Why do PC gamers look past all of the greatness in Skyrim?

[Btasty]

People are complaining about Skyrim for pc because it is simply not optimized for the pc (Which is understandable because they make most of their money off of the console versions). Take the UI for example, which is the probably the biggest complaint of them all. The xbox 360 controller has two joysticks and a total of 12 buttons (14 if you count joystick clicks). Meanwhile the a full keyboard has 50+ keys and a mouse. If you count how many of those keys are actual feasible using WASD movement its a lot less but still much more than a controller (not including multiple key presses). However the PC version still uses the same UI as the console. Bethesda simply didn't take advantage of what a keyboard has to offer. I mean imagine trying to play an RTS on the console (Get a Starcraft 64 ROM if you really want to know what this feels like). You would get frustrated because the controls wouldn't feel fluid and something that should ordinarily take a small effort takes a large amount of effort. The Skyrim UI is actually easier to traverse with a game controller than it is on the PC. Logically that doesn't make sense. More control should equal less effort not more. Just be thankful we get the creation kit... Which still hasn't come out yet. Another reason why people are complaining. Edited November 23, 2011 by Btasty

[Mogwilson]

The "entitlement" & "ungrateful" arguments have no merit whatsoever & only exist to make me spit out my coffee in anger, Seriously, It's always the fanboys that use this logic as a platform & it makes no sense at all.

I do not give my money to a company then feel grateful for recieving a product in return, Logic of fanboys & fools & belongs on the Steam forum where it's overused & thrown about without rhyme or reason.

 

As for Skyrims greatness, Yes, It has plenty of that, However the nerfing of magic, Dumbing down of character creation , Horrific & clunky UI, Limited magic diversity & lack of depth or meaning in a lot of quests do disappoint me.

[Wyrdfire]

People will *censored* about just about anything. There's also this ridiculous sense of entitlement because their hardware can handle things far beyond what consoles have, but the games that are being made are mostly at the console quality. But really, it's people bitching for the sake of bitching so that they can get attention.

 

So that's what staff thinks about my right to be satisfied or not with paying for a dumbed down version of what used to be my favorite game series. I'll do you a favor and remove myself forthwith from your forums. Feel free to ban me. Regards

[HellsMaster]

People will *censored* about just about anything. There's also this ridiculous sense of entitlement because their hardware can handle things far beyond what consoles have, but the games that are being made are mostly at the console quality. But really, it's people bitching for the sake of bitching so that they can get attention.

 

By this post I can tell you are playing on a console. Really we are bitching because we want attention? That is the most ridiculous thing I have heard. PC gamers are pissed off because we are stuck with some shoddy half assed port. We are pissed off because the UI stinks so much it makes you not want to play the game.

 

We are bitching about because we where told we would get better.

 

So don't make ridiculous statements like that please.

[shiftyoliver]

 

You clearly have not been reading what people have been saying. And the book analogy is more like this. The book you're reading so far seems good; but all of a sudden you find missing pages, unreadable text, the translations from the language it was originally written in sometimes don't make sense ie..(User Interface) making reading the book a chore.

 

As someone who reads books, I don't think I'm alone in saying a book that has missing pages, bad translations and unreadable text gets a 9/10. I'll try it in another way.

 

The book uses verbs that people dislike, and that's the complaint.

 

Not quite, reviews are pointless imo. Dragon Age 2 was acclaimed by most "critics" but derided by fans. EA even admits they lost "some fans" with DA 2. Look at the release of Rage. It was more or less acclaimed by critics but PC fans were steaming mad with the poor PC support on launch. Pop in textures, corrupted textures, crashing.

 

Yeah sure, great reviews with most of the PC gamers that can't play their game they bought due to a shoddy port. Ironically, while not developed by Bethesda, published by them. Yes, the issues were eventually resolved but understandably the PC gamers are pissed off they have to wait while the console games who were insulated from the problem, could play right on launch.

 

Same thing with FNV, critically acclaimed but buggy as hell. At least some of the reviewers acknowledged the lack of polish, despite the good intentions.

 

The reviewers also don't stick around with the game long, as before, they only jot down first impressions more or less. Which means they've already moved onto reviewing the next game and haven't had to deal with a recently rather obtrusive patch.

 

So yes, even a tattered book can get good reviews.

Edited November 23, 2011 by shiftyoliver

[Clawdius69Talonious]

This is one of the most unpolished games I've ever played:-Frequent random lag spikes-Frequent crashes to desktop. -Poor user interface. -Many bugs, some of them game-breaking. All together these make the game almost unplayable until a patch comes out to fix them. I'm a bit tired of modders having to turn Bethesda's excrement into gold.

