Anyone Disappointed With The Lack Of Creatures?

[CLSimms]

I loved Oblivion, even before the mods for more creatures and items etc........... However, it seems I already know what im going to be facing once going into a cave, or a dungeon, or anything else...... Im going to encounter either: a draugr ( who eventually looks like every other one ive encountered ), a spider ( same creature ive seen since level 1 ), or............wait no, thats it? I have no fear walking throughout the forests or roads of skyrim at night, not worried about being gang raped by bandits/deadra/random bad ass creatures....... I generally go where I please and own all that I encounter with some tact and intelligence, whereas in the previous elder scrolls, my fear ( usually brought on by lesson learned ) kept me off of the roads and out of the forests until I thought I could handle it or was fast enough to run away! It just doesnt seem to make me sit on the edge of my seat wondering " omg what will I encounter next ", its more like a " how many draugr's will I have to kill this time? " its a hack and slash fest thats completely redundant. Its great the game is pretty, but its not very interesting or exciting after the first 50 hours. If your thoughts on this are " wait till the patch comes out " then basically I should have waited 3 years to buy this game and I could pick the greatest mods and saved half the money?!?!?!?!

[zebai]

I fight humans, draugr, spiders and bears. I seem to encounter little else. I miss the random elemental, the occasional vampires, the isolated daedra Where are these things? You know in my travels I've only seen a single wild fire elemental no storm no frost. I've never seen a deedra yet and I'm already level 40.

 

My mage feels very underpowered to the point where i'm now wearing armor and swords as even at low skill level they are often doing more damage than spells. I also want to see some variety in creature strength, always they are leveled tjhere are other ways to adjust encounter difficulty such as spawn count, You could make it swarm weaker spawns occasionally make some of the combat fun having to fight a decent sized battle that won't drop you flat.

[soot00]

To the Poster above me, playing pure mage? Well they have always been squishy. Take advantage of companions as a few of them have unique skills like picking chests. If 2 legged companions are not your thing, buy a pet aka War Dog.

 

In other words, don't travel alone. Lot of benefits to companions, they can carry your excess loot, pick locks, and keep stuff off of you

[TheCruddyBug]

I also feel this way... You're forgetting Falmer, though, which I feel are the most obnoxious enemies!

 

However I don't mind just running in and one or two-shotting every enemy. The thing that bugs me the most, and this may be a little "off topic", is when I'm in the zone with my mindless slaughtering and out of nowhere comes one of the overpowered mobs (compared to the other mobs) ,like a Druagr Deathlord or something, and whoops my butt. That, or some lightning casting milk drinker that keeps backing away from my War Hammer. I'm not saying I don't like the difficulty, but It always catches me off guard after mindlessly bashing 10 or 20 low difficulty mobs.

 

Back to the original topic... yes some more enemy variety would have been nice. Most of the time in Skyrim I don't feel like I'm here nor there, the only difference is how much snow is on the ground.

[NSCReaver]

Sure, there was a lot of variety in Oblivion, but then again, you could kill anything you came across, as long as your weapons / spells upgraded along with your levels. At least, that was my experience. As for Skyrim, I enjoyed not being able to take on a Troll, or a Giant, even if I would eventually be able to kill whatever I swung at. Liked having a chance at failing, perhaps. A reason to level up that didn't involve just raising my stats.

 

However, on the other hand, the monotony of level 45+ dungeons and wading through a sea of Draugr Deathlords is off-setting.

[Vangarrett99]

Yes, there is an obvious lack on variety of creatures. Sure, there are now dragons... but hey where are the Dreughs, Goblins, Imps?

 

One thing I hate about skyrim is you can't attack when submerged in water, and that makes you fishfood for slaughterfishes.

 

I remembered Morrowind then, swimming one short stretch of water, you get a pack of slaughterfishes coming at ya. Now, that's fun. :D

[hymhym]

This is something I have felt as well. Though once I stop to think about it, I realize there is quite lot of different monsters to kill and bash. There are draugr, skeletons, ghosts, trolls, bears, wolves, frost wraiths, spiders, chaurus, horkers, spriggans, hagravens, skeevers, sabre cats, atronach (3 different variety) , wisps, wisp mothers and slaughter fish. Several different types of dwemer automata too - and then there are the biggies: mammoths, giants and dragons. And a ton of humanoids - starting with the annoying falmer, all sort of brigands, and forsaken and soldiers and mercenaries and assassin and thalmor stooges. And of course the dremora - which I haven't even encountered yet.

