Why Skyrim Is Bad
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Nakatsu_Hime
Active Member
I agree that, after a while, a lot of it is rinse-and-repeat, and you can usually guess what 90% of NPC's are going to say/do, but it's all probably a balancing act of getting it all in, and not having 3000 people working on the conversation trees/transport options/weapon options and skinning, but I do sometimes feel that even Sacred2 beats Skyrim in the weapons diversity stakes - and possibly armour.
SaveVsBedWet
Well-Known Member
Let me start by saying that whether or not I agree with your opinions you do have the right to express them.
Now that that's out of the way, I have to disagree that you've done anything really in the way of backing up your opinions, except with more subjective opinions about what a "good" crpg would be doing and how one would be doing it. Some of the things you mentioned, such as the question about what happened to traveling the world without fast travel, don't even represent the reality of the situation at all, since there is literally nothing more preventing one from heel toe travel in Skyrim than there was in any earlier game. It's expressly how I travel, unless at the limit of my encumbrance and trying to get home to unload things.
The rest of it again is like I said, very heavy on personal preference and very light on actual factual design failure. That the Alduin battle represents the only decent scenery in the game is preposterous to me, but valid to you. What it is not is a game flaw. The combat system, for a game with this level of complexity and intricacy, and for a game where combat is far from the only thing going on, is about as intuitive as I would have expected. It is light years beyond Arena and Daggerfall, and certainly no worse from a tradeoff standpoint than Morrowind. Oblivion represented in my opinion a decisive step backwards, but Skyrim made up for it by at least regaining lost ground. What variety between weapons, tactics and experiences weren't addressed by the combat itself or the weapons themselves was at least bridged by the difference in skill trees, one hand vs. two hand, and specialties for different types of weapons. Is it perfect? Probably not. But is it some pathetic mess that demonstrates complete disdain on the part of Bethesda? That's far fetched at best.
Frankly I can't see how you could have mentioned Bioware as if you've experienced a real capitulation to consoles and betrayal of title standards and then equated Bethesda with it. It's absurd, in fact, unless you have not seen what became of Mass Effect. Faced with that, and no way to change anything or do anything except fixate on the $60+ hole in your wallet that ME3 caused, I would think that a company that has striven to maintain as many of its standards as it could, to add in more, while still realizing they can't do and think of everything and thus opening the game up completely to modders and building their own SDK and editing interface which they ship with every new title for free would be appreciated. Not ripped to shreds.
And then there's the usual powergamer mumbo jumbo (no offense but I'm sick of hearing it now since Zork and Santa Paravia) about how a gaming company somehow failed in their obligation to best "This Comic Book Guy In Particular". People who start every game so they can "beat" it, wear the best armor, get the best weapons, and stand there pulling weggies out of their butts while 36 hit dice monsters are swinging for the fences at them. Congratulations. If this is your goal, and you look for ways to cut corners or level for its own sake, you will find them. In any game. To cluck about which games make it easier over others is simply irrelevant conversation actually supporting the impression that the main game was not the one purchased, but the hidden game of exploiting something and feeling like one has gotten over.
As for GOTY honors? There is something to be said for a game that does a lot on its own but provides a platform and a system to make any and all good great and to support an experience that technically never "has" to end. Contrast that with the COD games that you claim Bethesda wants to emulate, where the entire experience is ruler straight, never changes, and is over in 15 hours or less, with the only difference between beginner and nightmare difficulty being that enemies don't even need to aim to hit and a shot in the pinky becomes capable of dropping 80% of your health. Per bullet. Not sure if serious with this concern either. COD and its ilk have become so blatantly disdainful of campaign mode in favor of prehistoric Deathmatch Mode that we'll be lucky to see anything but a splash screen with the company logo in campaign mode before long.
I could go on and on about this but this is long enough and I guess it comes back to the same thing always, which is that every successive generation of gamers expects their games to provide the same level of realism and random as reality. They never will. The reason why older generations could live with this and younger generations cannot is because at some point, someone was less than forthcoming with kids about what can actually be done with the computer and console worlds unloaded and the real world loaded instead. There is no real point of comparison or reason to expect one to hold a candle to the other and the sooner you remember that, the better these gaming efforts will appear to you.
