Yeah, there's basically one class in Skyrim: fighter/mage/archer/thief.

Thank You. If someone with a blue user name were to say this they would think that the bugs are the only problem. The game is fundamentally meh, but then again so is dungeons and dragons and people eat that shit up.

cuz the game is fucking awesome. end

You know, I can agree that once you hit some max levels, the game starts getting dull due to you becoming overpowered, but if your using exploits to boost your levels in the first place(Sneak hitting Grey Beards/ Smithing 2,000 Iron Daggers) you can't blame the game can you? Some people enjoy different types of games. A lot of forum goers love to hate on CoD, heck, I'll make a crack about it too, but at the end of the day, that game is way more fun for me then BF3 will ever be. If you don't like a deep fantasy world, then the Elder Scrolls series may not be for you. Don't like melee? Probably should have rolled a mage.

It's easy to hate a game if you'r a hater, and it's easy to defend one if you'r a fanboy. It seems that Skyrim was just not the OPs kind of game, and he found plenty of reasons that upset him. Personally, all the UI was fine for me, I loved the Combat, and the writing was all pretty fantastic, but that's because the game works for me. I expected a fantasy story with RPG trappings, and that's what I got. I'm sure I could elaborate more, but my post is getting long enough as it is.

Some dislike it, some love it, whatever. But it can't be denied as one of the biggest games of the year either way. I recall it being the fastest selling game on steam, ever, so there.

http://www.1up.com/news/skyrim-ships-ten-million-fastest-selling-game-steam

@Dagbiker said:

@CaptainCody said:

@JerichoBlyth said:

Stop whining - there will be dlc released, which will probably test the might of your master class. Hell, I have played the game for 46 hours and I'm only level 22. Just been doing sidequests, guild stuff, exploring, listening to stories. It's a different breed of game entirely. I'd actually refer to it as an interactive adventure with action elements, the way I've been playing it.

But to each their own. If you're so obsessed with AI problems and level scaling/balancing then that's YOUR concern. As Arnold Schwarzenegger would say "I don't play that game".

It was worth £27.00.

You know what, go fuck yourself. The OP put some work into this post and saying, "Stop whining" just tells me how immature you are. Also 46 hours and you're only level 22? Holy shit.

I love the irony in this post.

*Plays sad horn noise*

Bugs are out there in every game, this is an improvement to Oblivion but many of the same mechanics will be there to keep it familiar to fans of the series, also when they review games like this they tend to have maybe a dozen hours (if that to just go through the game to find out quite a lot about the game) often this is on a released version before any day1 patches (so the game they review is usually bugged more than normal plus they might have some info from the publisher stating about the known bugs they are working at fixing meaning if a reviewer sees those bugs they might not put much attention on them as they don't know if they will be fixed or not on release). If you want the game to be harder then just crank up the difficulty, don't buy any houses or craft your stuff & try to survive.

Pretty much agree with all of that yeah. But I've still played it for 120 hours ...

Heh, nobody said it's perfect. No game is perfect. Or ever will be. But it's the best open world vidja game... well, not EVER, but in the last couple of years for sure.

@Neeshka: I kind of agree with you on this one, a lot of things bothered me about this game, and i personally think that the game doesn't look as good as people claim. I can see why some people enjoy it, and i appreciate the ridiculous amount of content offered by Skyrim but I don't really enjoy experiencing the content it has to offer. Personally I don't find the combat engaging at all, and I feel like their is no elegance to it. I think the game can look pretty shitty in spots, and the voice acting can at times be terrible. However I think the soundtrack is great and I do like dragons.

Remember when games where perfect? No, me neither. Play it on the hardest diffifulty if things are so easy for ya.

By the time I was done with it (PS3 77 hrs) I hated it too for all the problems, but the ride was so damn good. So much fun, so many rag doll enemies. I didn't fully exploit the smithing/enchanting. I did it in between quests so it wasn't as game breaking. I was at level 50 when I got them to 100. It's not a disappointment by any stretch. The only reason you can even be disappointed in it as much as you say your are is because you want to be so good. Because it kind of is that good. Because it made you grind. Because it is like life. You grind, its broken, you don't know why, you get sick of it, it ends. Take it deeper bro. You love this game. I can tell.

I wish I understood the thought process behind some of the complaints from the OP, especially as relates to the Leveling and the economy.

