Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[ghost]

I don't know, maybe part of the issue for me is all of the FO3 and FONV that I played.  And that's a setting that I like better....

 

[Samprimary]

I'm not looking for WoW type crazy coloration necessarily.  Skyrim is just the land of bland.  There is little to distinguish one town from another. 

All of the walled cities were totally unique. And I can totally distinguish Dawnstar from the other unwalled cities. It's that place where the weather is 100% dragons.

[Ingmar]

Right, as opposed to Winterhold, where the weather is blinding snow PLUS dragons.

[ghost]

Sorry, it was all a bit "samey" to me.  Difference of opinion? 

Are there different things to kill other than Trolls, Draugr, Frost Spiders, Wolves and Dragons as you move along?  I'm only level 32 as I've restarted from a primarily magic user to a stealth/ranged character. 

[Ingmar]

Humans? Sabre cats? Frost wraiths? Falmer? Those bug things that hang out with Falmers? Giants? Hagravens? Spriggans? Vampires?

I'm sure I left some stuff off. If anything I would say the monster variety is probably higher in Skyirm than in either FO game.

[ghost]

Yeah, maybe you're right.  And it's not like there are that many different options in FONV, either.  The combat with all of them feels very similar though.  There's nothing to really distinguish getting hit with a sword versus being blasted with a cold ray versus arrows.

I probably just ought to stop playing for a while.  I think I'm going to fire up Dark Souls again tonight.  Maybe I'll be into that now.  Or maybe Alan Wake or Gone home, or something completely different.

[ajax34i]

Have you modded yourself overpowered?  Because that CAN make all combat feel similar.  I'm not playing for the combat, so for me fights are pretty much I shoot 2-5 fireballs while standing there taking whatever they dish out (50% resists + 50% damage reduction from smithed enchanted armor), would be very boring were the fights not short.

As far as the quests, they get thrown at you randomly and all of them at once, but if you make an effort to follow only ONE story line at a time (mages guild vs. companions vs. thieves guild vs. the various Daedric quests) they do have somewhat varied plots and twists.

EDIT:  I'll give you, though, that the game is a way long RPG.  If you play it for 2-3 months trying to "progress" every week, that'll feel like an MMO very fast.

[ghost]

Actually, no mods for me.  Maybe that would perk things up a bit?

I typically am not the type that goes in and basically tries to kill everyone, either.  I like doing quests, but these feel completely tacked on.  This is my first Elder Scrolls game that I've played to any level though.  Maybe that is the norm.

[Kitsune]

The downside to Skyrim's cities is that they're all grey, either because of grey stone or because of faded grey wood.  The architecture is radically different from city to city, but you're still seeing a grey screen wherever you look, and I think that is the primary force behind the 'all the cities look the same' vibe.  One of the things Oblivion did right was in having the cities be fairly different in appearance, both in layout and in overall color.  None of them measure up to Morrowind's 'city inside a giant crab' or 'city made of mushrooms' for uniqueness, but it's at least more distinctive than Skyrim's selections.

Of course, plenty of mods exist to spruce up the Skyrim cities visually, which can help a whole lot in that department.


When it comes to questing, I feel that Skyrim lacks in options to not be a homicidal maniac.  It would be nice to have an option to smooth talk your way through a den of thieves rather than have to up and kill everything that moves.

[Ingmar]

That seems especially true with the Daedric quests; there's very little reason to not just be an evil bastard and do them all in terms of how the world views you or any kind of consequences.

[Khaldun]

Yeah. The game could really use an enhanced approach to consequences--it definitely kills some of the open-worldliness when you do stuff that should really result in people viewing you differently and nothing happens.

[ghost]

Sniping is rather unrealistic, too.  Ranged is superpowered.  I drop Giants in a couple of shots now.  Not to mention the ever present eventuality of dropping people only to have the others walk around like nothing happened.

[Samprimary]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHbF9ynGZV0

[DraconianOne]

Arise!

The SkyWind mod is still progressing and they released a development video a couple of days ago.

