skyrim getting boring

[fraquar]

I never played Oblivion, but what I've seen from Skyrim - this game is only going to be as good as the modders can make it. Vanilla, it's seriously lacking.

[Bannor9]

Lack of depth, which has already been mentioned, OR the opposite thereof in some cases.

 

Like how long it takes you to get into the Blades faction, and then they do absolutely NOTHING to further the rest of the story?

 

Thieves Guild does a lot of the same thing, BIG build up, then nothing.

 

The Dark Brotherhood was a complete letdown too.

 

It is sort of like they had several different planned endings, but gave them all up to just kill it with a dragon.

 

The Civil War? I have played both sides, and neither is really all that different. Same quest just a slightly different location. Some of those quests, re-run things that I have already solved differently. For example, I ran the quest to return the helm to the guy playing the arch-nemesis for the Stormcloaks, but I did that BEFORE I started any of the civil war options... So, this guy has the helm in his possession already, yet I am sent on a quest to steal it before he gets it?

 

Good attempts at making the various factions more fun to play through, but for what purpose? They don't directly relate to the main storyline at all, and don't help you achieve that storyline much.

 

There are some interactions where the Blades will help with settling the dispute between Empire and Stormcloaks long enough to go trap a dragon, but it appears that they various factions really don't tie together all that well.

 

I have played through at least 6 times, and have several aborted attempts also. Well over 800 hours game play throughout. Boring, yeah, now, completely. From the beginning, not quite, but after reaching around level 50 or so, well, the rest is a major let down.

 

Spending numerous hours playing through each of the factions side quests to gain whatever it is they give you, and then not have them directly apply to the main quest? Epic fail on that issue.

 

Various other things too. You can level fairly quickly just using smithing, which, I guess is fair enough, but you end up with a character that creates better armour and weapons than ANY quest item you go find. If you max out Smith and Enchanting, you can create a weapon with two very powerful enchantments on it and that does base damage well above any of the enchanted items you find during quests. I laugh when I pick up xxx sword/axe/bow whatever as nothing I can find in game can come close to the base damage level I can create at a forge without any enchantment at all. Add the ability to enchant, easily achieved by forging a bunch of iron daggers and enchanting each one with a simple enchantment, well, then the ability to find nothing of real value in game makes it boring. The only real limiting factor here would be the number of soul stones needed to enchant everything with.

 

If you utilize any mod that enhances/raises max level caps, it gets even worse. Although that IS to be expected as your mod is actually well beyond what Bethesda Intended.

 

I typically end up with a character that has over 2 million gold in their possession at the time I stop playing. Money I can't really use for anything in game. Power-leveling makes things even worse. But that is not really Bethesda's fault. It is the base story line with sub-stories not really tying in very well that makes it boring. Or, as I mentioned, this epic side quest series, that ends up with nothing of any real value.

 

The online achievements are a joke as well. I have all but 3, and those three are not very interesting to me. Something to do with 1000 gold bounty in every hold, escape from jail... (which I did at least 3 times but for some reason is not being recognized) and the Thieves Guild "One with the Shadows" which is not a direct quest that shows up in your journal. However, I am Thieves Guild Master etc, and have done just about anything else I can think of to achieve that status.

[tigrublood]

What you could do to make it funner is, start skyrim all over with a different character,If you haven't already, after starting over more than 2 times it gets boring.

[gengar807]

yea bannor9 really set a point there to like other people :)......but another thing also really bothers me, which is the blades. if any of you have played oblivion you would realize that the blades were just trained soldiers that protected the emperor but now they are saying they were once dragon hunters :dry: .i used to like the blades a lot in oblivion but now its a major..idk set back i guess...i just found it a little corny

[Ta110n]

yeh agree it gets boring mainly because it was written for a controller and not a PC the actual underlying game isn't too bad the interface is terrible and breaks immersion ( comments are about the unmodded pc game )

 

3 solutions as i see it

 

 

1/ Give me a paper doll ........ No paper doll to put your weapons on .... the original inventory system is pure crap ... the modded one improves it slightly but hope someone mods a paper doll so i can actually put a sword in my guys hand

 

2/ Improve the magic ..... some mods have partially addressed this but the interface for casting needs rehashed .................Magic is pretty but poorly implemented ,,,, changing spells is a chore ... I'm a mage I'm meant to be able to fire off loads of spells why limit me to 8 spell buttons and what's all these time limits on conjure duration/ mage shield duration/ light duration ?

if you want to limit me limit me to only 3 schools of magic/ limit my mana or don't let me use armour or something but don't make spells not worth using and having to recast spells every 20 - 30 seconds is not fun make the damn skeletons die easier but last longer and let me use a couple at least

...what no skeletons without mods who decided that ? Every conjurer / necromancer wants to conjure skeletons. PS the option of black robes are a must for any mage game and why can't I enchant robes properly ie to the same stats as ones i find ?

 

3/ Proper party controls and ai......................Why give us a follower ? daft decision if there were proper party members with proper controls fair enough but a follower with poor ai who gets stuck and has very poor controls and can't even get on a horse.

