# The unofficial Skyrim thread.



## bcasey25raptor

Well in 4 days the world will be inundated with the most anticipated game of the year. Skyrim being the next installment in the elder scrolls series. I have waited many years for this. This thread is for all who are excited about this release. And upon the day it is finally released we are to discuss this game and what we think of it. Post mods for pc gamers and post links to extra content. I hope your as excited as i am.
   
  Now enjoy the video.


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## Magedark

Sadly, I'm getting it for 360.

But still, the wait is unbearable.


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## Deathdeisel

Nom nom, soo many good games coming out. PC for sure for me.


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## bcasey25raptor

Quote: 





magedark said:


> Sadly, I'm getting it for 360.
> But still, the wait is unbearable.


 


  I only prefer the pc version because i can mod it.
   
  http://www.skyrimnexus.com/


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## joomongj

PC it is. Need to download ost when it hits the net as well.


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## Magedark

I for one can't wait to throw away any advancement into the story for massive exploration and dragon hunting.


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## Hifianddrumming

Will this work for mac? I can't be asked t actually hook up my x-box and get my TV working. Meh.


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## bcasey25raptor

Quote: 





magedark said:


> I for one can't wait to throw away any advancement into the story for massive exploration and dragon hunting.


 


  Yes just yes.


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## Head Injury

Already preordered. Not sure if it'll ship on release day. 
   
  My first character's going to be an Argonian spellsword, with perks in Destruction, One-Handed with a Sword emphasis, some Alteration and Illusion for good measure. I think I'll try to avoid potent healing spells the first time around, they always make things too easy. I'll probably end up making a Nord warrior with One-Handed axes and Block soon after. The archery overhaul has me interested in a thief character too.


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## bcasey25raptor

Quote: 





head injury said:


> Already preordered. Not sure if it'll ship on release day.
> 
> My first character's going to be an Argonian spellsword, with perks in Destruction, One-Handed with a Sword emphasis, some Alteration and Illusion for good measure. I think I'll try to avoid potent healing spells the first time around, they always make things too easy. I'll probably end up making a Nord warrior with One-Handed axes and Block soon after. The archery overhaul has me interested in a thief character too.


 

  
  I'm going to go with a nordic warrior. I can't wait to play this game i have been waiting for years for this release. Oblivion is still awesome though.


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## Head Injury

I've uninstalled Oblivion. It got to the point where I needed over 300 mods to keep me happy, so most of my time was spent in loading screens after crashes.
   
  It's going to be great being able to play for more than half an hour at a time and without having to save every two minutes.


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## bcasey25raptor

Quote: 





head injury said:


> I've uninstalled Oblivion. It got to the point where I needed over 300 mods to keep me happy, so most of my time was spent in loading screens after crashes.
> 
> It's going to be great being able to play for more than half an hour at a time and without having to save every two minutes.


 


  Mods are 1/2 the fun. Vanilla oblivion is still great though.


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## treal512

Ugh, this and D3. Is it PC upgrade time? I built it in 2004


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## Head Injury

Quote: 





treal512 said:


> Ugh, this and D3. Is it PC upgrade time? I built it in 2004


 

 I doubt Diablo 3 is demanding. Skyrim won't be much worse than Oblivion, if it's worse at all. Whatever you do salvage your hard drives. They're expensive right now.


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## bcasey25raptor

Quote: 





head injury said:


> I doubt Diablo 3 is demanding. Skyrim won't be much worse than Oblivion, if it's worse at all. *Whatever you do salvage your hard drives. They're expensive right now.*


 


  Wait hard drive prices went up?


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## treal512

Quote:


head injury said:


> I doubt Diablo 3 is demanding. Skyrim won't be much worse than Oblivion, if it's worse at all. Whatever you do salvage your hard drives. They're expensive right now.


 
   
  About the only things up to date in my PC are the HDDs. I'd be replacing core parts like the proc (AMD 3500+), mobo, ram, and video (AGP). I can't be chopping around on the lowest settings in Diablo, man!


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## Head Injury

Quote: 





bcasey25raptor said:


> Wait hard drive prices went up?


 

 Floods in Taiwan. I bought one of these babies for $50 this summer.


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## Henry Flower

Quote: 





head injury said:


> Floods in Taiwan. I bought one of these babies for $50 this summer.


 


  *cough* Thailand.


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## crapmonster

Quote:


head injury said:


> Floods in Taiwan. I bought one of these babies for $50 this summer.


 


  Holy crap, thats one heck of a price jump.  I picked up an extra Spinpoint at the end of August for $60.


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## fraseyboy

Final Maths exam on Monday, haven't studied. Skyrim couldn't have come at a worse time.


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## Head Injury

Quote: 





henry flower said:


> *cough* Thailand.


 

 I suppose I should have looked at more than the first Google result. My mistake.


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## joomongj

Quote: 





fraseyboy said:


> Final Maths exam on Monday, haven't studied. Skyrim couldn't have come at a worse time.


 

  
  I've been there. Happened multiple times even in grad school. But I've eventually learned to block out sources of distraction and temptation via firm determination that if I play and don't study, I will regret for a long time!


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## logwed

Quote: 





fraseyboy said:


> Final Maths exam on Monday, haven't studied. Skyrim couldn't have come at a worse time.


 


  Agreed, the whole idea of releasing games in November is pretty awful to the game industry's target demographic...


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## bcasey25raptor

Quote: 





logwed said:


> Agreed, the whole idea of releasing games in November is pretty awful to the game industry's target demographic...


 


 They release them when the holiday season starts so they can make more money.


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## logwed

Quote: 





bcasey25raptor said:


> They release them when the holiday season starts so they can make more money.


 


  I'm not an idiot, so I know this. However, that doesn't change the fact that college-aged folks have extremely heavy workloads this time of year.


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## crapmonster

I don't personally put alot of weight on stats myself but it is something to consider:
 http://grabstats.com/statcategorymain.asp?StatCatID=13

 according to this, the avg gamer is 35 and has been playing for 13 years.  In terms of sales specifically, that elevates the avg age to 40.  That said, college-aged gamers while a large part of the target demographic may not actually be "the" target demographic.  Personally, I didn't start gaming regularly until I was well out of college since during, I had little time nor money to do so.

 Its a similar story for most of my friends as well who really started putting down money into gaming after college or towards the end of it.  We all gamed beforehand but we didn't spend nearly as much money on it as we do now.

 I tihnk realistically, the age range in which most sales are coming from is probably ALOT higher up.  Mainly because its a situation of who has the economic means to buy games whether its for yourself or as a gift.  Parents buying games for their kids probably pushes the average way up especially around holiday season and the fact that most good games are 18+.  I don't know about stores elsewhere, but here my Gamestop always asks for ID which would definitely serve as a hindrance for younger-aged(highschool/early college) sales.

 All that said, I can't really understand how its awful specifically for college-aged consumers.  Its not all that great either for those that work fulltime jobs and have other crap to deal with day to day.  Games usually come out on Monday at midnight or Tuesday.  Its not like any of us can put everything else on hold and just miss work the next day.  Also, at they very least, Skyrim is coming out on a Friday which gives most of us the weekend, so it could definitely be worse.


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## bcasey25raptor

I was pretty certain M means 17 +.


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## Head Injury

ESRB is a ratings system. It doesn't imply target audience, only limits it. Skyrim is made for all ages over 17, not just high school and college students. The average gamer is getting older every year.
   
  However, the average age of members on the official Bethesda forums is high school and college aged. Take from that what you will. The sample isn't exactly random.


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## bcasey25raptor

Quote: 





head injury said:


> ESRB is a ratings system. It doesn't imply target audience, only limits it. Skyrim is made for all ages over 17, not just high school and college students.* The average gamer is getting older every year.*
> 
> However, the average age of members on the official Bethesda forums is high school and college aged. Take from that what you will. The sample isn't exactly random.


 


  I thought gaming would be expanding to younger demographics not getting older?


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## Head Injury

Quote: 





bcasey25raptor said:


> I thought gaming would be expanding to younger demographics not getting older?


 

 Why? The average gamer doesn't stop gaming. Gaming was popularized 20 years ago, if they were teenagers at the time they'd be in their mid 30s now.
   
  Here, think of it like this. Assume a constant rate of growth of 100 new gamers every year (we're working with small scales), and assume they start at age 15. Now assume older gamer numbers don't decrease. That's reasonable, because for every one that quits another might pick the hobby up.

 In year 1 there's 100 gamers age 15. The average age is 15.
 In year 2 there's 100 gamers age 15, and 100 gamers age 16. The average age is 15.5.
 Year 3, 100 15, 100 16, and 100 17 year olds. The average age is 16.
   
  Etc.


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## Fhurricane

This game will be the ish. Not sure if I should get the ps3 version or xbox version


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## Head Injury

Get the PC version


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## bcasey25raptor

Quote: 





head injury said:


> Why? The average gamer doesn't stop gaming. Gaming was popularized 20 years ago, if they were teenagers at the time they'd be in their mid 30s now.
> 
> Here, think of it like this. Assume a constant rate of growth of 100 new gamers every year (we're working with small scales), and assume they start at age 15. Now assume older gamer numbers don't decrease. That's reasonable, because for every one that quits another might pick the hobby up.
> 
> ...


 

 Ok that makes sense.


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## dibbler67

32 more minutes for me! 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



   
   
  See you all next year.


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## bcasey25raptor

Quote: 





dibbler67 said:


> 32 more minutes for me!
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 


  Lmao i still got a good 2.5 hours to go. Curse living on the west coast. But why am i complaining i'm buying it later. I hate lines.


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## oqvist

PC version is what to get as always. I am moving so I will stay well away or nothing will get done


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## beamthegreat

Good game but could be better. The graphics is pretty bad even when I set every thing to ultra. Also the game is horribly rendered as I get 25-40 FPS on my HD 5870 which is lowest frame rate I ever seen from a game (including crisis 2, Metro 2033, witchier 2, etc.)


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## logwed

Quote: 





beamthegreat said:


> Good game but could be better. The graphics is pretty bad even when I set every thing to ultra. Also the game is horribly rendered as I get 25-40 FPS on my HD 5870 which is lowest frame rate I ever seen from a game (including crisis 2, Metro 2033, witchier 2, etc.)


 

  
  It's not about the graphics, man...


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## Head Injury

Quote: 





beamthegreat said:


> Good game but could be better. The graphics is pretty bad even when I set every thing to ultra. Also the game is horribly rendered as I get 25-40 FPS on my HD 5870 which is lowest frame rate I ever seen from a game (including crisis 2, Metro 2033, witchier 2, etc.)


 

 What's your processor? Because the game is a huge open world with complex AI, it's very CPU-dependent. I would hope they improved things over Oblivion and are using multiple cores now.
   
  And yes, the graphics are the last thing to think about with an Elder Scrolls game.
   
  Unfortunately I won't get my copy until Monday, it seems. Apparently Newegg doesn't ship preorders out with one day shipping like Amazon does. Oh well, I saved $12. That'll give me time to enjoy the next MLP episode and catch up on some Doctor Who before my life is consumed.


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## joomongj

Got it. Finally... skyrim here I come.


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## crapmonster

Honestly, I thought that graphics were pretty good given the scale of the game, also runs smooth on high settings for me.  The only thing I've noticed graphics-wise is missing/messed up textures.  Haven't tried ultra settings yet but will try later after work to see how well that runs on my system (HD6870, i5-2500k).


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## dirkpitt45

Completely agree with Beamthegreat; the graphics are horrible imo. Compared to The Witcher 2, which is similar in style to Skyrim, it looks like they're a generation apart. The animations are awkward, people float around a lot Haven't really done much in game yet, been playing around with settings trying to get it to look and run decent. It seems to like a single 5870 better than two, which is annoying. 
   
  The menu's really show how obvious a console port Skyrim is. Disappointing, but most pc games seems to be that way nowadays anyways.


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## Head Injury

Quote: 





dirkpitt45 said:


> Completely agree with Beamthegreat; the graphics are horrible imo. Compared to The Witcher 2, which is similar in style to Skyrim, it looks like they're a generation apart. The animations are awkward, people float around a lot Haven't really done much in game yet, been playing around with settings trying to get it to look and run decent. It seems to like a single 5870 better than two, which is annoying.
> 
> The menu's really show how obvious a console port Skyrim is. Disappointing, but most pc games seems to be that way nowadays anyways.


 

 The Witcher 2 is a completely different style. It's a series of closed maps with invisible walls along every path. They have the time and space to make each path look pretty. Skyrim is an open-world game with no invisible walls and over a hundred unique dungeons. You can't expect the same level of textural detail.


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## Deathdeisel

Quote: 





head injury said:


> The Witcher 2 is a completely different style. It's a series of closed maps with invisible walls along every path. They have the time and space to make each path look pretty. Skyrim is an open-world game with no invisible walls and over a hundred unique dungeons. You can't expect the same level of textural detail.


 


  Gotta agree here, skyrim is completely different. Its massive, if its like oblivion, its massive. And yes, the downside of SLI/Crossfire is some games dont support it.


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## Exediron

Grrr Witcher 2 hype machine 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



   
  Anyway, I don't know what your problem is with the graphics of Skyrim. It looks fine to me, and I love the water and the distant mountains in the snow. Also, it runs perfectly smooth for me. Nobody needs 200 fps.
   




   
  Okay, so maybe the bushes look a bit tacky, but so what? It doesn't keep me from enjoying the game. If the attention of the developers went to things other than the prettiest graphics possible, good for them! I think the gaming public today are too focused on graphics, and too quick to cry 'bad graphics' on anything and everything.


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## bcasey25raptor

Quote: 





exediron said:


> Grrr Witcher 2 hype machine
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 

 Looks pretty damn good to me.


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## Head Injury

Oh no, are those _polygons_ I see? So much for Game of the Year, sheesh 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



   
  Now where'd my Call of Duty game go. I've got at least a whole hour left in the campaign, money well spent.


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## MuppetFace

Graphics alone do not a good game make. If seeing a few glitches is enough to make you stop playing, then maybe you weren't cut out for playing this sort of game in the first place.


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## Audio-Omega

I bought a brand new PS3 version today for $63.


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## nikp

Quote: 





audio-omega said:


> I bought a brand new PS3 version today for $63.


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## Audio-Omega

I think the special price was only for this afternoon/morning at JB Hi-Fi.


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## joomongj

Quote: 





nikp said:


>


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## MuppetFace

Good grief... the limited collector's edition box is HUGE. Much bigger than I expected. So awesome.


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## WhDemon

In the deep mountains of Skyrim, cold winds and Arrows going through the air, passing a few inch off your head. 
   
  Conclusion,
  DT990Pro + Skyrim = FTW
   
  This game sounds amazing.


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## Audio-Omega

This game reminds me of Dragon Age.


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## Audio-Omega

Its 4 disc soundtrack will be available next month.


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## Head Injury

What's the bitrate of the files in the game's Music folder? Or does it not have one like Morrowind and Oblivion?


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## JamesMcProgger

Quote: 





audio-omega said:


> I bought a brand new PS3 version today for $63.


 


  dont you mean 'stole'?


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## Exediron

... So I'm guessing the PS3 version costs more? It's only $60 for the PC.


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## Head Injury

All three versions are $60 MSRP.


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## JamesMcProgger

I thought he meant a PS3 console


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## Audio-Omega

The retail price in Australia is around $99.  At least we pay about the same for its soundtrack.


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## bcasey25raptor

Quote: 





audio-omega said:


> The retail price in Australia is around $99.  At least we pay about the same for its soundtrack.


 


  Holy crap, that's a lot of money for a video game.


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## MuppetFace

Quote: 





bcasey25raptor said:


> Holy crap, that's a lot of money for a video game.


 


  Maybe I'm just getting old, but I remember the days when videogames cost around $75 bucks new here in the US. That was for the SNES and Genesis, too. Then there was Phantasy Star 4 that cost $99 new.
   
  Oh lawdy, then there was the Neo-Geo... those carts were like $400+ bucks! Crazy early nineties system that used actual arcade boards.
   
  Seems like games got cheaper for a while, then started climbing back up again in recent generations.


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## Exediron

I remember back when you could get a really good PC game for $10 bucks, or a cheap one for $5. You got more for the money, too - in those days you got all sorts of maps, posters, strategy thingies and whatnot. Now you have to pay $130 for the same stuff.


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## MuppetFace

Quote: 





exediron said:


> I remember back when you could get a really good PC game for $10 bucks, or a cheap one for $5. You got more for the money, too - in those days you got all sorts of maps, posters, strategy thingies and whatnot. Now you have to pay $130 for the same stuff.


 

 PCs themselves were pretty costly back in the days of yore, though. You can get a lot more for your money these days in terms of hardware.


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## bcasey25raptor

Quote: 





muppetface said:


> PCs themselves were pretty costly back in the days of yore, though. You can get a lot more for your money these days in terms of hardware.


 


  I can build a gaming rig for $700. But do i want to? Nah i'm to lazy.


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## MuppetFace

Quote: 





bcasey25raptor said:


> I can build a gaming rig for $700. But do i want to? Nah i'm to lazy.


 


  I've always been a console person, myself. Though I used to build computers for fun. It's not so much laziness as it is a lot of games I enjoy being console-only.


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## Head Injury

Skyrim is here 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



   
  I have work to do first, though.
   
  Of course, Steam won't load the launcher. I just get the "Preparing" message flashing endlessly. So I can't change any of my graphics settings. Can anyone with the game working copy paste the contents of their Skyrim.ini file here so I can try to set it up manually?
   
  Oh nevermind, that stuff's in the Prefs.ini file now.
   
  Launcher works now too, Steam had to update.


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## LimeANite

Quote: 





head injury said:


> What's the bitrate of the files in the game's Music folder? Or does it not have one like Morrowind and Oblivion?


 


  Not sure, but the sound's been a bit frustrating for me.  Clippy and staticy with my E10 set to 24/96 (fine with 24/48 though) and the whole game crashes on the menu screen when I try to switch it back to onboard audio.  I haven't tried lowering the onboard audio quality to 24/48 to see if it will work like that yet though.  Skyrim is the only game that's ever done this to me, and I'm not sure why it does it.


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## Head Injury

There's no Music folder like the past games, the songs are packaged into the Sound.bsa file, and they're in a xwm file format I'm not familiar with. VLC plays it fine, but I can't check the bitrate or sampling rate. The game sounds great for me with two channels and Dolby Headphone though.
   
  I've tried an axe-and-shield Nord and dual-magic High Elf so far. I'm really liking magic, much more fun than point-and-shoot spells of previous games. It's easy so far, I may need to increase the difficulty later. I'm so used to FCOM in Oblivion


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## crapmonster

The thing that is really getting on my nerves is the random crashing to desktop.  It seems to happen randomly and nothing apparently or obviously triggering it.  I can go 8+ hours playing with no crashing or it can be like today where its apparently crashing every 15 min or so....


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## Exediron

Did you play Morrowind? Skyrim doesn't crash half as often.


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## Head Injury

Oh no, I've already started downloading texture mods


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## bcasey25raptor

I just got it today. Haven't noticed any crashing, And i play on high in 720p on my laptop.
   
  My specs aren't that great either.
   
  4gb ram
  intel core i3 370m 2.4ghz
  500gb hard drive with windows 7 at 5400rpm
  ati radeon hd 5470 at 512mb
   
   
  I play it on my 27inch monitor. It's pretty sweet.
   
  I was shocked when it said detecting recommended settings and it was set at high. Maybe the developers of this game did a good job in making it less of a resource hog. Loving the game.


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## Head Injury

Quote: 





bcasey25raptor said:


> I just got it today. Haven't noticed any crashing, And i play on high in 720p on my laptop.
> 
> My specs aren't that great either.
> 
> ...


 
   
  It's much better optimized than Oblivion, which only used one core (it was basically a console port from 2005 after all). I expect even after the big texture overhauls come out, it'll still run better. Might be able to stuff it full of 300 mods with minimal crashing 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			




   
  I just cleared Bleak Falls Barrow on my mage, the dungeon that was in all the gameplay demos. I need to head up to Winterhold and get some new spells, the flamethrower is starting to get dull.


