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Posted by: mALX Nov 11 2011, 03:49 PM

The good:

The wait function - better than Oblivion's
Player has vocalizations !! May make modding the voices easier !!



The bad:

How the heck do you alter the age of your character?
Voice acting - not as good as Oblivion so far


The Ugly:

Characters are butt ugly and very unrealistic and weird movements

Posted by: King Coin Nov 11 2011, 04:01 PM

One thing to add to the bad: Massive update for PC. I'm looking at a down load that is going to take 11-12 hours in total time. Just so I can play it. It really makes me wonder if the game was even on the disc I bought.

Posted by: SubRosa Nov 11 2011, 04:17 PM

One more reason that Steam = blech

Posted by: King Coin Nov 11 2011, 04:20 PM

No kidding. I hope that's all I'm going to be adding to the bad pile.

Posted by: mALX Nov 11 2011, 04:24 PM

Good:


The map is pretty awesome

Posted by: Acadian Nov 11 2011, 04:25 PM

mALX, this is a wonderful idea for a thread! I'm anxious to see all the impressions of Skyrim through the eyes of others, as I don't even consider buying games until they have been out for at least a year or more.

Posted by: mALX Nov 11 2011, 05:59 PM

Bad:

Crime ESP - commit a crime in one town and the other towns suddenly know of it? What is that all about? Also, no matter how far away you are when you steal something - if an NPC was FACING YOUR DIRECTION when it occured they can spot you? Something pretty odd about that.

Posted by: Thomas Kaira Nov 11 2011, 06:41 PM

I know I've already harped on this but...

Bad: Poor textures.

Not just the PC version, but I have seen mainstream reviewers (GameSpot, for instance) making quips about how the textures in this game look painted-on and not believable. Considering this is 2011, and Bethesda is using the exact same texturing solutions from their 2008 Fallout 3 engine, that is a bit of a gaping hole in their "overhauled game engine." I would have thought that rewriting the render would include improving the texture-mapping, but I guess not.

Also, yes. Day-one patches should be banned. Installation is done, but now I need to wait for that stupid 200+Mb day-one patch to download before playing. Whatever happened to to those good ol' days when devs didn't rely on patches?

Posted by: mALX Nov 11 2011, 06:50 PM

I have to agree. They look fake, and are certainly not an improvement over Oblivion's in my opinion. My son disagrees with me, he thinks they are better. - both these opinions are based on the 360 version of the game, and on an older (non-HD) TV.

I thought the gambryo was a better graphics engine - and required a LOT less of a PC to run it.

Posted by: King Coin Nov 11 2011, 07:33 PM

Only 200 MB? The steam thing is making me download nearly 6G! What the hell is going on?

Posted by: McBadgere Nov 11 2011, 07:36 PM

The good...

My God it's beautiful...I love the countryside...Absolutely stunning...

The dungeons are soo pretty...Loot is good...People look generally better...

Smoother...Niice...Loving it so far...

Th'wife loves the Alchemy stuff...

The kids are having a blast on it...Absolute classic...

OOoooh, LOVE the dual fire and electric spelly thing...LOVE it!!...



The Bad...

Not a big fan of the swordy combat...In Oblivion, whether people thought it was realistic or not, if you hit someone, you hit them...Doesn't really feel like it connects somehow...Not pleased with that...Looking forward to it I was...

The Ugly...

I think they've completely arsed up the perk trees...They make no sense to me...Too complicated...Stick to the Fallout 3 version...Much easier to understand...

I've had several characters levitate above the scenery...

Whatever other people thought of Ease Burden spells...I liked them...And now I'm pretty incensed that they've taken them all out to stop spoil sports whining...Not a happy bunny...If they were there before, they should be there now...Retconning is sh*t...Utter sh*t...

Other than that...YAY!!... ...

Posted by: Thomas Kaira Nov 11 2011, 08:26 PM

KC: http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1258133-installing-from-disc-instead-of-steam/

Steam is trying to download the entire game instead of install from the disc. If you suffer from that bug, read those instructions to initiate the disc install manually.

More from me...

Ugly: Native AA is utter trash. The performance hit it brings is prohibitive.

Good: Ignoring the aforementioned texture issues, the game does look really good.

Good: People who don't care for Steam, if you launch the game directly from the EXE, Steam will be bypassed.

Posted by: King Coin Nov 11 2011, 08:30 PM

... I can't even type what I want to say.

