Skyrim doesn't work

Skyrim is boring.

It is a sandbox game watered down with inept storytelling.

It is a story watered down with inept sandbox gameplay.
 
Stone Cold Robert House said:
At this point your entire argument is just refusing to accept that scale has an effect in design. "Oh this would make sense if the game was in real size, but since it's not, there is no excuse!" It would be totally unreasonable to expect a huge country to be represented anywhere near a realistic scale, unless most of the terrain is randomly generated like in Daggerfall. You talk about how the Forsworn attacks are downplayed even though it's another case of the game engine being unable to render hundreds of NPCs at once (...)
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I have to say though that this is something Beth really can't do well. They should seriously get away from this "dramatic" stuff, trying to make epic battles or situations. Like in the Civil War campaign. Or calling a situation where 10 people do something a war. It's simply laughable. And not needed anyway. Morrowind had no battles of "epic" proportions. And it was not a bad game at all. I agree, they picked the wrong engine for such kind of narrative. And yet ... they ALWAYS do this over and over again since Oblivion.

No matter how much "scale" there is, a battle with just 5 people where everyone is talking about this huuuuge civil war and turmoil will never ever give me the feeling of epicness or war or what ever. It simply doesn't And Beth either isn't willing or has not the skill to create enough of an abstraction to make it feel right - See Dragon Age 1, a lot of the fighting happens in the background while you advance, hence it feels like there is a real massive battle going on.
 
Agreed, here's to hoping Fallout 4 doesn't just have another "save the world" or "war between good and evil" plot.
 
Stone Cold Robert House said:
Dr Fallout said:
Downscaled is an understatement. Pretty much one mine supplies all of Skyrim's steel you say? Fair enough...

You do have a point, but Bethesda really failed in showing it. Also the civil war fucks up the economy, with half of Skyrim torn up. Solitude no longer makes sense as a rich town if all the good economy points are in the hands of the Stormcloaks, yet how can they run if in-game evidence suggests the holds are EXTREMELY independent with supplies staying each 'city'. Also economically and politically regions like Morthal and Winterhold make no sense. The College has enough power to take over Winterhold, however their leadership doesn't, and the trade in trinkets doesn't work... because the roads there are dangerous and barely traveled. I wonder where they sell their shit... to trolls perhaps? Also the Forsworn threat is so exaggerated yet at the same time it's quite small. Even the attack on the Reach's capital is downplayed. The Forsworn are powerful enough to stop shipments and disrupt trading. Riften is actually supposed to be a trade center, not a farming location. While the area suggests farming, the game suggests otherwise with a high emphasis on non-existing shipping and fishing. Whiterun is surrounded by giants and bandits, who have large enough forces to plague the nearby farms. Now I mention Bandits a lot, so you may accuse me of attacking just a game thing to make Skyrim 'harder'. However look at Morrowind which has small groups of Bandits in a well spread area. Bandits can be a problem but not to the extent Skyrim's should be. Windhelm has few rural properties for sale, being relatively empty. So overall... the economy makes no sense in Skryim's timeline that we see. Earlier on, maybe so, but the economy in Skyrim we see is shit.
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At this point your entire argument is just refusing to accept that scale has an effect in design. "Oh this would make sense if the game was in real size, but since it's not, there is no excuse!" It would be totally unreasonable to expect a huge country to be represented anywhere near a realistic scale, unless most of the terrain is randomly generated like in Daggerfall. You talk about how the Forsworn attacks are downplayed even though it's another case of the game engine being unable to render hundreds of NPCs at once (yet another detail explained by that same initial point of scale). The holds are never made to be economically sufficient, just politically separate, as evidenced by all the carriages, traders and other services connectingeach city. You say Riften is not supposed to be an agricultural center which shows you're actually ignoring a lot of the evidence in the series as seen in books and even pieces of dialogue. You say Morrowind had more sense in their economy, and while the Morrowind world was indeed better constructed, if you applied your own argument to it you'd see it doesn't work because it's also heavily downscaled (with the Dren Plantation that supposedly holds hundreds of slaves being the size of a few buildings, Sadrith Mora as the main Telvanni center in Vvardenfell is basically residential, the Sheogorad region is basically empty other than the area around Dagon Fel, etc). Which is no problem, by the way, as these games need to scaled down and you're apparently the only person to take major issue in that. The bandit thing is an issue of lazy design, not in the worldbuilding - saying "there are enough bandits to take Whiterun!" as an argument against the game's economy is really poor. You could use it as argument against the dungeon or quest design of the game, but not this. All of this just seems like being nitpicky because you can't really understand scale and abstraction (or refuse to accept them as valid design elements even though they are completely normal and have always been used in this genre).
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You basically ignored my reasons. I don't mind downplayed as long as it still works! I don't care if the Forsworn invade Markarth with seven people BUT as long as they do something then I'm fine. The Forsworn threat is downplayed even in it's small scale, because no matter the scale... they do nothing! Everyone is scared to death of them, but no matter if they are 10 or 100 they don't do anything. They're just 'there' so the player can kill another type of bandit, whoop-dee-doo. If each hold is NOT economically sufficient that's nice, because they have trade... so how does trade work if most good economy point is controlled by the Stormcloak enemy? Yeah, let's give the enemy holds steel so they can make more weapons to kill us (as you can see the large part Skyrim doesn't work is that god damn civil war). Riften is more or less portrayed as a fishery and shipping location. Go to Riften. Look around. Talk to people.