 

and why no enchanter that I can pay to enchant something? ( someone please please please mod one ) why do I have to learn to enchant at all when there's a world full of mages and enchanters out there? sure I'd like the option to learn it but I'd also like the option of paying someone else to do it for me.

[DafuqWasThat]

Nope

[BlackCompany]

The blades were actually covert agents in addition to bodyguards. Lore supports this, if you dig for it. I once saw a mod for Oblivion, briefly, which expanded on this idea. Small but decent. Shame more people didn't look into this side of the blades faction. As for their descending from Akaviri dragon hunters...no one ever said they didn't, either. Its just...expanding...on them.

 

Overall though...well, I just finished Bastion and the Witcher 2. Once you play those games, in terms of combat and narrative structure...coming back to Skyrim is beyond hard.

 

Here are some consistent mistakes I think Bethesda makes (not a rant):

 

-Explaining their entire narrative up front. Derives from the over-use of the "prophesied hero" trope. Robs the story of any mystery or climatic event. You know its all coming up front and roughly what to expect. Terrible narrative structure.

 

-Lack of Role play. They have taken away everything. No more attributes. No persuasion. We should have to choose form dialogue options, some more persuasive than others, and win/lose the challenge based on that. Nope. One option, die roll, works or doesn't. And its the same option for mage-alikes as it is for warrior-esque builds. Terrible RP design.

 

-Horrible Combat: You've "streamlined" (read" consolized) your game to the point its become an open world action game. Its 90% combat. Yet, your combat system indicates one of two things. 1. You suck at designing combat. Period. 2. You spent 10% of development time on combat in a game where combat is 90% of the game. Either way, back to the drawing board.

 

-Game Engine: Since Morrowwind Bethesda has been busy playing catch-up on game engines. They are constantly behind the curve in technology. More time is spent between games learning a new engine/scripting language, than they do making the new game. Which means they release an unfinished product near every time.

 

 

Bethesda needs to scrap the Elder Scrolls. Not the world. The Scrolls as parts of the game. The prophecy part, I mean. They need to scrap the creation engine, itself a derivative of the old, mostly bug-ridden Gamebry. Hire new writers and bring in a team that knows how to make a combat system.

 

In Short, Bethesda, its time to go back to the drawing board. Pretend Oblivion and Skyrim didn't happen design wise, and look at Morrowind for ideas. Do all of this and I might even consider becoming a customer again.

[ItalianBill]

I agree that skyrim has gotten a bit stale comparitively quickly. I clocked well over 400 hours on oblivion and left it with still plenty to do, but i'm now pretty bored with skyrim after 'only' 200 hours. I'm not exactly an Elder Scrolls veteran (oblivion was my entry point into the series) but there is definately something missing in skyrim that was there in oblivion, and I think there are several problems which can't really be fixed by mods.

 

The first really is the quality of the writing. I don't know about anyone else but I thought the main storyline of Oblivion was much more engaging than Skyrim's. This is mainly down to pacing; in Oblivion the story took all these twists and turns - you start the game, within half an hour (the tutorial was too long, imo) the most important person in the world was dead at your feet. From there your focus changes from finding out what the hell just happened, to finding Martin, to getting the amulet, to rallying all the cities, etc, all with this backdrop of the Mythic Dawn; you really get the feeling they are everywhere and that this is something that has been planned for years. Gates to oblivion have opened everywhere and you can see signs that the empire is starting to collapse.

 

Let's compare this with skyrim: You're about to be executed and OH S#!T A DRAGON! Certainly a better start, but there's no mystery, nothing quite like the insidious threat of the MD. And the plot never really budges from there: dragons are nasty, kill their boss. That's it.

 

And it's the same with the factions; they start out seemingly more interesting but they're over as soon as they've begun. The fighters guild in Oblivion has about 20 individual quests. The Companions have ten (as far as i'm concerned radiant quests don't count unless there's a legitamate reason to do them besides money). Every major faction you join in oblivion makes you do some 'business as usual' quests in order to give you a sense of belonging to that faction and the main faction quest is only revealed after a certain level of advancement. Again, the companions let you into their elite circle of leaders after about three missions.

 

I think that Bethesda spent too much time on shiny new graphics, needless gameplay alterations and limitations, and ruining the interface (which is easily fixed with SkyUI) and as a result the depth and quality of writing that I at least have come to expect from their games was neglected as a result. So while the gameplay might be slightly better there's nothing to make me want to keep playing it. This is the same problem I had with New Vegas from Fallout 3. The gameplay was better but the writing just wasn't up to scratch. I'll probably leave Skyrim for half a year or so, wait until the DLC and big mods come out, then maybe start a new game when there's more to keep me interested

[shotgun188]

I agree that skyrim has gotten a bit stale comparitively quickly. I clocked well over 400 hours on oblivion and left it with still plenty to do, but i'm now pretty bored with skyrim after 'only' 200 hours. I'm not exactly an Elder Scrolls veteran (oblivion was my entry point into the series) but there is definately something missing in skyrim that was there in oblivion, and I think there are several problems which can't really be fixed by mods.

