LE Zeitdruck's Giant Wishlist (Contribution encouraged)

[Zeitdruck]

Hey, Ladies and Gentlemen.

What is this about?

Skyrim is a great game that I had a lot of fun with already, no question.

Nevertheless, there are a few issues that I deem important. They make the game annoying at times. REALLY annoying. I've spent some time in the game myself (lvl 50 mage), and shall provide a list here.

This whish-list only covers things that struck me as annoying or easy to improve. It does not incorporate cosmetic aspects or things that completely change the gameplay.

 

I realize that modding all of this is a lot of work. My experience with other Beth-Games tells me that some people are going to do it anyway- so this list, updated with the help of your contributions, might help someone with modding experience to find useful examples for what might be improved.

 

Obviously, I've spent some time writing this, and tried to organize my requests in a way that should enable you to extract the relevant information without reading it all(see next section). Additionally, I am thinking about cross-posting to other forums. Please warn me if this would cause too much of a disturbance.

Most importantly: If you happen to find a solution for any of the listed issues, please contact me. If you stumble across nuisances that I did not list because of my playstyle or the blinders I wear, Thank you. I then shalt incorporate it into the wall of text. I will not include purely cosmetic issues.

 

Content:

Each section contains an explanation for the various problems that I have been made aware of or that I stumbled across myself, followed suggestions to fix them. Finally, existing remedies to the problems are mentioned.

1) Menu- related Nuisances

2) Lack of information given by the game

3) Problems related to Followers, Horses, Summons, and NPCs

4) Quick-Travel related Suggestions

5) Balancing Issues

 

Disclaimer: I am nuts about statistics and I like numbers and detailed information.

In RPG's, many people say that such things decrease immersion. For me, immersion is decreased even more when I have to look up stuff (E.g. "How does skill x and perk y exactly influence z") in the internet. So much to my personal taste influencing the following.

1) The menus generally are bogus.

This is probably because the game is a console port, and should be fixed by mods as soon as possible. The "broken" menus greatly decrease immersion for me.

Examples that should be fixed:

1)You have no proper menu depicting what gear you wear. Of course it is summed up in the different tabs, but I regularly find myself running around without wearing one armor part because I only use the 1st person perspective.

2)Navigating the menu is a pain (due to the console- based controls, I often end up using the keyboard instead of the mouse to navigate because this works smoother). When using alchemy or enchanting (and possibly on other occasions, too), you are required to use your mouse to approve several times (Click yes or no). Because of being forced to use the keyboard to confirm things usually, this simply is stupid.

3)Items are only ordered alphabetically in chests (which makes you use different chests for different items that you want to store)

4)Active effects are given, but you have to select them to find out what causes the effect. Also, too often I find myself thanking an NPC for pointing out I have a debuff on me, "You're not looking so well." The same problem arises when using buffs with a long duration, you have to watch closely to not miss them wearing off (and, as a mage, you die when your armor wears off).

5)Whereabouts of NPC's. Ohkay, you often have quest markers, and in dungeons or mountains, clairvoilance is a genious spell, but what if I desperately wanted to learn x from NPC z and can't find him because the lousy vagabond is all over the place? (Example: Trainers/Merchants in the College of Winterhold).

6)As in all other Elder Scrolls part, eight shortcuts are just ridiculously little to work with. I have limitless possibilities, so please let me use them in battles without spending half the time fiddling through the menus.

7)Some folks have trouble with the inaccessible 3D map Skyrim comes with (thanks to Wyrdfire).

8)The camera seems to be an issue as well. People playing in the 3rd person perspective end up with their camera being stuck in a weird angle when mounting a horse (thanks to WipKream)

Suggestions:

1) Any traditional rpg- interface that has slots for every piece of armor and weaponry that you can wear would be a great improvement on the current state.

2) No yes/no question windows. Or at least none that require the usage of a mouse.

