Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

The only issue I have is that many of the mods actually dont do anything else then changing the visuals one way or another. Countless of mods for either Oblivion or Skyrim are just something that is replacing textures, giving you some new weapons here and there, making your armor look like in Diablo (Tyrael) or Lord of the rings, making Deadra armor pink and the like.

I am missing real mods. I know those are not easy to make but still.

Many of the really interesting projects get sadly never finished. Like one where they wanted to make Oblivion in to LotR, but I guess they had to deal with legal issues here ... no clue.

Totall conversion mods seem to have died somehow. Guess it has become much more difficult to motivate people to stay with one project. Not that I expect every mod to become the next Counter Strike as far as popularity and fun goes.

But there is so far not even one really good "play as dragon" mod in Skyrim.
 
Total conversion mods are just too much work with current games, I guess. There's way more to convert now than there was with Half-Life, back in the '90s.
There is the SkyWind project, though, that's aiming (and making good progress) to 'import' Morrowind to the Skyrim engine.

There's plenty of good quest mods, too, if you look for them. "Wyrmstooth", for instance, or "Moonpath to Elsweyr" (though that one is almost impossible to play if you use lighting mods because it's so damn dark). "Interesting NPC's" also adds a lot of content.

Meh, it's not like Skyrim's really all that lacking in content anyway.
 
it isnt? As far as interesting NPCs, dungeons (seriously, if you saw one of them then you know them all) and quests go it is ...

Again, Skyrim is great at what it was meant to be (hiking simulator), but still lacks interesting content.
 
Well you know, I meant "content" as in "stuff to do". I did point out Skyrim doens't reach the level of F:NV in terms of story or characters (or was that another thread? I'm getting old.).
 
If you want real mods, just take a look at my list:

Recommendations:
Unofficial patches
SKYtest (Very realistic animal mod)
Weapons of the Third Era
No Tint and Desaturation
My own mod
Better Magic
Dual Wield Parrying (Also allows blocking with magic in one hand)
Potions heal over time
No Quest Items
Radiance (random encounters)
Boethiah alternate ending
House of Horrors alternate ending (and all extra choice mods)
The Choice is Yours (No more automatic misc quest filling)
Deadly Dragons Lore edition
Lore based loading screens
Two Handed Rebalance
Loot Overhaul (no more gold in everything)
Immersive Patrols
Economics of Skyrim


[spoiler:6d413c141d]
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Guards armor replacement.esp=1
[/spoiler:6d413c141d]
 
Jebus said:
Well you know, I meant "content" as in "stuff to do". I did point out Skyrim doens't reach the level of F:NV in terms of story or characters (or was that another thread? I'm getting old.).
Click to expand...
sure, but at the end of the day. I dont know if Skyrim offers really that much content anyway. Most of the caves, dungeons and ruins look the same which is somewhat understandable. Bethesdas approach was always quantity rather then quality. But exploring caves just to kill random thugs inside ... I never saw that really as content.
 
Crni Vuk said:
Jebus said:
Well you know, I meant "content" as in "stuff to do". I did point out Skyrim doens't reach the level of F:NV in terms of story or characters (or was that another thread? I'm getting old.).
Click to expand...
sure, but at the end of the day. I dont know if Skyrim offers really that much content anyway. Most of the caves, dungeons and ruins look the same which is somewhat understandable. Bethesdas approach was always quantity rather then quality. But exploring caves just to kill random thugs inside ... I never saw that really as content.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Now the factions, quest lines and main quest seem more like a chore for them. "Well, we HAVE to do them, so let's just do it as quickly and cheaply as possible."

You can assassinate the Emperor, and your dealings with the imperials will differ in zero ways. You can rid the Companions of the werewolf curse but they will forever remain a bunch of sitting and sleeping npc's who only talk about mead and honor. You can defeat Alduin or not, but the world stays the same. Only the guards get a new line. You can rebuild the blades but Delphine and Esbern will never have an interesting comment regarding the world. You can become head of the mages college without using a single spell, and you can not do anything related to the guild and neither will anyone speak to you differently. Apart from maybe one or two comments when they adress you as archmage when they pass you by. But I didn't notice any comment like that. The Thieves guild questline literally spits in the face of logic. Whiterun is a miniature village, not a trading hub. And certainly not a place of much interest. You can take over a hold in the civil war, which changes only the posting of the guards, and switches the jarl over to imperial.

