So I finally bought Skyrim...

[TheWesDude]

the guys at work are always hassling me about not having skyrim and being a "hardcore" gamer.

i always maintained that i would get it when its like $20-30 for the full thing.

well steam sold it last week for like $21 for legendary edition. and i bought it on steam.

i must say, the stock levelling system is much better to deal with now than it used to be.


overall i have to say it is not that bad, its actually partially enjoyable.

although, i do have to say i have decided to call it CRJ Syndrome.

we all know that song "call me maybe" from carly rae jepson, the one that goes "hey, i just met you, here is my number, call me maybe"

well in bethesda's world, it would be "hey you just joined our guild, did like 4-5 quests, be our new guildmaster?"

i dont really have mods installed, all i have is:
one that lets you train 99 times per level
one that adds a stone that lets you redeem dragon souls for perks/buffs at high hrothgar
unread books glow
sky ui
lockpick pro - shows the lockpicking debug window so you can see where to open locks
one that makes crafting resources weightless


and i had an idea.

TES 6: The Return of the Dwemer

you would be working for a local mage/fighter/thief/commerce guild, and you received a report saying some mage/researcher has found and item and is going to the dwemer forge to do some experimenting. so you go and follow him to watch the results of his experiments and report back. turns out when they disappeared, they were all actually shunted off to a pocket dimension. and now they are all coming back. all at once. and they want their old cities/territories back. all of them. and they have an army of automatons to do it.

 

[Akratus]

Return of the dwemer?

Heresy!

Not using Requiem? Double heresy!

Besides, we all know that TES 6 will be all about the big bad thalmor.

 

[Walpknut]

A friend gifted this to me with the Dragon Born DLC. I played it before on his account but hey, you never complain about a gift, that is just rude.

Downloaded a shit ton of mods, my favorite one is Frostfall, the Hypothermia mod.

 

[TheWesDude]

uhhh... yea... so i started reading that requiem pdf...

they severely weakened the players, and buffed the monsters.

seems pretty much like a hybrid HP bloat system.

take 50% health from you to make enemies more deadly, and then gave the enemies 50% more hp, partially in the form of more specials.

you cant fix broken, trying to is an exercise in futility.

 

[Makta]

Been a while since i had my mod addiction but i'm pretty sure there are better mods for difficulty than requiem.

 

[Crni Vuk]

the problem with Skyrim actually is, at least for me, that it gives you 2 extremes. Its an absolutely awesome experience for one moment, just to get ruined by something in another moment.

Like, awesome scenery and cool visuals (even decent animations this time), which get ruined by a single boring and repetitive guild quest (like with the mages, its not so bad actually, just way to short).

Or the main story which is really awesome with some parts, but it fails completely because they try to give you this feeling of "epicness" while there is no epicness ... you just cant show a civil war with a handfull of soldiers ... its ... simply stupid.

Or the moment when I enjoy the game ... it gets ruined by a very frustrating bug.

And this goes on and on for ever ...

 

[Walpknut]

Got the bug where Esbern doesn't have a voice and the main quest just gets stuck.... good thing mods exist. Nobody QA'd the MAIN QUEST?

Edit: Also I downloaded this mod called "Realistic Body Type system" thinking, Hey it would be nice to have different body types on villagers, then every female NPC started going round in thongs and wearing the skimpiest clothes..... yeah "REALISTIC".

 

[Makta]

the problem with Skyrim actually is, at least for me, that it gives you 2 extremes. Its an absolutely awesome experience for one moment, just to get ruined by something in another moment.

Like, awesome scenery and cool visuals (even decent animations this time), which get ruined by a single boring and repetitive guild quest (like with the mages, its not so bad actually, just way to short).

Or the main story which is really awesome with some parts, but it fails completely because they try to give you this feeling of "epicness" while there is no epicness ... you just cant show a civil war with a handfull of soldiers ... its ... simply stupid.

Or the moment when I enjoy the game ... it gets ruined by a very frustrating bug.

