Khorak

I could go along with a system that lets you choose a perk in a particular skill tree when that skill reaches a certain level. Takes more effort to balance, but ties perks and skill levels together and removes the "Woohoo! I have become so eloquent it has made me better at picking locks!" issue. A system like that would force specialisation, as perks would be limited within their own tree and not simply "You get 81 to throw around as you please", which results in you being able to max out the entirety of something. No, instead your One Handed skill will grant you, say, one perk every ten skill points in it. Obviously, this means you get ten perks in total for One Handed. Then what they need to do is make each one handed weapon type, swords, axes and maces, require ten perks to reach the top level of specialisation with (the tree, obviously, has three branches to follow). Those who put everything into one weapon will unlock specialised awesomeness that can be a far more expanded form than the current "swords crit, axes bleed and maces ignore armour". In that way you can still 'do everything' in terms of being a mage and an archer and a warrior and a thief and blah, blah, blah like we already do, but you can't do everything in any given tree. Every character has to make real choices with what they can do, beyond mashing one amorphous blob of perk points entirely into the trees that can be min-maxed like a motherf-....like a....uh....something. So yeah, the protagonist can still be an awesome polymath, but at least an awesome polymath who still specialises in things, so at least everyone else around them isn't reduced to pitiful irrelevancy. Sure you could be considered a Master of Conjuration by the College of Winterhold, but your studies are in summoning. THAT guy might have spent his whole life mastering the art of Conjured Weapons. You can still conjure weapons, but he's better at it, because it's his area of expertise. He can still summon stuff, but they're nowhere near as good as yours, because it's your area of expertise. We should be able to differenciate between people and characters even within a particular skill. I think the 'freedom of play' thing swings a little too far. Players should still be pushed into making choices that are mutually exclusive with other things, even in their preferred field.

Uh....no. It's on them. Walking near someone in the wilderness is not a reason to be brutally bludgeoned to death with a warhammer. It's how you tell the difference between bad people and good people. Bad people try to kill you. Good people tend not to.

I find your pitiful argument insulting. Now go do something, start a new game and go to Whiterun. You see all those options for getting into the city? That's because you don't have to go with your initial contact to Riverwood and get the mission requiring you to speak to Jarl Balgruuf. You can go anywhere, immediately. And they knew this, so they deliberately set the game up so that you could still get into Whiterun with Persuasion, Bribery or Intimidation without expecting you to go to Riverwood and start those missions. In short, your smugness is matched only by your embarassing ignorance. Bethesda merely set up the main quest. They do not expect you to do any part of it at any given point beyond the glithy problem of Balgruuf still being primarily a main quest vendor when you try to hand him Ulfrics axe, so they have deliberately s*** all over your sad little argument by explicitly writing the game to accommodate this. Last time I fought Mirmulnir, I was already Archmage of the College of Winterhold. And that choice is what Bethesda intended to be possible, not your laughable attempts to claim otherwise. Just to hammer home the point, your first contact, Ralof or Hadvar, even outright says it would probably be best if you split up one you've escaped Helgen. That right there is them validing any decision you make to shove off and do whatever the hell you like.

If you were worth the effort, I'd fraps a video for YouTube of me making a Khajiit character, going straight from Helgen to every single city except Whiterun, ending with Windhelm, where that Khajiit would go buy something from Sadris Used Wares and then get a drink in the New Gnisis Corner Club.