[Father mike]

Damnit, I was going to buy Morrowind in the Steam sale so I could play this when it released, and I completely forgot.

[Paelos]

Did it release? Is it close? I can't tell on the site. They say they have releases but I'm unsure if it's beta still.

[Ingmar]

Don't think it's really anywhere near ready yet.

[Merusk]

It's not. Youtube description on the vid says something like, "please e-mail to sign up and donate time if you can.  The more helping the faster we can finish."

[DraconianOne]

Sort of related, RPS has a post by Duncan Harris of Dead End Thrills about the tips and techniques (and relative lack of mods!) that he uses to get all those stunning shots in Skyrim.  His site also has a lot of shots from Skywind too.

[Rendakor]

Rather than shit up the "What are you playing" thread I'll just necro this one.

Fired this up and it's got it's hooks in me again. I'm playing a caster with the Forgotten Magic mod, which adds a bunch of new spells that level up and you can customize. Most of the customizations are direct rip-offs of pre-MoP WoW talents but still, it's more interesting than the vanilla magic system.

Working my way through the Helgen Reborn mod too; it's fully voiced and very well done for an addon. NPCs are a bit too wordy (with minutes-long unskippable dialog) but other than that it seems pretty cool. I'm not very far into it yet.

I'm also doing the Civil War storyline that I'd totally ignored before; I went Nord and sided with the Stormcloaks. I'm not sure I'm doing it right though; in addition to following the questlines I've been murdering any Imperial camps I run into. There's always at least 1 NPC that's unkillable in each one though; I know there's a console command to fix that but I don't really want to glitch my game out.

[raydeen]

I finally picked up the Legendary Edition thanks to the Quakecon sales. I must admit I'm very surprised I'm able to run this as well as I can on my 8 year old machine. Everything is at the absolute minimal settings so it's ugly compared to screenshots I've seen but still nicer than what I'm generally used to. Hopefully getting a substantial pay raise soon so a new system may be in order (after our roof gets replaced though).

Still don't think it's as good as Morrowind or Oblivion but I'm still early in the game so time will tell.

[Khaldun]

I would love it if there was a mod that let you decisively reject both sides in the civil war in favor of your own murderous dictatorship over Skyrim.

Isn't the mod where people are redoing all of Morrowind w/Skyrim's engine almost done? I haven't checked in that for a while but it did seem really cool.

[DraconianOne]

I would love it if there was a mod that let you decisively reject both sides in the civil war in favor of your own murderous dictatorship over Skyrim.

You may have seen this one. I don't think it alters the civil war but it does make you High King of Skyrim

[Reg]

Oh that's great! I hated that little snot.

[satael]

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hrmSD6DZt4

A total conversion for Skyrim from SureAI (who made Nehrim for Oblivion) coming next month. 

[Signe]

What is this?  Because it sounds awesome.

[Malakili]

I haven't played the previous stuff but out by those modders, but as I understand it that will be a total conversion mod that has a bit more emphasis on characters and stories than Skyrim did. But it's basically a new open world RPG using the Skyrim engine and assets.

[koro]

I adored Nehrim, so I'm very hype for this. From what I've heard, there's a system that acts like the rad meter from Fallout that's increased when you cast self buff spells or go into certain magically charged areas, which seems neat.

[Yegolev]

There is some rustling in the bushes that lead me to think someone in my house will buy the PS4 redo of this.

[satael]

English version of Enderal has been released.  

edit: mod compatibility list for Enderal

[satael]

First impression of Enderal based on a short session: It's like Skyrim's Nehrim (and probably even better) 

[apocrypha]

That looks really interesting, I'll give that a go sometime. Not dabbled with Skyrim for ages!

[Signe]

So far... 

[apocrypha]

Yeah it's a slippery slope. I'll start and then rack up another 300 hours on it.

[Hawkbit]

This mod takes a bit to get going, but after a few hours it really picks up. It's very, very good so far. A little bit of jank, but it's better than 80% of any other games I've played since Skyrim.