I have played, and enjoyed, far buggier releases than Skyrim. I was one of the -very- few people who purchased, and enjoyed, Trespasser when it came out. I have my own complaints, many and varied, about Skyrim. However, I will say this. I have spent 131 hours in Skyrim, and in those hours I have perhaps experienced 200 brief lag spikes, and one CTD. I have never been stuck in the terrain (something that has been an issue in previous Bethesda games, and countless games by other developers) in such a way where I could not eventually jump or wiggle my way out, I have never experienced a game breaking bug (unless you consider being able to abuse some NPCs persuasion responses infinitely game breaking), and personally having spent 60 dollars at a rate of what has for me, so far, been a rate of less than 50 cents an hour for entertainment seems like describing the game as excrement is at least a little harsh.

 

If you're not enjoying your time with the game, go on vacation, spend thanksgiving with your family. I'm sure that the folks at Bethesda have been looking forward to the same. However, it wouldn't surprise me to see the creation kit come out before the end of the year, and then the mod community can begin their work in earnest. If you choose to play while you complain, you should look into upgrading your video and sound drivers, and perhaps things you consider inconsequential such as your keyboard and mouse drivers. There can be a great many factors at play when it comes to crashes, but it never hurts to have the latest drivers.

[Arcadiast]

@dwellufool

 

we are obviously of different opinions which is ok but this...

 

If you don't care about actually playing the game, but would rather it be some smoothed out eye candy, I'm going to assume your stupidity has rendered you an atrociously dull person to be around. Your reading record can be recorded in a standard Word document's first line.

 

...pretty much disqualifies you as a serious discussion partner. So when somebody doesn't like the game because he/she thinks the graphics are not good enough, you automatically assume that they are dull and dumb Persons?

 

We are definitely of different opinions.

[Vagrant0]

People will *censored* about just about anything. There's also this ridiculous sense of entitlement because their hardware can handle things far beyond what consoles have, but the games that are being made are mostly at the console quality. But really, it's people bitching for the sake of bitching so that they can get attention.

 

By this post I can tell you are playing on a console. Really we are bitching because we want attention? That is the most ridiculous thing I have heard. PC gamers are pissed off because we are stuck with some shoddy half assed port. We are pissed off because the UI stinks so much it makes you not want to play the game.

 

We are bitching about because we where told we would get better.

 

So don't make ridiculous statements like that please.

Playing on PC, always playing on PC. And my opinions on this matter are my own.

 

My comment was fueled mostly by the sort who make long ranty posts about "All the things that make this latest game crap.". They talk about all their expectations about what a game should have, when they rarely have any experience in making or even working with resources of said game. The sort of thread which complains about jagged and polygonal looking rocks because, by their standard, every PC should be able to render several million polygons in a given scene without any slow-down. The sort who complained at long length about how "stiff" the movement animations were after watching grainy, low quality, leaked footage from the console.The sort who spend hours of their day raging about their latest discovery and disappointment with how they expect things to have been done, expecting sheer perfection and blaming everything less on a console port. Interestingly enough, many of these sorts of people are also the sort to down-rate quest mods, flame authors, and generally do the same sort of nitpicking in mod threads, so there is little love for this sort in my book.

 

I'll agree with you, the UI in Skyrim sucks. Often it picks the wrong thing I click on in dialogues and the perk menu is almost unusable with the mouse given how it zooms in so damn close and registers any clicks outside an area as trying to click over to the next skill. But will it make me stop playing the game? No. Will it make me feel it necessary to scream and whine about it every place I can? No. Since I'm playing the PC version and am technically minded, if it annoys me that much, rather than make complaints that fall on deaf ears, either I learn to deal with them differently, wait for it to be patched, or I mod it.

