Things you hate about skyrim

[ArgonianDunmer]

Doing well Criticism-wise...??? Interesting... gaming stores are getting quite a bit of returns on Skrim... especially on the PS3 side of the house. I read it the other day, and went to a gamestop just to see for myself, and sure enough, they have quite a few Used Skyrim Games... mostly PS3.

keep in mind....it also sold ALOT of copies.....more sales = more returns

And the fact that its mostly one console means that people might be trading in the PS3 game and buying it for PC or Xbox

[azuarc]

What are you talking about?? Being able to create and name completely custom spells was one of things that separated TES games from every single other RPG. Could you create your own spells in Baldur's Gate? Any D&D rule-using game for that matter? The Might&Magic series? WoW? the Souls games? Two Worlds? Diablo? Any JRPG ever made?
"Hey, let's take one of the defining traits of out series and... throw it out, so we can put piddly 50 damage bombs on walls!"
"OKAY! YAYYYYYYYYYYYY :'D"

This is actually meaningful to you? In my experience, most games have repeated versions of the same spell with different power levels, so the ability to customize your spells isn't terribly important, except maybe putting a weakness to fire on the same spell as fire damage. And names? Names are a big deal? Unless you're really creative, your names probably aren't any better than "Inferno" for a fire spell. In Morrowind, my custom spells all started with ZZZ and then something simple about the spell, and only so I would have them in the same part of my list from the store-bought spells.

[NLN]

This is actually meaningful to you? In my experience, most games have repeated versions of the same spell with different power levels, so the ability to customize your spells isn't terribly important, except maybe putting a weakness to fire on the same spell as fire damage. And names? Names are a big deal? Unless you're really creative, your names probably aren't any better than "Inferno" for a fire spell. In Morrowind, my custom spells all started with ZZZ and then something simple about the spell, and only so I would have them in the same part of my list from the store-bought spells.

The more I read other people complaining, the more I realize that they are complaining about the features I actually like in the game. This in turn could mean that they might love it for the things that I hate in it... There's no pleasing everybody.

Let them take out the actual BUGS, and it will be a good game. Then everybody mod it the way we like. Though most everyone seems to agree that they should fix the factions too...

[Puggles]

The more I read other people complaining, the more I realize that they are complaining about the features I actually like in the game. This in turn could mean that they might love it for the things that I hate in it...

Same. I think that I might just be this accursed 'casual gamer' (although I have spent far too long on Skyrim) some speak off.

I don't particularly care about the lack of separate leg armour (and if we really wanted to be pernickety it would be made out of multiple pieces anyway) or DIY spells (which were never much more than a novelty for me).

Athletics I do miss a bit, but I think it wouldn't have worked with the perk system (too easy to exploit) and that having the perk system is worth it.

In all, I'm glad I didn't listen to much of the pre-launch publicity since they must have be promising the video game equivalent of the second coming. I'm happy to appreciate Skyrim as the superb game it is; one that I have enjoyed as much as Morrowind and more than Oblivion.

Come to think about it, one thing that does genuinely irk me is the way ghosts just suddenly vanish. Would it have been so hard to make them just fade away? Completely ruins the atmosphere.

[Dunmer999]

Like someone said, they took out most bad things about Morrowind and Oblivion. They've also taken out a lot of good things. I'm glad it's a different game, unlike most franchises that bring out clones. I'm glad it's not Morrowind with new graphics and a new area.

[Akiraka]

I'm starting to hate the conversations.

"Why are you here, mortal?"
"I need to learn Dragonrend"
"There are formalities that must be observed"
-tedious Shout exchange-
"What would you ask of me?"
"I need to learn Dragonrend"
"Ah yes, Dragonrend"
Fist topic choice?
"How did you know I wanted to learn Dragonrend?"

-facepalm-

[Red Guardian]

Mountains. Can't find a proper way to climb them. Horses don't help either.

[SpikeSpeigel]

Mountains. Can't find a proper way to climb them. Horses don't help either.

Weird
I feel like a dang billygoat in this game. I'm a climbing/bunnyhopping fool going up these mountains.
In Oblivion, I could jump farther but, in Skyrim my feet have alot of grip on high-angle surfaces.
and then Become Etherial off of High Hrothgar!! woohoo!

[DorostheConqueror]

Mountains. Can't find a proper way to climb them. Horses don't help either.

Weird
I feel like a dang billygoat in this game. I'm a climbing/bunnyhopping fool going up these mountains.
In Oblivion, I could jump farther but, in Skyrim my feet have alot of grip on high-angle surfaces.
and then Become Etherial off of High Hrothgar!! woohoo!

Skyrim horse physics

[Frost Mage]

Mountains. Can't find a proper way to climb them. Horses don't help either.

