Skyrim - What would you change/add?

[SajuukKhar]

Really because I thought RPGs were about making a character, advancing the skills of that character in a way you see fit, and making choices about what your character does/how he interacts with the world. Not... having monsters that are higher level then you to fight.

Also, there is a difference between
-Having monsters that are beatable, but just stronger then you, such as having level 50 dragons spawn when you are level 38 like Skyrim does.
-Placing monsters you aren't intended to beat at all until you level up 50 miles down the line and have to backtrack. Like New Vegas did with putting Feral Ghoul Reavers 3 step away from Primm that you had no chance of beating at level 3-5, the level you would be at Primm.

I don't mind the former, in fact I want the former, because that is good game design. Making the game beatable, but not always easy. Skyrim's problem lies in he fact that they didn't add anything past level 30 for most monsters, making it cap out way to fast, and thus making any moderately high character able to kill shit way to easy. They did fix some of that in Dawnguard though.

I hate the latter, because there is no reason to make people backtrack when you could still make a hard, but beatable fight, in that place instead.

God forbid someone makes a game that you can actually play as you go.

 

[triggrhappy94]

There needs to be more trails in the mountains. For a hiking sim, I was disapointed in the lack of mountains I could actually climb.

 

[8a88leph1sh]

In no particular order here are some of my hopes for the future:

1. Dragon Mounts/Taming
2. Spears that are usable as both melee and throwing weapons
3. Leveling spells - I use fireball more than some of the other higher power fire destruction spells because I like it's blast radius but at the level I'm at it doesn't have much damage output while I can cut enemies down no problem with my sword despite the fact that my destruction and one-handed skills are nearly the same level.
4. More recognition for the fact that you are a guild leader/Jarl/Dovahkin
5. A weapon which levels as you use it, starting as a pretty poor weapon with the potential to become one of the strongest if not the strongest weapon in the game. You would choose what kind of weapon you'd like to fit your play style and you would choose how to upgrade it as it levels. The choices you make upgrading it would change its appearance. For instance, if it does extra damage to undead it would glow with holy light but if it does extra damage to human enemies it would look evil and jagged. You would not be able to improve it with smithing, only blood can temper it and make it stronger.
6. Bring back spell making
7. Longer, more interesting guild quests like those in Oblivion

 

[Sande45]

Skyrim's combat is only as good or bad as you, the player, chooses to make it. You don't want it to suck? then stop playing it in such a way that it does suck.

Ummm... nope. When you need to limit your playstyle and nerf your character to keep the game even remotely challenging and interesting, it's bad design.

And you know what? On one playthrough I actually did everything there was to do to make the combat as good as it can be and it still sucked big time. It was too easy and simplistic to my taste and the little difficulty there was came from wrong places.

I guess someone can like Skyrim's combat, but saying something like "if you don't like it you're just doing it wrong", is incredibly ignorant. People have different preferences you know.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Tell that to every RPG ever.

I cant think of a single RPG were not nerfing your character allowed for the game to be challenging at the end.
-BG1 and 2
-NWN 1 and 2
-SWTOR 1 and 2
-All the Fallouts.
If you used the best gear in those games you were pretty much god-like.

It's impossible to make a game with AI as good as the player, so there will ALWAYS come a time were
1. The game designs stupidly overpowered monsters to compensate for their shitty AI, usually by making them damage sponges or have insta-kill moves, which is bad game design.
2. You have to self-nerf in order to make the end game challenging, which is bad game design.

It is literally 100% impossible to NOT have "bad game design", and have challenging enemies, because enemy AI can NEVER match human players without getting some retarded buff to compensate.

 

[Duskflamer]

SajuukKhar, if you think turn based games are nothing more than random dice roll vs. random dice roll, you clearly aren't understanding the game you were playing.

This is also why everyone is so confused at your insistence that Skyrim can be a tactical game. I, personally, play Skyrim about as tactically as I think is possible, I sneak, fire off arrows and ducking back to avoid being spotted, when forced into open combat I doublecast destruction to make enemies stagger and make good use of the shouts. This does not come close to the kinds of decisions you have to make in a proper tactics RPG like Fire Emblem or FF tactics.