No one is claiming that Dovakiin is emperor. We're exploring the idea of Dovakiin becoming emperor. Most people want to argue based on what has come before. These traditionalists are the book scholars who think the only answers are those from their betters now deceased. I'm more of a radical. So is my Dovakiin. Plus, every other book out there seems to conflict with every other book. No one knows for sure what it means to be dragonborn or if there is a difference between being merely "dragonborn" and being "Dovakiin". But riddle me this all you traditionalists: If there were true Dovakiin before, why all the dragons coming back? Kind of seems to me that those dragons were buried without actually being dead. I suppose maybe we could say that killing the soul eater might then release those souls? Better not anyone kill Dovakiin then! Or that Alduin is a soul giver? But then he could just follow Dovakiin and resurrect again any dead dragons. So what is the answer, if there is one? Your 'riddle me this' question is answered in the main campaign. The dragons are coming back because Alduin came back. Alduin had been blasted through time by an Elder Scroll at the end of the Dragon War, which is why there's a prophecy of his return; he was never dead. Alduin uses a soul snare in Sovngarde to consume souls, and with the power this gives him he can bring dragons back from the dead. He's flying around ressurecting dragons with a unique power only he posesses. Those dragons were as dead as anything else when they were buried, only Alduin could bring them back like that. And the Dragonborn is the only one who can kill them and prevent him raising them again, because the Dragonborn tears out their soul and eats it like a terrifying living soul gem. This is most certainly a fate worse than death since everyone in Elder Scrolls knows there's an afterlife, so being truly destroyed like this, while convenient to the mortals who want a dragon to be gone forever when Alduin is flying about the place, is probably why the last words of Mirmulnir are, "DOVAHKIIN! NO!" For someone so quick to deride and sweep aside people who bother working out the lore based on....the books that are filled with the lore....it's an incredible facepalm moment that you asked those questions. Especially after you asked what the difference between Dragonborn and Dovahkiin is. There is a difference....the spelling. Dovahkiin is Dragonborn in the dragon language. There is absolutely no difference between the Dragonborn lineage of the Emperors and the Skyrim protagonist in terms of what being a dragonborn actually does for them. The only difference is that the return of Alduin means the Skyrim protagonist has dragons to slaughter and consume, which the dragonborn lineage of the Emperors did not. In the conversation after killing Mirmulnir, one guard even flat out calls another one an idiot for saying that the Emperors never killed any dragons, because there weren't any for them to kill and do all the Dragonborn things that come with that. Riddle me this...how many dragons have come back to life until Alduin came back? That was rhetorical, the answer is none. Why on Earth would a dragonborn be running around to personally kill every single dragon when the Blades are killing them cheerfully enough? Endless piles of dragons have been killed by mortals, seemingly far more than Dragonborn ever got. The whole Dragon War goes by without any Dragonborn being mentioned at all, until it culminated in those Dragonborn-less mortals resorting to an Elder Scroll to deal with Alduin. Why, exactly, is it to be assumed that all the dragons Alduin is raising were killed by a Dragonborn and thus we should make up random nonsense about the souls being 'released' or whatever when a Dragonborn dies? We shouldn't. It's creating a question and problem that don't exist.

I'm curious to know how, exactly, the Dunmer of Windhelm are freeloading. They're not given anything. They intrinsically can't freeload, because they'd starve to death. This is medieval fantasy world, not a modern European nation with lovely unemployment benefits you can 'freeload' from. Dunmer no worky means Dunmer no eaty.

In B4 "Hur Hur Karita iz teh hawt".

I make up a nice little backstory to my character, and then just play the game. Such as making a white Khajiit named 'Snow-walker' (if only we had a bigger Khajiit dictionary) who was born in Skyrim and considers it his home. The cold doesn't bother him like other Khajiit. He's well known even before the game starts, because the Nords kinda like him as this wandering, snow-bound Khajiit who's just like them (he's like a minor celebrity just through being rather unique and interesting) and in this case the Imperials kinda have him bang to rights; they caught him as he was approaching Ulfric to join up. Then I go smash everything in the face with a warhammer. Or my fists.

Are you saying Titus Mede II is the Joker? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWILhrSzw5o

I'd take an Imperial start if it let me get my hands on that Imperial Captain. You and Hadvar run into her during the escape, and she starts shouting at him for allowing this criminal free, that I should be dead, blah blah blah while Hadvar starts arguing furiously with her. If you leave it he manages to shout her into letting you come along, but she promises she'll deal with you afterwards. I want a Renegate Interrupt option where I just murder her during the argument. Hadvar looks at you for a moment and says, "It's a real shame the Stormcloaks got the Captain before we arrived. Lets get out of here."

Unfortunately, the whole turning to ashes thing is designed specifically to prevent resurrection. This is so you can't continually resurrect a massively powerful enemy as a zombie and laugh your way through the entire game; as soon as a resurrection spell expires, the NPC is disintegrated to prevent further ressurection. If you hadn't raised him, the console would have worked. Your only options are to reload an earlier save, or find out what the heck his ID number is and use the console to add him back into the world. That doesn't guarantee success though, because there's no telling if the replaced NPC will have the required conversation options.

