Let's talk Skyrim! (Gameplay footage inside.)

[quote name='Fell Open Ian']Since Morrowind, I've purchased Bethesda's games on both console and PC. The console versions I play as was intended and the PC versions I mod to hell.

Skyrim, on PC, is the absolute worst UI integration that Bethesda has ever done. It's not even an I don't like this kinda thing but rather a this doesn't even fucking work kinda thing.

I approach it with zero master race bullshit or system wars or whatever...the mouse controls for the menus are fucking broken period the end and it's pathetic.[/QUOTE]
What specifically do you hate so much about it? Honestly, I don't see it as much worse than any other TES game so far. Once I figured out you can assign number keys to favorites, I actually didn't really have any other complaint. Scratch that, I do have one and it's where is the status bar? In oblivion you could clearly see what status effects you had running and even a screen devoted to it. Hell, I was running around with some disease for the longest time that had staggered my stamina pool and I didn't even know it until I used some shrine.

Other than that, it's pretty clean and does what it needs to for the most part. Sensitivity in menus is shit for sure, but that's a really minor annoyance since you can usually use a hotkey everywhere in them. Pro-Tip: if you're crafting something in bulk, just highlight the item and click mouse 1 over the area where the yes prompt is. You can just spam click until everything is made. Trust me, that's a HUGE time saver when you're doing alchemy.
 
I went to my stats page which said I had a disease. No idea when it happened or that I had it. Something like that would be insanely useful.
 
[quote name='Draekon']I went to my stats page which said I had a disease. No idea when it happened or that I had it. Something like that would be insanely useful.[/QUOTE]
You mean the skills screen? I have no idea how to see my stats like HP, Stam, and MP otherwise.
 
[quote name='Jodou']What specifically do you hate so much about it? [/QUOTE]

The mouse was invented and intended as a point-and-click interface and Skyrim does not adhere to that.

Bethesda has tossed-out 30+ years of user interaction in regard to point-and-click actually working.

edit: And I am not attempting to disparage you nor any other PC owner as I also own Skyrim on Steam. It's just one of those super dumb things where when I click on something, as I have for 30-ish years now, I expect an interaction to register but with Skyrim that does not typically happen. It's gross and dumb and a glaring omission on Bethesda's part.

I am not dismissing the PC version by any means but that's pretty damn fucked-up.
 
[quote name='Jodou']You mean the skills screen? I have no idea how to see my stats like HP, Stam, and MP otherwise.[/QUOTE]

Nah, when you go to the journal (J hotkey), it will tell you how many times you've been diseased and such if you select the stats tab up top (at least I think it's called stats). I assume I'm cured as I see no indication anywhere that I'm actually still diseased.
 
[quote name='Fell Open Ian']The mouse was invented and intended as a point-and-click interface and Skyrim does not adhere to that.

Bethesda has tossed-out 30+ years of user interaction in regard to point-and-click actually working.[/QUOTE]
But it does work? I'm lost here because I haven't found something that I can't click on yet and regardless I use hotkeys most of the time anyway.[quote name='Draekon']Nah, when you go to the journal (J hotkey), it will tell you how many times you've been diseased and such if you select the stats tab up top (at least I think it's called stats). I assume I'm cured as I see no indication anywhere that I'm actually still diseased.[/QUOTE]Wow, I'm going to have to look closer next time I'm playing because I sure as hell never saw a stats tab. Oh wait, I think I see what you're saying now, like enemies killed and distance traveled. Totally not the character stats I was thinking of lol.
 
Yeah, I don't think there's an actual character doll/attributes page. You can see your health/magicka/stamina on the skills page but that's pretty much it. Inventory shows what you have equipped by arrows next to the equipment. While it's very minimalist, it is not an efficient or good system.


I can only dream of the day we'll get old school Bioware-like shit in a game that's similar to Skyrim with many Daggerfall/Morrowind aspects in it that were removed (with refinement of course).
 
[quote name='ChibiJosh']diseases and blessing that you currently have are in your magic menu under "active abilities"[/QUOTE]
You know, that's one of those dickhead design moves where you have a UI completed and try to incorporate something after the fact. Those kind of designers should be shot.

So I spent an hour last night putting together and editing a dragon slaying video only to find out Warner Music has a copyright block on any of their music. Since Youtube apparently now uses some sort of audio algorithm to match music during an upload, they automatically blocked it from being viewed by anyone other than myself. So thanks for wasting my time and money, Warner, that's the last dime you ever see from me for your music again. Seriously can't understand why there's a dozen still picture videos designed to do nothing but play their music on Youtube, but mine is the one that gets blocked. This shit should fall under fair use because this to me says I can't do whatever I want with the song when I'm not looking to turn a profit from it.
 