Posted by: mALX Nov 11 2011, 08:50 PM

Can you do that initially and never have to access Steam? If so, I will unwrap my PC version right now !!! Oh TK, you ROCK if I can do this !!!

Posted by: King Coin Nov 11 2011, 08:52 PM

You gotta have a Steam account.

EDIT: And thank you TK for posting that.

Posted by: Thomas Kaira Nov 11 2011, 09:18 PM

You still need to install from Steam, but once you do, if you wish it, you never have to deal with the client again.

Posted by: mALX Nov 11 2011, 10:20 PM

Just install some kind of (few megabyte) update/patch type thing? Not anything huge? (like gigs) (Yes, thank you TK) !!

Posted by: Grits Nov 12 2011, 12:53 AM

The Ugly: My character’s silly walk.

The Bad: Still don’t like blood on the screen.

The Awesome: Everything else.

Posted by: King Coin Nov 12 2011, 01:06 AM

Blood on screen? I missed that. Or haven't fought much yet...

The walk is a little goofy I admit, but it doesn't bother me anymore.

Posted by: Thomas Kaira Nov 12 2011, 02:43 AM

The waddle-walk? Yes it is pretty silly.

Especially when going up steep inclines and half your leg clips into the ground. Fallout 3 had better terrain tracking than that.

Posted by: King Coin Nov 12 2011, 03:10 AM

Something surprising to me: The game runs better in 3rd person mode.

Posted by: Thomas Kaira Nov 12 2011, 03:16 AM

The hilarious: In Skyrim, Elephants can fly.

Posted by: Uleni Athram Nov 12 2011, 12:20 PM

And if you put a basket on NPC's heads thanks to the new physics you can... Hey guys, ever tried that trick before? Its more of an exploit than a hilarity though.


AND ONE MAJOR THING: SHEO-GODDAMN-GORATH. Guess what.

Posted by: treydog Nov 13 2011, 02:27 AM

The good- creatures (the few I have seen so far in the wild) are NOT homicidal/suicidal.

The bad- I did manage to get stuck in the terrain between Helgen and Riverwood (with no "tcl" on xBox I will have to be more careful).

The ugly- My television is TOO small (the creatures mentioned above could have been foxes, deer, or mountain lions).

Posted by: Thomas Kaira Nov 13 2011, 07:14 AM

For those of you who don't like the magic compass, if you delve into SkyrimPrefs.INI, under the Interface entry, you can find a setting called bShowCompass. Set that from 1 to 0 and the game won't display the compass anymore. That means no more map markers and no more quest markers (except on the map, of course, but I try not to use it much). If you are having trouble finding your objective, you can use Clairvoyance instead.

Posted by: Jacki Dice Nov 13 2011, 07:32 AM

The Good: Love the variety of voices, the detail in every little thing, dual wielding, the docile creatures, the quality of loot found even at low levels, the size of Skyrim.

The Bad: Dark Elves with Cockney sounding accents and the flatness of some of the voice acting, some of the text is really, really hard to read

The Ugly: The spiders. Normally, I love Bethesda's attention to detail...not so much with the giant spiders. Oh and my eye make up after I stood in the Game Stop parking lot half laughing and half sobbing while I held Skyrim

Posted by: Thomas Kaira Nov 13 2011, 07:58 AM

Bad: http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1261029-keybinding-issues-2/page__p__19185190__hl__ui+keybindings__fromsearch__1#entry19185190 I'll let the thread speak for itself, but for me, it manifests as this: the UI completely fails to take into account that I have remapped keys. I swapped the ready weapon and POV switch keys, but this also swapped the Drop and Favorite keys in the Inventory menu, and the UI failed to update the keybinds to reflect this.

I think it's safe to say now that the UI is not just garbage, it is flat-out broken.

Posted by: canis216 Nov 14 2011, 02:38 AM

Good: Creatures, dungeons, landscapes. Combat is nice now that I've got the cursor moving more freely. The smithing and cooking is a pain but in a good way, I feel. I'm liking the story so far... but I've not really had the chance to get beyond the quests of Whiterun and Riverwood.

Bad: Is there a way to do a better job with bartering? I could put the voice acting here too, but I feel like the quality of the line-reading is better than with Oblivion, if not the voices themselves. Sounds too much like Fallout 3.

Ugly: The interface. I shouldn't have to prowl the internets to make it functional. But I do.