3) Item categories in containers

4) Overhaul of the active effects tab

5) Add a feature that allows you to a) depict any NPC you are looking for to the map or b) lets you use a modified version of clairvoilance to find him

6) Add additional shortcuts (e.g. the entire numblock) that may be assigned

-Add macros (e.g. for a set of armor or a combination of spells/swords, one for the right, one for the left hand, thanks to WipKream)

-Add modifiers for the shortcuts (Strg/Alt + Shortcut = different assignment) (thanks to WipKream)

-Better organization of the lists of favourites: A multi- row list with the first row incorporating weapons, the second spells, the third shouts and powers, and the fourth armory and others (thanks to AkuraX1 for this suggestion)

7) Add an oblivion-like 2D version of a map. I would welcome it if you could move it around (spatially, not perspective-wise) with your mouse.

8.) Free the camera/properly fix it during the mounting animation.

 

Related Remedies:

-SkyUI by Snakster, T3T, and Kratos: Great mod that enhances the inventory A LOT! Brought to my attention by ThoroughlyOiledGod.

 

2) As mentioned before, you get way too little information about some stuff.

Okay, I may be a bit too noisy about game mechanics and numbers, but hey, I want to play this game on the hardest difficulty and probably the skillset I am about to use will make it even harder.

However, I never have not critizised this regarding any game I have played, so this might be a personal issue.

Examples:

-What does armor actually do? I have an armor rating of x. Now what does that mean?

-Spell efficiency. Is it decreased by wearing armor? It is said to be, but I don't think it really is.

-Spell/Skill duration and damage. The damage and duration of some spells can be enhanced by dual-casting or perks. However, the information given still is the basic one. You don't really know what you buy when buying spells/getting perks/enhance skills.

Suggestions

Add More tabs with information, overhauled skill descriptions

3) Followers and Summons and generally NPC's fighting on your side are problematic, as is.

Followers are a big issue, because you often are forced to use them in quests.

Ohkay, when using them in quests, they at least don't die, and you are not forced to hassle with equiping them. But if you are getting into higher levels playing as a mage who did not bother increasing his health pool, you might want to have a tank with you (either as addition to your summons, or as replacement for the entire conjuration school). Summons are somewhat problematic as well.

Here's why:

1) Followers do not advance in levels. They will remain at the stage they are at when you first entered the area they are in (see http://uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim_talk:Followers for a good discussion about followers), thanks to Mystais&Trevorlahey)

2) Information regarding followers. I do not have it regarding the a) whereabouts, b) condition (health) or c) skills and armor values of my companions. I use restoration spells and there are some spells that can heal up your allies in no time. However, I rarely know when to use them, as it takes a lot of effort to see the healthbar of your allies, and is impossible once a fight is over. So I end up healing my companion after every fight, and way too often during fights, or they just die because f*** you.

3) Summons here come with an extra problem because they are hard to distinguish from your opponent's summons. I regularly get beaten up by some opponent's atronarch because of this.

4) Some horses act very aggressively instead of staying back, and hence they die a lot

5) FRIENDLY FIRE. Biggest issue here. I am a mage, I use fireballs and chain lightnings, people die. However, it gets less funny when I am forced to use single target spells only because my stupid follower, summon, or some NPC that happens to be in the area is the second target of my beloved chain lightning. I even ended up enchanting my follower's gear with lightning resistance because he kept dying, which was even more frustrating from the point I got the "finishing move-perk" in the lightning tree that turns people into ashes at a certain health. Most ridiculously, even the "melee AOE spells" hit allies (Flaming Cloak/Frost Cloak/Lightning Cloak), which makes the spells entirely useless. Your followers (should) stay close to you and will eventually die of these effects.

I have read that the problem becomes more eminent when solving the Legion/Stormcloud quests, as you are fighting with larger packs of allies here. As WipKream pointed out to me, this is a big issue when using horses, as well.

6) General pathing makes them get lost sometimes. I don't expect no game to make my follower be able to path along when I exploit glitches to pass terrain that is not supposed to be crossed. However, my pets and followers regularly get lost in caves as well as in the wilds. The aforementioned problem is increased by the fact that my followers tend to die regularly. Because I spent some time to equip them, I prefer to reload when that happens- which is frustrating when you do not realize when and why your follower died, just because he ran into some boss mob that you were not aware of instead of following you.

