What I would change about Skyrim

[worldofscotty]

I like this thread but I think it has gotten somewhat out of control.

 

I don't know how we got from 'things I'd like to change' all the way to 'They need to pass on production to another company', One can only assume that we are still talking about the same game, game of the year and one of the best games ever made. Sure it has its faults but most of those are rapidly being covered by the 1000s of mods.

 

Speaking of mods; How on earth can you possibly say that the CK is 'buggy to the point of being unusable'. How many more thousands of mods do we need as evidence that it does work as intended. Again yes it has bugs at the moment but it is more than adequate.

 

What we have here is a base platform which is coming close to bug free in vanilla without mod interaction. That is an achievement in its self. It was built for modding and that's where we are at right now. We havn't even had any expansions yet.

[Helix341]

I like this thread but I think it has gotten somewhat out of control.

 

I don't know how we got from 'things I'd like to change' all the way to 'They need to pass on production to another company', One can only assume that we are still talking about the same game, game of the year and one of the best games ever made. Sure it has its faults but most of those are rapidly being covered by the 1000s of mods.

 

Speaking of mods; How on earth can you possibly say that the CK is 'buggy to the point of being unusable'. How many more thousands of mods do we need as evidence that it does work as intended. Again yes it has bugs at the moment but it is more than adequate.

 

What we have here is a base platform which is coming close to bug free in vanilla without mod interaction. That is an achievement in its self. It was built for modding and that's where we are at right now. We havn't even had any expansions yet.

 

Good point made here. When I first made this post, it was a bit of a grumble at how some things needed more of a touch or reality to them. I have absolutely no problem with the mods/bugs side of Skyrim (mainly because being moon-launched is really funny!). Skyrim is, without doubt, my favourite game of all time (with the possible exception of Portal 2). I think that Bethesda have done a fantastic job with it - I would just have liked a bit more reality. The CK works as intended. The bugs in the game can be annoying, but you can work around them. Well done for trying to make a good point ;)

[Helix341]

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.

 

 

You commented on my issues, so I'll return the favor ;)

 

1. The factions are problematic, with only a select number of people recognizing your new rank (reminds me of my problem with the Thane rank...). Even though I'm a Nightingale, some woman won't tell me her real name, and some guy still says "You've caused enough trouble" down in the Ragged Flagon...Where's the sense of respect?

 

2. I definetley agree with this point - or at least, if you are leader, you should get leader quests (e.g. Farengar has accidentaly sent Jarl Balgruuf to Oblivion, only you, the most skilled mage in Skyrim can get him back) rather than the rookie quests you get at the start. Your point about not using magic in the Mage College - In the Thieves guild, you don't need to pickpocket much, which I thought would be an essential skill. The guilds definetley need a bit of work.

 

3. I've never seen a Slaughterfish. Can you Shout underwater?

 

4. The combat is quite basic compared to other games. Maybe the next game should involve a Ninja-style guild, with rigorous martial arts training, focusing on two-handed weapons and various techniques. That could also improve your no-weapon skills (make brawls easy!)

 

5. Creating custom spells could get quite complex, but I see no reason why you shouldn't at least have a basic spell creation system, even if its just combining spells (e.g. Spark + Flames = Flaming Sparks?)

 

6. I figured out something - a follower should only be treated as a carrier mule or meat shield. Whenever something requiring stealth is needed, I send Faendal off home. However, when starting out, followers can be useful in raiding bandit camps - Faendal once took out the whole of Valtheim Towers with his bow, whilst I just collected the loot! Their inventory system does need sorting - Marcucio died because he didn't want to wear the Steel Plate or Glass Armors that I gave him -_-

 

7. I only use one ring at a time, and I suppose the effects could sometimes conflict with each other? That's the only logical reason I see for only being able to wear one. Then again, a ring of increasing magicka and a ring of destruction combined would be extremely useful for me - definetley a logical suggestion

 

8. They managed to make sex-dependant outfits (e.g. Forsworn Armor, Dwarven Helmet), I don't think it would be too hard to create race-dependant outfits...although seeing as the majority of the races (Mer and Men) are pretty similar, they obviously didn't see the point. As a Dark Elf, it doesn't affect me much :P

 

9.There is a simple solution for this. Blast the freakin' Slaughterfish out of the pond with all your magicka, and then hunt down it's family. Oh wait, you can't fight underwater! You should only be restricted by an opponent if they are withing striking distance e.g. standing next to you with a massive axe. I can see why you can't do things like mine when they're near you, although how near should be re-adressed

 

10.It's worse when dead people send thugs after you for killing one of their relatives after you killed them...Or when someone sends thugs after you for killing someone on their orders (Dark Brotherhood, cough cough!) Again, it's the lack of realism that I mentioned my first post.

[azaltan]

"What I would change about Skyrim?"

 

Long rant short; Bethesta.