And this goes on and on for ever ...

If you would have needed a real life sized army to win the war i guess 90% of the players would not be able to play the game due to lagg/crashes. But the guild quests are indeed quite terrible especially the dark brotherhood and even worse the thief guild quest. And as i've said before i'm pretty certain they were awesome in Oblivion.. But i did not play that much Oblivion to begin with so it might be some "nostalgia" even if i wassn't into that game? Oo

Got the bug where Esbern doesn't have a voice and the main quest just gets stuck.... good thing mods exist. Nobody QA'd the MAIN QUEST?

Edit: Also I downloaded this mod called "Realistic Body Type system" thinking, Hey it would be nice to have different body types on villagers, then every female NPC started going round in thongs and wearing the skimpiest clothes..... yeah "REALISTIC".

The BODY is realistic not your hunger for granny pants i was using some body replacer but i think i still had the original underwear going on so i havent been in thong land yet.

 

[Walpknut]

Well, I don't find thongs that sexy to begin with, and I am running a hypothermia mod so I am not too big on having characters in the middle of snowy towns going around in thongs when I need full Wolf Armor to not freeze to death.

 

[Makta]

Like you havent been out in the snow with just a thong?.. Or maybe that's just me? :O

 

[TheWesDude]

yea, i am not sure i want to join up with the imperials or the stormcloaks.

from what i have read imperials are for tyranny based single source law+order, and the stormcloaks are more of an anarchist or multiple/local source law+order.

im more inclined to go with stormcloaks, but from what i read neither is a good option.

 

[Walpknut]

My character is a furry, so going for the Nord supremacist Stormcloaks would be kind of illogical.

 

[DustyTraveller]

High level encounters are a bit boring unless you install mods. Just like in FO3/Oblivion/F:NV it takes ways too many hits to kill a high level creature.
A lvl 90 rat would probably bore you to death unless you nuke it with an elder scroll... about 25 times or so.

Thankfully there are several mods out there that fixes that.
I chose Skyrim Redone since it's modular and there's an automated tool to rebalance any other weapon/armor mods you install.
It changes a lot of the perk trees so that everyone does more damage and blocking in combat is needed at all levels.
SkyRe uses a lot of scripts which can be a problem, especially when combined with other script-heavy mods like Frostfall.
Oh, and beware crossbow users...

Requiem also makes combat harder and more rewarding. Changes a lot of other stuff too.
Its all combined into a single mod though, so a lot of other mods need patches to work well with Requiem.
Not script-heavy IIRC.

Then there is ERSO which has dozens of small modules that change everything. Can be more easily combined with other mods since you can swap out one small ERSO module if you've got other mods you like better and still keep the other ERSO modules. Not script-heavy either.

Then there's the combat-only mods like DUEL or Deadly Combat. Haven't tried those at all so I've probably got them mixed up but one of them makes all blows almost fatal unless you block. The other one makes melee combat more like magic combat. Every blow/dodge/block costs stamina so you (and mobs) WILL run out of stamina in combat so then you'll have to weigh the stamina cost of your next sword swing against the risk of getting killed before you get back enough stamina to dodge/block any other foes.

Oh, and why use combat mods at all? Well.... they're mods... must use mods...
And vanilla combat difficulty settings/slider doesn't really balance the risk vs tedium at higher levels.
You're either almost impossible to kill (snooze) but at least your weapons kill quickly OR
every blow can seriously hurt you (yay) but your weapons are made out rubber so it take ages to kill something.
Vanilla FO3/FNV had similar problems but there was VATS and there was always the mini-nuke. *Shudder*

 

[Walpknut]

Yeah combat in Skyrim is just so weird, sometimes I get one shotted by fireballs at level 25 and other times they barely do anything to me.

 

[DustyTraveller]

Bethesda did a good job to balance the justifications of both factions. In my current playthrough I went with the empire for all the right reasons. Tiber Septim did pretty well as dragonborn.... ;>

Well... the civil war quest line desperately needs a whole DLC. Especially the later stages aren't that well fleshed out. I am going to try out the Civil War Overhaul on my next playthrough.