My argument is that Skyrim's world makes no sense, on a bigger or smaller scale (though it was at first just smaller scale, Skyrim doesn't work as long as the world doesn't change) so no it doesn't apply to Morrowind, because Morrowind was only really settled in ten years, the world makes sense and while it's still down scaled it has enough people/things to feel as if it isn't. And the bandits were their own argument, not part of the economy. Though it does go the economy, because Bandits disrupt non-existent trade routes and can pillage mines and farms, yet they just sit in their little fortresses and wait for some Dragonborn to kill them all. I would like it if Bandits were a threat, not just another thing that the player can enjoy killing. I do accept abstraction and scale... wait here's the twist... AS LONG AS THEY'RE DONE WELL. Which Skyrim failed.
 
Well, if you mention Riften and Skyrim's stupidity, I just can't not mention the Thieves Guild. Which genius in Bethesda (and this is BETHESDA we're talking about, so there wern't any high expectations, storyline-wise, to begin with) thought of a main quest for the THIEVES GUILD which doesn't ever actually require you to STEAL anything. After the Thieves Guild questline of Oblivion, which was arguably the best in the entire Elder Scrolls series?!

Maybe I'm not fully topic-related, but as a Thief fan, I just can't get over it.
 
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LordAshur said:
Well, if you mention Riften and Skyrim's stupidity, I just can't not mention the Thieves Guild. Which genius in Bethesda (and this is BETHESDA we're talking about, so there wern't any high expectations, storyline-wise, to begin with) thought of a main quest for the THIEVES GUILD which doesn't ever actually require you to STEAL anything. After the Thieves Guild questline of Oblivion, which was arguably the best in the entire Elder Scrolls series?!

Maybe I'm not fully topic-related, but as a Thief fan, I just can't get over it.
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Ah yes, that messed up shitty piece of writing. There was an article by a gaming author who outlined the failures of it's story. There are a lot.
 
Well pretty much any bigger questline of Skyrim to be honest. Even the Brotherhood quest which was one of the better Skyrim quests. The issue is really that to many situations end with your face on the desk. That's how cringe worthy the writing often is.
 
The Dopamine Cleric said:
Skyrim is boring.

It is a sandbox game watered down with inept storytelling.

It is a story watered down with inept sandbox gameplay.
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If I'm not mistaken, and going by basic mathematics and canceling out multipliers and divisibles that are the same is to be correct, I THINK he just said "Skyrim is boring and inept"?

Sounds about right.
 
Dr Fallout said:
You basically ignored my reasons. I don't mind downplayed as long as it still works! I don't care if the Forsworn invade Markarth with seven people BUT as long as they do something then I'm fine. The Forsworn threat is downplayed even in it's small scale, because no matter the scale... they do nothing! Everyone is scared to death of them, but no matter if they are 10 or 100 they don't do anything. They're just 'there' so the player can kill another type of bandit, whoop-dee-doo. If each hold is NOT economically sufficient that's nice, because they have trade... so how does trade work if most good economy point is controlled by the Stormcloak enemy? Yeah, let's give the enemy holds steel so they can make more weapons to kill us (as you can see the large part Skyrim doesn't work is that god damn civil war). Riften is more or less portrayed as a fishery and shipping location. Go to Riften. Look around. Talk to people.

My argument is that Skyrim's world makes no sense, on a bigger or smaller scale (though it was at first just smaller scale, Skyrim doesn't work as long as the world doesn't change) so no it doesn't apply to Morrowind, because Morrowind was only really settled in ten years, the world makes sense and while it's still down scaled it has enough people/things to feel as if it isn't. And the bandits were their own argument, not part of the economy. Though it does go the economy, because Bandits disrupt non-existent trade routes and can pillage mines and farms, yet they just sit in their little fortresses and wait for some Dragonborn to kill them all. I would like it if Bandits were a threat, not just another thing that the player can enjoy killing. I do accept abstraction and scale... wait here's the twist... AS LONG AS THEY'RE DONE WELL. Which Skyrim failed.
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Uh, I'm not ignoring anything, you're just changing the subject. Now it's about how the in-game conflicts and quests were presented. Which was awful. I was arguing only about the in-game world economy and location setup. In any other case I'll be the first to criticize Skyrim, meaning there is little point in saying anything else.
 
