Skyrim is upside down!

[Hateshinai]

I finally get it – I know why Skyrim feels like a half finished game. The reason is because Bethesda made a huge mistake in the leveling system – instead of making it simpler like many players wanted and they actually broke it. Originally there were suppose to be 24 skills not 18 – notice that some of the skills make no sense as to which category they belong like Archery which instead of being a stealth skill is a combat skill. Well Archery might be considered a combat skill by some; however I don’t think anyone will agree that Alchemy is a stealth skill instead of magic the only thing it has in common with stealth is the fact that a poison can be considered a hidden weapon. Originally Alchemy was suppose to be a magic skill however since there must be the same amount of skills in each category it couldn’t be removed and instead was set as a stealth skill while Marksmanship was renamed as Archery and moved to combat – note that if we use cheats to increase skills instead of Archery we have to type Marksmanship in the console. Else Alchemy would have to be moved to combat instead of stealth and that would be an obvious lie. But I said there were suppose to be 24 skills originally so I’ll show you which:

 

Magic:

- Alteration

- Conjuration

- Destruction

- Restoration

- Illusion

- Mysticism

- Enchanting

- Alchemy

 

Stealth:

- Light Armor

- Lockpicking

- Pickpocket

- Sneak

- Marksmanship

- Speechcraft

- Mercantile

- Acrobatics

 

Combat:

- Heavy Armor

- Block

- Smithing

- One-handed

- Two-handed

- Hand to Hand

- Athletics

- Dual wield

 

This is how I believe it was originally meant to be, but why wasn’t it then? Simple because of the perk points which we gain when we level up there isn’t enough of them – at most we can gain 80 while there are 251 perks to buy. And as we know each next level requires training much more skills so if there were 24 skills the gap between the points and available perks would be even larger. Skills have an average of 14 perks per skill so with 6 more skills it would be about 84 more perks while we would gain at most 10 more points by training those 6 skills. The final result would be 90 points while there would be 335 perks so Bethesda noticed it a bit too late and as that would require changing the scripts they decided to make the gap smaller instead of changing the scripts. And so they removed certain skills while others were merged with other – Dual wield was merged with One-handed and Mercantile was with Speechcraft and renamed as Speech. Note that One-handed has more perks than any other skill 21 in total, while the perks in Speech are more related to trade than actual persuading and also if we want to increase Speech using the console we have to type Speechcraft. However this caused even more problems as removing Mysticism was a very bad idea. While Mysticism is rarely used in actual spell casting this school has the most powerful effects – Reflect (spells only - Morrowind), Reflect Spell (Oblivion), Reflect Damage (Oblivion), Spell Absorption, Soul Trap and Dispel. So by removing that school they also had to remove its powerful effects, however without Soul Trap we wouldn’t be able to use Enchanting so they moved it to Conjuration. Still without the other effects we lost many methods of becoming invulnerable – while in Morrowind we don’t have Reflect Damage instead we have Sanctuary from Illusion. So Bethesda decided to give us a false idea that they don’t want us to be able to do it and removed Resist Normal Weapons too – despite the fact it still exists as Ghosts still have it. And made a gap in Resist Magic because of which we can achieve 85% at most, however Bretons as we know have natural 50% Resist Magic so they would be too close to the gap as a result their resistance was reduced to 25% but Bethesda forgot about their own loading screen hints - one of which clearly states that Bretons have 50%. Removing Dispel also caused problems because without it we can’t remove very dangerous magical effects we know from the previous games such as Silence and Chameleon hence they were removed as well. Of course we use 100% Chameleon for our characters but what I meant was that we use Dispel if our enemies use it to become invisible. The next issue that came with it is not being able to find very powerful artifacts – in Oblivion there are many powerful random artifacts we can find once we reach a certain level like: Mundane Ring, Ring of the Iron Fist, Sorcerer's Ring – all of which use effects from Mysticism so without it similar items couldn’t appear in Skyrim, which is why we cant find in random containers anything extraordinary. The lack of these effects also causes the fact that Skyrim is very unrewarding for example lets compare “No Stone Unturned” quest with “The Collector” from Oblivion. In “The Collector” there are only 10 Statues we have to find and we know that the only places they can be are Ayleid Ruins and actually if we really don’t want to look for them we can turn in 3 at most to move to the other 2 quests, more over after turning in the 2nd statue we are told the location of 5 ruins in which we can find the next statues. In “No Stone Unturned” however we have to find 24 gems which are not only easy to miss and we get no help on where to look for them but also the area of the search is the whole Skyrim.