You can make 1,000 daggers or whatever, enchant the heck out of them, sell them for unholy amounts of cash and at the end of it you've broken the economy and the leveling, right?

Right.

So.... What's the drive that makes someone look at a system that they know can be exploited, take that exploitation to a ridiculous end, and then list that as an issue?

The OP even mentions that after a certain point with skill leveling you have to start leveling something you never used, and it stinks because those skills are at zero.

Well of course they are. They were never used, the metaphorical You were too busy breaking/exploiting one of the other skill trees.

Everything in a game goes from 1 to X, where X is as good as you can be at something. There's always a stopping point. And really, if there weren't, then the issue with the game would be that you could forge ten million daggers, enchant them, sell them, and win by spitting on something because your level would be "I am that I am".

Having said this, I've certainly spent more time than strictly necessary casting Fury on mudcrabs, and Courage (or whatever the name was) and Healing on myself an my companion. But I did this for about 5 or 10 minutes and then stopped because it got boring.

Back to that big question then.

What is it that makes someone actively want to exploit a system to a ridiculous end?

I agree. I cannot believe how reviewers looked past the insane multitude of problems this game has. Sure, saying it's an open world game and that it has a few bugs is a given and it's acceptable, but when the problems extend beyond that into things like the horrible UI, the easy difficulty of the game, the insanely lackluster and short story, the useless gear and tiems you find, the absolute USELESSNESS of money in the game, etc etc.. th game loses all it's charm. I put a lot of hours into the game but only because I wanted to S-rank it. I felt like it was pointless to just keep playing for the fun of playing afterwards.  
 
The reason I like playing these games beyond the main story/guild stories is to find awesome items and little things inside caves and dungeons. But when the best things you can find in a dungeon are yet ANOTHER pair of Glass or Ebony boots (Which you can EASILY make yourself), there is absolute 0 reason to keep plundering these places. Even the unique items are complete and utter shit. 
 
Needless to say I am very disappointed in Skyrim.  
 
Deus Ex 3 is my GOTY.

@Neeshka: i think you have to acknowledge to some extent that if your criticisms begin to outline fundamental issues of "design versus function" within a game, it makes it a little more difficult to identify and surround the more significant issues with realistic solutions, assuming that's the priority. otherwise, if i seriously considered everything you had written, i could probably apply that strict logic to every game ever made, to which then i would have to determine if any of this is worth the headache.

the issue of advancing skills and characters by exploiting mechanics within the game is definitely a problem, one that i think highlights many of the other shortcomings (i.e. the combat and AI leveling). the problem here is that all these "individual" issues can't be properly fixed or policed without contradicting the coding of the game's logic. everything that exists within the game is communicating with everything else without much of an override command. i can only speculate since i wasn't there during development, but i assume this was done in an attempt to create more dynamic events through a wider scope of gameplay, so that certain events could essentially occur anywhere without the use of scripting. imo, this is the game's best and worst feature. one of the more prevailing issues of this coding is found in the bug (not sure if it's still an issue) where the player might prompt an event (i.e. talking to a character, reading a book, etc.) that was necessary in advancing a previously completed quest, thus restarting the quest.

in regards to the UI and Skill Tree, i would never make the case that we should take the technological advancements of today and layer them with a more sterile, bland format of presenting information to the player just to retain the highest degree of functionality. Consistency maybe, but functionally of a game should NOT be considered the lowest common denominator by which all other design choices are measured against, as crazy as that may sound. it's the illusion that's the most important, and there are cases where things don't function properly in the game, but it doesn't hurt anything and for the most part those issues go unnoticed. despite my frustration with many of the issues you've outlined, i'm actually okay with a certain amount of bugginess within a game, so long as it doesn't completely undermine the progression, breaking the emersion entirely. with that being said, the developer's are throwing down the gauntlet when they embark on a game this ambitious. a game like this should be considered a journey not a destination, and not just for all of us playing but for the developers as well.

Games are never going to be perfect, mainly because everyone has a different idea of perfect.

Also, mods.

also, am i the only one who thinks many of the issues involving exploiting the game's crafting system could easily be solved if the player character was not allowed to increase their skills (or just crafting skills) beyond 100? i never really understood that exception to logic anyway, in fact, it seemed to me that by not capping skills the implication was so people could exploit the game. regardless, these exploits do exist, which if followed can lead to a rather monotonous, bland experience. it's hard to resist the temptation, especially when you consider the fact that by taking advantage of the crafting mechanics, you're still using them in the manner they were originally designed, it's just a matter of extent. i think that limitation should be a rule that exists within the design of a game, and once again, the easiest way to go about it is to limit all skills to 100.

