TES5: Skyrim
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posted on January 3rd, 2012, 8:53 am
Last edited by Nebula_Class_Ftw on January 3rd, 2012, 8:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
Of course it's navigable, the problem is that it's inconsistent about what a clikk or a key does even within the same menu (is the r key take all or store selected? Depends on whether you select the container or yourself while looking into a container! Is clikking going to put it in your inventory or consume the ingredient? Same problem!) There's also the issue of it being rather unresponsive to mouse movement (ten times worse if it's autosaving, it is possible to hav a game save without making the mouse go completely unresponsive), and when I overshoot a clikk target, it tends to lead to exiting the menu.
There's no way to sort anything, which makes useless crap in my inventory just as prominent as important things.
Quest items aren't marked at all, so I don't realize I can't store them until I actually go and hit r (for that matter, why can't I store quest items in my house? It can't be robbed. Those items are adding weight and clogging my inventory screens.)
Also, with items in one big category with a bunch of subcategories, and magic in its own category, it's just as long to go to a weapon as a useless item (I would love to see a spells/weapons category, an apparel category, then a general item category.)
Dialog options are there own pain, with commonly used options like "What have you got for sale?" being almost impossible to see just like all other previously used ones. Also, sometimes there are too many and rather than simply make the box taller so that I can see them all, some are hidden down below. Rather annoying.
With trying to make/store/sell multiple of something, there is the issue that one key will work for up to 5, but you need to press a different key when it asks for how many. This can be worked around by clikking with the mouse in the right spot (where the yes button will be), but that brings up the issue of why clikking clikks whatever is selected, not what is at the cursor. Clikking at that spot is also useless for ingredients due to the above-mentioned issues with what a clikk actually does.
That up there is just the menus, now let's get to the favorites thingy! Quite simply, a clikk to use and equip/unequip is intuitive, but it often leads to me unequipping what I intend to use since I try to use it right away (especially the shield). It's hard to navigate because it's way too small if you plan on using several spells like I do. Again, no sorting (really would like to hav my two healing spells next to each other, and my bow and sword (both are bound at the moment) far apart so I don't use one instead of the other. Alphabetic just isn't that great except for destruction spells.
And now the actual combat: not that bad, but why the hell is alt for sprint and tab for the menu? That's just begging for alt-tab issues.
Many of these things are the result of it being designed with consoles in mind. Why they can't make a decent interface change for the port I don't know.
Don't compare to Oblivion. I've heard a lot about that interface. You shouldn't use a bad interface as a point of reference.
I've even heard it said that Skyrim's interface is worse.
Screw 3d models, I want an unobtrusive and easy to use menu system much more than I want to see my weapon from multiple angles.
There's no way to sort anything, which makes useless crap in my inventory just as prominent as important things.
Quest items aren't marked at all, so I don't realize I can't store them until I actually go and hit r (for that matter, why can't I store quest items in my house? It can't be robbed. Those items are adding weight and clogging my inventory screens.)
Also, with items in one big category with a bunch of subcategories, and magic in its own category, it's just as long to go to a weapon as a useless item (I would love to see a spells/weapons category, an apparel category, then a general item category.)
Dialog options are there own pain, with commonly used options like "What have you got for sale?" being almost impossible to see just like all other previously used ones. Also, sometimes there are too many and rather than simply make the box taller so that I can see them all, some are hidden down below. Rather annoying.
With trying to make/store/sell multiple of something, there is the issue that one key will work for up to 5, but you need to press a different key when it asks for how many. This can be worked around by clikking with the mouse in the right spot (where the yes button will be), but that brings up the issue of why clikking clikks whatever is selected, not what is at the cursor. Clikking at that spot is also useless for ingredients due to the above-mentioned issues with what a clikk actually does.
That up there is just the menus, now let's get to the favorites thingy! Quite simply, a clikk to use and equip/unequip is intuitive, but it often leads to me unequipping what I intend to use since I try to use it right away (especially the shield). It's hard to navigate because it's way too small if you plan on using several spells like I do. Again, no sorting (really would like to hav my two healing spells next to each other, and my bow and sword (both are bound at the moment) far apart so I don't use one instead of the other. Alphabetic just isn't that great except for destruction spells.
