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I'd say my biggest complaints about Skyrim (aside from it having the absolute worst UI in an RPG I've ever seen) are how NPCs react (or don't react at all) to you. Occasionally they might trigger lines based on whatever your highest few skills are like "wow what strong arms you have" or whatever, but there needs to be a lot more work in this department. If I am the dragonborn, I want NPCs to literally stop what they're doing and wave at me and tell their NPC buddies to stop what they're doing and look who's here like I'm a drat red carpet celebrity, and possibly throw valuables on the ground at my feet for me. If I'm a big evildoer, I want them to stand still and show obvious signs that they're afraid of me. Either people should run away or they should say things like "Don't look directly at him" and "oh Gods here he comes I hope he doesn't notice me" or "kids, go inside, right now." Stuff like that. If I attack somebody for no reason in full view of 10 people in the town square, all but the toughest city guards should obviously see what just happened, pull their swords out and shout something like "it's not worth it" and drop their weapons and run away. It seems so weird that I can walk into a bar with my glowing Daedric armor on and a sword the size of a full grown adult on my back, crackling with magical effects, and nobody so much as looks up or bats an eye. GreatGreen fucked around with this message at Feb 15, 2012 around 22:00 |
| # ? Feb 15, 2012 20:28 |
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| # ? May 19, 2013 01:16 |
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GreatGreen posted:It seems so weird that I can walk into a bar with my glowing Daedric armor on and a sword the size of a full grown adult on my back, crackling with magical effects, and nobody so much as looks up or bats an eye. Hey, that's not true. After acknowledging you the bartender may, in fact, suggest that if its work you need, how about chopping up some wood for the fire?
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| # ? Feb 15, 2012 22:59 |
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GreatGreen posted:It seems so weird that I can walk into a bar with my glowing Daedric armor on and a sword the size of a full grown adult on my back, crackling with magical effects, and nobody so much as looks up or bats an eye. I always thought it was funny when I walked in wearing a full on dragon priest mask (which made me look like Dr. Doom) and (1) no one seemed to care or (2) have any problem recognizing me even if they'd never seen me in the mask. I had one of those moments last night when I was messing around with raise zombie spells on the corpse of a townsperson that wouldn't disappear (no I didn't kill her). I had just raised a citizen from the dead, turned around and a guard was bitching at me for doing a shout in town because that's what's making people nervous.
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| # ? Feb 15, 2012 23:05 |
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I keep trying to make sense of the smiting system, but the materials are driving me up the wall. Ebony is a wood, dammit, not something you mine! Oh, and Elves make weapons and gilded versions of their armor with mercury ( quicksilver ) and I'm still trying to figure out how making armor out of a brittle material like glass or malachite is even supposed to work.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 01:33 |
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Twincityhacker posted:I keep trying to make sense of the smiting system, but the materials are driving me up the wall. Ebony is a wood, dammit, not something you mine! In the Elder Scrolls games glass and ebony are metallic minerals. And are distinct from window/lantern glass I guess.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 01:35 |
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You have to remember this game is taking place on a completely fictional planet distinct from Earth. The materials don't necessarily have to follow the same rules as Earth by extension. Also this is a game where trolls, vampires, magic, hagravens and dragons exist. I think ebony not being a wood is kind of low on the "this isn't realistic!" list. 
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 02:10 |
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Today I finished my 15th Daedra mission. I sat there waiting expectantly for the little trophy ding, but it never came. Finally I check the wiki. The Rueful Axe doesn't count as a Daedric artifact? Bethesda, you loving assholes.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 02:19 |
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NaturalLow posted:You have to remember this game is taking place on a completely fictional planet distinct from Earth. The materials don't necessarily have to follow the same rules as Earth by extension. But TES universe follows enough of the same rules that things like ebony being a mineral just drives me to distraction. I mean, they came up with a mineral and a pun for Orcish smiting by using the very old fantasy mineral Orichalcum. Dwermer metal is handwaved to be bronze but with some special alloy that no one has been able to figure out yet. But I have no idea how ebony the wood becomes ebony the mineral.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 02:43 |
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J-Spot posted:Today I finished my 15th Daedra mission. I sat there waiting expectantly for the little trophy ding, but it never came. Finally I check the wiki. The Rueful Axe doesn't count as a Daedric artifact? Bethesda, you loving assholes.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 03:44 |
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Twincityhacker posted:But TES universe follows enough of the same rules that things like ebony being a mineral just drives me to distraction. I mean, they came up with a mineral and a pun for Orcish smiting by using the very old fantasy mineral Orichalcum. Dwermer metal is handwaved to be bronze but with some special alloy that no one has been able to figure out yet. But I have no idea how ebony the wood becomes ebony the mineral. My guess would be that Bethesda needed a name that would seem relevant to the mineral's properties. Ebony wood is known for being extremely hard/dense and black in color, same as the mineral. Why they did that instead of choosing an actual mineral? You'd have to ask them. 