SaveVsBedWet
Well-Known Member
A thread has to have actually died for it to be resurrected. If you think the OP is a troll then you don't understand the meaning of the word. If you don't like the thread then don't read it. Posting in a thread that you want to die is counterproductive because you just bumped it up the page.
And to add to the Tao of Dagmar, I have to say I always wondered why (not really wondered more shook my head at) the implication that people are doing something wrong by reading from the OP backward and responding thus, rather than being completely counter-intuitive and reading from the most recent posts back to the OP. Which of course they'd have to in order to know to avoid the dreaded zombie thread resurrection post. Perhaps some people read threads back to front. I know I don't, nor do I award medals or Mother Teresa Act Of Kindness accolades on those who do in deference to those who lay awake nights expecting old threads to be lurking in their closets...
TJohnson
Torbjorn
:L Posting a thread called 'Why Skyrim is Bad' on the Skyrim forums. I think you might be in the wrong place brah.
Maybe you want these forums Call of Duty Community: Space: Forums
(I kid)
Maybe you want these forums Call of Duty Community: Space: Forums
(I kid
)
Xarnac
Active Member
I must agree that Skyrim leaves a lot to be desired, desirables that were in previous ES games (to name a few: Spell creation, acrobatics, H2H as a skill, speed variable, the things attributes covered but are not covered in Skyrim, degradation, neutered spell effect list, neutered greater/lesser power list, the list goes on and that's just from Oblivion to now. If we went from Dagger or Morrow to now, the list of cut features would fill a page). Actually, Ive been calling and criticising the cutting since Skyrim was announced. Seems I was right in every way. It also ratchets up the hand holding and dumbing down. Too much cutting and missing fundamentals, compromised for...graphics and console limitation it seems. Fortunately mods fix some of this stuff, but not all. Which is why I still have to go back to previous games to play certain build types and RPs that are not even possible in Skyrim. From Ob to now, there were actually more things cut, than were added. Which is...pathetically sad. With that said, Skyrim does some things good, adds some things great, but compared to the series as a whole, its got pretty graphics and that's about it, especially for the vets.
TJohnson
Torbjorn
My disapointment with skyrim is the combat, generally. In melee it makes no sense really, in real life you dont hut people in the face with swords until their health goes down and then they die - in real life their face falls off.
I'd be happier with some Fallout style gore :L
It sounds childish but it would make you feel more baddass cutting through bandits.
Although, I was pleased with the archery
I'd be happier with some Fallout style gore :L
It sounds childish but it would make you feel more baddass cutting through bandits.
Although, I was pleased with the archery
Mr1cammando
asdf
Well this thread is back. Goody. I have to ask though, why does everyone else think the OP has stopped posting on here? He's letting it die if you ask me.
SaveVsBedWet
Well-Known Member
What is a vet? I've been playing TES since Arena. For years per. CRPGs since the original Zork (if you want to call that one). I continue to not see what is so difficult about understanding the concept that retaining everything in the game along with everything added will result in a completely unwieldy p.o.s. that will accomplish nothing but an 'E' for effort and a marquee position at the masthead of every article about ambition gone wrong and what "could have been" written from now until doomsday?
Any "vet" of computer gaming is going to be identifiable by an appreciation of how far this industry has come since computers only had enough RAM available at one time to put up the equivalent of one Windows desktop icon from today. Back when saying "the graphics suck and the scenery is repetitive" meant they never ported the game to machines that could display amber on black instead of just white. Or when superior graphics on consoles meant "yeah I can clearly see those players have necks AND helmets".
Seriously. From the very first articles about Arena people were resoundingly clapping about "over 400 cities and towns" while at the same time sniveling about why they lacked NYSE-level cacophony in the central square of each of them. Daggerfall attempted to improve, by reducing the coverage of Tamriel and increasing the activity at the price of a more resource-costly game and then it was "too buggy" and "too geographically limiting". Everybody loves Morrowind but "why are we stuck there?!" and "why didn't we get navy battles after the boats in Daggerfall and Redguard?!" plus "why can't we ride the Silt Striders?!" and "when do we get interactive horse riding?!"