AoE is 'Area of Effect'. It's common terminology for RPG game systems, both tabletop and computer. The Fireball in Skyrim would be referred to as an 'AoE spell'. 'Cleaving damage' is....not common terminology, it's a weird ruination of common terminology. No-one says 'cleaving damage', they actually talk in more generic terms about an AoE melee attack. MMO's especially have lots of attacks like this for fighters, and it is very common for 'Cleave' to be used as a name for them. 'Cleave' is used in reference to the D&D ability of the same name, which only the worst Fighter would ever fail to take and is thus pretty much a standard thing. If the OP made sense, the thread title would be "AoE melee attacks?"

Very little difference. Very little. The actual amount of discriminatory, race specified ambient dialogue is tiny. Guards tell elves to stay out of trouble. Wow. Big deal. The tavern keeper in Windhelm is a jerk if you're Elf or Beast (schizophrenically so, ambient dialogue complains about you, then cheerfully takes your gold and shows you to your room). Khajiit get a comment here and there. Bethesda bowed out of putting in serious racial and sexual discrimination probably due to a combination of laziness and not having the balls to do it. It's so rare in Skyrim that it reallys sticks out when it happens, because it's so damn rare. The whole thing is very much a 'tell, don't show' situation, which is rubbish. If everyone is telling you that Ulfric is a monsterous racist and the Stormcloaks a bag of phalluses, then they should act like it. Or not, to prove the stories aren't true, if you can work that rambling nonsense out. As it is, there's clearly supposed to be an ugly streak of discrimination, what people say is meant to be true, but the reality is.....nothing really hapens. It doesn't matter. You already pointed out the only functional differences, and they're pitifully minor. Orcs can go straight into the strongholds. Dark Elves don't have to waste time answering if you hate Dark Elves.....yeah that's about it. What should have happened is that Beasts have to do quests even to enter Windhelm and do extra quests in the Stormcloaks before they earn any respect....the payoff is bigger when the Stormcloaks hail you as awesome incarnate because you beat that respect into them, whereas Nords should walk into Windhelm like a conquering hero from the start and have such an easy time of it that it's just damned insulting. Being a High or Dark Elf at Winterhold College should have gotten you dropped into a petty little office politics situation where the 'natural mages' are being dicks to everyone else....especially Nords and the Orc librarian. The Thieves Guild should appreciating a Khajiit, Wood Elf or Dark Elf for their stereotypical abilities....which might be insulting to you just because of the assumption. Even the Imperials should be getting in on this. They should treat Orcs as excellent muscle, unthinkingly assuming you're also an idiot and not realising how insulting you are because they're being 'nice' by praising your ability to smash faces....because Orcs are brilliant at that, right? Imperials should obviously be like Nords joining the Stormcloaks. Nords should have to prove their loyalty (no Stormcloak infiltrators please). What do we get? Meh, few lines of ambient dialogue.

It's standard practice for pretty much any institution that just did something it knows won't go down well. You do whatever is necessary to keep the required people from being annoying. Money, titles, hollow promises, women, sheep....who cares. The Empire just didn't have anyone in the room who knew enough about Skyrim and Nords (if they did, they could have gotten the Nords as worked up as Ulfric has right now, but in support of the Empire). Riften is certainly a hellhole. Can't really disagree with Nordrick on The Elder Strolls chapter 6. Burn it down. Markarth is also garbage either way. The Imperials have an ineffectual goon captaining the worst ship at sea, and the Stormcloaks replace him with the guys who made it the worst ship at sea. Should burn Markarth down too. Dawnstar is better off under the Imperials, since Skald is a nutbar. Morthal....geez, who the heck could really make a place whose only export is waterbourne diseases, into something worth a damn?

I don't go near them. Any insect capable of actually pushing me around is an insect I have no interest in dealing with.