One thing I see constantly thrown around is that levelling smithing and enchanting is an "exploit".

Why ?

If you want to play a non-stealthy melee character specializing in 1 offensive combat weapon type; what else would you even choose ?

You shouldn't need a guide to tell you which talents seem useful. It's also incredibly obvious that a good offense is better than defense. Just trying out heavy armor/light armor at lower levels will tell you that heavy is infinitely better without perks.

It really seems that people intentionally choose gimpy perks on purpose to intentionally cripple their character. Either that or they haven't played stat based RPGs before and just pick perks

Another thing; you don't even have to make 100 daggers; that's something you would choose to do just to get around the annoying weight problems from making, say, armor or heavier weapons. It's only natural to look for cheaper and lighter things to make.

whimsically.@studnoth1n said:

also, am i the only one who thinks many of the issues involving exploiting the game's crafting system could easily be solved if the player character was not allowed to increase their skills (or just crafting skills) beyond 100?

Skills are capped to 100. Smithing, enchanting are too.

The problem isn't skills not capping. It's that enemies stop scaling much earlier than they should (around level 30). Bethesda used a mish-mash of fixed and scaling enemy levelling systems. Enemies are just picked from an increasing set of types as you level. But the set just stops growing after a point.

Additionally they balanced the game off a very abnormal perk setup. What they should have done is balanced off a few sensible perk setups.

Non-combat perks shouldn't even level up enemies. Perk leveling rate should also be normalized; so that 1 hand or crafting get heavier penalties to level compared to other perks.

I'm really not sure how to fix combat or AI; possibly just take a look at how deadly reflexes fixed oblivion ? Can't be that hard can it.

About the UI I think you missed what I was trying to say. I definitely agree that UI's shouldn't always confirm to the exact same designs; that would lead to stagnation of course. This is more of an issue of focusing too much on aesthetics and ignoring functionality or making it frequently fiddly and annoying.

A good example is how early touch screens had godawful (although good to look at) UIs. Then apple came along with the iphone and showed how aesthetics could work well with ease of use. You don't have to have a new good looking UI that stinks to use.

One thing I see constantly thrown around is that levelling smithing and enchanting is an "exploit".

Why ?

If you want to play a non-stealthy melee character specializing in 1 offensive combat weapon type; what else would you even choose ?

You shouldn't need a guide to tell you which talents seem useful. It's also incredibly obvious that a good offense is better than defense. Just trying out heavy armor/light armor at lower levels will tell you that heavy is infinitely better without perks.

It really seems that people intentionally choose gimpy perks on purpose to intentionally cripple their character. Either that or they haven't played stat based RPGs before and just pick perks

Another thing; you don't even have to make 100 daggers; that's something you would choose to do just to get around the annoying weight problems from making, say, armor or heavier weapons. It's only natural to look for cheaper and lighter things to make.

whimsically.@studnoth1n said:

also, am i the only one who thinks many of the issues involving exploiting the game's crafting system could easily be solved if the player character was not allowed to increase their skills (or just crafting skills) beyond 100?

Skills are capped to 100. Smithing, enchanting are too.

The problem isn't skills not capping. It's that enemies stop scaling much earlier than they should (around level 30). Bethesda used a mish-mash of fixed and scaling enemy levelling systems. Enemies are just picked from an increasing set of types as you level. But the set just stops growing after a point.

Additionally they balanced the game off a very abnormal perk setup. What they should have done is balanced off a few sensible perk setups.

Non-combat perks shouldn't even level up enemies. Perk leveling rate should also be normalized; so that 1 hand or crafting get heavier penalties to level compared to other perks.

I'm really not sure how to fix combat or AI; possibly just take a look at how deadly reflexes fixed oblivion ? Can't be that hard can it.

About the UI I think you missed what I was trying to say. I definitely agree that UI's shouldn't always confirm to the exact same designs; that would lead to stagnation of course. This is more of an issue of focusing too much on aesthetics and ignoring functionality or making it frequently fiddly and annoying.