And now the actual combat: not that bad, but why the hell is alt for sprint and tab for the menu? That's just begging for alt-tab issues.
Many of these things are the result of it being designed with consoles in mind. Why they can't make a decent interface change for the port I don't know.
Don't compare to Oblivion. I've heard a lot about that interface. You shouldn't use a bad interface as a point of reference.
I've even heard it said that Skyrim's interface is worse.
Screw 3d models, I want an unobtrusive and easy to use menu system much more than I want to see my weapon from multiple angles.
posted on January 3rd, 2012, 9:35 am
You're complaints are largely valid - I guess memorizing the ins and outs of the system has caused most of them to fade from my awareness. I've never had trouble seeing or choosing faded dialog options, so I'm not sure what the issue is there. As for the 3d display thing, there's an odd dissonance in my perception; I understand why everyone complains, but I think it's pretty darn neat, so they can all rot in hell if it means keeping the 3d window. Petty as hell, huh?
posted on January 3rd, 2012, 12:45 pm
i've never played skyrim, but bethesda are quite well known for building a passable console game then making a terrible pc port, see star trek legacy for that. the manual even mentioned xbox 360 controller buttons. those are the simpler things to do, but they get them wrong.
can you remap skyrim's controls?
can you remap skyrim's controls?
posted on January 3rd, 2012, 6:15 pm
I've played it during the last days on the PS3 of my brother. I'm a level 16Ork. I didn't really focus on the main quest yet, I was rather lazy in travelling around and therefore did only stuff in and around whiterun so far. Yesterday I fought three dragons(two at a time) - two of them were killed by a giant though - that was funny 
.
The music and atmosphere is simply incredible.
.The music and atmosphere is simply incredible.
posted on January 3rd, 2012, 8:14 pm
Redshirt wrote:I've never had trouble seeing or choosing faded dialog options, so I'm not sure what the issue is there.
The one NPC I had major issues with was Eorland Grey-Mane, as just about every other vendor is one I either go to often or has few dialog options. It might hav been the lighting next to the forge.
Myles wrote:i've never played skyrim, but bethesda are quite well known for building a passable console game then making a terrible pc port, see star trek legacy for that. the manual even mentioned xbox 360 controller buttons. those are the simpler things to do, but they get them wrong.
can you remap skyrim's controls?
You can, but the key setup is actually pretty okay. It's things like menus designed for the D-pad (I find only arrow keys plus enter really work well), and keys used in multiple places (because they only hav a few buttons on a controller to work with, so button reuse is a must) that are the big issues from the porting.
They definitely did a bad port job this time, but PC users are the ones who benefit thanks to the command console. It lets you work around most bugs that can ruin it on consoles, and is great for when you find out you went up a terrible perk tree branch and need to switch to get a workable character.
posted on January 3rd, 2012, 8:27 pm
TES...
I remember having OOODLESSSS of fun with Morrowind in 2003, especially when my char got stronger and I decided to visit all the daedric ruins to get their treasures (I actually used the included poster-map to find out where they are and where I need to travel to to get there). With Oblivion I suddenly felt like "Great. The use of weapons is better, the overall skill-bindings make more sense, but... wtf is this boring world?"
With Morrowind I explored strange places and intruiging cities. In Oblivion everything looked the same, middle-age-like cities, totally equal looking shrines and ruins and... well... everything was feeling so normal it could have been ANY RPG. And the NPC's all spoke like the players are all six-year-olds who recently watched LotR. Yugh...
I don't know about Skyrim right now, 'cause all Screenies I saw reminded me of the stone-age. Which is probably a little misleading.
I remember having OOODLESSSS of fun with Morrowind in 2003, especially when my char got stronger and I decided to visit all the daedric ruins to get their treasures (I actually used the included poster-map to find out where they are and where I need to travel to to get there). With Oblivion I suddenly felt like "Great. The use of weapons is better, the overall skill-bindings make more sense, but... wtf is this boring world?"
With Morrowind I explored strange places and intruiging cities. In Oblivion everything looked the same, middle-age-like cities, totally equal looking shrines and ruins and... well... everything was feeling so normal it could have been ANY RPG. And the NPC's all spoke like the players are all six-year-olds who recently watched LotR. Yugh...
