Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[Sky]

while you block, you aren't hitting them.

My shield bash power move stun disagrees with you.

[tmp]

Well, my block isn't high enough to unlock that ;/

does it actually do any damage, though? Or just stun?

[koro]

I've beaten people to death at 15 Block with just the basic shield bash.

Also, remember back before the game came out (and not that long before it hit too), Bethsoft was talking about disrupting a town's trade by messing with their mills and mines and such? Did that ever get implemented, or was it something that never made it, and Bethsoft just quietly stopped talking about it?

[Ruvaldt]

It does damage.  With a perk at around 50 skill, I think, it does considerably more.  Shield bash is mostly there for the staggering though, which is better than the damage.

I started with a shield, but now that I've built the ultimate suit of legendary Daedric armor with 100 smithing and enchanting I just sort of casually rove through dungeons, mowing everything down without blocking.  Nowadays my shield is just there for the extra +20% magic resist and +46% shock resist.  Once I hit level 50 I'll take a break for a week or two and start over with another character.  The amazing thing is that I really only did two cities' quests with this character and I've put in an ungodly amount of time, though I do explore a lot.  The scope of the game is pretty amazing.

[stray]

Yeah, I was tempted to train more in block on this new char, but went up dual wielding. Still good to carry a shield for resists though. Also, went heavy armor instead of light. Pretty much what I did with a 2hander, but there's slightly more versatility here.

Kind of cool that my werewolf power is a dual wielder too. It's a more powerful version of me. 

[Miasma]

There is a talent in block to reduce all fire, frost an shock damage by 50% while blocking.  That seems quite tempting for the dragon encounters but I don't think I'll bother.

[kildorn]

Right now I'm using a 1h/magic character in melee, and the game is a LOT harder than 1h/shield. Shields block so much freaking damage.

My near-20 character has something like 20-odd block because i never really bother with it with the 2h. Blocking is for sissies -- while you block, you aren't hitting them.

Learning to use block honestly turned 2h melee bandit chiefs from potion popping encounters of doom where I lost half my health every time they swung, to losing 10% health through the entire encounter.

Block/Swing/Block/Swing pretty much turns one on one melee encounters into cake. Would probably feel more balanced if you couldn't happily block with 0 stamina.

[stray]

I'm not sure what's more epic..

[AcidCat]

The more I play the more impressed I am with this game, it is like a bottomless pit of engaging game content. Really something special.

[Ginaz]

Getting close to 30 hours in and I'm only level 26 and I don't feel like I've done much at all.  Biggest achievements so far is owning 2 homes (in Whiterun and Windhelm), somehow earned over 100,000 gold (companion mule + frequent fast travel to sell stuff)  and picking a side in the civil war (choose Stormcloaks since I'm a Nord).  I can easily see this getting to 100 hours before I "finish".

[koro]

So. I found A Thing. A very interesting thing that, as an unabashed Morrowind fanboy, absolutely floored me:

[stray]

It's definitely immersive. The one thing I'd like to see improved though is not have trust so easily gained by certain quest givers/companions. That's immersion breaking. They've made more of a step into storytelling, but it still relies on the old "instantly do something for a stranger, become best friends afterwards" formula.

It's hard to escape in RPGs, so maybe I'm asking too much, but it's something I think Bioware does a little better, at least with main quests.

[Sheepherder]

So. I found A Thing. A very interesting thing that, as an unabashed Morrowind fanboy, absolutely floored me:

Yes, but does it kill you when you equip it?

[lamaros]

I've spent all weekend doing fun stuff, birthdays and parties and fancy dinners, but I am really sad I have to go to work tomorrow as I just want to play!!

Good game. Just clearing out the bandits who had their spot in the mountain with the beautiful view of Whiterun was great. This game has one if the strongest senses of place I have ever played, you truly feel like the world exits and you are just visiting.

[Comstar]

Wait, the companions have quests? Lydia barly talks and seems to have no personality, back story or history.

[caladein]

Wait, the companions have quests? Lydia barly talks and seems to have no personality, back story or history.

Capital "c" Companions.  Lower case "c" companions are referred to as followers.

I'd really like if they had quests though (even to the Fallout: NV level), I'm half-tempted to cycle through them both to deal with the leveling bug they have and just to hear some new stuff.

[tmp]

Wait, the companions have quests? Lydia barly talks and seems to have no personality, back story or history.

Lydia's personal quest is to make your life miserable.

[Tannhauser]

Yep, her favorite tactics are to block doorways and to stand in front of your lightning bolts.

[tmp]

Stuff like this makes me srsly consider dual-wielding shields

[rk47]

I'm sworn to carry your burdens.

I'm sworn to carry your burdens.

I'm sworn to carry your burdens.

On topic: I abandoned any serious attempt at finishing the main quest. It's kinda tedious to get from point X to Y, watching some clumsily scripted NPCs say some boring one liner. 'Hey dude, this is the tower we r raidin'. Don't roll for the plate armer drop k. I needz it.' Whteva.