I'm glad I finished the college's quests because I'm a little afraid to go back to Winterhold again. It seems like every time I'm there, I get attacked by a dragon. Once I got attacked by 2 dragons within 10 minutes of each other there. Random dragon fights just aren't as rewarding because you don't get a word or much loot.
 
[quote name='ChibiJosh']I'm glad I finished the college's quests because I'm a little afraid to go back to Winterhold again. It seems like every time I'm there, I get attacked by a dragon. Once I got attacked by 2 dragons within 10 minutes of each other there. Random dragon fights just aren't as rewarding because you don't get a word or much loot.[/QUOTE]
That's what I'm saying. The loot is always garbage and they're way too frequent. They don't even offer a challenge anymore to me.
 
The one good thing about dragon fights is that you get their bones which while heavy, do bring in some cash.
 
[quote name='Jodou']But it does work?[/QUOTE]

They've actually fixed some of it but in the version which shipped you couldn't click on the Skills, Items, Magic, and Map entries of the main menu and things within the inventory also had very odd placements for their clickable areas.
 
Yeah, Dragons are pathetically easy. As a pure spellcaster, the only issues I ever had with them as when I was on the lowest level spells (Flame, Frost or Shock). Reason for that was because you were close enough to get eaten by the dragon if you didn't have a companion.

Honestly I'm more afraid of running over a hill to be greeted by 3 or more Bears (or Cave Bears) without my companion. Those things charge very fast, hit very fast and hit hard. Unless you're using the Lightning tree, it'll be tough to do without abusing terrain and running like hell at the beginning. I'd probably be less afraid if I wasn't a robe wearing wuss.

I've also found out that their rewards on major quests are based on your character level when you complete them it seems. fuck you Bethesda and your consistently bad leveling design choices. (Link to examples)
 
[quote name='Draekon']Honestly I'm more afraid of running over a hill to be greeted by 3 or more Bears (or Cave Bears) without my companion. Those things charge very fast, hit very fast and hit hard. Unless you're using the Lightning tree, it'll be tough to do without abusing terrain and running like hell at the beginning. [/QUOTE]
I... but... bears are not aggressive animals.

Bears are not aggressive animals, people. Nor are they pack hunters. I know I'm the only person in the world irritated by this, but that's not how animals work, every single developer ever.
 
[quote name='The Crotch']I... but... bears are not aggressive animals.

Bears are not aggressive animals, people. Nor are they pack hunters. I know I'm the only person in the world irritated by this, but that's not how animals work, every single developer ever.[/QUOTE]

Actually, I've never seen more than 1 bear at a time. Also, the bears are normally not instantly aggressive for me. Usually I see one in the distance and if it notices me, it'll look in my direction and let off a roar. They don't attack unless I ignore their warning.
 
[quote name='The Crotch']I... but... bears are not aggressive animals.

Bears are not aggressive animals, people. Nor are they pack hunters. I know I'm the only person in the world irritated by this, but that's not how animals work, every single developer ever.[/QUOTE]

Tell that to the bears in WoW with 10 mile agro radius.
 
[quote name='ChibiJosh']Actually, I've never seen more than 1 bear at a time. Also, the bears are normally not instantly aggressive for me. Usually I see one in the distance and if it notices me, it'll look in my direction and let off a roar. They don't attack unless I ignore their warning.[/QUOTE]

Early on I only saw one and they had about a 50 foot aggro range or so (which is about the distance I usually first notice them in most cases). Then two days ago I began encountering them occasionally in groups of 2. Yesterday I had two aggro me from 50 yards away after they chased down a poor rabbit. Since I kill them in 3 casts using a lower tier spell, it's not that big of a deal at that range but it was the first time I had a bear aggro that far. Then finally last night I encountered two groups of 3, both of which were cave bears and my god they have a lot more health.
 
[quote name='Jodou']You know, that's one of those dickhead design moves where you have a UI completed and try to incorporate something after the fact. Those kind of designers should be shot.

So I spent an hour last night putting together and editing a dragon slaying video only to find out Warner Music has a copyright block on any of their music. Since Youtube apparently now uses some sort of audio algorithm to match music during an upload, they automatically blocked it from being viewed by anyone other than myself. So thanks for wasting my time and money, Warner, that's the last dime you ever see from me for your music again. Seriously can't understand why there's a dozen still picture videos designed to do nothing but play their music on Youtube, but mine is the one that gets blocked. This shit should fall under fair use because this to me says I can't do whatever I want with the song when I'm not looking to turn a profit from it.[/QUOTE]

Want some cheese with that whine?
 