It is 100% fine for you to prefer more action oriented games, but the way you're talking about more tactics focused games makes me think that you are just completely failing to comprehend anything that doesn't involve you personally controlling the combat.

 

[scotth266]

82 hours into Skyrim after about a week, and here's what I think ought to be changed:

Dungeons are brilliant, when they work. When they don't work, you feel like you're just running around killing Draugr. Some more diversity in both dungeon enemies and planning is needed here - spiders were fun to fight for instance, but there aren't enough of them.

Some of the puzzles in the dungeons are bloody brilliant - but they lack diversity. There's essentially two puzzles in Skyim: the dragon claw ring and the symbol match, and while Bethesda found a whole lotta ways to keep the second one interesting, the first gets old after the third time you do it.

Traps don't feel lethal unless you're criminally stupid and stand in their way. Hell, half of them can be beat just by running really fast - this isn't a good trap at all. And the lack of unique triggers means that 90% of the time you won't even trigger the trap, because noticing those tripwires and floor panels is incredibly easy. Traps could also use more diversity - the first time you see a slashing axe trap you're like HELL YEAH, but after the fifth you're like "Is this the only kind of trap these guys know about?"

Dragons feel stupid and they are too frequently spawned when you fast-travel. Either they get stupid and attack other enemies, allowing you to freely kill them, or they trot up to you and 1-hit kill you by nom-nomming your head off, which isn't conducive to having fun. And if you fast-travel a lot, dragons wind up becoming more of a travel tax than an interesting encounter - it doesn't feel random when, after fast-traveling to three open areas, I get attacked by three dragons in a row. I have more dragon souls than I know what to do with at this point. And they lack diverse attacks - it's either bite, breath, or tail slam, with the odd overhead breath attack.

The inventory is a gods-awful mess, especially the Misc and Potion categories. I understand there's a mod that fixes it, but I'm playing the vanilla game right now and will critique it as such.

Some perk trees are absolutely pointless. Speech and Pickpocket are both pointless: the former because you just don't need it, the latter because it's mostly a tree for RP'ing as a thief. The Lockpicking tree is also worthless unless you suck at the lockpick minigame.

Taking Enchanting is an insane priority over Smithing and Alchemy, since you can just enchant with "fortify alchemy/bsmithing" and then BOOM you level those skills a bajillion times faster.

Magic seems poorly implemented: sure Destruction's fun to use, but Fire seems to be the dominant element, with a bit of lightning mixed in to take out mages since nobody ever has ANY elemental resists whatsoever. Frost magic seems pointless other than for making enemies a bit slower. Alteration and Illusion get fucked over in favor of Conjuration, Restoration, and Destruction - sure, invisibility and muffle are cool, but there isn't anything else worthwhile in Illusion, and Alteration's sole virtue appears to be Oakflesh.

Hitting birds with anything other than lighting bolts to get their ingredients is hard as hell. Realistic to be sure, but annoying in game terms.

The whole "conquer Skyrim for either the resistance/Legion" is a cool idea, but the whole "battle for Fort Whatthefuck" minigame attached to it is dull as hell. How about mixing it up a bit, eh? And let's see some actual CHANGES when you take the areas other than the Jarls moving out - some new quests would be nice. And I shouldn't have to be re-Thaned each time I take over an area. And the Thane-dubbings should have more unique dialog.

It really doesn't make sense for me to be able to trot into the enemy capital when I'm supposed to be a figurehead of my movement - swaggering around Solitude when I'm going to be taking it over in an hour (and all the Jarls in the basement hate me, and probably told the Jarl of Solitude who I am) strikes me as being more than a tad silly. I'd also like to be able to actually, you know, have INPUT on the whole Jarl situation. Some of those people I wanted to keep. And what's with the racism coming from people I'm supposed to be a hero to, anyway? And why wasn't all of this tied into the main quest line - it's kind of goddamn important!

Why does the Dark Brotherhood's big quest not DO anything? Someone important just died: there should be more than two line's worth of dialog changed here!

