What I would change about Skyrim

[Helix341]

Whenever I play Skyrim, there are always a few things that I want Bethesda to change! Here are a few of them:

 

1. NPCs should react to the Civil War more. I have completed the Civil war for both sides, and, after a faction has won, the only NPCs who react are the leaders of the Holds and Factions. Soldiers, farmers and even priests fail to notice the victory. The priestess in Solitude still talks about the banishment of Talos after Talos' shrine has been put back, Farmers still mention that "they hope the war ends soon" and soldiers still talk about how Ulfric Stormcloak deserves etc. Even after the Stormcloaks have taken Solitude, and the Imperial Legion has been banished, I still find Imperial Patrols taking a Stormcloak prisoner in a random direction. Why can't the game adapt to this, when it adapts to so many other things?!

 

2. Disguises should work. When I first started playing Skyrim, I killed a Whiterun guard, and took his armor. However, even dressed exactly the same as the guard, the other guards immediately recognized me, and arrested me. When walking around in full Dwarven regalia, people still know exactly who I am! Why do disguises not work? It would make assasination attempts and burglaries so much easier! At least if you have your face covered, you should be unrecognizable to a point. Guards shouldn't be intelligent enough to figure out that you aren't one of them when you where exactly the same clothing!

 

3. My new rank means nothing! By the end of the Imperial campaign, I had killed Ulfric Stormcloak, had full officer armor and the nice title of Legate. However, soldiers still refer to me as "citizen". Why does this rank mean nothing? Why do I have no power because of it? The same is true of the Thane title. You should be able to influence the average members of society with a Thaneship, rather than just one instance of getting out of an arrest. Other Thanes should also recognize your importance - the two Solitude Thanes have never acknowledged me as their equal, despite me being Dragonborn, Legate of the Empire, Thane of all Nine Holds etc...

 

4. More city battles! No matter which Civil War campaign you choose, you only get two city battles, the rest are in forts. I spent ages working out which streets in Dawnstar would lead me to the Jarl the quickest and which route was safest, only to find out that all I had to do was kill a couple of guards at a fort a few miles away to capture the city. For each hold, you should have to do the task (such as intercepting the courier), take over the fort so that your chosen faction can ready themselves, and then asault the Hold Capital, before capturing the Jarl and exiling him from the hold! The forts can't be that important to the security of the city - they were filled with bandits until a few days beforehand! This would have the double advantage of making extra quests and more fun!

 

5. More factions should be joinable! After the quest "No One Escapes Cidhna Mine", I rampaged through the streets in my armor of the gods, killing Markarth guards with the rest of the crowd (raising my bounty quite considerably. Realising that I couldn't stay here, I chose to go to the nearest Forsworn camp - seeing as I had just befriended their King, I thought they would welcome me. Did they? No! I was assaulted and narrowly escaped with my life. You should be able to join factions such as the Forsworn and the Thalmor. Maybe you could join a bandit troop! Maybe you could join the city guard and have a life talking about you injured knee! But no, you are severely limited in the number of factions you are able to join.

 

6. Imperials & Stormcloaks shouldn't kick me out of my fort! Before I had enough money to buy Breezehome, I realised I needed somewhere to dump my trash so I didn't become "over-encumbered". Thinking logically, I visited Fort Greymoor and cleared it of bandits (and an annoying maid) and set up camp there. It was all going well for a couple of days, until one day I came back home to find a bunch of Imperials living in it. Whats more, they had cleared out my chest of goodies, leaving me without my stuff to sell! Why does this happen? Moral of the story is - get a bandit camp that isn't a fort. My favorites are Knifepoint Ridge, Karthspire Camp and Valtheim Towers.

 

Rant over - I think that's enough to complain about. Let me know what annoys you, and what you think about my thoughts on Skyrim

Thanks,

-Helix341

[RedRavyn]

Helix, you've just encountered six of the plethora of problems caused by the fact that Bethesda developers are "starters" and not "finishers". Let me address your issues, and then I'll add a few of my own.

