I like Skyrim's story, world, and quests better than Oblivion, though. Oblivion, I played through the main quest, a couple of sidequests, the expansion, and that was it. I probably still have a good 40-50% of the content left to do, but I just ran out of steam. Hasn't happened with Skyrim yet.
I feel about the same as what's written here, but also want to add that the leveling system, which is what finally killed Oblivion for me, is so much better in Skyrim. I'd say I'm about halfway through the game's quests(based on number of cities I've visited and can find no more quests in), and everything is still fun.
I find the leveling pretty similar, actually. It's just you need to specialize more; unlike in Oblivion, where perks are unlocked as you hit a skill level, in Skyrim you both need to hit the level AND need to have the perks available. It makes you a bit choosier, but also limits what you can do a bit more. And I'll probably be the only person who feels this way, but I do kinda miss the stat system and the athletics skill. It was pretty fun boosting my athletics to insane levels and jumping from hilltop to hilltop.
And spell crafting. Yeah, athletics boosting and spellcrafting are what I miss the most. Other than those, Skyrim is a lot better.
Except that one boss with the Fus Ro Dah and the multiple copies on the platforms, that wasn't quite so much fun as it was an exercise in frustration. Beyond that, it's been nothing but fun.
I kind of cheated. I sat back by his throne and just shot him with Arrows. When I started I was too close and he used the disarm shout while I was drawing my bow. So I was left holding an arrow in my hands and kind of laughed. But if I was standing at the throne he wouldn't attack me, and just sat back as I arrowed him to death.
My favorite Nord-King boss so far has been Olaf. I entered his place, with Mr. Ghost tailing behind me, Olaf and Mr. Ghost are duking it out, and I run up to beat down on Olaf. He turns to me, does a Fos Ro Dah and sends me flying across the tomb. Then continues to go back and fight the Ghost. It's like he was saying ********** off and let me fight this Ghost." By the time I was back up on my feet and crawling towards him (must have been stunned or something, could barely move) the Ghost had him down to about 50% life.
While Skyrim can also reach a plateau, the game also gives you reasons to keep exploring (shouts, quests) and since you're much more specialized in Skyrim, starting a new character can be a completely new experience all the way up to lv50.
I miss spellcrafting because it allowed for a wider variety of spells. The plague of diseases in this game is ridiculous and really wish there was a cure disease spell... and that is why I am a werewolf.
I really have yet to decide if I like the perk system of Skyrim- it gives off this feeling that you're almost forced to specialize. I'd rather choose to be specialized than limited in my abilities. Also, I found the perk system to be backwards since as you reach higher and higher level, the less and less you actually need perks. I think I've wasted about 10 perks simply because they were useful at the time and now, don't even fly as a prerequisite for anything.
I do like being able to choose hp/mp/stamina and the perk system does make leveling up more exciting- something to look forward to, almost. I really just wish I could unlock all perks on a single character without console.
Skyrim isn't that great a game. There, I said it. The story is barely there, it's easy to overpower your way through things, it's highly repetitive, and the worst offense is how glitchy and just how many exploits there are. It's an unfinished product. That being said, I still find myself having fun with it.
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George Carlin wrote:
I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.
Skyrim isn't that great a game. There, I said it. The story is barely there, it's easy to overpower your way through things, it's highly repetitive, and the worst offense is how glitchy and just how many exploits there are. It's an unfinished product. That being said, I still find myself having fun with it.
I find the leveling pretty similar, actually. It's just you need to specialize more; unlike in Oblivion, where perks are unlocked as you hit a skill level, in Skyrim you both need to hit the level AND need to have the perks available.
Yeah, but you don't have to try to avoid gaining skill levels in certain skills while trying desperately to get them in the right ones in order to make sure you don't end up completely hosed when you're stuck getting a five, a four and a freaking two. With perks, you can bank the points until you're where you need to be on that particular skill.
The only part, aside from dragon animations, I dislike is the lack of gibbing. I don't mean that stuff should explode all over the screen every time you poke it, but come on, even with the decapitation perk, sometimes my dude just beats someone to death with his sword. A huge swing and the target flies clear across the room instead of getting sliced in half.
2011 graphics, 2006 physics.
Edited, Dec 12th 2011 11:01pm by Mazra
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Please "talk up" if your comprehension white-shifts. I will use simple-happy language-words to help you understand.
Yeah. While gaining a level because of Speech and Pickpocketing perks technically underpowers you a little, it ultimately means very little. That was much less the case in Oblivion, where enemies would level up with you, but your stats wouldn't necessarily increase proportionately and your overall health was determined by how early, by level, you could cap your endurance.