Once you hit the 30's the difficulty of the game just disappears, at least at the "Adept" setting. Only thing that threatens me now is dragons, and even then it's mostly because of the stupid 1-hit kill move.

The houses outside of Morthal suck donkey balls in terms of aesthetics (though I haven't gotten the one in Solitude yet, so I still have hope). Breezeholm is a shitty house for early game, I get it, but couldn't I make it nicer given the money I put into it? And isn't the one I got in Ulfric's city kind of, well, empty? There's room for entire dining tables in here, even with the upgrades! What's the deal?

Of course, all of this ignores that I had a lot of fun with Skyrim. But I could have had EVEN MORE with this stuff fixed.

 

[SajuukKhar]

snip

Having started off my gaming experience with dice-roll RPGs like Fallout, NWN, and BG I can easily say that most of what YOU personally did in combat didn't matter much at all on anything but the highest difficulty setting.

It IS a RDR vs RDR.

Things like distance from the target, and what your attributes were, only added slight modifiers to your dice-roll, but the large majority of what determined if you hit or not wasn't at all in your control.

If you actually look at the formula that those games to determine hit-chance use you will see plainly that the majority of your chance to hit or not isn't in your control, it never was.

In fact it is so not in your control that you can, quite literally, enter in a fight in BG or NWN, or even Dragon Age, get up from the computer table, walk off, not manage the fight at all, and still win, because THAT much of the game isn't being controlled by you.

Why does the Dark Brotherhood's big quest not DO anything? Someone important just died: there should be more than two line's worth of dialog changed here!

Because logically it shouldn't?

When an Emperor dies the armies continue his last orders until the new emperor is crowned and tells them otherwise.

The Emperor's death would realistically have zero impact on anything in Skyirm, or the civil war, Cyrodiil on the other hand is probably flipping shit, but for Skyrim to care because of it is entirely illogical.

Also The Emperor's death in Skyrim is a setup for Elder Scrolls 6, a new, heavily anti-Thalmor, Emperor will be crowned, rally the people, and start the second great war.

 

[IamSofaKingRaw]

Making dragon encounters have more significance. They were heralded as gods in the games past yet they are nothing in Skyrim. I would have made one dragon for every shout that would normally be found in a shitty daugr cave each with its own dragon priest.

The first part of the shout will be found in random places not only caves, and once learning it, it'll reveal the location of part 2 of the shout (guarded by the Dragon Priest). Once the priest in defeated, the corresponding Dragon will awaken and you fight him in a mountain top somewhere to get the last part of the shout along with the dragon soul (I'd also make dragon soul give you a new power, so killing one makes you feel more powerful)

In my version of Skyrim, a shout can only be held by one person/dragon. You'd have to kill the person/dragon or they'd have to willingly give it up for you to use it

 

[Duskflamer]

Having started off my gaming experience with dice-roll RPGs like Fallout, NWN, and BG I can easily say that most of what YOU personally did in combat didn't matter much at all on anything but the highest difficulty setting.

It IS a RDR vs RDR.

Things like distance from the target, and what your attributes were, only added slight modifiers to your dice-roll, but the large majority of what determined if you hit or not wasn't at all in your control.

If you actually look at the formula that those games to determine hit-chance use you will see plainly that the majority of your chance to hit or not isn't in your control, it never was.

In fact it is so not in your control that you can, quite literally, enter in a fight in BG or NWN, or even Dragon Age, get up from the computer table, walk off, not manage the fight at all, and still win, because THAT much of the game isn't being controlled by you.

I'm not talking about games that attempted to be an action-RPG while still sticking to dice rolls. I'm talking about TURN-BASED games, games where if you put down the controller and walk away, nothing happens while you're gone, because it's waiting for your input.

 

[Sutter Cane]

New Vegas only has one message about the player. That he survived a gun shot wound to the head. The most consequences in new vegas is npc comments on situations. Like one of the three sherrifs you can put in Primm. Just about everyone spoke of the NCR taking over Primm in my game. People were getting a little worried that the ncr might take over too much. And then there's the reputation system ofcourse. Most npc's in skyrim don't make such comments. That is mostly left to the guards. The faceless copy and paste guards. It's better than Fallout 3 and certainly not one of those things where I'd talk about skyrim "Not being a real rpg" or "just a casual action adventure" or something else silly, but not as great in my opinion.