 

But even so, there is still something off, since I do not feel the variety. And I have killed and maimed a lot of creatures - in my nearly 180 hours of game play, I have killed: 607 people, 264 animals, 135 creatures, 387 undead, 13 daedra and 34 automatons, a handful of of giants and couple of dozen dragons and zero mammoths.

 

That is a lot of killing. And I know my companions have scored lots of kills too.

 

Of these, the 13 daedra and 387 undead stand out. First for their nearly complete lack of appearance, the second for their ridiculously high number. In all likelihood the vast majority of that number is Draugr. I wouldn't be surprised if I had killed 300 draugr since all those Nordic ruins are full of them. Room after room after room. Each containing 2-4 draugr. There have been some vampires, but no more that 2 dozen at most. Only one dungeon so far (out of the 90 or so I've explored) contained ghosts. There were less than 20 of them there. No idea how many plain old skeletons I've killed. One hardly even notices them.

 

Killing draug has become so monotonous that I hardly ever notice what kind I am killing. Besides they tend to come in small packs and I'm just doing sweeping power attacks with my axe until they are all dead - truly dead this time. Countless have been the times I've been wandering the one way street that most dungeons are, praying that the next room will prove to be the last, of pretty but pointless chambers, in an unnecessarily long dungeon, only to discover yet another meaningless room with smattering of brick a brack loot and 2-4 draugr in it. So in I go with Fus-Ro-Da,charge attack with my axe while they recover, and chop chop choppity chop them to bits, loot the bodies without even stopping to check what they had and move to the next room. Rinse and repeat ad infinitum.

 

That distorts things - it undervalues their "image" as "monsters" and things to be "feared." And I slip out of immersion and the only thing I remember is me screaming at my telly "just die already!" and the monotonous grinding that is clearing those tombs becomes my most clear memory of playing this game. And since most dungeons are really just levels from rail shooters sans guns - with no real way to sneak by monsters or pick which foe to fight. The only thing to do is just to kill them all room by room. Sure you can sneak kill them, berserk rampage through them or summon minions to do the actual bashing, but bash them you do.

 

And it really doesn't get much better above ground.

 

No way to say for sure how many of those "animals" were wolves, but I bet a significant number. They are the true cliffracers of this game. They are everywhere, and they attack you all the time, and they have zero chance to actually harm you. I use a lot of Kyne's peace to stop the pointless animal attacks. If I hadn't found that shout early in my game, my number of animal kills would probably be double. But even using that shout is annoying, since I can't do it while riding and must dismount (which is a really slow animation) while they nibble on the bum of my horse, do my shout and clamber back on my horse (another slow animation) and continue on my way. Even though that is a real hassle to do all the time, it's still a less tedious solution than dismount, take your weapon out and start hacking them to bits. (since they too travel in small packs. At least cliffracers were solitary predators)

 

I really wish that there was some sort of mechanism in the game that stopped those animals attacking you all the time. Like after you've absorbed say 5 dragons souls, you will develop a fearsome aura and all animals instinctively know to avoid you.

 

Bandits forts are not quite as bad as draugr lairs, but all of them are still far larger than their exteriors would indicate and have many pointless rooms full of one shot bandits and nothing significant to loot (just barrels that contain few vegetables) but the most annoying (to me at least) are those forsworn camps. Each has couple of dozens of lunatics that charge you on sight, and if they have interior chambers, they tend to be as tedious to navigate as the draugr lair.

 

In all these dungeons the problem is that there really is only one monster type in each, and there are way too many of them (yet they never gather together and come at you all at once - no, they always march to their death in pairs or in groups of no larger than 5.). There might be an ancillary boss monster or not, and some sort of side kick beast type (nearly always spiders - except for falmer, they sometimes get chaurus.) but even those tend to be lost in the tedium of butchering the main monster type inhabiting the place.

 

This monofauna feature turns the clearing of dungeons in to a chore, the monster guardians devolve in to a faceless mass, and there really are too many draugr in the game. I'm not saying that things were immensely better in Oblivion - it's dungeons and monsters had their fair share of problems - and most off it's dungeons also had just one type of enemy, but there were lot less of them in each dungeon, so it didn't get to be chore so easily. And over all, there were more balanced distribution of different monster type dungeons in the game. Skyrim, on the other hand, has way too many draugr dungeons. And the grind fests of Oblivion, the daedric towers, always managed to have a wide variety of different defenders. (I miss daedroths damn it!) So clearing them had that sense of surprise in them - you never knew what daera or dremora were waiting in the next room.

