Bethesda are idiots.

[InDarkestNight]

Started playing Skyrim LE again (posting here because it gets more traffic than the LE board for no reason), and I'm already sick of the shitty writing in this game. Let's not forget how they've been treating the modding community too.

I just got soft-locked from completing the main quest due to their idiotic writing. I was playing a paladin, and was planning on never entering Riften. It had seriously been so long since I ran the main questline, I seriously forgot I had to go there.

Spoiler

I had to talk to Brynjolf, and I failed to convince him to help me. So I paid a begger to give me a buff, only to find I don't get a second chance at the check. So now, my character has no choice but to join the TG, something THEY WOULD NEVER DO, just to continue the quest line.

So much for player choice. I thought you could play whoever you wanted to? Then what's with all the forced quests? Why hard-lock someone into starting the main quest before they can do the civil war? Why force them to join an evil faction just to finish the main questline? What's with all the stupid force-greets that force quests upon you WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT. What's with the limited dialogue options that force you to play as a specific character? You believe in Talos, and you're not 'affiliated' with any god. All of this I guess shouldn't be a surprise, considering this was made by the same company that years later started shoving cheap garbage mods THAT NOBODY WAS USING down everyone's throats whether they liked it or not. Wtf? What kind of a company does that?

So yeah, a playthrough ruined, due to NO FAULT OF MY OWN. I was playing through a mod for the first time too, which requires me TO COMPLETE THE MAIN QUESTLINE AMONG OTHERS. So yeah, entire playthrough ruined. Guess now I'll have to be thinking up a different character to play, and starting all over yet again from square one.

Why has no one addressed writing issues like this? Why not fix the main questline so you don't have to join an evil faction to complete it? That one dawnguard side-quest that requires you to be a stealth character despite the questline clearly favoring warriors. Or that infamous forsworn quest in Markarth that tricks you into walking into a catch-22 situation where you have no choice but to do something evil and reprehensible. Or that infamous murder quest in Windhelm WHERE YOU HAVE TO HAND OVER EVIDENCE IN A MURDER CASE TO AVOID THE THING GLITCHING OUT. Wtf? Or those dialogue options that tell you who your character is rather than letting you decide for yourself? I get not much can be done about npc dialogue, but surely someone could at least change what the player says seeing as its unvoiced.

This isn't the first time I've been forced to quit a game due to bethesda's crappy writing. I've had Serana end more playthroughs than I can count. I also quit my first playthrough with the infamous forsworn quest because I didn't want to chose either way. I genuinely hope the beyond Skyrim team knows better than to do stupid crap like this. I think they even claimed they may re-make Skyrim after they're done. Hopefully if they do (long shot I know), they'll fix the utter garbage writing in this game.

So here I sit with a dead playthrough that I have no way to recover other than to say my goody-two-shoes paladin randomly decided to go to the dark side halfway through the main quest-line and dawnguard quest-line (I rushed the latter just to get the sun damage spells). Wtf kind of choice is this? How am I even supposed to the stupid little intro quest to this evil questline considering that I'm a strict melee character? I haven't even leveled LP once! Seriously.

f*#@ bethesda. I don't even know why I try to play this game anymore. I'm sick of trying to get it stable, I'm sick of having to abandon playthroughs over and over again due to either technical issues or stupid s#*! like this. I've actually gotten utterly sick of seeing the intro sequence. It seems like that's all I do. Do the intro, level to 10 at best, then quit and do it all over again. I mean, its been so long since I've managed to actually finish a playthrough I've literally forgotten the plot for all of the major quesltines! What does that say?

So yeah, I'm going to be doing a long break before I make another attempt. Try to figure out how I can play through my quest mod as a good guy despite what I have to do. Isn't the dragonborn supposed to be a good guy? Wtf?

Sorry, I just needed to vent. f*#@ bethesda again and again to all eternity.