A good example is how early touch screens had godawful (although good to look at) UIs. Then apple came along with the iphone and showed how aesthetics could work well with ease of use. You don't have to have a new good looking UI that stinks to use.

when i say that they should cap a skill at 100, that means including any buffs (potions/enchantments) that might increase that particular skill beyond 100. that may seem harsh, but not if you consider balance an integral part to gameplay.

also, in regards to enemy difficulty, i think they tried to scale everything based on their estimation of when certain skills would be maxed out, specifically the combat-related skills/perks. so i agree that could have been better thought out, though to be fair, the perks-system is a new feature in this kind of game (which overall i think is a good idea) and much of what seems obvious now might have been harder to predict then. in fact, i think the perks-system, as simple and commonplace as they are now, sort of fast-tracked the series and ultimately revealed many inherent shortcomings in most rpg's. This goes for the UI too, as imperfect as it is. i didn't really miss what you were saying, i actually did disagree. ultimately these changes reflect the actions of those who have sat down and seriously considered the issues, specifically where most people are spending their time in the game. i can critique the results but i can't fault them for pushing forward when most would just bank on a winning formula and hit the cruise control.

Opinions, dog.
A lot of the points you bring up, while they may be true, are not things that will bother everyone nor are they game breaking. You can't tell someone they're wrong for enjoying the hell out of a game because it has flaws. Its my GOTY and unless it causes my 360 to explode in the next few weeks, will remain so.

@studnoth1n said:

when i say that they should cap a skill at 100, that means including any buffs (potions/enchantments) that might increase that particular skill beyond 100. that may seem harsh, but not if you consider balance an integral part to gameplay.

Well basically some kind of balancing needed to be done. Capping skills at 100 "including buffs" is a bit hard to quantify; since certain things are inherently unbalanced. It's really these things that need to be looked at. And how enemies scale relative to these skills.

How do you prevent dual enchants being so incredibly OP ? paralyze+fire/paralyze+soul tap or frost is by itself incredibly strong.

Why are magic enchants so OP that they completely nullify the need of speccing into most of the magic perks ? Clearly someone should have thought about this.

Why is smithing gear consistently always better than drops ? Again, you don't even need level 100. Level 50 smith and level 50 enchanting will give you vastly superior items than the junk available off enemies. This just wasn't thought out well. Even if QA came across issues like these; they were ignored. And bethesda has time and again done this.

I would say it would make a lot more sense to scale enemies based off the offensive and defensive power of a character; and not just the aggregate character level. Non-combat perks shouldn't even level the character at all. In any case levelling enemies when non-combat perks are levelled flat out makes no sense; an just penalizes taking them. Enemies should drop more interesting loot and scale for much longer.

A very good enemy and player scaling system along with a item levelling system isn't something new.

Diablo 1, 2 and it's clones and borderlands; all do it extremely well. Even most old-school DnD games handle this quite well.

Enemies scale perfectly; and the level of difficulty is always "just right" no matter what build you choose. Unless you choose something pants on head retarded, obviously.

Skyrim just doesn't do this.

It's nice to see someone expecting a degree of excellence from games. I won't lie, I loved skyrim. I have a few hundred hours on there. I was also 12. It was my first open world, and I had a lot of fun. You know what's happened since 2011 though? I've grown a up. I can not enjoy it, nor the uncreative art direction it has. I've played morrowind, some oblivion since then, they're nice. BOTW is breathtaking. I enjoy popping my Link's Awakening cartridge back into the gameboy every once in a while. I play Mass Effect. I'm really into Warframe. It's not that my tastes changed, I just started wanting more from my experience. Skyrim is a great game, if you are a child. It is fun if you are not trying to have a challenging or unique experience. However, people have raised it a pedestal, making Bethesda into the illumination entertainment of its industry. They're sitting down, their experience leaving them both unmolested and unimpressed, then leaving to proclaim its greatness.

If Bethesda wants to do itself a favor, it would leave Neverland with the lot of you and let something new be created.

Huh, this got bumped. Weird to be reminded that Skyrim is six years old at this point. Also, coincidentally, I have been playing loads of Skyrim over the past two weeks.

Skyrim is in my top five games of all time, and it's easily the most recent entry in that list. I love this game. Yes, I'm well-aware of its myriad problems. Without even mentioning bugs, the game is loaded with balance issues, bad difficulty scaling, writing that's as hit or miss as Stephen King's works, animations that never really line up right, and combat that's really mashy and looks kinda silly.

