Why is Skyrim so liked and what is there even to do?

So dearest CT. Why can't you go and apply for President of the United States of America? Or become chairman in Zenimax? Or sit as director of the next Avatar movie? Because in an actual living world that has a society in it, you can't do whatever you want. People will tell you to fuck off. You'll be pushed around, and it'll be physycally impossible. And hell, you even could do it after a lot of effort and subterfuge. And then face the trouble that such things actually are.

The problem with this attitude is it's not what real life reflects as many people have been great generals, politicians, scholars, AND richer than God. Let alone mythological heros. Gilgamesh was King of Ur, a Priest, a 3/4 god, the greatest warrior who ever lived, and a learned scholar who just so happened to also have a serious problem with kidnapping women to be sex slaves. The Elder Scrolls Universe is also one which has been based around the concept of superhumans who affect the whole of reality with the power of their raw aweomeness throughout.

You're essentially being pissed off at the games premise of being the Dragonborn and a demigod.

I do think part of the issue here is you see the "game" as something to do everything in and I see a sandbox like World of Warcraft where you're not MEANT to do everything in one playthrough.

In Skyrim? You become Archmage in a gameplay hour. No questions asked! There aren't even magical exams or challenges or whatever the fuck. There are no magic "checks" in the game unless it somehow is "bring your retarded viking to work" day.

Except for the one which exists. You know, the one where you have to display a facility with magic to get accepted then go one some field trips and archaeological missions to retrieve valuable mystical artifacts for. Also, that's kind of a thing colleges in real life. Plenty of staff don't teach but they do processes like...say, treasure hunting.
 
Except for the one which exists. You know, the one where you have to display a facility with magic to get accepted then go one some field trips and archaeological missions to retrieve valuable mystical artifacts for. Also, that's kind of a thing colleges in real life. Plenty of staff don't teach but they do processes like...say, treasure hunting.
There's only one mission in the College that feels like a legit college field trip and the rest is forgotten for another typical save-the-world bullshit questline that requires artifact collection than actual studying, research and learning of spells. Plus you can get around the display bit with a Speech option or simply Shouting.

No actual courses or full lectures for the player in the College which is honestly wasted potential. The College and the Companions honestly have the worst faction questlines in the game though that's not saying much since most of the questlines are around the same caliber.
 
In my opinion, bethsoft games are really all about modding and customization. Other than that, they are very meh.

i cant help but compare something like the dragon age series to stuff like oblivion/skyrim. They are both popular, they both have their own flaws, but they take very different approachs to an RPG.

I dont really like dragon age gameplay either, the whole deal with WOW style abilities and micro managing combat scripts, trying to get your party members to do something in the right order at the right time. But it is still much better balanced than stuff like skyrim, which is mostly "spamming melee attacks" or "Back pedaling with arrows/magic". Blocking in skyrim actually gets you killed faster because enemies dont leave themselves vulnerable after having their attack blocked (unlike oblivion, which actually had better meee), so they can just keep spamming attacks at you.

The "action combat" leaves a lot to be desirable since most of it is exploiting dumb AI, and the combat just isnt as fast paced or well done as something like dark souls. There is nearly no difference between the different weapon skills other than their unique weapons. Dungeons are boring and loot is uninteresting...oh look a container with a few gold coins and some junk. Yay. Fallout 3/NV had the same problem...opening containers got dull quickly simply because there was nothing decent in them, almost everything was low level trash or junk like clipboards or whatever. Fallout 2 had much better loot placement, at the expense of the maps being individually designed instead of randomly generated via badly designed level lists. Exploring in something like new vegas is largely a waste of time...all you get are empty wilderness, some annoying dogs that attack you, and as a reward, you find a shack with a varmint rifle and a sunset bottlecap. Lame.

Something like dragon age actually bothers to tell a story. The problem with the whole "sandbox" thing is that there is basically no story. Your character is this person who doesnt speak (because all those voiced lines would take a fortune to do), but unfortunately, there is almost nothing to read either (because their target market doesnt like to read). Stuff like planescape torment is a pleasure to read, but writing all that takes effort, so its easier for bethsoft to do player responses in the form of uninteresting one liners. You cant immerse yourself in your character because there is basically no character, nothing that defines his/her personality, her goals, etc.

Compare that to dragon age 2 where you play as Hawke, who actually feels like a real person. So do the party members that you can recruit. They make jokes, they talk, they laugh. They have personalities. Even though the dialogue options largely dont matter since they just range from sarcastic/good/evil responses, the dialogue is far better written than bethsoft games. Meanwhile, bethsoft games have you hire a companion, do a simple quest, and then they follow you for the rest of the game and say pretty much nothing. They are just there to help you kill stuff. At no point do you actually CARE about them because they are automated killing machines. I dont feel anything for any of the characters in any of the bethsoft games, except for the girl in the skyrim vampire DLC, which actually has decent voice acting and some attempt at storytelling...until you finish the DLC, at which point she turns into the same automated killing machine like the rest (barring one quest that unlocks after you finish the DLC).