I don't know about Skyrim right now, 'cause all Screenies I saw reminded me of the stone-age. Which is probably a little misleading.
posted on January 3rd, 2012, 10:01 pm
Last edited by Nebula_Class_Ftw on January 20th, 2012, 4:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Skyrim actually made things quite varied. The only issue of repitition really is the damn mountains and completely unmarked routes that lead to a lot of me abusing the bad horse-riding physics (your horse can gallop up cliffs if you do it right) to get to places that seem at first simple to find. The developers really wanted to force you to take long winding roads so that you'd find a lot of interesting places along the way. The problem is they didn't put any roads on the map so you hav to figure out that long winding path yourself (there's a mod for roads on the map if you're interested.)
Another way to fix this would be a topographic map, since just seeing where impassable cliffs are would greatly aid pathfinding.
Another way to fix this would be a topographic map, since just seeing where impassable cliffs are would greatly aid pathfinding.
posted on January 20th, 2012, 4:34 pm
Last edited by Nebula_Class_Ftw on January 20th, 2012, 4:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
There's actually another repetition issue, but it can take a bit to notice it: about 60% of the dungeons are tombs. Tombs with all the same enemies consisting of the undead using weapons that are subpar by the time your smithing is at 20 (which takes no time at all since smithing needs to be grinded for all except pure mages (no physical weapons or armor period) and just making a few iron daggers is enuff to raise it by 1 early on.)
They do hav very different layouts, and some unique traps, but the same drab architecture and overall design being the same boring thing where you search every single urn for a little gold and maybe a jewel gets repetitive after too long.
All the other dungeon types are more varied and less frequent.
There are balance-related complaints to level at the game that should probably be mentioned:
Because higher skill in a magic reduces mana cost, but doesn't increase damage or other effects, while weapon skills increase damage, spells get way outclassed by melee combat and archery later on. Dual casting is a joke too because it is 10% more effect (duration for alteration tho) for 40% more mana vs. just using singlehanded in each hand. For Destruction, dual casting is useful...because the next perk allows dual casted spells to stun, meaning you can permanently stun anything so long as you hav mana.
Alteration spells only get you up to 300 armor with mage armor, and the highest armor spell ignores mage armor perks, making them utterly crap. For that matter, the highest level alteration armor spell is too expensive, only lasts 30 seconds, and takes 5 seconds of standing still to cast.
Ward spells are useless. They take time to put up, hav a set magic damage resist that if overcome will stagger you and break the ward, they take insane mana costs to make, and the armor increase is a joke and irrelevant against magic. The only semi-practical ward in the game is the Spellbreaker...it's a shield enchanted with the medium variety of ward.
Smithing can get ludicrously high damage weapons (that's before the perks and skill increases) and make literally any armor hit armor cap (yes leather armor that's just as good as daedric, and far better than an expert level spell that costs magicka and takes time and has to be recast) with the right stuff.
Max Enchanting can make two schools of magic completely free, with enuff enchanting positions left over to make you completely magic/elemental resistant. It also rivals smithing for making weapons too powerful, with 31 elemental damage at max level (and double enchants possible).
They do hav very different layouts, and some unique traps, but the same drab architecture and overall design being the same boring thing where you search every single urn for a little gold and maybe a jewel gets repetitive after too long.
All the other dungeon types are more varied and less frequent.
There are balance-related complaints to level at the game that should probably be mentioned:
Because higher skill in a magic reduces mana cost, but doesn't increase damage or other effects, while weapon skills increase damage, spells get way outclassed by melee combat and archery later on. Dual casting is a joke too because it is 10% more effect (duration for alteration tho) for 40% more mana vs. just using singlehanded in each hand. For Destruction, dual casting is useful...because the next perk allows dual casted spells to stun, meaning you can permanently stun anything so long as you hav mana.
Alteration spells only get you up to 300 armor with mage armor, and the highest armor spell ignores mage armor perks, making them utterly crap. For that matter, the highest level alteration armor spell is too expensive, only lasts 30 seconds, and takes 5 seconds of standing still to cast.
Ward spells are useless. They take time to put up, hav a set magic damage resist that if overcome will stagger you and break the ward, they take insane mana costs to make, and the armor increase is a joke and irrelevant against magic. The only semi-practical ward in the game is the Spellbreaker...it's a shield enchanted with the medium variety of ward.