But none of those things bother me all that much. I love being in this world. I love talking to people in this world, I love poking my nose in corners to see what detail I can find there, I love finding new gear and crafting and enchanting my own gear. I love the atmosphere and the music and just looking at the game. The Special Edition on PC that I've been playing makes all of that stuff even better - sound seems less compressed so everything sounds a little better, the Special Edition runs much smoother and loads much faster, and the graphical improvements just make it that much better. Those god rays looks so damn good!

Aside: you can get the original Skyrim to look amazing and maybe even better than the Special Edition, but that requires some work and some experimentation and frankly I was never quite happy with the results, whereas the Special Edition's graphical tweaks were enough to get me to want to try it out after watching my brother play it for a little while. You also don't get the smoother performance and load times of the Special Edition, and the mod community for the SE version seems alive and well these days so those kinds of graphical enhancements will likely come to the 64-bit version anyway.

I did wind up adding a few small mods to my game - an extra perk point per level, backpacks that let you carry more, an enchanting table in the Breezehome, the Unofficial Patch, SkyUI 2.2 because that one works without SKSE and holy shit that original UI is one of the worst UI's in gaming history, and a handful of other things that touch up the vanilla experience.

Anyway, yeah, that's me posting in a necro'd thread.

Ah, the joys of being 18 and thinking you've grown up.

I didn't like Skyrim even back in 2011. I've tried at least 12 times to play through this game and enjoy it, but I can't. I liked Fallout 3, Morrowind and heck I'm one of the few people who likes Fallout 4 as a guilty pleasure thing, but I can't get into Skyrim. I don't like the sense of progression. Even finding builds online to try and Roleplay as something doesn't enhance my enjoyment. I've had the same quest breaking bug happen on multiple versions of the game too, which shouldn't happen. Everything is just wooden, there's no sense of adventure and the quests weren't fun. Looks great, sounds great, isn't fun to play or be in.

I don't like how crafted items are generally more powerful than the stuff you find in the world/quests.

It's weird that I like the Risen RPGS (barring 3) a lot better than Skyrim. They're pretty crap games (in terms of playability and polish) to the average player, but they had personality and a sense of adventure and discovery that doesn't feel wooden.

I just get the completely opposite feeling when I play Skyrim. Tons of adventure, a great world to be in, I just get drawn in for hours. Meanwhile, I've tried Fallout 3 and 4 several times and just can't get into either of those, or even New Vegas.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

We've got enough ridiculously huge open-world RPG's (using RPG a little loosely here) that there's almost something for everyone. Best time to be playing video games and all that.

You do know that moral of the story of Peter Pan was that one should enjoy their youth, right? So let people enjoy Skyrim.

Should clarify that I'm not referring to people who enjoy Skyrim as young or stupid. That was the OP's point. I think growing up involves allowing people to enjoy what they can. Don't know what 'grown a up' means, part of me doesn't want to know.

I'll be upfront and say that I don't like the waypoint system in Skyrim. I don't like being told exactly where to go in games. I feel like I'm being pulled by the nose around the world instead of me making discoveries on my own. Granted, FO4 has this issue, but I forgave a lot of issues that game had simply because I could play it like STALKER via the survival mode and as a Sim game in management mode. Not what people come to these games for, but I liked it a lot. The Risen games don't have waypoints and you're forced to make discoveries on your own. That's what makes an adventure for me. But it's very cool you enjoy Skyrim and don't let people tell you it's wrong to be happy.

@franswaa: So now you're approximately 18 years old. Please tell us more about all the growing up you've done and all those deep experiences you've been through called highschool.

It definitely has problems, but you can't really compare it to many other games in terms of its large scale RPG accessibility.... Oblivion maybe.

Goodjob digging up a corpse. Also Skyrim is overrated Oblivion is the better TES game.

Most just learn to overlook the flaws. The TES games are kinda to be seen as a whole, not as bits. Every part of the Bethesda games comes short when you look at them individually. The shooting in the fallout series, melee in the TES series.. Movement is clunky.. Inventory is vexing.. Bugs are all over the place and so on. But, taken as a whole.. It's an awesome thing.

People overlook the bugs and bullshit because they have to in the same way that people never really talk about pop in, but it's in every single game ever. Bethesda games are just like this.. You can either do very few thing amazingly well (race simulators, first person shooters and so on) or you can do lots of things pretty good (RPGs since the dawn of time).

