The OFFICIAL Anandtech Forums TeS V: Skyrim Thread

[zinfamous]

Wow... Funniest skyrim vids EVER. He may have convinced me to try unarmed - I thought it was a useless build until now.

did you see his thanksgiving dinner?

D:

 

[Imp]

Okay, 133 hours later and level 71, damn, starting to get bored. Almost done practically every quest in the game, just a few Thieves Guild ones left.

Spoiler

Also, haven't done any Winterhold town quests, but I wiped that town out by joing the Imperials.

I've been level whoring my magicka skills with my fighter, and have found conjuration to be best. Can't beat summoning a Dremora Lord to take care of business for you and reanimating the dead.

 

[dennilfloss]

Enchanting, alchemy, and smithing are probably the three most important trees in the game.

I'm now at level 41 summoner/destructomage and I have been leveling enchanting but haven't used it yet to enchant stuff for myself. I'm a cloth mage and won't bother with smithing on principle. Armour is below my mage condition. Let the plebes wear that. As for alchemy, it would feel like being back in grade school, such a grinding bore. Not gonna bother with it.

I know my mage could make potions and then enchant some superarmour but it's not fun being invincible. As it is now, I can still be one-shotted by a bandit if I don't see him first. Means I have to be aware of my environment and that's more of a challenge.:ninja:

Heck, I even save every time I read a new book so I won't advance by mistake in skills I won't use.:biggrin:

That's one of the appeals of single-player games and Bethesda in particular, you play as you like. And replay later differently.

 

[Slew Foot]

Enchanting and Smithing are very overpowering when you load up those trees. Alchemy not as much but its very good for profitting off of random stuff you pick up, you really only need to advance the first couple nodes in that tree.

 

[Dominato3r]

I posted about this problem earlier. I found her by going to the church in Riften and waiting inside. She was there and started a convo about the marriage right after.

That worked. Thanks.

Don't you love it when you go out in the hills far from the roads to find and enter a cave that, at first glance looks small and mundane, then at the very end of the room you find a small passage, which leads to withered journal, and quickly you find yourself in awe like you've entered The Great Machine in Forbidden Planet and are retracing the last steps of unfortunate pilgrims?

And am I the only one who gets queasy when I collect a few hundred chaurus eggs? Those egg sacs are revolting and I keep expecting one to open and reveal a face hugger. D:

Maybe I'm just a pussy or something but everytime I enter a cave or dungeon I start getting the shivers expecting to be scared. The sound in the game is really glitchy and sometimes ill turn around looking right into the eyes of a vampire or something who I had no idea was there. But its pretty awesome. The spontaneity of the dungeons is great.

 

[dennilfloss]

Heck,yesterday I was scared once by the shadow of my follower when the light was behind us in a dwemer ruin.

 

[QuantumPion]

I'm up to about 70 hours total and think I'm ready to wrap up the main quest and call it quits. While I love the huge amount of stuff to do in Skyrim and it is a vast improvement on Oblivion, after a while every dungeon starts to look the same and it feels repetitive and pointless. I don't even bother trying to sneak around any more, I just run through and shadow warrior backstab anything in my way.

 

[JackSpadesSI]

Are mammoths infinite (after a respawn period) or finite? I need grand souls for enchanting (I'm too cheap to buy them), but I don't want the mammoths to go extinct.

Also, how can I easily get a lot of black soul gems? They've got to be actual black soul gems, so don't suggest the

Spoiler

Black Star, because that ship has sailed

.

 

[Borealis7]

i get grand soul gems by collecting loot and going to a store, i then buy a grand soul gem and sell equipment until the store runs out of money. buy another soul gem and repeat...
stores have grand soul gems maybe 75% of the time.

 

[Red Storm]

If you want a much easier method for farming grand souls:

Spoiler

The Black Star

 

[shortylickens]

There's a spell in the alteration tree 'Equilibrium' that converts your health to mana. If you combine it with Healing, you can level your Restoration even though you can't level Alteration for some reason...

Be warned though, Equilibrium burns your health faster than you can heal so if you do go below 0 by Equilibrium you WILL die. I'm guessing they did it so that you couldn't autolock cast your restoration to max.

I have 430 health.