 

Clean-up: I never played Morrowind, although I've got a LOT of hours under my belt playing Oblivion. This problem was endemic there, too. Most of your issues are caused by the fact that Bethesda leaves out a crucial phase of quest development -- what I refer to, from my years of being an amateur game designer back in the 70s and 80s, as "clean-up". In Bethesda games you see a lot of this, or, rather, lot of the lack of it. Quest items get left in your inventory when they should be removed. Others don't get unflagged as quest items, so you can't get rid of them, yourself. Quest entries remain in your journal even after the quest has been completed. NPCs still talk to you as if you were a mere peon, even after you've saved the world and gained titles that put you just under the Emperor in terms of influence (but you really have no influence over anything). Cities and buildings burn forever. Bodies never disappear. I've seen people make the excuse that things like this will happen in a "complex" game like Skyrim, but that's utter cattle dung. Clean-up is a simple thing and it's up to the person who created a quest to "make things right" at the end of it. Basic laziness is the fault, here, and it's responsible for every single one of your issues, but one.

 

1. I agree. Dialog should change, dramatically, after the Civil War is over. People should talk about the victors and the vanquished, rather than continuing to make comments as though the war had never been resolved. This seriously breaks immersion. If the Imperial Legion has been banished from Skyrim then no more troops escorting prisoners should be seen. It shouldn't have been that difficult to disable those spawns. Some developer dropped the ball very badly on that one because it would have only taken a few lines of code at the end of the quest script -- basic, rudimentary "clean-up".

 

2. This has always been a sore point for me, both in Oblivion and now in Skyrim. If I'm decked out in full Daedric armor I look exactly like anyone else who is decked out in full Daedric armor. Seriously. How in hell can anyone recognize me? But they do. Instantly. Without fail. Now, disguising yourself as a Whiterun guard should be more difficult. After all, all these guys eat, sleep, drink, and work together. It's a sure thing they all know each other by sight and probably by name. I spent five years stationed on a guided missile cruiser when I was in the Navy. We had a complement of 800 to 1000 men aboard. I knew just about everyone by face and probably over a hundred by name within the first year after checking aboard. The Whiterun guards are no different.

 

3. Your ranks, titles, and achievements don't mean diddly squat in Skyrim (or in Oblivion, either). You'll still be referred to as a "sneak thief", even after you've saved the country and become Thane of every hold in Skyrim, and are known throughout the land as the only living Dragonborn. Again, basic lack of attention to "clean-up". Understand, though, that you're actually told that the title of Thane is mostly an honorary one. I only know of three privileges it bestows. You might get a housecarl. You might be allowed to purchase property (or you might be required to purchase property beforehand, depending upon the hold). You can bluff your way out of a single crime so you don't have to pay the bounty or serve jail time. My stance on this? Why bother? If you want me to "help your people" then you damn well better make my title worth the trouble.

 

4. I'm not personally interested in the Civil War questline, so I don't do it. However, I can see your point. The problem with it, though, is that this would leave every city touched by the war in shambles. Bethesda didn't clean up Whiterun after the war. Why do you think their developers would get ambitious and clean up the rest of the damage the Civil War quest would do? These are the same people that left Kvatch and the Bruma Mages Guild in Oblivion burning forever, and left the Temple District in that game littered with rubble after the Main Quest was over.

 

5. You don't get to join the Foresworn, true, but you are a friend of the specific Foresworn associated directly with Madanach. If you follow him to his camp, Druadach Redoubt, you'll find that you're welcome there. Other Foresworn won't be friendly. Is this an oversight on the part of the developers? I think so. After all, Madanach is supposed to be their king, but, as happens so often with quests in this game, the developers didn't consider all the logical ramifications of that. I completely agree, though. You should be able to join any of the major factions in the game, even the bandit faction. You shouldn't be able to join all of them at once, though, for obvious reasons. This, however, would give the player way too much freedom of choice in a game that railroads you into a very narrow range of choices so that the developers can insure that anyone but the most determined player will play through all the primary quests like nice little robots.

 

6. Yes, Imperials and Stormcloaks should kick you out of your fort, because it's NOT your fort. All the forts, indeed, all property within a hold, legally belongs to the Jarl of that hold. Had you consulted the wiki (always read the Notes and Bugs sections of a wiki article pertaining to any place you invade before you do it) you would have found out that many forts will have either Imperial soldiers or Stormcloak soldiers move in after you clear them out. No containers are safe for storage because most of the interior cells are replaced when the new tenants move in.

