Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[Sir T]

I don't mind them scaling back some of the stupid skill gains.

I shouldn't have to level 1 or 2 handed swords. I shouldn't have to level 3 different types of armor. It's armor. How exactly does my experience with wearing better armor make it more effective at protecting me?

I'd be more in favor of changing that skill to affect the encumbrances of armor rather than the effectiveness.

Well, in Oblivion, Anything from a claymore to a dagger were under the skill "blade" and Anythinjg else was a blunt, and you just had 2 categories for armour, light and heavy. That was simplified enough for me. If you need things simplified more than that You probably need help getting your clothes on in the morning.

Min maxing is unavoidable. people who Min and Max will find a way to do it no matter what system you craft. Whether its by jumping in place for 17 hours or chasing squirrels, they will find a way. All systems can be min maxed as you are playing a mathematics system on a computer rather than an analog system a la real life. Min maxers live to figure out the algorithms and then bitch to everyone else about how easy the game is.

[MuffinMan]

I shouldn't have to level 1 or 2 handed swords. I shouldn't have to level 3 different types of armor. It's armor. How exactly does my experience with wearing better armor make it more effective at protecting me?

I'd be more in favor of changing that skill to affect the encumbrances of armor rather than the effectiveness.

Making a type of armor lighter as you have experience with it makes more sense?

[WindupAtheist]

Min-maxing to the point of becoming a deity is like half the point of this series. Morrowind wasn't about whatever the fuck the story said, it was about becoming uber as fuck and then kicking in Vivec's front door and cockpunching him to death and going "NOW WHO'S THE GOD?!"

[Tebonas]

Maybe for you it was. I was in it for the exploring and when I was so overpowered that the main quest didn't offer any challenge anymore I just quit because it was the worst part of the whole game. I had more than 100 hours of fun till then, so I certainly won't complain about that.

[Paelos]

I shouldn't have to level 1 or 2 handed swords. I shouldn't have to level 3 different types of armor. It's armor. How exactly does my experience with wearing better armor make it more effective at protecting me?

I'd be more in favor of changing that skill to affect the encumbrances of armor rather than the effectiveness.

Making a type of armor lighter as you have experience with it makes more sense?

Well consider it from the point of view of strapping yourself now into heavy plate and swinging a sword around. I'm guaranteeing that the longer you did it, the more accustomed you'd get to the armor and the lighter it would seem. It's like people training with weight vests and swinging heavier bats.

[Sky]

Actually, it would increase your STR, and END or whatever that stat was, as well as you're ability to move under the restrictions of the armor.

[MuffinMan]

Well consider it from the point of view of strapping yourself now into heavy plate and swinging a sword around. I'm guaranteeing that the longer you did it, the more accustomed you'd get to the armor and the lighter it would seem. It's like people training with weight vests and swinging heavier bats.

I see what you're saying but I would think that would have more to do with a strength stat increasing than skill with a particular armor type.

EDIT: Sky, get out of my hheeeeaaaadddd.

[Paelos]

Well, in Oblivion, Anything from a claymore to a dagger were under the skill "blade" and Anythinjg else was a blunt, and you just had 2 categories for armour, light and heavy. That was simplified enough for me. If you need things simplified more than that You probably need help getting your clothes on in the morning.

Right and that's fine. My point was referencing Morrowind, not Oblivion. There were several skill choices there that made no sense. I do like the skill system for many things, but some just made me go whaaaaaa?

There were 21 skills in Oblivion. Here's the ones I really thought should go:

Athletics - gain points by...running, and then run some more. Grats, now you can run without getting fatigued. While that's real life, it's also stupid that you have to level it by running.
Speechcraft - who didn't hate this one? Anyone? No? Moving on.
Acrobatics - like Athletics, but with bunny-hopping like a crack-addled Counterstrike player
Block - find something to hit you. Put up shield. Get hit repeatedly for about 2 minutes. Heal. Get hit again. Heal. Kill the animal. Rest up. Repeat. Snooze.
Mercantile - buy sell BUY BUY SELL SELL BETTER DEALS!

[Flinky]

To this date they've confirmed 18 skills will be in Skyrim. One definitely getting cut will be the small-child-locked-under-the-stairs of the magic family; Mysticism. I think they realised that when Mark and Recall never made it to Oblivion, they killed any hope of that magic group being accepted by society.