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 03:53 |
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NaturalLow posted:My guess would be that Bethesda needed a name that would seem relevant to the mineral's properties. Ebony wood is known for being extremely hard/dense and black in color, same as the mineral. Why they did that instead of choosing an actual mineral? You'd have to ask them. Fact: Ebony mines are set up to mine buried, petrified ebony wood. PROBLEM SOLVED.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 04:18 |
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Brainbread posted:Fact: Ebony mines are set up to mine buried, petrified ebony wood. Smelt wood ore into wood ingots erry day. 
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 05:05 |
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In the ES universe, nobody ever gave the name ebony to wood. They named a mineral ebony instead. Works for me.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 06:35 |
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Why do all the potions I make end up in the same boring bottle? Other alchemists in Skyrim apparently have a variety of pretty bottles, but not me -- everything goes in that same red bottle. They must have been on sale at Belethor's. 
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 09:27 |
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Twincityhacker posted:But TES universe follows enough of the same rules that things like ebony being a mineral just drives me to distraction. I mean, they came up with a mineral and a pun for Orcish smiting by using the very old fantasy mineral Orichalcum. Dwermer metal is handwaved to be bronze but with some special alloy that no one has been able to figure out yet. But I have no idea how ebony the wood becomes ebony the mineral. You can also, somehow, smith Sauron armor and weapons out of the still-beating hearts ripped from the chests of dead demons. Yeah, you're definitely overthinking it.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 09:47 |
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I didn't see a mention about how annoying it is you can't use a spell to open chests. I'm especially annoyed by this because, unlike a lot of annoyances, it's a trivial thing to add, it makes complete sense in the game world, and we had it in previous games! If I wasn't completely done playing Skyrim, I'd mod it in myself - I knew I should have waited for mods before I played it.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 13:01 |
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E2M3 posted:I didn't see a mention about how annoying it is you can't use a spell to open chests. I'm especially annoyed by this because, unlike a lot of annoyances, it's a trivial thing to add, it makes complete sense in the game world, and we had it in previous games! If I wasn't completely done playing Skyrim, I'd mod it in myself - I knew I should have waited for mods before I played it. Not just opening chests and doors; how abut being able to lock them? There were a few times I saved my own rear end in Morrowind by running away and tossing a lock spell on a door behind me.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 14:12 |
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Wolfsheim posted:You can also, somehow, smith Sauron armor and weapons out of the still-beating hearts ripped from the chests of dead demons. "I can only tell you tales of how to make Daedric armor. I have never seen it myself, nor do I know anyone that has. The stories say that it should always be worked on at night... ideally under a new or full moon, and never during an eclipse. A red harvest moon is best. Ebony is the principle [sic] material, but at the right moment a daedra heart must be thrown into the fire." http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Heavy_Armor_Forging  Quiet Feet posted:Not just opening chests and doors; how abut being able to lock them? There were a few times I saved my own rear end in Morrowind by running away and tossing a lock spell on a door behind me. Is THAT what those spells are for? I haven't been playing Morrowind long, admittedly, but I didn't think their NPCs could even open doors.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 16:15 |
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mushroom_spore posted:"I can only tell you tales of how to make Daedric armor. I have never seen it myself, nor do I know anyone that has. The stories say that it should always be worked on at night... ideally under a new or full moon, and never during an eclipse. A red harvest moon is best. Ebony is the principle [sic] material, but at the right moment a daedra heart must be thrown into the fire." They can't leave their individual cave/ruin/fort/house I think, but they can open doors within those places.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 16:27 |
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mushroom_spore posted:"I can only tell you tales of how to make Daedric armor. I have never seen it myself, nor do I know anyone that has. The stories say that it should always be worked on at night... ideally under a new or full moon, and never during an eclipse. A red harvest moon is best. Ebony is the principle [sic] material, but at the right moment a daedra heart must be thrown into the fire." In my experience, NPCs will open doors to chase after you if both rooms are part of the same area. If it's one of those doors that transitions with a loading screen though, they won't follow. This saved me from a (second) horrible death at the hands of a forsworn briarheart and their guard troll at Hag Rock Redoubt. I saw an opening and sprinted for the door behind them like a little girl and it worked! 