 

[shortylickens]

Was very peeved to see theres no cure disease or cure poison spells. Now sorry I spent so much time leveling Restoration.
Grand Heal is good enough even with low skill.

 

[Markbnj]

Was very peeved to see theres no cure disease or cure poison spells. Now sorry I spent so much time leveling Restoration.
Grand Heal is good enough even with low skill.

Really? Damn, they sure stripped the hell out of this game, didn't they? Maybe they should have put less money into bad voice acting. Or maybe this is all the complexity the current player base can handle.

 

[Red Storm]

Really? Damn, they sure stripped the hell out of this game, didn't they? Maybe they should have put less money into bad voice acting. Or maybe this is all the complexity the current player base can handle.

It's sad when you look at what spells we had in Morrowind, and then Oblivion, and now Skyrim.

I expect Bethesda to continue their simplification of magic with each new game. Not that it matters, thanks to mods.

 

[Specop 007]

It's sad when you look at what spells we had in Morrowind, and then Oblivion, and now Skyrim.

I expect Bethesda to continue their simplification of magic with each new game. Not that it matters, thanks to mods.

One of my more memorable events was flying around castles in Daggerfall. Man that was fun.

 

[Markbnj]

One of my more memorable events was flying around castles in Daggerfall. Man that was fun.

I remember that at one point in Daggerfall I no longer had to walk anywhere. I would fly from town to town, land on a rooftop, scan the streets for the hooded baddies, and kill them from above if they were present. Awesome.

Levitation was pretty powerful in Morrowind, too, though much more limited.

 

[Martimus]

Really? Damn, they sure stripped the hell out of this game, didn't they? Maybe they should have put less money into bad voice acting. Or maybe this is all the complexity the current player base can handle.

I don't have a problem with that, since there are cure disease potions. Poisons are temporary, so I don't mind not having a cure.

While making your own spells is fun and a game unto itself, I also like the dynamic of having set spells, since each spell becomes more valuable and unique. Making Spells in Oblivion wasn't that fun anyway, since it was more of a spreadsheet method of creation. I would like to see a more enjoyable spell creation method in future games.

 

[Markbnj]

I don't have a problem with that, since there are cure disease potions. Poisons are temporary, so I don't mind not having a cure.

There has always been overlap between spells and alchemy. I didn't see it as a problem to be rectified. Having multiple ways to approach things adds richness. I wouldn't be as disappointed overall if all they had done was limit the number of spells, but they have stripped a ton of stuff from the game: underwater combat, multiple armor pieces, spellcrafting, item degradation and repair, abandoning quests, persuasion, etc. And what they haven't removed they've simplified to the point of it all being point and click... which I guess is what you have to do when 80% of your player base now has just a couple of buttons and a joystick.

I'm enjoying the game. It's pretty, and the action pieces are fun. But I think overall it's more of a snooze-fest than Morrowind, and even more than Oblivion. RPG fans need richness to keep them involved in a sandbox. Action fans don't need richness: they're happy just swinging weapons at enemies, but then they get bored quickly in a sandbox, which is to some extent already happening.

Guess none of this matters when you sell 9m copies on expectations alone.

 

[Martimus]

There has always been overlap between spells and alchemy. I didn't see it as a problem to be rectified. Having multiple ways to approach things adds richness. I wouldn't be as disappointed overall if all they had done was limit the number of spells, but they have stripped a ton of stuff from the game: underwater combat, multiple armor pieces, spellcrafting, item degradation and repair, abandoning quests, persuasion, etc. And what they haven't removed they've simplified to the point of it all being point and click... which I guess is what you have to do when 80% of your player base now has just a couple of buttons and a joystick.

I'm enjoying the game. It's pretty, and the action pieces are fun. But I think overall it's more of a snooze-fest than Morrowind, and even more than Oblivion. RPG fans need richness to keep them involved in a sandbox. Action fans don't need richness: they're happy just swinging weapons at enemies, but then they get bored quickly in a sandbox, which is to some extent already happening.

Guess none of this matters when you sell 9m copies on expectations alone.

If I were to complain about things in the game, I would go with the combat mechanics being so horribly dull, and the UI being annoying just to do the simplest and basic things. These two things are such basic aspects of the game that the little complaints I hear about the lack of depth in spells, and lack of niche activities seem frivolous. The major issues are far more base than those small problems.