When we finish Secrets of the Ayleids we can no longer turn in the statues if we haven’t already but still we get the reward in the form of 2 Ayleid crowns – both with powerful effects on them. But after we finish “No Stone Unturned” all we get is an effect which makes us find gems more often which we have no real use for actually as merchants have limited gold so we cant even sell them – well it would make some sense if we could at least give them to our spouse as a gift but we cant.

The next problem the lack of perk points caused is separating Enchanting from the magic schools meaning we have to disenchant items to gain the effects instead of simply having the same effects available as the spells we can use. As there is no guarantee that everyone who uses enchanting will be learning magic too. Also instead of being able to enchant anything with anything we want like in Oblivion and Morrowind (yes I know in Morrowind the power of the enchantment depends also on the type and quality of what we want to enchant) we can only enchant certain pieces of clothing/armor with certain effects – most likely so we don’t create too many Resist Fire/Frost/Shock/Magic items for ourselves. Another factor that supports this is the fact we can only wear 1 ring in Skyrim while in Oblivion and Morrowind we can 2 – unless of course we try to wear 2 same rings at same time like 2 Mundane rings but if the rings are created by us we can wear 2 even if exactly the same. And this caused in turn the whole Greaves and Cuirass merged together thing as the area we enchant has to be the same for clothing and armor; however I’m very curious how in real life we would put on an armor in which the Cuirass and Greaves are combined together or even worse how would we take it off?

The shouts I think are also nothing more than a byproduct of this broken leveling system – since Resist Magic does effect them it means they are nothing more than spells which instead of using Magicka have a recharge time - why is that so? Simple since we cannot master all skills possible players who prefer melee combat would have a hard time killing the dragons without a bow and/or magic because they wouldn’t be able to fully master either even if they would want to hence the whole Dragonrend shout plotline.

The lack of perk points is a major issue as even if we don’t want to learn certain skills we still have to do it if we want more of these points. The best proof of the facts it’s a big problem is the fact that despite the construction set has not been released yet there are already 3rd party mods that aim at that problem.

In other words Bethesda made minimum effort in solving the games problems as all they did was delete a few things and expect the players using the construction set to solve them on their own – why waste money and time to fix something if there are others who will do it for free anyway? Now I personally never made a mod and probably never will but if I was one of the brilliant 3rd party modders I would feel cheated that I have to repair a game just because the creators were too cheap and lazy to do it themselves and get nothing out of it.

[Dambuster]

An angry man, a wall of text and complaining about a minor feature with better written arguments against it. :(

[Matth85]

I must apologize, but the combination here, which is outlined from the poster above, makes me scared to read this.

 

If somebody can TL;DR this, I would be gratefull.

[Kuramin]

Uwah... I was doing my best to read it but the wall of text really started to hurt my eyes... Those are good points but I wouldn't say it's the reason Skyrim feels unfinished. It's really just seems like a minor annoyance, at best. To me anyway... :psyduck:

[Marcvss]

Read the first line and thought, another rant, another person complaining, another reason to skip reading another OP's posting....

 

Lovely to yet again read what is oh so wrong bout Skyrim (in OP's opinion) instead reading about the quality of the game as a whole.

 

Had my own share of negative thoughts about the game but let it all go and just played on. In the end it was (and still is) a marvelous game period.