[InDarkestNight]

In hindsight, maybe I should've invested in Speech for once. I was doing persuasion checks all the time, but kept failing since I wasn't putting perks into it. Also, the mod I have allows me to 'sell' items without going to a merchant, meaning my speech skill was lower than usual. If I was planning on trying to talk people down all the time, why not invest in speech? Guess I never thought about it due to the cliche of speech being useless. Also, my skills were spread too thin. I chose one-handed, block, light armor (mainly to be different because I've done multiple playthroughs as paladins), restoration, and archery. Note the lack of crafting skills. I don't like to invest in more than 5 skills for the sake of leveling too fast for my skill levels to keep up. I normally go smithing or enchanting, but I dropped it so I could fight dragons (I've never done the main questline as a paladin before, since they normally don't have any ranged offense). Funny enough though, I found myself rarely using archery. Most of the time I was just meleeing dragons, simply because my sword for some reason hit harder than my bow. Maybe it was because I was only using the bow in dragon fights, so it was lagging behind (I had armsman 4 when archery only had 2 perk points invested in it), though my mod sword probably didn't help much with that. Also, note how I had no magic resist at all. I was playing an altmer btw, and was using the steed stone for the mod I was testing out. I was getting owned by mages left and right. I had to run from a dragonpriest fight because there was clearly no way I could handle him. I just couldn't out-dps him, due to my weak archery and no magic resist.

So maybe my build just sucked. Still doesn't excuse bethesda for puting stupid s#*! like this int he game. Did they intend the dragonborn to be a villain (that may be the case given the trailer for dawnguard)? More likely though they simply didn't care. Maybe they just didn't consider what the player was doing narratively at all, expecting players to be willing to do all quests on the same character (they did seem to assume that for oblivion, seriously).

This is why I prefer quest mods over the vanilla quests; the writing is actually decent and makes f*#@ing sense. Too bad so many of them require you to complete vanilla questlines (such as the main questline annoying, why do like half of quest mods require you to at least start it?)

Either way, me making a crappy build didn't help. Guess I need to just accept there's only 6 possible builds in this game, and mine wasn't one of them. Warrior, mage, stealth, paladin, conjuration warrior, and stealth with illusion and/ or conjuration. You can forget everything else, unless you're playing with a perk overhaul. Also, ignoring speech probably isn't such a good idea. Next game, I'll make use of it. I'll sell all my items myself, and invest perks in it so I can actually beat speech checks. Giving money to beggers and using the blessing of dibella clearly wasn't sufficient. Also, need freaking magic resist regardless of what I'm playing.

[AaronOfMpls]

  

Oh my, here's hoping your future play goes better!

10 hours ago, InDarkestNight said:

I just got soft-locked from completing the main quest due to their idiotic writing. I was playing a paladin, and was planning on never entering Riften.

Regarding that -- unless there's some mod out there I don't know about, you do have to go to Riften.  However, there's a "secret" back way through the quest, which bypasses the Thieves Guild altogether:

Spoiler

Speak to innkeeper Keerava in the Bee and Barb.  She'll tell you where to go, advancing the quest to the next stage, so you don't have to talk to Brynjolf -- or anyone in the Thieves Guild -- at all.

As for discovering that route,

Spoiler

"talk to the innkeepers for rumors/info"

is a common-enough action in these games, which I think might be how I first discovered it.  (Assuming I didn't read about it in the UESP wiki first; it's been more than a decade since I first played through it and I honestly don't remember.)  I imagine the devs figured it'd be found, given how the game seems to encourage talking at least once to everyone who isn't attacking you.

8 hours ago, InDarkestNight said:

Still doesn't excuse bethesda for puting stupid s#*! like this int he game. Did they intend the dragonborn to be a villain (that may be the case given the trailer for dawnguard)? More likely though they simply didn't care. Maybe they just didn't consider what the player was doing narratively at all, expecting players to be willing to do all quests on the same character (they did seem to assume that for oblivion, seriously).

That would make sense.  Still, I haven't let that stop me from enjoying the good parts; I frequently build more sensible narratives and dialogue in my head a bit beyond what the game actually gives me -- even if I don't usually type them up and post them like I did with one story in my Nexus images.  Though I can see how that might be a problem if you're still planning to stream your gameplay (like I remember you talking about in the past).

