Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[Falconeer]

Level 18 now.

Sure I could crank up the difficulty, but I am just disappointed that dragons, aside from the music and the look, are just as easy as any other mob. Fighting them after the first one doesn't feel epic at all, and I am playing at default difficulty. I think it shouldn't be like that, but it's not a game breaker.

[lamaros]

They seem a bit harder at higher levels (you get different types, too), but again that might have been my character. Also you're meant to be a dragon killer, and you fight a lot of them, so they're not meant to be the hardest things going around.

[Tannhauser]

I like the Thief quests much more than the Mage ones.  They have you steal from a house, cook books, even ransack a town.  The mage ones weren't as compelling for some reason.

Last night wandering I found a cave that led to a tower that had a book about an old warrior.  I then found another cave and met the old warrior.  Generalized to avoid spoilers.  Stuff like this is really fun, stumbling into a quest and a story.

Do I wish Lydia and other NPC's had more to say?  Sure, but this is a sandbox game, not an rpg and it's a huuuuge sandbox they've given us.  I am quite fine with how they balanced it. 

[Ironwood]

I put full Dwemer armor on Lydia and I just pretend I'm being followed by a robot.

It works for me.

[Xilren's Twin]

So finished the main quest on my first character, and while thankfully it's not Fallout3 game over, it did seem very anti-climatic which is classic bethesda.  Final fight was cake at level 39, and the location seems like a good idea that just wasn;t fleshed out enough. Debated continuing on that character to clear up some remaining misc quests, but decided to start my sneaky playthough for dark brotherhood and thieves guilds, plus the 6 towns i didnt even touch and picking a side in the empire vs stormcloaks thing.

Oh yeah,only found 3 masks in that run so I am going to find all 8 dragon priest masks if it's the last thing i do (without spoilering myself).

[rk47]

Finally found the Atronarch sign. Essential for warriors. And allows them to boost their default mana by 50%. Perfect for conjuring Flame Atronarch.

[Sky]

I think maybe the big problem is they allow you to 1) play a complete and utter psychopath but 2) only reward you for it, never punish. (Which really is the problem with all games that let you go full serial killer for the most part.) There's no in-character 'cost' to doing all the Daedra quests, Dark Brotherhood, etc., partly because I can't get invested in caring whether any of the NPCs live or die. Sure, I'll murder this dude to get this cool thing, there's literally no reason NOT to.

Well, TOR doesn't punish you for  but when I killed her on my dark Knight playthrough it REALLY bothered me, since we were total chums when I was a light Consular. Doesn't seem like there's much ingame consequence but the impact on ME was huge.

Lamaros brings up a good point: I really wish you could kill children. Had that one brat follow me into my house and taunt me with "I"M NOT AFRAID OF YOU!" Then I chop her face and she's invulnerable and now the town guard wants to kill me. That hardly seems realistic.  It's rude to make invulnerable npcs say obnoxious stuff to you.

On dragons: there are different kinds, some are tougher than others. I've had to run from dragon fights a couple times, especially if the terrain didn't favor me and my almost complete lack of ranged attacks. I'm a Nord, not a woman!

[Engels]

So, I got a new 'companion' and left Lydia at 'home'. This companion just will not stfu. The scripting is super annoying when she goes warbling on about whatever when I'm actively trying to hear what an NPC in my quest line is saying. I think I may go back to Lydia who at least kept her yap shut.

[lamaros]

I've put the difficulty up for my Mage play through. Some fights are tough now, and the spell swapping interface is really stupid, which makes it even harder. I'm going alchemy though, so having a bundle of potions to chug is helping me out. I dunno if they're more powerful than enchants as its still early days, but they're pretty handy, even without any perks yet.

Invisibility on demand is fun, throwing down runes and then luring enemies is also fun.

[koro]

Apparently the new 1.2 patch breaks elemental and magic resistances (they'll appear in your active effects page, but not actually function) on top of introducing some hardcore interface lag.

GG Bethesda.

[CmdrSlack]

I had Lydia equipped with a dwarven sword and the shield of solitude. I was carrying too much stuff and offloaded a bunch of things to her, not even thinking about the staves I was handing her.

Now she's dual-wielding a staff of frostbite and the sanguine rose item. So, basically, in every fight I now have Lydia and her summoned badass. I am tempted to not let her go back to sword and board.

[Ironwood]

Putting good equipment on her really makes a difference.  She fairly wades right in during my games and doesn't come out until everyone goes down.  Meanwhile, I'm just putting arrows in people, hoping not to hit her.

[sinij]

Apparently the new 1.2 patch breaks elemental and magic resistances (they'll appear in your active effects page, but not actually function) on top of introducing some hardcore interface lag.

GG Bethesda.

There is active effects page?! Where?

[tmp]

It's on the magic page, last one on the scrolling categories list iirc.

[Xuri]

Apparently some people are also experiencing loss of the most recent save-game files after the patch. That's one of the ways that might cause me to stop playing the game. Interesting times ahead when I get home from work and patch the game...

[Pezzle]

not patching until the next patch!

