Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[Ceryse]

Executes _REALLY_ pissing me off, to the point that I don't want to play this game. Any way to disable them? I really _NEVER EVER_ want to have bullshit 1-shot kill from some faggoty NPC, they meant to just fucking die, not force me to randomly reload! There got to be a mod to turn this shit off.

 

I have no idea how you are having this many issues with combat, executes and such in Skyrim. Once you're past level 10-15 I don't even so how one can even come close to dying unless you absolutely forsake any and all defense (i.e. are playing naked with 0 defensive perks). I've never even seen an NPC get an execute off on me, whether on my mage, dual wielding character (no block!) or my sword and boarder.

Nonetheless, after 20 seconds of looking;

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2266

Read comments. Apparently the link he gives for a requisite file is out of date from the overview page and there's an updated link in the comments.

Beyond that, just started my mage character for a break from my dual wielder; takes a bit of getting used to, but my main issue thus far is I can't decide which magely direction to focus on, though I've mainly been bound sword/frost spell dual wielding it with the occasional double fire spell of doom. Not liking it as much as my melee characters thus far, but decent enough for a change of pace now and then.

[sinij]

I thought the "executes" were just a fancy way of animating a last hit that does more than your current hp?

This how it looks on my PC...

Run up (or sneak up) to a group of enemies. Kill one right away with charge attack or sneak execute. Fight other opponents, lose some health, maybe to 80% of total health. Get impatient and start forcing through chain-blocking of sword-and-board NPC upfront, take little bit more damage, to maybe 70%. Then BOOOM HEADSHOT! Goes to ZERO HEALTH because I didn't get out of the way of 2-handed power attack. They also show you animation of getting skewered or decapitated to further taunt you. This isn't "I am about to die, oh crap I am dead", this is "WTF, not again".

Decreasing game difficulty makes combat uninteresting, and still doesn't completely eliminate these executes. I mostly play on Master, and combat is interesting - that is your opponents use tactics and I do die if I don't plan attack and let NPCs corner me. This type of deaths I am 100% fine. It is when you play well, and last dude executes you out of the blue right before you bring him down that enrages me.

[Tebonas]

So you die when you jump into the middle of a group of enemies?

Yes, its definitely the game at fault here. 

[sinij]

I wish I had video recorder to show this. It is really out-of-the-fucking-blue kills. I can take on 3 opponents without problems, that is unless they execute me. It is like random chance of instant death, certainly not normal damage.

[Tebonas]

It could be that there is some kind of flanking bonus in play here. I try to avoid enemies at my back and that seldom happens to me.

[rk47]

I wouldn't even fucking think of diving into groups of more than 2 if you're on Expert and above. The amount of damage bosses can do is phenomenal. If you think Bandit chiefs are bad enough, wait till you're locked in a room with nothing but mages who blast off 30-50% of HP in three seconds.

Hell, you could set traps with runes after landing a solid poisoned sneak arrow - then poison another before drawing a sword. What's the problem here? If the odds are against you, shit tends to turn south in high difficulty. I'm not surprised anymore when bandit chiefs KO me.

[Sheepherder]

It's normal damage.  You should read what the difficulty setting does before you select it.

Also, the mage hallway in Sunderstone Gorge is just fucking silly.

[Murgos]

I wish I had video recorder to show this. It is really out-of-the-fucking-blue kills. I can take on 3 opponents without problems, that is unless they execute me. It is like random chance of instant death, certainly not normal damage.

Because you got hit by a critical.  You're sneaking, so you're probably wearing light armor and you are facing multiple (more than 3) opponents.  I'm not sure what the chance of a critical is, but 3 or 4 attacks by 3 or 4 opponents in a few seconds means that even if it's only 5% chances you are getting nailed by at least one. Meanwhile the other normal attacks are steadily dropping your health.  Also, 2-h weapons do 2-x the damage of a 1 hander, so if a crit is double that damage then yes, no shit you died when you got critted by a 2-hander and saw an execute animation. 