Now that you talk about it I might just ask right away. Are there any big hints to an economy in Skyrim? Not that I critize it. I am just totally oblivious to that part, not that I have really seen or heard much of it in Skyrim when playing the game. But I also havn't been really paying attention to it. THough I do guess the visual representation is better, at least compared to Fallout. Most of the smaller locations do make sense. With cutting wood, farming and the one or other mine here and there. And the Khajiit Caravan which I feel was awesome and I wish they would have done more (a lot more!) with that.
 
Crni Vuk said:
Now that you talk about it I might just ask right away. Are there any big hints to an economy in Skyrim? Not that I critize it. I am just totally oblivious to that part, not that I have really seen or heard much of it in Skyrim when playing the game. But I also havn't been really paying attention to it. THough I do guess the visual representation is better, at least compared to Fallout. Most of the smaller locations do make sense. With cutting wood, farming and the one or other mine here and there. And the Khajiit Caravan which I feel was awesome and I wish they would have done more (a lot more!) with that.
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The relatively static world makes dialogue and location placement the biggest indicators, really - as in, we don't really see a bunch of carriages taking goods from city to city but we know from the layout of cities/roads and from the characters that some routes and activities are more important to certain regions, and which are less represented. So when you put together the geography of each region with the location of towns and other settlements, the world is fairly self-consistent (there is logical sense in which cities are poorer or richer and we know how they reach that state, as I explained in my first post in this thread, unlike say Fallout 3 which hardly has any cohesion between each location). Now, one thing the game fails pretty badly at is representing the military aspect - camps, blacksmiths and guards are distributed decently, but we see very little of the warrior culture mentioned in books like Children of the Sky except in tombs. It's true that the Tongues are long dead by the time the game takes place, but it seems the only place a strong warrior culture exists is, oddly enough, among the Skaal. There's the Civil War, which is completely pointless and poorly designed despite being all over the map. The Companions are completely isolated. So that aspect of young Nords being trained to be warriors from young age is something that is definitely missing.
 
Yeah, that's another issue. So little is actually touched by the Civil War really. I mean a fucking Civil War. Someone at Bethesda should have told them what that actually means for a nation. But you know, neither the Companions, the Thiefs or anyone really seems to care much about it. Skyrims world is so life less, and shiny. Like a puppet world made out of plastic. Nice to look at, but when you scratch on the surface, it all falls apart. And sadly the whole design and world is build like that.
 
Stone Cold Robert House said:
Dr Fallout said:
You basically ignored my reasons. I don't mind downplayed as long as it still works! I don't care if the Forsworn invade Markarth with seven people BUT as long as they do something then I'm fine. The Forsworn threat is downplayed even in it's small scale, because no matter the scale... they do nothing! Everyone is scared to death of them, but no matter if they are 10 or 100 they don't do anything. They're just 'there' so the player can kill another type of bandit, whoop-dee-doo. If each hold is NOT economically sufficient that's nice, because they have trade... so how does trade work if most good economy point is controlled by the Stormcloak enemy? Yeah, let's give the enemy holds steel so they can make more weapons to kill us (as you can see the large part Skyrim doesn't work is that god damn civil war). Riften is more or less portrayed as a fishery and shipping location. Go to Riften. Look around. Talk to people.

My argument is that Skyrim's world makes no sense, on a bigger or smaller scale (though it was at first just smaller scale, Skyrim doesn't work as long as the world doesn't change) so no it doesn't apply to Morrowind, because Morrowind was only really settled in ten years, the world makes sense and while it's still down scaled it has enough people/things to feel as if it isn't. And the bandits were their own argument, not part of the economy. Though it does go the economy, because Bandits disrupt non-existent trade routes and can pillage mines and farms, yet they just sit in their little fortresses and wait for some Dragonborn to kill them all. I would like it if Bandits were a threat, not just another thing that the player can enjoy killing. I do accept abstraction and scale... wait here's the twist... AS LONG AS THEY'RE DONE WELL. Which Skyrim failed.
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Uh, I'm not ignoring anything, you're just changing the subject. Now it's about how the in-game conflicts and quests were presented. Which was awful. I was arguing only about the in-game world economy and location setup. In any other case I'll be the first to criticize Skyrim, meaning there is little point in saying anything else.
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I'm not changing anything. I'm still talking about Skyrim's failed economy and other topics which DIRECTLY relate to the economy.
 