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## crapmonster

Its not a spec problem, running it on a i5-2500k, HD6870, 8gigs of ram.  Running at 1920x1080 on high settings.  The crashing is really irregular and seems to be happening to alot of players.  i.e.  while it seemingly crashed often this morning, I didn't crash again all day and I probably played a good 5 hour straight before stopping.
   
  Its honestly not that bad though since I just set it to autosave every 5 minutes so I never lose too much progress if it crashes.


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## LimeANite

I have (had?) the crashing problem as well (laptop w/ i7, gtx460m, 6 gigs ram, running ultra settings).  I got a new monitor today and my graphics card started outputting everything in the red/blue style of 3D.  I turned off stereoscopic 3D in the Nvidia control panel and everything's been running fine since.  Not sure if this is a complete fix since I've only played about 4-5 hours since turning off 3D, but it seems to be working so far.


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## bcasey25raptor

Guys try setting your audio to
   
  24bit 48000hz
   
  It solved many peoples issues.


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## crapmonster

Read about that sound fix but it did nothing for me. The last time I loaded it up I disabled Steam overlay and it didn't crash but its hard to say whether that did anything or not since its so random.


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## LimeANite

Quote: 





bcasey25raptor said:


> Guys try setting your audio to
> 
> 24bit 48000hz
> 
> It solved many peoples issues.


 


  I mentioned that the last page - it solved my crappy sound problems, but crashes kept happening.  None yet since I disabled 3D, but we'll see if that continues.


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## Head Injury

A couple things you can try if you're crashing, I'm just making guesses:

 Launch the game without the launcher, from the TESV.exe file in the game's directory. That bypasses Steam. Make sure to set your graphics settings first.
 Try with and without FXAA and regular AA enabled. I don't use FXAA because I get plenty good framerate with 8x AA.
 Don't overclock.
 Open SkyrimPrefs.ini in My Documents/My Games/Skyrim and find the line bGamepadEnable. Set it to 0. I think this occasionally caused problems in Oblivion. While you're in there you might want to set bMouseAcceleration to 0 too. You can also play around with some of the other settings, just save what values they were before.


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## JamesMcProgger

Skyrim will most def be my next game purchase. meanwhile....
   
   

[size=small] Instant Order Update for James XXX. You purchased this item on *August 30, 2010*. View this order.[/size][size=small] [size=0.86em] [size=1.7em] Diablo III[/size] by Blizzard Entertainment[/size]

  [size=0.86em] Platform: Windows Vista / XP, Mac[/size]


 [/size]
   
  I keep waiting.


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## JamesMcProgger

BTW, if you guys havent signed already, you're welcome to do so: *Sign up the petition for a Video Games lounge*​


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## TehJam

This is all I know from the game.


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## JamesMcProgger

^ that is freaking hilarious


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## Head Injury

That poor chicken.


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## Exediron

Okay, I literally laughed (well, giggled) while I watched that. Without the slow-mo and the dramatic music it would only be mildly amusing, but the whole effect is hilarious. (I signed the video game proposal already, I think)
   




   
  There's three things I think they really got right in the graphics of Skyrim, more than anything else; the sky, the water and the armor. I don't like the way elves look now, but apparently weird elves is one of the trends of the early 21st century.


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## MuppetFace

Yeah, I think female elves look especially wonky in this game. When I was creating my character I was a bit taken aback by how the defaults looked old and were all sportin' mohawks.


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## bcasey25raptor

Quote: 





tehjam said:


> This is all I know from the game.


 


  That song would sound amazing as a viking metal song.


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## Exediron

Quote: 





muppetface said:


> Yeah, I think female elves look especially wonky in this game. When I was creating my character I was a bit taken aback by how the defaults looked old and were all sportin' mohawks.


 

 Everyone looks a bit old now; I had to make a few changes to my character's planned back story to accommodate that. I ended up playing a female Breton because the Breton could give me the appearance I wanted for my (originally intended to be elven) character more easily than an elf.


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## LimeANite

There are already some mods to fix some of the appearance issues with elves and faces/bodies in general.


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## bcasey25raptor

The map in this game is freaking huge.


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## oqvist

Question... Are sea wrecks as in Morrowind restored so you can actually spend some quality time under water? I was a argonian (lizard race?) and loved it´s swimming abilities.
   
  If anybody else find this all to amusing I can highly recommend the Endless ocean series for Wii


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## Exediron

Dunno, I've only ever been as far as the ocean once, and I didn't go in. Dwemer ruins are back in style, so maybe the sea wrecks are, too. I can take a look next time I'm on the coast.


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## bcasey25raptor

Quote: 





oqvist said:


> Question... *Are sea wrecks as in Morrowind restored so you can actually spend some quality time under water?* I was a argonian (lizard race?) and loved it´s swimming abilities.
> 
> If anybody else find this all to amusing I can highly recommend the Endless ocean series for Wii


 


  Yes i found one. It was split in 2 and had skeletons in it.


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## Head Injury

I found M'aiq! 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			




   
  I can die happy now.


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## Audio-Omega

First person view gives me motion sickness.  Could it be changed to third person view ?


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## LimeANite

Quote: 





audio-omega said:


> First person view gives me motion sickness.  Could it be changed to third person view ?


 


  Yes.  If you're on the PC, just use the mouse wheel to scroll out.  Not sure how to do it on the console version though.


----------



## Head Injury

The game actually plays really well in third person. Melee combat looks great that way. Magic, not so much, but it works.


----------



## Exediron

Yeah, but good luck if you're an archer.


----------



## Head Injury

You get a crosshair.
   
  Today my mage (level 20 now!) slaughtered three or four dragons. One I found on the top of a mountain (I won't spoil where), close to a Word Wall, on my way to town to unload a full inventory. He caught me by surprise but I managed to take him out. I planned to fast travel to a town and back so I could loot him, but went to the wall first. What should pop out of the nearby coffin but a dragon priest with more health than the dragon? One more epic battle later and I have 390/300 weight in my inventory, and not wanting to risk any of it I hauled it all to town. Took me half an hour to walk there, with the help of some Whirlwind Sprints 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



   
  Fun fact: Some special named dragon priests apparently drop this cool mask-like item. The one I got boosted skills I don't use, so I don't use it. But by some glitch you can equip the Jagged Crown from Empire/Stormcloak quests and one of the masks at the same time. Your face disappears, but you get to wear two helmets for bonus armor.


----------



## Adda

After having played Elderscrolls games since Dagerfall it's nice to see that Skyrim is a nice mix between the Morrowind style and Battlespire with more content then Morrowind and Oblivon combined.
  The leveling system is good too, Morrowind and Oblivion where too weird here, too hard to get the most of your levels in those, still miss the Daggerfall and Battlespire system though, but Skyrim is fine.
  I'm level 54 so far and completed all the guilds, the main quest, the Daedra quests and lot more, but there must be some more quests in the various towns, but it might be about time to start a new character.
   
  Archers can get totally crazy, I have a Daedric bow that does over 400 damage, to get there you need to be a master smith, enchanter and archer of cause, works best if you are good at sneaking though.
   
  For those who still enjoy Daggerfall, take a look at this:
  http://xlengine.com/


----------



## JesDaMess

A good 24 hours into the game and I haven't even been to half the main cities in Skyrim. I'm overall very pleased with this game and combat is so much more satisfying than in any of it's predecessors. I also feel it does well to keep things interesting and have lots of nice little details and varied dungeons, which was one of my main complaints with Oblivion when compared to Morrowind.


----------



## Head Injury

Quote: 





jesdamess said:


> A good 24 hours into the game and I haven't even been to half the main cities in Skyrim. I'm overall very pleased with this game and combat is so much more satisfying than in any of it's predecessors. I also feel it does well to keep things interesting and have lots of nice little details and varied dungeons, which was one of my main complaints with Oblivion when compared to Morrowind.


 

 I haven't been to Markarth or Riften yet. I absolutely love the designs of the other cities and towns.
   
  Maybe I'll pop down to Riften once I'm done finishing up quests around Windhelm.


----------



## Adda

Quote: 





head injury said:


> I haven't been to Markarth or Riften yet. I absolutely love the designs of the other cities and towns.
> 
> Maybe I'll pop down to Riften once I'm done finishing up quests around Windhelm.


 


  Oh yes go to Riften, should be interesting right from the get go, you must have heard stories about that town by now.


----------



## Exediron

Riften is a bloody hole in the ground. I recommend Markarth; it has much more interesting city design.


----------



## Adda

Quote: 





exediron said:


> Riften is a bloody hole in the ground. I recommend Markarth; it has much more interesting city design.


 


  Depends on what you are after, what's beneath Riften is what makes it interesting.


----------



## Xcellent

I just discoverd a place called ''Blackreach''.. Has anyone been here? Its like being in space... (Thats no spoiler btw 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





I don't even know how to get out of here)


----------



## Adda

Hmm donno, can't remember, so I guess, I have been to Blackreach though, but I should keep quiet about that place.


----------



## Xcellent

Yeah that's what I meant. Changed it
  Quote: 





adda said:


> Hmm donno, can't remember, so I guess, I have been to Blackreach though, but I should keep quiet about that place.


----------



## crapmonster

Just got through one of the last quests for the Dark Brotherhood, impersonating "Gourmet" is easily one of my favorite moments in the game thus far although this might depend on specific dialogue choices.


----------



## Xcellent

One of my favorite moments when I first had the game, was when the guard told me "Let me guess, someone stole your sweetroll" and my mind switched back to Fallout 3 immediately. Then I knew this game was going to be epic. Or when I finally killed 1 dragon when I was still on a low level, another one came straight after it making it impossible for me to fast travel, tried to kill it again and got killed by a snow sabre cat in the back in the middle of the city -_-, also reminded me that the most random things can happen. (Winterhold)


----------



## Head Injury

Quote: 





xcellent said:


> One of my favorite moments when I first had the game, was when the guard told me "Let me guess, someone stole your sweetroll" and my mind switched back to Fallout 3 immediately. Then I knew this game was going to be epic. Or when I finally killed 1 dragon when I was still on a low level, another one came straight after it making it impossible for me to fast travel, tried to kill it again and got killed by a snow sabre cat in the back in the middle of the city -_-, also reminded me that the most random things can happen. (Winterhold)


 
   
  What race is your character? I wonder if that sweetroll comment is race-based, because I get it a lot on my Altmer.
   
  I got into an epic fight between a dragon, two giants, a mammoth, and a group of three patrolling Stormcloaks. Everyone ganged up on the dragon first and made short work of him, then I fireballed everyone until the Stormcloaks were dead and ran circles around the mammoth and one remaining giant until I had the magicka to kill them. I love what they've done to the AI, reminds me a lot of modded Oblivion.
   
  I've learned to save often! There's no telling what might pop out around a corner, and since I've spent all but a few stat points on Magicka I'm pretty squishy.
   
  P.S. For kicks and giggles, PC users should turn on god mode ("tgm" in the console) and blast everything in sight with the Ice Form shout. I turned a castle into an ice sculpture museum that way, but it eventually became too much to handle and the game crashed (first and only crash in 40 hours! Is this really TES?)


----------



## Adda

Yea Skyrim really is remarkably stable, I have only had a few crashes, but in strange areas.
  Got two crashes in a row inside a small cavern? but the big demanding areas with plenty of things going on are rock stable.
  In early versions of Daggerfall, all you needed to do to get a crash, was to walk backwards in to the wall on the lowest deck of your ship, in later versions this only caused you to fall through the wall


----------



## Exediron

_Skyrim_ may be stable, but Steam crashes on me every 5 hours or so. And if you Alt+Tab Skyrim, there seems to be a ~30% chance that it will crash when you tab back in.
   
  Although I think Skyrim is probably my favorite Elder Scrolls game yet, it is not without faults. My list of complaints is much shorter than it was with Oblivion, however:
   

 Can't craft arrows
 No ability scores
 Too many cool ruins that you can only get into by going to the College of Winterhold
 Getting a house in Markarth is an annoyingly obtuse process
 Elves look weird about the forehead
 Skill trees (I like perks, but I don't like the sequential way you need to take them)
 Soul gems don't show the identity of the trapped soul
 Why can't you make weapons out of dragon bone?
   
  The rest of the complaints I have aren't specific to Skyrim and are instead things I've never liked about Elder Scrolls games (for instance, I don't like Daedric equipment as much as Ebony, but if you stick with Ebony you're handicapping yourself unless you make a sacrifice for style).
   
  As a fairly random note, does anyone know a good source of Common souls in the ~40 level bracket? I've worked out good places to get Grand, Greater, Lesser and Petty souls, but I can't seem to find many creatures which have Common souls.
   
  And yes, I know that mods can probably fix all of these complaints, but I hate modding games. I suppose since most of these are simply mechanical problems I wouldn't mind using a mod on them too much. The arrows and the soul gems, for instance.
   
  By the way, I get the sweetroll comment a lot (Breton), but I don't actually 'get' it at all. I suppose if I'd played Fallout 3 I might.


----------



## Adda

I agree with you that it's annoying that you can't craft arrows, it doesn't make any sense.


----------



## Audio-Omega

Its soundtrack is enchanting.  Is there a way to level up quickly ?


----------



## Adda

Quote: 





audio-omega said:


> Its soundtrack is enchanting.  Is there a way to level up quickly ?


 


  Go exploring.
  Make all the iron daggers you can.
  Disenchant magic items if you can, and make all the magic items you can.
  Pick all the locks and sneak around dungeons.


----------



## Xcellent

Quote: 





head injury said:


> What race is your character? I wonder if that sweetroll comment is race-based, because I get it a lot on my Altmer.


 

 I am a Imperial, but on my other save I was a Khajit and also got the comment. A friend of mine is a Stormcloak and he told me about it first.
   


  Quote: 





exediron said:


> Although I think Skyrim is probably my favorite Elder Scrolls game yet, it is not without faults. My list of complaints is much shorter than it was with Oblivion, however:
> 
> 
> Can't craft arrows
> Why can't you make weapons out of dragon bone?


 

 I would also love to see those two, I am saving up Ebony Arrows but they are not that easy to come by, I wish I could create them myself. Dragon Bone weapons would also be a really nice addition, too bad they did not put them in. Ill stick with my Daedric weapons & armor, don't like the Ebony nor the Dragon armor that much. A quick way to rank up when you are higher level is to use the things you never used before. Now I am level 45 and its a pain to rank up fast, so I use archery alot now because I almost never used it in the beginning, same with illusion & conjuration etc. Makes it easier and alot more fun since you experience a bit of everything. Only thing that I just cannot seem to get up fast is Alchemy.


----------



## Exediron

Something I forgot; for whatever reason, naming items doesn't work for me. I can press the little button or hit 'F' to my heart's content after crafting, but nothing at all happens. Am I missing something, or is this just a bug?


----------



## Adda

As far as I know you can only rename items you have enchanted.


----------



## Exediron

I'm aware of that. Although looking back at my post I realize I said after crafting, I meant enchanting. After selecting the soul gem, the option to Rename Item appears, like so:
   





   
  However, clicking on the option doesn't do anything, and neither does pressing F. So is there something I'm not doing right, or is this a bug? I haven't found anyone else online who seems to have the same problem, so I assume I'm doing something wrong. But I can't for the life of me figure out what.


----------



## Adda

It works fine for me, have you selected the enchantment, item and soulgem before attempting to rename the item?
  I don't know if that makes a difference, but that's how I do it.


----------



## TehJam

To whomever was asking about Blackreach, I can help you with that, as I completed everything in there.


----------



## bcasey25raptor

Yes just yes. I knew it was coming and it was only a matter of time. Skyrim Meets Metal.


----------



## Xcellent

Thanks but I rather explore it myself  I did not had any missions that required me to go there, I found it by exploring thats why it was so special for me.
  Quote: 





tehjam said:


> To whomever was asking about Blackreach, I can help you with that, as I completed everything in there.


----------



## Exediron

I suppose nobody knows the answer to the renaming thing? (as the screenshot shows, I already selected an enchantment and a soul gem)
   
  Anyway, speaking of Black Reach I was hanging around in the area of that quest last night as the sun went down and I took some screenshots. I decided to try processing them as I would actual photographs and see what I could get:
   




   




   




   




   
  The problem with night 'photography' in video games is that, unlike in real life where there actually is color but you can't see it, in video games there usually isn't any color to bring out at night.


----------



## EnOYiN

exediron said:


> I suppose nobody knows the answer to the renaming thing? (as the screenshot shows, I already selected an enchantment and a soul gem)




Just tried. I didn't even know that was an option to be honest. Presssing F gives me a cursor which allows me to type in whatever I want sometimes. Other times it doesn't do anything and sometimes it gives me a cursor to change the name of a soul gem. After I finished enchanting the name of my item didn't actually change either. So it seems to be a buggy feature altogether.


----------



## Audio-Omega

I'm taking a break from it because of a problem.  I didn't get that guy to bring my weapons into the embassy so now I will have to fight with bare hands.


----------



## Xcellent

lol, You can always use your magic(ka).


----------



## Audio-Omega

Yes I did and it was tough because of my weak character.  However I got through thanks to a glitch, one soldier simply stood still and let me hit him with fire.


----------



## Xcellent

Did you follow the elf when he went into the kitchen and looked into the chest in front of him? I had to look pretty good aswell, but its right in front of him when he stops after he talks to the chef in the kitchen.


----------



## beerguy0

I downloaded Skyrim Saturday night on Steam, and all I can say is...
   

  Skyrim! Y U no let me sleep?
   
  Love the game so far. I find the graphics to be pretty good overall, with no mods. (I'll probably be downloading some mods tonight). My first character is a High Elf, although I haven't been using much magic yet. I just started the College of Winterhold, and have done a good amount of exploring. I'll probably start another character once I get the gameplay sorted out.
   
  Skyrim seems to run much better on my PC than Oblivion. Oblivion set my video settings to pretty much bare-bones detail, while Skyrim cranks it up and seems to have a decent frame rate. So far, in 10+ hours of gameplay, I've had one crash.
   
  PC specs: Intel i7 2600K, 16GB RAM, Evga GTX 560 Ti video card.
   
  Now, if Blizzard will kindly release Diablo III I'll really be happy...


----------



## Audio-Omega

Nope I walked straight pass, didn't even look around.  My next task is to locate an Elder Scroll.


----------



## LimeANite

Quote: 





beerguy0 said:


> Skyrim seems to run much better on my PC than Oblivion. Oblivion set my video settings to pretty much bare-bones detail, while Skyrim cranks it up and seems to have a decent frame rate. So far, in 10+ hours of gameplay, I've had one crash.


 


  The Oblivion thing is most likely because the game didn't recognize your graphics card, because your specs are more than enough to run it on max.  I've noticed that a lot of older games will set me on minimum settings because they aren't sure what hardware I'm running, but the game will still run fine with everything maxed out.


----------



## Magedark

I only got to play Skyrim for a short time before heading back to Uni, but I must say it is very good right now. I am sad the College quests were so short though...


----------



## TehJam

Quote: 





audio-omega said:


> I'm taking a break from it because of a problem.  I didn't get that guy to bring my weapons into the embassy so now I will have to fight with bare hands.


 


  Oh I remember that happened to me. 
   
  I got mad. 
   
  Became a werewolf and conjuration master. Needless to say they were somewhat surprised when a werewolf and Dremora Lord came bounding in...


----------



## Audio-Omega

I have finished the main story and now it's time for side quests.  I wish I could take on soldiers to level up without consequences.


----------



## Hensroth

I played my first character a ton, finished the main quest and all of the College/Civil War/etc. quests, but the Thieves Guild is glitched because I sold my armor. So, I've started a second character (woo, mage!) and took on two giants and 3 mammoths at level 3 and won.


----------



## Exediron

100,00 gold pieces worth of gold and gems...




   
100,00 gold pieces worth of dragon body parts!




   
  I will repeat this vile and eldritch experiment when I have 1,000,000 gold pieces worth of each.
   
  --------------------
   
  Also, interesting fact: if you enter no-clip mode and drop 100 dragon bones without moving, they hang in the air - and when you exit no-clip, they explode like a bomb (even doing damage!). I'm tempted to try to weaponize this now.