Bethsoft games also consistently struggle to deliver interesting fights. Oh look, 2-3 bandits with the fraction of the player's HP and some low level gear. Literally, who cares? New vegas has you run into raiders all the time who try to kill you with pool sticks and pose zero threat to you. Even the "boss fights" are a total joke. They also can't create a balanced economy...every human enemy you kill drops a weapon/armor that you can sell for tons of gold, becoming filthy rich quickly. Its difficult to get around this problem...dragon age basically had to side step it entirely by not making human enemies drop all their gear, so they could balance the player's progression instead of throwing tons of loot at you with every encounter. Its not "realistic", but its better balanced.
 
The problem with this attitude is it's not what real life reflects as many people have been great generals, politicians, scholars, AND richer than God. Let alone mythological heros. Gilgamesh was King of Ur, a Priest, a 3/4 god, the greatest warrior who ever lived, and a learned scholar who just so happened to also have a serious problem with kidnapping women to be sex slaves. The Elder Scrolls Universe is also one which has been based around the concept of superhumans who affect the whole of reality with the power of their raw aweomeness throughout.
Those are not many, those are not even 1% of all the world population, also those people are not everything, mythological beings are (well) mythological, they are exaggerated and given powers they do not possess or they never even existed.
And about that tiny fraction of people who were great at something, how many in addition to their other great feats/expertise became super rich? how many also became leader of a church or a cult? how many also became astronauts? Etc. They became famous because they excel in their fields, not in all the fields. Most great generals die without being millionaires, without achieving much outside of the military career for example.
For example, using your logic someone who was born in a different country could move to the USA and become president. But they can't because there are rules that say only USA born citizens can become president... But then that is screwing the completionists! That is just one example, our world is full of other examples like that, there are rules and laws and people who make it impossible to do whatever you want to and be whoever you want to.
TES world was always like that in the past too. Play Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind and even Oblivion and you will have to do a lot of work for the guilds and have specific stats/skills relevant to that guild to rise on the ranks. But all of a sudden in Skyrim "BAM" you somehow can be everything you want to be. It breaks the rules of the TES universe.
Except for the one which exists. You know, the one where you have to display a facility with magic to get accepted then go one some field trips and archaeological missions to retrieve valuable mystical artifacts for. Also, that's kind of a thing colleges in real life. Plenty of staff don't teach but they do processes like...say, treasure hunting.
"Upon visiting the College, it can be joined by passing a test of merit which requires the casting of a spell. The College must be joined during "Elder Knowledge" in order to progress the main quest. However, this can be avoided if the Dragonborn travels directly to Septimus Signus' Outpost to pick up the next part of the quest there."
"A high-level persuasion check bypasses this test. Additionally, revealing one's Dragonborn-identity to Faralda causes her to ask for a Thu'um demonstration. Successfully using it bypasses the spell-casting test."
The game doesn't let you fail this. Because you will become the Dragonborn during the main quest whether or not you know any magic.
 
I remember my unarmed argonian managing to become the magic master guild person thingy without even trying.

I mean seriously, they watched a scalie punch shit to death and went "Yeah he's totally magic leader material".
 
I remember my unarmed argonian managing to become the magic master guild person thingy without even trying.

I mean seriously, they watched a scalie punch shit to death and went "Yeah he's totally magic leader material".
My Nord stealth archer went through the same thing.

They saw him deal with monsters by making sneaky shots with a bow and thought "Now that's our future Archmage right there."
 
Oh, I also forgot to say this:
"If the spell she requests has not yet been learned, she offers to sell it for 30 ".
So it's like:
-Hi there.
-Uh... Hello.
-You here to join the college?
-I guess.
-Ok, you need to prove me you know about magic and know how to cast a specific spell.
-Erm... I don't really know those spells... I also never cast a spell before and never raised my mana or used "skill points" to raise my magic skill trees... Maybe I don....
-Stop it right there, you give me 30 septims and I sell you the spell you need to enter this college!
-30 Septims?
-Yeah, a bargain isn't it?
-Sure!
...
*spell cast*
-Wow, look at that, you know magic quite well. Alright, you're in. Follow me.
-Sweet!
 
I love how the PC 'consumes' the book too.

He gives her 30 coins for a book, devours the book, then casts the spell.

Maybe she's just impressed he converts a book into magic hand effects by eating it?
 
The problem with this attitude is it's not what real life reflects as many people have been great generals, politicians, scholars, AND richer than God. Let alone mythological heros. Gilgamesh was King of Ur, a Priest, a 3/4 god, the greatest warrior who ever lived, and a learned scholar who just so happened to also have a serious problem with kidnapping women to be sex slaves. The Elder Scrolls Universe is also one which has been based around the concept of superhumans who affect the whole of reality with the power of their raw aweomeness throughout.