In Skyrim, you'll be slightly less effective in normal melee combat if you power level sneak up to 100. In Oblivion, improperly doing the same would have been far more annoying (instead of 15 stat point increases that level, you'd get 7).
I'm much, MUCH happier with Skyrim's system.
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IDrownFish wrote:
Anyways, you all are horrible, @#%^ed up people
lolgaxe wrote:
Never underestimate the healing power of a massive dong.
Something odd happened to me in the game a bit ago. I had a quest to kill a dragon at Northwind Summit. I decided to go the backway and get the jump on the dragon, which I did but being only 12 and didn't power level my blacksmithing I only took a notch off his health. As he was slowly taking off, I booked it to the closest shed. As I started plucking away from his health and taking minimal fire damage he got tired of that, landed, and stuck his head in the shed to say hi. As soon as I got the chance I ran to the largest shed and managed to keep his face away from mine. As soon as he landed at 40%ish the shed bugged out and fell halfway into the ground. To make matters worse I couldn't get to the exit, was stuck against one wall. I shouted at the dragon staring at the back of the shed thinking I could very slowly kill him and he reciprocated. He then stuck his nose through the wall to say sorry and I proceeded to fire a dozen arrows up it until he died.
After absorbing his essence I quick traveled 100 yards away and looted his corpse. The shed was back to how it was when I entered. I made a mental note not to dare go back in there.
While Skyrim can also reach a plateau, the game also gives you reasons to keep exploring (shouts, quests) and since you're much more specialized in Skyrim, starting a new character can be a completely new experience all the way up to lv50.
Maybe up to level 30. Beyond that you end up running of perks to take and have to branch out a bit. I'm level 66 right now and I'm equally effective using Archery, Destruction Magic, and One Handed damage. I'm decent with Conjuration and Two Handed as well. On top of that I've capped and perked Smithing, Enchanting, Light Armor, and some Block. While I haven't put much in the way of perks into Sneak (just the extra damage perks), it's at level 96 and mobs will literally bump right into me in a dark room and still not detect me.
Yeah, but you don't have to try to avoid gaining skill levels in certain skills while trying desperately to get them in the right ones in order to make sure you don't end up completely hosed when you're stuck getting a five, a four and a freaking two.
I've heard about this and heard of guides and checklists and all manner of silliness to make sure you only get fives when you level. I never bothered with any of that and just played and gotten plenty of 2s and 3s in my score gains and... the game still plateaued quickly and I never felt like I was hurting for anything. The one time I felt outmatched was the first Oblivion Gate and the worthless NPCs against the armies of Daedra.
Aside from wanting a perfect set of scores, how do you get hosed?
Edit: I see endurance mentioned so, since that was the first score I capped (playing a fighter-centric character helped, I guess) maybe I was less "hosed" than if I capped Personality and left Endurance in the 60s.
Ok, I just had one of those "this feels too real" moments. I found Bard's Leap and walked to the end of the plank. I'm usually in 3rd person, but wanted to jump in 1st person view. Wow, if you do this, don't look down. I felt my stomach knot up like I was a kid taking swim lessons jumping off the high dive.
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"Beyond poor, Beyond ostracized, Destined to be obscured" Black Nurse
Ok, I just had one of those "this feels too real" moments. I found Bard's Leap and walked to the end of the plank. I'm usually in 3rd person, but wanted to jump in 1st person view. Wow, if you do this, don't look down. I felt my stomach knot up like I was a kid taking swim lessons jumping off the high dive.
Best part about jumping off of there is the ghost you meet at the bottom that tells you his story.
Ok, I just had one of those "this feels too real" moments. I found Bard's Leap and walked to the end of the plank. I'm usually in 3rd person, but wanted to jump in 1st person view. Wow, if you do this, don't look down. I felt my stomach knot up like I was a kid taking swim lessons jumping off the high dive.
I've actually experience this in WoW of all games, too. And that's a cartoon-ish game in 3rd person.
Ok, I just had one of those "this feels too real" moments. I found Bard's Leap and walked to the end of the plank. I'm usually in 3rd person, but wanted to jump in 1st person view. Wow, if you do this, don't look down. I felt my stomach knot up like I was a kid taking swim lessons jumping off the high dive.
I've actually experience this in WoW of all games, too. And that's a cartoon-ish game in 3rd person.
I have no fear of heights in real life, but Portal has given me the feeling of vertigo a few times.
I'm more than plateaued in the sense that I have no more perks to take in order to play my character the way I want to play it. That doesn't mean I'm not having fun, however. I got a quest very, very early in the game to try and figure out a way to get some guy set free from a keep way the hell off in the NW part of the map and I finally got around to doing it tonight. I had just done the main story line quest to infiltrate the Thalmor embassy and was more than willing to take a trek off a bit to the west to kill more Thalmor. I expect more Thalmor justicar death squads in the not too distant future.