Important Questions, bitches.

Is there ever any point to wear any sort of clothing (robes, say) over armour?

Does item quality affect what happens when you enchant it (a bronze ring versus a gold ring, say)?

Does weapon size affect it when you enchant it?
 
[quote name='The Crotch']Important Questions, bitches.

Is there ever any point to wear any sort of clothing (robes, say) over armour?[/QUOTE]

the only time I see using this is if you want to do a pure Mage character and do not want to enchant the armor you have or if you are trying to sneak around then wearing light clothes really helps. Once your sneak gets so high though armor really has no effect kn sneaking but until then blogged or nothing on can help with the sneaking.
 
[quote name='The Crotch']Important Questions, bitches.

Is there ever any point to wear any sort of clothing (robes, say) over armour?

Does item quality affect what happens when you enchant it (a bronze ring versus a gold ring, say)?

Does weapon size affect it when you enchant it?[/QUOTE]

1. Clothes/Robes tend to have magic-user friendly enchants. (but you can put those on Light/Heavy armor as well as long as you Disenchant the effect and have your Enchanting/mats up to par) Also they weigh next to nothing and are silent.

2. Yes and so does the soul gem.

3. Not sure. I'm guessing that you mean 1H versus 2H? It would make sense but I've only been enchanting apparel so far.

Also: Do you hate dragons?

Well then never do the first part of the main questline where you visit the Jarl in Whiterun. (I'm not 100% on this but with 2 characters and maybe 60 hours of play between them I've not fought a single dragon)
 
[quote name='Fell Open Ian']1. Clothes/Robes tend to have magic-user friendly enchants. (but you can put those on Light/Heavy armor as well as long as you Disenchant the effect and have your Enchanting/mats up to par)[/QUOTE]
Alright, that's... somewhat optimistic-ing me. Do those advantages carry on through the game? Like, will a mage eventually reach the point where they say, "fuck, might as well just enchant some glass armour and ditch the robes"?

[quote name='Fell Open Ian']2. Yes and so does the soul gem.[/QUOTE]
Good.

[quote name='Fell Open Ian'] 3. Not sure. I'm guessing that you mean 1H versus 2H? It would make sense but I've only been enchanting apparel so far.[/QUOTE]
I really hope so. Aside from a slight range advantage, there was never any reason to use a two-hander over a smaller weapon in Oblivion. In fact, the smallest weapon was usually by far the best, as the faster attacks let your enchantments (the real source of the damage, not the weapon itself) pile on at a much greater rate.
 
Well I've been using a robe and hood/cowl/circlet coupled with heavy gloves and boots in order to balance out the utter lack of damage resistance you get from cloth. (aside from Wards and Skin spells of course)

But, enchanting is supposedly completely overpowered/awesome once you level it high enough and spec into it so you can definitely make a battlemage in heavy armor with magicka enhancing enchants.

People are making mages where their spells cost next to nothing and the potency of said spells is increased due to heavy enchanting.

You can also do stuff like use two 1H weapons which each have +1H enchants on them and it'll all stack with any skill points to end-up with crazy things like ~30x sneak damage. Many are saying that this needs to be nurfed as there isn't nearly as much +damage to be had with Destruction spells in comparison to that method.

And, not that you asked, if you decide to use bound weapons they actually raise whatever weapon skill rather than (in addition to?) Conjuration.
 
[quote name='panzerfaust']It's role-play, use a 2 hander if that's what you want your character to be.

I'm hardcore like that :cool:[/QUOTE]

Oh, totally. And I plan on doing that with at least one of my characters.

But see, I've always felt that there's been "One Best Way" to play any Bethesda game.

Yes, I could use a giant axe in Oblivion, and I could make a legitimately good character out of it, but it'd always be inferior to the guy with the short sword and shield.

Oblivion especially seemed to push you into a jack-of-all-trades kind of role. Now, that makes sense, since it's a solo game so what's the point of being the healer if you don't have a tank and a DPS. But... it was also pretty damn lame that in a "Go anywhere, be anything!" kind of game you always had in the back of your head, "You're going the wrong way, you're doing the wrong thing." Regardless of whether you wanted a stealthy backstabber or a pants-will-just-weigh-me-down berserker or a mage desperately avoiding getting his hands dirty, the game always pushed you into playing as some sort of renaissance man type... thing. That's... that's really just the nature of a solo adventure game.