Also Paelos, the Athletics grind was nothing like you describe. Everyone knew you got faster skill gain from SWIMMNG

[Bunk]

It was joyous the day I discovered I could macro practice Stealth and Athletics by wedging down the W key while facing a corner near a sleeping beggar.

[Paelos]

So that doesn't strike you as something we'd like to get rid of?

[Sky]

If you played the game normally, you got better at the things you did often. That's cool. Someone gaming the system so they can go 'cockpunch' Vivec doesn't make it any less cool for those who want to play as intended.

Removing it because the cockpunchers don't like it, that's making it less cool to play as intended.

I guess we can agree to disagree, because it's a moot point. Enjoy your shitty action game, while I take five seconds to feel bad about another pc rpg franchise in the toilet. Luckily, europe has my back.

[Bunk]

So that doesn't strike you as something we'd like to get rid of?

Improve upon != Remove entirely

[KallDrexx]

I like the *idea* of skills increasing upon use, but I don't like any implementation I have seen.  I'd rather just kill shit and increase my skills by allotting skill points or something.  At least then I"m not focusing on what exact actions I have to do to get better at a specific skill, and I can more thoroughly just enjoy the game.

[ezrast]

That's fine for combat skills, but doesn't do much for people wanting to run around pickpocketing everyone and their dog or became a fabulously wealthy merchant. You'd have to get bashy XP every time you kill something, sneaky XP every time you acquire something that isn't yours, and poncy XP every time you... make a friend, or something. I don't know if that would be as fun.

[Paelos]

If you played the game normally, you got better at the things you did often. That's cool. Someone gaming the system so they can go 'cockpunch' Vivec doesn't make it any less cool for those who want to play as intended.

Removing it because the cockpunchers don't like it, that's making it less cool to play as intended.

I guess we can agree to disagree, because it's a moot point. Enjoy your shitty action game, while I take five seconds to feel bad about another pc rpg franchise in the toilet. Luckily, europe has my back.

You sort of just extrapolated that into something else, but fair enough. People will always game the system, and that's fine. I was listing things that you do just by showing up in the game. Everybody moves, everybody sells shit, everybody jumps, and everyone talks to NPCs. You can make a case for block, and I'm ok with that. The rest of it is stuff that's not a "gameplay" decision, it's intentionally cockblocking the game because it's not a negotiable part of playing. I can't NOT run, for example. It's akin to having a "resting" skill or a "shitting" skill.

Everybody poops, dude.

[JWIV]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le-ogIVQmmY

Fuck that was awesome.   

[Sky]

Everybody moves, everybody sells shit, everybody jumps, and everyone talks to NPCs. You can make a case for block, and I'm ok with that. The rest of it is stuff that's not a "gameplay" decision, it's intentionally cockblocking the game because it's not a negotiable part of playing. I can't NOT run, for example. It's akin to having a "resting" skill or a "shitting" skill.

Everybody poops, dude.

But not everyone moves quickly for long without fatigue, not everyone has good haggling skills, not everyone is charming. If you work at those, you can improve your skills, modified by your stats.

Everyone upgrades their poop skills to go in the porcelain bowl, dude 

[Azuredream]

Am I remembering wrong, or was it possible to run around leveling acrobatics/athletics because "woo ding grats" and then find out you just gimped yourself for the whole game because you've now gone up in level and so have the enemies?

[Paelos]

Am I remembering wrong, or was it possible to run around leveling acrobatics/athletics because "woo ding grats" and then find out you just gimped yourself for the whole game because you've now gone up in level and so have the enemies?

Yep.

[MuffinMan]

Only major skills could level you so you had to be careful you weren't leveling from non-combat skills.

Really if they would have just left out the leveled content and put more thought into how the stat bonuses worked when you level I wouldn't have anything to complain about with the stat/skill/level system in Oblivion.

[rk47]

Remove level scaling and suddenly you realize it won't hurt to make a lot of potions to practice alchemy. Really that is my serious complaint about the Oblivion mechanics. You spend all your gold on mixing potions, rewarded with 4-5 level ups in the first city, only to leave town, enter kvatch and encounter daedra forces that kill you in two hits.

Oh, if only you didn't gain 4 levels, you'd be facing a bunch of scamps. Riiight.