From a gameplay (specifically, combat mechanics) point of view, my character is OP as all hell. The fun for me now is seeing what interesting things the ragdoll physics system will cause my arrows to do to my victims. I made a bandit do a full sideways somersault with an arrow to the side of the head yesterday, and the day before I shot a skeleton who blew to pieces and I watched one of its hands fly spinning through the air in a massive arc. From a challenge perspective, I can't remember the last time I died. I actually came close at the Thalmor embassy tonight on my way through the outdoor area when a guard saw me and about 8 of them came after me, but that's because casters like to hide behind stuff and zap the sh*t out of you and it's nearly impossible to get a bead on them. Bosses die in one hit if I get a shot on them from sneak mode. Elder/ancient dragons die in 3-4 hits. And I'm okay with that. I'm not huge on the 'necessity' of immersion in RPG games, but being as powerful as I am actually helps with immersion. If I drive an arrow through the back of your skull, you're not going to get up and charge after me.
Running around doing main story quests, I found myself back in Riverwood where a poorly timed dragon attack had resulted in the death of the town's blacksmith a long, long time ago on this play through. And here he was, just lying there face down where he died, so I dragged him into the river and watched him float downstream.
But the best so far was yesterday when I came across an elder dragon. I've mentioned before how irritating it can be without the Dragonrend shout to get dragons out of the sky and stationary where they're easier to hit, but in this case there were some baddies on the ground that got the dragon's attention and I manged to get a couple of shots off from sneak before the dragon finished them off. At this point I had the dragon's full attention as it took flight and circled around, so I lined up a shot and when it straightened out for its flaming strafing run I put an arrow in its face. It wasn't dead but it was low enough on health to land...only it didn't land gracefully. It landed on its face and skidded a very substantial distance. I had to strafe out of the way to avoid it. What made it cool was that it wasn't just some fortuitous graphics glitch that made it 'look' like it was skidding on its face...dragons have explicit crash landing animations complete with dust and debris spraying out all around them as they skid along the ground.
The game is enormous. While you'll see repeated themes in various different dungeons, they're all adequately unique that you never feel like you're moving your way through another WoW-esque copy-pasta cave on your way to the boss that is always in the same place. I've explored a very large portion of the map and I'm still constantly coming across undiscovered caves and keeps and ruins any time I head out to do a quest. You've got your 'guild' quest arcs that so far have been entertaining enough to warrant doing, and of course of you've got the generic Radiant Story quests that involve a random objective in a location chosen at random. But what impresses me is the number of unique scripted quests I've come across. I did one quest out of the Blue Palace in Solitude to check out the 'strange lights' coming from Wolf Skull Cave. That was cool. Cave cave cave and then blam...opens up to this massive room with a broken underground keep and necromancers doing all kinds of horrible nasty things, complete with voice-over dialogue of the event. I had a feeling based on how the event ended that it wasn't over and sure enough, a few hours of playtime later and courier runs up to me in Whiterun and gives me a message from the Blue Palace asking me to come back because sh*t just got real. I just didn't expect that kind of scripted quest outside of the main arcs.
And lastly, there's all the memes. I've thus far come across 3 sweet rolls in my adventures. I'm saving them up so that one day I can run around and throw them at the knees of the Whiterun guards who talk about how they used to be adventurers...
I'm going to try and finish up this character's time in Skyrim (until DLC, of course) so that I can focus on Bastion and Overlord over my xmas holidays, but I can safely say I haven't been so entertained by a standalone RPG since DA:O.
I never bothered with any of that and just played and gotten plenty of 2s and 3s in my score gains and... the game still plateaued quickly and I never felt like I was hurting for anything. The one time I felt outmatched was the first Oblivion Gate and the worthless NPCs against the armies of Daedra.
Sounds like you could use some mods. There's very good ones which add a number of new enemies, which was one of my big issues - once you reach level 25 or so, you're just fighting scamps and atronachs and bears and trolls and all the exact same things over and over, which gets really boring, really fast. Similarly, I believe there's mods to help with the balance issues which Bethesda never got around to fixing (read: all of them). I hear there's one mod that's really highly recommended which fixes hundreds of little bugs in the game, but I've never tried it myself.
Well I got hit with another odd bug. While diving down into the Wolf Queen's catacombs and picking away at various mobs I saw what looked like one of those undead vikings against the wall. I proceed to bury an arrow between its eyes and nothing happened. "Well bummer time to go loot my arrow" I thought right as I step in the trap and fire jets shoot up around me. "Son of a... let me try that again..." I said to myself as I did it roughly 4 times. After the 4th I tried to hop on the table next to the trap and reach across and, no suprise here, the trap sprung. All the sudden I fell through the map (I guess the flame pushed me through the wall) and I am thinking I am going to have to reload a previous save. Nope, the game dumped me farther into her catacomb, just a short distance from a vampire who somehow was oblivious to the loud 'thunk' my character made as my shins touched my lungs.