[Roltak]

As far as I could understand it he is complaining that several Abilities(Chameleon, Reflect Damage etc.) that could be used to totally break the game and make yourself invincible were removed. And that several Skills are in the false category, although I have to disagree about Alchemy and Archery, taking a bow and shooting pointy sticks at people isn't necessarily stealthy, so in my opinion it is more a combat then a stealth/rogue ability. And Alchemy has some magical attributes to it, but I think it has just as much reason to be in the rogue part as it has in the magical part, perhaps more. Poisons are one of the key ingredients to an assassin, while a mage can be a mage without any potions etc.

 

And I doubt that Bethesda is that stupid as not to realize such a flaw that would make them change large parts of the game, I guess they just wanted to streamline the game and take out the possibility of making yourself invincible as well as being lazy by making balancing all of that easier.

 

And calling the shouts a byproduct of the system? Even though half the game evolves around that shouts and the dragons that use them? It would have been faaaaaaaaar easier to change the whole system to accommodate those changes instead of writing in all of the graybeards as well as all the reactions to your shouts, the dragons using that shouts etc.

 

Also once again I don't think that the change in the Enchanting mechanic has anything to do with them being too stupid to think the concept through to the end and some reason to take Enchanting away from Magic, they simply wanted to a) Make Enchanting possible for every char b) wanted to make balancing easier and c) failed miserably at balancing nonetheless(Smithing + Enchanting + Alchemy)

 

And using the argument that there already exist mods to fix those issues well ... with that logic I can take Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas and Morrowind and say exactly the same. The players/modders just love to change stuff to their liking I personally and if it is easy enough to do they will make things easier/harder/different the second they can.

 

Finally I still don't really understand what exactly you are criticizing about the perks, that there aren't enough to pick everything? That they changed some skills around? Or what exactly?

Large parts of your post seem to be about not being able to make yourself invincible by enchanting and how you don't like the change of the skills so is that your complain?

Edited December 24, 2011 by Roltak

[Lolmasteromg]

TL barely read.

 

Alchemy involves no magic at all, you're just grinding herbs and ingredients together to create poisons and potions. You are taking ingredients from nature. Enchanting involves magic and souls, thus magic.

 

Archery is in no way a stealth skill. Look at it this way. If it does or prevents damage and doesn't drain Magicka, it must be a combat skill.

Edited December 24, 2011 by Lolmasteromg

[xlr8films]

Bowmanship was, and always has been, a form of artillery. It was used mainly as a defensive posture in the beginning of it's history, then became a part of the battlefield, playing a critical role. It is a Combat skill, hands down. If you *CHOOSE* to sneak around and use it, that still doesn't mean it should bend to Stealth... any more so than a One-Handed dagger to the neck should.

 

Furthermore, I could sneak up on you while you're asleep and donkey-punch ya. Are my bare fists stealth weapons now? No. Grapple, Wrestling and Boxing are all combat skills.

Edited December 24, 2011 by xlr8films

[Susurruss]

TL ; DR

 

1) Too few perk trees means perks end up with skills they weren't meant for

 

2) Lack of Mysticism school removed not only uber spell effects but also good loot from the game

 

3) Collector quests that make you look everywhere instead of just a set area or areas

 

4) Disenchanting means that it doesn't matter what spell schools you know when it comes to enchanting items

 

5) Shouts are just a way for non-magic users to combat dragons

 

6) Dammit, modders don't get compensation for making the game to my liking

 

 

I think that's it....

[xlr8films]

 

4) Disenchanting means that it doesn't matter what spell schools you know when it comes to enchanting items

 

 

I fully disagree with this. I can take a ballpoint pen apart, grab another inkwell, and put it in the original pen sheathe. That doesn't necc mean I understand how an inkwell works, let alone the ballpoint. But I can take it apart and make it work again. In another pen, if I desire. Heck, I can even change the color.