 

I'll also agree with some of the AI issues and poor transitions... But this is a Bethsoft game, that kinda stuff has always been there. Hell, many games I've seen have the same sorts of bugginess when the player isn't stuck on rails the whole way and NPCs aren't this sort of static, immovable object. It was present in Daggerfall, present in Morrowind, present in Oblivion, present in both FO3 and FONV, so really nothing new... Yes, there's room for improvement, and there's room to polish things off... But here's the thing. I've done my own work with trying to get choreographed scenes to play out the way I wanted them. It wasn't a lack of the needed resources, or even the know-how to do it... But it still took me months to get anything even close. Months working on the same exact scene, having to start it over and over and over again only to see a rare glitch pop up that makes everything look like rubbish usually, and breaks the scene rarely. So a whole game, which is mostly working, with a few glitches here and there, seems like a good enough job from my standards. Knowing how things usally work in a development office, the people who are working on the engine side of the game rarely have contact with the art people or the ones who are manually placing stuff and writing quests; so the engine people rarely know of minor issues encountered by either group, and likewise the artists rarely know of minor issues encountered by the engine people or game scripters. Usually these things aren't even looked at until the game has gone to a preliminary QC check and come back with reported issues.

 

And again, there is always room for things to be smoothed over by patches or mods. I can't remember a single game released in the last 10 years which didn't require some patching to improve things, or just make it playable. Even Baulders Gate needed some patching to fix various dropped events, item imbalances, and other rare issues. And that was like 1996. Sure, there might be a handful of games out there who don't get patched and don't have any obvious glitches... But none of them have an open world and they're usually platformers, highly menu based, or linear FPS games where 90% of the game content is actually just online deathmatches. Come to think of it, I think even Doom had an update patch for it somewhere... and that was the pre-internet age of sending out patches as part of a CD included with gaming magazines.

 

I'm not saying that complaints may not be valid, but that posting them here or similar, in a place where game devs aren't likely to ever see it does approximately nothing to solving any of them. Therefore it is only logical that these complaints are voiced to either get people to echo your sentiments and give you personal validation, or as a means of catharsis. It's not a bad thing, except when it starts to drown out almost every other discussion and starts to intrude into other threads needlessly.

 

 

When many threads read like:

 

A spoiled child who is upset that the teddybear they got for their birthday doesn't sing and dance like it did in the commercial, and because their parents didn't get them that singing, dancing teddybear, the child hates their parents and refuses to accept any consolations or words of apology until a singing, dancing, teddybear is bought... Only then to get said teddybear and throw it against the wall and throw a fit because it doesn't sing or dance in the way they expected, and the eyes didn't come in blue, proclaiming their now seething hatred for their parents, and now the toy maker who didn't make the teddy bear good enough to live up to their expectations.

 

or:

 

Calling the police/911 because the fast food restaurant you just visited and are presently sitting in the exit of the drive-thru for accidentally missed part of your order or added ice to your drink when you didn't want ice in it. Or just giving you fries that are lukewarm instead of hot.

 

 

It makes it hard to take those threads as much else. It's right to be upset, it's right to feel a little disappointed, but that's how the world is. Very few things EVER live up to your expectations, and the reality is that most of those things that you complain about, even when it's in the right place and sent through the right channels, will probably never change because it is either outright impossible to meet those expectations at the current time or is just impractical to do so based on the amount of work that might have to be re-done or the money spent. So if something you dislike is so integral to the game, you kinda just have to deal with it, or take what enjoyment you can so that the purchase is not seen as a loss, or just take it as lesson to be more careful about what you decide to buy. I'm learning this lesson myself with Saints Row 3... Which I was assured was pretty much a sandbox game after the main story and which had lots of room for customization.

[macole]

Why are PC players unhappy? Because you're left feeling like an unpaid beta tester until the CS comes out, which should have been included in the disk I bought. You play and at the same time you're writing on note paper change this and change that. Then after filling a small notebook you begin to think this is not fun. Why are modders expected to do what Beth should have done in the first place? Modding should be fun not a requirement to tie the loose ends together to make a finished product.

[Balakirev]

I hear so many PC gamers and reviewers who nit pick minor details of Skyrim to complain... Meanwhile, there are so many great things and details within the game.

 

This is a strawman argument. Instead of focusing on actual realworld complaints about Skyrim that involve a range of major issues--whether one agrees with these complaints, or not--you're simply categorizing them all in advance as being minor, so you can dismiss the lot and demand universal acceptance for your views. We all use strawman arguments from time to time. It's a very human weakness that plays well with our friends, but it really doesn't help us understand what others think, or why. :)

 

If you really want to know what major issues bother some people about Skyrim, read the complaint threads for content. Don't read to diss them, but to see where the largest amount of energy is expended. I'll give you a start: check out what people have to say about the UI, which is a major issue, or what they have to say about the removal of spellmaking. There are many other concerns. Again, unlike you, I'm not saying how you should to react to any of this--except to note that when you parade your views before people who already agree with you, you learn nothing. I speak from personal experience. ;)