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 16:31 |
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When they were designing these games they needed to have some cool black armor, they were like ok lets have a type of black metal, we'll call it ebony because things that are black are sometimes called ebony irl and from what I've gathered it is a very harmonious substance. Glass is also not literally glass it is a type of volcanic crystal, like super-diamond (ebony is also a volcanic crystal) it has nothing to do with glass used in windows except probably a thousand years ago some dude made a sword out of this super tough, sharp crystal and some yokel sees a guy with a sword made of this clear crystalline material and was like "Hyuck hyuck hyuck, whatchu doin' making a sword outta windows?" Now its basically called glass because that's what it looks like. Much like in the real word with animals, a dormouse isn't a mouse but it looks like a mouse so that's what it is called. This has been Sperging About Skyrim(tm) thank you for listening.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 17:10 |
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Yea ebony is called ebony because it's black. Also orcs are beast men and voiced by black guys and redguards literally do not have the same blood as real humans.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 17:19 |
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Umm orcs are elves thank you very much.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 17:29 |
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The Chimer betrayed their god and were cursed with dark skin as punishment.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 17:33 |
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I agree with the complete inability to be a good guy, in most cases. I wanted nothing more than to take out the Thieves' Guild. Oh well... On a slightly trivial note, why can't I be properly left handed? I played the game as a lefty for a long time, and never knew why I never got any of the death animations. I stopped when I realized I couldn't put a shield in my right hand, nor would hotkeys correctly work, nor would I be able to draw a bow left handed, etc. Why on earth not? They obviously had all the things in place to do so. On a less trivial note, why is it possible to master every skill? I really like the fact that you train a skill by using it. I thought it was kinda dumb in the fallout series that I could use a gun for weeks and never get any better at it, but could be better at stealth without ever having snuck before. But now, in Skyrim, I'm killing things in armor I don't like using a weapon style I hate because I can't level up otherwise. Why is there not just a level limit, but no limit to skills? If I want to be a mage who can level mountains with a sneeze but can't heal a stubbed toe by myself, why can't I do that?
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 17:46 |
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I'm confused are you saying you like that you get better at a thing by doing it but you don't like that you are getting better at things you do?
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 17:58 |
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Akrabbim posted:On a less trivial note, why is it possible to master every skill? I really like the fact that you train a skill by using it. I thought it was kinda dumb in the fallout series that I could use a gun for weeks and never get any better at it, but could be better at stealth without ever having snuck before. But now, in Skyrim, I'm killing things in armor I don't like using a weapon style I hate because I can't level up otherwise. Why is there not just a level limit, but no limit to skills? If I want to be a mage who can level mountains with a sneeze but can't heal a stubbed toe by myself, why can't I do that? From a modding standpoint, this is an interesting idea. Allocate 1800 (or some number of) points that the player can distribute across all the skills to determine maximum skill level attainable. Want to be a two-handed murdermachine that laughs in the face of dragons wearing ultra-crafted heavy armor? Go for it, but you probably can't sneak or cast illusion spells well. For a slightly less granular option, give the player 72 points, each of which allows for 25 more skill-ups in its particular skill. That'd probably work better with the novice/apprentice/adept/expert/master system that locks and magic have going on. Edit: This clearly runs into problems with Skyrim's leveling system, since 26-50 gain you fewer levels than 76-100. On the other hand, you would probably choose mainly combat skills to go beyond 100, so the extra difficulty of the scaled enemies would be mitigated by the ability to continue building your offense. Edit 2: Damnit, now I want to work on this. Quick, someone do it better than I could to save me from myself! Grundulum fucked around with this message at Feb 16, 2012 around 18:01 |
| # ? Feb 16, 2012 17:58 |
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Akrabbim posted:I agree with the complete inability to be a good guy, in most cases. I wanted nothing more than to take out the Thieves' Guild. Oh well... My first playthrough was a piece of poo poo elf wizard who blew up everything, killed everyone, did all the major questlines, and stopped at level 50. Now I'm trying to play a "heroic" character (bearded Nord swordsman type) and am really disappointed at how much it limits your character. No Dark Brotherhood, no Thieves Guild, no Daedric quests (except the ones in which you can gently caress over the Daedra)...I've decided that even though my guy is afraid of all non-restoration magic, he's gonna have to join the College simply to keep from being bored. He can hang out with that nutjob Colette.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 18:04 |