It makes me mad! Something human and real please happen for the love of gamedesign!
 
It's always what puts me off replaying Beth games as I did for New Vegas. Yes, you can do so many things, but they matter so little. You can easily be Harbinger of the Companions, Arch-Mage of the College, Listener of the Dark Brotherhood, Master of the Theive's Guild, head of a powerful Vampire Clan, hero of the Empire, reformer of the blades, slayer of a hundred dragons, bane of Alduin, all at once, yet you still get sweetroll jokes from guards and nobody seems to give a shit.
 
Dragonborn actually averts that to a degree with the Raven's Rock fellas thanking you for being awesomes and other characters commenting on what you did around the town. Guards still insult you but that's how House Redoran rolls and it plays of the Dark Elf ego thang from Morrowind that was sorely lacking in the newer games.
They may not mention the big bad dude but only a really stupid shaman and his really annoying daughter really gave a damn about him anyway, his most menacing and diabolical plan that he managed to enact being to steal one of your dragon souls.

Vegas does faction stuff right by never letting you be the boss of a faction, fight for the NCR and you never end up as General of the army but you still earn recognition for your actions despite being a civilian. In Skyrim you're a Legate who can't give orders to the Imperial soldiers, none of the fine balance of NV's not being part of the faction's command structure but close enough to it to feel part of it thing.
 
Alphadrop said:
Vegas does faction stuff right by never letting you be the boss of a faction, fight for the NCR and you never end up as General of the army but you still earn recognition for your actions despite being a civilian. In Skyrim you're a Legate who can't give orders to the Imperial soldiers, none of the fine balance of NV's not being part of the faction's command structure but close enough to it to feel part of it thing.
Click to expand...

Completely true. I wouldn't have a problem with the College, for example, naming you ''Protector'' or somesuch. An honorific and privileges to go with it, but not the boss. I mean, what you did is basically avert a crisis. If some dude solves a hostage situation in a university, do they make him Dean? Of course not, that would be silly. They will reward him, to be sure, but he hasn't demonstrated any qualifications for the job. Same thing with being named Arch-Mage because you poked in a bunch of ruins and killed a world-destroying madman. You do get to make a few decisions as Listener regarding the new Sanctuary, and Harbinger of the Companions is more of an honorific than a true leadership position.
 
Crni Vuk said:
Jebus said:
Well you know, I meant "content" as in "stuff to do". I did point out Skyrim doens't reach the level of F:NV in terms of story or characters (or was that another thread? I'm getting old.).
Click to expand...
sure, but at the end of the day. I dont know if Skyrim offers really that much content anyway. Most of the caves, dungeons and ruins look the same which is somewhat understandable. Bethesdas approach was always quantity rather then quality. But exploring caves just to kill random thugs inside ... I never saw that really as content.
Click to expand...

Yes, this is actually my main issue with Skyrim. Horrible AI, crappy engine, childish writing and all that aside, it would still be an immensely entertaining game if it just has some sort of focus on quality of content and not quantity. Because where Bethesda ultimately goes wrong is in thinking that exploring a dungeon is fun, so exploring 50 dungeons must be 50 times as fun. Even if they all look the exact same. It's a really cheap and lazy way of adding lots of content to a game. And the sad part is that they actually think this is what makes people enjoy their games so much.

Hell, I'd even enjoy it more in it's current state if the world was simply smaller and there were fewer quests. I quit playing when everything finally becomes a chore. Because even if I want to focus on a guild quest line or two, all the damn running around across the entire world and always ending up in a huge dungeon to move the quests forward, it eventually becomes too much of the same old and I tire before I see the end of any of it.
 
I think the truth is, if we want to accept it or not ... that IS what people love about their games :/

I mean ... when I still remember the time on the Beth boards ... without flaming it, just what people "love" about Beth games.

