I find Skyrim kind of... boring.

[Ihateregistering1]

When I was a kid, one of my friends had this game called "The Manhole" on his ancient computer. Basically it was a point and click adventure where you went around and explored this strange world. There was no overarching plot, you couldn't die, and no objective beyond "explore and have fun".

That's what I think of "Skyrim" as.

Sure, the game does have a central plot and storyline, but it's bland and, frankly, I'll maybe get to it after I've hit level 30 or so. The real point of the game is how you're dropped into this HUGE world, and you can basically do whatever the heck you want. Want to roam the land and hunt various wild animals? Go ahead. Want to become a vigilante and wander the countryside clearing out bandit strongholds? Knock yourself out. Become the world's greatest Thief? Pilfer away. The thing is, you need to have some level of imagination to do this, because it's not like everywhere you go people are going to say "there goes Ulfnir, world's best Thief!". In a much more structured RPG, such as, say, "Dragon Age: Origins", you can do that, but 'Skyrim' is specifically designed to be as unstructured as possible. Because of that lack of structure, it's not for everyone.

2 things I would recommend: Try playing as a stealthy character. I honestly found the game boring as could be until I decided to play an Assassin type character, and after that it became way more enjoyable. 2nd, you basically HAVE to play it on PC. The amount of additional gameplay and content that mods have added is nothing short of amazing, and I definitely would have quit playing long ago if it weren't for mods.

Also, think about this: 'Skyrim' was released on 11 November, 2011, and we're STILL talking about it, and the "complete edition" is one of the top sellers on Steam right now. How many games can say that they're still ultra popular nearly 2 years after being released?

 

[Your Fearless Captain]

That's okay man. Exploration games with meh questing isn't for everyone.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

It does get rather boring after a while. Once all the more or less interesting quests are out of the way all that's left to do is wander around exploring ruins and stuff and picking up the occasional side quest which get's old rather quickly. I think my quest log is full of stuff I can't be asked to do.

 

[Zen Bard]

As a dungeon crawler it's pretty fun, but as an real RPG it falls flat on it's ass.

The world of Skyrim feels sorta lifeless and empty despite all the nice-ish visuals. And NPCs blurting out the exact same dialoge everytime when you pass them feels like you're in a nordic version of Westworld. It would've been better if they didn't say anything unless you spoke to them first. "Mead, mead, mead... Would it kill them to get some beer. Stupid bees and their stupid honey."

And nothing story-related you do seems to have any impact on the public at all. Again, the worst example is when you become head of the Dark Brotherhood, and the Thieves Guild treats you like some whipper snapper when you apply, eventhough these two organisations have extremely close ties.

The Mojave Wasteland in New Vegas felt way more brimming with life than Skyrim despite it being, well, a wasteland.

I completely agree with everything you just wrote, Shinji.

In fact, after logging close to 250 hours in "Skyrim", I started playing "Fallout: New Vegas" and was blown away by the differences!

Characters that don't recite the same dialogue! Quests that can be solved multiple ways! Quest that don't involve running into a subterranean place, killing things and fetching some McGuffin! And most importantly, the sense that the player's actions actually impact the game world!

How were these basics overlooked when developing "Skyrim"?

 

[Hero in a half shell]

I've found Skyrim to be boring when you are just trying to motor through it, but if you take your time and roleplay proper it can be fantastic.

Create a character, give them a brief backstory, and achieveable in game goal and a DnD alignment, then try to play without metagaming (ie. no just going to a particular dungeon because you know there is a powerful sword there, wait until you get directions or motivation for it) and make choices based on what your character would want, not what you want. Let their choices and behaviour be shaped by there past experiences.

It takes on it's own life after that, if you manage to do it right.

 

[Athinira]

I'm still a little offended that Skyrim got the GOTY award from so many different review sites when the game was horribly designed, and the only two things it had going for it was that the world was interesting to explore and that people had been waiting for a game of it's type for a while (aka. high demand of a genre with low supply).

I never finished Skyrim, although i did have fun with it for a while, but it just got too repetitive. Repetitive combat, repetitive enemies, repetitive 'looking around for vendors who still have money so i can sell my loot', bugs all over the place. Yeah, well you've guessed it.

I would give the game 7.5 out of 10. Good, but not GOTY material in any way.

 

[masticina]

Mmm yeah the main quest just is eeh a rag along! It just pulls you along the lines. It doesn't really do offer much. But sneaky kajiit like mine doesn't cares about such. Ooh you got shinies, they are mine now.

You gotta make your own game really out of it. Skyrim is quite balanced, in Oblivion you could get really badly burned with leveling up wrong. Or you could cheat the system and be a GOD AMONGST MORTALS .. on level 5. Skyrim well at least you get points for actually doing it, meaning if you sneak allot you level up because of sneaking.

