Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[aenemic]

alright alright

Thesis: Bethesda is dumb.

Proof: Shouts

Interesting concept. What actually is their purpose in the game ? From all those "shouts" only a handfull are really usefull. And thx to some absurd "level scaling" where certain enemies have an health pool so huge that it is ridiculous you will do not much against them. It seems that only "storm" and "push" are the only really usefull shouts. But storm cant be used "inside" and it will hit any of your companions/allies as well which makes it more or less useless if you consider that most of the maps are well inside of ruins/graves.

I really think Beth droped the ball on this one. They could have done much more with those "Dragon" powers. It really does not give me the feeling of having some kind of special and unique weapon.

since I got Ice Form it's pretty much the only one I use. it's perfect for crowd control and with the damage I do I can usually kill even the more powerful enemies before they have time to get back up. I haven't found the last part of Push yet but I find it a bit underwhelming. it's good for pushing people off cliffs, but then it's a pain to loot them. and they recover too quickly from it to make it an effective crowd control.

as for the other shouts I've found, most seem to do what magic spells can already do.

But the figures are much less animated and much less detailed.

I'm just saying that it's possible to have more than ten people fighting at once.

Bethesda's excuse has always been that their engine can't handle too many npc's at the same time. but I really think this is bullshit. last time I played FO3 I used a mod to put more enemies in the game. Feral Ghouls often spawned in the 20's and above, with no lag whatsoever.

Then you must have a pretty good computer (it heavily depends on your hardware anyway). Skyrim, as example, starts to run extremely shitty on my system as well, as soon as there are 10+ npcs around me. When I had done the first "take over the town!"-quest, it felt like doing the Hoover Dam battle in FNV once again, just in medieval times. If there are only a few npcs around me, Skyrim is running very fine. So yes, the engine can't handle many npcs very good (their faces, etc- that's why many npcs in FNV and in Skyrim wear full-head helmets).

yeah I guess this might be true, but my computer isn't THAT poweful to be honest. GTX 260 gpu, 2 gb RAM and 3.16 gHz core 2 duo. I'm sure there are people with less powerful computers playing these games, but the question is how low Bethesda sets their bar.

 

[Faceless Stranger]

Actually, I was impressed by the amount of npcs during the Legion questline, I had at the very least 20-30 Stormcloaks and Imperials fighting at one time.

 

[Knight Captain Kerr]

I think it is

Skyrim is great. I think it is as good as Morrowind. Way better than Daggerfall and Oblivion. My character in it is a Breton Spellsword on account of Breton spellswords being awesome.

 

[Courier]

Re: I think it is

Skyrim is great. I think it is as good as Morrowind. Way better than Daggerfall and Oblivion. My character in it is a Breton Spellsword on account of Breton spellswords being awesome.

Did you just call Morrowind better than Daggerfall?

 

[Knight Captain Kerr]

Re: I think it is

Skyrim is great. I think it is as good as Morrowind. Way better than Daggerfall and Oblivion. My character in it is a Breton Spellsword on account of Breton spellswords being awesome.

Did you just call Morrowind better than Daggerfall?

Yes, but that doesn't mean I don't like Daggerfall.

 

[Crni Vuk]

apart from the fact that wizards/necromants with a dagger can reduce your health in 3 hits to "minimum" while you are on level 50 while Dragons can be killed in 1 or 2 hits. Yeah the game is nice ...

Will Bethesda ever learn correct level scaling ?

 

[Alphadrop]

Actually, I was impressed by the amount of npcs during the Legion questline, I had at the very least 20-30 Stormcloaks and Imperials fighting at one time.

Did that bit today and it was pretty good how many npcs they had running around. Downside being that Stormcloaks and Whiterun town guard wear the same armour which looks the same colour when you set it on fire means a fair few friendly fire incidents.

 

[Faceless Stranger]

Did that bit today and it was pretty good how many npcs they had running around. Downside being that Stormcloaks and Whiterun town guard wear the same armour which looks the same colour when you set it on fire means a fair few friendly fire incidents.

I like that at the end of the battles, the remaining Stormcloaks flee in retreat, pretty satisfying to shoot them in the back as they run like cowards.

 

[aenemic]

careful with the spoilers, please.

 

[Makagulfazel]

use the tilda key to get into the console then type this: setcamerafov 80

I doubt this patch will affect how the shadows are rendered. Instead, I just dropped the shadow draw distance down to 3500 in the skyrimprefs.ini file. Stoopid CPU intensive games.

 

[aenemic]

it's pretty annoying how dungeons respawn, even when they're marked as "cleared" on the map. what's the point of marking them then? not only does this mean that if you felt like you left something behind, you'll have to clear and loot the dungeon again (plus, you probably lost whatever you left behind), but it also means you will always have unlimited loot. need some cash? just hit up whatever dungeon and loot it. with the way loot scales with your level, you'll always be sure to find something valuable.

 

[Xellos]

So true, poor guards ...

 

[Sub-Human]

Aaah, how true...

 

[fedaykin]

You know what they say. Bethesda never changes.

 

[Alphadrop]

I'm playing on the hardest difficulty and the scalling is just awful. You can beat a Dragon pretty easy compared to such legendery foes like bandit plunderers. Actually i saw a troll kicking the dragons ass, once the dragon attacked the troll wanted none of it and just bitchslapped him like a boss. It was pretty pathetic really....