I've seen this train of thought a couple of places.  People post that the game is deciding to do an 'execute' and so it kills them randomly.  It's a really kind of weird way of thinking and seems totally disconnected with what they are describing cause/effect wise.

[Rendakor]

As has been said before, the executes are not random chance. If an opponent's attack does enough damage to kill you, you get hit with an execute animation instead of him just slashing you and you dying. That's all. Nothing special, no magic at work, no one sitting in the Steam HQ watching you play and pushing the "KEEL SINIJ" button every 10 minutes just to fuck with you. You're playing on Hard mode, you did something stupid, and you died for it. Over and over apparently, and yet your only recourse is to whine and look for a way to cheat to make the Hard difficulty challenging. 

[koro]

Sinij does have (a little bit of) a point with the enemy-used executes, though. From everything I've seen, an enemy only has to start the attack that would otherwise kill you to trigger the animation that locks you in and sends you to a game over. It doesn't seem to take into account blocking or the ability to actually move out of the way of said attack, so it does make more sense that a more-fragile-than-average character would run into them a little too often. In fact, I think it's even been gone over before on a previous page.

That being said, if you're a stealther and are trying to sneak-kill enemies, you shouldn't even be getting detected in the first place, much less caught in straight-up combat with 3-4 enemies. My Khajiit thief/assassin can get through pretty much every dungeon regardless of the enemies populating it and take everything out if he so wishes, without a single drop of incoming damage, on Expert (I've dabbled with Master, but it tends to be more annoying than a challenge, but I find Expert to be a good balance), using nothing but daggers. If you're trying to do the backstab route with anything but, you're doing it wrong, plain and simple.

You just have to make use of all your tools. Sneak-rolling is insanely useful, and combined with the perk for sprinting power attacks in the one-handed tree - which work while sneak-rolling and are silent - you can do some incredibly effective backstab chains, while being cool-looking to boot. If an enemy almost spots you, back off and roll away down a hall or into a dark corner and wait til the threat's gone. If an enemy's facing down the hallway you're coming from and you have no chance to get around it, fire an arrow off against a wall behind him. The sound will distract the enemy, allowing you to either get up and sneak-kill them, or get in position to easily do so when they go back to their spot. And if worse comes to worst and you must fight, you switch to a fucking sword and shield. Even a low One-Handed skill can keep you effective in full-on combat.

Of course, this advice only applies to people who are backstabbers. If you're a stealth archer and are having these issues, well... Nothing I can do for you then, since you'd be completely failing at arguably the easiest, most powerful, and least risky combat style in the game.

[tmp]

This how it looks on my PC...

Run up (or sneak up) to a group of enemies. (..) Get impatient and start forcing through chain-blocking of sword-and-board NPC upfront, take little bit more damage, to maybe 70%.

(..)

I mostly play on Master, and combat is interesting

Is it, really? I mean, if you're getting impatient with it to the point you basically suicide in attempt to get over with it faster, then it doesn't seem like it holds your interest too well...

[Engels]

I just finished the Dark Brotherhood quest line. My, what an amazing bit of story writing. If they made a RPG with JUST that story arc as the main thread, I'd have loved it. That that entire arc is embedded into a game with dozens of other story arcs is just fantastic.

Sinij, don't play a game on hard difficulty and then complain when its hard.

[Ingmar]

Dozens of arcs is overstating it a bit. There are about 6 or 7 that go on long enough to call an arc imo.

[K9]

Main
Dark Brotherhood
Companions
Mages
Imperials/Stormcloaks
Thieves
Daedric quests

I guess this could round up to a dozen or more if you include the quest series to become thanes of the various holds.

[Ironwood]

I will say that the voice acting of the Clavicus Vile quest was fucking stupid and fucking ruined it.

That's my only criticism of this game so far.

Apart from the UI, of course.

[K9]

It did seem a bit off, but then all the daedra have slightly funky voice acting. Meridia was probably the best though.

[Ironwood]

An American Dog and a Cockney God.

It was fucking Mary Poppins.