But the radio in New vegas still mentions everything you did.

It doesn't mater that they mention YOU specifically, all they have to say is "X town was attacked by Y and was defended" and people will be like "OMG I'M GETTING RECOGNITION FOR THINGS I DID" even if they never use your name at all.

Also the only people I ever had talk about the NCR taking over Primm in my were
1. Generic NPC soldiers
2. The Radio

I cant recall a single named NPC outside of the town that mentioned it at all.

Not saying others didn't, but in over 500 hours of playing the game I never once heard anyone besides the generic guards and the radio mention it, smae with every other thing you did in the game.

-Guards mention it
-Radio mentions it
-NPCs don't talk about anything ever.

I don't see the problem with the radio. Obsidian realized that they wanted it to seem like your actions were altering the game world, but also realized that programming in completely new actions for absolutely everything you did was an unrealistic goal so they use the in game radio system to show the consequences of certain actions. and even then most of the things the radio covers seem to be thing that would not dramatically change the way the town feels to visit anyway. For example, with the primm sheriff. I mean you see the faction you chose take over and you get to hear deputy beagle's thoughts about it, so what else is there really to show? I mean the town's not likely to change drastically overnight, or even over the course of a couple months just because a new sheriff took over and you do get to see what the long term effects of your decision were due to the ending. What else do you really want? The only thing n that game that feels like it wasn't given enough weight to me was if you choose to kill Caesar, which really does feel like it should have immediate consequences beyond people in new vegas saying "Hey weren't you the guy who killed Caesar?"

but still, the main difference that makes fallout: New Vegas feel alive and Skyrim feel kind of empty by comparison is that how you handle things does indeed have an effect on how the game (or at least the endgame) plays out, and you do get to see how your actions affect the world long term.

 

[SajuukKhar]

I'm not talking about games that attempted to be an action-RPG while still sticking to dice rolls. I'm talking about TURN-BASED games, games where if you put down the controller and walk away, nothing happens while you're gone, because it's waiting for your input.

Turn based games are worse IMO then games like Baldur's gate.

Not only is the combat still controlled by dice-rolls, and thus mostly by the computer, but now the game practically taunts you with its control over your game by making you have to click the attack button so the comptuer can fight itself.

At least games like BG, and DAO, have the decency to not try and hide the fact the computer is playing itself, and just have your guys attack the computer's guys on thier own.

Also Turn-based games artificially lengthen battles by placing arbitrary limits on how many steps you can move. They don't make battles complex, or engaging, they just do everything in their power to make it as slow as possible.

Battles in games should not be long because you can only walk 6 steps, and fire once, before your turn is over, they should be long because the enemy is well designed, and uses tactics, they should be long because the world is well designed allowing you to use cover, and have to flank enemies to get at them.

Turn-based systems are a crutch for enemy AI, it's a cheap and easy way to not have to make good AI for games, while still having long and seemingly complex battles.

Unfortunately the complexity from turn-based games is all from artificial limitations, and not because the enemies and world are well designed. Its the worst type of "complexity" a game can have.

 

[TwentyPercentCooler]

I've got to agree with a lot of previous posters in that the vanilla game is just missing a lot of things that it shouldn't be. In fact, I could never get into it, like I did with Fallout 3/New Vegas. It just felt different, and I think it was mostly the atmosphere (not saying that one or the other was objectively "better"). I felt the same way about Oblivion, really.

The redeeming feature, of course, is mods. Considering that a lot of us seem to think that there are a lot of things missing from Skyrim - essentially, Bethesda released it unfinished, and for consoles, it will never be anything else. They should be ashamed of themselves.

I've just recently gotten into playing Skyrim, and only after making it barely recognizable. As for a specific list?

More weapon types: The number of weapons in the vanilla game is kind of disappointing, and aside from the specific perks in the one-handed and two-handed skill trees, there wasn't a particularly noticeable difference between the types, either. Even the "kill move" animations are pretty generic.