[PsxMeUP]

Gameplay. Add a lock-on mode, give the game Assassin's Creed's parkouring, countering and assassinating and you'd have an awesome game. In fact, It would be more realistic to expect Assassin's Creed to expand its sandbox world to resemble Skyrim than it is to expect an Elder Scroll to get decent gameplay.

[RedRavyn]

@ worldofscotty

 

How you can refer to Skyrim as a GOTY candidate, and then say that its faults are being fixed by "1000s of mods" is a little far-fetched in my eyes. A released game must stand on its own to be GOTY material in my opinion. It cannot rest upon the shoulders of the modding community, especially when the game was never developed with PC gamers in mind in the first place!

 

I've never used the CK for Skyrim, but I'm intimately familiar with the one for Oblivion. I've seen many comments by modders complaining that all the old bugs, including things like ESP/ESM packing corruption and corruption of mods simply by running the CK for long periods of time without shutting it down and restarting it are still there. Let's face it. If you aren't a modder you won't appreciate just how much a piece of dung the CKs are for ES games. They are user-vicious, bug-ridden, clearly programmed by committees of people who weren't communicating with each other, and are, just generally, badly programmed. It's a miracle that the Bethesda developers can even get a poorly-tested game like Skyrim out in a decade or more, let alone meet specified deadlines. It's no wonder to me it took a hundred people to crank out this game, even in its clearly unfinished state.

 

Also, I never said that the CK was "unusable". You took my comment out of context and completely altered its meaning. I said, and I quote, "Even the CS is buggy to the point of being unusable for some purposes ..." Please note the emphasis I just added.

 

I think that for the most part this thread has remained on-topic. Most of the stuff written, so far, has addressed specific shortcomings of the game, and frequently included suggestions on what needs to be done to fix them. Unlike a few people, here, I don't think the solution is to turn development of ES over to another company. I really enjoy playing Oblivion. I really enjoy playing Skyrim. I can even enjoy both of these games right out of the box and with no mods. This is Bethesda's baby and needs to remain so because I don't, personally, think that the development style of any other company really matches that of Bethesda. I would like to see some of those other companies have a go at creating an open world fantasy-based game like the Elder Scrolls. A little competition might be just what Bethesda needs as an eye-opener.

 

I think the Bethesda developers have a wonderful sense of adventure and reasonably-refined creative skills, but as I mentioned, before, at the crux of the problems I have with this company is the fact that they are starters and not finishers. Maybe with Skyrim there was an alibi. My answer to that is fire the marketing team and let the development team do their jobs correctly. However, someone still needs to light a fire under their collective butt and make them carry their work to the logical conclusion, rather than leaving a feeling after almost every quest like "Was that all? Really?"

 

@ Helix341

 

Slaughterfish: These were also present in Oblivion. They were the only predator you would encounter in the open water. They were also deadly, just as they are in Skyrim. In Oblivion you could swing a sword or dagger underwater and kill them (there was even a specific quest where you had to kill a dozen of them). In Skyrim you can't do this because the developers probably thought it was illogical to be able to fight underwater (they're wrong if that's the case).

 

A slaughterfish, at least the Skyrim variant, is apparently a sort of lungfish (based upon their external anatomy), and they can be coaxed up to the shoreline, where you can attack them with weapons or spells, but it can be an exercise in futility to do so. I don't know if you can shout underwater. I've never tried it -- perhaps an experiment for the next time I play in my last playthrough (I can't shout in this one). You can hit them with ranged spells in the shallows, but I think they actually need to clip through the top of the water for that to work.

 

Custom Spells: This was integral to Oblivion and worked quite well in that game. There's nothing complex about it. You learn a "spell effect" and you can create custom spells using that effect. This would enable you to, for instance, create a higher-level version of the Flames spell, which actually has some advantages over the existing higher-level fire-based spells in Skyrim, for example. I really don't know the logic for not letting us do this.

 

Rings: In Oblivion you couldn't wear two rings with the same name/effects. That didn't stop you from wearing two rings with different effects, and for awhile I even experimented with a mod that allowed me to wear as many rings as I wanted (easily abused and can ruin game-play for a player who wants to be challenged). I never ran into any "conflicts".

 

Beast-race Problem: Add non-mutability of masks to the "ever-wagging-tail" situation (dead Khajiit continue to move their tails), and the overall bad mesh design of the face for Khajiits, and it's pretty obvious that Khajiit are getting the short end of the stick in this game in every way the developers could do it, except one. The color patterns are a distinct improvement over Oblivion. I was expecting Morrowind-type digitigrade feet in Skyrim, although it looks like our complaints regarding the flat-footed Khajiit in Oblivion went unheeded. They can do it. Werewolves are digitigrade, and believably so. As a player who prefers to play Khajiit, since my other favorite race, the Bosmer is just so butt-ugly in Skyrim, I almost feel like a second-class citizen.