7) Additionally, equipping and chosing your follower is a pain. As an enchanter or blacksmith or even both you can greatly enhance the use of your follower by equipping him (as a hint, increase health and heavy armor enchantments on armor and absorb health enchantments on weapons give a great tank). However, only if he deems it right to wear the stuff, and only if you happen to guess the skills he comes with correctly. I have enchanted a lot of stuff for followers. For instance, I tried to equip Kharjo (some Kajit that you can take with you) with an entire enchanted set of orcish armor, a bow, a shield, and a sword. He didn't really bother. He gratefully wore the bracers, helmet, boots, ring and amulet, but refused to wear the harness, as well. Also, he changed to a non-enchanted version of his sword (and bow) whenever I happened to give them to him for carrying reasons. Some/most followers prefer their hunting bow to the weapons you give them. Scroll down to the remedies section on how to fix this preliminary. Again, see here.

8.) Which follower is best for me? I only can guess, since there is no information given about their skillsets.

9) Behavior of your follower. This especially is an issue in the open, where followers tend to use their ranged abilities from a way too large distance. Because of this, they don't hit the enemy, and are rendered completely useless (at least, archers are). You cant remedy this by taking your follower's bow, because he then will use his old wooden hunting bow, and deal close to no damage even if he happens to hit the enemy. Because of this, I ended up trying to find melee only followers. This (at least for archery) could be solved by having full control over the items your follower uses.

 

Suggestions

1) Fix static stats & levels for followers

2) -Map markers for followers and summons.

-A constantly depicted health bar of followers, maybe as well of summons

3) Color effects on allied and enemy's summons.

4) Disable hostile horses! Horses should behave like the flight animals that they are (thanks to WipKream).

5) No friendly fire against followers and horses, maybe none against summons as well. NPC's are more complicated, because you may actually want to attack them.

6) Add some sort of spell to "instanly call" your allies to your location even when they are currently fighting would make this easier.

7) Add full control over what your follower wears

8.) Information on followers skillset provided ingame. Control over it would be even better, but not really necessary.

9) Some sort of control over the combat behaviour of your follower

 

Related Remedies:

-Essential Followers by Nekocatz: Enables you to set followers as essential, which makes them unkillable. Somewhat game-breakin on it's own.

-Taking away better arrows than iron that your follower have might make them use a better bow (again, see http://uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim_talk:Followers, thanks to trevorlahey.

-Disabling and afterwards Enabling a follower will scale him to your level. To do so, first dismiss the follower. When he starts walking home, open the console and select the follower. Type 'disable', he will vanish. Then type 'enable'. Possibly you should take your equipment away from them before (see here, thanks to trevorlahey, Mystais).

 

4) Quick- Travel related

Disclaimer: The following changes are somewhat more gameplay- changing than the ones before. However, they solve nuisances that cost, as is, just time without adding anything of value- such as prolonging the trip to your house to store stuff.

1) In the good old days of Morrowind, one had two incredibly useful spells at hand: Mark, and Recall. Both have been dropped with the incorporation of "Quick Travel" in Oblivion, disregarding their huge use. They, of course, have been modded back into the game. Do it again. it saves a lot of unnecessary running about, be it Quick Travel or not.

2) Direct Quick Travel to your houses should be possible- as well as from. It doesn't serve immersion to see a loading screen after visiting your house before you are able to get back into battle.

3) Carriages are a nice feature as well and should be found in front of every town.

Suggestions

1) Reintroduce Mark & Recall (thanks to nic1357890)

2) Direct Quick-Travel to your houses/Archmage's Quarter

3) Place Carriages in front of every (larger) town (thanks to nic1357890)

5) Balancing

Disclaimer: I play the game on master difficulty. Maybe I have not thoroughly thought about my actions and have a far too high level for my combat skill levels, but there are a few things I stumbled across that I deem weird. I do not provide requests in this section, because I can't come up with a proper solution.

-The game is basically split in two sorts of encounters: very hard ones and very easy ones. Most are easy. Some are so hard it's close to frustrating (especially because of the aforementioned issues) and will only get harder if you come back later, because the enemies scale with you. So most of the encounters are sort of... boring.

-A single player RPG does not have to be balanced to perfection. I mean, archery and destruction magic do not have to be equal in power, because you will not face a human opponent being way too strong because he deems it right to imitate Imperator Palpatine or Robin Hood. But at the same time, skills shouldn't make the game too easy.

