, which defeats the point of having a choice. EDIT: Upon reflection, while I don't agree with you completely, I do wish there was more to distinguish the races from each other. There is an asston of specialization and I agonize constantly over the important choices. Don't know what you are on to there. I can't tell you how many times I have thought to myself "If I only had a few more skill-points..."

And you aren't playing a role? You're the goddamn Dovahkiin. Plus whatever role you want to be. People write long essays and freaking fanfiction about their characters' back-stories. Personally, I prefer the mystery of not knowing what happened before. The story is about fulfilling prophecy, really, not a character study. I like to think what happened in my past isn't as important as how I fulfilled the prophecy. But that's the whole point, there have to be strategically placed blank spots for your imagination to step in.
Strategically placed blank spots, the character entire fucking life is a blank spot. You know another game that starts character like that, Arcanum. You know how it lets you characterize your character? By letting you choose from a shit ton of backgrounds, each which can edit your stats and starting gear, and if none of them suit you, you can be a blank slate. Well of course you hated stats in Oblivion, Oblivion was a shit RPG that couldn't be damned to properly use stats. Please, give me some examples of "important choices" in skyrim. Also, how bout an example of this supposed specialization. Cause through personal experience, you can play the game as a mage, and then later on equip heavy armor and a two handed weapon and do just fine. Really, the Dovahkiin is not a role, with that logic, CoD is a RPG because your the goddamn chosen soldier! The world rarely reacts to your actions, and when they do all that changes is the person who tells you to do some dumb fetch quest.
Also, if you can't just pile horse shit and expect something good, than why are you praising the pile of horse shit named Skyrim?
One Handed and Two handed skills are useless, because it doesn't limit anything but a few animations if you don't put any skills into it. So are most of the magic skills, as all you need to cast master level spells is high magicka, it doesn't matter if you don't level your magic skills. Light armor and Heavy armor also don't matter, as you won't be missing out on anything if you don't put any points into them.
 

getoffmycloud

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You have to realise the point of an elder scrolls game is that you make your own fun they just give you the tools to do it for example my first character was a nord that only used stuff that could be found in nature so it was a standard longbow and fur armour that I never upgraded and it was great fun. Basically just make your own story as you do stuff and make sure the main story is the last thing you ever do in the game.