----------



## Audio-Omega

Why is there a thunder that shakes the whole screen ?


----------



## Xcellent

I like how you put 2 Dibella statues on top of your chest  I putted a Butterfly In a Jar, Bee in a Jar and the Dragonfly in a Jar on top of it. I don't really like the Moth on a jar that much.


----------



## Head Injury

Has anyone else bought the OST? Order it before December 23rd and Jeremy Soule's supposed to sign it. At $30 (plus shipping) for 4 CDs it's a good but not great deal, but a signature puts it at bargain status.


----------



## Xcellent

I am looking for it but cannot find it anywhere in my country, probably have to look outside my country. The signature does not really matter to me that much  Everytime when I start up skyrim I just listen to the theme song before I actually play it, thats why I want it lol.
   
  Anyway I think for the people who do want it its a really nice extra, care to post a link?
  
  Quote: 





head injury said:


> Has anyone else bought the OST? Order it before December 23rd and Jeremy Soule's supposed to sign it. At $30 (plus shipping) for 4 CDs it's a good but not great deal, but a signature puts it at bargain status.


----------



## Head Injury

I think they ship worldwide.


----------



## TehJam

Wasn't a great OST, I still think Halo 3 is king but whatever.


----------



## Head Injury

Halo?


----------



## TehJam

You don't know Halo?
   
  Here's some music from the least popular of the series, but a great song, probably the most epic cut-scene I have ever seen as well:


----------



## Adda

That Halo soundtrack sounds like any other game, don't see whats special about it, but if you like it that's fine.
  I think Elder Scrolls games have always had the best soundtracks of their time (alright maybe Oblivion wasn't as good as the others), Skyrim even beats Daggerfall's snow tunes.


----------



## TehJam

That was ODST, not neccesarily the best halo stuff but it's good. Halo 3 is better. 
   
   
  I still don't understand how somebody had never heard of halo before...


----------



## Head Injury

Quote: 





tehjam said:


> I still don't understand how somebody had never heard of halo before...


 

 I've heard of Halo. I'm wondering how you think the soundtrack is "king".


----------



## TehJam

I just enjoyed it a lot. Hope I didn't offend anyone..


----------



## ShamanSleeve

Just got Skyrim today!


----------



## Exediron

Quote: 





adda said:


> (alright maybe Oblivion wasn't as good as the others)


 
   
  What? The music was the best part about Oblivion! More like Morrowind wasn't as good as the others...


----------



## Head Injury

Quote: 





exediron said:


> What? The music was the best part about Oblivion! More like Morrowind wasn't as good as the others...


 

 Agreed. Oblivion's music is better than Morrowind's. Morrowind's theme music is better, but it gets used too much in the regular sound track.


----------



## Audio-Omega

I don't think I will receive the soundtrack until early next year.  Its game guide is one big book !


----------



## Adda

Quote: 





exediron said:


> What? The music was the best part about Oblivion! More like Morrowind wasn't as good as the others...


 


  Different tastes for everyone, just the way it should be 
  Listening to 'Far Horizons' from the Skyrim soundtrack now, beautiful.
   




   
  Look at this, K240DF's where involved in making the sound of Skyrim:


----------



## Audio-Omega

Skyrim's soundtrack is comparable to The Lord of The Rings.


----------



## Soul363

One of the best designed games of all time i must say, excellent graphics and sound to go with the different moods and atmosphere at times. Easily a 10/10 IMO


----------



## Xcellent

For some reason, I always found the OST from God of War one of the best. Its so dark and having the lyrics in Greek makes it even more bad-ass 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




  
  Edit: I can also see some headphones in the making of video, but  cannot identify them except the Fostex T45.
   
  A part of the soundtrack:




   
   
  And the production of it


----------



## Audio-Omega

I just realised that I haven't been to most places in Skyrim.


----------



## beerguy0

Quote: 





audio-omega said:


> I just realised that I haven't been to most places in Skyrim.


 


  I've been making it a point to use the wagon service to go to a different city each time I play. I still have several to visit, though.


----------



## LimeANite

Quote: 





beerguy0 said:


> I've been making it a point to use the wagon service to go to a different city each time I play. I still have several to visit, though.


 


  Psh, wagon service.  What's the fun in that?  You miss out on all the mines, bandits, ruins, and cool random encounters along the way.
   
  Speaking of which, I've now seen the Headless Horseman twice.


----------



## Exediron

Out of curiosity, what was the most out-of-the-way place anyone has spotted M'aiq?


----------



## Adda

Quote: 





exediron said:


> Out of curiosity, what was the most out-of-the-way place anyone has spotted M'aiq?


 


  To the wayyy north west on the map, by the shore line near the invisible wall.


----------



## LimeANite

Quote: 





exediron said:


> Out of curiosity, what was the most out-of-the-way place anyone has spotted M'aiq?


 


  M'aiq being the headless horseman?
   
  The two places I've seen him have been on the road between Falkreath and Markarth, somewhere in the mountains near a fortress (can't remember which one).  The other was just north of Dragon's Bridge, on the way to Solitude.  I've also heard of him being spotted near Riverwood.


----------



## Adda

Quote: 





limeanite said:


> M'aiq being the headless horseman?


 

 M'aiq the Liar, he's a Khajiit, he first appeared in Morrowind and has stuck around in the elder scrolls games since.


----------



## bowei006

i've sadly finished this game, it's quite hard to get back in it, when the blood...brothers tell you to keep doing same thing


----------



## Adda

Quote: 





bowei006 said:


> i've sadly finished this game, it's quite hard to get back in it, when the blood...brothers tell you to keep doing same thing


 


  You sure you finished everything?
  Look here to see if there is anything you missed: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Quests


----------



## bowei006

Quote: 





adda said:


> You sure you finished everything?
> Look here to see if there is anything you missed: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Quests


 


  no imeant that it's hard getting back intot he game...like really hard now


----------



## TehJam

Yea I've pretty much completed everything I wanted to. 85 hours is enough. Gets bland.


----------



## LimeANite

Quote: 





adda said:


> M'aiq the Liar, he's a Khajiit, he first appeared in Morrowind and has stuck around in the elder scrolls games since.


 


  Oh, haven't seen him yet.


----------



## bowei006

Quote: 





tehjam said:


> Yea I've pretty much completed everything I wanted to. 85 hours is enough. Gets bland.


 


  Exactly. i don't need a dead mummy to keep telling me to go kill some random unnamed person.


----------



## TehJam

"Talk to the Nervous Patron" 
   
  How about no.
   
  I just walk around with my 2 Storm Thrall bodygaurds, going in with my Daedric Sword and healing spells. I've recently started just exploring, kinda fun, especially when you see a thief.


----------



## johangrb

For those reporting the "crash to desktop" problem, try the 4G patch. It worked for me - 100% stable. (GTX590 Hydro, 8GB Ram, i7 4.6 Ghz).
   
  (150 hrs, lvl 56).


----------



## Head Injury

Works for me too. No more crashes. I believe they released an official 4 GB patch today, haven't tried it.


----------



## coatezy

Looking forward to seeing if the patch works on my system tonight. Didn't get a chance yesterday. Was crashing every 10-15 previously with everything maxed.. GTX580 SLI, i7 2600k @ 4.6ghz, 16gb ram, ax1200 psu.


----------



## LimeANite

Quote: 





coatezy said:


> Looking forward to seeing if the patch works on my system tonight. Didn't get a chance yesterday. Was crashing every 10-15 previously with everything maxed.. GTX580 SLI, i7 2600k @ 4.6ghz, 16gb ram, ax1200 psu.


 


  If it works anything like the 4gb mod, it should.  I was crashing constantly as well until I found that (it's a ported Fallout 3 mod) after Large Address Aware stopped working.


----------



## coatezy

Played hassle free for a good few hours with no crashing!  So nice to set it all to max settings again.. I didn't just spend 2k on a machine to play games at medium settings!


----------



## Head Injury

Yeah, I played a while today without crashing using the official update only. Worked great. Had a couple strange floating object glitches though, but that's par for the course.
   
  I've been playing a sword-n-board warrior type guy lately. Lots of fun. I'm more than durable enough to dual-wield instead, but shields are fun. Slow-mo blocking, slow-mo shout to improve my reaction time, shield bashing helpless woodland critters to death, etc. I dual-wield on dragons though, to kill then in two power attacks. Smithing is overpowered.


----------



## TehJam

What kind of damage do your weapons do? My daedric sword that is upgraded is only 50. I can usually get my legendary daedric bow to about 120.


----------



## Head Injury

Flawless Sky Steel longsword and axe, with the Fortify One-Handed ring and gauntlets I found they do 59 and 62. I have 3 or 4 ranks in the first One-handed perk. They'd do about 36-38 damage without Smithing.


----------



## Exediron

My Legendary ebony swords, Doomrazor and Soulscorcher, both do 360 points of pure slashing and 25 points of health absorption. Soulscorcher does another 25 points of fire, as well. I'm sure I could do better with Daedric weapons, but I like the way the ebony looks better, and hey; they do plenty of damage for everything I've fought so far. My bow does 198 plus usually about 10 for the arrow (finding decent arrows is a pain, so I just use steel arrows from hapless town guardsmen).
   
  Even these numbers pale when compared to the power one can wield if they unlock the nexus of Alchemy, Enchantment and Smithing; I master two of these disciplines, but I lack the component of Alchemy. The best potions you can buy for smithing and enchanting are only about half as good as the best which you can brew.


----------



## Audio-Omega

Are there bigger enemies to fight outside the main story ?


----------



## Adda

My Daedric swords do 368 damage, so the benefit of Daedric vs. Ebony is rather insignificant, most enemies die in a single power attack on master difficulty, a dual wield power attack kills most dragons.
   
  The main story of Skyrim is only the beginning, you haven't seen much of the game if you stick to that.


----------



## TehJam

How did you get a 360 Damage sword with just smithing?!


----------



## Adda

You need to enchant some gear to improve smithing, to get the most of this you need to drink some potions that improve enchanting.
  Then you forge your weapon, then put on your smithing gear, drink the blacksmith potion and improve your weapon.
  Then you go and enchant your gear to give bonus weapon damage, to get the most of this drink an enchanters potion.
   
  Then you go hacking and slashing like you never imagined.


----------



## Head Injury

All that's too much trouble for me. Not sure why you'd go to so much effort to break your game. 100 Smithing and 100 Enchanting seem like they'll be overpowered enough.


----------



## TehJam

Yea that sounds good. My enchant is ok, put I don't have many perks in it, I think it's above 70 though. My armor rating is somewhere around 450, the Spellbreaker shield is epic. I'm level 49 now, so I'm just getting enchanting up.
   
  Giants are no problem for me, if that makes a difference, I take minimal damage.


----------



## Adda

Well what applies to weapon improving goes for armor as well, I don't have my gear enchanted to improve AC though, just resistances, weapon damage, stamina recovery and waterbrathing, but my Daedric armor gives me about 1050 AC, melee attacks barely hurts me at all, neither does magic, this is without a shield.
   
  Why go through so much trouble? well why not? for reasons of laziness or not enjoying the game enough to bother? after all this work is done, you can take on an army on your own, no need for healing spells or potions.


----------



## Head Injury

Quote: 





adda said:


> Well what applies to weapon improving goes for armor as well, I don't have my gear enchanted to improve AC though, just resistances, weapon damage, stamina recovery and waterbrathing, but my Daedric armor gives me about 1050 AC, melee attacks barely hurts me at all, neither does magic, this is without a shield.
> 
> Why go through so much trouble? well why not? for reasons of laziness or not enjoying the game enough to bother? after all this work is done, you can take on an army on your own, no need for healing spells or potions.


 

 I suppose for console players that's nice to have on a save file. But PC users get god mode.
   
  Armor is capped at 567, 80%, by the way. You get no benefit past that.


----------



## Adda

Good, immunity to physical attacks would be silly, but it's all the same, who would get to hit me before they got chopped up?


----------



## voon

Pure damage is boring. I love the paralyze part of my bow ... it's just strangely satisfying to see enemies fall slowly to their side. One hit kills? Nah.


----------



## LizardKing1

I just found this thread. Has anyone else found some surprisingly powerful characters in the game? Like they seem really easy to kill but they kill you in like 2 hits? Captain Hagran would kill me with 2 swings of his dwarven hammer - I'm mostly a warrior, lvl 30, full elven exquisite armor, blocking perks... oh and with nearly full health (about 180) it just doesn't seem normal. Then this mage would kill me with a single fireball when I had full health too. I thought it was a bug, but oh well, managed to kill them with shouts and scrolls.


----------



## Head Injury

You only have 180 health as a level 30 warrior? 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			




   
  Is Captain Hagran the one in the cave near Solitude? There's a Captain in there that kept getting two hit kills on me even with health in the mid-200s. There was some mage somewhere that could kill my mage (probably like 150 health at the time) in one Incinerate spell even with 50% resistance to fire. I managed to kill him by trapping him in the doorway so he couldn't get a clear shot and blasting him with endless dual-wield Chain Lightning spells (thank Talos for the High Elf racial power!)
   
  I'm glad there are enemies that can be a challenge even on normal difficulty, provided you don't abuse Enchant and Smithing. You could breeze through Oblivion, even if it took you half an hour to hack an enemy down.


----------



## LizardKing1

Well I'm not asking for lack of difficulty, I just find it odd that these seemingly weak characters are harder to kill than a giant! The entire combat levels seems completely random. I've found bears that were harder to kill than some dragons. Cpt Hagran (yes the one near solitude, even more up north) was a freaking behemoth. A Novice Conjurer or whatever blasted me off with a fireball. It's like they got drunk and played darts with levels written on them, and whichever picture the dart hit, that would be the creature's strength.


----------



## Head Injury

Enemies come at different power levels, indicated by their names. I don't think there's anything random about it, besides what you happen to find. We'll find out when the creation kit comes out.
   
  I doubt it was a Novice that killed you in one hit. They don't cast Fireball, many won't even cast Firebolt.
   
  Dragons need to deal more damage. They've got a lot of health, but aren't threatening at all. The only challenging one I fought was on my warrior when I was like level 7 with iron stuff. I shouldn't even be able to win at that level.
   
  And Giants are freakin' hard unless you're a mage or use a shield. Haven't tried archer.


----------



## Draygonn

My lvl 32 Khajiit Thief can stealth in the middle of a room and people walk right past him.

"Must have been my imagination"


----------



## TehJam

Honestly, the only people who pose a threat to me the way I play now are EXTREMELY powerful mages. Dragons are just elongated giant fights. I don't lose health against most enemies, including  most Dragons, unless they're ancient.  
   
  When I played as an archer sneak, I did relatively well, pretty fun way to play. 
   
  Before that, I was a conjuring *******, 2 Dremora Lords are completely unfair. 
   
  Heavy 1 Handed with shield is my favorite way to play, haven't done any 2 Handed yet. At level 50 I have somewhere in the 300s for health, around 150 stamina, and around 200 magicka I believe. Just trying to get more perks into Heavy Armor, One Handed, and Enchanting.
   
  Edit:
  I hate Forsworn Briarhearts at high levels. More challenging than Dragon Priests.


----------



## LimeANite

Quote: 





draygonn said:


> My lvl 32 Khajiit Thief can stealth in the middle of a room and people walk right past him.
> "Must have been my imagination"


 


  Heh, I love stealth.   There have been times when I've nailed someone with an arrow, then had them walk right up to me and look me in the eye before turning around and walking away.  Now that my sneak skill is high enough, it's a lot more fun to backstab.  Epic Elven dagger with + fire damage enchantment one-shots most people with the x15 dagger damage perk.


----------



## Clincher09

I'm trying to decide if I should side the Imperials or the Stormcloaks, what are the advantages of either?


----------



## LizardKing1

Imperials - you are part of the dictatorship that crushes the lives of Nords, stop their worship of the might Talos and are overall douchebags.
   
  Stormcloaks - you are a freaking rebel, your boss is a badass Voice shouter and most Nords will like you more.
   
  I think the hardness of fighting enemies is very random, or at least badly implemented. When you first see a dragon you think "I am so dead". Then a few arrow strikes and he's dead and you're like "seriously?". I barely heal at dragon fights. They should be much harder because *they are freaking dragons*. I was being serious when I said I found a bear that was more challenging than a some dragons.
   
  I just realized how I should totally upgrade my sneak, I'm more of the walk-in-kill-everything style =( but it's never too late.


----------



## TehJam

Happy is jam. My armor rating has gone above 1000. My daedric war hammer does 180ish damage while it takes 22 health from enemies. Can't wait to test it out.


----------



## LimeANite

Quote: 





lizardking1 said:


> Imperials - you are part of the dictatorship that crushes the lives of Nords, stop their worship of the might Talos and are overall douchebags.
> 
> Stormcloaks - you are a freaking rebel, your boss is a badass Voice shouter and most Nords will like you more.


 

 Actually, it's the Thalmor that stop the worship of Talos (they don't believe that humans can become gods) and the Imperials are planning to crush them once they build their strength back up.
   
  Ulfric is a racist, imbalanced d*****bag who only thinks short term.


----------



## LizardKing1

Right the Imperials seem eager to do that. Meanwhile they're busing trying to decapitate anyone mildly suspicious of being a Stormcloak, even the playable character who had never step foot in Skyrim. I don't see how defending the interests of the Nord turns into racism, I never heard him say anything bad about the Dunmer living in Winterhold.


----------



## Head Injury

Quote: 





lizardking1 said:


> Right the Imperials seem eager to do that. Meanwhile they're busing trying to decapitate anyone mildly suspicious of being a Stormcloak, even the playable character who had never step foot in Skyrim.


 

 Ironically I can join the Stormcloaks and no one will touch me. Well, they do now since I killed every guard in Solitude. I killed a group of Thalmor up in the nearby mountains but the 40 gold assault charge wasn't dropped after I killed witnesses. Like hell I'm going to pay that. I think it's up to something like 22,000 gold now. The queen doesn't care, she's pretty chill. Killed half of those guards right in her castle.


----------



## LimeANite

Quote: 





lizardking1 said:


> Right the Imperials seem eager to do that. Meanwhile they're busing trying to decapitate anyone mildly suspicious of being a Stormcloak, even the playable character who had never step foot in Skyrim. I don't see how defending the interests of the Nord turns into racism, I never heard him say anything bad about the Dunmer living in Winterhold.


 


  Copied from somewhere else because it breaks it down far better than I can (basically, it's the backstory between Oblivion and Skyrim):
   
  "Way I see it is this:

 After the Oblivion Crisis, Empire is left in a mess. Septim line of emperors is dead. The interregnum is pretty significant and the Empire isn't able to do much against the Summerset Isles forming the 2nd Aldmeri Dominion. Then, boom, both Valenwood and Elseweyr gone soon after, thanks to manipulations by the Dominion.

 For the next century and a half, the Empire struggles on, replacing the Septime dynasty with a new stock of emperors. Then, the Dominion shows up, issues its ultimatum on 4E 171, wipes out the Blades, and cues up the Great War. Empire suffers massive losses and loses a good portion of Hammerfell de facto to the Dominion. They wipe out a major portion of the Dominion in the Battle of the Red Ring and sue for peace, accepting most of the terms the Dominion had issued at the outset of the war.

 Talos worship is banned and Dominion agents run freely through the Empire. Hammerfell is pissed off that the Empire caves in and secedes, and manages to win their own rebellion against the Dominion.

 Now, cue up 4E 201, and Ulfric is starting up his rebellion against the Empire. He accuses the Empire of bending over to the Thalmor and of denying Talos. Here's the problem I had with that.

 When the Empire accepted the White-Gold Concordat, they were no longer truly the Empire of Tamriel. They had lost Valenwood, Elseweyr, and the Summerset Isles. They had just come out of losing the Septim dynasty and reconstructing after the Oblivion Crisis. Vvardenfell had just literally blown up and what was left of Morrowind was overrun by the Black Marsh. The Empire was essentially under attack by nearly three fronts. After the Battle of Red Ring, Titus Mede II realized that it was simply impossible for the Empire to continue.