 

Now for a few of my own:

 

1. I'm the Harbinger of the Companions. Why am I still doing odd jobs for Vilkas, Farkas, and Aela as though I'm still the new cub? This is a perfect example of how hard work in climbing your way up through a faction is not rewarded in any way. You'll still be doing hits out in the field for the Dark Brotherhood after you become Listener, even though that's not the Listener's job. When you become Guildmaster of the Thieves Guild it's all over. There's nothing else left to do, there. I'm a member of the Bards College. I can't sing, dance, play an instrument, recite poetry, or do ANYTHING related to being a bard. What's with that? I'm the Archmage. Why is Farengar still suggesting that I join the College of Winterhold if I have the aptitude for magic? And why isn't there anything for the Archmage to do? Does anyone but me get a feeling of "incompleteness" about all this?

 

2. Related to my #1, above, I'd prefer that no player ever be able to achieve leadership of a faction. Let's face it. In less than a week of playing in your spare time, and not much more than that in actual in-game days, you can achieve leadership of every joinable faction in the game (except for the Bards College) in both Oblivion and Skyrim. What's more astonishing, is that you can become Archmage and only cast a two spells the entire time -- one to prove your mettle and get allowed to enter the college, and the other to use the Saarthal Amulet to open the way to the interior areas of Saarthal. You can hack and slash your way through the rest of the entire questline. This qualifies you as Archmage? I don't think so. I'd much rather just work for these various guilds as a grunt out in the field. At least that way, there would always be something guild-related to do in the game.

 

3. I want to fight underwater. Seriously. Slaughterfish will kick your butt because you can't defend yourself against them like you could in Oblivion.

 

4. Why can't I block with my off-hand weapon when dual-wielding? Did the developers never hear of the Florentine style of combat, or escrima, or nito-ryu, or ... well, you get the point. Use of a "parrying dagger" has been part and parcel of combat in many different cultures throughout the ages. That it would not have developed on Nirn is unthinkable.

 

5. Why was the ability to craft my own custom spells removed from Skyrim? I can think of no fewer than three NPCs in the game (there are possibly more) who are researching their own spells, including two of my own student associates. Why can't I?

 

6. The follower AI needs some very serious overhaul. I can describe it in two words. "It sucks". Can it be that difficult to detect when the player is in sneak mode even after being observed by an enemy? Of course it isn't. And, yet, most followers will rush into combat the instant of detection, even if not all the enemies have detected the player, completely blowing any chance at all of retreating and regaining the advantage of being undetected. They bump into you constantly. They block doorways. Some even complaining when you sneak, as though you're going to try to pickpocket them. They don't use the equipment you give them, but resort to crappy stuff that you can't even see in their inventory to take away from them. They jump in the way of your attacks and get mad when you hit them, but are constantly hitting you with their arrows and spells when you're trying to fight hand-to-hand. For a game designed with followers in mind, the developers sure did a pathetic job of implementing them.

 

7. I want to wear more rings. Really. I could wear two in Oblivion, even though I had eight fingers. Why can't I wear eight in Skyrim? I'd happily settle for two. And why can't I wear a circlet under my helmet or hat? That doesn't make sense, either.

 

8. Why is it that when I put on a mask of any kind I suddenly look like a human with a tail (I play as a Khajiit)? OK, I know the game mechanics behind this. Full-coverage helmets and masks replace the player character's head. Couldn't the developers have made beast-race friendly versions of these things? Sure they could have. After all, these are powerful artifacts (supposedly). Surely they can morph to accommodate a wearer's anatomy.

 

9. I'm standing on a ledge overlooking a lake. I want to mine an ore vein. They game won't let me. Why? Because it informs me that I'm "in combat". I am? That's a new one on me, I think as I look around and see no enemy in sight. Then I notice the red dot. Frustrated, I start tracking it down and discover that some slaughterfish in the lake has gone aggro on me, and the game considers that "in combat" for me. If I'm not actually fighting something then I'm bloody well NOT in combat! The game needs to understand that a foe that can't get to you should not stop you from doing certain things (namely mining ore, chopping wood, waiting, sleeping, and fast traveling).