Here we have the problem with the way opponents scale. For instance, when I got to be able to conjure a Dremora Lord first, I started looting chests, bodies and looking for mushrooms only. When strolling through a dungeon, I didn't have to bother what my enemies did- immediately smelling the weakness of my opponents, this jolly fellow from daedric realms would leave them no other end than dying immediately.

 

Best, Zeitdruck

Edited December 19, 2011 by Zeitdruck

[Wyrdfire]

Whoa, that was long! But very well put and leaves me with little more to say.

 

I'd still like to have a simpler 2D map of Skyrim with village markers enabled like in Oblivion and other simple ideas taken from Oblivion as I described in an earlier post.

Edited November 19, 2011 by Wyrdfire

[Zeitdruck]

I'd still like to have a simpler 2D map of Skyrim with village markers enabled like in Oblivion and other simple ideas taken from Oblivion as I described in an earlier post.

 

Humm. A somewhat cosmetic request, however, it would serve accessibility, so I will incorporate it.

I hope that more people take the time to read this and contribute!

[LunaWolve]

actually read it 3 times.

 

Just to let you know.

 

Dont actually now what i think about these Ideas, need more time to think.

[Bearget]

"deem" - you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

 

You have some great points; fortunately, most of them should be fixable once the official mod kit comes out, and until then we just have to suffer through. Others... well, we might be screwed. Being able to give followers specific orders in combat seems like a pretty huge overhaul. Who am I to say it can't be done though.

[Zeitdruck]

"deem" - you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

 

You have some great points; fortunately, most of them should be fixable once the official mod kit comes out, and until then we just have to suffer through. Others... well, we might be screwed. Being able to give followers specific orders in combat seems like a pretty huge overhaul. Who am I to say it can't be done though.

 

Hey, thank you, Bearget.

I thought those things should be fixable, hence I made the effort. Regarding the 'combat behaviour' of followers, it should suffice to be able to stop them from using bows if you want to.

I now got Farkas, and even he regularly draws his bow. And he doesn't really dish out tons of damage with it.

 

And it deems me that 'deem' means what I think it means. English is not my native tongue, but according to the dictionary- or, enlighten me?

Edited November 20, 2011 by Zeitdruck

[Zeitdruck]

whoops, accidental double post :S Edited November 20, 2011 by Zeitdruck

[nandchan]

The custom map marker needs to be killed. I find myself always left clicking the map to move it around, with the result that I get an ugly, clunky map marker instead. I've never really used it. A mod which would disable it completely and allow moving the map via left clicking would be perfect.

 

Otherwise, clicking somewhere else should move the marker immediately, and clicking on the marker itself should remove it. That's how such interfaces normally and intuitively work. The current system is simply horrible.

 

I avoid opening the map as much as possible in Skyrim, it's simply awful to use.

[Zeitdruck]

The custom map marker needs to be killed. I find myself always left clicking the map to move it around, with the result that I get an ugly, clunky map marker instead. I've never really used it. A mod which would disable it completely and allow moving the map via left clicking would be perfect.

 

Otherwise, clicking somewhere else should move the marker immediately, and clicking on the marker itself should remove it. That's how such interfaces normally and intuitively work. The current system is simply horrible.

 

I avoid opening the map as much as possible in Skyrim, it's simply awful to use.

 

What exactly bothers you when using the map?

I sometimes feel it is too full of markers that all are coloured the same. At times it take me a while to find where my quest actually leads me. I think it would be great to have a bigger, but less fancy map- the markers would be more spread then.

Questmarkers should be coloured.

My wishes for the custom locations are different from yours- I actually want to be able to set more than one at a time, and, most importantly, give it a name. There were mods in Oblivion enabling to do this, I used them quite a bit. I'll ponder on this and then incorporate it.

[nic1357890]

A carriage outside of every major town and village would be nice, along with mark/recall spells. I try to play without fast travel but places like High Hrothgar are just tedious to get to and it would be nice to have some fast travel options without the ability to just click any location on the map and instantly be there. (maybe add a dragon shout that allows fast travel to High Hrothgar)