Collecting spoons ... garden gnones ... playing "my doll house" with your home ... collecting random crap all over the world. And so on ...

Thats why their worlds are made like that. Its what the Elder Scroll Fans seem to want. This big huge lifeless world ...

Sure that is fun once in a while, but if I wanted to play a Sims game then I would just do that. And they are even better as far as that goes. Still Beth is selling their games as RPGs even though they are in my eyes more like adventure games and just some open world.

I dont see their games as Sand Box games though. A "true" Sandbox game offers you a lot more freedom. Take Second Life as example which is pretty much THE Sandbox game because you can literaly change everything there.

In Skyrim you cant do much else then walking around and choping heads off. But now you can do it with Dragons!

Its not a bad game by any strech. It is entertaining in many ways. Just that it has very little content despite the fact that its FULL of stuff. Just that its extremly generic.
 
Crni Vuk said:
I think the truth is, if we want to accept it or not ... that IS what people love about their games :/

I mean ... when I still remember the time on the Beth boards ... without flaming it, just what people "love" about Beth games.

Collecting spoons ... garden gnones ... playing "my doll house" with your home ... collecting random crap all over the world. And so on ...

Thats why their worlds are made like that. Its what the Elder Scroll Fans seem to want. This big huge lifeless world ...

Sure that is fun once in a while, but if I wanted to play a Sims game then I would just do that. And they are even better as far as that goes. Still Beth is selling their games as RPGs even though they are in my eyes more like adventure games and just some open world.

I dont see their games as Sand Box games though. A "true" Sandbox game offers you a lot more freedom. Take Second Life as example which is pretty much THE Sandbox game because you can literaly change everything there.

In Skyrim you cant do much else then walking around and choping heads off. But now you can do it with Dragons!

Its not a bad game by any strech. It is entertaining in many ways. Just that it has very little content despite the fact that its FULL of stuff. Just that its extremly generic.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's my point - people like running around and do crazy shit. Collect things and kill people. And install ridiculous mods. That's the main thing - the silly, stupid mods.

In other words, people don't play for the repetetive quests and dungeons. They play for the sheer freedom of dicking around.

Bethesda think they create vast open worlds for the player to explore and immerse themselves in. While in reality they make theme parks for easily amused people.

The annoying part is that I'm convinced they could do so much better. As I said in another thread, I think they have a good touch for atmosphere and mood. Also, they are capable of creating fun exploration and interesting locations. But they fuck it up by insisting on having a stupid amount of useless filler and lazy writers.
 
aenemic said:
...The annoying part is that I'm convinced they could do so much better. As I said in another thread, I think they have a good touch for atmosphere and mood. Also, they are capable of creating fun exploration and interesting locations. But they fuck it up by insisting on having a stupid amount of useless filler and lazy writers.
Click to expand...

That's the problem with all beth games since oblivion. The world is big and filled with clutter, placeholders or however you want to call that junk but it feels empty, shallow. Still, you can actually feel the potential. If only there were less stupid plots and characters. If only there was some meaning to all that stuff. If only the plot would not be so static, daedra, col. Autumn, dragons… all waiting for the player to deal with them. But if and when he does nothing changes. I think "if only" summarizes beth-games quite good. I often have the impression the games are simply not finished. All the basics and the clutter are there and instead of letting in the big boys writing the story and the quests and flesh out the characters the game gets published.

The excellent modability of the games makes it even worse in a way. You are given a blank canvas and a paintbrush and colors but you have to try and paint the picture yourself because Bethesda couldn't be bothered. And you start adding stuff, getting mods, perhaps even make your own, to fill up that emptiness, to give it that finishing touch that would make the programm into a believable gameworld instead of a half-finished simulator. But that never works, as was said, 90% of the mods are cosmetic, a few change gameplay and balance and only a very few actually add stories, plots, meaning. Which is understandable, it's quite hard work to even add a small quest. Taking hours, even days, to make something you play in 20 minutes.

Well, at least the games (not FO3 because there is FO:NV) keep me quite amused installing the stuff every two or three years and looking up new mods. After downloading, sorting, installing and solving conflicts and bugs for a few hours I give the game a short spin and remove it again in disappointment.
 