Yeah, there's a reason it's in the Magic skills. Mages should be abusing Enchanting in the same way everyone else should be abusing Smithing. I have a Mage character saved somewhere. She's level 15, and with only 70 in Enchating, not even maxed out, she pays 2 Magicka to dual cast a fireball. 2. That's it. I've levelled Enchanting since I made that kit, so I could make it literally nothing (yes, if you go above 100% reduction in magicka costs in a given school of magic, it will cost nothing; the game has no cap in place to prevent this), but I can't be bothered because I don't actually notice the magicka drain when I'm stun locking to death absolutely anything with dual casted, Impact perked spells. At level 40 you really should have zero magicka cost for Destruction spells, which you will hurl endlessly at anything and everything that offends you. This includes rabbits, elk, anyone who doesn't have a witness to report you.... If you're paying nothing for your Destruction spells, your magicka pool becomes the 'how many summons can I cast' bar.

Yeah, stuff like that is what really gets you. I made a Khajiit male in order to do an Unarmed Combat run, which took a turn for what I considered utterly hilarious when I ran down the stairs to the Helgen torture room, found a Stormcloak on the floor struggling to escape the torturer who's going all Emperor Palpatine on him with the force lightning, and then immediately pulled off the 'punch them brutally in the face three times' unarmed execution kill on the torturer. In third person, so the guy is just completely dwarfed by my big cat, it's beyond vicious. It took five damn minutes for me to calm down and breathe properly after being presented with this image of a colossal Khajiit running into the room and beating Emperor Palpatine to death with his bare hands in total "ain't no problem" boss mode. Even managed to keep that Stormcloak alive in the next fight too. Figured he earnt it. Named him Luke, obviously. I can't watch Return of the Jedi in quite the same way anymore, keep wishing Darth Vader were an angry Khajiit Cathay-Raht. That's just not that funny unless you were me, having that day, and suddenly being tickled juuuuuust right....

He married the arrow, and is tied down to a sedentary life as a city guard.

Get more health. You're a mage, you're not meant to be getting hit in the face. Those spells are to give you more longevity, not duke it out like a properly built warrior does. Even with maxed out damage reduction the warriors get their job done because they've got masses of health. Some enemies hit so God damned hard that the 20% left over after full armour reduction is still deadly without a vast pile of HP to laugh it off. And you've got 80 in Conjuration, why the heck are you taking hits? There should be a Dremora Lord out there. There's the extra health you need. Once you've maxed out Conjuration, there'lll be two of the damn things. Destruction becomes pointless, they kill everything remorselessly.

God damn bears.

Balgruuf says that the Jarls weren't consulted about the treaty, they were told. Avenicci responds that the chests of gold didn't hurt either. He's making the obvious inference that the Jarls were bought off after a rubbish peace was thrust upon them. *shrug* It's only surprising if you're desperately clinging to the idea that the Empire is great or something. They knew this wasn't going to go down well, and it's standard practise even in real life for terms that will be contentious to be sweetened with a massive sack of bribe money to the influential underlings. What's actually surprising is that the guy you end up thinking is a cowardly weasel, Avenicci, suddenly slams Balgruuf right in the face with it, and leaves the usually confident and assured Jarl with little real argument in response. Considering he says "Not this again!" it's clear that, against what you'd expect, Avenicci and Irileth have been on his case about it more than once, and clearly, he wasn't very much on the winning side of that argument. He's sick of them kicking him in the gut about it. Balgruuf isn't 'corrupted', but certainly he's taken an Imperial payoff....I say he's still not corrupted because he's clearly not happy about it and it's very much, and very obviously his belief that the Empire is the best for everyone that drives him to stick with it, not the fact that the Empire ponied up some spending money after the Great War. They pack a hell of a lot of character into those few lines, and it's easy to spot the difficulties Balgruuf has faced. He wants the Empire to stay together but....well, obviously the situation isn't clear cut and certain things he's found necessary as ruler are grating on him. In his case, the Empire would probably have been better off not giving him that money, as it personally insults him and presumably has made him look bad. He may be a supporter of the Empire, but he's still a 'good Nord' and things like that don't sit well.