 

10. I want to see a little more care taken by the people who are building things in this game. You know about Anise's Cabin, that little shack just WSW of Riverwood? Did you know that if you kill Anise to gain unrestricted access to it, that none of the items in the cabin are re-flagged as "unowned", which is the usual case when you clear out a hostile area with owned items. Did you know that if you steal anything from Anise's cabin that a hagraven named Moira will send a pack of thugs to beat you up (read that, kill you)? My main issue is this. First of all, when I kill Anise there are no witnesses. Ever. Moira doesn't even exist in the game until you start the quest "A Night to Remember". How is it, then, that this Hagraven, who lives in Witchmist Grove way, way, waaaaay, to the east of Riverwood, could possibly know that I swiped something out of a cabin that doesn't even belong to her? To say nothing of the fact that she doesn't even exist, yet. Anise is a member of the Hagraven Faction. Why? She's not a hagraven. She'll never, EVER, come into contact with one because she never leaves the vicinity of her cabin. No hagraven will ever visit her. This is just poor game design, and I'd like to see better.

[Perraine]

I agree with pretty much all these points, and the worst. most annoying, frustrating or downright rage inducing thing about it? I can sum it up in 2 words "Obsidian Entertainment" ... They managed, using basically an identical set of tools (i.e. game engine) to overcome many of the aforementioned "game features" of Skyrim ...

 

My hope, is not for some new sword or new NPC in Skyrim DLC, it's that BGS will admit that they are completely incompetent and hand over ALL future development (or redevelopment might be a better term) of Skyrim to Obsidian Entertainment!

[yota71]

and hand over ALL future development (or redevelopment might be a better term) of Skyrim to Obsidian Entertainment!

 

 

OMG Obsidian! argh after what have they done with neverwinter Nights 2 ? not for all the money in the world! this Entertainment company (big word for obsidian :wallbash: ) the only thing they can do is ruining completly the TES game, maybe pass it ro Bioware is a better idea

 

Obsidian begone! :ohdear:

[Perraine]

and hand over ALL future development (or redevelopment might be a better term) of Skyrim to Obsidian Entertainment!

 

 

OMG Obsidian! argh after what have they done with neverwinter Nights 2 ? not for all the money in the world! this Entertainment company (big word for obsidian :wallbash: ) the only thing they can do is ruining completly the TES game, maybe pass it ro Bioware is a better idea

 

Obsidian begone! :ohdear:

 

Bioware! ... Arrrrggggghhh ... Nooooooo ... After what they did to Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 3 ???!!!???

 

I'd rather take an arrow in the knee ! .... :wallbash:

 

..................... End of Riposte

 

At least Obsidian did a pretty good job with FO:NV, and let's face it, if you ported all the visual assets from Skyrim (meshes/textures and stuff) to make a TC of New Vegas, it would probably be a damn sight better game than Skyrim ...

[yota71]

 

Bioware! ... Arrrrggggghhh ... Nooooooo ... After what they did to Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 3 ???!!!???

 

I'd rather take an arrow in the knee ! .... :wallbash:

 

..................... End of Riposte

 

They had made this games in hurry and all have seen that (one year to make that type of games is truly little), but at least i had played DA2 twice For NWN 2 it was truly hard and annoyng to finish the game once (and not all expansion)

 

At least Obsidian did a pretty good job with FO:NV, and let's face it, if you ported all the visual assets from Skyrim (meshes/textures and stuff) to make a TC of New Vegas, it would probably be a damn sight better game than Skyrim ...

 

I havent played fallout NV but truly is a totally different game from NWN and Skyrim (and least but not last) they have a solid base with FO3 that thing had maked all the thing much simple, i will be truly terrorized to see a TES game in the hand of obsidian :unsure:

[thompsonar]

Regarding the OP and the next poster, I completely agree with both of you. Of all the threads complaining about Skyrim this one is the most thought out and spot on with just about everything. I don't have a problem with the Imperials moving into "your" fort and you losing your items, I think you should have expected that and it seems like a logical thing to happen. As for all the other suggestions, they would vastly improve the game, and honestly don't seem like they would have been hard to implement.

 

My favorite is the suggestion that you should NOT be able to become leader of the factions/guilds. It's so simple, and it would be better. I have not seen this suggestion before and can't believe it never crossed my mind. It solves everything though, people treat you like a grunt, and you are a grunt. If they weren't going to give any rewards for being the leader, then don't let you become the leader.

 

Good thread and I don't usually like "complaining" threads.