 

If the dungeons of Skyrim had about 33% reduction in the numer of "30' by 30' feet rooms with one entrance and exit, a chest in the middle guarded by a pair of orcs" and the animals would leave the hero alone after a certain level, I feel that the diversity of Skyrims monsters would start to show through. As things are now, most of the monster types get drowned in the noise that are wolves and draugr (and bears to a slightly lesser degree. I hate psychotic bears.)

 

If you got this far in my rant, then thanks for reading. For the past few days, a sense of frustration with Skyrims monster population has slowly been building inside me.This thread gave me a chance to voice out some of those thoughts. I hope you at least got some food for thought from my musings.

[Tardivex]

Quote on spoiler

 

 

This is something I have felt as well. Though once I stop to think about it, I realize there is quite lot of different monsters to kill and bash. There are draugr, skeletons, ghosts, trolls, bears, wolves, frost wraiths, spiders, chaurus, horkers, spriggans, hagravens, skeevers, sabre cats, atronach (3 different variety) , wisps, wisp mothers and slaughter fish. Several different types of dwemer automata too - and then there are the biggies: mammoths, giants and dragons. And a ton of humanoids - starting with the annoying falmer, all sort of brigands, and forsaken and soldiers and mercenaries and assassin and thalmor stooges. And of course the dremora - which I haven't even encountered yet.

 

But even so, there is still something off, since I do not feel the variety. And I have killed and maimed a lot of creatures - in my nearly 180 hours of game play, I have killed: 607 people, 264 animals, 135 creatures, 387 undead, 13 daedra and 34 automatons, a handful of of giants and couple of dozen dragons and zero mammoths.

 

That is a lot of killing. And I know my companions have scored lots of kills too.

 

Of these, the 13 daedra and 387 undead stand out. First for their nearly complete lack of appearance, the second for their ridiculously high number. In all likelihood the vast majority of that number is Draugr. I wouldn't be surprised if I had killed 300 draugr since all those Nordic ruins are full of them. Room after room after room. Each containing 2-4 draugr. There have been some vampires, but no more that 2 dozen at most. Only one dungeon so far (out of the 90 or so I've explored) contained ghosts. There were less than 20 of them there. No idea how many plain old skeletons I've killed. One hardly even notices them.

 

Killing draug has become so monotonous that I hardly ever notice what kind I am killing. Besides they tend to come in small packs and I'm just doing sweeping power attacks with my axe until they are all dead - truly dead this time. Countless have been the times I've been wandering the one way street that most dungeons are, praying that the next room will prove to be the last, of pretty but pointless chambers, in an unnecessarily long dungeon, only to discover yet another meaningless room with smattering of brick a brack loot and 2-4 draugr in it. So in I go with Fus-Ro-Da,charge attack with my axe while they recover, and chop chop choppity chop them to bits, loot the bodies without even stopping to check what they had and move to the next room. Rinse and repeat ad infinitum.

 

That distorts things - it undervalues their "image" as "monsters" and things to be "feared." And I slip out of immersion and the only thing I remember is me screaming at my telly "just die already!" and the monotonous grinding that is clearing those tombs becomes my most clear memory of playing this game. And since most dungeons are really just levels from rail shooters sans guns - with no real way to sneak by monsters or pick which foe to fight. The only thing to do is just to kill them all room by room. Sure you can sneak kill them, berserk rampage through them or summon minions to do the actual bashing, but bash them you do.

 

And it really doesn't get much better above ground.

 

No way to say for sure how many of those "animals" were wolves, but I bet a significant number. They are the true cliffracers of this game. They are everywhere, and they attack you all the time, and they have zero chance to actually harm you. I use a lot of Kyne's peace to stop the pointless animal attacks. If I hadn't found that shout early in my game, my number of animal kills would probably be double. But even using that shout is annoying, since I can't do it while riding and must dismount (which is a really slow animation) while they nibble on the bum of my horse, do my shout and clamber back on my horse (another slow animation) and continue on my way. Even though that is a real hassle to do all the time, it's still a less tedious solution than dismount, take your weapon out and start hacking them to bits. (since they too travel in small packs. At least cliffracers were solitary predators)

 

I really wish that there was some sort of mechanism in the game that stopped those animals attacking you all the time. Like after you've absorbed say 5 dragons souls, you will develop a fearsome aura and all animals instinctively know to avoid you.

 

Bandits forts are not quite as bad as draugr lairs, but all of them are still far larger than their exteriors would indicate and have many pointless rooms full of one shot bandits and nothing significant to loot (just barrels that contain few vegetables) but the most annoying (to me at least) are those forsworn camps. Each has couple of dozens of lunatics that charge you on sight, and if they have interior chambers, they tend to be as tedious to navigate as the draugr lair.

