Skyrim Weight Inaccuracies

[Treblaine]

Just some flame protection first; Skyrim is a great game, and Bethdasoft can make there game how ever they like, all im asking is why they are doing stuff blantly wrong.

Ok its time for a history lesson about medevil europe.

Wikipidea
The longsword (of which stems the variation called the bastard sword) is a type of European sword designed for two-handed use, current during the late medieval and Renaissance periods, approximately 1350 to 1550 (with early and late use reaching into the 13th and 17th centuries).

Longswords have long cruciform hilts with grips over 10 to 15 cm length (providing room for two hands). Straight double-edged blades are often over 1 m to 1.2 m (40" to 48") length, and weigh typically between 1.2 and 1.8 kg (2½ to 4 lb), with light specimens just below 1 kg (2.2 lb), and heavy specimens just above 2 kg (4½ lb).

Ok you see how much the average long sword weighs; at max 4½ lb. Yet in Skyrim a normal sword weighs 9 Skyrim Weight (Sw). Yet leather armor weights 6 Sw and that is for your torso and legs. But in reality Leather armor weights about 15-25 pounds. So how why does the sword weight more in Skyrim.

Iron Sword 4½ lb : 9Sw
Leather armor 15-25 lb : 6Sw

This is only one example because i dont want to bore you guys (might be to late for some). Now im sure someone is going to say "To help balance the game" or some crap like that; I call bull shit on that.

So now after that lesson, my question. Why did Bethdasoft purposfully make the weights on items historicly Inaccurate? I honestly cannot see a good reason for it.



See me next time on HOW TO SWING A SWORD. How all the weapons in skyrim are being swong in mollases.

#1: how are you THAT SURE that Leather armour, weighs 25lb. 25lb of leather is a LOT of leather. It could very easily be only 10lbs

#2: just because it is a Long Sword, that does not make it identical to a Longsword made in OUR universe, on OUR planet, in Europe, in the 13th-17th century. They are on Tamriel, the sword can be unusually heavy because fuck it people have magical powers to life super weights. And there could be fifferent abundance of quality iron and steel production.

#3: it is a video game, often HUGE liberties are taken with weight not for reasons of plausibility but for mere game balance. The more valuable things are lighter and so on.

 

[Scrustle]

Yes, that just happened.

That is just really depressing.

 

[teknoarcanist]

It IS to balance the game, sorry if that's not an answer you want to hear. Dragon bones would obviously be very brittle, to allow for flight. But they're heavy because they're valuable, which forces you to make a choice.

S'called game design bro.

 

[Scars Unseen]

...The fuck?

...Did you really go to the trouble to cross reference the weights of real life medieval equipment with Skyrim's weight system?

Do you really not have anything better to do? And why the hell does it matter that leather armor is heavier than a sword? Actually, I can answer that. It doesn't. At all. In any way.

EDIT: And I don't mean any offense, this just confuses me very much.

Yes i did; but I am also a medevil weapons buff, so I know all of this by heart. I just wanted to make the numbers look more ligit.

In order for that to work, you would need to reevaluate how encumbrance in the game works altogether, taking into account not only weight, but size, flexibility (you can stuff more shirts than axes into the same space), storage location, etc. A pure weight based encumbrance system doesn't jive with reality at all. Not only that, but then you would need to account for how all that affects movement, especially in battle, as having 3 sets or armor, 5 bows, and a 11,000 Septims on your person is bound to interfere with your sword swing.

Or we could just agree that this is a game, and that gameplay logic trumps real world logic.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

If it still called encumbrance well there is your problem. Encumbrance =/= weight and generally speaking it would be more difficult and encumber you more to bring around a sword than armour as a sword is relatively unwieldy when it is at your hip compared to armour which you can wear. Think of armour as your clothes and the sword as a heavy school back and which one restricts your movement more?

Also above all else and I am getting quite sick of these topics relating to encumbrance in Bethesda games as the way they do it balances the game stop thinking about it like real life or in your own logic.

 

[spartan231490]

Because it's not based on history, it's based on dnd and other fantasy games. Also balance.

 

[Mr Thin]

I'm usually quite bemused by how picky fans can get, but this actually seems quite reasonable. Armour should weigh more than weapons. I want my armour to weigh more than my weapon!

I can understand certain things having unrealistic weight, but having weapons weigh more than armour doesn't add to or improve the game in any way, it just annoys picky people.

I just assume that ingame'Skyrim Weight' of an item takes into account how easy it would be to lug around - besides just how heavy it is.

Perhaps if you could fold a sword up, it would be easier to carry around and have a lower 'Skyrim weight'.

...I have no idea.