[BlackCompany]

1. Combat. Plain and simple, Bethesda needs to hire someone who specializes in designing combat for video games, and has some experience with this engine in its other iterations. Animations are sad, clumsy and repetitive. Weapons have no weight without modded effects to add them. For some reason we have a stamina bar, though i cannot for the life of me tell you why. Blocking? Attacking? I had to create a mod which told the game to use stamina for these things, because it didn't even bother to do so before. Pathetic. And lazy.

 

 

2. Choice. Obsidian really nailed choice and consequence in Fallout New Vegas. There was absolutely no reason Bethesda could not do the same. You basically copied their 'civil war in an open world' idea, so why not copy the idea of faction-specific quests and alliances that matter? Which leads me direct to my next concern:

 

 

3. Factions. Or the lack thereof. None of them matter. So...i can agree to work for a guild of assassins, quietly, in the shadows. And they are ok with me drawing attention to myself by also becoming Archmage or Harbinger of the Companions? I hardly think so. You should be expelled for divided loyalties and then hunted to death because you know too much. Likewise, if this causes other factions to become aware of your alliances to the darker Guilds, you should be shunned and hunted? Want to play all sides against each other? Fine. If you are found out both sides shun you and you become an exile, living on the run between cities, hiding in ruins for fear of Guards on the one hand and assassins on the other.

 

 

4. Bestiary. How about some enemies to fight? We had centurions, bandits, Draugr and Falmer. They all move and fight basically the same way. Same animations. Same weapon speeds. Except for the Dwarven stuff there is so little variety I want to cry.

 

 

5. A new game engine. Really new, this time. Gamebryo had outlived its usefulness before you decided to create Gamebryo 1.5. It doesn't handle physics or animations well. The new scripting language you have created is a disastrous mess requiring work arounds just to function. Everyone in the business of developing games is ahead of Bethesda in tech these days. They are years behind and will, after their next Fallout game (skipping it) spend two of their 4 development years trying to learn yet another new engine.

 

 

But I have learned my lesson. Bethesda, who PC gamers pulled back from the brink of disaster when they gave us morrowind, has become a console developer. So, its time for me to move on to the likes of CDProjektRED and others. Skyrim was my last straw; I am no longer a Bethesda customer.

[ManleySteele]

I completely agree with the OP and, especially, the first response. This game is so unfinished that, at times, it is almost unplayable. I keep having this litany running through my head that they left it this way for the modding community, but that makes no sense. They could have cleaned up they messes they leave everywhere with a little thought and action. In response to BlackCompany, I play on a console and believe me, it's no picnic. I'm so frustrated that I'm thinking of building a new computer, just to mod this aggravating game. Am I crazy. Probably. I should just move on as you seem to have done. Like you, I've had about enough. I received another unsolicited update the other day and it appears they have rebroken some things I thought they had finally fixed. Well, I feel better now. You folks have fun.

[RedRavyn]

@ ManleySteele: I'm not saying this is how it is. What I'm about to say is something that makes sense, though. Bethesda knows that there are some crack modders at work on their games, and they know that some of these modders are all over their bugs like flies on sugar. Do you really think they don't examine the Unofficial Skyrim Patch and other bug-fix mod? Of course they do. And they probably then include some of those fixes into later patches.

 

I've said it, before ... the Bethesda developers can't finish what they start. This company has a long history of releasing bug-infested games, touting them as "finished" and ready for public consumption, when, in fact, the two I've played (Oblivion and Skyrim) were released to the public as barely-acceptable beta versions. Why bother with actually testing your work when you have modders to do that for you and then fix all the problems you introduced into the game? Seriously, some of the bugs are so obvious that they should have been plain to the developer before he ever hit the "save" button in the CS.

 

I'm a firm believer that every developer should actually have to do an "alpha test" of his work before it get incorporated into the game for beta testing by real playtesters. That doesn't seem to be the case with many companies (so Bethesda isn't in that boat, alone). At least we can mod this game with reasonable efficacy. One of my other favorite (and buggy) games, Borderlands, really can't be fixed by the modding community at all -- at least I know of no bug-fix mods that are available, and installing any sort of third party add-on to that game is a nightmare.

 

We can at least thank Bethesda for leaving Skrim moddable, even though the company is clearly making games only for consoles now.

As PC users, we're on our own. Even the CS is buggy to the point of being unusable for some purposes, but our modding community has supplied us with alternatives that work better. They will make this game playable on the PC. It's just going to take time.