Skyrim, where's the fun?

Applejack

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Aug 1, 2010
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I started playing Skyrim a lot about a month ago because I heard the worst of the bugs are now gone and that I can fight on the back of my horse now but there's still a huge problem. The battles are really dull. I just swing at everything with a sword and shoot slow motion arrows. The bad guys all act the same and the dragons are very mechanical. I want a huge enemy variety like in Oblivion and cool weapons like Fallout! That's what made those games fun. I thought werewolfness would help spice things up a bit but it makes me really weak. Why did everyone rate this game so high? The only thing I find interesting is the exploration part of the game. I haven't trie magic yet is that a more fun way to play?
 

DoPo

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Jan 30, 2012
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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.
 

Shadowstar38

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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.
 

DoPo

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TopazFusion said:
Yeah, the enemy variety is lacking, somewhat.

DRAUGR!!

...

Also there's this . . .



If that font is too small, click here for full size.
OK, this is too true. Also illustrates what I realised about the previous games being fun was - they weren't all "go kill stuff". OK, oblivion isn't a shining example of diversity and stuff but, goddamn, compared to Skyrim it's a friggin' patchwork of cooky mischief and randomness.
 

Thomas Rembrandt

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I would recommend playing the game as a stealthy assassin. Sneaking up on enemies and one-shooting them actually adds an entire layer of fun to an admittedly pretty repetitive game.

Also, play the Dark Brotherhood questline, it is really good and you get very useful stealth gear right at the start.
 

Mirroga

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I have analyzed some behaviors about the fun in different genre. 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. The appeal of Skyrim and possibly other Bethesda games is the "freedom" found in it that are rare in today's videogames.
 

Applejack

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TopazFusion said:
Yeah, the enemy variety is lacking, somewhat.

DRAUGR!!

...

Also there's this . . .



If that font is too small, click here for full size.
Yeah Oblivion had more colorful quests and quirky characters. I liked the paranoid guy in Skingrad, the Vampire count, and the argonian that sneaks around the town by the gate to the shivering Isles. Oh and I haven't seen anything in Skyrim as good as the shivering Isles.
 

Rooster Cogburn

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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.

Usually when I see someone complain about the combat, it turns out they are not challenging themselves. They just "swing at everything with a sword" and "shoot slow motion arrows". It's like playing Halo on Easy and only using the Battle Rifle. Like any game, it becomes fun when the difficulty forces you to economize and scramble, and use all the tools at your disposal. I think it doesn't occur to people to bump up the difficulty because this is an unusual type of game and they don't realize what the problem is. Bump it up to Expert and see how things go.

Also, make sure you are using shouts, your racial power, scrolls, poisons, potions, etc. Especially if you do not use magic. See, if you play on Adept, you tend to just skip that stuff because you don't need it. Prioritize collecting Words of Power. Or don't, you will find plenty along the way. If you have Kinect, start screaming at your television. If you are playing on PC like a boss, get Thu'umic Shouter and the mod that eliminates the delay when shouting. Keep in mind this stuff is not the usual Kinect gimmick. Voice activation makes shouts more useful, reduces time in menus, and makes combat more fluid and immersive.

Combat gets more interesting as you level up and collect perks.

Finally, the core appeal of Elder Scrolls titles is exploration. In my opinion this is best realized not by seeing the neat stuffs, although that's important, but by learning about the land of Skyrim. So hopefully you will enjoy that, and try not to pass up opportunities when they arise.
 

DoPo

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Applejack said:
Yeah Oblivion had more colorful quests and quirky characters. I liked the paranoid guy in Skingrad, the Vampire count, and the argonian that sneaks around the town by the gate to the shivering Isles. Oh and I haven't seen anything in Skyrim as good as the shivering Isles.
To be completely fair, there isn't anything as good as the SI in Oblivion either. It was an expansion, after all and a later one at that. We should wait until next year to see if they get anything comparable. (haven't played Dawnguard yet, can't judge it)
 

Smooth Operator

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TES has always been all about exploration and they can survive on that simply because no one else does it, the sheer amount of "uuu what's that over there" moments is topped by no other game.

I don't remember this great variety in Oblivion you speak of, there were more mobs in there no doubt but at the end of it that combat never actually changed.
Apart from animations they haven't made combat better in Skyrim(which is a shame) but things aren't quite so bleak as you make it out to be.
 