Smithing can get ludicrously high damage weapons (that's before the perks and skill increases) and make literally any armor hit armor cap (yes leather armor that's just as good as daedric, and far better than an expert level spell that costs magicka and takes time and has to be recast) with the right stuff.
Max Enchanting can make two schools of magic completely free, with enuff enchanting positions left over to make you completely magic/elemental resistant. It also rivals smithing for making weapons too powerful, with 31 elemental damage at max level (and double enchants possible).
posted on January 20th, 2012, 7:54 pm
Oh. Skyrim. I played it too in the last couple of weeks for, dunno, 50 hours? I'm currently a nord warrior at level 30-something, and whilst I agree with the complaints about the interface (Come on, we got a keyboard with maaany keys here. why do we only use half a dozen? Console-portations suck hard.) I also think the enemy leveling-system is a bit off. In some dungeons I've never entered before I keep one-hitting the enemys while in some others THEY keep one-hitting ME. And oh yes, I've spent quite some time in smithing tons of leather bracers and enchanting them (some enchants like carry weight let you sell them for more money btw). So, either I'm doing something wrong or I'm supposed to wimp out there and tone the difficulty down, which I would consider cheating. Fighting dragons is easy and fighting giants is not. (they hit you twice and send you a couple hundred metres straight up in the air which is kind of fun to watch tho.)
Also, Followers. Some of them just run into the enemy's and die quickly, but those that prefer the bow usually stay away and let me do the hacking and slashing all alone. Sure, they do some damage, but they are generally largely useless plus annoying when they activate traps or refuse to go through a gate or just stay behind or glitch out in another hundred ways. Another nice glitch is that NPC's don't use ammo, but use the best arrow in their inventory. So give them one glass arrow and they will shoot those from that day on. (Known abuse is to place a good arrow in the inventory of an npc that shoots all day long arrows at a training target at some castle, easy arrow farming.) I suppose this abuse for the followers is countered by the glitch that they will only use their default bow or revert back to their default when given another one which is most likely far worse then anything you could provide. On the other hand, I have no idea how bow and arrow damage calculation are actually working.
Also, Followers. Some of them just run into the enemy's and die quickly, but those that prefer the bow usually stay away and let me do the hacking and slashing all alone. Sure, they do some damage, but they are generally largely useless plus annoying when they activate traps or refuse to go through a gate or just stay behind or glitch out in another hundred ways. Another nice glitch is that NPC's don't use ammo, but use the best arrow in their inventory. So give them one glass arrow and they will shoot those from that day on. (Known abuse is to place a good arrow in the inventory of an npc that shoots all day long arrows at a training target at some castle, easy arrow farming.) I suppose this abuse for the followers is countered by the glitch that they will only use their default bow or revert back to their default when given another one which is most likely far worse then anything you could provide. On the other hand, I have no idea how bow and arrow damage calculation are actually working.
posted on January 20th, 2012, 8:16 pm
_Zap_ wrote:I also think the enemy leveling-system is a bit off. In some dungeons I've never entered before I keep one-hitting the enemys while in some others THEY keep one-hitting ME.
That was very intentional. As a general rule, the further north you go and the higher your elevation, the more difficult the dungeons are. This was done for several reasons. In Morrowind, there was no way to determine the difficulty of a dungeon without trying it out and people complained. In Oblivion, they decided to apply the level scaling to the dungeons instead of just the over-world, with no exceptions, resulting in a ridiculously repetitive game. So for Skyrim they decided to have elevation and latitude be an indicator of general difficulty while applying some limited level scaling.
This way, you know that a ruin on the peak of a mountain is going to have some higher level enemies while a bandit camp in a valley is going to be pretty easy.
posted on January 20th, 2012, 10:41 pm
Uh. That would explain the hordes of draugr deathlords on top of the mountains.
posted on January 21st, 2012, 12:36 am
Last edited by Nebula_Class_Ftw on January 21st, 2012, 12:44 am, edited 1 time in total.
_Zap_ wrote:Quote too large for Nebbie to put here since it would make this comment absolutely monstrous.
Level-scaling is similar to Fallout. Areas you visit will be lokked to a certain level forever, so going bakk to an area you just went next to once ten levels ago means you end up facing hilariously easy enemies.
