Skyrim Weight Inaccuracies

[Something Amyss]

Don't listen to him, he's just trying to cover his tracks. This is clearly and attempt by Bethesda to brainwash the general public. They start with simple weights of historical items and then move bigger and bigger. Obviously Bethesda is trying to alter history in the minds of the general public. This leads me to believe that Bethesda are non other than...

Spoiler: ...

THE PATRIOTS

Dammit! They ruin everything they touch! Why? Whyyyyy?

 

[Mau95]

And dont get me started on the dragons! How can they even fly?! Its completely inaccurate; theyre too heavy to be able to move with such flimsy wings!

 

[babinro]

I'd agree with the OP. While the weight of items in the game is really not important...there's no real reason to lie about it either.

I don't get the balance argument as you can always offset the weight of an item with the value it's sold at in stores. Not that you should ever assume anything in a video game reflects reality...but I'm sure there are gamers out there who believe a sword is that heavy because the Elder Scrolls is about the only video game or media source to tell you that.

I'd like to see realistic weight values used in future games while still having an unrealistically high carrying capacity. I only agree with things like arrows weighing zero because it's clearly a game mechanic change and no one would mix that up with reality.

 

[Montezuma's Lawyer]

I worked all night, working my ass off, and come to The Escapist to relax, and I get online, and see you bitching about weapon weight?!

Are you just fucking impossible to please? Jesus christ, if I gave you a diamond ring would you complain about the weight of that?

I wouldnt be upset if you werent making this statement in the most entitled way possible.

What part of FANTASY do you not understand? Are you upset about how heavy Dragon Bones are?

...

I need coffee.

 

[Jandau]

Possibly for balancing reasons. Generally speaking (not including enchantments or anything), weapons seem to sell for more at stores, so in order to prevent people from passing over armor entirely in the pursuit of coin, they made weapons weigh more to limit how many you could grab.

EDIT: This is all from my experience so far, it's possible that armor does end up being more valuable later on, which would invalidate my explanation entirely.

But think about it for a second, if you are looting corpses on an actual battlefield, would you go stripping knights of their Full Plate or would you just grab their Swords and other weapons, assuming you're going for the best weight/cost ratio? I'm pretty sure you'd just grab the swords and maybe a few pieces of armor if you had room.

Balance is a silly argument here. There's always going to be more loot than you can carry and you need to make a selection anyway. It would have been a nice touch if the weights were more in line with actual RL item weights.

 

[gideonkain]

Weight is proportional to it's trade value, a Sword of Magic is going to fetch more than a full set of plate armor therefore you can carry less of them around you, this is so that it increases the time sink of vendoring trash.

 

[CarbonEagle]

First of all we assume that at the beginning of the game you aren't that strong (eg. how much could a sickly mage carry) so you can carry 100lbs maximum, which using Skyrim's standard unit of measure is 300u therefore a sword that weighs 9u actually weighs 3lbs and now everybody's happy. You simply forgot to convert from the standard Skyrim unit of measuring weight to pounds.

 

[ExileNZ]

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.

I'm all for this one - what if the dude has no scabbard?

Then again, armour isn't exactly easy to carry, but we could always argue that unlike a sword it can be lumped into a sac with everything else.

But honestly? I call nitpicking...

 

[dangoball]

Not sure if anyone mentioned it before (too lazy to go through 5 pages), but if you want somewhat realistic weight of items along with carry weight limit, play STALKER. Moving with 60kg (abou 130lb) acros the map is a heroic effort in itself in that game.

 

[craftomega]

Its intresting to see that fan boys are countering my argument with "Because its not set in our world the same laws dont apply". But sadly they are missing my point. Would it be safe to say that humans from skyrim have the same or similar physical capabilities? If you say yes to this question then my point is valad. The human arm cannot deal with extreme weights at the ends (in your hands) for long periods of time, especialy while swinging them around. you would literly tear your muscles apart. so how would you be able to swing a sword that weights more then your armor? And no it does not really matter how strong you are, since everyone in skyrim can use the largest weapon without consequece. Yet in reality almost anyone can use most medevil swords due to there balance and weighting (most people will probaly cut them selves).

The irony is that I am also a huge fan boy of the TES series. I will defend this game agianst anyone who bashes it without good cause. The only point I am trying to make is that the weighting system does not make any logical sence, and sadly it is based off of the emcumbrance system which did make some sence. Sadly Skyrim over all has become consolized and many areas of gameplay and grafics have suffered for it.

 

[Spineyguy]

Bethesda didn't want to piss of PETA, so they made their virtual leather armour out of the data-equivalent of faux leather, so no pretend cows were harmed during the hypothetical forging. It also provides much less protection than you'd think, so anyone who thinks they're wearing real leather armour will die repeatedly for their sins.

