Skyrim: thoughts?

Ted the Flayer · Post by **Ted the Flayer** » Tue Jul 17, 2012 3:54 pm

I found Dark Souls to be both slow paced, and WAY too unforgiving for someone of my skill level. Got tired of dying constantly, and got tired of not being able to memorize long chains of decisions where if you messed up you died.

I found it like playing guitar Hero, if you didn't get to see the notes and you lost if you missed only one.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Wed Jul 18, 2012 12:29 am

Ted_the_Flayer wrote:I found it like playing guitar Hero, if you didn't get to see the notes and you lost if you missed only one.

That sounds like an awesome way to play Guitar Hero. Does it even have special modes like hidden/instant fail?

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Wed Jul 18, 2012 4:01 am

Ted the Flayer wrote:I found Dark Souls to be both slow paced, and WAY too unforgiving for someone of my skill level. Got tired of dying constantly, and got tired of not being able to memorize long chains of decisions where if you messed up you died.

I found it like playing

It's like playing Super Mario Bros.

But easier, since you can level up or have Fire Flower on all the time.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Wed Jul 18, 2012 4:03 am

Blicero wrote:
OgreBattle wrote:
Do you get raped in that game? That's what "dishonored" brings up in my head.
I have no idea why the word dishonored would bring up such associations

The dictionary

dishonoredpast participle, past tense of dis·hon·or (Verb)
Verb:
1. Bring shame or disgrace on.
2. Violate the chastity of (a woman); rape.

Google 'dishonored', and that's what comes up automatically.

Blicero · Post by **Blicero** » Wed Jul 18, 2012 4:47 am

OgreBattle wrote:
dishonoredpast participle, past tense of dis·hon·or (Verb)
Verb:
1. Bring shame or disgrace on.
2. Violate the chastity of (a woman); rape.
Google 'dishonored', and that's what comes up automatically.

Kay then. I did not know that the modern usage of dishonored still possessed that meaning. I'm pretty sure the only places I've seen it used in such a context are medieval and faux-medieval works.

Ted the Flayer · Post by **Ted the Flayer** » Wed Jul 18, 2012 2:38 pm

DS: I know that Guitar Hero/Rock Band usually has something called "Performance Mode" where you remove the notes, I'm not sure about failing if you miss one.

Ogre: I see your point, but the difference is I've been playing games like Super Mario Brothers for almost 30 years. Which means when a new Mario game comes out, I can use that accumulated knowledge on the new one and still be fairly good. I am okay with games like dark Souls being around because I consider them to have a higher level of quality than another CoD game, but I just don't like them.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Jun 17, 2014 12:10 am

I got Legendary edition for my birthday and have been playing through it.

I frequently have to ask "what the hell level am I supposed to be for this area!?" Specifically, what the hell level am I supposed to be for Solstheim and surrounding where I'm not easily killed by a couple ashspawn?

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Tue Jun 17, 2014 2:21 am

My character was around level 40-50 (I think I started in 40s and ended in 50s) when I started going through Solstheim, and I don't recall having much trouble.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Jun 17, 2014 4:14 am

...I'm level 26.

I guess I should catch up on some sidequests.

Hicks · Post by **Hicks** » Tue Jun 17, 2014 8:30 am

I'm just gonna go on record here and say that I'm never giving Bethesda another red cent until my elder scrolls character can fly. Skyrim? Oblivion? I remember the glory of flying and super jumping with +100 fortify athletics potions in Morrowind. Flying and fuck having city gates load scripts.

I will pay all the dollars if they integrate destructible and constructable structures/terrain and making it so that I can shoot a guy in his house though a window or burn him and his house down with a torch.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Tue Jun 17, 2014 10:00 am

Prak_Anima wrote:I got Legendary edition for my birthday and have been playing through it.

I frequently have to ask "what the hell level am I supposed to be for this area!?" Specifically, what the hell level am I supposed to be for Solstheim and surrounding where I'm not easily killed by a couple ashspawn?

Everything scales to your level, you will always feel like that because there is no sense of progression in this game.