 

In all these dungeons the problem is that there really is only one monster type in each, and there are way too many of them (yet they never gather together and come at you all at once - no, they always march to their death in pairs or in groups of no larger than 5.). There might be an ancillary boss monster or not, and some sort of side kick beast type (nearly always spiders - except for falmer, they sometimes get chaurus.) but even those tend to be lost in the tedium of butchering the main monster type inhabiting the place.

 

This monofauna feature turns the clearing of dungeons in to a chore, the monster guardians devolve in to a faceless mass, and there really are too many draugr in the game. I'm not saying that things were immensely better in Oblivion - it's dungeons and monsters had their fair share of problems - and most off it's dungeons also had just one type of enemy, but there were lot less of them in each dungeon, so it didn't get to be chore so easily. And over all, there were more balanced distribution of different monster type dungeons in the game. Skyrim, on the other hand, has way too many draugr dungeons. And the grind fests of Oblivion, the daedric towers, always managed to have a wide variety of different defenders. (I miss daedroths damn it!) So clearing them had that sense of surprise in them - you never knew what daera or dremora were waiting in the next room.

 

If the dungeons of Skyrim had about 33% reduction in the numer of "30' by 30' feet rooms with one entrance and exit, a chest in the middle guarded by a pair of orcs" and the animals would leave the hero alone after a certain level, I feel that the diversity of Skyrims monsters would start to show through. As things are now, most of the monster types get drowned in the noise that are wolves and draugr (and bears to a slightly lesser degree. I hate psychotic bears.)

 

If you got this far in my rant, then thanks for reading. For the past few days, a sense of frustration with Skyrims monster population has slowly been building inside me.This thread gave me a chance to voice out some of those thoughts. I hope you at least got some food for thought from my musings.

 

 

I've read all of your rant and it is true, in fact if I was gonna do an overall of Skyrim it would be a rant 10x bigger than this one, all that hype was kinda for nothing really, Skyrim coulda been so much better than it is, and what about the Creation Kit "Oh! Enjoy Skyrim while we work on it" enjoy what? Boring dungeons and quests? Dungeons like you said feel like a chore and become really annoying, because your like "Gahhh just finish this already" and you see "Door to Gaulgar Crypt" after 30 minutes of boring killing Dragurs you see another door "Door to Gaulgar Highter Levels" another 30 minutes "Door to Gaulgar Lower Levels" after that... "Door to Gaulgar Study" then... "Door to Gaulgar Workshop" "Door to Gaulgar Sanctuary" "Door to Gaugar Temple" Then you reach the BOSS! Wow a boss! Wich is actually a Dagur wih more HP and damage, nothing really especial to it, just takes longer to kill. I know I've exagerated on the doors but seriously, dungeons are like 3 huge sections of boring s**t, and theyre all linear, theres no multiple paths to reach the door to the next section, just room after room and eventually a room with to paths, the one to the next room, and the second one for a "hidden" chest. Quests are like that too, "go to this dungeon and retrieve mine golden crown of sudden power of the great massive lightning storm of massive chaos and decieved fury of justice" or "go to the x dungeon and kill y guy" or "persuade this guy so I don't need to pay my 100.000.000.000 gold debt, you go there <Persuade> You don't need that money don't ya think? Random NPC: Yeah I guess your right, or <Intimidate> I'll kill you if you don't clear that debt. Random NPC: No need to get harsh! <Bribe> This 1000 gold should clear out the debt huh? Random NPC: Hmmm yeaaaaah... His debt is clear... And then the quest giver is like THANK YOU! You deserved it! <100 gold added> Rewards are also bad don't you think? I mean you kill he f***ing emperor and all you get is 20000 gold with isn't enough to buy a house in Solitude, I mean wht the hell, and no one seems to care that the emperor is dead, or that you killed the eater of worlds, or that your archmage, or that your leader of the companions, or anything you do, that if proof enough that the "Radiant storytelling" engine is working perfectly huh? I could go on with this for hours but who will really read this? Play Skyrim, then Oblivion, then Morrowind, putting graphics aside, youll notice HUGE differences of actual quality.

[Sindrie]

agreed there is a lot of enemies but some how I find my self still fighting the same thing... spiders,draugr, and bears oh my oh and bandits man am I sick of them :confused: cant wait for the cs to come out and people overhaul the enemies in the game... I also find the game a little to easy at times then ball crushing hard at others though more of the former.

[Arcadiast]

a Creature "expanding" mod is usually a no brainer and finds fans very quickly, so I guess we will see something happening here.

 

I agree by the way there could have been more variety of enemies in Skyrim. However I am not desperatly unhappy!