Leading to Oblivion's "why are the horses dumb?! Why don't their heads turn independently from their bodies?! Why don't they do anything?!" leading to Skyrim's "why do the horses do stuff when I donwannum to! Why is Bethesda sucking to spite meeeeeeeeeee"
Amazing how many people think this stuff is abracadabra. And what's worse is that if they'd actually kept all this crap in and factored in the wet dreams and wish lists of the millions whose dev contribution stops at double clicking "setup.exe", they'd need to double the dev time 3D Realms spend on DNF just to get the game to release lest their entire fanbase take to devoting entire servers to blogs about what broke what and how much "makes the game unplayable".
Again. When Bethesda becomes Bioware or EA by extension, starts leaving interface elements and key mappings clearly set up for console controllers in plain view on PC installs, lies about multiplayer, meets 3rd party resource kits and hacks with copyright notices, tells you your experience is yours to craft from beginning to end when all that's really yours is which of the three color overlays you die under, and then only if you're not colorblind, then we have a problem. Until then we all complain about our shoes until we meet a man who has no feet.
Xarnac
Active Member
...What are you talking about? things were cut, playstyles and RP mechanics were cut, diversity and options were cut. Who would prefer less, but an idiot, or someone who played in limited ways?
When I have to go back to predecessors for basic fundamentals that have been in every previous game, it's upsetting. Someone newer to the series might not care. Someone who didnt get everything out of their ES might not care, but a lot of people do care for the cut mechanics. Your diatribe was pointless, having nothing to do with anything I said and I'm not sure why you quoted me in it.
The sad thing being ES games made more than a decade ago have more than Skyrim.
When I have to go back to predecessors for basic fundamentals that have been in every previous game, it's upsetting. Someone newer to the series might not care. Someone who didnt get everything out of their ES might not care, but a lot of people do care for the cut mechanics. Your diatribe was pointless, having nothing to do with anything I said and I'm not sure why you quoted me in it.
The sad thing being ES games made more than a decade ago have more than Skyrim.
Mr1cammando
asdf
You both hold valid points, but from what I know, a lot what was cut was because of poor user reviews and memory. They didn't want use to have our computers downloading enough crap to take multiple days to finish.
ShadowMage
Article Writer
WHY ARE WE FEEDING THE TROLL? Still...
ShadowMage
Article Writer
In the midst of this "war", I welcome you to the forums.This is why we can't have nice things -_-
Mr1cammando
asdf
I know right? If he left his thread to die, let us no longer resurrect it.
BY THE GREAT AND MIGHTY GODS OF THE FORUMS AND ALMIGHTY INTERNET, I DUB THIS THREAD POINTLESS.
Daedric Death Master
Cape Town, South Africa Daedric Nord level 46
Magey McFireball, you lack the required perk/skill to do this
Please level up more
Please level up more
SaveVsBedWet
Well-Known Member
And yours was presumptuous. But we all have our ideas of how large an area of the user base the blanket of our own individual preferences and value covers, don't we?
You began your post implying veteran Elder Scrolls players were in essence, forgotten about or somehow short changed by feature removals in Skyrim. This is a generalization based on your own personal preferences and apparent low tolerance for anything resembling an attempt to find middle ground regardless of reason. That nobody invested in the series cares about removals would be more presumption which is what prompted me to comment on your original post so if you are implying that that is my stated view, you're basing that on air. I also never implied things weren't removed.
What you refer to as a "diatribe" is just the opinion of someone who would fit into the category of a veteran TES player who does not agree that every subtraction was unwarranted, detracted from the game, or was not compensated for in some other area. Additionally, it was an acknowledgement that although previous features no longer included are often missed, and I am certainly no fan of selling out the rp nature of a game to console fps crowds, a certain amount of tradeoff is also to be expected to avoid a top heavy game that pleases nobody and is a bear to extend or qa. And as crpg betrayals go, Bethesda has nothing whatsoever on Bioware and EA.