I just rolled a Lizard rogue and spent like 3-4 hours just killing everyone I see with Essential NPC nokill flag turned off. it was hard at first, relying on bow sneak attacks at night. But I remember nailing that Nord's sister as they reunited after the execution camp escape - her brother screamed bloody vengeance as I swam downstream, using the flow of the river to make my escape - The brother wasn't lonely for long as I returned to his home, courtesy of his sister's key and stabbed him with dual imperial sword as he lay asleep. 'You cannot rest while trespassing' made me realize I need to claim my own hideout.

More days ahead spent taking over a fort from a bunch of bandits...then defending it from bounty hunters and passing guard patrols.  Hit level 11 without even trying for it. Elder Scrolls series are best played like that, fuck scripted quests.  ...I shall post a screenshot of a pyre of bodies I gather at the fort's courtyard and set ablaze tomorrow.

[Hawkbit]

Complaints:
I wish they would treat shields as weapons instead of apparel. 
It took me a while to get the L/R button confusion straightened around (Mb1 is R, not L for LeftMb). 
Shadow rendering is ass on all settings. 
I want the world bigger.  Yeah, I said it. 
UI is jank. 

But the complaints are so completely overshadowed by the fun.  Some of the monster AI is neat; just when you get their patterns figured out they throw a new move.

[Xuri]

I'm pretty sure I will never complete this game unless I somehow manage to learn how to say "no thanks" to random side-quests and then come back to those with a different character, or something. It's almost like reading Wikipedia; I never finish the article I was intending to read because I come across links to other pages I want to read, and yet more links in those pages, and so forth - branching out into infinity or until my browser crashes from having too many tabs open. At this point my quest-log in the game is so full of random quests with no descriptions, just titles that I'm finding it hard to pick anything in specific to do, and instead just end up wandering in a random direction and hope I run into one of the quest goals by chance.

On a side-note, it took me about 36 hours of gameplay before I remembered that there is fast-travel in the game to locations you've already visited. I've since then reached 39 hours of gameplay and fast-travelled three times. *ashamed of self*

[Falconeer]

Listen up people, I understand I am a minority here, disappointed and all. I am probably broken, fine.
But seriously, is it my system or that annoying delay between any key press and the reaction on screen is a "feature"? The melee combat is the most unsatisfying thing ever in a game of this scope and overall quality, and while I can see where the whole majesty of the project is, I can't find the fun when everything is sluggish and "aquatic". Mind, my system auto-detected settings as "high" and to be fair everything runs very smooth and the visuals are luscious. Just... moving around and fighting is so dull I wish they put an autocombat feature. I am trying to play third person (as the first person is just ridiculous for melee, and quite if not more unfun) and I HATE to see my character do that "slide" thing when you stop or the little delay before moving. Same with hits and blocks. Or just moving the mouse cursor around: that few milliseconds of delay that feel like playing a korean MMORPG on Asian servers. Seriously, is it my system? I want to try, just out of curiosity, to crank the settings to "VERY LOW" and see if it gets any crispier. As of now, the combat just became an additional layer of shit (on top of the UI) that keeps me away from the greatness of Skyrim.

[Quinton]

Have you tried:
- adjusting mouse speed in settings
- disabling gamepad in settings
- reducing some of the video quality settings a bit (shadows high->medium, 8x AA -> 2x AA made a difference for me)

I was annoyed by mouse and menus being sluggish, but the above helped a lot.

[tgr]

Whenever I go from 60fps to 30fps or so, the sluggishness goes through the roof. Seriously, just get the FPS back up, and maybe even turn off vsync (not available in the menu, you'll have to go for the config file). At least I hear vsync plays a large part of this.

[stray]

I only have played melee characters. It's ok, depending on the enemy. I thought Oblivion/Morrowind had a crappy feel, but this feels a bit more visceral or something. Not as good as an action title, of course (or even some other newish rpgs, like FF13 or DA2), but I kind of like it.

[kildorn]

Listen up people, I understand I am a minority here, disappointed and all. I am probably broken, fine.
But seriously, is it my system or that annoying delay between any key press and the reaction on screen is a "feature"? The melee combat is the most unsatisfying thing ever in a game of this scope and overall quality, and while I can see where the whole majesty of the project is, I can't find the fun when everything is sluggish and "aquatic". Mind, my system auto-detected settings as "high" and to be fair everything runs very smooth and the visuals are luscious. Just... moving around and fighting is so dull I wish they put an autocombat feature. I am trying to play third person (as the first person is just ridiculous for melee, and quite if not more unfun) and I HATE to see my character do that "slide" thing when you stop or the little delay before moving. Same with hits and blocks. Or just moving the mouse cursor around: that few milliseconds of delay that feel like playing a korean MMORPG on Asian servers. Seriously, is it my system? I want to try, just out of curiosity, to crank the settings to "VERY LOW" and see if it gets any crispier. As of now, the combat just became an additional layer of shit (on top of the UI) that keeps me away from the greatness of Skyrim.

