The Dragons are powerful? Oh well......

[Hateshinai]

I think Bethesda is all out of ideas because there is nothing more corny and unoriginal than dragons in an RPG. Seriously there are so many RPG's with dragons already however when you are out of ideas just pull out the dragon card and hope for the best - wouldnt you agree?

No of course not but question is why wont you agree? Well answer is simple - they are dragons! The truth is its a psychological matter - we all have been raised on fantasy stories about dragons, virgins and the gold they guard. And we always wanted to be the knight who slays the dragon and dragons are also related to martial arts which we all like to see in movies too. Hence when we hear the word dragon we instantly think of it as the peak of power.

 

So now my question - would you really think so highly about Skyrim and Alduin if he and the other dragons were not dragons but something else like gargoyles or simply a new kind of winged daedra?

 

The dragons wouldnt even be considered powerful in Morrowind or Oblivion. Well truth is they are more powerful than most enemies you encounter there but they suffer many flaws.

First of all the fact they are so large makes them less mobile - if you decide to run into a cave the dragon cant follow you like regular sized foes.

Another thing is that about 80% of their damage comes from their stinking breaths which deal either frost or fire damage in Oblivion and Morrowind you have many ways to protect yourself agianst those - resist fire/frost, frost/fire shield and resist magic of course (the last one is not in Morrowind). For example in Oblivion all you would need to do is wear the Flame ring and Frost ring which give 100% resistance to fire and frost damage respectively. Or another simple way would be to play a Breton and wear the Mundane ring which gives us 100% resist magic instantly.

This is exactly the reason why resistance to magic is capped at 85% in Skyrim otherwise the dragons would be no challenge at all more over it would be the only effect worth using since all effects protecting agianst melee dont exist anymore except for shield (now renamed armor) but we cant use it for enchanting.

In that situation only melee combat would remain but the dragons suck at that because they cant run up to you to bite you due to their bulk so it is you who must run up to them but should you decide to fight at range with spells or a bow they wouldnt be able to do anything.

 

So the truth is they are only powerful due to our limited capabilities in Skyrim. If Skyrim was an expansion to Morrowind or Oblivion we would all be laughing at the dragons.

[Glhadiator]

I suggest you download and install the Deadly Dragons Mod. I promise you it will give you a whole new perspective on the Dragons in Skyrim.:smile:

[rockman4417]

I suggest you download and install the Deadly Dragons Mod. I promise you it will give you a whole new perspective on the Dragons in Skyrim.:smile:

 

2nd that. Last night I had an hr long fight with an ancient dragon, who I had to chase all the way across Whiterun valley, as he laid waste to it. Must have killed hundreds in his rampage before I could ground him. :)

[Hateshinai]

I suggest you download and install the Deadly Dragons Mod. I promise you it will give you a whole new perspective on the Dragons in Skyrim.:smile:

That actually was the most unwise thing you could have said. If you offer me 3rd party mods to repair an issue then you only confirm what I said :wallbash:

 

And this also proves that you dont understand what I said - I said that the dragons can only be considered powerful in Skyrim but in Morrowind and Oblivion they would be a laugh.

 

More over if you offer me 3rd party mods it means you are unhappy with vanilla Skyrim. In Oblivion such a mod would be useless because all you have to do is move the difficulty slider to the right and presto instant insane difficulty. Your words remind me of cabaret I once saw in which a guy is trying to sell a car to another guy and the more they talk about the car it turns out that it has more and more parts missing or broken. Finally the buyer asks " does this car have anything that is whole?" and the salesman says "yes the ignition keys". So thats what Skyrim is then - a wreck with only the ignition keys intact. So yeah Bethesda cheated us all but hey no problem the 3rd party mods will repair everything and Bethesda will get full price with no extra effort.

[calfurius]

I suggest you download and install the Deadly Dragons Mod. I promise you it will give you a whole new perspective on the Dragons in Skyrim.:smile:

That actually was the most unwise thing you could have said. If you offer me 3rd party mods to repair an issue then you only confirm what I said :wallbash:

 

And this also proves that you dont understand what I said - I said that the dragons can only be considered powerful in Skyrim but in Morrowind and Oblivion they would be a laugh.

 

More over if you offer me 3rd party mods it means you are unhappy with vanilla Skyrim. In Oblivion such a mod would be useless because all you have to do is move the difficulty slider to the right and presto instant insane difficulty. Your words remind me of cabaret I once saw in which a guy is trying to sell a car to another guy and the more they talk about the car it turns out that it has more and more parts missing or broken. Finally the buyer asks " does this car have anything that is whole?" and the salesman says "yes the ignition keys". So thats what Skyrim is then - a wreck with only the ignition keys intact. So yeah Bethesda cheated us all but hey no problem the 3rd party mods will repair everything and Bethesda will get full price with no extra effort.