Applejack

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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.

Usually when I see someone complain about the combat, it turns out they are not challenging themselves. They just "swing at everything with a sword" and "shoot slow motion arrows". It's like playing Halo on Easy and only using the Battle Rifle. Like any game, it becomes fun when the difficulty forces you to economize and scramble, and use all the tools at your disposal. I think it doesn't occur to people to bump up the difficulty because this is an unusual type of game and they don't realize what the problem is. Bump it up to Expert and see how things go.

Also, make sure you are using shouts, your racial power, scrolls, poisons, potions, etc. Especially if you do not use magic. See, if you play on Adept, you tend to just skip that stuff because you don't need it. Prioritize collecting Words of Power. Or don't, you will find plenty along the way. If you have Kinect, start screaming at your television. If you are playing on PC like a boss, get Thu'umic Shouter and the mod that eliminates the delay when shouting. Keep in mind this stuff is not the usual Kinect gimmick. Voice activation makes shouts more useful, reduces time in menus, and makes combat more fluid and immersive.

Combat gets more interesting as you level up and collect perks.

Finally, the core appeal of Elder Scrolls titles is exploration. In my opinion this is best realized not by seeing the neat stuffs, although that's important, but by learning about the land of Skyrim. So hopefully you will enjoy that, and try not to pass up opportunities when they arise.
I agree about the difficulty thing but I could super smith my weapons to compensate so maybe I should use underpowered gear instead. I do kinda forget about shouts but I think thats because I only have one strong shout (ice breath all 3 words) but the recharge time is so long. And exploration yeah it's fun but I liked Cyrodil more because it has charm. Climbing mountains and finding sunsets was fun and when everythings reflecting on the water it's amazing. Also I have an xbox so maybe I should get kinect! Sounds fun.
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?
 

Woodsey

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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.
 

GAunderrated

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Most of the time I am enjoying exploring areas. Sadly gamers are conditioned to follow the carrot and stick approach to gaming so when they get an open world with anything to do they just put down the controller and say i'm bored.
 

Charli

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"Oh noooo I don't find the same things fun as other people, panniiiic tiiiime."


...I just don't think Skyrim is for you then, it sounds like you're not into what intrigues the rest of us and that's OKAY!
 

Epona

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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.
It's gamers who are victims of the hype machine, not Skyrim. I couldn't even imagine getting 30 hours into Skyrim, it is just so boring. On the flip side, I put many many hours into Oblivion.

The whole concept of followers in Skyrim, I just don't get it. Also, this new DLC, something about having a family?

The Sims: Skyrim. Now with more bugs!
 

NotALiberal

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I don't get what's so compelling about exploring in Skyrim? It's tedious as you run out of Stamina every 5 seconds, riding a horse is godawful (seriously? I've seen games from 2004 with better animations), and then when you finally get to the place, its just more landscape with nothing to do in it, or an (instanced) dungeon filled with Draugr in which you go in and engage in the game's tedious, pathetic, unrefined, godawful combat system.

They have the "open world" part down, but there's just nothing to do. Quests are all of the "go here fetch/kill" variety, and writing and characterization are barely non-existent. They are just objectively bad games. Animations are below sub-par, combat is pathetic, story is non existent, "exploring" consists of roaming around an empty wasteland with nothing to do but fight more people (see above about how pathetic combat is). The game has potential, Bethesda are just a bunch of monkeys incapable of getting the little things like MAKING COMBAT FUN or NOT HAVING ANIMATIONS FROM CIRCA 2001 correct. It's a shame, TES games all had potential, but as they are, they're just bug riddled, over hyped pieces of shit. Yes, this applies to Daggerfall too, people need to take off the nostalgia goggles.

EDIT: Please note I can tell the difference when "a game isn't for me" and when a game just flat out sucks. Which Skyrim does.
 

Epona

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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.

Yes, the quests are not up to the standard set in Oblivion so a very active imagination would be required.
 

Lucem712

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Jul 14, 2011
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Skyrim is very special, where people can go in 40, or 80 hours and say, 'man that sucked.' when normally a person would sit down with a game for an hour or two and say, 'this sucks'.

I found that more role-playing and giving yourself rules to stand by help, so there's that. Sometimes you have to give a little to have some more fun, as the older generation would say, 'you kids have no imagination'.