Less broken crafting: Make an enchanting potion, enchant an item with an alchemy skill increase, make a stronger enchanting potion, enchant an item with a stronger alchemy skill increase, make an even st...ah, you get what I mean. Enchanting is broken and it's far too easy to make godlike items without actually cheating. I like the IDEA of enchanting. One of my character builds was an arcane warrior, and the ability to enchant heavy armor with less effective versions of the bonuses found on mage robes/hoods was pretty much the only way to make it viable. But it goes from "viable" to "overpowered" far too easily. Gaming the system and finding ways to break it is human nature. It should have been anticipated.

Those are my two main complaints, really. Everything else will probably sound like pointless nitpicking.

 

[Duskflamer]

I'm not talking about games that attempted to be an action-RPG while still sticking to dice rolls. I'm talking about TURN-BASED games, games where if you put down the controller and walk away, nothing happens while you're gone, because it's waiting for your input.

Turn based games are worse IMO then games like Baldur's gate.

Not only is the combat still controlled by dice-rolls, and thus mostly by the computer, but now the game practically taunts you with its control over your game by making you have to click the attack button so the comptuer can fight itself.

At least games like BG, and DAO, have the decency to not try and hide the fact the computer is playing itself, and just have your guys attack the computer's guys on thier own.

Also Turn-based games artificially lengthen battles by placing arbitrary limits on how many steps you can move. They don't make battles complex, or engaging, they just do everything in their power to make it as slow as possible.

Battles in games should not be long because you can only walk 6 steps, and fire once, before your turn is over, they should be long because the enemy is well designed, and uses tactics, they should be long because the world is well designed allowing you to use cover, and have to flank enemies to get at them.

Turn-based systems are a crutch for enemy AI, it's a cheap and easy way to not have to make good AI for games, while still having long and seemingly complex battles.

Unfortunately the complexity from turn-based games is all from artificial limitations, and not because the enemies and world are well designed. Its the worst type of "complexity" a game can have.

You are either, as I said before, completely failing to understand a system where you are not personally controlling every moment of combat, or you're being a massive troll. Either way, respond to this if you want, I'm not bothering with this thread any further.

 

[Duskflamer]

Even the "kill move" animations are pretty generic.

Before I vacate this thread, I just have to comment that I agree with this completely. The one time I decided to finish off a dragon in melee combat, I got a kill animation on it, jumped onto its head, held my mace high into the air....and proceed to treat my mace as though it was a sword, seeming to stab into its head instead of crack its skull like I was expecting.

 

[Animyr]

I wish the game had characters.

Skyrim has people who say things.

 

[Rasor]

I'm assuming that everyone found the easy combat exploits in Skyrim, by accident of course.
My first character became ruined when I bought that dual casting spells stagger talent in destruction, with little mana regen I could dual cast a cheap destruction spell and stunlock 2-3 foes until they died.
There's a few other easy exploits that you can stumble across when playing a new style for the first time that also completely make the combat lose all weight.

So then you have to rely on the story to make the game feel different.
Unfortunately the game's quests play like a checklist;
- Become leader of guilds A,B,C
- Follow mainquest
- Do menial tasks for equipment far worse than yours
- Do other menial tasks for small amounts of gold to add to your hoard.
- Do civil war quest with result A or B

Maybe these quests could be great but the characters around the entire game were so boring and forgettable. I liked that there was a definite set of accents for the local races but I found the characters blending together because each accent only had one voice actor for each gender.
Not even the companions you could gain were different, even the early companions were poor.
Lydia: housecarl to you when you become thane of Whiterun 4-5 quests in to the main story. She seems to have pledged her life to serving the nobility of Whiterun and as such the imperials.
If you kill every non essential citizen in Whiterun, she helps.
Same result if you go about chopping legions of imperials, not a damned peep out of her and you'd be hard gone by to try to ask her about herself.
You end up choosing your companions based on what style of combat they prefer, and then that doesn't matter anyway because this is your third new character and you just stumbled upon how OP the stealth tree is and ruined combat again.

So the combat is too easy to break.
The quests are streamlined and lack much choice or weight.
The characters are all the same and lack emotional investment.