Now that you guys mention it, I remember a long discussion about the extremes of Beth games and true RPGs. It was with one of the admins of the Beth forum, where she explained how awesome it is that every object in the world has an model, which can be picked up, be it a spoon or what ever you can imagine making it "immersive" and then you had some of us on the other side which actually would like to see more time spend on quest lines, NPCs, world interaction and so on. It just seems like a waste of time to spend so much attention on rather trivial details like a garden gnome for someone to pick up and store it in his inventory. I mean was Fallout 1/2, Baldurs Gate, Planescape and many other RPGs a worse game because the designers never took their time to give EVERYTHING a model? Or that you could not throw some random dishes in your inventory? I see why someone might see it as "realism" when he walks around the Beth world and suddenly can throw down an object. But not even that is really used to enhance the gameplay, imagine a stealth situation in buildings with a hell lot of objects and as soon you touch something and it is falling down it would alarm the guards/people there and so on. I mean I don't even want to know how much time was wasted to do models of "rubbish" that you can pick up in a game like F3 or Oblivion or Skyrim which serves NO purpose at all.
 
Arden said:
aenemic said:
...The annoying part is that I'm convinced they could do so much better. As I said in another thread, I think they have a good touch for atmosphere and mood. Also, they are capable of creating fun exploration and interesting locations. But they fuck it up by insisting on having a stupid amount of useless filler and lazy writers.
Click to expand...

That's the problem with all beth games since oblivion. The world is big and filled with clutter, placeholders or however you want to call that junk but it feels empty, shallow. Still, you can actually feel the potential. If only there were less stupid plots and characters. If only there was some meaning to all that stuff. If only the plot would not be so static, daedra, col. Autumn, dragons… all waiting for the player to deal with them. But if and when he does nothing changes. I think "if only" summarizes beth-games quite good. I often have the impression the games are simply not finished. All the basics and the clutter are there and instead of letting in the big boys writing the story and the quests and flesh out the characters the game gets published.
Click to expand...

Am I the only one who likes Oblivion more than Skyrim as far as quests go?

Baurus for example is a better character than Delphine can ever be. You help him amend for his failure to protect the Emperor, and you get to know him. And faction questlines are a bit longer and less of a simple chore rewarded with the position of leadership.
 
Akratus said:
Am I the only one who likes Oblivion more than Skyrim as far as quests go?
Click to expand...
Count me in.

Skyrim uses daggerfall's way to increase quantity of quest.
Always different story to start but solution is same: just go to cave, kill all the monster and take some useless POS.
 
Akratus said:
Am I the only one who likes Oblivion more than Skyrim as far as quests go?...
Click to expand...

I don't compare them by story or characters really. They are both awful in that respect. Skyrim has better graphics... normally that would not be a criterion for me but with beth-games.... well. Modability was better for Oblivion though I did not look too deep into the papyrus scripting, might be that its superior.

Yes, delphine is a colorless generic piece of lack of imagination. Baurus had at least some character. But I was already disapointet what the blades had become in oblivion. In morrowind the blades were a secret order doing investigations and stuff, not just another combat unit. It was what the CIA is to the army, not just a different sort of grunts.

@crni Vuk: Yep, and remembering the place of every pencil dropped in a realistic world led to huge savegame bloats. One should always try to figure out the consequences when adding cool shit. Took them a while to figure it out and include a cell reset.
 
So as I've posted in the 'what game are you playing right now' thread, I've been playing Skyrim again. To get a character into dragonborn. I've just spoken to Parthuurnax. The one and only rpg moment in the game, I'd say.

What do you guy think of that part of the game?
 
yeah, that was indeed an pretty nice moment and I even think his character was well designed. I think the Dragons are one of the few things that Skyrim did REALLY well. Particularly some of the fights that can happen.

The only problem? Dragons become to fast the "cliff racers" of Skyrim ... like so often it feels they wasted a lot of potential here. Could have been so much more and intense if there would not have been so damn many dragons making them nothing more but generic enemies.
 
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