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The hotkey system loving kills me. So how does the system work, you ask? It's got to be a system where 1 hotkey press = 2 Items/spells, or one item/spell for each hand, or in other words one "loadout" per key, because of how the combat system emphasises the independent right/left hand system, right? WRONG. No, we here at Bethesda are not going to use the most obvious, intuitive, versatile, useful system possible, we're going to use some dumbfuck hotkey scheme that could only possibly benefit ~*~battlemages~*~ and gently caress pure casters or dual wielders, you know, those other two playstyles we wanted to make completely viable in our game. With the current hotkey system, spells always default in the left hand unless the same spell is in the left had, in which case the spell will go to the right hand. This means that to change out a single spell "loadout" you need to perform 3 keypresses. Brilliant. Dual wielders are totally hosed though! Weapons always go to your right hand and replace whatever was just in that hand. Want to easily dual wield a variety of one-handed weapons? gently caress YOU, should'a made a battlemage. How it should have worked... 1 key = 1 set, meaning one item or spell in each hand unless you were hotkeying a two-handed weapon. How anyone could have possibly play tested this and not immediately thrown up because their body rejected how dumb this design was is beyond me. Picture this system for a caster: 1: RH=Flames, LH=Fireball 2: RH=something with knockback, LH=Ward 3: RH=Summon Monster, LH=Heal etc Picture this system for a Warrior: 1: RH=Sword, LH=Shield 2: RH=Sword, LH=Dagger 3: 2-handed Giant Hammer etc Picture this system for a Jack of all Trades player: 1: RH=Sword, LH=Shield 2: RH=Fireball, LH=Sparks 3: RH=Axe, LH=Flames 4: Bow etc See how wonderful and neatly organized and easy to use that type of system sounds, no matter how you choose to play? Yeah, I do too. Guess who didn't. GreatGreen fucked around with this message at Feb 16, 2012 around 19:07 |
| # ? Feb 16, 2012 18:30 |
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GreatGreen posted:How it should have worked... 1 key = 1 set, meaning one item or spell in each hand unless you were hotkeying a two-handed weapon. How could anybody possibly have play tested this and not immediately thrown up because their body rejected how dumb this design was is beyond me. No, see, if you open the favorites menu, you can just scroll through it really quickly and use the left and right mouse buttons to manually assign spells to that hand! So if you are shooting a guy with fire and now you want ice in your right hand while keeping a shield in your left hand, you just press F and then hit S and hold it down until it reaches Ice Spike, and then you let go and push RMB, and then you push Q and now you have Ice Spike in your right hand. Really, it's just like the menu system in general. It looks really confusing at first, but after a few hours of practice, navigating the UI becomes almost second nature! That is exactly how the user interface should work, it rewards skill and practice ok.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 18:46 |
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FlocksOfMice posted:No, see, if you open the favorites menu... Haha. Hotkey 1: RH=Fire, LH=Shield Hotkey 2: RH=Ice, LH=Shield 1 button press per spell change. No menus, no scrolling. I know you're joking though.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 18:51 |
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Akrabbim posted:On a less trivial note, why is it possible to master every skill? I really like the fact that you train a skill by using it. I thought it was kinda dumb in the fallout series that I could use a gun for weeks and never get any better at it, but could be better at stealth without ever having snuck before. But now, in Skyrim, I'm killing things in armor I don't like using a weapon style I hate because I can't level up otherwise. Why is there not just a level limit, but no limit to skills? If I want to be a mage who can level mountains with a sneeze but can't heal a stubbed toe by myself, why can't I do that? This is not a problem with unlimited skill level ups. This is a problem with leveling in general. Elder Scrolls games are supposed to be about being able to max out every skill and get every perk if you want to. So if you don't want to use a skill, you won't use it and it won't count against you and it won't improve. There are two problems with doing this in Skyrim. First, advances in health/stamina/mana/enemy difficulty level are based on a level system that does not take into account what you have done. You level up speechcraft ten times? Your enemies will get more difficult to kill. Only level up two handed swords and heavy armor for a level? You can still pick a magicka upgrade. Instead of increasing the way you scale and the way the world scales based on what you do, it bases it off of abstract choices you make. The second problem is the perk limit. You can have one perk per level. Thus while you can theoretically increase all your skills up to 100, you cannot really make those trees worthwhile, because you can only get about 80 perks. You have to plan your character out, otherwise the late game becomes horribly painful. My solution would be to get rid of the level system. when you advance a skill to the proper level you automatically get all the correct perks. However stuff would scale in proportion to the appropriate skills. Lets take enemy level scaling for a second. Improving a combat skill like Two Handed or Heavy armor or destruction, something that directly adds to the amount of damage you can dish out or take, would add a point to an enemy level scale meter, and once that meter reaches a certain point enemy difficulty scales up. However non-combat skills like speechcraft and pickpocketing, would not cause combat difficulty to scale. Combat support skills like smithing, alchemy and enchanting would add half a point. At the same time using skills that require hard physical labor would increase health and stamina, while magical skills would contribute to magicka. End result would be a system in which you could level any skill to any level you desire, but there is no reason to push skills you have no desire to use.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 22:19 |