 

[Neksar]

I had to heavily mod it to make it playable. Skyrim Redone does wonders, but it can't fix the lack of personality the world has. I can never, ever feel like my actions have consequences, especially when one guard hails me as harbinger of the Companions, and his buddy not two feet away asks if I fetch the mead 'cause I'm the newbie.

Obsidian's games were buggy, and people can be talked down, but at least the developers *tried* to create different approaches. Skyrim's approach, time and again, is to murder whatever's causing the problem, usually located in a draugr-infested cave, and then bring back whatever they had that was important.

Honestly, I'm probably a terrible person to ask about Obsidian, since I remember Alpha Protocol better than I do New Vegas, and I liked how they handled their little perk system in Alpha Protocol. I was hard-pressed to find a decision that wasn't referenced later.

I'd be happy if Skyrim managed to at least create far-reaching consequences for the major quest lines, like the Civil War quest, and the main quest. Just make me feel like I *did* something with those two, and I'll be happy.

 

[Rasor]

And DAWNGUARD!

I sat with my girl friend side by side as we played the expansion and we experienced the same damned thing! We just went to different talking heads to get the same missions. The main difference between our play throughs:
I got to be a big evil vampire with design and clunky features and got to bash up Dawnguard at the end of some quests.
She got to use a crossbow that's super effective against vampires and got to beat up some Vampires instead.
Neither of us used our exclusive power/item much other than when we first got it.

A point where I got excited was the new vampiress companion, she seemed to have emotion depth and a story but in the end she could be shaped to be anything you wanted her to be through a few dialogue boxes. She is not her own character at all but just whatever you want her to be.

There was even a failure on the two possible interesting characters in the game, the two Snowelf brothers. They seemed interesting but, in the end they only have one possible outcome and you just have to leave them where you found them.

We finished up the expansion just 2 days ago and I cannot remember a single character or place name.

The game and it's expansions so far promised to but much more expansive all aspects than they they actually were. In 5-10 years time I will feel no nostalgia to this game, It's an rpg with out the role-to-play, the Dovahkin role is just so loose that it's hard to feel to be a character. The dialogue you have lacks any personality and the skills you acquire never seem to effect the narrative.

Finally the changed to the game I'd make...

Combat skills need to change. Exception of 1 or 2 talents; the rest of the talents you acquire are passive bonuses. This makes combat stale, with out a new active thing to do you hardly change your combat style from beginning to end.

The characters need to feel defined. Even just a few companions to to have more background, opinions and the ability to disagree with your actions. The towns and cities feel weightless because you can kill almost everyone in side the city walls, walk outside, pay off one guard to forgive your crimes and then the other guard with joke about you having your sweetroll stolen. Please, oh please can we hire more voice actors for the next time? or at least ask them to do more than one voice each?

And the quests. Oh boy those quests.
There are 100's of quests, so many! even if you beat all the named quests the game will procedurally generate more "misc" quests to keep you going for eternity.
And none of them have any weight. You can to as much as you want in this world and it still stays static. You can gain a few fancy titles and unique weapons to put in a chest at home but the world in this game, no matter how much you try to change it, stays the same.
Like a giant single player MMO.
That big thing about blotting out the sun in dawn guard, It's temporary. you have to reapply it every new day.
Kill Alduin? Dragons are still every where. and if you level up some more you find stronger dragons.

This game is a static, clunky, Lifeless world. Of course it has great graphics and a great metascore though, so feel free to not actually look at it objectively.

I did not compare this game to any other games, I don't care if you think it's better than previous games released SIX AND TEN YEARS AGO. you need to think of this game objectively.
And I swear to god if someone grabs a paragraph out of these posts and points out just 1 or 2 minor things then acts like because of that, my entire argument is invalid I will through the internet and choke you to death, Kay?

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

Better gameplay (combat is terrible)
Better 'story' elements (writing/dialogs/characters/choices & consequences...)
Better RPG elements/mechanics
Better enemy variety
Better dungeons layouts (way too linear and easily navigated)

So in other words, you want Daggerfall. ;P