A perfect example of this for me is the previous bartering/bargaining wheel, which was fairly easy to game and in the long run was not really worth the additional conditional forks in the code necessary to maintain it. I don't miss it, but some who consider such mini-games uber real may feel its loss was a huge blow.
On the other hand, the spell and item makers were legitimately simplified to a much greater degree than I personally would have liked. I enjoyed being able to make fully customizable stuff, rather than working with small subsets and being limited to only a few effects. But my point here is that some attribute anything like this to laziness where there more likely was a refinement or addition somewhere that they thought would balance things out.
Make of that, and the relevance of that to your original statements, what you want. I don't do butthurt gamer geek so if you can't take the post in the spirit it was intended, c'est la vie.
Xarnac
Active Member
They were. As was obvious from the PR and cutting for newer players. I couldn't care less about people that didnt get everything out of their ES though. In the end, more was cut than added, and we are given less. Might be cool for the newer players, but not for the vets. In the end, nobody complained about Morrowind or it's depth. Beth PR on Sky: "We added this, and we cut this, this, and that. But hey, at least its purdy. Oh and have some regenerative health like this was a linear JRPG, or shooter, while your at it. Don't worry, you wont have to worry about too many RP mechanics in Skyrim. So easy, a caveman could do it."
Small things like a barter wheel that were only in one ES game is not a cornerstone or important feature of the series, like the ones I mention. Specifically Spell Creation, things that attributes no longer cover, acrobatics, degradation, etc.
I attribute it to selling out, and Beth's direction since Morrowind. Which is pretty much what it is.
It's bad enough so little was actually added to the series with Sky, much less that they cut more than they added.
And why do you keep bringing up the lich that is Bioware? Yeah, Bio/EA is a POS, but they are irreverent, especially in the real RPG world.
Skyrim is still in the 1% of games that actually try, unfortunately most of its predecessors have more in terms of diversity, customization and RP mechanics. Even...Oblivion, the most criticized of all ES games.
My point was that I have to go back to previous ES games (a lot) to play build types that are not in Skyrim, because of the cut features and mechanics that every single other ES had. Except Arena, Arena didnt have a few of these things, but it did have Spell Creation. Which is my biggest beef with Skyrim. Conversely, not than many new types of builds were added with Skyrim.
Small things like a barter wheel that were only in one ES game is not a cornerstone or important feature of the series, like the ones I mention. Specifically Spell Creation, things that attributes no longer cover, acrobatics, degradation, etc.
I attribute it to selling out, and Beth's direction since Morrowind. Which is pretty much what it is.
It's bad enough so little was actually added to the series with Sky, much less that they cut more than they added.
And why do you keep bringing up the lich that is Bioware? Yeah, Bio/EA is a POS, but they are irreverent, especially in the real RPG world.
Skyrim is still in the 1% of games that actually try, unfortunately most of its predecessors have more in terms of diversity, customization and RP mechanics. Even...Oblivion, the most criticized of all ES games.
My point was that I have to go back to previous ES games (a lot) to play build types that are not in Skyrim, because of the cut features and mechanics that every single other ES had. Except Arena, Arena didnt have a few of these things, but it did have Spell Creation. Which is my biggest beef with Skyrim. Conversely, not than many new types of builds were added with Skyrim.
Mr1cammando
asdf
This little paragraph must look puny compared to your speech, but not everyone is a hardcore RPG fan. Some people need some casual elements, and that requires that some complicated or other non-vital items, deemed "extras" were removed. But now look at the game you have. If you don't dwell on the past, in this case past games, it makes it much easier to be happy with what you have.
Xarnac
Active Member
Thats why you give us everything, and everybody is happy. If the more casual doesnt want to use this or that, he doesnt have to. The things that were cut were far from extras. How can I be happy (or happy about) with what I have, when I go to play X build and it's not even viable, and I have to go back to previous games? I dont want one, or two, or three builds. I dont want twenty, or thirty, or forty builds. I want thousands, like I had in previous games.
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