Skyrim Anniversary Edition and 'survival mode'

[mikeymikec]

I bought anniversary edition a while back and thought that it's time to give it a try, particularly a new feature called 'survival mode' which is the novel concept that you need to eat and rest in order to function like an ordinary... biological lifeform.

I'm still on level 1 with this latest playthrough and noticed my stamina/health/magic bars going down, so I started eating the few items I had gathered so far, like a couple of loaves of bread, a cheese wheel, that kind of thing and was a tad surprised when I saw the vitality bars only going up a tiny bit. I was thinking, "how much are they expecting me to eat?".

So I googled the topic and found something that I had already noticed in the game (but I thought fast travel wasn't available because some bit of local plot was about to be triggered), and apparently in survival mode, FAST TRAVEL IS DISABLED.

I don't often resort to text-based modifiers to indicate my feelings on a topic, but:

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!?!?
​

They removed the one feature that makes virtually any RPG playable beyond the first few hours, and apparently the Skyrim devs are so dumb that they couldn't figure out how to calculate say the number of minutes saved as a result of fast travel from X to Y and apply that number of minutes to the survival vitality draining code at the end of the fast travel?

 

[Borealis7]

what do you expect? you gave Bethesda money for a 10 year old game so

 

[BFG10K]

It's always amusing to see people intentionally pick the hardest difficulty, then complain it's too hard.

 

[nakedfrog]

Maybe there's a mod to add it back, and add the projected drain as you expect?
It does remind me of the time that I played Skyrim as a "normal person" (it's a thing people do). Where you don't do any questing, you just go about your business as if you were a normal person in the world, finding ways to make money, eating, sleeping, etc

 

[mikeymikec]

It's always amusing to see people intentionally pick the hardest difficulty, then complain it's too hard.

I didn't complain it was too hard. Disabling fast travel doesn't make the game harder, just infinitely more tedious and boring. For similar levels of boredom, why not introduce waiting in line to see the king/jarl? Realistic healing times for some injuries requiring the Dragonborn to be bedridden for months?

Maybe there's a mod to add it back, and add the projected drain as you expect?
It does remind me of the time that I played Skyrim as a "normal person" (it's a thing people do). Where you don't do any questing, you just go about your business as if you were a normal person in the world, finding ways to make money, eating, sleeping, etc

I mentioned my recent Skyrim modding experience in another thread That'll be a hard pass.

 

[TheELF]

I didn't complain it was too hard. Disabling fast travel doesn't make the game harder, just infinitely more tedious and boring. For similar levels of boredom, why not introduce waiting in line to see the king/jarl? Realistic healing times for some injuries requiring the Dragonborn to be bedridden for months?

Being able to fast travel makes the games immensely more easy, being able to sell all your stuff, buying better stuff and keep on questing is much easier than having to walk, encumbered, through enemy territory, sometimes several camps or different hazardous areas to sell your stuff.
All the survivor mechanics make the game infinitely more tedious and boring, that's the point, having to stop to eat or to sleep just slows down gameplay.

Anyway, each difficulty setting has its own set of rules that are described to you when you pick it, choose whatever one you like the most.

 

[mikeymikec]

Being able to fast travel makes the games immensely more easy, being able to sell all your stuff, buying better stuff and keep on questing is much easier than having to walk, encumbered, through enemy territory, sometimes several camps or different hazardous areas to sell your stuff.
All the survivor mechanics make the game infinitely more tedious and boring, that's the point, having to stop to eat or to sleep just slows down gameplay.

Anyway, each difficulty setting has its own set of rules that are described to you when you pick it, choose whatever one you like the most.

Plenty of games, Skyrim included, do not generally auto-spawn bad guys, so if the player has already walked from X to Y then chances are they've cleared the area of bad guys on that path. Also I think you're confusing difficulty (which requires skill to counter) with tedium. Walking from X to Y does not require skill. Making the walk from X to Y take longer does not make the game require more skill. It just makes it more boring.