[Ingmar]

The whole dog thing was retarded even setting aside the accent issue.

[Miasma]

More Skyrim Classifieds.

[CmdrSlack]

I just did that quest. It was a bit off-putting to have the Don Rickles-meets-Buggsy-Malone dog with a Simon Pegg-sounding Daedra.

Also, the axe is shit.

But I must say that I  games where I can jump and push my way up an unclimbable mountainside to get the "discovered yon area" message and then fast travel to the door.

[Malakili]

Late to the party, but just got this.

So, enjoying the game when it stay stable - which is a big if at the moment.  It seems like opening the map has about a 50/50 chance of requiring me to reboot my PC.

[rattran]

I solved that by switching from ati to nvidia, and using the 4gb launcher on skyrimnexus. It's rock stable now, even with alt-tabbing like a fiend. Your mileage may vary.

[MuffinMan]

I'm still having problems with CTD's every 30 minutes or so. I wonder if the 4gb launcher would help me.

[Engels]

It helped me -a bit-. Now instead of CTD every 30 min, its more like every 2 hours. I think ATI is aware of the issue, but don't hold your breath on a driver release.

[Soln]

that mod fixed it for me as well 100%. No CTD's ever.

[Malakili]

I used it just now and played for a solid couple of hours with no problems.

[tazelbain]

Awesome, guys this is good info.  Hope 1.4 comes out today and we don't need this work around.

[CaptainNapkin]

I haven't experienced a single crash or dump to desktop with ATI and no mem mods (or any mods), and I've pulled a few marathon 8+ plus sessions on the weekends. My wife has had the dumps though and is ATI as well, maybe I'll try the mod on her rig.

[Malakili]

So with the 4gb patch is looks like the map is still causing the hard crash, but I have to stay on the map for a bit to trigger it, rather than it triggering immediately when I open the map.  I'm just going to have to get used to playing without it until they fix it I guess.

Did some further testing, turning the graphics down to low seems to help.  But its frustrating to be able to run the game on ultra but have to knock it down to be able open the world map 

[taolurker]

Try removing the cloud textures from the map.
Add the text below at the end of your Skyrim.ini

[MapMenu]
sMapCloudNIF=0
bWorldMapNoSkyDepthBlur=1
fWorldMapNearDepthBlurScale=0
fWorldMapDepthBlurScale=0
fWorldMapMaximumDepthBlur=0

There are a bunch of map tweaks to try here:
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=272

[Malakili]

Try removing the cloud textures from the map.
Add the text below at the end of your Skyrim.ini

[MapMenu]
sMapCloudNIF=0
bWorldMapNoSkyDepthBlur=1
fWorldMapNearDepthBlurScale=0
fWorldMapDepthBlurScale=0
fWorldMapMaximumDepthBlur=0

There are a bunch of map tweaks to try here:
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=272

Thanks, I'll try this tonight.

[Hawkbit]

Supposedly the guy who did the GTA4 overhaul is working a bit on Skyrim.

http://kotaku.com/5868549/the-guy-who-made-gta-iv-look-like-this-is-hard-at-work-on-modding-skyrim-now/gallery/1

[K9]

If that's the direction he's going it's not an improvement. Skyrim's aesthetic is pretty much spot-on as it is.

[Malakili]

Try removing the cloud textures from the map.
Add the text below at the end of your Skyrim.ini

[MapMenu]
sMapCloudNIF=0
bWorldMapNoSkyDepthBlur=1
fWorldMapNearDepthBlurScale=0
fWorldMapDepthBlurScale=0
fWorldMapMaximumDepthBlur=0

There are a bunch of map tweaks to try here:
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=272

Didn't seem to make a difference.  Looks like I am just going to suck it up and play it on low graphics until they patch, and then I'll try again

[koro]

If that's the direction he's going it's not an improvement. Skyrim's aesthetic is pretty much spot-on as it is.

Pretty much every post-processing filter mod released so far has been a new, unique flavor of suck. I can't imagine this being much different.