The Elder Scrolls games have always been plagued with odd bugs and things you can do to completely break the challenge. I would have to say though that this is the best they have done so far though.
Well I got hit with another odd bug. While diving down into the Wolf Queen's catacombs and picking away at various mobs I saw what looked like one of those undead vikings against the wall. I proceed to bury an arrow between its eyes and nothing happened. "Well bummer time to go loot my arrow" I thought right as I step in the trap and fire jets shoot up around me. "Son of a... let me try that again..." I said to myself as I did it roughly 4 times. After the 4th I tried to hop on the table next to the trap and reach across and, no suprise here, the trap sprung. All the sudden I fell through the map (I guess the flame pushed me through the wall) and I am thinking I am going to have to reload a previous save. Nope, the game dumped me farther into her catacomb, just a short distance from a vampire who somehow was oblivious to the loud 'thunk' my character made as my shins touched my lungs.
The Elder Scrolls games have always been plagued with odd bugs and things you can do to completely break the challenge. I would have to say though that this is the best they have done so far though.
I fell through the world once over this past weekend. Sadly, I don't recall where it happened and don't even remember where it punted me back to but it was some distance away as I recall. I know the exact spot you're referring to, however, as I was just in that dungeon and triggered the trap accidentally with a draugr corpse. I had to grab it by the foot and drag it off the pressure plate to see what was on the wall, but I've got the Sneak perk that allows me to stand on pressure plates without triggering them.
My first time playing i thought my PS3 locked up during the dialogue at the beginning of the game. I waited it out a couple of minutes and it continued. Problem I have, and maybe I am missing something, but I find this game alot more difficult than the previous games. I have the same class I used on Morrowind and Oblivion which is basically light armor/Bow/stealth/melee/ with a tad bit of restoration/destruction magic. IT worked great in Morrowind and Oblivion. Heck with Oblivion I had the achievements maxed on my Xbox 360 minus Shivering Isles. Skyrim however I am struggling to stay alive. Just following the main quest requires you to go through areas where there are enemies that can kill you in 1 to 4 hits. The giants can kill me in 1 hit and even trying to climb the mountain I struggled to get past the tiger as it could kill me in 4 hits. With Oblivoin I kept the difficulty in the middle and the challenge was right where I liked it. With Skyrim I have it set on the lowest setting and I either 1 shot stuff or I die it seems like. What is annoying I have even spent some time "grinding" skills like Light Armor/block/melee on easy stuff trying to not be such a wimp. Have some leveling points put in light armor to take less damage.
I don't like the way shortcuts worked, Oblivion had a much better method. Far as the game layout, quests, story I think its great. I love the layout of the land and the main quest seems interesting enough. Tradeskills are neat and the side quests are alot of fun. I just wish they would have kept the same combat/leveling/difficulty that the previous games had. If it don't get any better I foresee this game being sold off soon. What ever happened to "If its not broke don't fix it"?
I've just run into my first **************** bug. I'm 53 and have just decided to take sides in the Stormcloak/Imperial fight. Unfortunately I've been to the fort the Imperials send you to in order to start that quest line. When I was up there I started exploring around there and was attacked by the bandits outside, so I killed the ones outside, but never went in. However, since the bandits on the outside are now respawns, the quest won't update. No Imperial questline for me.
While Skyrim can also reach a plateau, the game also gives you reasons to keep exploring (shouts, quests) and since you're much more specialized in Skyrim, starting a new character can be a completely new experience all the way up to lv50.
Maybe up to level 30. Beyond that you end up running of perks to take and have to branch out a bit. I'm level 66 right now and I'm equally effective using Archery, Destruction Magic, and One Handed damage. I'm decent with Conjuration and Two Handed as well. On top of that I've capped and perked Smithing, Enchanting, Light Armor, and some Block. While I haven't put much in the way of perks into Sneak (just the extra damage perks), it's at level 96 and mobs will literally bump right into me in a dark room and still not detect me.
As of level 36, I still haven't run out of the perks I really really want as part of my primary vision for the character. I still have a few to go in enchanting, 1h and Heavy Armor before I'll feel like I'm really branching out.
Jophiel wrote:
Edit: I see endurance mentioned so, since that was the first score I capped (playing a fighter-centric character helped, I guess) maybe I was less "hosed" than if I capped Personality and left Endurance in the 60s.
It's possible. All I know is that getting multiple twos or threes always left me feeling a bit weaker.