I expected a survival mode to force the player to plan more: Cooking more meals in advance of a major quest, maybe changing clothing for cold conditions. Not forcing the player into indulging in one of the more mocked Skyrim game mechanics being the chronic eating of cheese wheels in order to survive. The idea that a person with an active lifestyle could eat a whole loaf of bread in one sitting and it barely to have any effect on their level of hunger is just plain absurd.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Elder Scrolls is a series that will lend itself to "settlement building" which will in turn help round out and make a survival mode far more robust than the tacked on thing in the anniversary edition. Give the player a reason to strategically build settlements at staggered intervals from the main city so they can explore and resupply while using one of their outposts as a staging area.

 

[aigomorla]

lulz... no fast travel in skyrim... should be even more painful in new world with its limited fast travel.

 

[Zenoth]

Check on Nexus, I'm sure there's a "Re-enabled Fast Travel for Survival Mode" mod out there, has to be. This game has all the mods that could possibly be created in this universe.

 

[TheELF]

Plenty of games, Skyrim included, do not generally auto-spawn bad guys, so if the player has already walked from X to Y then chances are they've cleared the area of bad guys on that path. Also I think you're confusing difficulty (which requires skill to counter) with tedium. Walking from X to Y does not require skill. Making the walk from X to Y take longer does not make the game require more skill. It just makes it more boring.

I expected a survival mode to force the player to plan more: Cooking more meals in advance of a major quest, maybe changing clothing for cold conditions. Not forcing the player into indulging in one of the more mocked Skyrim game mechanics being the chronic eating of cheese wheels in order to survive. The idea that a person with an active lifestyle could eat a whole loaf of bread in one sitting and it barely to have any effect on their level of hunger is just plain absurd.

Dragons can attack at any time, so can assassins or wild life, but anyway,
if selling loot is too tedious for you you can always change your playstyle, you can get by just with the gold and gems you loot or you can learn how to steal, swipe a few expensive items in town and you can buy anything you need.
Or like the game tells you in the beginning, learn to do some alchemy and transform cheap stuff into more expensive stuff.
You don't have to pick up everything to sell it.

 

[Stg-Flame]

You can still take the caravans between cities. That being said, I miss my Silt Striders and actually loved how Morrowind forced us to traverse the world. Granted, I was fairly young and had all the time in the world back then which I don't now, but I actually prefer to disable fast travel whenever and wherever I can. Besides, it's not like Skyrim is that large of a map or that gold is so difficult to come by that you'll go broke if you hire a caravan to take you from one town to the next.

 

[pmv]

I confess I never used fast travel when I played those Elder Scrolls games.

It's a confession because probably it's a kind of weird OCD quirk. Probably related to why I dislike using motorised transport in real life, preferring to walk or cycle everywhere. Feels like cheating if you aren't traveling the distance under your own power (in real life there are political/environmental justifications, or maybe pseudo-justifications, that are hardly relevant in a game, plus the fact that real public transport so lamentably slow and unreliable - I don't recall the Striders in Morrowind being suspended for engineering works and being told to take the replacement bus service)

In the game it always felt kind of 'immersion breaking' to constantly "teleport", bouncing around the world, seemed to destroy any sense of place. I mean the whole USP of those games, that made them unusual, was the sandbox aspect, that meant it felt like a place with real geography. Jumping about with fast travel seemed to destroy that feeling of 'place'. I suppose that was just me. Did rather limit how far I got in the games for the time available, though.

It's why in Morrowind my character always developed insanely high athletics and acrobatics skill, as I recall.

 

[BFG10K]

Disabling fast travel doesn't make the game harder...

Really? So you're saying the difficulty stays the same, or gets easier?

 

[mikeymikec]

Really? So you're saying the difficulty stays the same, or gets easier?

"Remains unaltered" for the reasons I've already specified.

 

[Stg-Flame]

Really? So you're saying the difficulty stays the same, or gets easier?

Disabling fast travel doesn't affect the difficult. Just the tedium of traveling. Longevity doesn't correlate to difficulty in most cases.

 

[mikeymikec]

Disabling fast travel doesn't affect the difficult. Just the tedium of traveling. Longevity doesn't correlate to difficulty in most cases.