 

[midknight129]

There's a game I play called "Dungeon Crawl". In this game, weights are in units of AUM which stands for Arbitrary Unit of Mass. Item weight in games like this are balanced from a gameplay aspect, not a realistic aspect. And this is as it should be.

 

[geK0]

I have about 20 gold bars in my inventory 0_____0

 

[MaxwellEdison]

Because people ***** about how much you can carry as it is, if they made the weights accurate, you wouldn't be able to carry anything, it's that simple.

This? I'm kinda confused as to why you want *more* weight...I keep filling up my inventory every time I go to mine.

 

[Soluncreed]

I think because you can classify it as a different kind of leather, maybe? You don't mine ebony either, but you do in this game. Different materials.

 

[F4LL3N]

Only read the first page because it should be fairly obvious. Balance, and the fact they weren't going for realism.

If they raised the leather armour they'd have to raise the rest of the armour and everything else in-game. Before long you'd be able to hold about 6 things.

Also, if you want to be more scientific, you don't know how big Nirn is. 1kg might feel like 10kg or 100gm on Nirn. Iron on Nirn might have different specs than in real life... That's the thing with fantasy; it's fantasy. It can make it's own rules.

EDIT:

Its intresting to see that fan boys are countering my argument with "Because its not set in our world the same laws dont apply". But sadly they are missing my point.

Now you're just trolling. We're fanboys because we answer truthfully and factually? No one's missing the point, except you. You're under some assumption that fantasy isn't aloud to make it's own rules. You're also ignoring 1 million other unrealistic things in the game to complain about weight inaccuracies.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

By the OP'S rules The cupboard upstairs in Breezehome should have fallen through the ceiling by now and crushed Farkas to death considering the amount of stuff I've put in it.

 

[derelict]

Because people ***** about how much you can carry as it is, if they made the weights accurate, you wouldn't be able to carry anything, it's that simple.

It's so funny that they use this method instead of, yaknow, restricting the max carry weight. It's equally borked in that I don't know anyone that could *run* while carrying 300lbs of anything, regardless of bulk of that amount of weight.

Long story short, it's easier to use the system they designed for Morrowind than go out and research the weights of 50 or 60 weapons, and suits of armor to generate a median range to work with. At least the swing speeds (and stamina usage for that matter) match what would be expected if someone made an attempt to swing around a 41 lb greatsword.

'Sides, they always release a construction kit, so someone will eventually put a fix to it.

 

[dcdude171]

Here is the most neutral reason why.

Weight is a force that is determined by mass time the force of gravity [W=m*g]. Mass remains constant anywhere in the universe, but the force of gravity is dependent of the equation of Newton's universal law of gravity.
Which is
F(of gravity) = [G(this a universal constant)*mass(of the planet)]/[radius^2]
or g= Gm/r^2

So this means that the the force of gravity can vary depending on the mass or radius of the planet.

I do not know the mass of Nirn (but that could be figured out by finding the acceleration of free falling objects in Skyrim) but as you can see in this picture at the bottom of the page http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Nirn

that Nirn has a different radius, therefore its force of gravity is different, therefore objects can weigh differently as they would on Earth.

That is all I have for you. Hope it helps.

You need to read the OP a little better, he was not talking about weight inaccuracies relative to the weights of actual swords or armor on earth, he was referring to the disproportionate weights of objects in Skyrim to other objects in Skyrim. A change in gravity would do nothing to change weight ratios.

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

This is a weak argument and I've seen it waay too much on this thread. Oh sure, since we have dragons ANYTHING goes, we can have mountains the size of cocktail weenies, if you break open a coconut it'll be full of butterflies and everyone's third word is wainscoting. You know, not for any good reasons, but we have dragons, so you shouldn't be complaining.

This was not a choice made by the developers, they didn't all band together and decided that Skyrim would be better with skewed weight ratios, it just lack of research. Not that it bothers me particularly (The wolf pelt thing does bug me considerably more though) I am just annoyed with the weak arguments trying to defend it.

I think it is a reasonable argument you dont complain about GTA 4 cause you can hold More than 2 guns or that you can't run out of gas, i mean mafia II you can run out of gas so why doesn't GTA 4 have it ? Also who says that Nordic " weight " is in pounds ? And maybe wait doesnt even mean wait , and also takes into account its difficulty to carry ?. We play games for the escapism ,not to have every monotonus detail of the world that we live in placed in the game , they obviously made " weight " the way it is because it will be the most fun that way , if you dont like it im sure there will be a mod for it .... like everything else