I suggest you do back and pay attention to what people say in the game. The "ban" on Talos worship was not upheld in practice. Several Jarls, Legates, and countless other people were known to practice Talos worship. It wasn't until Ulfirc started the war that The Thalmor actually started snatching people. Again, this is another apologetically naive and insulting argument to make. To refer to my scenario above, it isn't somehow acceptable for the US to have banned Mohammad, because the local Islamic government is trying not to bother enforcing it. Even if people are still secretly worshipping Talos and getting away with it with a wink and a nod, the fact still remains that these people can no longer publically practise their religion. They cannot worship Talos in the open and their temples have been closed. They have been banned. Failure to understand this just reeks of a complete lack of any form of empathy or understanding. Take it out of religious context, and it's a case of homosexuality being illegal. Oh sure, we let people be gay and turn a blind eye, but regardless, every single day any homosexual has to hide away who they are and can only meet with other gay people in the freaking wilderness so they don't get caught. If you can't work out why that's just not acceptable.....well there's no point arguing. You'll watch Fox News and vote right wing every single time.

Talos worship ISN'T the "main" religion for them. The Nords worship the Nine Divines, they just revere Talos more then most. Their entire religion wasn't banned only one of the 9 gods they worshiped. This is like saying, "We only banned Mohammad, they've still got Allah. What's their problem?" It's ludicrously naive. Banning Talos most certainly is an absolutely massive deal for Nords. Especially when you also let Thalmor snatch squads roam around the countryside murdering anyone they please. To take the previous idea of putting it into modern context....the US defeats Iran, and in the peace negotiations it bans Mohammad. Then, US killteams roam around the place summarily executing anyone who mentions Mohammad in his religious Islamic context. If you think this is something the locals should "just put up with", then you really need to see a psychologist.

You're not. At points Alduin is freed from script to do normal dragon things. At which point he can, if he picks you out of the dozens of targets available, strafe your complacent ass with fire. He's almost killed me like that before, and a few times I've run into the fort because I saw him coming straight for me after I stood around watching.

To be fair actually, when you sign up you get exactly zero trouble from the Stormcloaks. None. Not a bit. They love you, even if you're a High Elf. Another facet of why the 'Nords are racist!' thing is getting boring is the lack of comprehension why. This isn't happy, friendly, cosmopolitan modern London here (where you get stabbed for sounding literate), it's a rocky, snowy hell that has caused the locals to actually evolve an unnatural resistance to cold. As I already said, we're talking about ludicrously well entrenched nations, and it's all about the cultures. And with how Elder Scrolls is set up, cultures are heavily linked to species. If you think about what really happens, you notice that the Nords aren't 'racist', it's cultural discrimination. Racial insults and the like get tossed around (by everyone, really) because race is linked to culture in Tamriel, and it's the culture clash that's the big issue. Notice how Niranye (who wears the face of the ultimate enemy) says the Dark Elves make it harder by not just knuckling down and working their way through it; as far as she's concerned, if you put your head down and work with the Nords, instead of clashing with them, things turn out alright for you. Dunmer don't do this, they're very confrontational, they don't want to change (rightfully so, I'm pointing stuff out instead of really judging it right now). The Orcs shove off to someplace in Skyrim no-one cares about and....basically already act like green Nords, so not much problem there. The Khajiit complain no-one likes them because they think they're smugglers and thieves. This is a tragic sob story until you play the Thieves Guild questline and find out they bloody are. As per usual, the Argonians are still eternal victims and getting screwed for basically no reason. Sod the Dunmer, they're a-holes, arguments should be entirely about the Argonians. They're often friendly and don't really do anything to deserve what they get. So....off you go and join the Stormcloaks. Lets say as a High Elf, the single thing that sends Stormcloaks into paroxysms of hatred. In you go and talk to Ulfric. He lets you sign up. Not a peep out of him. You talk to Galmar, and don't get a peep out of him when you tell him Skyrim is your damn home and you're willing to die for it. He sends you off on a traditional Nord trial (which you get even as a Nord, it should be noted). When you get back, you all have bloody adventures and the Stormcloaks constantly lay new, apparently flattering nicknames on you to represent how you're freaking awesome. That....doesn't sound racist to me. Nords are culturally discriminatory, they respect you if you act like a Nord. They're only racist by extention because Tamriel is a typically racially segregated fantasy setting where hating the opposing cultures means hating the opposing, singular species attached to that culture.