Olurum

They should've opted for a voluntary donation feature... or even a feature that allows someone to buy things on the mod authors wishlist on steam or something. Anything but this... Mods will become ' DLC' with unpredictable quality, unknowable lengths of support and the liability of being completely broken by an official game update. I really hope there will be enough outrage and complaints about this so that the decision is reversed.

Yea, agreed. Early on it was really useful but once I levelled to 35+ I get destroyed by the first lone mage I run into. Their attacking power is still good at this level, but it's just that you're really lacking in the HP department. I use healing spells in nearly all of my battles... so when that gets taken away (plus potion use even) it becomes a giant handicap and not a buff. Considering it's a one-use-a-day thing, it should be borderline overpowered.

Yea, when I saw Babette I immediately thought of her as my ticket to trying out vampirism in Skyrim. Another compounding problem is that she's one of the just two original members that survives. At least they could've focused on more dialogue for the surviving members if not the others. Astrid was ridiculous though. You could always tell she didn't like giving up power... but to make a deal with a guy who's son she ordered to be killed is bizarre. It's like if a crime boss orders the death of someone important to you and a hired thug does the killing. Would you be content in getting revenge on the random thug sent to do the bidding? No, you'd want to kill the boss too, which is what happened here. Another negative is that I liked the first sanctuary more than the second one.

Yea, I was dead excited about seeing them in Skyrim... then I find out that these guys are basically only the DB in name, they don't hear the Night Mother, the Tenets have been abandoned and it's the last sanctuary in all of Tamriel. Ugh. Eventually we start doing it the proper way via the Night Mother... but then I'm basically a Listener/Speaker/Silencer all in one, doing everything. But of course, everyone with a personality gets killed at this point and we're left with just two people. It would've been more fun to have quests to recruit new members and promote people after this point, but as said earlier... the contracts are just: go here, kill him, no special conditions requested, come back, repeat. Some of the quests given by the Night Mother need adjusting too. I was told to kill a noble in a hall that he never leaves... he doesn't seem to have a need for sleep. He just sits at the table 24/7, occassionally swapping seats, making it impossible to kill without being surrounded by 5 guards and the Jarl himelf. A littler unfair for a melee based assassin. But anyway, it doesn't matter because this'll be fixed with mods. We saw some amazing stuff in Oblivion, I'm sure this mess can be cleaned up just as good. EDIT: Also, regarding the question about Astrid: I'm also confused of what she was hoping to achieve. She obviously didn't like losing the top position to the Listener/Night Mother combo and wanted me to disappear... but doing it by making a deal with the guy who's son's murder she ordered...? I suppose she wasn't quite thinking things through, or I didn't quite understand what happened. Did she get caught and ratted us out in exchange for being released? Whatever happened, she was foolish/selfish.

Like stated before, there's already a huge competition for hosting Source content, so the site might not kick off that well. Plus I would've thought that Dark0ne has quite a bit on his hands already with the major site redesign and the upcoming Skyrim site.

I'm really hoping that it will be stable. For me, Oblivion and Fallout 3 ran really well on my old machine. But ever since I built myself a new PC, Fallout 3 became unplayable (modded or not). It would crash randomly from anything within 5 minutes to 2 hours. Oblivion still works perfectly though (and about 30 other games, old and new). I spent ages trying to find fixes throughout the year and eventually just gave up on it... never got to try out any DLCs, nor did I feel motivated to give New Vegas a try. If Skyrim has some issues like that... then I'll just cry or something.

I just hope the 'everything is out to kill you all the time (except for Deers)' style is avoided. I would hope that NPC/Monster attitudes and aggressiveness alter depending on what you do. If Lore allows it, then worshipping a certain god that rules over them should make them neutral/friendly. I know that mods will probably solve most problems anyway... so I'm not worrying too much about anything.

Nope, I built this computer last year and spent a lot of money on it. I build my PCs with very high end components to last me for 5 years at least (and over those 5 years I save up money again for the my next PC - £20 a month or so). I'm currently playing all new games at 1920x1200 with everything cranked up to max with plenty of AA and AF and lots other goodies. I'm expecting Skyrim to run just fine... and if it doesn't, then I can surely turn to all the helpful modders who will be cranking out optimization mods. ;)

Heh, no idea if it was a concious decision on Bethesda's part but that is indeed a sure-fire way to force 'vanilla play' if they wanted to. But it also caused much outrage because the construction kit was left unconfirmed and people feared that it wouldn't be released. ;D But they've already announced it for Skyrim and the game isn't anywhere near out yet. A simultaneous release might just happen. Maybe this thread could've served more of a purpose if there was a poll "If possible, will you mod your game from the very first playthrough?". ;)