 The White Gold Concordat was chosen as a way to let the Empire rest and recover and live to fight another day. Nothing more, nothing less. Both sides were more than aware that the current diplomatic relations were a sham and both sides were simply jockeying to regain power and prepare for the 2nd Great War.

 This meant some significant concessions if the remnant of Talos' Empire was going to survive. This meant giving up Hammerfell. This meant denouncing Talos worship. One has to understand, by this time, the Empire is essentially reduced to Cyrodiil, Skyrim, and High Rock. Morrowind is a wasteland and doesn't really count. Black Marsh and Hammerfell are now independent entities. And Aldmeri Dominion owns the rest with the Summerset Isles, Valenwood, and Elseweyr.

 Titus Mede II was forced to make a decision that would allow his Empire to survive and fight again. Without conceding to the White Gold Concordat, there probably wouldn't be an Empire by 4E 201.

 So now, the Empire is attempting to re-consolidate its power. My understanding is that the Empire allowed Talos worship de facto, except merely privately. They made no effort to seek out Talos worshippers and all was fine and good until Ulfric Stormcloak made a mess of everything with the Markarth Incident. Then, the Dominion gets extremely interested in Skyrim and sets up a Thalmor Embassy and increases Thalmor patrol of the region. Until Stormcloak had drawn attention to Talos worship, the Thalmor would have likely continued on, oblivious. It isn't exactly easy to enforce a law that says you can't worship said god (How would one know where to look if everyone is just worshiping privately?), until Stormcloak threw away the veil.

 Then Stormcloak has his rebellion and everything goes to hell. The Empire has spent the last 30+ years trying to regain their power and prepare for the 2nd Great War, NOT deal with a rebellion sweeping across Skyrim. The infighting only weakens both Skyrim and the Empire in general. As the Thalmor note, this is perhaps the best thing that could have happened for them.

 Ulric Stormcloak is too myopic to see the bigger picture. The Empire never intended the Talos ban to be permanent because they very much plan to kick the Thalmor's ass in the future. The best chance Man has against the Thalmor is precisely the Empire and Stormcloak is trying to muck that up now. Worst case scenario, Stormcloak manages to win a significantly weakened Skyrim. The Thalmor swoop in and conquer Skyrim, which won't be able to sustain TWO wars back to back.

 Throw in the fact that Ulfric actively alienates non-Nordic peoples, therefore cutting off support from other nations, especially Hammerfell which won't be too keen to help someone who makes clear that Skyrim is for the Nords, and Nords only. Add the fact that Ulfric clearly states that any Jarl with him is against him, cementing his status as an idiotic, myopic child who somehow got stuck with the task of running a city and is now conducting a war against the Empire that harms the cause of Men entirely. This is a guy who's proven so detrimental to everyone to the extent that the Thalmor consider him an _asset_, is an enormous racist person, and is generally terrible at diplomacy and has no trouble apparently killing off anyone who doesn't explicitly support him...

 So yeah. **** Stormcloaks. Empire all the way."


----------



## beerguy0

Quote: 





lizardking1 said:


> I just realized how I should totally upgrade my sneak, I'm more of the walk-in-kill-everything style =( but it's never too late.


 
   
  Not that there's anything wrong with that...


----------



## Head Injury

Quote: 





limeanite said:


> The Thalmor swoop in and conquer Skyrim


 
   
  They'll have to get past me first


----------



## Xcellent

You people should watch this, very interesting. And I am now almost at the highest level, only 3 more to go, and it is so incredibly boring because it seems like the characters don't level up with you. Even on Master, the only thing which I have to be carefull with are Lightning Mages. Its fine when you are at lower levels, but later on when you get stuff like Master Destruction Spells it basiclly is a sort of godmode.


----------



## TehJam

The game is incredibly boring when you get in the upper 50s (for me). Nothing is a challenge whatsoever. I've done every cave and whatnot as well. 
   
  Killing everyone in a city is fun though (lolumad Riften?).


----------



## Exediron

Personally, I never found the melee combat to be interesting. Bow combat is still interesting, you can just think of your enemies as moving dummies - the fun part is getting to the corpse and finding out how good your shot placement was. However, my favorite part of any Elder Scrolls game is exploring, and you can do that just as well at level 2 or level 52.


----------



## Xcellent

Well, exploring is fun but the there is no more challenge. If you go exploring and and all of a sudden a Ancient Dragon appears its no fun when you take it down with 5 strikes with your super-overpowerd, two-handed, overly enchanted sword. I almost never use those weapons (I do carry them with me for coolness 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




) But knowing that I can, ruins it. I try to vary it as much as I can, different schools of magic, different weapons and such. But I'm up to the point where the enemy is just to weak to fight against me in everything I do.


----------



## oqvist

How exciting is it to fight your 25th dragon anyway? For me they quickly turned into just another oblivion gate 
  Challenge is important to fool you that what you are doing is valid. But as previous poster I can´t say the combat has ever been that exciting. Bows are fun trying to calculate trajectories for head shots. Medieval form of sniping but hand to hand combat has never been particularly good. This is something that is easier to get right in the 3rd person perspective. I think it´s a wrong move to dumb down the selection of weapons instead of going by more quantity over quality. Since it´s still half arsed and it´s kind of impossible to get right with the level scaling and all .
   
  You can´t optimize the game for someone that go to youtube and what not to figure out how to beat the game and play as efficient as possible. Don´t level up when possible but wait so they can easier level skills etc etc then for someone that don´t take that part as seriously 
   
  I don´t want to complain on a game I spent 110h on but there is still a way to go for bethesda to get up to Morrowind class with their Elders Scrolls. I doubt they will ever get there they seem to be fixated about streamlining and removing content to cater for casual players. Sure they will get more money that way but it´s said they are not aiming for making the best game possible.
   
  Found this video. I am sure it´s old. Beat all the music that is in the game though http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr-buV4tYOA


----------



## EnOYiN

I would have to agree that after a while some things are too overpowered. I had the same feeling in Fallout.

Right now I've got a 'mage' with 100 in enchanting, destruction and smithing and I can beat dragons unarmed without using a single spell. That does take away part of the experience. I think there is a problem with the way you level smithing, enchanting and alchemy. You can't really level smithing if you just make armor/ weapons for yourself. What you'll end up doing every time is making iron daggers until you can make something you want. It's pretty much like this: Make a steel or leather armor. Play a bit. Make a ton of iron daggers. Make an elven or dwarven armor. Play some more. Make a ton of daggers again. etc etc. Same goes for enchanting and alchemy. 

I think the 'level what you do' concept needs some serious tweaking before it actually works well. One of the first things I would do to get this to work is to take away most information regarding what level you are in a certain skill. Take away perks as well when we're at it. Perks will make it that you want to get to a certain level before you actually use the skill for what you need. For example: If you've got 78 in enchanting you won't enchant your newly made armor just yet. You'll just enchant a few random items (iron daggers you made to level smithing for instance) to get to level 80 so you can get the perk that gives you an additional 20% increase in enchanting. Power leveling is what breaks this game and makes it so that you end up with an extremely overpowered character.

There is also a problem with certain play styles that just don't work in this game. A thief character simply doesn't work very well for the main quest. It's fun to be able to pickpocket people and have the ability to make neat poisons, but those things don't help when you're trying to take down a dragon or a draugr deathlord. You need at least some skill with either a weapon or a spell to be able to do anything against those things.

That said. I'm still enjoying this game a whole lot and I guesss they could've done a lot worse.


----------



## Head Injury

Quote: 





oqvist said:


> How exciting is it to fight your 25th dragon anyway? For me they quickly turned into just another oblivion gate


 
  Quote: 





enoyin said:


> Right now I've got a 'mage' with 100 in enchanting, destruction and smithing and I can beat dragons unarmed without using a single spell.


 

Mods to the rescue!
   
  I've had some pretty epic fights lately even on Normal difficulty. Unless you abuse Smithing and Enchanting, it's actually dangerous to run in on a dragon while it's breathing fire without a shield raised. I still haven't come close to dying, but the battles take quite a bit longer (5 dual-wield power attacks instead of 2!)


----------



## oqvist

Well sneaking is quite powerful. And I don´t know how it´s possible to not level any of the weapon categories. Thieves/sneakers will either go for bow or maximise sneak attacks with one handed weapons and whatever to improve their combat.  It could be a fun mission trying to create the crappest character available. But seriously you are forced to level something that kills your enemy or make you stronger so the problem solves itself.
   
  Dragons are not that tough. Trolls early in the game was much worse. I didn´t stumble across any giant before I was to much badass


----------



## Xcellent

No, Fallout did something really good, and that was that everything had a ''Condition''. So the weapons and armor could only last a certain time before needing repair or find another weapon. I don't know if it was like this in previous Elder Scrolls games, but I think that was on of the many major add-ons from Fallout 1 and 2, to Fallout 3. 
  If Skyrim had this option, it would vary what weapons and armor we would have now and again. 
 .


----------



## Head Injury

They did have something like that in previous Elder Scrolls. There was no Smithing skill, instead a Repair skill. But all you had to do was carry a dozen repair hammers around with you, and if you didn't have the skill to repair enchanted equipment just pay a little gold on your next town visit. It was mostly pointless.
   
  To balance Smithing leveling, they should have made more difficult items give more experience, and reduce the experience low level items give at higher levels. So to level up in a timely manner we would need to make and upgrade stuff like ebony.
   
  But really the skill is only overpowered if it's abused using Alchemy and Enchanting. I've vowed to not use Fortify Smithing effects, so I'm topped off at about an 80% improvement on weapons and armor. I _will_ probably abuse Fortify One-Handed enchants though, because even with a Daedric sword some stronger bandits take a dozen swings to drop.


----------



## our martin

battlefield3 game of the year even with all it's flaws kill another dragon or have another go on caspian border and have a one on one with that helicopter again sorry my friends but that helicopters on the top of my wanted list....


----------



## EnOYiN

head injury said:


> Mods to the rescue!
> 
> I've had some pretty epic fights lately even on Normal difficulty. Unless you abuse Smithing and Enchanting, it's actually dangerous to run in on a dragon while it's breathing fire without a shield raised. I still haven't come close to dying, but the battles take quite a bit longer (5 dual-wield power attacks instead of 2!)




That seems really nice. Thanks for the link.



oqvist said:


> Well sneaking is quite powerful. And I don´t know how it´s possible to not level any of the weapon categories. Thieves/sneakers will either go for bow or maximise sneak attacks with one handed weapons and whatever to improve their combat. It could be a fun mission trying to create the crappest character available. But seriously you are forced to level something that kills your enemy or make you stronger so the problem solves itself.
> 
> Dragons are not that tough. Trolls early in the game was much worse. I didn´t stumble across any giant before I was to much badass




Of course no one will actually try to play a character without any weapon skill since it doesn't work in this game. I would like it if you could though. 



head injury said:


> To balance Smithing leveling, they should have made more difficult items give more experience, and reduce the experience low level items give at higher levels. So to level up in a timely manner we would need to make and upgrade stuff like ebony.




Something like that would've done it. I hope they will still try to fix such things later on.

In other news. I just started a new character. I've been using Archery and One handed + shield. Aside from that I use restoration magic. I'm planning on not wearing any armor at all. So far it's a lot more fun. The frost troll at the way to the Greybeards nearly got me. I'm not sure whether I'll survive the Deadly Dragons mod this way, but it's easy enough to revert to using armor again I suppose.


----------



## oqvist

Would be nice to be able to talk yourself out of trouble more often. Everything you meet in the wild wants to kill you it appears. Everyone is forced to become a ruthless murderer when you wander in the wild. It would also make the Speech skill that is so impossibly hard to increase actually making a difference. And speaking of that why isn´t speech skill linked to the dragon shouts? Considering how much money and effort it took to get speech up to 100. After lvl35 you pretty much had to buy training to get speech up to 100. You could buy sell until you where blue in the face and it would not level up. It would just be a fair reward for so much effort and money to have shouts that was stronger and reduced lead times.
   
  As for repair skill it has been in previous titles. This series is dumbed down more and more for each iteration. More and more console damage. Older versions had more armour, weapons, classes, weapons and a vastly superior interface etc.  It would make it a bit harder because you would spend time and money to improve that skill instead of another. Walking around with repair hammers would be kind of awful for a packrat like myself so that comes with a cost as well.


----------



## Head Injury

Quote: 





oqvist said:


> Would be nice to be able to talk yourself out of trouble more often. Everything you meet in the wild wants to kill you it appears. Everyone is forced to become a ruthless murderer when you wander in the wild. It would also make the Speech skill that is so impossibly hard to increase actually making a difference. And speaking of that why isn´t speech skill linked to the dragon shouts? Considering how much money and effort it took to get speech up to 100. After lvl35 you pretty much had to buy training to get speech up to 100. You could buy sell until you where blue in the face and it would not level up. It would just be a fair reward for so much effort and money to have shouts that was stronger and reduced lead times.
> 
> As for repair skill it has been in previous titles. This series is dumbed down more and more for each iteration. More and more console damage. Older versions had more armour, weapons, classes, weapons and a vastly superior interface etc.  It would make it a bit harder because you would spend time and money to improve that skill instead of another. Walking around with repair hammers would be kind of awful for a packrat like myself so that comes with a cost as well.


 

 Dragon shouts are in the tongue of dragons. I don't think your eloquence in the common tongue is going to help you there.
   
  Skyrim has considerably more varied equipment than Oblivion. And the series hasn't had real "classes" since Arena. Skyrim is the closest game to real classes since Daggerfall easily, thanks to the perk system. I found Oblivion's interface more annoying than Skyrim's, with its billion little different tabs. There are mods for that already, anyway.


----------



## Draygonn

I'm staying away from smithing and enchanting. I'm just using whatever I find. It keeps my weapons from being BFG9000 status. Sometimes going sword and board against a group of baddies can still be a challenge. Sometimes I need to run and hide. 97 sneak and 87 archery. When I max those out I'll head into magic for a new thrill.


----------



## beerguy0

Quote: 





enoyin said:


> Of course no one will actually try to play a character without any weapon skill since it doesn't work in this game. I would like it if you could though.


 

 This guy is trying to play Skyrim as an NPC:
   
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/12/10/the-elder-strolls-part-1-fresh-off-the-boat/
   
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/12/17/the-elder-strolls-part-2-that-sinking-feeling/
   
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/12/24/the-elder-strolls-part-3-off-to-meet-the-blizzard/
   
   
  I had my first bad experience with Skyrim this week. My character got infected with vampirism, and the quest to cure it failed due to a game bug. I would up having to go back to a previous save, and lost a lot of loot/time/exp. I'm definitely avoiding vampires form now on.


----------



## Head Injury

Quote: 





beerguy0 said:


> This guy is trying to play Skyrim as an NPC:
> 
> http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/12/10/the-elder-strolls-part-1-fresh-off-the-boat/
> 
> ...


 
   
  His Oblivion version is absolutely hilarious. I read it a while ago. Might not be as entertaining with Skyrim, since there's real work options now.
   
  Always carry some extra Cure Disease potions around.
   
(or become a werewolf, which gives you immunity to disease)


----------



## Clincher09

You mean Ridiculous Military Simulator 438? No thanks, I'll have some originality and storytelling instead. 
  Quote: 





our martin said:


> battlefield3 game of the year even with all it's flaws kill another dragon or have another go on caspian border and have a one on one with that helicopter again sorry my friends but that helicopters on the top of my wanted list....


----------



## oqvist

Quote: 





head injury said:


> Dragon shouts are in the tongue of dragons. I don't think your eloquence in the common tongue is going to help you there.
> 
> Skyrim has considerably more varied equipment than Oblivion. And the series hasn't had real "classes" since Arena. Skyrim is the closest game to real classes since Daggerfall easily, thanks to the perk system. I found Oblivion's interface more annoying than Skyrim's, with its billion little different tabs. There are mods for that already, anyway.


 


 There is more equipment in Oblivion and even more in Morrowind. Even more in Daggerfall before that 
  I don´t see how it´s more logic that training speech has no effect on if you can successfully cast dragon spells or not. Otherwise every single soul should be able to.
  It would make more sense then practising a dagger make you just as efficient handling a sword or axe


----------



## Head Injury

Quote: 





oqvist said:


> There is more equipment in Oblivion


 
   
  No, there isn't. Skyrim has hide, fur, leather, studded, scaled, elven, and glass on the light armor side. Oblivion has fur, leather, chainmail, mithril, elven, and glass. That's one less. On the heavy side, Skyrim has iron, steel, steel plate, dwarven, orcish, ebony, and daedric. Oblivion has iron, steel, dwarven, orcish, ebony, and daedric. Again, one less. This is ignoring special varieties like banded, Imperial, Stormcloak, ancient Nord, and dragonbone. And some of the types have various alternate appearances for the armor slot. And there's a lot more unique loot, too.
   
  Speech has nothing to do with dragon shouts for two reasons: One, the shouts have nothing to do with regular speech. Two, game mechanics. They didn't want to limit players who don't train Speech. The shouts were meant to be abilities all classes and play styles could utilize equally.
   
  Daggers increase One-handed for, again, game mechanics purposes. Leveling a skill for each weapon type is tedious. The separate skills in Morrowind were ridiculous. You find a good weapon, you can't hit with it unless you happen to have chosen that weapon as your specialty. Oblivion took it too far and made all the weapons feel too homogeneous, but Skyrim's perks solve that and allow you to specialize without limiting your options entirely.
   
  It's a shame you don't like the game (apparently). This game is easily better than Oblivion, just as good as Morrowind, and a lot funner than either. I'm 100 hours in now. By this time I was bored with unmodded Oblivion and a god in Morrowind. I haven't even scratched the surface of Skyrim.


----------



## oqvist

If I don´t recall wrong there is 8 body parts in Oblivion and only 4 in Skyrim you can wear at the same time. So there was more possible combinations. There was also more weapon types. But well the biggest cut down was from Morrowind to Oblivion if we stick to the 3D versions


----------



## slaw slaw

Quote: 





beerguy0 said:


> This guy is trying to play Skyrim as an NPC:
> 
> http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/12/10/the-elder-strolls-part-1-fresh-off-the-boat/
> 
> ...


 
  I enjoy being a vampire.  Just don't go fighting during the day.


----------



## Xcellent

That reminds me, Lately i've been reading alot of books that lay around. And the one that was the most interesting for me, was the one in the Labyrinthian called ''Immortal Blood'' very enjoyable 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




. And playing as an NPC will require ALOT of patience. I will be following that thread!
  
  Quote: 





slaw slaw said:


> I enjoy being a vampire.  Just don't go fighting during the day.


----------



## EnOYiN

beerguy0 said:


> This guy is trying to play Skyrim as an NPC:
> 
> http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/12/10/the-elder-strolls-part-1-fresh-off-the-boat/
> 
> ...




I've read those before. Really entertaining indeed.


----------



## Gr33nL34f

I havent played Skyrim yet because i was adventuring oneday and took an arrow to the knee, so i havent had the time.


----------



## Head Injury

Quote: 





oqvist said:


> If I don´t recall wrong there is 8 body parts in Oblivion and only 4 in Skyrim you can wear at the same time. So there was more possible combinations. There was also more weapon types. But well the biggest cut down was from Morrowind to Oblivion if we stick to the 3D versions


 

 There were 5 slots in Oblivion, plus two rings and an amulet. There are 4 in Skyrim, plus one ring and amulet. That's not what I'm talking about. The vast improvement in armor _design _makes it meaningless. You could wear more combinations in Oblivion, but you'd always look butt ugly. There was only one more weapon type, that being short swords. I miss them, but they'd be useless in Skyrim anyway since only daggers get any special stealth bonus and the combat isn't always a "who can swing the fastest" race like Oblivion.
   
  Skyrim cost us one armor slot and one weapon type, and gave us more materials and unique gear to play with. Oblivion cost us three armor slots (both pauldrons and a gauntlet), several extra clothing slots, three weapon types, made most weapons all act the same, and greatly reduced the number of available armor types and unique items (even most Daedric Prince items looked like generic gear). Add to that the fact that Skyrim's world and culture (the bread and butter of these games) is ten times more interesting than Oblivion's, Skyrim's not even dumbed down in comparison. They actually put some effort into this one.
   