Draugr Deathlords, two hits if I'm lucky and then it's Argonian all over the walls.
It's mostly o.k. apart from dragons being crap and a horribly overpowered enemy in every enemy group list, deathlords, plunderers, bears in general.

 

[Courier]

I'm playing on the hardest difficulty and the scalling is just awful. You can beat a Dragon pretty easy compared to such legendery foes like bandit plunderers. Actually i saw a troll kicking the dragons ass, once the dragon attacked the troll wanted none of it and just bitchslapped him like a boss. It was pretty pathetic really....

That's because there's infinut dragons so they have to be really easy to kill.

 

[aenemic]

I'm playing on the hardest difficulty and the scalling is just awful. You can beat a Dragon pretty easy compared to such legendery foes like bandit plunderers. Actually i saw a troll kicking the dragons ass, once the dragon attacked the troll wanted none of it and just bitchslapped him like a boss. It was pretty pathetic really....

Draugr Deathlords, two hits if I'm lucky and then it's Argonian all over the walls.
It's mostly o.k. apart from dragons being crap and a horribly overpowered enemy in every enemy group list, deathlords, plunderers, bears in general.

I'm wondering if this is mainly a problem when playing on Master. I'm on Expert, level 41, and I'm still struggling with Elder Dragons. I have yet to meet another enemy that gives me as much trouble as those do. yes, there are some "boss" enemies that do enormous damage, but most of them I kill with a few power attacks, so as long as I can sneak up on them or get an Ice Form off they don't really pose much of a threat.

either way, it's pretty damn stupid letting the game scale like this. but it's pretty typical Bethesda, not realizing what effect it has on the immersion they oh so dearly speak of. and like in my first impression post, this could have easily been fixed by introducing dragons later in the game and making them actually powerful. but again, it's typical Bethesda to thrown the "coolest" things in the game right in your face as soon as possible.

 

[Ilosar]

Bandits should have stopped scaling after level 15ish (they are just lowlifes praying on the populace, make a higher-level faction of Warlords or somesuch if you want humanoid opponents to slaughter after that point) and dragons should have started scaling at about level 20. Make Bleak Falls barrow much harder so that you don't complete it at level 5 and have the gameworld filled with nigh-invincible dragons, but killing one of the apocalypse-bringing monstrosities 10 seconds after it lands and then being owned by a glorified thug should not happen. Apart from that, the scaling has not been too noticeable for me after all, and there are a couple dungeons from where I had to turn back (running into 2 trolls at level 6 = instant death, Falmer dungeons are also a hassle, and don't even think about getting in a Dwemer ruin until 15 or so, even the lowly mooks there start at that level).

 

[Faceless Stranger]

Meh, I get a lot more trouble with Elder Dragons than bandits, as high level as they may be, ( I'm level 38), they're nothing a fully upgraded, enchanted Daedric battleaxe can't fix.

 

[Crni Vuk]

Meh, I get a lot more trouble with Elder Dragons than bandits, as high level as they may be, ( I'm level 38), they're nothing a fully upgraded, enchanted Daedric battleaxe can't fix.

Yes true. Thing is just that Dragons become at some point the "cliff racers" of Skyrim ... and then you have to ask your self why those things are actually dangerous in the first place. Something which many of us already predicted quite before Skyrim was released.

Setting it up as an acquired ability rather than an inborn one would have been smarter and would have fit in better with the Elder Scrolls theme of constantly growing in ability over time, the "zero to hero" story. Unfortunately that would have also killed the YOU ARE THE CHOSEN ONE thing, if just about anyone could have potentially been Dragonborn, but I'll take a balanced game over a dumbass game-ruining plot any day.

Well they could have still done it in a way that you are the only one with the blessing of Akatosh/Talos what ever which has the power to actually get that skill. That way you could be still the "chosen one" but you are not "born" with the start of the game with the ability to learn shouts. Kinda like how you became in Morrowind only later in the game the Neverrarine after some tests even though you have been already "born" as such (or blessed by Azura if you want so).

You know. It all comes down to 2 things.

1. Good writing.

2. Good brain storming/pre-production.

Both things which Bethesda has trouble with. Either because they limit their creative writers to heavily (yes such things happen more often in the "industry" then people think.). Or it is because of how they actually move from the pre-production in the actual production of the game. To say it that way it seems they don't really have "any" pre-production. And you can see that in many Beth games since Oblivion. Actually for that reason you have Pre-production phases to avoid any possible contradictions - namely situations like in Fallout 3 where your "followers" refuse to do the job for you even though they are immune to the deadly effects because someone at Bethesda thought it would be important that the player has to "sacrifice" someone. I mean yeah ... send the paladin girl inside to die instead of the ghoul/super mutant/robot which would walk out without a scratch. Or like now in Skyrim where Dragons become piss-poor at some point but random bandits/mages/goblins the bane of the player. You can say about games like Baldurs Gate what or Fallout what ever you want but the "difficulty" of mobs made at leats sense there. A a simple group of orcs never possessed the same treat in BG2 like a Dragon or undead Lich for example.

*
Something which is also a bit strange. Though beware the spoiler:
[spoiler:30f708a730]The leader of the evil dragons resurrects a dead dragon infront of your eyes. He is powerfull. He flies over you there and mocks you. But what is he doing ? He is flying away! Now I expected at least some fight or something or at least I asked my self "why isnt he trying to kill me now ?"[/spoiler:30f708a730]