This means my cute little assassin/thief kajiit sucks at magic and doesn't likes to deal with mages or dragons. He is weak once found out! I love that, so for me playing Skyrim becomes not just about playing the objectives, the story..it becomes a meta game. Can I cheat the system, can I do things so smart that enemies that should kill me .. can't reach me *mrew*

That makes the game fun for me, also I kinda find it hard to care about characters that die anyway. You heard me I know already that some of the NPC's will die. Boom, gone caring for them!

 

[joonsk]

I've put quite a lot of hours into Skyrim (126 to be precise) and enjoyed most of it. But when I play it now, I just, can't. The world doesn't make sense to me anymore. Why are there bandits everywhere? Why does nobody respond to my actions? Why are the cities so small? (compared to real cities). But sometimes I am able to suspend my disbelief enough to really "live" in the world, and when that happens the game is great, maybe one of the best of its kind.

This video might be helpfull to understand the appeal of the Elder Scrolls.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZUynhkal1I

 

[sushkis2]

Skyrim died to me the very moment I got my hands on Dark souls.°

Actually to be honest, I never really was into TES series, or into most of the standard fantasy games like Dragon age, Baldur's gate, Diablos (actually all of the hack and slash mindless loot fests) and such. I actually went into Skyrim, hoping it would be something like Fallout 3, or better. But its just damn boring...

I think the most prevalent problem with these kind of games is, that they don't present much in combat variety (just click to swing your sword or whatever the same way, all the time) or maybe sometimes use fireballs. Also the fact that all of these games have these bullshit crafting systems. Ofcourse most of you might start clawing at my face, yelling that, noo, it's the best thing in these games. But actually, think about it: If you were a badass dragon slayer, who can blast people away by screaming at them, would you really take the time of the day required to make all of those crappy stamina potions and "+33 nosepicking skill" enchantments? Or would you really carry all of that mining equipment with you, so you can then carry tons of iron ore, while you're heading to a quest to Mount Doom? I don't think so.

Look at Dark souls, All combat, no bullshit. Nuff said.

 

[Ishal]

In games like TES the game world IS the story, more than the actual story put in the game. That concept is not for everyone. If you don't like it then I'd point you to a JRPG or story driven one like Dragon Age.

Skyrim is a game where you make your own story, and the world is where you do it. Playing it with the 3 DLC's is fun enough on its own, but as others have said. The modding community is there for you to use. Skyrim can be a deeply immersive experience if you are the type of gamer who wants to play that way.

I'm that kind of gamer, and I've spent hours playing multiple characters.

 

[The Feast]

You want to know how to make Skyrim fun? PC mods. I really don't find the satisfaction of playing Skyrim reach the level of Morrowind and Oblivion. The game feels like a game for a new and casual audience that only wants to say "Skyrim is beautiful, I only wish Skyrim 2 will come out sooner". Most of them doesn't even know that it should be called The Elder Scrolls.

 

[Risingblade]

Mods + knowing what you want to do. What people like about skyrim is that you can make your own little adventure with you own little limits and what not.

 

[War Penguin]

I've found Skyrim to be boring when you are just trying to motor through it, but if you take your time and roleplay proper it can be fantastic.

Create a character, give them a brief backstory, and achieveable in game goal and a DnD alignment, then try to play without metagaming (ie. no just going to a particular dungeon because you know there is a powerful sword there, wait until you get directions or motivation for it) and make choices based on what your character would want, not what you want. Let their choices and behaviour be shaped by there past experiences.

It takes on it's own life after that, if you manage to do it right.

I don't think anyone can realize how true this statement is.

Take my orc barbarian for example: I gave him a backstory [small](old chieftain whose tribe was destroyed by the Altmeri Dominion and now is trying to redeem himself in the eyes of Malacath)[/small], gave him a fighting style [small](dual wields two Orcish axes and an Orcish war hammer, later Volundruung)[/small], gave him an outfit [small](shirtless fur armor you get from bandits and a heavy set of boots/gauntlets)[/small], and let him off on his own journey. It was shocking to find how much more engaging the game was instead of metagaming.

So I did what my character would do, not what I would do. Get into a bunch of drunken brawls? I wouldn't do that, but my character would. Want to steal a valuable object? He wouldn't want to do that. Is night coming soon? Better find an inn to get some sleep, rather than just use the damn "wait" feature and sit in one place for eight in game hours.