Weird
I feel like a dang billygoat in this game. I'm a climbing/bunnyhopping fool going up these mountains.
In Oblivion, I could jump farther but, in Skyrim my feet have alot of grip on high-angle surfaces.
and then Become Etherial off of High Hrothgar!! woohoo!

Skyrim horse physics

Elder Scrolls horse physics. They've never been good, and you can't really blame Bethy for making horses so... awkward, as especially with a mountainous province like Skyrim, it wouldn't be realistic for a horse to scale a 90° mountain. And for the record, Skyrim's horse physics are better than Oblivion's by far.

[Iaius Amaius Heron]

Copy-paste:

November, 2011.

• Skyrim is gods gift to women, men, children and several species of dogs. People post on message boards about why the game is so amazing. Video game reviewers praise the title for being innovative and a step in the right direction for the medium. Anecdotal stories are spread around about gamers epic battle with Giants or the undead.

All rejoice.

Mid December, 2011.

• It's been over a month now, and you start to see cracks in the armor that surrounded Skyrim. You find comments on message boards with people dissecting why its a horrible game, or why the product was flawed compared to its predecessors. "Purists" hold up the mighty Morrowind as an infallible device that Skyrim failed to meet by miles and miles.

Somehow, we've all been duped..


This has happened before, you know. When Oblivion game out there was blanket praise for the title for about.. a month or two, and then countless posts and editorials arise about how flawed a product it is. Even when Morrowind was first revealed I caught gamers claiming that Arena and Daggerfall were better titles.

Why does this happen? Why the honeymoon period? Why the backlash following it?

I've seen posts of people who have played Skyrim for over 100 hours trying to tell others that its a bad game.. how is that even possible? If you have fun with a title, then that's sort of all that matters.

But I want to know what you think.

Why does this happen? Why the honeymoon period? Why the backlash following it?

I think you have people pointing out flaws in the game from Day 1, but fanboys just drown that [&@%!] out.

Go through the /r/gaming archive and find a Skyrim post from when it was first released. No doubt you'll find something like "It has a lot of exploits" or "the AI is still garbage". You'll find those posts at the very [&@%!] bottom of the thread. People put some blinders on when a hyped game comes out. They are afraid to criticize a game because the hype says it's supposed to be a good game. This is a classic in group vs. out group scenario. Do YOU want to be the one who says B when everybody is saying A?

I remember comparing it to dark souls, which i've since returned to after 190 hours in skyrim. Those comments got me some heavy downvotes. [Sound familiar?]

Yup, I was one of them from Day 1. I even told this to people before the game came out. "Now guys, remember what happened to Oblivion? Remember how it was okay to begin with but now if you want to play it you need to spend half a day installing mods to fix a bunch of [&@%!], like Darnified UI"

And the community just raged and downvoted and denied and made lame excuses about how you "make up your own story" that magically makes up for everything. [Oberoni Fallacy!]

[Avron the S'wit]

And for the record, Skyrim's horse physics are better than Oblivion's by far.

True, but it means nothing when my horse kills itself tripping on a more-or-less perfectly flat road between Whiterun and Windhelm. Stupid horse...I shall be bitter about that till my dying day, mark my words!

[Frost Mage]

And for the record, Skyrim's horse physics are better than Oblivion's by far.

True, but it means nothing when my horse kills itself tripping on a more-or-less perfectly flat road between Whiterun and Windhelm. Stupid horse...I shall be bitter about that till my dying day, mark my words!

At least it actually has some skill involved with timing your horse's jumps .

[Giordano]

I've abandoned horses until there's a good mod to fix their slow speeds.

[Avron the S'wit]

And for the record, Skyrim's horse physics are better than Oblivion's by far.

True, but it means nothing when my horse kills itself tripping on a more-or-less perfectly flat road between Whiterun and Windhelm. Stupid horse...I shall be bitter about that till my dying day, mark my words!

At least it actually has some skill involved with timing your horse's jumps .

Hmm...I wonder if that's why he died. Perhaps I made him jump? To be honest, it was hilarious. When your horse dies, everything slows down as you get thrown, and his dying ninny, to confused little me, sounded like a dragon roar, so I dusted myself off the ground and turned all about, going crazy...only to discover poor little fellow just took a trip and fell. Bah!

I've abandoned horses until there's a good mod to fix their slow speeds.

You can console their speeds, but I've found that making them faster only makes them easier to kill and harder to maneuver. I kind of like the slow pace - very scenic!

[Akiraka]

Why does this happen? Why the honeymoon period? Why the backlash following it?


I think you have people pointing out flaws in the game from Day 1

I hadn't even put the game in the XBox before I noticed something was amiss. Terrible, terrible, kindergarten-work map, no letter in the manual from the dev. team, no chapter about Races, or Skills.
I do hate this game's instruction manual, on the topic. As much of an abortion as Gears3's or one of those other paper games.