That... might actually be it. It kind of makes sense to do that, really.

However I'd prefer they simply imposed restrictions on quantity, rather than compensating via inaccurate weight. Like, you can only carry three full-sized weapons at any given time.

Ah, but then you would have to figure out which items should have what restrictions, and how the character could realistically carry them... no, it's probably better just to do what they're doing.

 

[TKretts3]

Why does this matter? That's my question.

 

[winter2]

During Bethesda's MASSIVE effort to dumb-down TES they changed 'Encumbrance' to 'Weight'.

Taking 'Weight' to mean 'Encumbrance' again, I can answer this the same way I answered this exact same question a few years ago about Oblivion...

An item's Weight/Encumbrance value reflects NOT ONLY how heavy it is, but how difficult it would be to carry. How would YOU carry around several different swords, various armors, as well as hundreds of Keys, Scrolls, etc?

* Le Snip *

And that is the whole thing in a nutshell. Case closed. End of thread. Nothing to see here. Move on. Good Day.

 

[Jfswift]

Sometimes I notice nitpicky things like that too (more so with say, Fallout when it comes to weapon specs) but then I figure, it's an alternate universe, where everything is similar, but not quite the same and everything is okay again in my mind. Hope that helps anyway.

 

[Lazy Kitty]

...Well, if you want it to be more realistic, mod it...

 

[dcdude171]

They should also take out the dragons , all the other mystical creatures , the magic , and potions , cause you know they're not realistic.

 

[Woodsey]

"Why did Bethdasoft purposfully make the weights on items historicly Inaccurate? I honestly cannot see a good reason for it."

I... is that a joke? For balancing, and because its not meant to be historically accurate; its a bloody made-up world.

"Now im sure someone is going to say "To help balance the game" or some crap like that; I call bull shit on that."

Oh right, OK. I love it when people dismiss all the logical answers so they can carry on with their inane 'point'.

 

[Pandaman1911]

Sorry, IRL does not a fun game make. And Bethesda sees this. That's about all there is to it.

 

[The_Blue_Rider]

Well look at it this way, Steel Longswords sell for about 45 gold, and weigh 10 pounds (In Skyrim)
that means that if you looted enough to fill your inventory with them and then sold them all, you would gain 1350 gold, but if each only weighed 2.5 pounds like in real life then suddenly you've made 5400 gold. Its a way to stop players from breaking the game for themselves.

Also Its a fantasy game, get over it

 

[Catalyst6]

because its a fantasy game set in a different universe... they dont have to be realistic. its not a simulator

But armour weights totally kill my immersion!

Immersion? In MY Skyrim?

I was immersed, once. Then my horse ran up a tree and the dragons started flying backwards.

Still game of the year.

 

[microwavefriendly]

so...
http://kotaku.com/5296222/kotaku-bureau-of-weights--measures-studies-fallout-physics-also-beer
...
yeah...it'll be useful until it takes an arrow in the knee.

this thread amazes me and totally justifies not only the internet, but forums too.

 

[Jordi]

This is only one example because i dont want to bore you guys (might be to late for some). Now im sure someone is going to say "To help balance the game" or some crap like that; I call bull shit on that.

Would you care to explain why? I mean, presumably you mention this counterargument to your thesis with the goal of preemptively discrediting it, but then you mention no reason whatsoever for why it isn't a valid argument.

I'm actually kind of with you. I like (certain kinds of) realism in a game like this, and I wonder the same thing you do. The thing is: I can't really imagine it being for any other reason than game balance. I guess it's possible that all of the developers are completely ignorant of this information and they didn't bother looking it up, but this seems very unlikely to me in such a huge production. Furthermore, I've heard this criticism before in other Elder Scrolls games, so I'm sure the devs did too. It's hard to imagine something like this not happening on purpose.

How exactly it affects game balance, I don't know. I'm curious too.

Well how would making armor weight less then weapons balance the game? I guess you could make the argument that it prevents you from carring around a crap load of weapons... but there is really no point in doing that thice there is no durrability. I just cant seem to find a good reason, other then what Trevor Thomas said

During Bethesda's MASSIVE effort to dumb-down TES they changed 'Encumbrance' to 'Weight'.

I can't really think of a balance reason either, but if you don't know an argument, then you also cannot counter it.

I don't really see how swords would add relatively more "encumbrance" than armor though, so I don't see that being the reason for the weird weights. Encumbrance is basically a function of weight, shape and flexibility, right? If anything, I'd say that in that case the encumbrance of most weapons should be even lower compared to armor. It seems much easier to roll 10 swords into a piece of leather or something (so I won't get cut) and carry that around, than it would be to carry around 10 pieces of leather armor.