Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[HaemishM]

The only review of the XBox version I read was on Joystiq and they thought Dawnguard was pretty meh.

[Amaron]

That price point has certainly dulled my enthusiasm for this.  I'm not hearing anything to suggest it's bigger than previous DLC packs.

[koro]

Yeah, $20 puts this firmly on my "Wait for the GOTY edition to come out, and then wait for that to go on sale" list.

[Ingmar]

And here I was thinking it sounded cheap for an expansion. Isn't that about what we paid for Tales of the Sword Coast and Throne of Bhaal over 10 years ago?

I guess... is it DLC, or an expansion? If it is DLC it does seem kind of pricey yeah. I was thinking it was something along the lines of Tribunal or whatever.

[CmdrSlack]

If content can be downloaded, isn't it all DLC? If the content isn't worth the price point, who cares what kind of DLC it is?

[Stormwaltz]

It's $5 horse armor all over again.

From what I've read, there's no new landscape - the new quests are seeded into corners of the existing area. There are a few new features (vampire lord! crossbows!), but the big ones seem to have come from BGS' post-ship "week where you can work on whatever you want."

UESP has a list of what's in it. IMO, it's a solid $10 DLC.

[Kail]

From what I've read, there's no new landscape - the new quests are seeded into corners of the existing area.

There's a bit of new land, depending on what you mean.  There are definitely new dungeons and some of the new areas are outdoors-ish (plus there's the Soul Cairn, which I haven't seen yet) but it's definitely not adding a whole new continent, Shivering Isles style.

It's $5 horse armor all over again.

I'll see your horse armor and raise you an armored dog.

[Ingmar]

If content can be downloaded, isn't it all DLC? If the content isn't worth the price point, who cares what kind of DLC it is?

I just mean that mentally I divide things into "DLC" and "expansions" based on how much shit is in it - like Awakenings for Dragon Age was an expansion, but Return to Ostagar was DLC. I thought this was going to be like one of the big "expansion" type things that prior Elder Scrolls games got. Possibly the $20 price tag is what made me think that, though.

EDIT:

Mentally my personal bar for 'is this an OK price?' for RPG DLC/expansion/whatever you want to call it, is something in the neighborhood of $5 for the first hour or so + $1 for each additional hour. So, if this comes in around 15 hours of gameplay or so I would be OK with it.

[Amaron]

That sort of depends on if the 15 hours generated are solely due to the new content.  Skyrim already heavily reuses it's own content to create 100's of hours worth of stuff.   Everything I'm hearing though sounds like it's just a normal Bethesda DLC pack?

[Ragnoros]

So has anyone made a mod that fixes the loot/gear in this yet? The game is just so immersive, big, and beautiful. I want to play it more, but knowing once I have found that first daedric weapon any future items I find will not actually improve my character takes much of the fun out of dungeon crawling. Looking around there seems to be many candidates, however I am too lazy to sift through a dozen crappy mods.

[Amaron]

So has anyone made a mod that fixes the loot/gear in this yet? The game is just so immersive, big, and beautiful. I want to play it more, but knowing once I have found that first daedric weapon any future items I find will not actually improve my character takes much of the fun out of dungeon crawling. Looking around there seems to be many candidates, however I am too lazy to sift through a dozen crappy mods.

I haven't tried it but Deadly Dragons and it's sister gear mod seems to be quite popular.

[Ingmar]

Seems like a fair amount of new stuff, and the crossbows are fun. Not yet sure if it is actually worth the money. For those of you who care about such things, one of the new major characters has the same voice actress as Kira from SWTOR.

[Ceryse]

Finally re-installed this and aim to clock a lot more hours into it (and maybe this time I'll actually bother with the two main quest-lines). Started looking into mods to add on for various things I recall bugging the shit out of me.. and god damn is that going to take forever. Now I remember why I was always tentative about replaying Fallout New Vegas.. too many damn mods and compatibility worries.

Still.. it'll be worth it, I think, when I do get it all sorted..

Haven't picked up the dlc and don't plan to for awhile. It just doesn't add enough for the price, imo.

[Ingmar]

Upgraded dwarven crossbow = 

Unfortunately I am going to have no idea how many hours the DLC added by the time I'm done with it, because I keep getting sucked into finishing off little things here and there that I had never gotten around to in my first playthrough, since I was scrambling to finish it before SWTOR came out.

[brellium]

Finally re-installed this and aim to clock a lot more hours into it (and maybe this time I'll actually bother with the two main quest-lines). Started looking into mods to add on for various things I recall bugging the shit out of me.. and god damn is that going to take forever. Now I remember why I was always tentative about replaying Fallout New Vegas.. too many damn mods and compatibility worries.

Still.. it'll be worth it, I think, when I do get it all sorted..

Haven't picked up the dlc and don't plan to for awhile. It just doesn't add enough for the price, imo.