Courier said:
Agreed, here's to hoping Fallout 4 doesn't just have another "save the world" or "war between good and evil" plot.
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Every time I get a small kick of "MAYBE I'll try FO4 out, maybe I'll just try it" I remind myself of how horrible it can end up being.
It feels so likely. Especially with that dissapointing showcasing, with the dog and the cheering audience. It really looks like it'll be Fallout 3 II.

Also, we all forget this, but they planned this during FO3. There were hints there as to what FO4 would be about, it was all settled. WE ALL thought that FONV would mean something, that it would matter, and in our hopes, we forgot that FO3 did indeed hint at FO4s plot: The damn "robots" from "The Institute", the dude you help in "Rivet City", that's the plot.
 
zegh8578 said:
Courier said:
Agreed, here's to hoping Fallout 4 doesn't just have another "save the world" or "war between good and evil" plot.
Click to expand...

Every time I get a small kick of "MAYBE I'll try FO4 out, maybe I'll just try it" I remind myself of how horrible it can end up being.
It feels so likely. Especially with that dissapointing showcasing, with the dog and the cheering audience. It really looks like it'll be Fallout 3 II.

Also, we all forget this, but they planned this during FO3. There were hints there as to what FO4 would be about, it was all settled. WE ALL thought that FONV would mean something, that it would matter, and in our hopes, we forgot that FO3 did indeed hint at FO4s plot: The damn "robots" from "The Institute", the dude you help in "Rivet City", that's the plot.
Click to expand...

It's just Fallout 3.2. It's funny how Bethesda is trying a new setting and factions, yet we all know they handle that badly so no one is excited for it. Lot's of people were disappointed by the rehash of different faction in Fallout 3... but Bethesda just made some more stupid ones instead!
 
Dr Fallout said:
zegh8578 said:
Courier said:
Agreed, here's to hoping Fallout 4 doesn't just have another "save the world" or "war between good and evil" plot.
Click to expand...

Every time I get a small kick of "MAYBE I'll try FO4 out, maybe I'll just try it" I remind myself of how horrible it can end up being.
It feels so likely. Especially with that dissapointing showcasing, with the dog and the cheering audience. It really looks like it'll be Fallout 3 II.

Also, we all forget this, but they planned this during FO3. There were hints there as to what FO4 would be about, it was all settled. WE ALL thought that FONV would mean something, that it would matter, and in our hopes, we forgot that FO3 did indeed hint at FO4s plot: The damn "robots" from "The Institute", the dude you help in "Rivet City", that's the plot.
Click to expand...

It's just Fallout 3.2. It's funny how Bethesda is trying a new setting and factions, yet we all know they handle that badly so no one is excited for it. Lot's of people were disappointed by the rehash of different faction in Fallout 3... but Bethesda just made some more stupid ones instead!
Click to expand...

A bit of a nitpick on my part, but many people are excited for it. Look, this is perfection at its most perfect. You have to remember this - Bethesda making a crappy-ass crap Fallout game is not an error on their part, it is simply unfortunate on our part. Error=/=misfortune! Bethesda has been studying their sales reports, they've been studying the feedback, they have been reading forums, they've read the arguments, probably even right here, they have taken good note of all the oldies, and they know full well what we want. Back when they were hinting to FO3, they even went and said something like "Relax, we all got it on our laptops - it's our favorite game too!"
They know...

Here's a good example - years ago I try to push FO2 to some friends, push push, they aren't very excited, cus the game looks old and stupid. They try it, I'm all "WELL!? =D" and it was discarded as old and stupid - NOW - time passes, and FO3 comes out, and here is the math:
A formula of content culminating in FO2 will result in = People finding it old and stupid, except a few nerds. Sales: 80% lost, 20% gained.
A formula of exactly what FO3 turned out to be, a shooter etc = People finding it remarkable, giving it good ratings, "intelligent dialogue!" "multiple choice!", they lost the 20% nerd-base, but who gives a shit - they earned 80% of the money.

Very simplified here, but that is the basic mechanism behind it. They don't give a long, soft shit... about what Fallout is "supposed to be", they know what it's supposed to be, they have probably read ALL the source material - ALL of it!
They only give a shit about whatever mathematical formula brings them the biggest ammount of money. The formula of Skyrim, man, was it a money-maker, it's even boring, it's dumb, dull, uneventful and boring, and people praaaised it, so, math-wise, that is the answer, nothing else - make it like we made Skyrim! "Skyrim with guns, lol", but yes, it is, they even bragged "you can make your own home" as if you couldn't fucking just now do that in Skyrim o_-

It makes me very hopeless and cynical to remind myself of this, because it extends to all of society, it all comes down to people and their interests, even politicians doing decisions of global importance do these ultimately to safeguard their own next election and pension plan and whatnot...
Then I take some comfort in that the world is still brimming with real artists, they pop up like Beth once did, all obscure and unnoticed
 
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