(Re tedium) Especially considering that in my latest run-through there has been plenty of occasions where I've spent a good half hour at least fast-travelling from one city to another to try and sell off all the stuff I've picked up. More time used up by me arriving at a city outside of business hours, then fast-travelling nearby and back again (often repeatedly) until the time is right. No fast travel and the player is supposed to do what?

Side note - it has bothered me in Skyrim before that the rest system seems to only work for set periods of time (24 hours I think?) with the only configurability being 'plus one day' IIRC. I also find it odd in Skyrim Anniversary that one can buy a backpack with a bed roll attached and yet still can't sleep virtually anywhere (I can imagine city guards telling you to move on though).

If the 'must sleep / eat' system was sufficiently advanced then it could encourage a concept of circadian rhythm, if you get to a city late or you've not slept for a longer period than normal then you end up sleeping in by an extra hour or five. Or allow the player the option to rest for a couple of hours. I'm pretty sure the sleep mechanic is identical to Skyrim RTM though.

 

[TheELF]

You can use any barrel in any city as permanent storage, shops closed and you don't want to wait or sleep, stash your stuff in a barrel and come back to sell it later, money shouldn't be a problem anyway.
Also buy a horse and use the stage coach to travel to any region, the horse will come along so you can reach any place pretty fast, it's also super cheap, the price doesn't scale with your level which they could have done to make it less viable.

 

[mikeymikec]

You can use any barrel in any city as permanent storage, shops closed and you don't want to wait or sleep, stash your stuff in a barrel and come back to sell it later, money shouldn't be a problem anyway.

If you queue it up for later, then surely later you've got more stuff in your inventory to sell and the merchant only has ~750 gold to buy with?

As long as you're using training, money will always be a problem!

 

[Stg-Flame]

No fast travel and the player is supposed to do what?

You can wait/sleep until the shop is opened. You don't have to constantly fast travel back and fourth to progress time.

If you queue it up for later, then surely later you've got more stuff in your inventory to sell and the merchant only has ~750 gold to buy with?

Invest in the Speech tree and you can increase a merchant's gold or you can just cheese it with the save/load exploit that still exists in the game. If you don't wish to invest in Speech or abuse the exploit, you can always just sell your stuff to trainers. Dump money into the trainer which increases their shop total then mass sell. I would use the alchemist in Whiterun and the smith in Riften. Or just use the money to buy ingots and leather, then use the ingots to increase your smithing skill or buy soul gems to level up your enchanting or buy alchemy ingredients and make a ton of potions. Making money in any TES game is a joke.

As long as you're using training, money will always be a problem!

What kind of person plays Skyrim but doesn't pickpocket their training money right back off the trainer/merchant?

 

[mikeymikec]

You can wait/sleep until the shop is opened. You don't have to constantly fast travel back and fourth to progress time.

Can you sleep for <user chooseable number> hours though? I was under the impression that it incremented in days.

Invest in the Speech tree and you can increase a merchant's gold or you can just cheese it with the save/load exploit that still exists in the game. If you don't wish to invest in Speech or abuse the exploit,

The speech perks require a lot of level up points and experience though.

you can always just sell your stuff to trainers. Dump money into the trainer which increases their shop total then mass sell. I would use the alchemist in Whiterun and the smith in Riften.

Yup, my tactic has been to sell high value items to mages and train with them.

What kind of person plays Skyrim but doesn't pickpocket their training money right back off the trainer/merchant?

You're talking to a guy who still can't bring himself to play the dark side in KOTOR1 & 2

 

[DigDog]

you still got carts and horses. what else do you need?
IMHO skyrim should not have had fast travel at all, from the start. Design better quests instead.

 

[TheELF]

you still got carts and horses. what else do you need?
IMHO skyrim should not have had fast travel at all, from the start. Design better quests instead.

You should get a town portal spell when completing the mage school quest line instead.
Or a sell junk, deadra spell.

 

[BFG10K]

Disabling fast travel doesn't affect the difficult. Just the tedium of traveling. Longevity doesn't correlate to difficulty in most cases.

I know exactly what it does. The problem is people redefining the term "difficulty".

Because they picked a difficulty level too high for them, it's the game's fault. It must be...