C'mon give the kid a break, who didn't think they grew up at 18?

I think skyrim is the best game Bethesda ever made, it has as many issues as all their other games but i think they got the sense of adventure and exploration down perfect. Probably put a couple hundred hours into 2 versions of thr games, while never managing to complete the main story line.

That said i dont have high hopes for Bethesda anymore, as bad as fallout 4 was and these terrible attempts to make money off modders i am probably done with them.

@winternet said:

I know this post was 5 years ago, but that's some fundamentally flawed roasting right there.

"forum |ˈfɔːrəm|

noun (plural forums)

1 a meeting or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged: 'we hope these pages act as a forum for debate.'"

The notion that someone made an account on a forum to express views on a particular topical issue should hardly be the most surprising and unanticipated development. "Whoa man, you signed up for a credit card just so could buy things online? Damn."

Good stuff.

I played fallout 4 for 100+ hours and still would say that I dont like it. These games have always been good at sinking their hooks into players, with interesting worlds, but I'd say the content started growing stale with Oblivion. There's a reason people have tried so hard to remaster Morrowind, its the perfect balance. It's truly a western RPG, the most pen and paper of the series, with a wonderful and intimidating world. As Bethesda began trying to cater to a wider audience, first with Oblivion, and then with Skyrim even more so, their style was muddled and their flaws became less forgiveable. I think to say that Skyrim is a bad game is too far, its just this constant tragedy knowing how spectacular it could have been. I've found a pretty good place with mods, survival mods, disabling of fast travel, new cities, difficulty management, and I look back fondly on it, but its flaws were always too severe to warrant its universal praise.

@franswaa: Wow dude, you have a very high opinion of yourself.

There's perhaps no other game some people love to get mad at other people for liking than Skyrim.

@soulcake: I agree with Oblivion being the better of the two. I enjoyed Skyrim but the plot was no fun in my opinion.

You know, I was going to tease you about the ad hominem "great game... if you're a child" stuff and playfully call you a judgmental necromancer... but then I saw the true gem of your post. "They're sitting down, their experience leaving them both unmolested and unimpressed, then leaving to proclaim its greatness."

What a choice of words. I've often thought that older games could be unduly harsh and cruel with their systems (Battletoads springs to mind as the best example. Limited lives, brutally challenging levels, no save system, and you have to restart the whole game when you inevitably die too many times), but... I never thought games like Battletoads left me molested, either in the old meaning-of-the-word way of "pestered and annoyed" or the new way of "I need to call the police and take a shower." I wondered how you found a copy of Link's Awakening and a vintage early 90s Gameboy considering that you yourself have stated that you were 12 in 2011 and thus born in 1999 (eBay?). Now I'm wondering what dimension such said copy and Gameboy came from. Poor cenobites must have misplaced it behind their trans-dimensional couch, which is a shame considering that it apparently simultaneously molests and impresses. A truly bizarre, disconcerting-to-fathom feat. :-/

Eek. You know, not every game needs to aim for the "retro difficulty" Dark Souls stuff to be for adults. Skyrim's combat gets really easy as the power bloat sets in, but it deals with some dark, adult situations and some heady subject matters. Incidentally, I could say the same thing for Mass Effect... a game that you praise as "for adults" which I found incredibly easy. *shrug* Anyhoots, welcome to the 18 to 35 year old market bracket, you necromancer you. :-P

@soulcake: man, really? There are things that are better in oblivion, some more interesting guild stuff for example but a lot of the complaints against Skyrim are even more severe for Oblivion. The sword play was so dull it wasn’t even funny, the world was kinda bland, and the faces/voice acting had issues.

I love both games but I don’t see how people can say Oblivion is a better game. I can see why people who prefer it to some extent but it isn’t a better game.

I liked Skyrim a lot at launch, but mods turned it into one of my favorite games. Skyrim seemed to have a much more diverse and interesting mod community. You could turn that game into so many crazy things, including a grueling simulation of a shitty medieval life full of hunger and frostbite and disease and combat that could go wrong in a swing or two but felt fair.

Even without the mods though, I had a ton of fun wandering Skyrim. It was a cool world, and the combat was more engaging than Oblivion, and despite the silly criticism, the Perk system was a lot more interesting than the system in Oblivion.

Its only appropriate this was bumped. Since Skyrim will have two releases (switch and vr) this year. (or is that next year?). People sure love Skyrim.