  I'm only disappointed in the magic system. It's a lot simpler than I was lead to believe in trailers and interviews with Todd. I expected the ability to charge spells to different power levels, the ability to combine different spells into combos, and the ability to cast spells in different ways (like a rune spell and flamethrower with the same hand using a different key combination). I don't see why they had to remove spellmaking for this, they would have worked perfectly fine together.


----------



## EnOYiN

head injury said:


> I'm only disappointed in the magic system. It's a lot simpler than I was lead to believe in trailers and interviews with Todd. I expected the ability to charge spells to different power levels, the ability to combine different spells into combos, and the ability to cast spells in different ways (like a rune spell and flamethrower with the same hand using a different key combination). I don't see why they had to remove spellmaking for this, they would have worked perfectly fine together.




It would have been great if they had a similar system as Magicka has, but you simply can't have it all.


----------



## Exediron

On the subject of vampires, don't become one if you have black eyes; it'll turn them brown. Or at least it did before patches, I don't know if it still will. That's why my first character didn't stay a vampire.


----------



## Audio-Omega

Have you guys received your soundtrack ?  I was informed that my copy ordered a month ago is currently in manufacturing.


----------



## Head Injury

Not yet, the site said an expected 4 week delivery at the end of December.


----------



## voon

I like Skyrim due to the landscape. They finally caught up with ames like Gothic etc in that aspect. Real crags, cliffs etc. More realism in caves, with a floor going all kinds of ways. Oblivion was just rounded algorithmic hills in various steepnesses and colors, but never anything even remotly close to a cliff or mountain. All caves were boring, flatt neverending halls. The elven ruins looked cool but eventually were just empty holes with nothing going on in them.I found that utterly boring and atmosphere killing. Plus, endless streches of nothingness. For me, reality can stop where it gets  boring, I like games for entertainment value. The addon was better though. Skyrim is also far from perfect. Some really crappy textures, stupid consoleoriented inventory etc, weird balancing between hard and easy to learn skills etc, a boring magic system, where they even failed to make something really cool of the dual hand magic system and more. If next time, they produce soemthing much more complex again RPG wise, keeping the landscape, I'm happy.
   
  I had that hope once, but then it took an arrow in the knee.


----------



## Head Injury

Quote: 





voon said:


> I like Skyrim due to the landscape. They finally caught up with ames like Gothic etc in that aspect. Real crags, cliffs etc. More realism in caves, with a floor going all kinds of ways. Oblivion was just rounded algorithmic hills in various steepnesses and colors, but never anything even remotly close to a cliff or mountain. All caves were boring, flatt neverending halls. The elven ruins looked cool but eventually were just empty holes with nothing going on in them.I found that utterly boring and atmosphere killing. Plus, endless streches of nothingness.


 

 Yeah, apparently Oblivion's landscapes were mostly randomly generated. All the developers did was dictate certain areas as forests and others as plains, then stick dungeons everywhere. And one person was the lead designer for every dungeon, and the dungeons were comprised of only so many geometrically simple room shapes stuck together like Legos, which is why they all ultimately looked the same. Skyrim's landscape is hand-made, most dungeon rooms are unique (which allows some caves to have really nice open environment designs), and everything's placed by hand. It really shows sometimes, when you first stumble across an abandoned camp site in the middle of the mountains, or find a weapon stuck in the ground just off the beaten path. Oblivion was just dungeon, tree, grass, dungeon.


----------



## Draygonn

Before purchase I didn't know this was a mountain climbing game.


----------



## Fidelity_Fiend

No more mountain climbing for you! IO hope this thread is thoroughly riddled with folly like this. Seriously though, Skyrim is awesome, I need to know Sapphire's real name grrrrr.


----------



## DesireUsername

Here's the problem with Skyrim, it was so awesome that I played obsessively for two weeks and now its over....like completely over. I have close to 130 hours, I don't know what to do now.


----------



## Head Injury

Quote: 





desireusername said:


> Here's the problem with Skyrim, it was so awesome that I played obsessively for two weeks and now its over....like completely over. I have close to 130 hours, I don't know what to do now.


 

 Make a new character


----------



## Br777

I dont play video games, or have any idea what goes on in this thread or this game, but i am a fan of this singer and felt obligated to share this...
  I figured this must be like a geeks wet dream to see video game songs be covered by great female singers


----------



## sphinxvc

Quote:


fidelity_fiend said:


> No more mountain climbing for you! IO hope this thread is thoroughly riddled with folly like this. Seriously though, Skyrim is awesome, I need to know Sapphire's real name grrrrr.


 

 Have you seen the episode where he strips naked in a tundra & starts doing push-ups to "stay warm"?  Or the one where he kills the white bunny rabbit to use as emergency toilet paper?  Awful.


----------



## Head Injury

Quote: 





sphinxvc said:


> Or the one where he kills the white bunny rabbit to use as emergency toilet paper?  Awful.


 

 When you gotta go, you gotta go.
   
  The people of Skyrim don't even have toilets. But I think they use foxes.
   
  Though I did find one cave with a bucket placed in a clearly bathroom-like corner. I think it was Embershard Mine right outside of Riverwood.


----------



## sphinxvc

Hmm, while I'm posting in this thread I realized I don't actually know what Skyrim is, is it perhaps a thread about what you folks are doing to express your appreciation for Skylab?  I would google it but I think I will just be disappointed so I'll stick with my version.


----------



## Head Injury

Quote: 





sphinxvc said:


> Hmm, while I'm posting in this thread I realized I don't actually know what Skyrim is, is it perhaps a thread about what you folks are doing to express your appreciation for Skylab?  I would google it but I think I will just be disappointed so I'll stick with my version.


 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_V:_Skyrim


----------



## Exediron

Quote: 





fidelity_fiend said:


> I need to know Sapphire's real name grrrrr.


 





   
  Shardana didn't really hit it off with Sapphire on their first meeting.


----------



## Draygonn

Quote: 





sphinxvc said:


> Quote:
> Or the one where he kills the white bunny rabbit to use as emergency toilet paper?  Awful.


----------



## LizardKing1

I'm doing the Dark Brotherhood questline and I keep finding flaws.
   
  First when I'm supposed to kill the bride, I do it while she's adressing the public. First of all the "public" are like 7 people. Huge-ass wedding bro. Now, when I kill the bride, I think of talking to the groom. In the most fake-sounding, bored voice he says "oh no no no no no". Really? If you still haven't completed this quest do it and talk to the groom and just listen to his despair. Also he kept telling me to not get too close to her, but just stared while I literally jumped on top of her repeatedly.
   
  Next I'm supposed to kill Gaius Maro, son of the commander of the commander of the Emperor's guard. Cool, easy. You get his scheduele where it shows the cities he's visiting to make security arrangements, so that the Emperor himself might visit them safely. Interestingly enough, the Emperor won't go through Winterhold, but he will go to Windhelm, where Ulfric Stormcloak is. Yeah, security in the Hold of the leader or the rebel army devoted to rid Skyrim of the Empire...


----------



## Head Injury

My soundtrack shipped today


----------



## DesireUsername

Watch it have a single track dedicated to Fus Ro Dah.


----------



## Deathdeisel

Playing skyrim full time now, beat the campaign way too fast on a lvl 18 2h warrior, and i knew it, so im now replaying and enjoying it even more as a mostly mage/assasin. Trying to find the dark brotherhood questline now, because ive beaten thieves, college of winterhold, joined the imperials, and havent even unlocked da from fus ro da lol. Really am trying to find all the dragon priests as i like their masks. 
   
  So far they made this one 100% better playing wise than the old oblivion. Glitches and what not no, but i dont mind, its rare for me. Doing the bards college now.


----------



## Eisenhower

I've played Oblivion and Fallout 3, and got the impression that Bethesda is a very lazy game studio. 
  For example, they reuse voice actors for many NPCs, which totally kills the immersion that their games attempt. The voice acting was also super spotty, ranging from amazing (Liam Neeson) to awful. The dialog was pretty bland too.
  Also things like, when you kill someone in private, other NPCs will just know that you killed them intuitively or something.
  Honestly, FO3 was one of the most overrated games I have ever played. I couldn't wait to finish the campaign.
   
  Has anything changed in Skyrim? Or is it just another Bethesda game?


----------



## MD1032

This is the first Bethesda game I've ever played. It doesn't have nearly the polish of many other games, but the effort invested into making it is pretty noticeable. It's clear to me that even though the game seems to have been coded by morons (who now refuse to acknowledge their mistakes by patching their game), they had an army of people generating the content, which just doesn't seem to end. I can imagine that it's easy to spend 200 hours on a single playthrough of this game, whereas the last Assassin's Creed game only lasted about 10 hours for me. Which game is better, I cannot say.
   
  Somewhat relevant to Head-Fi, the sound leaves a lot to be desired. There are only about three or four music tracks you will ever hear, which drives me absolutely up the wall. The sound effects have to be turned down to about 1/3 and the voices have to be maxed out to actually hear anything...I spent the first 50 hours of the game with one hand on my mouse and the other on my volume control...it is a shame that they spent so much time on other things only to overlook something this important. While the individual sound _effects_ can be quite impressive, the overall sound does not compete with today's games. I echo others' comments about the repetitive voice acting getting annoying.
   
  I'm not personally feeling the "immersion" thing. Bioware makes significantly higher quality RPG's in this respect (OK, please ignore Dragon Age, that was terrible), and they do so with a game that is less than half the size. When all is said and done, it's a good game, there are lots of things to do with your character, and plenty of surprises. Good enough until Diablo III comes out.


----------



## EnOYiN

eisenhower said:


> Has anything changed in Skyrim? Or is it just another Bethesda game?




Certain things changed and some things stayed the same. Of course they've reused certain voice actors, but most NPCs which play a bigger role will have a unique voice actor. Killing someone in private is supposed to work right now, but sometimes it doesn't. In towns it generally doesn't work if the person you're trying to kill sees you. If it does work the game will say something along the lines of " Last witness killed. Bounty removed". It seems that animals count as witnesses too and you'll have to kill those to get rid of the bounty.

Like I've said before, this game has many flaws, but it's still pretty awesome anyway.


----------



## Exediron

Quote: 





md1032 said:


> Somewhat relevant to Head-Fi, the sound leaves a lot to be desired. There are only about three or four music tracks you will ever hear, which drives me absolutely up the wall. The sound effects have to be turned down to about 1/3 and the voices have to be maxed out to actually hear anything...I spent the first 50 hours of the game with one hand on my mouse and the other on my volume control...it is a shame that they spent so much time on other things only to overlook something this important. While the individual sound _effects_ can be quite impressive, the overall sound does not compete with today's games. I echo others' comments about the repetitive voice acting getting annoying.
> 
> I'm not personally feeling the "immersion" thing. Bioware makes significantly higher quality RPG's in this respect (OK, please ignore Dragon Age, that was terrible), and they do so with a game that is less than half the size. When all is said and done, it's a good game, there are lots of things to do with your character, and plenty of surprises. Good enough until Diablo III comes out.


 

 If the repetition of the music in Skyrim is a problem for you, avoid playing Morrowind if you can help it. The music certainly could afford to be more varied in Skyrim, but the way you only ever hear the same 1-2 minutes of music for dozens or even hundreds of hours in Morrowind was a major issue I had with the game (and if people are familiar with me, they know I had a lot of those). I'm not quite sure why you're having the problem you do with the sound balance, however; I keep all of my in-game audio settings at maximum except for footsteps (-4 clicks) and music (1/2), and everything sounds fine with my DT770s. You might have the known distant voices bug which afflicts Skyrim - in this bug, if you look straight at the speaker they sound very distant, but if you look slightly to the side you'll hear them clearly. Or you could have an entirely different bug, who knows.
   
  I myself used to be a Bioware Devotee, but everything they've made since Dragon Age I has been a complete failure of one nature or another. Calling Mass Effect (1 or 2) immersive is a sick joke; there's nothing immersive about being constantly surprised by whatever **** comes out of 'your character's' mouth and watching as the unpredictable and inconsistent dialogue wheel options destroy whatever notion you ever had of your character's personality. If you like playing a game where you're just a desperate ghost trapped within a zombie host with no real control of your actions, then I suppose Mass Effect might be a good game. At least the first one had an interesting plot and actually felt at least halfway epic. No comments about Mass Effect 3, as neither I nor anyone I know has played it.
   
  At least Bethesda games are getting better with time, while Bioware's best days were barely even in this millennium. I suppose there's still hope for Dragon Age 3, but considering the way that the series has been going (except for Legacy, if you ignore all the random crap tacked on so that the Champion could steal the module) I'm not holding my breath.


----------



## Deathdeisel

Ill admit sometimes you can see a bit of lazyness from bethesda, and in some aspects they really were lazy, but in most aspects the game is well done. One game i was truely impressed with that never got enough sales was Witcher 2, amazing soundtrack, voices were completely different, phenomenal graphics, fun fighting. It eats bethesda in some ways, but all of bethesdas games have been bigger, fallout and skyrim are both massive plain and simple. 
   
  Mass Effect is probably still and will be my favorite futureistic anything. Really to compare it to skyrim isnt a good comparison, its smaller size wise, playwise a good bit too, but so much more polished, more engaging, fun, and dramatic. If you havent played this game, and like RPGs at all, go out and buy both of them now. If you have a ps3 or pc buy the second one, and itll inform you what went down in the first. Really mass effect does almost everything right. Mass effect 3 isnt out yet. While you dont control your actions quite like skyrim, you still decide how it goes down usually.


----------



## Exediron

Quote: 





deathdeisel said:


> Ill admit sometimes you can see a bit of lazyness from bethesda, and in some aspects they really were lazy, but in most aspects the game is well done. One game i was truely impressed with that never got enough sales was Witcher 2, amazing soundtrack, voices were completely different, phenomenal graphics, fun fighting. It eats bethesda in some ways, but all of bethesdas games have been bigger, fallout and skyrim are both massive plain and simple.
> 
> Mass Effect is probably still and will be my favorite futureistic anything. Really to compare it to skyrim isnt a good comparison, its smaller size wise, playwise a good bit too, but so much more polished, more engaging, fun, and dramatic. If you havent played this game, and like RPGs at all, go out and buy both of them now. If you have a ps3 or pc buy the second one, and itll inform you what went down in the first. Really mass effect does almost everything right. Mass effect 3 isnt out yet. While you dont control your actions quite like skyrim, you still decide how it goes down usually.


 

 Well, that would explain why I don't know anyone who's played it 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			




   
  Other than that, I disagree with basically everything you said; so no comment.


----------



## MD1032

Quote: 





> Originally Posted by *Exediron* /img/forum/go_quote.gif
> 
> You might have the known distant voices bug which afflicts Skyrim - in this bug, if you look straight at the speaker they sound very distant, but if you look slightly to the side you'll hear them clearly. Or you could have an entirely different bug, who knows.


 

  
  I did not know that was a bug. That explains why I can barely hear the voices when I am looking straight at them. I will try turning to the side more in the future to compensate.
   
  Maybe we have different definitions of "immersion". I never liked the dialogue that much in Mass Effect, but you have to admit that the storyline is pretty darn good (although so is Skyrim's). I prefer Mass Effect's characters, who are much more interesting for me than most of the people in Skyrim. At least they all have different voices. Mass Effect 2 is also a more colorful game than Skyrim, and I never once thought about the sound in the game until now. I constantly think about it in Skyrim. Mass Effect also has that nice feature where you're playing the game and don't have to keep quicksaving every 5 feet because you're worried about something bugging out...that is one thing I could do without in Skyrim.
   
  Honestly I haven't played any game in a long time that I really felt any significant amount of "immersion" in besides some of the Assassin's Creed games (my personal favorites on the current gen of consoles)...maybe part of that is the fact that I'm older now and they affect me less.
   
  But yeah if you could combine the polish of a game like Mass Effect with the huge size and sheer content (and complexity of the content) of Skyrim, you would have a deadly game.


----------



## Head Injury

Quote: 





md1032 said:


> But yeah if you could combine the polish of a game like Mass Effect with the huge size and sheer content (and complexity of the content) of Skyrim, you would have a deadly game.


 

 And a painfully overstretched budget.


----------



## Draygonn

eisenhower said:


> they reuse voice actors for many NPCs, which totally kills the immersion that their games attempt.


Doubt they've used more than 5 voices for the NPCs. At least the dungeons aren't reused (I'm looking at you, DA2)


----------



## Deathdeisel

Quote: 





exediron said:


> Well, that would explain why I don't know anyone who's played it
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 


   
  Not trying to pick a fight or anything here, but saying mass effect, a game who both the second and first generally got a rating of 9 or 10/10 is a bad game is a stretch, and yes i know ratings get bsed sometimes (im glaring at you GTA4) but still, kmon. While it may not allow you to pick every decision, or sometimes things come out unexpected as you thought(i have had that problem once or twice), but i really gotta wonder what makes you think so differently.


----------



## Exediron

Quote:


deathdeisel said:


> Not trying to pick a fight or anything here, but saying mass effect, a game who both the second and first generally got a rating of 9 or 10/10 is a bad game is a stretch, and yes i know ratings get bsed sometimes (im glaring at you GTA4) but still, kmon. While it may not allow you to pick every decision, or sometimes things come out unexpected as you thought(i have had that problem once or twice), but i really gotta wonder what makes you think so differently.


 

 Well, Mass Effect 1 came out before Dragon Age, so I'm only calling MA 2 a complete failure 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



   
  Seriously though I don't want to sound like I'm arbitrarily hating the series, so I'll try to explain my feelings on it:
   
  While I really don't think that there's very many things wrong with Mass Effect One, the things which do happen to be wrong with it are crippling. First and foremost is the dialogue wheel, and this isn't the refined and polished dialogue wheel of Dragon Age 2 - this is the dialogue wheel which shows you options which are completely in character for you, but grays them out because _it _doesn't think the option fits with_ its_ interpretation of your character; the same dialogue wheel which, when you want to break off a hostile interview with a reporter, makes you punch her instead. For people like me, playing an RPG is all about creating a character and experiencing the world with them and essentially through their eyes; it's vitally important that your character is able to react to a given situation in the way that they would, or it starts to eat away at their personality and deteriorate it. The dialogue wheel in Mass Effect makes you guess which option fits best with your character's response at the best of times, and at the worst of times there simply isn't one that fits.
   
  Which leads me into the second huge issue with Mass Effect - character voice. As we all presumably know, this being a forum devoted to the pursuit of audio, sound makes a huge impression on the human brain. And the way a person sounds, the way they talk and the inflections or nuances of their speech, make a huge difference in how we perceive that person and the impression they make. In an RPG without a character voice, you are free to imagine the voice of your character and make it fit your impression of them. But with the character voice (and all of this is with the disclaimer 'at least for me'), the audio impression of the voice associated with the dialogue spoken completely overwhelms your mental impression of however your character should sound, forcing your impression to match what you're hearing. And if the spoken dialogue voice clashes badly with your imagination of how your character sounds, this can be devastating for their personality. The voice acting in Mass Effect is good, but it only fits for one type of personality; if, for example, you want to play a quiet and elegantly refined individual who only fights because they believe it's right and wants to be courteous and pleasant to everyone they meet, the voice isn't really right for that. If you want to play a happy and extroverted personality who is always eager and excited about everything, you're even more out of luck.
   
  Mass Effect also makes use of a computer determined alignment system, and I'm never fond of those. Alignment (in my opinion, again) is about intentions, motivations and the reason behind the action - things which the computer really can't know. If a guard tries to stop you and you shoot him without waiting for him to speak because he was irritating you, that's evil. But if you didn't give him a chance to speak because you think that if you let him delay you then innocent lives might be at stake, then that pushes it into the neutral territory or maybe into good. I could come up with a better example, given time, but that serves to illustrate my point. I won't get too much into alignment because alignment is only one step away from real-world morality, which is a gray area on the forums.
   