[koro]

The 1.2 patch has been pulled from the Bethsoft servers. Apparently not only do dragons fly backwards and resistances stop working, but armor damage reduction no longer works, vsync is forced on regardless of your .ini settings (leading to tons of menu lag), and savegames can get corrupted.

Good grief.

[tmp]

Maybe that patch was intended to be the original .exe and what was first shipped was the patch

[Pezzle]

Ok, seeing Dragons fly backwards would have been fun.  Not worth the other headaches though.

[rattran]

Patch broke my savegame, ctd when I load it, or the previous 2. So, right on par for a TES game.

[Miasma]

Wow.  I know they have stopped the patch but I'm going to have to figure out if there is a way to prevent steam from auto updating for the future.

And on the lighter side:
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/skyrim-classifieds.php

[Ingmar]

I think maybe the big problem is they allow you to 1) play a complete and utter psychopath but 2) only reward you for it, never punish. (Which really is the problem with all games that let you go full serial killer for the most part.) There's no in-character 'cost' to doing all the Daedra quests, Dark Brotherhood, etc., partly because I can't get invested in caring whether any of the NPCs live or die. Sure, I'll murder this dude to get this cool thing, there's literally no reason NOT to.

Well, TOR doesn't punish you for  but when I killed her on my dark Knight playthrough it REALLY bothered me, since we were total chums when I was a light Consular. Doesn't seem like there's much ingame consequence but the impact on ME was huge.

But that's just it; that IS the game punishing you. The consequence is created by having characters that seem like characters. The 'punishment' for being a mass murderer (HO HO HO) doesn't have to be mechanical, it can be emotional, but because Skyrim doesn't have developed characters for the most part it doesn't end up affecting me. That's why I feel like there's no incentive at all to actually RP in these games - it creates no attachment to anything, and gives you no real opportunity to give your character a personality. The one storyline that has anything at all like that in it is the Civil War one (caveat: I haven't advanced the main quest much.) The game would benefit hugely by taking a page from New Vegas in terms of strapping some actual politics and characterization into the sandbox.

Sorry for the double post but I don't get this at all. Why does one character have to do everything? Maybe this is related to your skilling complaint, in that you want to be able to do everything, but not actually... do it?

The fact that one character can see every shred of content and be good at every skill kills the replayability for me, is what I meant.

[NiX]

Wow.  I know they have stopped the patch but I'm going to have to figure out if there is a way to prevent steam from auto updating for the future.

And on the lighter side:
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/skyrim-classifieds.php

Right click the game in your Library menu, properties and there should be an update tab you can switch off auto-updates.

[rattran]

Reports in the Steam forum that it updates even with autoupdate off.

[Sky]

That's why I feel like there's no incentive at all to actually RP in these games - it creates no attachment to anything, and gives you no real opportunity to give your character a personality.

Yeah, I'm with you on that completely. I see the Elder Scrolls as gaming with my old AD&D group that wasn't into RP but loved them some intricate dungeon crawls in interesting settings.

TOR is like another group I played with, you couldn't help but get sucked into the RP spirit. We tended to less dungeon crawling and more politicking.

The world needs both, but I don't think you should try to cross the streams unless you can REALLY swing it over the green monster. Metaphor mixology!

[koro]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xCjK3BD6u4

For those who haven't updated and want to see backwards dragons.

[Pezzle]

Awesome

[slog]

So buggy.

I started the Stormcloaks quest, but never finished the first one.  This now conflicts with the main story line.  Ulfric won't give me the dialouge to get him to come to the peace talks.  Instead he sends me Garl.  Garl won't advance the "join the stormcloaks" questline because I can't get him to say anything besides "how did you get Ulfric to agree to peace talks?" (which I haven't done yet.

Same old shitty Bethesda coding.

[NiX]

Reports in the Steam forum that it updates even with autoupdate off.

Yup, just found that out myself. Fantastic!

[Reg]

I'm very lucky I heard about this in time to put Steam into offline mode.

[Miasma]

I turned autoupdates off and then clicked to play.  It started updating.  The option apparently only means it won't update in the background, if you try to play you will still be forced to update.

So I tried to go into offline mode but now it thinks it has an update and it won't let me play until if finishes.  Clownshoes.

[koro]

Guys, someone at gamefaqs discovered that Fortify Restoration potions affect the enchantments on equipment.
That means you could have fortify alchemy enchantments get more powerful, and so make better fortify enchantment potions.

I played around with it for a while. Got about five crashes(probably due to drinking a 280k% fortify enchantment potion) and then decided to settle for 58k%.

I ended up with this. And 13k health/magicka with regen to match.

Speaking of clownshoes.

[Comstar]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xCjK3BD6u4

For those who haven't updated and want to see backwards dragons.

Dear Bethesdda- Please add a Dragon Shout that makes Dragons fly backwards.

[Lakov_Sanite]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xCjK3BD6u4

For those who haven't updated and want to see backwards dragons.

Dear Bethesdda- Please add a Dragon Shout that makes Dragons fly backwards.

Ka-Riss-kros!

[CmdrSlack]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xCjK3BD6u4

For those who haven't updated and want to see backwards dragons.

Dear Bethesdda- Please add a Dragon Shout that makes Dragons fly backwards.

Ka-Riss-kros!

That'd also make them jump, jump.