@opusofthemagnum: In Oblivion you could level up by jumping it was pure Genius !

@jimbo: I agree with everything you said except that it improves upon its predecessors. Oblivion and morrowind are vastly superior And are way more fun to play. I have bought every es game on day 1 and while I had some fun with skyrim it was the least enjoyable entry in the series for me.

I find myself being more critical of games as the years pass on. I don't like skyrim either. I may have liked it in the past, but I just don't anymore. The open world nature of games has lost its intrigue because all of the innards have been exposed.

Collectibles, fetch style side missions, and a main campaign that is largely forgotten due to the nature of the world. I don't mind poor animations or outdated graphics. I love good, old games and even those I play now for the first time.

Skyrim has all of the issues from a graphical standpoint, but also contains gameplay that never seems to excite me, nor does it have a compelling story/plot/premise, AND the smaller aspects (economy, inventory, leveling) provides a similar feeling of "really? Fine.".

But you know what? It's my friend's favorite game of all time. And that's ok. We all have to make our decisions for what makes a good game. If you like Skyrim, perfect! I wish I could because the people who enjoy it seem to love it and I like to love things.

Since people are moving this back towards discussing the merits of the Elder Scrolls franchise as it relates to Skryim, I'm jumping aboard too. :-)

Oddly enough, my favorite overall Elder Scrolls game is the MMO Elder Scrolls Online. I think Morrowind had the best atmosphere, but the combat and gameplay mechanics have aged very, very poorly (I'd love a remaster with the Skryim level system and combat grafted on. Not going to happen since it'd be an insane amount of work, but it'd be nice). Oblivion was a great step in righting that ship from a gameplay perspective, but it lost a lot of atmosphere in favor of an overtly Lord of the Rings experience. I still liked it, but Cyrodiil transformed into fantasy-Maryland was a bit less bizarre than I was hoping.

I contended for years that Skyrim was the right balance between the two, and I stand by that. The atmosphere and world building were much improved over Oblivion, the combat and gameplay were much improved over Morrowind, and I loved it. I in no way think of it as a disappointment, save that it robbed Saints Row 3 of its prize here. :-P The problem, in my humble opinion, is that open world games have made great strides in decreasing the jank in their systems... and that means that Skyrim has some awkward aging problems of its own that are increasingly apparent. The jank that people just accepted as "part of having a game like this" doesn't have to be there, especially to the degree exhibited by Skyrim (or Fallout 4, which I thought was a massive disappointment). The shallow systems that all worked together in this game to provide great breadth but limited depth... don't have to be shallow or "meh, good enough." They can be great in their own rights. What Skyrim could get away with in 2011 is stuff that a modern open world game can't... which makes comparing the two occasionally ridiculous.

Hence why even though I love Skyrim, I view Elder Scrolls Online as the best in the series. Merchants don't have that annoying limit to what they can buy, inventory space is never a pain in the butt, the level-up system isn't as stingy with points, the combat is better and has more depth, npcs don't all have overly complicated weekly paths that break frequently enough to be irksome, merchants don't get killed by vampires or dragons and disappear from the world forever, trade caravans don't level scale poorly and die to sabretooth tiger swarms so that I can't sell stuff on the road past twenty hours into the game, etc.. All that world building, "endless concurrently running scripts that inevitably break" janky npc stuff is something I've grown to no longer value. The world in Elder Scrolls Online is a lot more static, but I find it much more enjoyable.

But, ESO is a game from 2017 that learned a lot of lessons from other MMOs and its brother Skyrim from 2011. They are an evolutionary arc, and chiding the latter because it doesn't have the stability or improvements of the former seems backwards... so I'm not going to do it any more than I already have, hehe.

@franswaa said:

Spoiler alert: You're in for some surprises these upcoming years.

@newfangled:

You took 5 years, 9 months just to say all this? Damn.

@winternet said:

:D

Breaking Bad is a better series than Game of Thrones. Does that mean we shouldn't watch GoT? We watch both.

Pizza is tastier than falafel. Does that mean we shouldn't eat falafel? We eat both.

Oblivion is better than Skyrim. And? So what? we shouldn't play Skyrim? We play both.

I could not have said it better myself. I think Skyrim was ok experience. Fun for the first few hours and the grew boring very fast. The world did not intrigue me and the story never captured me. Its very sad because Oblivion I spent 200 hours in and is one of my all time best gaming experiences.