  Among the things which I did like about Mass Effect are its detailed and interesting universe, the look and feel of the science fiction technology and the companions you get. Bioware basically pioneered full-personality companions, and in this regard they're still miles ahead of anyone - even in Dragon Age 2 the companions were good, when they'd talk to you. Which wasn't often. I also really enjoyed the cinematics, particularly the end battle around Citadel Station, and the typical Bioware ability for your decisions to actually feel like decisions. I didn't like the system underneath the game and I hated the cooldown mechanic on the guns, but 'hard' mechanical stuff like that is far less important to me than the 'softer' role-playing side, as such.
   
  Mass Effect 2 is a different issue; I feel that it completely lets the promise of the first game down. Now, I admit that I haven't seen the end of it - I never got more than about halfway through. But I do know how it ends, since after I decided I wasn't ever going to finish I looked it up. The entire plot of Mass Effect 2 feels like a footnote to the first game - there isn't any real development. We knew the reapers were coming from the end of the first game, and nothing which happens in the second game is really compelling or new as far as story goes. The system is even worse now, with the sole exception of ammo clips which, although preferable mechanically, don't make sense with the in-story explanation of the technology. The cover system is a terrible mess, vastly inferior to other games which possess one. The dialogue wheel is barely better than before, and features if anything even more unjustifiable acts of badass than the first one. Fine if that's your sort of character, but it rarely gives you a choice. I also personally find the new companions in the second game much less interesting, but I realize that's a purely personal issue.
   
  A problem I have with both games, and apparently the modern era of games at large, is the way your character comes pre-integrated in the story. I know that a lot of people find this to be a good thing because it typically allows for a stronger story (it makes it easier, at least), but the unfortunate downside is that it severely restricts the concepts which you can reasonably have for your character. This problem is made worse by the fact that throughout the Mass Effect series Bioware clearly has a definite idea of what your character should be like, and the dialogue wheel and the cutscenes constantly push you in that direction. I also harbor a strong dislike for the character last name, which is why throughout this reply I have never referred to your character as 'Shepherd'. A predetermined last name is okay if nobody uses it, as in Dragon Age, but if it gets used it starts to become who you are, and that means everyone becomes the same.
   
  To try to explain that point more clearly: in a game such as Baldur's Gate or Dragon Age, the NPCs still need something to refer to you by when they can't get around it in the dialogue. I emphasis 'when they can't get around it' because most of the time, they can - and it works very well. Think about the people you actually know; how many times do they call you by your last name? Probably never, outside of a formal setting (this is strictly an American thing, I realize). To have your companions refer to you in such an impersonal way is annoying enough (especially if you have a freakin' romance with them!), but it's also unfortunate for building your character and their personality in a way which isn't obvious to everyone; a well chosen name fits your concept of a character, while the supplied name fits only a small handful of characters. And much like the character voice, hearing your supplied name often enough can hammer your correct and better name out of your consciousness. In Dragon Age, 'Warden' wasn't so bad in general - it was weird if your party called you that, admittedly, but for most people it made sense. A Grey Warden is a position of respect, and more importantly it isn't a name; you _are_ a Grey Warden, but you might not want to _be_ Shepherd. If they simply called you 'Colonel', for instance, it wouldn't be a problem - every character in that position would be of that particular military rank, and it wouldn't define them in a way it shouldn't.
   
  What all of this really boils down to is what you want out of a role-playing game, and I fully admit that in this respect I'm probably not typical. I represent the extreme fringe of role-players - to me, role-playing isn't so much a pleasant pastime as a way of life. Myself and my family play face-to-face D&D almost every day, and frequently spend entire sessions occupied in nothing except for playing the characters interacting with each other. And no, I'm not some sort of crazy person who believes my characters are real in some ultimate sense, but so long as I'm playing them they can become real to me and the people I play with. But if the computer fights me and tries to force my character into a mold that they don't fit, they aren't really that character anymore - they become whatever character the computer game was designed for, and will become so every time you play it. That's what separates _true_ role-playing games and simply interesting story-driven shooters or adventure games; the ability to truly create your character and play them as they would react throughout the game.
   
  Although some would argue that by this definition there have been no true role-playing game for the computer, I have achieved a satisfactory level of role-playing in the old Baldur's Gate era games and even recently in the first Dragon Age. I played Dragon Age four times, and I only rarely felt that I wasn't able to properly articulate the differences in my character; I'm currently in the process of playing Baldur's Gate with my sixth Bhaalspawn, and I don't feel restricted at all. Because the old games, and for a brief blip in the modern era Dragon Age 1, understood that you have to let the imagination of the player shape the character. Modern features which are designed to, and perhaps even do for some, help you enjoy the game - such as character voice and integrated backstory - actually hurt the critical ability to make and play your character, and for me that is everything. Skyrim is more a role-playing game than Mass Effect because it actually lets you play _your_ character fully; I wish that it gave you more opportunities to do that through conversation, but every action you take can be playing your character. I do like the story of Mass Effect more, though; I just think it would have made a better movie than role-playing game. Or it could have been a truly great role-playing game, if it were designed differently.
   
  I realize that got a bit long (I started listening to 'The Scarecrow' after I started the post and the album finished before I did 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




), but hopefully I made my point a bit clearer. If that's too much of a read, here's the short version:
   
  Mass Effect is a great game, but it's not a true role-playing game because it doesn't allow you the freedom to actually create and play your own unique character in the way which you feel is right for that character.
   
  For people who don't want the same thing out of an RPG as I do, I understand that Mass Effect might be all they want. To me, however, it is critically flawed but still a good game. It just won't ever hold a place in my hierarchy of games like Baldur's Gate does, which I've been re-playing about once a year for the past 5 years and don't intend to stop any time soon (pro tip for Baldur's Gate role-players interested in replaying; portraits are everything, the more the better - I have over 5,000 unique portraits for my game and I need every one of them!).
   
  If the contents of this post don't sound like the line I was taking earlier, it's the difference between me reacting to something and me taking the time to reach into the depths of my own feelings. I have a higher wisdom than intelligence score, as such 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



   
  EDIT: That is an intimidating block of text, isn't it? It didn't look that big while I was posting it


----------



## Deathdeisel

Haha now that i can actually understand where you come from. I understand that yes sometime(more often then not) mass effect has a tendency to let you pick between a few pre-determined choices that may not voice your opinion exactly. But the reason i believe they do so, is that it allows your choices to matter a good amount. 
   
  Take skyrim for example, if you make a choice, say kill this person rather than talk through it, it really doesnt affect the outcome much at all, but in mass effect(1) you literally have the option to kill off one of your teamates in less than 5 clicks. And that doesnt make a large difference throughout the ending, but it does make a large immediate change. 
   
  I played baldurs gate as well(not nearly like you)  and i remember it being extremely surprising at the depth of the level that you can define your character, while again you cant do so in mass effect, because they do start you out as a certain type of person already, it makes the differences actually apear a bit. I also do agree that with the shepard part, it would really be awesome should a game ever be able to read input text, and actually have the characters in game call you by that name, but until that day really we just have to suffice. 
   
  I differ from your opinion in which that, i like to see the characters story develop in a sense of how i want them to, not that the character is a representation of a real person, or myself. Again this is all personal preference. But i really do understand where your coming from now, and could see how its flawed, but these things dont bother me so much i guess, i just enjoy it as i can. 
   
  Btw my friends actually around 90% of them call me by my last name(we were in football together, and thats how our coaches called us by). But yes in a love relationship, my gf never calls me by my last name, and i really do wish there was that text input translator type thing. 
   
  I would disagree about the role player part, i would consider mass effect an RPG(50% of the time though) , the second one especially was more adventure type shooter. While mass effect doesnt allow the character customization depth, i think its still should be considered an overall rpg.


----------



## voon

I really wanted to read Exedirons long post, but then I took an arrow through my knee.


----------



## Xcellent

Ooh god, this thread is doomed
	

	
	
		
		

		
			




  
  Quote: 





voon said:


> I really wanted to read Exedirons long post, but then I took an arrow through my knee.


----------



## UnityIsPower

Quote: 





exediron said:


> "The system is even worse now, with the sole exception of ammo clips which, although preferable mechanically, don't make sense with the in-story explanation of the technology."


 
-RIGHT!


----------



## MD1032

I definitely agree that Mass Effect 2 wasn't as good as the first one, but I found that I liked it considerably more in the second one. And yeah, I know what you mean about Shepard's voice. You can have dialogue go like this if you want:
   
  Person: "Commander Shepard, I know we're asking a lot, but we need your help to survive!"
  Shepard: "Don't worry, I'm here to ensure everyone's survival. I'll get you all home safe."
  Person: "Great, we'll start making plans to move out."
  Shepard: "You're pathetic! I hope you all die!"
   
  Immersion gone. haha 
   
  And while it's obvious that the upper right option is usually paragon and the lower right is usually renegade, sometimes they are reserved and you find yourself in the above situation.
   
  Hopefully in ME3 they'll go back to no ammo, and can the dumb Gears of War style of killing from behind cover.
   
  What's your favorite RPG, then? Honestly, I haven't played too many that I enjoyed as much as Ocarina of Time.


----------



## Eisenhower

Quote: 





md1032 said:


> I definitely agree that Mass Effect 2 wasn't as good as the first one, but I found that I liked it considerably more in the second one. And yeah, I know what you mean about Shepard's voice. You can have dialogue go like this if you want:
> 
> Person: "Commander Shepard, I know we're asking a lot, but we need your help to survive!"
> Shepard: "Don't worry, I'm here to ensure everyone's survival. I'll get you all home safe."
> ...


 

 I mean, if you wanted a reasonable dialogue, you should have chosen to say that. I don't see how that's a fault of the game programmers, they're merely giving you the freedom to say something like that. If anything, that makes it more immersive.
   
  As for ME1 being better than ME2, certainly the story was a little hard hitting. ME2 was mostly about gathering up team members (most of whom I never really ended up using all that much), which made it less "epic" but more diverse.
  I thought the refinements in the inventory and what not were a HUGE improvement. I personally think RPGs should not be about nit picking in inventory (although to some that type of stuff has appeal).
   
  I'm not sure OOT is really an RPG. It seems like more of a fantasy adventure game. There is no personal identity in it at all.
   
  I am eager to play the older game "Planescape: Torment". I hear it has a great story and fantastic dialogue.
   
  What are people's opinion of The Witcher (1 or 2)?


----------



## Exediron

Quote: 





md1032 said:


> What's your favorite RPG, then? Honestly, I haven't played too many that I enjoyed as much as Ocarina of Time.


 
   
  My favorite RPG is Baldur's Gate, played as an entire series (BG, TotSC, SoA, ToB). I also like the first Dragon Age, but it has its fair share of flaws. I've played it four times from beginning of the main game to the end of Awakening including all modules, and I doubt I'll play it again any time soon. I haven't played Ocarina of Time; I think it's primarily or entirely a console game, and I do my gaming exclusively on some manner of PC.
   
  Quote: 





eisenhower said:


> I am eager to play the older game "Planescape: Torment". I hear it has a great story and fantastic dialogue.


 
   
  It does, but it's not my kind of game for reasons which I'm sure are clear from my long post. For the people who like that kind of game, it's one of the best; it's also considered to be a very intellectual game.
   
  Quote: 





eisenhower said:


> What are people's opinion of The Witcher (1 or 2)?


 
   
  My opinion is that it's overrated, but since I've never played either one you can feel free to take my opinion for what it's worth: nothing 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



   
  Basically, I know enough about The Witcher to know that I'd never want to play it. My understanding is that it's sort of a modern day Planescape: Torment in terms of linearity of character but breadth of story and dialogue. If you're interested in P:T, it would probably be worth your time to check The Witcher out.
   
  The people who constantly praise The Witcher 2's graphics do annoy me, because I've seen plenty of high resolution screenshots from it and it doesn't look any better (or very different) from Dragon Age 2. And I don't buy the 'you need to see it in motion' line.


----------



## Head Injury

Quote: 





exediron said:


> The people who constantly praise The Witcher 2's graphics do annoy me, because I've seen plenty of high resolution screenshots from it and it doesn't look any better (or very different) from Dragon Age 2. And I don't buy the 'you need to see it in motion' line.


 

 It's pretty, but only because it's linear. I couldn't get into The Witcher, it bored me to death, but The Witcher 2 is pretty fun. Again, too linear even with all the choices you're given, and too short for what it's worth. It has replay value though, all the different character development options are interesting and it seems like the whole middle chapter (of three) is different depending on who you side with at the end of the first. I don't know for sure because I never finished my second play through because of ponies and Skyrim.


----------



## Eisenhower

Isn't a "skyrim" basically just a "halo"?


----------



## Head Injury

Quote: 





eisenhower said:


> Isn't a "skyrim" basically just a "halo"?


 

 No, I think it refers to a kinky subdivision of the Mile High Club.


----------



## Eisenhower

Quote: 





head injury said:


> No, I think it refers to a kinky subdivision of the Mile High Club.


 

 ah, the ol' skyrimmer


----------



## Deathdeisel

In regards to eisenhowers post of witcher:
   
  I think its really more of an adventure game. You make really just 3 or 4 major choices and generally that dictates how your story evolves, the graphics are actually quite great, combat is nice once you master it(youll die a lot in the begining), customization is pretty much nil and void, but it still is a fun game. I didnt play witcher one, so, im refering to the second, ive heard the first was a bit boring, but again so far the second was to me impressive, for such a non marketed game. I would give it a 10/10 compared to most games, compared to other 10s, id say a 7 or so, overall was quite fun for me.
   
  It is more linear, so again its more or less an adventure game than an rpg, the few choices you do make actually make a large difference, and it youll probably want to play it a second time.
   
  Exediron: if you do your gaming via pc, why not run a virtual machine and play ocarina of time that way? Really ocarina of time is easily in my top 5 games of all time, and was for both me, my brother, my gf, and her sister, basically anyone who played it loved it to death.(in my case literally, my N64 died before i stopped playing it)


----------



## voon

WItcher 2 is too stringent and I don't like the handling of momvement ... feels to consoleish somehow. The "get over cliff by clicking" things etcs are just utter, utter rubbish. That said, I love witcher ... it's a far more adult game than most RPGs and somewhat unorthodox by mixing in sex and a much more sinister atmosphere - which I both love (the teenagers probably to, time to go "hehehe"). If it was for me, there could be even more of the two latters  You get to see cute elven thieves hanged etc, all these things woul dnot be in other games, to to fear of bad reviews and maybe loss of sales due to their non-child content. If they'd mix WItcher and Skyrim, and bring back some proper PC behaviour ... that'd sound nice. But maybe the PC is dying out. People don't seem to want better hardware, they prefer same hardware for easy development and big sales to the consolerso. Who knows, maybe even the classic RPG die sout. All these triggerhappy kids want is repetitive action it seems.


----------



## Head Injury

Apparently the soundtrack arrived Saturday (a day after it shipped) but I didn't think to check my mail until today 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



   
  The casing looks a little flimsy for $30 (+$5 shipping) but the artwork on it is nice. Jeremy Soule's illegible but artsy signature in gold ink is a lovely touch 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



   
  I'll start ripping it now.


----------



## Exediron

Quote: 





voon said:


> You get to see cute elven thieves hanged


 

 Why would I want to?


----------



## TheWuss

The crazy things NPCs say just crack me up.
   
  "They say Ulfric Stormcloak murdered the High King with his_ voice_!  Shouted him apart!"
                                                                                                                            - Guard


----------



## LizardKing1

Quote: 





thewuss said:


> The crazy things NPCs say just crack me up.
> 
> "They say Ulfric Stormcloak murdered the High King with his_ voice_!  Shouted him apart!"                                                                                                                          - Guard


 

 I love how some Guild members still treat you like crap even though you're their leader.
  Yes Dirge, I know who you are. I run the Thieves Guild, remember?
  Yes, I'm the new member of the companions, guard. No I don't fetch the mead, I'm actually Harbinger.


----------



## LimeANite

Quote: 





thewuss said:


> The crazy things NPCs say just crack me up.
> 
> "They say Ulfric Stormcloak murdered the High King with his_ voice_!  Shouted him apart!"
> - Guard


 


  "Maybe I'm the Dragonborn and I just don't know it yet."
   
  Makes me chuckle every time.  They occasionally get a little Fus-ro-dah too.


----------



## Xcellent

Indeed, everytime I heard someone say that I always shout in the air just to make them feel disappointed
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





. My favorite one was ''Let me guess.... Someone stole your sweetroll?'' My beautiful memories of Fallout 3 came back instantly 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



   
  PS: I know this is actually a reference to Morrowind, but for me it is more linked to Fallout
  
  Quote: 





limeanite said:


> "Maybe I'm the Dragonborn and I just don't know it yet."
> 
> Makes me chuckle every time.  They occasionally get a little Fus-ro-dah too.


----------



## Head Injury

I like to shout stuff off tables in inns. But there's nothing more fun than turning on god mode and freezing everyone in the city with Ice Form.


----------



## UnityIsPower

Quote: 





head injury said:


> I like to shout stuff off tables in inns. But there's nothing more fun than turning on god mode and freezing everyone in the city with Ice Form.


 


You can do that... maybe I should give the game a try. BTW... nice avatar(do I get band for saying that.. LOL).
   
  NOTE: This post has been censored as it infringes on copyrights.


----------



## Xcellent

Nice one.... Very nice....




  Quote: 





unityispower said:


> You can do that... maybe I should give the game a try. BTW... nice avatar(do I get band for saying that.. LOL).
> 
> NOTE: This post has been censored as it infringes on copyrights.


----------



## LizardKing1

Speaking of Avatars, how many times a day does Head Injury change his? I can't keep up! I was ok with the anti-SOPA pony.


----------



## Head Injury

Sorry 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



   
  I'll switch to Dovahshy tomorrow.


----------



## UnityIsPower

Quote: 





head injury said:


> Sorry
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 


  LMAO.


----------



## TheWuss

i'm harbinger of the companions, and married to aela the huntress.
  but, somehow, they keep giving *me* things to do.  shouldn't it be the other way around?


----------



## voon

Quote: 





exediron said:


> Why would I want to?


 


  Death Fetish? Elven Hate? Whatever  It just means, the Witcher RPGs are much dirtier than the usual RPG. You have ambiguous characters, dirty stuff. Like the guy running that town with the hanged elf thief. Things aren't black or white in Witcher, not good or bad. I found that dirt and the inclusion of sex options rather refreshingly realistic and hope they'll extend all of this in a witcher 3.


----------



## TheWuss

the next time i play through, i'm definitely taking the thief / archer / assassin angle.
  i started this time thinking "destruction magic" all the way, but it just became kind of boring.
  lately i've been spending my perks on sneaking and archery.
  there's nothing quite like sneaking up on a stormcloak camp, and dropping all of them (except the immortal camp leader, of course) with single arrow shots to the head.
  while the other members of the camp walk right by the dead bodies.  fun stuff.  
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



  i love drawing back the bow, and slowing time, zooming in, and making the shot.


----------



## LimeANite

Quote: 





thewuss said:


> there's nothing quite like sneaking up on a stormcloak camp, and dropping all of them (except the immortal camp leader, of course) with single arrow shots to the head.


 


  Haha, I found this out the hard way.  Slaughtered the whole camp and thought I had the leader down, then he popped back up and smacked me around while I was shuffling through the chests looking for loot.
   
  And thief is really fun.  Once you get your sneak skill up, it's really fun to sneak around stabbing people in the back.  With the 15x sneak dagger damage perk, you can take down pretty much anyone with one hit.  I've taken out most of the guards in Windhelm and Markarth like this for kicks.


----------



## Head Injury

I'm starting an assassin character myself. My first Argonian, too. I was going to make an Argonian spellsword, but I'm going to wait for a mod to make one-handed Destruction casting more than useless first.
   
  Smithing seems like it'll be extra overpowered on daggers, since I think it's a flat 10 point bonus to base damage at Legendary level. So you're going to double dagger damage, but only increase one-handed damage by like 60-80% or so. Archery's also a lot of fun in this game, does lots more damage than Oblivion and the perks are all great.