[Avron the S'wit]

... no chapter about Races, or Skills.

Really? I don't have the manual, as I just downloaded directly from Steam (and missed the whole e-book thing), so I'm surprised. I hadn't heard this before. What a disappointment that is - that's the whole best part of those manuals to me!

[Akiraka]

... no chapter about Races, or Skills.

Really? I don't have the manual, as I just downloaded directly from Steam (and missed the whole e-book thing), so I'm surprised. I hadn't heard this before. What a disappointment that is - that's the whole best part of those manuals to me!

It's a complete disappointment :/
I can't find my Oblivion case ATM, haha, but, for comparison, Morrowind's manual is 41 pages. Skyrim's is 24.

[Evil-i]

... no chapter about Races, or Skills.

Really? I don't have the manual, as I just downloaded directly from Steam (and missed the whole e-book thing), so I'm surprised. I hadn't heard this before. What a disappointment that is - that's the whole best part of those manuals to me!

It's a complete disappointment :/
I can't find my Oblivion case ATM, haha, but, for comparison, Morrowind's manual is 41 pages. Skyrim's is 24.

I don't play a wide variety of games, but from what little I've seen, it looks like in-box Game Manuals have been getting steadily less-informative over the past few years. It's pretty sad and ironic, really, considering that this is supposed to be the Information Age.

[Akiraka]

I don't play a wide variety of games, but from what little I've seen, it looks like in-box Game Manuals have been getting steadily less-informative over the past few years. It's pretty sad and ironic, really, considering that this is supposed to be the Information Age.

Too true. It's also the age of illiterate... ness... though, heh.
It isn't to say that Skyrim's manual is bad for a contemporary game's manual (although a laminated card with "^$#@ You!" printed on it wouldn't be worse than some of them). But, that doesn't excuse it, IMO, from being a terrible TES manual.

[Avron the S'wit]

Actually, that's an interesting thought. It might be slightly off topic but I'd still like to ask it: Do you think manuals get smaller because it is the information age? Do you think developers expect people to Google things and come to sources like Wikis and forums, or do you think that they are just expecting people to care less about the in-game lore?

[noobishlord]

Actually, that's an interesting thought. It might be slightly off topic but I'd still like to ask it: Do you think manuals get smaller because it is the information age? Do you think developers expect people to Google things and come to sources like Wikis and forums, or do you think that they are just expecting people to care less about the in-game lore?

Actually, a very good question, even if it is a lil' off topic. Personally, with the internet and "smart" phones these days, I think developers realize that they can get a lot more of the info they need online, and can save money by decreasing the size of the manual. Though it may also be more along the lines of people trusting other players than companies.

[SpikeSpeigel]

Actually, that's an interesting thought. It might be slightly off topic but I'd still like to ask it: Do you think manuals get smaller because it is the information age? Do you think developers expect people to Google things and come to sources like Wikis and forums, or do you think that they are just expecting people to care less about the in-game lore?

Actually, a very good question, even if it is a lil' off topic. Personally, with the internet and "smart" phones these days, I think developers realize that they can get a lot more of the info they need online, and can save money by decreasing the size of the manual. Though it may also be more along the lines of people trusting other players than companies.

Really it's because they want to sell us the guides too.

Back on topic: I did hate the fact that the manual left out how to grab stuff AND change camera distance! You dont omit control data. I had to get that info from this site (I'm a technical writer by trade)

[Akiraka]

Actually, that's an interesting thought. It might be slightly off topic but I'd still like to ask it: Do you think manuals get smaller because it is the information age? Do you think developers expect people to Google things and come to sources like Wikis and forums, or do you think that they are just expecting people to care less about the in-game lore?

Care less. Easily. I mean, how many kids have posted on this forum with questions that are answered in Oblivion-and-earlier's instruction books? Even among my own friends I'm one of the few gamers who actually makes it a point to do two things before playing a game: read the instruction manual, and watch the Opening CG that plays when the game's title screen idles.

...Skyrim failed me there, too.

[Evil-i]

Actually, that's an interesting thought. It might be slightly off topic but I'd still like to ask it: Do you think manuals get smaller because it is the information age? Do you think developers expect people to Google things and come to sources like Wikis and forums, or do you think that they are just expecting people to care less about the in-game lore?

Care less. Easily. I mean, how many kids have posted on this forum with questions that are answered in Oblivion-and-earlier's instruction books? Even among my own friends I'm one of the few gamers who actually makes it a point to do two things before playing a game: read the instruction manual, and watch the Opening CG that plays when the game's title screen idles.

...Skyrim failed me there, too.

This is how I approach a new game. There's really no excuse for not having a complete explanation of every in-game control function in the manual. (I discovered how to Grab & Drag by accident, thanks to some clumsy noobish button-pushing.) And yeah, Skyrim's lack of an opening featurette is disappointing.