This isn't choices or consequences. It's just dumb scaled leveling, even the item rewarded to lowbies are shit quality that aren't even worth wearing.

[Sheepherder]

I shouldn't have to level 1 or 2 handed swords. I shouldn't have to level 3 different types of armor. It's armor. How exactly does my experience with wearing better armor make it more effective at protecting me?

I'd be more in favor of changing that skill to affect the encumbrances of armor rather than the effectiveness.

Morrowind was four types.  Making you specialize in _____ weapon is somewhat sensible.

But the last point is absolutely fucking correct.  Armour skill as a coefficient of AR is horrendously fucking broken.

[KallDrexx]

That's fine for combat skills, but doesn't do much for people wanting to run around pickpocketing everyone and their dog or became a fabulously wealthy merchant. You'd have to get bashy XP every time you kill something, sneaky XP every time you acquire something that isn't yours, and poncy XP every time you... make a friend, or something. I don't know if that would be as fun.

The way I see it, the whole game is combat focused, either directly or indirectly.  Last time I played Oblivion and Morrowind, and correct me if I"m wrong as it's been a while, there wasn't these major gameplay mechanics that were dependent on your sneak skill nor where there major gameplay based on haggling.  The whole purpose of these skills is to steal shit (money or equipment) that will give you an edge, or to buy shit for less money so you can get more money in the end.

The game is still focused on combat and exploring, and thus if you do a skill-point distribution system based on leveling you don't have to sneak around all these newbie NPCs and be bored just so you can get high sneak, or grind out 500 potions just to make a specific potion.  You don't have to worry about doing anything but exploring new areas and being active in the gameplay, and by enjoying the game the way you want to you will up your stats the way you want to.

[WindupAtheist]

Morrowind was just ludicrously exploitable. I mean I became pretty uber in Daggerfall, boosting my stats with lycanthropy and mass-killing guards with my pimped-out custom class, but it took some doing and at least I was killing things. In Morrowind I can become a level 75+ demigod without doing jack shit but learning a couple of spells and training a lot.

[Lucas]

Skyrim Collector's Edition unveiled (together with the CHEAP pricing :P):

http://bethblog.com/index.php/2011/08/05/quakecon-2011-skyrim-collectors-edition-announced/

(big image)

[Paelos]

So you get a cheap cloth map, a book, and a plastic statue for $90.

Gamers are idiots.

[Riggswolfe]

So you get a cheap cloth map, a book, and a plastic statue for $90.

Gamers are idiots.

While I was semi-tempted you already get the cloth map for preordering. The dragon statue looks great but not that great. Sadly, if they threw in some ingame items I'd be more tempted. I'm a whore like that.

[Paelos]

The accountant in me just can't reconcile the fact that you are paying $90 for something that cost $5 to produce.

[Malakili]

I'll be buying the Steam version in all likelyhood.   I buy the occasional collectors editions, but I try to avoid over 100 bucks for them.  I might consider this for 100.

[Riggswolfe]

The accountant in me just can't reconcile the fact that you are paying $90 for something that cost $5 to produce.

I'd be more bothered by it if that wasn't pretty much the status quo on production prices vs what the consumer is charged.

[Mosesandstick]

I always want to grab CEs just for the art books, but it's not really worth it if you need to pay a £100 premium.

[Fordel]

Random but serious question: Why are DVD cases such piles of shit?


Like CD cases had that centre thing that held CD's and worked like a charm, but all the DVD cases have these bizarre center pieces that never work right and it's always a pain in the ass to remove the DVD without something breaking along the way. I feel like I am diffusing a god damn bomb trying to take my DVD's out of the case these days.


You can see it in the picture, the middle part holding the disc's is all weird and those little indents that look like they are going to help you lift the disc out? They are actually blocked my a small edge built around the disc slot circumference.


Whyyyyyy 

[Paelos]

The same reason they put tamper proof lids on arthritis medication.

[waffel]

http://www.newegg.com/emailpromo/?cm_sp=ShoppingGuide122710_email-_-ShoppingGuide122710-_-http%3a%2f%2fpromotions.newegg.com%2fhomepage%2fblackNov10%2fbnr_homeLinkList_email.png

Scroll to near the bottom. You can preorder Skyrim on any platform for 48 bucks.