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I don't understand why they make a system like this and start every skill out at 10 or 15 anyway. What's the point of that? I would have made it, racial bonuses notwithstanding, that every skill starts at 0 or 1, and they were scaled in such a way that that would be the new 10/15 (so instead of a Khajiit starting with 15 destruction, he would start with 0, which would be as good as 15, and it only goes up from there). This would allow you to get several more levels out of a given skill, too. I would have also given the player the choice to pick several major skills, like in Oblivion, and have the rest not count for level up. Why can my mage get better at throwing fireballs by picking locks? I actually refuse to open any locked chests/doors because it levels ridiculously loving fast and it gives me too many level ups (and thus harder enemies) before I'm ready for them. This is broken game design. It annoys the hell out of me whenever speech levels up. Why should I feel like I need to be careful about how many things I sell because I don't want too many speech skill ups? I also like the idea of perks just coming naturally as you level a skill, because people generally tend to take perks as they're available anyway when they're leveling a certain thing. Basically caleramaen's entire third paragraph sounds like a good solution. I bet a mod could do this. Too bad I have no idea how to use the CK.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 22:34 |
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I really hate how I have to go out of my way to let myself get the poo poo beaten out of me to level my armor skill. And you have to be mindful of it before you level up too much, or you'll run into the problem of enemies doing too much damage for your crappy armor skill to absorb. TES' leveling system is just bad.
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 23:32 |
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"Never should have come here." Why is the sentence missing a pronoun?
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| # ? Feb 16, 2012 23:52 |
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Tommy Calamari posted:"Never should have come here." Why is the sentence missing a pronoun? With the terrible generic NPC voice acting I can never tell if it's [You] "never should have come here" or [I] "never should have come here". You can really tell the voice direction was inflexible to the point where the actors could not, under any circumstance, change the dialog to make it more readable. Like they had already hard-coded the subtitles or lip flap and either couldn't or didn't want to change it. The result is a whole bunch of lines that at best don't read well and at worst don't make any sense. In a lot of cases you can really tell the actor is struggling with the terrible writing.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2012 00:34 |
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Is that why a lot of the lines in this game are delivered in the most awkward way? I've never heard anyone say certain phrases like Bethesda NPCs do.
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| # ? Feb 17, 2012 01:17 |
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WardeL posted:Is that why a lot of the lines in this game are delivered in the most awkward way? I've never heard anyone say certain phrases like Bethesda NPCs do. That's always been my assumption. There's also the eastern European accented ESL motherfuckers they hired to do some of the the generic NPC (and Daedra voices that you CAN'T SKIP PAST BLEEEARGH!!!)
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| # ? Feb 17, 2012 01:52 |
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Hadvar has like three different accents. Normally he has the fake-Scandanavian one, but sometimes he forgets he has an accent at all and slips to an American one, and then occasionally he's feeling fruity and goes into a really slurred French accent. The most prominent of the latter being when he says "we'll make surrrre your rrrremains are rrrreturrrrned to [X]." And then the very next sentence, "Follow the Captain, prisoner," is delivered in his American accent. It's one thing to fluctuate between being angry, excited, or chill (because that happens all the drat time in conversations due to how many ways conversations can go) but completely changing accents is ridiculous. Dick Burglar fucked around with this message at Feb 17, 2012 around 02:30 |
| # ? Feb 17, 2012 02:28 |
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| # ? May 19, 2013 01:16 |
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Dillbag posted:That's always been my assumption. There's also the eastern European accented ESL motherfuckers they hired to do some of the the generic NPC (and Daedra voices that you CAN'T SKIP PAST BLEEEARGH!!!)
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| # ? Feb 17, 2012 02:54 |
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