If you've restarted it would be worthwhile since it flows seemlessly with the rest of the campaign.  Otherwise, if you're just picking up from an old save, not so much.

[Kitsune]

Welp, ran into a bit of a problem with Dawnguard today, in that vampires will invade towns in murder sprees.  This in and of itself is just dandy, however they tend to kill shopkeepers and quest-giving NPCs in these attacks, with no way for you to stop it if you aren't standing there when it happens.  I've started reverse-pickpocketing better weapons onto shopkeepers, just in case.

[K9]

Do they not respawn?

[UnSub]

Welp, ran into a bit of a problem with Dawnguard today, in that vampires will invade towns in murder sprees.  This in and of itself is just dandy, however they tend to kill shopkeepers and quest-giving NPCs in these attacks, with no way for you to stop it if you aren't standing there when it happens.  I've started reverse-pickpocketing better weapons onto shopkeepers, just in case.

The vampires have no respect for player agency. 

[Hawkbit]

I've started reverse-pickpocketing better weapons onto shopkeepers, just in case.

I just had a mental image of Belethor with a 2hd Daedric. 

[koro]

Do they not respawn?

NPCs? No, never. Many (especially quest givers) are immortal, though, and aren't affected, but most shopkeepers would be.

The list NPCs in the game that are invulnerable for a significant amount of time is fairly ludicrous. I think I counted somewhere between 30-40% of them.

[Ingmar]

The vampires spawn and come after you, but NPCs will join in and then possibly get killed, which is exactly like dragon attacks except that they happen inside walled cities sometimes as well. I haven't ever seen what you're describing, where people nowhere near me will get murdered. The vampires always show up pretty much on top of me.

Funny you mention Belethor, Hawbit, he's the one dead NPC shopkeeper in my game...

Do they not respawn?

NPCs? No, never. Many (especially quest givers) are immortal, though, and aren't affected, but most shopkeepers would be.

The list NPCs in the game that are invulnerable for a significant amount of time is fairly ludicrous. I think I counted somewhere between 30-40% of them.

The ones that are particularly frustrating are the named NPCs in the Imperial/Stormcloak camps. Once you have picked a side there is no reason for the ones from the other side to be immortal.

[koro]

Dragon attacks can happen inside walled cities as well. I've had it happen in both Whiterun and Solitude.

[Ingmar]

Wow, those must be rare. 138 hours in game and I've never seen it happen. Just as well!

[Khaldun]

I've see Whiterun get attacked inside the walls by dragons at least three times.

[amiable]

After buying all of Fallout:NV and the expansions for around 10 bucks during the steam summer sale I have come to the conclusion that I will never pay full price for a game (especially a Bethesda game) again.  I will get literally hundreds of hours of entertainment out of that 10 dollar investment.  

The funny thing is that is you wait for all the expansions to come out you are pretty much guaranteed to have a much better gameplay experience as it gives the company time to fix all the bugs/balance issues and modders the time to do the same.  The disadvantage of course is that you have to wait 1-2 years to buy the game, but honestly I have a backlog of cheap steam games that will literally take me a lifetime to play at this point.

I think we have all come to accept that new games, even from triple A comapanies like Blizzard and Bethesda, tend to be bug-ridden pieces of crap when they first come out because of the timetables imposed on them by their marketing/business departments.  (Maybe Valve is the exception?  At least with Portal, TF and TF2 had lots of tweaking).  They get fixed eventually, but why pay full price for a crap game when 2 years later you can pay 10 dollars for a much better gaming experience?  Thank god the market is full of hyper teenagers who need the next new thing right away, they can support the company by paying full price while wait.

Having said that Vanilla skyrim is still fun, and I can gladly wait a year or 2 for all of the DLC to go on sale before I dive into that.  Maybe by that time they will fix the magic system/interface/loot.

[cmlancas]

I reject your argument that games from AAA publishers (hell, even all publishers) don't come out polished.  Sure, a misstep with Diablo III, but seems a little baby/bathwater to me.

I get what you're saying about Bethesda games though.  I want to fucking die every time I try to go somewhere because my game is bugged to shit and four townsfolk just try to stop and talk to me ALL THE FUCKING TIME.

But, isn't this to be expected when a game is so open?  Can a developer even hope to plan for so many permutations?

[Ruvaldt]

Skyrim was relatively bug free when released and it was well worth the full price.  Any game as big as Skyrim was bound to have a few problems here and there, but they really were few and far between.  The ui was abyssmal, but that was to be expected and isn't being fixed with a dlc or expansion; mostly just user created mods.  I don't generally like Bethesda games, but I loved Skyrim.

[UnSub]

Thank god the market is full of hyper teenagers who need the next new thing right away, they can support the company by paying full price while wait.

What makes you think a group with a limited disposable income and that have grown up in a time when they can dl what they want for free are going to be the ones paying full price for a title on day one?

[Lakov_Sanite]

192 hours played on fallout:NV and 176 hours played on Skyrim, if that's not worth full price than nothing is.