You're essentially being pissed off at the games premise of being the Dragonborn and a demigod.

I do think part of the issue here is you see the "game" as something to do everything in and I see a sandbox like World of Warcraft where you're not MEANT to do everything in one playthrough.

Except for the one which exists. You know, the one where you have to display a facility with magic to get accepted then go one some field trips and archaeological missions to retrieve valuable mystical artifacts for. Also, that's kind of a thing colleges in real life. Plenty of staff don't teach but they do processes like...say, treasure hunting.
You're not let in in any of the factions, except maybe the Blades and High Hrothgar (which are just main quest stuff really) FOR being a demigod. You do that stuff because everyone in the world of Tamriel is a promiscuous half braindead homunculi.

All those myths featured, well, some kind of extreme feat of show of wit, will or strength. The only feat you're doing in Skyrim is being able to do many things at the same time, so we could say that the Dovahkiin is a multitasking demigod. Good enough. Also, you tend to forget how much shit the demigods get and how tragic their ends are, except maybe for Perseus. Unless you really felt for that good ol' world eating dragon, you face no tragedy or bad outcomes like that.

A GOOD RPG doesn't need you to dance around its systems.

In World of Warcraft you are supposed to do everything as you're playing it for the money you paid, lmao. You say it like if there's any roleplaying there out of the designated RP servers which ar emostly dead nowadays.
 
To be fair, this crap of becoming the headmaster of every faction started with Oblivion. So i guess Skyrim is just following that game's philosophy. Still doesn't excuse Skyrim for using this shit.


And after reading some posts, the Dragonborn is a damn Mary Sue which is one of the things i hate the most in fiction.
 
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I love how the PC 'consumes' the book too.

He gives her 30 coins for a book, devours the book, then casts the spell.

Maybe she's just impressed he converts a book into magic hand effects by eating it?

Where do you get the impression he eats it? Clearly given the quality of the rest of the game the Dragonborn shoves the book up his arse
 
I'm always the odd man out when it comes to Bethesda games because I freely admit that Morrowind is the closest thing to a decent game that they have made, but I still don't think it's a particularly good game.
 
No actual courses or full lectures for the player in the College which is honestly wasted potential. The College and the Companions honestly have the worst faction questlines in the game though that's not saying much since most of the questlines are around the same caliber.
I would say the Thiefs guild really takes the cake when it comes to nonsensical not-thiefery storylines. That ... is such a cluster fuck, that you have to actually aks your self if the guy who designed it was sane.
 
The Elder Scrolls Universe is also one which has been based around the concept of superhumans who affect the whole of reality with the power of their raw aweomeness throughout.
I'm sure that even in myths Achilles gained his warrior abilities through actual fighting skill, and not by purely being awesome, and Gilgamesh became a scholar/warrior/whatever through actually knowing his shit, not by everyone thinking he's one.

Wouldn't it be far more meaningful if you become Archmage by actually practicing magic, and genuinely being the best magic user in Skyrim, as opposed to simply running around pretending to be a wizard?, In Morrowind it actually feels like an achievment to progress through the mages guild, because you know you genuinely are growing in magical power, and actually are the most powerful mage in Vvadenfall, as opposed to just being told it regardless of how much effort you put in.
Plenty of staff don't teach but they do processes like...say, treasure hunting.
Yes but, no reasonable college would make you a staff member because you are good at clearing out dungeons. That would be like a university making you a professor in archaeology because you own a shovel.

If you want to become the college treasure hunter, you should at least know about ancient history/magic artefacts and the processes that the College of Winterhold goes through, or at the very least be knowledgable about a certain field of magic, so you recognise artefacts of that magic type when you see them.

Hence we're back to the locking you out because your not skilled enough.
 
Another thing which pisses me off is the dark brotherhood cunts.

*Scary woman captures me*

"I am not letting you go until you kill one of these three sods you don't know"

*Breaks her spine with my bear hands*

*Takes password and leaves*

*Literally exterminates the brotherhood apart from every fucking essential character*
 
Another thing which pisses me off is the dark brotherhood cunts.

*Scary woman captures me*

"I am not letting you go until you kill one of these three sods you don't know"

*Breaks her spine with my bear hands*

*Takes password and leaves*

*Literally exterminates the brotherhood apart from every fucking essential character*

Isn't that the way the quests should go for a good character?

One question:

Why can't you become the Emperor of Tamriel in Skyrim?

CT Phipps answer in his head:

But I role played one!

Me:

:roll:

Is it wrong I was really disappointed there wasn't DLC which allowed you to become High King with a build-up to becoming Emperor? Because I thought that's where the story was going. The Dragonborn should be the next Emperor, lore-wise.
 
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