And Hicks, this is a company that made a game where you can use plates instead of no clip because having objects have actual hit-boxes was too hard. Even if you get real time burning physics, they'll suck.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Jun 17, 2014 1:35 pm

Scales how? When I started out, a wolf had a decent chance of killing me. Now i take out a pair of wolves in two to three hits. The first giant i found took a lot of sniping to drop, and there was no way in hell I'd get a mammoth, now i can take out a giant in a double dagger slash, and a mammoth in one lucky snipe.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Jun 17, 2014 1:46 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:Scales how? When I started out, a wolf had a decent chance of killing me. Now i take out a pair of wolves in two to three hits. The first giant i found took a lot of sniping to drop, and there was no way in hell I'd get a mammoth, now i can take out a giant in a double dagger slash, and a mammoth in one lucky snipe.

What monsters you run into scales with your level. If you are level 1 you will run into a lot of wolves. If you are level 67 you will run into a lot of not wolves.

The most obvious example is crypts. If you are level 1 you will face nothing but Draguar. If you are level 80 you will face nothing but Draguar Super Mega Death Overlord Kings.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Tue Jun 17, 2014 2:03 pm

This, you can, for instance, venture into a bandit lair at level 1, decide that shit is too hot for you, and then come back at level 50 and notice no appreciable difference in difficulty. There's never a point that anything really becomes easy, and while that's not a terrible way to go about game design, in a game where you can go wherever you want it really does feel like you're on a treadmill some places you can go that's really more friendly to low level characters would be nice, just to give a sense that you are becoming more bad ass as you go on. Cause if all you ever fight is level appropriate challenges then you never feel how much better you are than the peons.

Probably the worst offenders are the guards, they don't get new types or anything, they just respawn every couple days at your level so you never get stronger than them until you reach level 50 then they stop.

Also, I understand that the game doesn't want you to get your hands on great swag from every enemy, but why are they so much stronger than me when they have nothing but trash on them and I'm wielding a ebony sword with fire and frost damage?

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Tue Jun 17, 2014 2:05 pm

As with every common complaint about Skyrim, there's a mod for that. Never leave home without 'em.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Tue Jun 17, 2014 2:07 pm

I have the console version, do not feel like shelling out for the same game twice. Besides, if the game you designed can't stand up on its own merit and needs the players to finish it, you have designed a shitty game.

John Magnum · Post by **John Magnum** » Tue Jun 17, 2014 3:28 pm

I've always found in Skyrim that once you get extremely well-crafted and well-enchanted custom gear, it tends to flatten every enemy at every level and you don't feel powerless. The game's coy about it, but Smithing and Enchanting are the skills that give you real ultimate combat power.

Antariuk · Post by **Antariuk** » Tue Jun 17, 2014 3:39 pm

John Magnum wrote:I've always found in Skyrim that once you get extremely well-crafted and well-enchanted custom gear, it tends to flatten every enemy at every level and you don't feel powerless. The game's coy about it, but Smithing and Enchanting are the skills that give you real ultimate combat power.

Don't forget Alchemy, which definitely is the 3rd cornerstone to ultimate power (and powerful gear) in Skyrim. I think they nerfed the crazy power-up cycle that was possible in the early game, but it is still the way to go.

The single most useful mod against the problem of your individual power vs. leveling monsters is MMM (Mart's Monster Mod). Not only is it modular and allows you to pick your features, but it allows you to have very dangerous and very weird encounters from day one. Sometimes it gets a bit ridiculous, as in: encounter a giant with his mammoths, start fighting, then a dragon shows up, then another dragon shows up, then some Thalmor join the frenzy. But I think it's still way better than the vanilla status.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Tue Jun 17, 2014 3:42 pm

Who else hates the Falmer?

John Magnum · Post by **John Magnum** » Tue Jun 17, 2014 3:48 pm

Yeah, Alchemy definitely contributes, but it's less mandatory than Smithing and Enchanting and it's also a lot more annoying and fiddly to get ranks in and use. But it's worth mentioning.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Jun 17, 2014 5:08 pm

darkmaster wrote:Who else hates the Falmer?

They're tougher than nails, but I kinda like them as a setting thing.