----------



## Exediron

Quote: 





head injury said:


> Smithing seems like it'll be extra overpowered on daggers, since I think it's a flat 10 point bonus to base damage at Legendary level. So you're going to double dagger damage, but only increase one-handed damage by like 60-80% or so. Archery's also a lot of fun in this game, does lots more damage than Oblivion and the perks are all great.


 

 I'm pretty sure it's a lot more than that, but I don't know for sure. My swords wouldn't be the base of legendary anyway, so that could be it.


----------



## LimeANite

Quote: 





head injury said:


> I'm starting an assassin character myself. My first Argonian, too. I was going to make an Argonian spellsword, but I'm going to wait for a mod to make one-handed Destruction casting more than useless first.
> 
> Smithing seems like it'll be extra overpowered on daggers, since I think it's a flat 10 point bonus to base damage at Legendary level. So you're going to double dagger damage, but only increase one-handed damage by like 60-80% or so. Archery's also a lot of fun in this game, does lots more damage than Oblivion and the perks are all great.


 

 It's more than 10.  I just checked on a random steel dagger I had lying around.  base attack is 9, legendary enchantment brings it to 26.  This is with smithing in the upper 70s/low 80's (can't remember exactly what it is anymore), with +27% smithing effectiveness from gear.


----------



## Exediron

I tried an experiment with Ebony, which is the material I have most readily available. The results I got are: Base Ebony Sword: 39. Legendary Ebony Sword: 74. These measurements are taken with no damage enhancing items of any sort worn, and no crafting enhancers of any sort were used in the upgrade. I was expecting a 100% increase, but that's pretty close.


----------



## KingStyles

My daedric dagger does about 100 dam. plus fire and ice dam. and my bow does 501 dam. plus drain health and paralyze. I had fun this 2nd time through being the sneak with bow on master difficulty. At first I always needed a companion so they could distract the enemy and I could shoot the mutitood of arrows that was needed to take them down. Now I can pretty much handle multi person conflics by taking most out before they see me.


----------



## voon

You can have any damage on any weapon ... just do the enchanting, smithing +gear game ad nauseam and you can have a weapon with 60'000 damage if you like (well I'm not sure if they limit it at some point). Question is in the end, if that's fun to you still, if everything dies in one hit. It's easier to open the console and type tgm into it


----------



## Head Injury

Quote: 





limeanite said:


> It's more than 10.  I just checked on a random steel dagger I had lying around.  base attack is 9, legendary enchantment brings it to 26.  This is with smithing in the upper 70s/low 80's (can't remember exactly what it is anymore), with +27% smithing effectiveness from gear.


 

 No, this comes before any bonuses you get from One-handed skill or enchantments. Steel dagger base damage is 5. So you're getting an extra ~75% from skills and stuff. +10 brings it to 15 damage, which is about 26 damage after +75% bonus. See here.


----------



## KingStyles

Its still fun for me. I cant be totally careless because there are some things that will still kick my butt pretty quick if I dont aproach it the right way.


----------



## Exediron

Quote: 





kingstyles said:


> I cant be totally careless because there are some things that will still kick my butt pretty quick if I dont aproach it the right way.


 

 How? My swords only do 360 a hand, and there's nothing in the game that I can't kill by holding down two buttons. With a bow that does even higher damage I'd think that was more true.


----------



## KingStyles

You can swing your swords a lot faster than I can shoot a bow. Also some of the mages you fight are ridicules. They can kill you with only a couple of hits and they slow you down so the rest of the weaker mages around them can beat on you. I had a dual weld character the first time and it was soo easy. Go in swinging and everything died if I just knicked them. With bows, you dont want a bunch of people running up on you because distance is your friend. As long as your smart about it, its easy. Thats what makes it funner than dual welding. I consider bows like a sniper rifle of the time. I want to be able to sneak and get a 1 shot kill everytime. That is the type of character I wanted. Like a hitman, controlling the situation and no one knows where the shots are coming from. They just see everyone dieing around them. It didnt work that well when the bow was even half as powerful. Once you fire the first shot, if it didnt kill, everybody around was alerted.


----------



## LimeANite

Quote: 





kingstyles said:


> You can swing your swords a lot faster than I can shoot a bow. Also some of the mages you fight are ridicules. They can kill you with only a couple of hits and they slow you down so the rest of the weaker mages around them can beat on you. I had a dual weld character the first time and it was soo easy. Go in swinging and everything died if I just knicked them. With bows, you dont want a bunch of people running up on you because distance is your friend. As long as your smart about it, its easy. Thats what makes it funner than dual welding. I consider bows like a sniper rifle of the time. I want to be able to sneak and get a 1 shot kill everytime. That is the type of character I wanted. Like a hitman, controlling the situation and no one knows where the shots are coming from. They just see everyone dieing around them. It didnt work that well when the bow was even half as powerful. Once you fire the first shot, if it didnt kill, everybody around was alerted.


 

 But as long as you don't keep firing and hide somewhere where you won't be seen, you're fine.  It may take you a little longer to take out a Bandit hideout, but if you play your cards right, you won't get hit at all.  There's a reason why my archery is in the 80s, my sneak is in the 90s, and my light armor is only in the 30s or 40s.


----------



## KingStyles

That is what I had to do in the beginning until I leveled up high enough,  had to shoot an arrow or 2 then run around the corner and hide till either my follower got up and distracted them again or things settled down and I could fire another arrow or 2. I would recommend trying it on master if anybody hasnt already. It is much more a challenge in the beginning.


----------



## psygeist

Sneak 100 and you can crouch right below someone's nose without being detected.


----------



## Exediron

Yes, but even a sneak 100 can't fire a shot in front of someone's nose without being detected.


----------



## Head Injury

That's what daggers are for


----------



## TheWuss

i assume you don't just mean a sneak of 100, but a sneak of 100 with the "silence" perk opened up as well, right?


----------



## TheWuss

so, i did "boethiah's calling", and got the Ebony Mail.
  not the strongest armor by any means, but the effect is pretty cool looking, and i just love sneaking up behind people and listening to them choking as they are poisoned by the aura of the chain mail.
  my character is becoming quite cruel, after starting out with such good intentions.


----------



## LizardKing1

I know right? I wanted to help the world, now I'm a freaking cannibal who has done some really nasty stuff.


----------



## JamesMcProgger

so I have been procrastinating this game for too long, but yesterday I slayed my first dragon and now I can shout. guess I'be playing it more often now that DA2 is over.


----------



## TheWuss

yeah, i remember slaying my first dragon.  lots of guards outside whiterun helping.  thank goodness.
  and, last night, i sneak attacked the dragon at Ancient's Ascent.  and one-shot killed it.
  i've come a long way, baby.


----------



## KingStyles

Quote: 





> yeah, i remember slaying my first dragon.  lots of guards outside whiterun helping.  thank goodness.  and, last night, i sneak attacked the dragon at Ancient's Ascent.  and one-shot killed it.
> i've come a long way, baby.


 
  What level are you? I sneak attacked the dragon in Blackreach last night with a bow that does 501 damage and daedric arrows with the 3x multiplier for sneaking and had to 3 shot him. I am somewhere around 46 or 47 level. Cant remember without looking.
  I know I got the multiplier because it said so after every shot in the left hand corner. Does a dragons health scale?


----------



## Exediron

There are different types of dragon, which might explain it.
   
*Dragon *is the weakest
*Frost Dragon *and *Blood Dragon* are slightly better
*Elder Dragon* is pretty tough
*Ancient Dragon* is the best you'll usually meet.
   
  I have no trouble one-shotting plain Dragons, but Ancient Dragons take a few hits to kill.


----------



## TheWuss

exactly.  i was level 46 when i one-shot said dragon.
  not sure what my total damage was at the time.  but, i took a potion of true shot beforehand.  and, poisoned the bow as well.  so, was just trying to max out the damage.


----------



## voon

Do you know the game limits the distance an arrow can do damage within? You can shoot all you want .. the arrows will all fly through the victim at some distance. but: Can be changed somewhere in the files .... that way an arrow will hit anything over it's maximum range .. .I wonder what the farthest Distance is ... maybe stand on Mount Hrothgar and just randomly shoot in a 45 Degree angle upwards and hit some poor Rabbit through its knee on the north coast?


----------



## TheWuss

right.  and you can change the trajectory to dead-straight as well.
  in the game, arrows fly at a slightly upward trajectory.  not sure if they rise, then fall.  but, with my targets, i aim slightly below the mark, and it seems to work...


----------



## LizardKing1

The shot angle is calculated according to where you were pointing when you released the arrow. If you were pointing at a target far away, the arrow is releasedpointing very much up, if the target is near it shoots straighter. This means the arrow is supposed to hit where you were pointing.
   
  It actually stop hitting in decent distances, you can still hit enemies pretty far away.


----------



## Exediron

Hmm. I haven't noticed that to be true at all - maybe it's a settings thing? Or do you play on the console? Because I certainly need to aim up manually to hit far targets, and if I aim at the neck of a target 20' distant I'll hit his forehead.


----------



## Xcellent

Same here, I played on console aswell as PC. On both I have to aim up manually.
  Quote: 





exediron said:


> Hmm. I haven't noticed that to be true at all - maybe it's a settings thing? Or do you play on the console? Because I certainly need to aim up manually to hit far targets, and if I aim at the neck of a target 20' distant I'll hit his forehead.


----------



## KingStyles

I am on the xbox and I have to aim low also. Also last night for about a hour, my shots were going to the right of the target also.


----------



## JamesMcProgger

Quote: 





kingstyles said:


> I am on the xbox and I have to aim low also. Also last night for about a hour, my shots were going to the right of the target also.


 


  you character got the shaky hands syndrome.
   
  I havent use bow and arrow, yet, in mostly in shield and mace or huge ass sword. but I'm just a newb, slayed my second dragon yesterday night and I got lucky because it was fighting a Giant, so most of the time I was just trying not to get hit by the giant hitting the dragon here and there


----------



## voon

Giants are funnier if being used as orbital lifts. I once got hit by one and made a nice Saturn V impression ... the whole of skyrim shrivelled to about post stamp size. Interesting view I must say. I can also tell you, that going into sneakmode does not mean, the floor won't see you once gravity kicks back in.


----------



## LizardKing1

I'm used to aiming slightly higher, but all the shots go way up, over the target's head. I'm on PC, only using a map mod and that gorgeous night sky mod.


----------



## HiGHFLYiN9

I'd have to say that Skyrim was the most enjoyable game for me in the past couple of years. It's a shame that there's barely anything left to do for my character. I really hope the DLC is announced soon.


----------



## JamesMcProgger

Quote: 





highflyin9 said:


> I'd have to say that Skyrim was the most enjoyable game for me in the past couple of years. It's a shame that there's barely anything left to do for my character. I really hope the DLC is announced soon.


 


  start over again?


----------



## Draygonn

eisenhower said:


> ah, the ol' skyrimmer


and the double skyrimmer, for dress occasion


----------



## voon

Quote: 





jamesmcprogger said:


> start over again?


 


  Boring ... tried it ... but only liked it as long as I still could find some new quests. That's the bad side of well  told stories compared to random gaga: Once you know them, you know them.


----------



## Head Injury

Quote: 





voon said:


> Boring ... tried it ... but only liked it as long as I still could find some new quests. That's the bad side of well  told stories compared to random gaga: Once you know them, you know them.


 

 You don't have to do quests. Explore some ruins you haven't explored yet. If you're not into that, only the story, I think you bought the wrong game


----------



## voon

Quote: 





head injury said:


> You don't have to do quests. Explore some ruins you haven't explored yet. If you're not into that, only the story, I think you bought the wrong game


 


  I explored just about everything .. the map looks pretty mad right now ... I tried to find things in empty spots ... on the ice shelves and whatnot .. I've seen it I think ... and now it bores me to death.


----------



## Pepsi

Quote: 





highflyin9 said:


> I'd have to say that Skyrim was the most enjoyable game for me in the past couple of years. It's a shame that there's barely anything left to do for my character. I really hope the DLC is announced soon.


 


  Couple of years? Didn't the game release in 2011?


----------



## LimeANite

Quote: 





pepsi said:


> Couple of years? Didn't the game release in 2011?


 


  I think he means that it's the most enjoyable game out of all the ones he's played in the last couple years.


----------



## UnityIsPower

How do you guys feel about Borderlands?


----------



## Deathdeisel

I liked borderlands quite a bit, was a fun game overall. Nothing amazing though tbh.


----------



## Kirosia

I started playing the game this week. It's Fallout 3 with medieval elements... and significantly less interesting EVERYTHING. Characters are forgettable, the world is vast but empty, combat is competent yet highly repetitive, and side areas and loot are a joke. Initially I was wandering around, doing sidequests and exploring, but I've gotten nothing worthwhile from it. The UI is cumbersome, magic spells are uncreative as can be, sword fighting is BIG SWING AND STEP BACK. The entire game, although not un-fun overall, just seems utterly pointless and a step back from Fallout.


----------



## Head Injury

Meanwhile, I never really got into FO3. Played it through once in 50 hours and felt like I saw everything (except the handful of quests which had meaningful branches). Tried a couple other builds but none of them were as interesting as my sniper. I'm gonna give it another go soon though, since I've been reading a MLP crossover story


----------



## JamesMcProgger

stupid Odahviing bug, I hhad to practically kill it like 6 times until I notice nothing ever happens, and went to look for the fix on some forums.
   
  So when Odaviing takes me to the place to look for Alduin, is that the final quest of the main story? because I feel it is too soon ... I havent fool around basically, I'm on the main quest all the time.


----------



## LizardKing1

Yeah, you're ending the main quest. The guilds (DB, Thieves, Companions, Mages' College) all have pretty good stories too. And the Daedric quests are usually very good. So even if running around delivering letters and killing Draugrs bores you, at least there's that.


----------



## JamesMcProgger

so I'm going to continue the other quest as the Hero who defeated Alduin and saved the world? cool!


----------



## Dzjudz

I started Skyrim a couple of weeks ago. I'm level 23 now, with 20 hours played. I've only just reached the Greybeards, I've been exploring and doing dungeons mostly so far.

I played Morrowind a lot(!), it's one of my favourite games of all time. I skipped Oblivion though.

I think I have three main gripes with the game so far.
- yes, the game is pretty big, but the content of the world is very sparse. Towns I've been to so far include about 4 or 5 buildings, one of which usually a tavern, the other ones just residential homes. In between towns, it is mostly quiet.
- the diversity of enemies isn't too great so far. Dungeons only include a few types of Draugr and skeletons. It gets pretty boring to go into yet another crypt where you see Draugr sleeping in a tomb waiting to be picked off with an arrow or two.
- the UI is just terrible. Who designed this console-y interface for PC users? Using the mouse to click options is very hit and miss too in conversations, because for some reason text options are highlighted and are supposed to be chosen with the arrow buttons. Terrible.

My play style is mostly sneaking and sniping. It's a pity arrows don't seem to hit if the target is some way away (like across a river or something).


----------



## LimeANite

For those of you complaining about the PC UI, I give you: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=3863
   
  SkyUI - it's a UI replacement mod.  Works really well.


----------



## LizardKing1

Quote: 





limeanite said:


> For those of you complaining about the PC UI, I give you: http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=3863
> 
> SkyUI - it's a UI replacement mod.  Works really well.


 

 I tried it some time ago. It doesn't let me store things from my inventory or get them from chests, etc.


----------



## Head Injury

Quote: 





lizardking1 said:


> I tried it some time ago. It doesn't let me store things from my inventory or get them from chests, etc.


 

 Works perfectly for me.


----------



## LizardKing1

What aesthetic mods do you guys use? I've been using the awesome Nightsky one, the Enhanced Shaders and I just found out this.
   
  Viva Nexus!


----------



## Xcellent

I played Fallout 3 till Skyrim came out. I left New vegas for what it was and waited for the GOTY (turns out to be Ultimate Edition) .
   
  And I have to say, Fallout 3 interests me alot more then Oblivion, Skyrim ever did. Having +/- 120 hrs on Skyrim and maxed 1 character, I simply do not have the energy to start over with another playstyle. The replay value is alot lower IMHO then with Fallout 3. Even though in F3 everything was more bland, with a poop brown colour on everything with a green shade on top, it was alot more fun and the gameplay was alot less ''serious''. More (dark) humour was in it which was just wonderfull. 
   
  I think what made Skyrim less interesting was that your actions does not effect your playthrough like with the karma system. Even though the changes were not that big, it still made you to make choices you otherwise wouldn't choose. Atleast, thats what it is for me.
   
  Anyway a quick,simple question for fun 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 here it goes:
   
  ''''A Bosmer, was slain. The Altmer claims the Dunmer is guilty. The Dunmer says the Khajit did it. The Orc swears he didn't kill the Bosmer. The Khajit says the Dunmer is lying. If only one of these speaks the truth, who killed the Bosmer?''''


----------



## Kirosia

..And skyrim did not autosave, meaning I have to redo an incredibly tedious mission.


----------



## LimeANite

Quote: 





lizardking1 said:


> What aesthetic mods do you guys use? I've been using the awesome Nightsky one, the Enhanced Shaders and I just found out this.
> 
> Viva Nexus!


 

 I have a ton of visual mods:
   
  Night Sky
  Skyrim Sunglare
  Quality World Map
  Armor Improvement
  CBBE
  Whiterun HQ Texture Pack
  Daedric armor/weapon improvement
  HD Mountains and rocks
  Improved NPC clothing
  JaySuS Swords
  Lush Grass
  Lush Trees
  Millenia Weapon Retexture Project
  Nicer Snowflakes
  Nightingale Black Sacrament armor retexture
  Real Ice
  Realistic Smoke/Embers
  Realistic water textures
  Vurt's Skyrim Flora Overhaul
  Skyrim HD (2K textures)
  Visible Windows
  Wolf Armor Remix (for Companions Guild armor)
  Xenius Character Enhancement
   
  Skyrim looks really pretty now


----------



## ben23

Quote: 





limeanite said:


> I have a ton of visual mods:
> 
> Night Sky
> Skyrim Sunglare
> ...


 


  Also try ENBSeries. 
http://enbseries.enbdev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6
   
  it makes the lighting look more realistic.


----------



## Head Injury

Quote: 





xcellent said:


> ''''A Bosmer, was slain. The Altmer claims the Dunmer is guilty. The Dunmer says the Khajit did it. The Orc swears he didn't kill the Bosmer. The Khajit says the Dunmer is lying. If only one of these speaks the truth, who killed the Bosmer?''''


 
   
  Trick question. My character's a Nord 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



   
  Quote: 





ben23 said:


> Also try ENBSeries.
> http://enbseries.enbdev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6
> 
> it makes the lighting look more realistic.


 

I use this. Probably less of a performance hit.


----------



## LimeANite

Quote: 





head injury said:


> I use this. Probably less of a performance hit.


 

 Yep, I have that one too - forgot to put it on my list.


----------



## JamesMcProgger

Defeated Alduin yesterday, the greedy mofo didnt even left me some gold, I was expecting some super powerful and unique armor...


----------



## Kirosia

I'm level 8, with 40 Destruction, and my apprentice-level spells take 3+ shots to kill a mage. My housecarl 1-2 shots them with a 20 damage axe. The hell.


----------



## LizardKing1

Quote: 





kirosia said:


> I'm level 8, with 40 Destruction, and my apprentice-level spells take 3+ shots to kill a mage. My housecarl 1-2 shots them with a 20 damage axe. The hell.


 

 Because they are mages. They have protection against spells, even if they have no ward on. However they have no protection against melee, so the 20 damage is done fully.


----------



## Kirosia

That's what I figured, but it still annoyed me (sometimes it takes 5+ shots, and these things are not accurate).  I originally wanted to dual wield magic and one-hand, but my even with armor, my defense is really bad.


----------



## Head Injury

Quote: 





kirosia said:


> I'm level 8, with 40 Destruction, and my apprentice-level spells take 3+ shots to kill a mage. My housecarl 1-2 shots them with a 20 damage axe. The hell.


 

 Magic is underpowered for the most part. Novice level spells are mostly useless once you get Apprentice level spells. Expert level spells cost way too much to cast for the damage they do. Master level spells are powerful, but take time to cast so they do less damage overall. The only things worth casting are the Apprentice and Adept level spells, until you get 100% cost reduction and can freely spam Expert ones. And by then melee and archer characters are going to have +160% damage from enchantments, +100% from perks, and +10 base damage from Smithing so magic is still pointless.