Which, I guess, brings up another Important fucking Question: how big a role do companions play? I remember in Fallout 2, if your character didn't have the skill to repair a broken elevator, a companion could do it for you. Can companions cover your specific weaknesses (can a companion repair my armour, say), or are they just swords attached to backpacks?

EDIT: Fell, all that's worrying me. I hate that "build a character this way to be totally awesome; every other build is just for flavour"... stuff. Mages in armour and enchanted dual-wielding being viable? Sure! Awesome! Of course! Armoured mages being vastly better than robed mages and enchantments making dual wielding better than any other weapons? No. No, thank you. Do not want.
 
[quote name='The Crotch']
EDIT: Fell, all that's worrying me. I hate that "build a character this way to be totally awesome; every other build is just for flavour"... stuff. Mages in armour and enchanted dual-wielding being viable? Sure! Awesome! Of course! Armoured mages being vastly better than robed mages and enchantments making dual wielding better than any other weapons? No. No, thank you. Do not want.[/QUOTE]

I'm hoping that Bethesda takes a page from Obsidian's New Vegas and continues to balance the game rather than just fix things. (but totally fix shit first! ;))

I have a mage and an archer going right now and I don't plan to exploit the enchanting stuff at all. I prefer to have fun with a bit of min/max'ing but I'm not going to spec my characters around something which will probably get smacked with the nerfbat.
 
Unfortunately it's too easy to make your character a god-like being in this game. I can be a heavy armor mage with 100% magic resist and 1100+ defense while not requiring any mana to cast destruction spells. Not going to do that because I don't really find it fun, but I have a friend who did and now he's bitching to me about how conjuring at 100 skill costs something like 550 mana. So he made a separate set of armor just for conjuring shit.

EDIT: Fixing typos.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
You might as well just play on PC with GodMode toggled on at that point.

I mean some of the fun that I had in Morrowind was effectively breaking the game with constant effect enchants but also = fucking levitation! :applause:
 
I picked it up Monday after work, and hate being away from my PS3 now.$ The last couple of days, I've woken up more than an hour before my alarm went off in order to get some playing time in before work.$ I was happy to see a couple of shows I like were repeats last night, because it meant I could play.$ I was sick on Wednesday, so I went home early.$ Ended up playing from noon to 9 PM.$ This game has grabbed me like few others have, and I've done very little to advance the main story.

This morning I killed my 2nd dragon, got into a drinking contest and woke up in a strange town, and bought a house in Whiterun. My Redguard is at lvl 16, and I'm building him up as a warrior with a few spells.
 
[quote name='The Crotch']Which, I guess, brings up another Important fucking Question: how big a role do companions play? I remember in Fallout 2, if your character didn't have the skill to repair a broken elevator, a companion could do it for you. Can companions cover your specific weaknesses (can a companion repair my armour, say), or are they just swords attached to backpacks?[/QUOTE]
Early in the game you will want one while you're still leveling skills. Once you're close to max in your main stuff, you can solo it. They also make great mules, basically doubling your loot capacity and that's the biggest advantage they bring. Otherwise, there's nothing you can't solo with enough quickloading.
 
LOL, someone doing Bethesda's job in the UI department again. Seriously, why haven't they hired some of these modders? They really should just clean house and fire everyone but the creative directors/level designers.
 
Hey, so I'm trying not to spoil anything by reading the guide but does the main questline eventually grant you access to more homes to buy? Ever since Whiterun it just doesn't seem to be leading in that direction but I'll admit I really haven't worked much on it. You seem pretty far Draekon; do I just need to go to a town and seek work from the Jarl to gain favor?
 
I've only spoiled myself on homes so far and finally bought the most expensive one. It's not really difficult to get either and isn't involved in the main story. But here's the little bit of information I know:


There are 5 purchasable houses according to early information.

I only know of two off hand:
- Whiterun
- Solitude

Whiterun is opened up via main story
Solitude is gained by completing the first quest the Jarl there gives. She may not give it to you until you complete some quests from some of the important people in town whos names I can't remember.

Cost of house:
25,000
Approximate cost of upgrades:
10,000



I don't believe the others are gained through the main story either, but my knowledge of them is limited.


Though once Sunday hits, I won't be touching Skyrim for a while. Gotta play my Zelda.
 
Sweet, thanks. Guess I need to speak to the Jarl in Solitude because I was hoping that was where the best house is. That city is just epic.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
bread's done
Back
Top