Anyways, Prak, power works best if you focus on something. Mage, or sneak-attacking, or melee combat. Equipment is also important, but it's being able to do six times damage on a sneak attack that REALLY makes it shine. (Or 15 times damage with a dagger). Or, as in D&D, effects outrank damage. Destruction mage's okay, but being able to stunlock enemies with a dualcast spell is way useful.

That said, the Dragonborn DLC is a sonofabitch in term of difficulty.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Tue Jun 17, 2014 5:15 pm

You know, it's always baffled me that the elder scrolls games can have you literally killing god and you still don't feel important. No body respects you, you never have any lasting effect on the world, sure you can become the leader of every guild and therefore should logically be able to basically run the province, but you can't ever do anything with that.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Jun 17, 2014 5:17 pm

1) The Falmer are fine as a thing, except that you have basically no meaningful way to interact with them. Fuck the stupid Racist Rebels vs Tyrannical Religion suppressing Imperials bullshit. I want to be able to spend my fucking time wiping out the goddam Falmer presence in Skyrim so that the Imperials can let them worship Tyr or whatever, and the Rebels won't blame kahjit for what the Falmer do (and will go back to hating them for being gypsies I guess, but you can't win them all).

2) Yeah, as far as power goes, all you actually need is as much mana regen as you can get (Or High level Enchanting for a set of gear that erases all mana costs from all spells) and a stunlock spell to dual cast. You can beat literally 100% of all single enemy groups by just stun lock chaining. And if you have no mana cost and you are facing a group you can just use really good AoE and/or high damage spells. If you have 100 Destruction and no mana cost just by the most expensive fired blast spell and kill everything with one or two hits.

Or you can get the Master Lightning Destruction Spell, which just fires a continuous beam of death energy that kills everything in half a second, and just wave it around.

That's if you are actually having a hard time. I never did. The other thing to do is put all your points into Stamina and Health, because eventually your spells will cost no mana with proper enchanted gear.

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Tue Jun 17, 2014 5:22 pm

darkmaster wrote:Who else hates the Falmer?

Do you mean the Thalmor? The Thalmor are the High Elves that dress like the bad guys from Harry Potter. The Falmer are the Grimlocks that happen to be mutant elves. Falmer were just annoying at worst, because they were hard to kill if you weren't bow sniping all the time (which basically kills everything ever).

But the Thalmor, on the other hand...the game went out of its way to portray the Thalmor being not-so-secretly-behind just about everything that's going on in Skyrim except the dragons/add-ons, but also went out of its way to make it impossible to actually do anything meaningful with this information, nor to actually do anything for/against the Thalmor that will have any meaningful impact. I was hoping that it was buildup for a Thalmor add-on, but that would be too reasonable for Bethesda. It seriously pisses me off.

John Magnum wrote:Yeah, Alchemy definitely contributes, but it's less mandatory than Smithing and Enchanting and it's also a lot more annoying and fiddly to get ranks in and use. But it's worth mentioning.

Nah, you can get a lot of ranks in Alchemy it really early on if you do that side quest for the court wizard in Whiterun. The town alchemist then likes you, and you can take most of her ingredients, and make potions with them, and then sell them to her, and then buy training with the excess gold, and make more potions.
And there's something super awesome with Alchemy in mid-late game:
[*]Make potions of Fortify Enchanting
[*]Enchant items of Fortify Alchemy
[*]Lather, rinse, repeat until you get bored or reach the cap (I think there's a cap, but I haven't played in a while and could be wrong.) Then just enchant whatever the hell you want on to your stuff.
[*]Profit (quite literally, since you can sell the leftover enchanted items)
Enchanting is the Real Ultimate Power skill that is hardest to raise, but it's probably also the best.

John Magnum · Post by **John Magnum** » Tue Jun 17, 2014 5:26 pm

Enchanting, Smithing, and Alchemy all have super obnoxious "Scour the continent buying ingredients, mass-craft stuff, immediately sell all the stuff back because it's worthless to you*" loops that you have to repeat dozens if not hundreds of times. I found Alchemy the most annoying because of the secret effects bullshit, since either you do a ton of experimentation with all your reagents or you just hop on the wiki to look up what effects everything has. But all three crafting skills have almost identically tedious and protracted levelling patterns.

*Assuming you can find a merchant with enough gold to buy all your stuff, otherwise add another round of continent-scouring.