[amiable]

Thank god the market is full of hyper teenagers who need the next new thing right away, they can support the company by paying full price while wait.

What makes you think a group with a limited disposable income and that have grown up in a time when they can dl what they want for free are going to be the ones paying full price for a title on day one?

/shrug  Just thinking older gamers would be more inclined to wait.  I conceed have no data and could be entirely wrong.

[Mrbloodworth]

Dragon attacks can happen inside walled cities as well. I've had it happen in both Whiterun and Solitude.

Yep. I was in the first town and this happened.

[Ingmar]

After buying all of Fallout:NV and the expansions for around 10 bucks during the steam summer sale I have come to the conclusion that I will never pay full price for a game (especially a Bethesda game) again.  I will get literally hundreds of hours of entertainment out of that 10 dollar investment. 

The funny thing is that is you wait for all the expansions to come out you are pretty much guaranteed to have a much better gameplay experience as it gives the company time to fix all the bugs/balance issues and modders the time to do the same.  The disadvantage of course is that you have to wait 1-2 years to buy the game, but honestly I have a backlog of cheap steam games that will literally take me a lifetime to play at this point.

I think we have all come to accept that new games, even from triple A comapanies like Blizzard and Bethesda, tend to be bug-ridden pieces of crap when they first come out because of the timetables imposed on them by their marketing/business departments.  (Maybe Valve is the exception?  At least with Portal, TF and TF2 had lots of tweaking).  They get fixed eventually, but why pay full price for a crap game when 2 years later you can pay 10 dollars for a much better gaming experience?  Thank god the market is full of hyper teenagers who need the next new thing right away, they can support the company by paying full price while wait.

Having said that Vanilla skyrim is still fun, and I can gladly wait a year or 2 for all of the DLC to go on sale before I dive into that.  Maybe by that time they will fix the magic system/interface/loot.

 

As Ruvaldt said, Skyrim had very, very few problems even at release (actually that was my experience with F:NV too.) It's one of the best games I've ever played. If that isn't worth supporting with a full price purchase, this industry is fucked.

[Soln]

Ya Skyrim is superb.  I can always nitpick RAM bugs or the clunky UI, but I definitely got my full price in gameplay hours and fun as well.  Jus sayin.

[Malakili]

I got Skyrim a month or two post release, but sadly crashed almost constantly.  I was able to run it with infrequent crashes on the lowest graphics settings, but at some point a patch came that actually made it worse and I haven't checked the game out since (although it might have been fixed).  

But that really isn't your point: I think with Steam and the general culture of "sales" all you have to do is be patient to get games dirt cheap.  Couple that with that fact that there are a lot of really good games out there which means you have no particular need to buy games on release unless you are a huge fan of the series or just want to play right away, and it just doesn't make sense to buy games at full price as often.  Even more so, things like I had happen with Skyrim can happen even with relatively bug free high quality games, and these bugs are often fixed in the months post release, so it can be considered just plain safer to wait regardless.

Here is an off the top of my head list of games I've bought at full price in the last 2 years or so (probably slightly incomplete).

Starcraft 2
Civilization 5
Portal 2
Brink (ouch)
Call of Duty Black Ops (Ouch)
Diablo 3
Skyrim (was gifted this, but it was purchased at full price)


Non-AAA pricing full price purchases:

Natural Selection 2 (supporting development ultra early beta buy) ($30)
WoW: Cataclysm (expansion pack) ($40)
Civ 5: Gods and Kings (expansion pack) ($30)
Project Zomboid (Alpha testing buy-in, 5$)
Counter-Strike: GO ($15, $13.50 @preorder price)


During this same two years, I've added probably something like 40ish games total to my steam library, which means I'm buying something like 25% at most of my gaming purchases new at this point, and at least 3 of these (CoD, Brink, Skyrim) would've been better purchases on sale.  So, I guess my point is, even for someone who is a pretty hardcore gamer like myself, buying at full price just 1) isn't that necessary and 2) is a bit risky.

[HaemishM]

Buying at full price is almost crazy these days, and that's very bad for the industry... sort of.

Games I've bought at full price in the last year: FIFA 12, Madden 12 (what a fucking mistake that was), Battlefield 3, the Secret World (twice if you count my wife's copy). The rest have been Steam sales or bargain price purchases. I even waited on Skyrim until it was 33% off. I'm a TERRIBLE customer for the industry in terms of the way they've structured their business, i.e. hit-driven, most sales have to happen in a 2-week window around release. That model favors the publishers who control the purse strings but absolutely fucks the developers who rely on the pubs investment to be able to finish a game. The devs are then beholden to shit milestones to get any sort of profit out of a game - things like Metacritic scores, for example.

OTOH, Steam sales are making huge amounts of money in small doses for developers who might not otherwise see a dime of their sales a year after release. And it's providing a platform for smaller developers to not have to rely on the big pubs and AAA budgets to survive.