Some actions seem to trigger an input cooldown. I haven't figured out WHAT yet. But sometimes I can pop into menus and use potions, and sometimes it just won't let me until a swing finishes.

[stray]

 

On topic: I abandoned any serious attempt at finishing the main quest. It's kinda tedious to get from point X to Y, watching some clumsily scripted NPCs say some boring one liner. 'Hey dude, this is the tower we r raidin'. Don't roll for the plate armer drop k. I needz it.' Whteva.

What is the main quest? I would consider the one with Greybeards / Delphine. Not any shit about stormcloaks. I mean, they even get some random russian VA to do Jarl Stormcloack. But the Delphine one leads to Joan Allen and Max Von Sydow.  

And no, they aren't are fedex/raid random tower type of quests.

[NowhereMan]

Yeah there are definitely some points where it does that and it really annoys me when my I accidentally trigger a charging sword swing (moving forward while power attacking) since it's hard to judge distances and I frequently end up sailing past whoever I was fighting and getting smacked in the back of the head. However those are occasional things, I can honestly say I haven't noticed that level of sluggishness, although I have put in all those tweaks listed. On a slightly different note I came out of Whiterun earlier to hear a dragon roaring, looked around and just couldn't see it anywhere. Next thing I know a Giant comes running past being chased by a dragon and the following sights ensued.
Needless to say I hit them both with a Marked for Death shout and proceeded to watch until the giant was low on health and then came in swinging with my soul trap Skyforge Greatsword. Good times. I'll also agree with the inability to say no to sidequests, I still haven't visited the Greybeards but I have done most of the College of Magic quests, been offered a place in the Circle, killed half a dozen bandit chieftains and slain about 6 dragons I just bumped into while wandering around. I keep looking for another city I can sell my phat lewts in but so far apart from Whiterun everywhere I've gone has had one shop, usually an alchemists, and been pointless for trying to offload stuff.

[tmp]

I still haven't visited the Greybeards but (..) slain about 6 dragons I just bumped into while wandering around.

Visiting these guys unlocks your ability to actually do anything with the souls of the dragons you killed, and such. So it's more useful than probably 90% of the side stuff the game has to offer.

[Sky]

The amount of content in this game is bordering on insane. So many of the little side dungeons have nice little story arcs, so much good prose tie-in with books leading you to quests or fleshing them out.

Not sure I get the complaints about the combat. At 60 block/70 1h/ 70 heavy armor it's pretty nuts (just forged my suit of legendary ebony, still needs enchantments though). I have to shore up my magic resists (next shield perk). Bosses are still enough of a challenge that I need to pay attention and use at least a bit of strategery or I'll get kerpwned. For retreating mages, I use the bullet speed shout to close the distance. Still have an issue with some dragons not landing and I have no ranged abilities.

I applied the LAA patch and it seems to have stabilized things well enough.

[Tannhauser]

On topic: I abandoned any serious attempt at finishing the main quest. It's kinda tedious to get from point X to Y, watching some clumsily scripted NPCs say some boring one liner. 'Hey dude, this is the tower we r raidin'. Don't roll for the plate armer drop k. I needz it.' Whteva.

What is the main quest? I would consider the one with Greybeards / Delphine. Not any shit about stormcloaks. I mean, they even get some random russian VA to do Jarl Stormcloack. But the Delphine one leads to Joan Allen and Max Von Sydow.  

And no, they aren't are fedex/raid random tower type of quests.

The main quest is (mild spoilers)

[MuffinMan]

I still haven't visited the Greybeards but (..) slain about 6 dragons I just bumped into while wandering around.

Visiting these guys unlocks your ability to actually do anything with the souls of the dragons you killed, and such. So it's more useful than probably 90% of the side stuff the game has to offer.

Hmm? I've been finding power words and spending dragon souls to unlock them and haven't visited them yet either.

[stray]

On topic: I abandoned any serious attempt at finishing the main quest. It's kinda tedious to get from point X to Y, watching some clumsily scripted NPCs say some boring one liner. 'Hey dude, this is the tower we r raidin'. Don't roll for the plate armer drop k. I needz it.' Whteva.

What is the main quest? I would consider the one with Greybeards / Delphine. Not any shit about stormcloaks. I mean, they even get some random russian VA to do Jarl Stormcloack. But the Delphine one leads to Joan Allen and Max Von Sydow.  

And no, they aren't are fedex/raid random tower type of quests.

The main quest is (mild spoilers)

[stray]

I still haven't visited the Greybeards but (..) slain about 6 dragons I just bumped into while wandering around.

Visiting these guys unlocks your ability to actually do anything with the souls of the dragons you killed, and such. So it's more useful than probably 90% of the side stuff the game has to offer.

Hmm? I've been finding power words and spending dragon souls to unlock them and haven't visited them yet either.

Dragonborn have the gift of learning without a training... that's the point of being dragonborn, I think. But these guys do unlock some things and direct you a bit.

In any case, I would definitely recommend following some of these quests at least.