 

But this isn't Oblivion or Morrowind, this is SKYRIM. You can't put one thing in another game and then says it's laughable. For example, bandits would be a laugh in Halo, I mean I could just unload my machine gun and lay waste to them. Maybe not the same genre, but they are still different games. You sir are just wrong, I highly enjoy the dragons in the game with or without mods and I feel the Elder Scrolls series already had dragons if you played the last quest in the main story line in Oblivion. You remember when Martin Septim turned into a dragon/Akatosh? Yeah dragons have been in elder scroll series lore for awhile they just now decided to add them. There's my tidbit, now back to more Skyrim!

[Vagrant0]

It's all well and good to say that the dragons in the game aren't much of a threat to the player... But that doesn't do much about the threat to others. Take Helglen for example. Dragons attacking cities mean that people end up homeless or burnt to a crisp. Hiding out in caves may keep you alive, but it isn't much of a life. That's kinda what the real issue is with dragons of any kind, they are things that fly around and can at any time reduce your city to a scorched pile or ruins, a forest to a standing field of char.

 

That said, the dragons in Skyrim have always felt a little less than epic. But that was likely done as a balancing issue that wasn't ever fixed (kinda like how the bandits posing as imperial soldiers are always silly powerful compared to other bandits).

[JanusForbeare]

Take Helglen for example. Dragons attacking cities mean that people end up homeless or burnt to a crisp. Hiding out in caves may keep you alive, but it isn't much of a life.

 

That's true, though as you point out later in your post, dragons in Skyrim don't ever realize their real potential for devastation. It always seems kind of silly to me that Helgen, with its stone keep and towers, is heavily damaged and abandoned, but Riverwood survives without a scratch on even one of its timber and straw buildings. It'd be nice to see a mod that replaces all or most structures with destructible objects, which the townspeople have to rebuild after an attack.

[MightyZ0G]

if the dragons realised their full potential, Whiterun would be a cinder before you got to Riverwood.

 

with the number of dragons in Skyrim it would be a wasteland before you realised there was a civil war raging through the holds.

 

the only way Beth could have had a powerful dragon would be to have just one that had to rest for a while between attacks and couldn't be killed until the last stage of the main quest.

 

in hind sight that may have been better, but we've got what we've got.

[Hateshinai]

It's all well and good to say that the dragons in the game aren't much of a threat to the player... But that doesn't do much about the threat to others. Take Helglen for example. Dragons attacking cities mean that people end up homeless or burnt to a crisp. Hiding out in caves may keep you alive, but it isn't much of a life. That's kinda what the real issue is with dragons of any kind, they are things that fly around and can at any time reduce your city to a scorched pile or ruins, a forest to a standing field of char.

 

That said, the dragons in Skyrim have always felt a little less than epic. But that was likely done as a balancing issue that wasn't ever fixed (kinda like how the bandits posing as imperial soldiers are always silly powerful compared to other bandits).

No wonder you are a staff member since you use common sense - I like you already.

But truth is the whole stop dragon attacks thing is a waste of time because they keep respawning even after the main quest is done.

So no matter how hard you try someone is gonna get killed sooner or later. I for that matter was once doing something else (a thieves guild quest I think) and from a distance I see a town get attacked even though I already defeated Alduin so I'm like "not agian!"

Seriously its as if nothing changed, now I know they cant remove all the dragons in case we need more souls but after the main quest they could have made so that only the dragons that appear in the locations marked with a dragons head on the map respawn.

This basically makes it look like we never stopped anything since the dragons just keep doing the same old stuff as always.

Oh and the reason why bandits can be more dangerous at times is because when you are fighting a dragon its a fight of 1 vs 1 so its easy to dodge the attacks of one foe. But in case of bandits its rarely a 1 vs 1 fight usually its 1 vs 2 or more so its very hard to fight multiple opponents without getting hit in the process.

Edited July 17, 2012 by Hateshinai

[chocklymon]

All creatures in the Elder Scrolls series can be laughable easy to defeat with the proper preparation.

 

For example, Dagoth Ur the final boss of the main quest in Morrowind could be quite the challenge for even a level 60 character if they are not prepared, but can easily be defeated by a level one character (without cheating) with proper preparation. Another example from Morrowind, cliff racers are weak enemies that can be killed in one hit by the prepared character, but they have lead to the death of many a low level character and are super annoying even to high level ones.

 

The techniques that you mentioned to easily defeat dragons in Oblivion can be applied to any creature in that game to make them super easy to defeat even with the difficulty slider all the way up. So to single out dragons as being less powerful because they can be easy to kill in Skyrim with the proper preparation is not logical.

 

And yes, Alduin and the other dragons probably wouldn't be as cool if they were gargoyles or winged daedra (though they might be a type of daedra (or aedra) for all we know), but I think that Bethesda did an excellent job with the dragons in the game. Sure there a flaws, but when was the last time you played a perfectly balanced game. When playing they don't seem cliched or out of place at all; they seem to fit into the world as though they had always belonged and are a natural part of it.

Edited July 17, 2012 by chocklymon