Meanwhile, re builds: one of my more recent characters is a spellsword -- or rather spellhammer, given he's a Vigilant of Stendarr with a mace via Alternate Start - Live Another Life.  I don't use perk overhauls, but I did use Diverse Character Creation as a kind of "starting class lite" to get a leg up on his starting skills.  I also usually have a follower or two with him who complement his own weaknesses.

As for not liking forced quests, I got a feeling you might like The Choice is Yours, Timing is Everything, and maybe Thieves Guild Requirements, if you don't already have them.

Edited May 6 by AaronOfMpls

[LenaWolfBravil]

I played Skyrim when it came out, and I played it on a console, so no mods. There was always a way to end any conversation without choosing any of the responses - you could simply walk away. My character never joined the Thieves Guild even though I didn't know about the "secret" route. May be I found it myself, I don't remember. You need to think out of the box and not always follow the directions given in your quest log. In most cases there was always a different way to do things and complete quests.

Generally I would agree that the writing in TES5 is shallow but I would not use an expletive to characterise it. It isn't as bad as that. No one forces you to play the main quest either. In my 2000+ hours I never completed either the Dragonborn or the Civil War quest lines because I found them boring. Definitely too boring compared to all the other side quests and stories that you can do in that world.

Edited May 6 by LenaWolfBravil

[InDarkestNight]

Been trying to think of another build. Decided to do my stealth playthrough, but I found I'm not ready yet to do an evil playthrough. Besides, I neglected to install one other mod that would've made sense for this playthrough. Also, I removed Safety Load because it caused my game to freeze mid-conversation (something I've never had before, besides I got the impression reading its documentation that it only works on windows). Point is, I may need to re-make my character. Oh well.

Problem is these stupid vanilla quests are making it nigh impossible to make a sensible character. I was thinking of playing a Knight, replacing restoration with speech. Still though, few quest lines make sense for me. I didn't bother with the companions for instance

Spoiler

because my character would never accept becoming a werewolf.

This meant I was locked out of that questline, and my knight character wouldn't be any better. I mainly chose to go with paladin because at the very least, the restoration skill would justify joining the CoW.

Like I said, it seems like the game assumes you're a villain. There's actually more 'evil' questlines than good, and even the 'good' ones are ambiguous. All the daedric quests, the dragonborn expansion which has you entering apocrypha repeatedly, the TG and DB, Volkihar Vampires, the companions arguably, even the main questline could be construed as you simply acquiring power rather than trying to save the world, the dawnguard was founded and is run by a fanatical bigot, you get the idea. It would seem your only choice for 'good' questlines is the CoW and maybe Civil War. What, is my character supposed to just stick to side quests? Though honestly I was thinking of doing that. Besides, I have yet to even attempt ALL the side quests this game offers. I've long thought about doing that, though with a hunter character so I would have an excuse to break from the roads and wonder the wilderness where most of the side quests I've missed seem to be located.

Either way, its breaking my mod sequence. I was trying to avoid having to reply the same mods or character archetype twice in a row. I was planning on doing good warrior, evil stealth, then good mage (an experimental build I don't even know if it would work so its probably a bad idea anyway).

Thinking about it though, do you really have to do the dawnguard or main questline as a warrior? Can't you do these as mages? I know the material rewards for these clearly favor warriors, but wouldn't it be doable? Then again, the dawnguard does come with unique spells, and honestly it sorta actually favors stealth builds.

Either way, to do the main questline from now on as a good a character, I need to get my speech to at least 50. Honestly, I was thinking of delaying it until I got to level 46 anyway (for leveled items), but I wanted to try Diplomatic Immunity as a high elf, and I already had my supplies in my inventory just sitting there burning away. Guess I would still be playing Beleren if I had just been patient. Of course, I was having a hard time finding things to do. Perhaps I should've looked more at side quests. Or maybe I should re-do a paladin build, but replace archery with speech. Like I said, I wasn't really using it much. I was mostly relying on melee. Also, despite being only level 13, my dps was high enough where I could widdle a dragon down to where they wouldn't take off again once they landed. Really, perhaps archery was of no use to me. Speech would've been far more useful. Besides, I've never really explored it anyway; I don't think I've ever once put a perk point into it. Also never really explored alchemy for some reason (I've only ever used it to make health potions when I was a noob, and after that only to make fortify smithing and enchanting potions).