Additionally, armor and magic resistance hav nothing to do with each other, which may lead to being oneshotted by mages despite superarmor.
Giants shouldn't be a problem once you get la high armor rating, but generally it is a good idea to be very careful fighting them at levels below 40 (I did it yesterday while also fighting a dragon at level 11. the key is to get in close and hit once then immediately go bakk before the giant can hit you. Finish any dragons off first, which the giants tend to help with actually.)
Bow and arrows are simple addition of bow damage plus arrow damage. However, perks and skill bonus apply to the bow, not the arrow. This is probably to make it less confusing as then you can easily remember whether a given arrow is better than what you are using, while bows are far more permanent (and smithable, making even the lower tiers you smith better than random loot) and thus don't need their damages remembered.
The infinite arrow glitch only works with their starting bow, which is terribly inferior to anything you can smith. I just dump all my steel arrows on Lydia and remove her bow with console commands so that she can use a Daedric one I made.
Followers need to be given heavy armor (yes, even mages, since mage armor is shit) as they tend to want to do lots of melee, and are generally best with a fireball staff and a onehanded weapon, a shield and a onehanded weapon, or a twohanded weapon. They tend to pikk twohanded just for damage, but onehanded plus a shield and fireball staff will lead to some changing it up so I prefer that. Not sure about weapons for mage followers, but a shield is probably a good idea due to the dual cast issues I mentioned, plus it means they won't be useless against melee opponents. Hopefully they actually use shields as mages.
posted on January 21st, 2012, 12:39 am
Skyrim has many... balance quirks. I do agree that being a full-on spellcaster is a bit weird since you start by leveling magicka but by the end of the game your magicka doesn't matter at all. It seems they intended everybody to pick a martial style with magical support, and yes EVERYBODY needs smithing which can feel a bit restrictive.
I didn't know that about altitude affecting difficulty, that's a great thing to know. I'm playing a sneaky archer and having a blast, but I'm about to get ridiculously powerful archery enchantments on all my gear and when I do, I think I'll increase the difficulty level to keep it challenging.
It seems to me that the crafting skills should have required fewer perk points. I'm planning to max out all 3 because Smithing and Enchanting are almost required and Alchemy is amazingly fun. I can make potions that paralyze for 12 seconds, deal 14 damage/second during that time, and add weakness to magic or other nasties.
I didn't know that about altitude affecting difficulty, that's a great thing to know. I'm playing a sneaky archer and having a blast, but I'm about to get ridiculously powerful archery enchantments on all my gear and when I do, I think I'll increase the difficulty level to keep it challenging.
It seems to me that the crafting skills should have required fewer perk points. I'm planning to max out all 3 because Smithing and Enchanting are almost required and Alchemy is amazingly fun. I can make potions that paralyze for 12 seconds, deal 14 damage/second during that time, and add weakness to magic or other nasties.
posted on January 21st, 2012, 12:57 am
Last edited by Nebula_Class_Ftw on January 21st, 2012, 1:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
Tryptic wrote:It seems to me that the crafting skills should have required fewer perk points. I'm planning to max out all 3 because Smithing and Enchanting are almost required and Alchemy is amazingly fun. I can make potions that paralyze for 12 seconds, deal 14 damage/second during that time, and add weakness to magic or other nasties.
Alchemy is virtually useless most of the time. All the potions you'll need except certain things likefortify smithing/enchanting will be found in the world. (at higher levels, you find a "draught of " in almost every single room of a dungeon. it's a pain to sell them all because few merchants hav enuff money, but the potions are so good on weight vs value to pass up.)
Even poisons aren't hard to find, but may be justifiable for skill leveling alchemy. You may want to not put many perks in tho because you'll rarely need any poison with maxed smithing (very few things can take more than four hits from an enchanted legendary Daedric war axe I made).
Enchanting perks are perfect I think; smithing is the big shame, as every perk except the last one you get (or last two if you get the dragon perk) and arcane blakksmith are completely obsolete unless you want to use substandard equipment. The heavy side giving better (yes I know it's only like four damage points, but Daedric weapons can hurt ghosts unlike glass) weapons is also pretty crap. It's like how EVERY magic skill tree makes you waste one perk per spell level.
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