 

Thugs: This is an issue that goes much further than just thugs, but is part of the whole "psychic guard syndrome" that plagued Oblivion and is still here in full force in Skyrim. When I commit a crime in Skyrim nobody knows I did it. There are no witnesses, at least no living witnesses. I've got two 1000 gold bounties -- one for Whiterun and one for Falkreath. The first was because I freed a Stormcloak prisoner being escorted by Imperial troops. I made short work of ALL of the escorts. When I checked corpses, none of them had a cell-phone. The second was a band (OK, just three), Thalmor I found walking around not far from Riverwood. Same thing. I killed all three of them, quickly and efficiently. Nobody got away. No cell phones there, either. I killed Anise in less than five seconds and she was busy back-pedaling the entire time. Even if there was a telepathy spell in Skyrim (there isn't), she couldn't have contacted the non-existent Moira and informed her that I had stolen something from her cabin. In fact, I was undetected when I did that, anyway, so even Anise shouldn't have known about it.

[worldofscotty]

@ worldofscotty

 

How you can refer to Skyrim as a GOTY candidate, and then say that its faults are being fixed by "1000s of mods" is a little far-fetched in my eyes. A released game must stand on its own to be GOTY material in my opinion. It cannot rest upon the shoulders of the modding community, especially when the game was never developed with PC gamers in mind in the first place!

 

I've never used the CK for Skyrim, but I'm intimately familiar with the one for Oblivion. I've seen many comments by modders complaining that all the old bugs, including things like ESP/ESM packing corruption and corruption of mods simply by running the CK for long periods of time without shutting it down and restarting it are still there. Let's face it. If you aren't a modder you won't appreciate just how much a piece of dung the CKs are for ES games. They are user-vicious, bug-ridden, clearly programmed by committees of people who weren't communicating with each other, and are, just generally, badly programmed. It's a miracle that the Bethesda developers can even get a poorly-tested game like Skyrim out in a decade or more, let alone meet specified deadlines. It's no wonder to me it took a hundred people to crank out this game, even in its clearly unfinished state.

 

Also, I never said that the CK was "unusable". You took my comment out of context and completely altered its meaning. I said, and I quote, "Even the CS is buggy to the point of being unusable for some purposes ..." Please note the emphasis I just added.

 

I think that for the most part this thread has remained on-topic. Most of the stuff written, so far, has addressed specific shortcomings of the game, and frequently included suggestions on what needs to be done to fix them. Unlike a few people, here, I don't think the solution is to turn development of ES over to another company. I really enjoy playing Oblivion. I really enjoy playing Skyrim. I can even enjoy both of these games right out of the box and with no mods. This is Bethesda's baby and needs to remain so because I don't, personally, think that the development style of any other company really matches that of Bethesda. I would like to see some of those other companies have a go at creating an open world fantasy-based game like the Elder Scrolls. A little competition might be just what Bethesda needs as an eye-opener.

 

I think the Bethesda developers have a wonderful sense of adventure and reasonably-refined creative skills, but as I mentioned, before, at the crux of the problems I have with this company is the fact that they are starters and not finishers. Maybe with Skyrim there was an alibi. My answer to that is fire the marketing team and let the development team do their jobs correctly. However, someone still needs to light a fire under their collective butt and make them carry their work to the logical conclusion, rather than leaving a feeling after almost every quest like "Was that all? Really?"

 

 

You write way too much. Keep it simple.

 

Firstly - Skyrim officially WON game of the year on many different publications which are controlled by professionals and voted on by the masses so my reference means as much as yours does. You can't argue what the majority of people think and claim your opinion as fact.

 

Secondly - If you have never used the CK why are you even commenting on it? I have used it. Maybe not as extensively as the hardcores but I have used it. Like I said it does have problems. Go speak to any professional in any computer industry and ask them about the faults with the major software programs they use and they will be able to write you a list as long as their arms. CK is no different.

 

Thirdly - Refer to secondly. You havn't used it

 

Fourthly - Why are we talking about them needing to step up their game and in need of competition when they just created one of the best games of all time. It's unbelievable. So it isn't exactly as phenomenal as we were promised it was going to be, it's still phenomenal.

 

Fifthly - Marketing vs Development is the same in every company. Development wants perfection and marketing wants the game on the shelves. Noone said they were finished and they aren't, they are releasing patches every month. You'd be moaning if they asked you to wait another year for the game instead

Edited April 19, 2012 by worldofscotty

[azaltan]

"Skyrim officially WON game of the year on many different publications which are controlled by professionals and voted on by the masses"

"You can't argue what the majority of people think.. "

[NudeSkyrim]

I don't like how some of the unique armor (Jester's Hat etc) is obviously light armor, but isn't classified as such without mods

[JimboUK]

"What I would change about Skyrim?"

 

Long rant short; Bethesta.

 

This says it all. Bethesda are good at building worlds, everything else they do its half arsed and phoned in. With New Vegas Obsidian showed them exactly how it should be done, it's a shame they didn't take any of that onboard and instead opted to yet again create a pretty but vacuous hiking simulator.