 

[Makta]

My character is a furry, so going for the Nord supremacist Stormcloaks would be kind of illogical.

Actually both sides would be bad for you since no one likes you sneaky kittens.

The nords are more like "We are just better than you!" and less "Throw them all out and closw down the boarders!" Neither side is good but the stormcloaks biggest weaknes is their leader where the imperials are weak and likes to take elf dong up their asses.

 

[AskWazzup]

Couldn't get back to bethesda games now (including skyrim), though i sometimes get the urge. Where does it come from? I think bethesda is very good at making mirrages, the game constantly has that potential that something awesome is going to happen around that corner and that keeps up pretty well at the beginning of the game. You have a huge mass of land with unexplored secrets and quests, a detailed character creation which makes you excited to develope him and then the mind constantly tries to trick you into thinking of things that you know will not be there. For me that ends when i start to feel tired from all the uninteresting characters and really shallow gameplay mechanics and now that i'm on a D&D run (iwd2, nwn etc...) i just can't look seriously at a game like skyrim, which is pretty much the same bethesda game as F3 and Oblivion with smoke and mirrors. The game does not outright suck, it's pretty good, but it feels like an rpg simulator to me.

 

[Crni Vuk]

If you would have needed a real life sized army to win the war i guess 90% of the players would not be able to play the game due to lagg/crashes. But the guild quests are indeed quite terrible especially the dark brotherhood and even worse the thief guild quest. And as i've said before i'm pretty certain they were awesome in Oblivion.. But i did not play that much Oblivion to begin with so it might be some "nostalgia" even if i wassn't into that game? Oo

Its the artist who makes the tools, not the tools the artist. If they cant find a way to portray and convince you that you are thrown in the midle of an ongoing civil war, then they should not try it, to be honest. It could still have been something in the distance while you are on the quest to fight the big old evil dragon-dude that wants to eat the world. Sometimes you can achieve a lot here by showing what you dont see, for the lack of better words.

Imagine a situation like this, you are on your way to a quest, on the top of a mountain, you can see a huge battle in the distance going on, but there is no way for you to join the battle. However, your actions and decisions before the battle started will eventually change the outcome of the battle. I hope you get what I mean. Sometimes you only need to show the player for a short moment what is happening around him to give him at least the "feeling" of beeing inside a huge scene. I hate to say it, but I think this is something Dragon Age did rather well in the begining with the huge battle. I know Skyrim is this open world game where you can go where ever you want when ever you want. But in the main quest, for the sake of story telling, they could find ways to give you the feeling that something huge is going on. Its not like they cant do it. Parthunax was a great moment. When you get the people together for the council in the temple on top of the mountain as well and so on. And yet ... always when Bethesda is trying to do this super epic stuff, they fail very hard.

 

[Akratus]

uhhh... yea... so i started reading that requiem pdf...

they severely weakened the players, and buffed the monsters.

seems pretty much like a hybrid HP bloat system.

take 50% health from you to make enemies more deadly, and then gave the enemies 50% more hp, partially in the form of more specials.

you cant fix broken, trying to is an exercise in futility.

Well I've played for dozens of hours with requiem, and all I can say is that you're dead wrong, in my opinion.

Sure enemies get more hp. But only if it makes sense. Dwemer machines, Daedroth etc get more hp. Not bandits and such. And everyone does more damage, the player included. So the game has you rely on blocking a lot more and keeping an eye on your position relative to enemies.

Then there's the stripping of level scaling, which means that places can actually be dangerous to you, especially if unprepared.

For me the mod severely increased my enjoyment of Skyrim by enhancing combat, overall challenge, magic, realism and immersion.

 

[Jebus]

Aw man, Skyrim. I put 150+ hours in it, ran it with dozens and dozens of mods, and I don't think I ever completed the main quest. My favorite mod was Falskaar - almost professional quality, that one.