I often just go back to play The Witcher 2, since it has better combat mechanics, and better UI (although the UI still isn't exactly good). I do like the sandbox nature of the game, as I love sandbox games, but I wish that they put more effort into cleaning up the base gameplay.

 

[Markbnj]

If I were to complain about things in the game, I would go with the combat mechanics being so horribly dull, and the UI being annoying just to do the simplest and basic things. These two things are such basic aspects of the game that the little complaints I hear about the lack of depth in spells, and lack of niche activities seem frivolous. The major issues are far more base than those small problems.

I often just go back to play The Witcher 2, since it has better combat mechanics, and better UI (although the UI still isn't exactly good). I do like the sandbox nature of the game, as I love sandbox games, but I wish that they put more effort into cleaning up the base gameplay.

Well, I guess that puts you in the action-oriented player camp, and I agree that the issues you mentioned are big ones. I didn't bring up the interface because it's so horrible that it would require a thread all to itself to fully describe it's badness.

But those other problems aren't small ones to most RPG-oriented players.

 

[shortylickens]

Just spent an hour doing minor quests. Got about 20 of them knocked out.
Getting bored. Probably gonna forge ahead with major quests now. Also very tired of leveling my skills.
Got 3 souls and dont know how to spend them. No going back once you make a pick.

 

[cytoSiN]

Got 3 souls and dont know how to spend them. No going back once you make a pick.

There's always this: http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1078
Highly recommended.

As for everyone's comments about getting bored, I started to feel that way but before I let it fully set in, I decided to take a break until modders have a chance to really work with the CK to create some amazing new shit.

 

[ManBearPig]

Yeah the beginning is definitely way more fun than the end. It ends up getting really repetitive/boring.

 

[SMOGZINN]

There has always been overlap between spells and alchemy. I didn't see it as a problem to be rectified. Having multiple ways to approach things adds richness. I wouldn't be as disappointed overall if all they had done was limit the number of spells, but they have stripped a ton of stuff from the game: underwater combat, multiple armor pieces, spellcrafting, item degradation and repair, abandoning quests, persuasion, etc. And what they haven't removed they've simplified to the point of it all being point and click... which I guess is what you have to do when 80% of your player base now has just a couple of buttons and a joystick.

I'm enjoying the game. It's pretty, and the action pieces are fun. But I think overall it's more of a snooze-fest than Morrowind, and even more than Oblivion. RPG fans need richness to keep them involved in a sandbox. Action fans don't need richness: they're happy just swinging weapons at enemies, but then they get bored quickly in a sandbox, which is to some extent already happening.

Guess none of this matters when you sell 9m copies on expectations alone.

If I were to complain about things in the game, I would go with the combat mechanics being so horribly dull, and the UI being annoying just to do the simplest and basic things. These two things are such basic aspects of the game that the little complaints I hear about the lack of depth in spells, and lack of niche activities seem frivolous. The major issues are far more base than those small problems.

I often just go back to play The Witcher 2, since it has better combat mechanics, and better UI (although the UI still isn't exactly good). I do like the sandbox nature of the game, as I love sandbox games, but I wish that they put more effort into cleaning up the base gameplay.

These two posts seems to make it clear to me that TES series needs to splinter into two different games, and action RPG-light to appeal to the button mashing crowd and a Daggerfall Epic RPG with all the bells and whistles to appeal to the long haul RPG crowd.

Right now Bethesda is trying to split the difference and make a RPG that has some depth but can be satisfactorily played as an action RPG-light. And it looks like Skyrim does this pretty well, the game is fun to play afterall. Unfortuantly, eventually it fails to deliver what the Epic RPG fan really needs to stick with a TES game, and that is depth.

Hopefully the Creation Kit will have enough flexability to add the sort of depth RPG fans need.

 

[coldmeat]

I started a new character, this time a mage (first was a sneak archer). When I opened the map up for the first time with the new character though, I saw that it was completely empty and I saw all the time I put into the last save and all the time I would need to put into this one and it kind of turned me off the game.

It was nice though when I was set free in the world again with my new character, it was kind of like exploring the world for the first time again for some reason. It was actually the first time I saw bees or a hive and I've found a few other things that I never noticed before.