And one thing I must kiss Bethesda for: radiant quests. I know it sounds silly, but it was surprisingly immersive when it gave my character some goddamn jobs. Blacksmith, woodsman, bounty hunting. They were all perfect for when I needed money, and they made more sense than "adventuring." A normal person wouldn't go to a dungeon and grab all that loot and then sell it off for a bunch of gold. That's because the normal person wouldn't go into the dungeon in the first place! My orc made money as a bounty hunter, making sense in the context of his history and character. It was slower, sure, but I made money nonetheless. And that made the game a lot more endearing as I was looking for work, trying to make money for some potions or, better yet, some mead.

Oh, and for the love of god, DO NOT fast travel! You have no idea how much this will break your experience! I stopped fast traveling and the world just felt much bigger and alive. Hell, that added to my Orc's character, trying to get from town to town, looking for money to buy a horse.

So you can't just slog through the game, completionist style. That's gonna kill your experience really damn quickly. Roleplaying is the only way that makes this game interesting and, dare I say, fun.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Skyrim died to me the very moment I got my hands on Dark souls.

I'll never really understand this. It's kind of like saying Diablo died to me the moment I got my hands on Peggle. Dark Souls and Skyrim are wildly different games that only tangentially share a genre.

OT - Skyrim, like all Elder Scrolls games and the Bethesda/Obsidian Fallout offerings, are sandbox RPGs. They are substituting freedom of exploration and large worlds for tight, heavily directed experiences. The game can be hugely engrossing or dreadfully boring, depending entirely on the player. My friend hates Skyrim. Thinks it's horribly overrated and full of flaws. Barely played 10 hours. Shit talks it every chance he gets. I played for 150 hours. My girlfriend played for 300 and couldn't stop talking about it.

Different strokes for different folks. For what it's worth, Skyrim is pretty much the king of its particular sub genre. At least in terms of production values. Some might prefer the muddier waters of something like Mount and Blade, but if you think SKYRIM gets repetitive...hoo brother...

 

[ninjaRiv]

It IS boring. The quests are kind of dull and repetitive, the factions are far too easy and there's not much to them and the world feels kind of empty. But that hasn't stopped me sinking hours and hours into it. I dunno what it is about the game...

But it's no Morrowind. Recently loaded that up again with the graphics overhaul and such and it's better than I remembered. Play that, instead!

 

[lacktheknack]

Skyrim died to me the very moment I got my hands on Dark souls.

That's like saying "Myst died to me the very moment I got my hands on Beyond Atlantis", except sillier.

(For the uninitiated, the Atlantis series is hard. Very, very, VERY hard.)

OT: It acts as a platform to pile on mods and see what works. And no matter how good or bad the base product is, THAT is the kind of metagaming I really, really enjoy.

 

[Roxas1359]

I know I'll get a lot of flak for this, but I agree with the OP when it comes to Skyrim. I found the characters to not be really engaging, I found the quests to be repetitive and quite frankly broken a lot of the time, and the guilds (except Dark Brotherhood and Thieve's Guild) to really be rather shitty.
The game is good, but to be quite honest I preferred Oblivion and Morrowind a whole lot more because I felt more immersed. And I tried my best to get immersed in Skyrim, but honestly I just got bored with the game after 1 playthrough.

The reasons for me getting bored, and quite frankly rather frustrated are as follows. One, I didn't own an HDTV so I literally couldn't read any text in the books or in the dialogue options. And before people go "why didn't you have an HDTV in 2011", I'll say that I was still in high school, had no job, and couldn't afford a TV since I had to get ready for college (I have to buy all my own electronic stuff). Two, the game was buggy up the ass, and I was playing the 360 version and not the PS3 version. On the 360 version I encountered so many bugs, I had at least 20 glitched quest items that I couldn't drop, six glitched miscellaneous quests stuck in my log, the bookshelf glitch had occurred, and the Dragons were glitching like crazy. The final straw was me trying to do the Civil War questline in which the game just started not giving me the dialogue options to advance the quests, and it resulted in me having to do retarded things that somehow triggered the events like how they were supposed to.

All in all my experiences with Skyrim were shit, I had encountered more bugs with Skyrim on the 360 than I did when playing Fallout New Vegas on the PS3 at least 43 times. I found Skyrim's quests boring, was disappointed by the DLC, and had so many bugs ruin the experiences that I've not actually played the game ever since. I know they patched it, but it'd take a while for me to get back into it because of how bad the experience was for me. Oh and before I go please note that my first game clocked in at around 200 hours so I didn't just play the game for a few hours and then quit.

Spoiler: Now to put up my flame shield

 

[Headsprouter]

Hey, to each their own. I enjoy Skyrim, but it didn't give me nearly as much as Oblivion did. When people talk about the main quest(s) I never get it, seeing as that hardly weighs into any aspect of the game for me. I just work on my skills and role play, get some cool items and enjoy the mods.

Knowing what you want to do.

This is important, too. Some people need a little more direction than others and need to be given choices before they can make them.