----------



## Kirosia

Well I've equipped a magic orc dagger in one-hand, so I just go around stabbing everything. Seems to work infinitely better other than when fighting long-range enemies (dragons).


----------



## TheWuss

well, i've finished the main quest.
  and i'm at level 55.
  i must say, it's quite difficult to level up at this point...
  i basically go around doing things i've never done before - like, transmuting ore, pickpocketing, etc.
  just in the hopes of levelling up.  hahahaha


----------



## Oberst Oswald

After 106 hours I still don't know how to clean my house.  Was having fun when I first bought Breeze house and using unrelenting force I messed up the interior with pots, dishes & food flying everywhere.  So how do I get to put the stuff back on the table and shelves neatly again?  I leave the lazy wench Lydia at home with my dog and come back after a hard days work and find her sitting in a chair whining and my dog lying on the floor barking as if I brought home the groceries.  Dropping the stuff on the table as carefully as possible is hit and miss.  Is there some sort of trick or command to straighten the home out.  I read somewhere about the game doing a "auto clean" but this don't seem to work in my game.  Is there a mod I could use?


----------



## LizardKing1

You could just get the awesome Winhelm house. Armory, lots of weapon stands, alchemy lab, enchater's table... not to mention the whole murder-scene thing, if you're into that.


----------



## LimeANite

Or get the Dovahkiin Hideout mod, which adds a whole new house accessible from all the others with tons of weapon stands, every crafting station, and about a bajillion chests.  Your companions can't go there though, for whatever reason.


----------



## Oberst Oswald

I have the Hideout mod but the upstairs Breeze home is a mess.  I could sell or move all the stuff but than it looks like I went through a divorce and feel a hollow sound when I enter my home.


----------



## Kirosia

It took me an entire day to cure myself of vampirism, since I hit stage 4 and was attacked by everyone... even the only vampire fella who could cure me. The "quest" itself, the one needed to turn you to normal, glitched, and the NPC wouldn't follow the proper procedure until I reset everything. Had to feed on someone beforehand, which was damn near impossible without perusing google to find where to do so remotely safely. I almost quit the game, the implementation is terrible, and they should just allow you to cure yourself with a potion or something.


----------



## Katun

Played the game for about 50hrs and had an awesome time -- until my main quest (A Cornered Rat) never started.
   
  So I quit. (Kinda sad, as I thought that game was quite fun).


----------



## Exediron

Quote: 





katun said:


> Played the game for about 50hrs and had an awesome time -- until my main quest (A Cornered Rat) never started.
> 
> So I quit. (Kinda sad, as I thought that game was quite fun).


 

 If you're playing on the PC there are plenty of console commands to get around problems like this. Alduin's Wall wouldn't start for me, so I just set it to stage 1 and that fixed the problem.


----------



## Katun

Quote: 





exediron said:


> If you're playing on the PC there are plenty of console commands to get around problems like this. Alduin's Wall wouldn't start for me, so I just set it to stage 1 and that fixed the problem.


 

 Unfortunately I'm on the 360, so I guess not much to do, besides start a new profile.


----------



## LimeANite

Quote: 





katun said:


> Played the game for about 50hrs and had an awesome time -- until my main quest (A Cornered Rat) never started.
> 
> So I quit. (Kinda sad, as I thought that game was quite fun).


 

 You couldn't go back to a previous saved game?  Or does the console version only let you have one save per character?


----------



## TheWuss

i'm curious how far all you guys have taken the enchanting/smithing path toward the best weapons...  it gets a bit tedious, doesn't it?
   
  so far, i have a daedric battle axe that does 577 damage.  plus something like 60 fire damage and shock damage.
   
  i'm certain that i could keep enchanting myself potions of enchantment and then making more apparel of fortify smithing, and keep going ad nauseum...
  but, my weapon is killing giants with one blow, so i figure it might not be necessary any more...
   
  so, for you guys out there, what is your highest damage weapon? 
  how much damage are you doing with it???


----------



## KingStyles

I am doing in the 500's with my bow and arrow and then I get the 3x multiplier for sneaking. It also has like 30 points of drain health and 2 seconds of paralyze on it. I also have a dagger that does around 125 damage plus fire and ice damage plus I get the 15x multiplier for sneak attack. My armor has all 4 bow fortify and 4 sneak fortify bonuses plus 1 health and stamina fortify.


----------



## JamesMcProgger

just me trowing Ulrich Stormclock around.
   





   
  that rebelious person never saw it coming


----------



## Head Injury

Are you sure that's not Chuck Norris?


----------



## JamesMcProgger

^ your avatar fits the posts.
   
  if he were Chuck then the Dragonborn would be dead now


----------



## TheWuss

so what happens when you kill ulfric stormcloak?


----------



## JamesMcProgger

Quote: 





thewuss said:


> so what happens when you kill ulfric stormcloak?


 

 General Tullius gives you his very cool sword and then he gives a lame speach.


----------



## Kirosia

May have to start smithing. Weapons do moderate damage, but my armor gets me massacred. (By mages mostly, for some reason) And my two enchanted weapons aren't doing much more damage than my bound swords (if at all), even though on paper they should be doing almost double damage.


----------



## KingStyles

Mages are the only real threat in this game. Even with strong armor, them ice mages can still be a pain.


----------



## Kirosia

Yes, those are the ones who literally 1-2 shot me, while few other enemies do. Yet my own destruction magic (I'm at 50 skill) is complete crap in combat. I normally dual-wield bound swords/enchanted weapons while wearing a steel plate or archmage robe.


----------



## Dzjudz

I'm leveling up my destruction through Fireball with the perk Impact. It's a lot of fun seeing Giants and Dragons being unable to cast or attack because you are constantly staggering them with fireballs .


----------



## JamesMcProgger

dzjudz said:


> I'm leveling up my destruction through Fireball with the perk Impact. It's a lot of fun seeing Giants and Dragons being unable to cast or attack because you are constantly staggering them with fireballs
> 
> 
> 
> ...





 
 
 fire balls are an exageration, you can make a dragon skeleton fly with one of those.


----------



## Kirosia

I've heard impact is one of those "god" skills that pretty much breaks combat. I purposely refrain from it because... well, I don't want to become a GOD. Also Dragons are incredibly easy to kill for some reason, especially if you have a follower to tank.


----------



## Dzjudz

I don't use followers, I think they're only distracting and in the way. I've have Ilia for a while, though, she was alright, but I don't like the idea of an immortal tank.

But yeah, impact is pretty godlike if you have a large enough pool of Magicka to keep casting, then those pesky Draugr Deathlords can't even shout at you. It helps that Draugr are vulnerable to fire. The killing blow with Fireball is great though, sends enemies flying (and skeletons in pieces everywhere ).


----------



## EnOYiN

There is a high resolution pack out right now for Skyrim. (Free DLC) Checking it out now.


----------



## Head Injury

Yeah, I'm in the process of downloading it.
   
  It's good they gave us this, even if modders would no doubt eventually come out with one that's better or more efficient.
   
  I haven't actually played Skyrim for over a week now. This might give me an excuse to get back on my archer character.


----------



## EnOYiN

I stopped for quite a while as well, but I'm going to revisit it one more time now. Makes me wonder why I even bother to buy games on launch. Most games are buggy at launch and need a zero day patch. Might as well wait half a year before buying most games. Single player games I mean. Cheaper that way too.


----------



## Dzjudz

enoyin said:


> I stopped for quite a while as well, but I'm going to revisit it one more time now. Makes me wonder why I even bother to buy games on launch. Most games are buggy at launch and need a zero day patch. Might as well wait half a year before buying most games. Single player games I mean. Cheaper that way too.


I usually wait for Steam sales, like the winter sale a few weeks ago (during which I also bought Skyrim).


----------



## EnOYiN

dzjudz said:


> I usually wait for Steam sales, like the winter sale a few weeks ago (during which I also bought Skyrim).




I generally do too, but sometimes I can't resist.  I don't really mind buying a game on launch if I think it's worth it though. I think supporting devs which make good games is something to consider there. However, I do get more and more annoyed by buggy ports from consoles and console GUIs lately. Seems like some devs make the PC version as an afterthought. Just think about what happend with Rage. That really hurt their image as well in my opinion. (meaning id soft)


----------



## JamesMcProgger

So i collected the 9th mask. it looks cool but there are better helmets around


----------



## TheWuss

wow. 
  i think i have 5 or 6 of the dragon priest masks.
  definitely want to see if i can get all 9...


----------



## brasewel

Damm didn't know this thread existed


----------



## JamesMcProgger

I made me a sweet sword today


----------



## voon

Train enchanting, smithing, potionmaking etc, make potions and equipment to boost these skills vice versa, repeat it forever and create a sword with 700 damage or 15'000 or whatever  Utterly boring, stupid and kills all game fun, but hey, it's legally possible without cheating.


----------



## Kirosia

Uninstalled the game. After beating the (highly lackluster) main campaign, everything seemed utterly pointless. The daedric quests were boring with bleh rewards, even after upping the difficulty.


----------



## JamesMcProgger

Quote: 





voon said:


> Train enchanting, smithing, potionmaking etc, make potions and equipment to boost these skills vice versa, repeat it forever and create a sword with 700 damage or 15'000 or whatever  Utterly boring, stupid and kills all game fun, but hey, it's legally possible without cheating.


 


  sounds like a plan


----------



## EnOYiN

kirosia said:


> Uninstalled the game. After beating the (highly lackluster) main campaign, everything seemed utterly pointless. The daedric quests were boring with bleh rewards, even after upping the difficulty.




Seems like you're not the open world game kinda guy. The most enjoyable experience in Skyrim isn't so much the storyline, but the exploration imo. That's either your thing or it isn't. I must admit that I've played better games myself last year. For only 10 euro I enjoyed Bastion more than Skyrim.


----------



## LizardKing1

Quote: 





voon said:


> Train enchanting, smithing, potionmaking etc, make potions and equipment to boost these skills vice versa, repeat it forever and create a sword with 700 damage or 15'000 or whatever  Utterly boring, stupid and kills all game fun, but hey, it's legally possible without cheating.


 

 Yes, I love how people say a game sucks because they exploited a bug. If you can kill Dragon Priests with a single blow, of course the game is boring. But I can make that sword without using the enchanting-alchemy loop, with a single smithing potion.


----------



## Kirosia

Quote: 





enoyin said:


> Seems like you're not the open world game kinda guy. The most enjoyable experience in Skyrim isn't so much the storyline, but the exploration imo. That's either your thing or it isn't. I must admit that I've played better games myself last year. For only 10 euro I enjoyed Bastion more than Skyrim.


 


  I explored the game for 30 levels. It's fun, I don't deny that, but there really isn't much sense of purpose. Where's the super post-game dungeon with awesome crazy bosses and killer loot? (Is there, I really don't know) Even the world doesn't change much after beating the campaign, no mass hookers and blow.


----------



## Xcellent

I think that the problem lies with the lack of variety of the items and missions. The world is huge and even if there are alot of different places, there is not much to do. The missions are mostly the same, storyline is short. Leveling is also somewhat boring. Maybe its just me, i've played all the Fallout games and this is my first Elder Scrolls, and what I miss the most is some sort of humour in Skyrim. Fallout always had some dark humour which I really liked.


----------



## Kirosia

Yeah, I liked Fallout more. There was a greater sense of purpose, and I felt more of a connection to the world and its characters, even if they technically weren't that great either.


----------



## Draygonn

I've done no enchanting or blacksmithing to escape the dreaded OPness boredom. How's the new High Rez graphics? I checked out some pics but it looked like minor changes.




kirosia said:


> after beating the campaign, no mass hookers and blow.




really? uninstalling now...


----------



## voon

Fallout was hideously easy with the slowmotion targetting system, though. And people also like it, because you can shoot off limbs and heads ...


----------



## Kirosia

I tried playing Fallout without VATS, and shooting was terrible. I've heard it's meant to be that way, until you get more accurate weapons and gain improved proficiency. Still, it sucked enough for me to go back to VATS.


----------



## Dzjudz

kirosia said:


> I explored the game for 30 levels. It's fun, I don't deny that, but there really isn't much sense of purpose. Where's the super post-game dungeon with awesome crazy bosses and killer loot? (Is there, I really don't know) Even the world doesn't change much after beating the campaign, no mass hookers and blow.


30 levels? I'm level 59 and just finished the Companion quest line this level, and I'm only at the Alduin's Wall quest in the main quest line (is about half-way I think). Steam says my playtime so far is 87 hours.

P.S. There is no killer loot. Once you get 100 smithing, 100 enchanting and 100 alchemy, you can make bows that 1 shot everything. Doesn't get "killer loot"-ier than that.


----------



## Kirosia

After 30 levels, I got bored. Wanted to see if the main campaign was more interesting. Other than one specific area that looks cool, it really isn't. 
   
  Didn't want to make my own loot, wanted to find something unique and practical. Specifically to murder super awesome bosses that apparently don't exist.


----------



## fabio-fi

After playing Fallout 3/New vegas, started playing skyrim. Seems interesting so far.


----------



## our martin

not much else to choose from at the moment is there i just got the darkness 2 a week ago and i am making it last supposed to only have 7 hours of game play which i read about the next day after i bought it.. but look on the bright side four new battlefield3 maps out soon i hope there as good as caspian border.kharg island.. operation firestorm and the canals and nothing like back to karkand no aa and moon buggys we need all the vehicles to have rip roaring firepower not just something to get you from a to b fingers crossed hey..


----------



## TheWuss

Quote: 





our martin said:


> not much else to choose from at the moment is there <snip>


 

  well, kingdoms of amalur reckoning looks interesting.
  of course, it's more an action rpg...


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## Deathdeisel

_Tbh if you go to reckoning for a storyline type RPG, look elsewhere. Its fun dont get me wrong, but the storyline was less than interesting, impossible to sink into, and disapointing because it has potential. _

_Combat on the other hand, is by far the best ive seen on an open world RPG. Its kind of annoying after a while but when you get the idea of DONT GET HIT, you get it._


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## our martin

Quote: 





thewuss said:


> well, kingdoms of amalur reckoning looks interesting.
> of course, it's more an action rpg...


 


 i have a wii aswell as a pc and i got zelda skyward sword for christmas off my sister that's why i never got skyrim because they are the same type of game and since then for my pc i have had deadrising2 off the record.. fear3.. crysis2 and the darkness 2 and i haven't completed any of them because of battlefield3 i can't stop playing this game.. i am in a clan and i keep getting invites off people to go on with them which i can't really say no to can i if they are in my clan..i have just played the demo of mass effect 3 which i thought about getting next but i will probably go for skyrim instead because i have got oblivion for the xbox360(that went off)and which was a good game but skyrim looks a lot better and i like the music aswell! p.s a new soundcard is coming out by asus the phoebus with 24bit dolby home theatre version 4 and that will be the one to get trust me on this one.. the pc i am using now has got dolby home theatre v3 and games like crysis2 sound amazing on it and that's just with a surround sound head set..but thanks for the heads up on amalur reckoning i will check that one out on the web!


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## JamesMcProgger

Hey guys, sign up if you havent: *Petition for a Video Games lounge*​   
  that said, skyrim doesnt particulary has a good soundtrack/sound scheme, IMO. it was OK but nothing impressive, and I was using Gilmore Lite > AKG K601 most of the time.


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## EnOYiN

deathdeisel said:


> Tbh if you go to reckoning for a storyline type RPG, look elsewhere. Its fun dont get me wrong, but the storyline was less than interesting, impossible to sink into, and disapointing because it has potential.
> 
> Combat on the other hand, is by far the best ive seen on an open world RPG. Its kind of annoying after a while but when you get the idea of DONT GET HIT, you get it.




I must say that so far the story doesn't really grip me either. It all looks really fancy though. That's what you get when you employ Mr. MacFarlane I suppose. The combat is really good indeed. I don't really know why they didn't take that a step further to get to the level of say Darksiders. Probably because of time/ money restraints. Still a much better experience for as far as combat is concerned than Skyrim in which the combat is a bit bland.



jamesmcprogger said:


> that said, skyrim doesnt particulary has a good soundtrack/sound scheme, IMO. it was OK but nothing impressive, and I was using Gilmore Lite > AKG K601 most of the time.




The main song is really good in my opinion. The remaining parts aren't very impressive indeed.


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## our martin

the shenmue games were the best games i have played that get you into the story and i don't think anything else since as come close to making you feel a part of the story the way they did and they come out a long time ago on the dreamcast!


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## EnOYiN

our martin said:


> the shenmue games were the best games i have played that get you into the story and i don't think anything else since as come close to making you feel a part of the story the way they did and they come out a long time ago on the dreamcast!




I never played those myself. Might be something to take a look at sometime. I'm still waiting for a game that does it all myself. A good story, good combat set in an open / immersive world. Skyrim and fallout did the last thing really well. (fallout more so than skyrim in my opinion) The story in both games was a alright and I'm still trying to forget VATS.


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## fabio-fi

Question..does siding with the stormcloaks or the empire affects the whole game?


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## JamesMcProgger

Quote: 





fabio-fi said:


> Question..does siding with the stormcloaks or the empire affects the whole game?


 


  just a few things, once you finish that story line the others go pretty much the same tho.


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## MD1032

I just finished this game a couple weeks ago. The ending was great, they really did a fantastic job on this game. I got to the point where I was the head of all the guild things in all the cities (finished the dark brotherhood, that was easily the best of the side quests) and my bow did like 300 damage so I was like eh what the heck. Finished the 3rd part of the main quest pretty quickly once I started it...I think the only drawback to this game, honestly, is that the main questline is a little too short...I'm estimating max 4 hours playing time if you rolled right through it. I tried playing after that, finished the Stormcloak questline and all, but it kinda felt like the game was over, so I gave up. Only made it to level 43, felt ridiculously powerful anyway, honestly. I'll definitely be playing it again sometime in the future...geographically, I feel like I only "saw" about half the entire map (and the underground city), and I don't think choosing the bow was the best thing in the end because it makes some quests so easy that it feels like you're cheating.
   
  Big props to Bethesda for making a great medieval fantasy game...it really stands out among the latest crowd. I might try Fable 3 and that new Kingdoms of Amalur but for now I think I'm gonna hold off for Mass Effect and Diablo.


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## fabio-fi

Quote: 





jamesmcprogger said:


> just a few things, once you finish that story line the others go pretty much the same tho.


 


  Thanks...i just sided with the stormcloacks (considering that the empire wanted to kill me at the beginning of the game) every day i feel more immersed in the game..its just awesome.


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## PhenomenalSound

I got bored and quit the game after reaching level 30.


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## Audio-Omega

I'm still waiting for the soundtrack ordered three months ago !


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## Audio-Omega

My soundtrack has finally arrived.  Listening to it is like living in the world of Skyrim.


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## lungStruck

Quote: 





phenomenalsound said:


> I got bored and quit the game after reaching level 30.


 
   

 I wish I would... so addicted though.  I keep going, though I'm starting to slow down now.  115 hours or so I believe.  Just picking off a lot of misc. little tasks now.


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## Rossinator

When I got Skyrim I played it A LOT and had a lot of fun, but then I got burnout. There is just so much to do in it, so many side quests. I still haven't really returned to it, but I do plan on. I want to do most of the things in the game.


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## WhiteCrow

Quote: 





rossinator said:


> When I got Skyrim I played it A LOT and had a lot of fun, but then I got burnout. There is just so much to do in it, so many side quests. I still haven't really returned to it, but I do plan on. I want to do most of the things in the game.


 
   
  Still not as many in morrowind....man Been playing the hell outta morrowind, then Ima go back and conquer Skyrim all over again. .....I really think Skyrim needed something with the Gods like Morrowind had, I just like the feel of Morrowind better I suppose. It feels more....not open but the city's feel more city like I suppose, rather than just a row of houses and a few shops they feel really active IMO. Not that skyrim doesn't but morrowind has a bit more bustle to it.


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