 

The first really is the quality of the writing. I don't know about anyone else but I thought the main storyline of Oblivion was much more engaging than Skyrim's. This is mainly down to pacing; in Oblivion the story took all these twists and turns - you start the game, within half an hour (the tutorial was too long, imo) the most important person in the world was dead at your feet. From there your focus changes from finding out what the hell just happened, to finding Martin, to getting the amulet, to rallying all the cities, etc, all with this backdrop of the Mythic Dawn; you really get the feeling they are everywhere and that this is something that has been planned for years. Gates to oblivion have opened everywhere and you can see signs that the empire is starting to collapse.

 

Let's compare this with skyrim: You're about to be executed and OH S#!T A DRAGON! Certainly a better start, but there's no mystery, nothing quite like the insidious threat of the MD. And the plot never really budges from there: dragons are nasty, kill their boss. That's it.

 

And it's the same with the factions; they start out seemingly more interesting but they're over as soon as they've begun. The fighters guild in Oblivion has about 20 individual quests. The Companions have ten (as far as i'm concerned radiant quests don't count unless there's a legitamate reason to do them besides money). Every major faction you join in oblivion makes you do some 'business as usual' quests in order to give you a sense of belonging to that faction and the main faction quest is only revealed after a certain level of advancement. Again, the companions let you into their elite circle of leaders after about three missions.

 

I think that Bethesda spent too much time on shiny new graphics, needless gameplay alterations and limitations, and ruining the interface (which is easily fixed with SkyUI) and as a result the depth and quality of writing that I at least have come to expect from their games was neglected as a result. So while the gameplay might be slightly better there's nothing to make me want to keep playing it. This is the same problem I had with New Vegas from Fallout 3. The gameplay was better but the writing just wasn't up to scratch. I'll probably leave Skyrim for half a year or so, wait until the DLC and big mods come out, then maybe start a new game when there's more to keep me interested

This. Even though I enjoyed Skyrim, the questlines were all lacking. The Companions was probably the worst questline in TES, ever. The Thieves Guild was just starting to get interesting when it ended. The main quest was too cliche and a bit short. I haven't completed the College or the Brotherhood but I heard they were worse than the Thieves Guild. Also, in all the factions, like you said, you don't really feel like a normal member. In the Fighter's Guild, you felt like you were a normal part of the guild doing contracts and stuff just like everyone else. Then after lots of quests, you end up saving the guild by destroying a rival. That doesn't seem that strange since you were one of the highest ranked people in the guild(and you actually worked to rank up, you didn't become one of the guild's leaders after a single contract) and you didn't do it single-handedly. In the Companions, you do a little job and suddenly they make you join an elite circle and make you a werewolf. They then proceed to make you do REALLY important tasks just after you joined the guild. Umm...what about the people who have spent years doing contracts? Why aren't they in the circle if I am after one little contract? And after about 5 quests(at most) in the circle, you become the Harbringer. WTF?! If Bethesda don't fix their factions in the next game, I'll just forget the fact that I loved Oblivion's quests and stop buying their products.

Edited March 30, 2012 by shotgun188

[Falconian]

The main things that got me bored of Skyrim, for me, were:

 

1) Linear storyline, which you discover immediately at the start of the game.

No "from zero to hero" thing, you realize you are a dragonborn superhero thing after like 30 mins.

I'd like to have the story told to me slowly, leave mistery, etc.

This was present in earlier games too, tho.

 

2) Too strong main character

When you get decent gear nobody stands a remote chance.

You can actually destroy the entire Skyrim continent on your own if you want.

This was the thing that made me quit.

 

5) Not enough enemies!

Enemies are always too few, regardless if they are brigand or guards; I expected a brigand stronghold to have 50-70 enemies, it has 6 bandits scattered around.

The only exciting moment in the entire game was where you siege the city to get Ulfrik's head.

Loved the big Whiterun battle, I just needed more of them and more enemies around.

 

4) You kill Dragons like flies.

I expected dragons to be very difficult battles where you need to do your best like in Dragon Age etc but no, they have predictable AI so no amount of modding can make them a challenge.

Sure you can add them health, it'll just take more to kill them.

You add them damage, I simply avoid the shots.

When the base AI is too easy, there is really nothing you can do.

At least give them fireballs!

 

5) They focused on QUANTITY of content, but little QUALITY.

As much as I loved the Thieves guild's questline, and even the Dark Brotherhood (the ending was easy to guess tho, I expected the ambush after killing the fake king), everything else seems boring / unoriginal.

Then again, I might just be another type of player; my girlfriend has dumped 400+ hours on the game and is still playing it.

 

 

Not bashing the game really, it's a great product worth every penny of it, I just find it limited and too easy.

 

PS:

One thing I would love to see is some "real time settler" and "wasteland defense" thing packed together into a DLC or expansion.

You own or build a city, hire guards, deal with economy issues, set trade routes, mining/logging camps to get resources, satisfy good citizens and punish bad ones, and especially depending on whether you allied with Empire or Stormcloacks, they make big attacks against you, like 100 men,

Brigands should also try to take over the town, or at least your mining sites.

 

THAT would definitely make the game more alive, rather than being a playable story after which you don't have anything funny to do anymore.

Edited March 30, 2012 by Falconian