Yeah, planning out builds is so stupid hard. Then again, its why I'm doing dry runs like this before I have the full LotD load order installed. Guess this is the only way to prepare, seeing what works and what doesn't. Still, I hate that its not really possible to play a good guy in this game. Again, I really hope the Beyond Skyrim team has more sense than this, assuming those mods ever even come out lets be honest.

[InDarkestNight]

Thinking about it, perhaps I did learn some things from this playthrough.

For one, block is NOT a replacement for having decent armor and magic resist. Yeah, you can get magic resist through a perk, but you have to remember that the block skill only helps you WHILE YOU'RE ACTIVELY BLOCKING. So as soon as you lower your shield so you can attack or do something else, you lose your magic resist and your armor.

Also, the build wasn't much of a paladin. Paladins are mainly famous for being tanky, which mine was not. I mainly chose to go with light armor to be different, but also because more of the vanilla light armors are appropriate for a paladin than heavy armors anyway. I was still thinking about this right up to the point I had to chose between Hadvar or Ralof, aka the moment you get to chose whether or not you get to walk out of Helgen with heavy armor or not. If you're playing a tank, you need the heavy armor. Besides, I wasn't investing in smithing anyway, so its not like any light armor was going to get me to the armor cap anyway. The perks may be better, granted, but is the lower armor rating really worth it?

Also, being a paladin didn't work out so well for my gear. I wasn't using enchanted gear, but I wasn't investing ANY POINTS into magicka, seriously. I chose to go 50/50 in health and stamina to maximize my carry weight for the mod. This is why I chose to play an Altmer actually. I did do the math and found I could easily get over 300 magicka even at level 1 if I needed it. However, I didn't take into consideration my current character (for the full runthrough of LotD, I was going to be playing an evil character to justify doing all the quests). My current build meant a number of things. No hoods, no amulets (especially the necromancer's amulet, an amulet you can get at level 1 that gives you a whopping 50 magicka), or any other enchanted gear. Also, for the mod I chose to use the Steed Stone, again to max my carry weight. This meant no atronach stone. So this mean the only extra magicka I had throughout my playthrough was from being an altmer and the blessing of julianos. I was planning on using an Amulet of Mara, but I never could find one (though amulets of stendarr seemed ultra common for some reason). I wasn't having problems casting any of my spells, but I couldn't cast Stendarr's Aura due to it requiring over 200 magicka, which I obviously did not have. Of course, I figured that would be resolved once I got the adept restoration perk. Keep in mind, I was planning on doing the same thing for my final build, but that thing's going to use illusion and maybe conjuration, including the invisibility spell! Yes, that much magic, with no magicka investment. I know its a bad idea, but after all my careful planning I realized it was the best option for the sake of maxing my carry weight. Keep in mind, I could technically max it by not investing health, but I've always found myself too frail without at least 50% health investment, thus the 50/50 split.

So in summary, what did I learn? Being a paladin sucks. You can't use any enchanted gear, pretty much all the game's content is cut off to you, and lacking magic resist really sucked.

This time around, I was thinking of playing a knight who used no magic. No need to worry about magicka then, speech, and no being locked out of content due to 'morals'. My character won't be trapping souls, granted, but they will be making use of enchanted gear they find. Of course, I was thinking of using some paladin armor I think LotD adds, but I never could find the pieces or any hint as to where they were. Fml. Maybe if I had that gear things could've turned out differently. Maybe I could try the paladin thing again, but without archery and with heavy armor. Or maybe I should just stick with the knight idea. Besides, having restoration overlaps with the mage playthrough, so maybe going pure warrior would be a better idea.

[IsharaMeradin]

You may benefit from Smooth Attribute Scaling.  With this mod, you can define how much goes into health, magicka and stamina depending upon the skills that level up.  It also makes the decision to select magicka, stamina or health at level up meaningless (an option has to be picked but any visible change would be reverted when the menu closes).

Of course, if you are not using SKSE or SkyUI, then you won't be able to use this mod.