Posted by: Kiln Nov 14 2011, 03:23 AM

Rented the game from redbox. The forced finishers are very distracting. Voice acting isnt great IMO. It is better than I expected but I dont intend to buy it. I also dislike no classes, attributes, and cheesy blood on the screen but the game is okay, not amazing or even great but it isnt horrible.

Posted by: treydog Nov 14 2011, 01:57 PM

The good- they have MAMMOTHS! Woo Hoo! Yes- I AM a geek.

The bad- a number of map symbols are not explained- which is actually probably a "compromise" for those who did not want a "Quest compass" at all. But- you know- do it or don't- but do not go halfway and stop

The ugly- (on xBox) "informational scripts" are unreadable. Things like poison effects- when someone gives you a reward- etc. They are really small- appear in the absolute top left of the screen and disappear quickly.

Posted by: SubRosa Nov 14 2011, 06:08 PM

I tried it out yesterday on a friends comp, created a character, and played through the tutorial.

Like so many others have noted, the PC user interface is flat out broken. Creating the character was a nightmare. Not just because I had to use the keyboard for the sliders, but also because half the time the keyboard itself simply would not work on the sliders, and I had to back out to a different section to the char gen process, then go back to move a slider over a tick, then back and again.

Actually playing the game with the interface like that was not quite as nightmarish, because it least the keys actually worked all the time. But it was still a pain the rear picking things up and dropping them, etc... Using magic was also a pain, because I had to unequip my sword or shield to cast a spell. In Oblivion I just had to hit the 'C' key. There is no way I am playing an entire game like that. It is like they went out of their way to make it as cumbersome and difficult to play as possible.

Then the characters themselves. Unless you are playing a Khajiit or Argonian, it is impossible to create a genuinely good-looking character. The textures they use are simply butt ugly. They make everyone look like a hardened criminal, full of saggy lines, pits, and that worn-out, dried up, weather-beaten look. It looks like their skin is old leather left out in the desert sun for a hundred years. The hair too, is awful. Does no one wash their hair in the province? It looks like there is more grease and oil in these people's locks then in Exxon.

I know it sounds like I am ranting, but the sad thing is I am not one of those people who wants a porcelian doll for a character. I could not stand the Cute Elves mod for Oblivion, because of how cutesy it made them look. So I don't want supermodels for characters. But I don't want horse's rears either.

The rest of the game was okay. The graphics are alright. It seems about the same as Fallout 3. It does run better than Oblivion, but again, so does Fallout 3. I cannot really say much about the story, since I all I did was the tutorial. What I came away with was a desire to help any dragon I see, and kill any Imperial. I think that is the opposite of what it is supposed to be. But the fact is the Imps were going to murder me for shits and giggles, and it was the dragon that saved me. So if someone wants to recruit my characters into the Blades, I am going to kill them. If the game does not let me, its not worth playing. Because if they don't want me to feel that way, they should not work so hard to insure I do. I could not play Mass Effect 2 because of that very reason.

Posted by: King Coin Nov 14 2011, 08:10 PM

LOL. I think the dragon didn't quite understand that its goal would have been fulfilled if it had shown up just a few seconds later.

Skyrim is a different game from Oblivion, You are not supposed to be able to have your arms full of weapons and cast spells too.

Character gen: still hard to get a good looking character, but still very possible.

Posted by: Thomas Kaira Nov 14 2011, 09:13 PM

Rosa:



Still, Skyrim's controls are extremely clunky for a PC game. I would say the whole spells issue is just re-learning how the equipment system works, but there is still a lot wrong with the picture. Hotkeys don't work right forcing you to use the favorites menu, the menu UI is hopelessly sloppy, the look sensitivity is tied to your framerates, you can't switch between menus without resuming normal gameplay first, you can't see what you currently have equipped without entering menu mode, switching stances, or switching perspectives, and overall you need to do more button-pushing and mouse-clicking in Skyrim to accomplish functions that were much smoother in Oblivion.

As I said before, Skyrim's UI = epic fail. Bethesda is getting ground into the dirt about it. Form comes before function here, and Bethesda sacrificed usability for pretties. And there is going to be hell to pay if they do that again.

Posted by: liliandra nadiar Nov 15 2011, 12:21 AM

Still puttering around Whiterun on my characters. Mostly due to getting a feel for what way I'm going.

So far..

Good: The land is pretty. Though the shadow renderding slow up mentioned before hurts some. While still a bit undecided on the mechanics of perks, I do like the new 'non-class' system. Also finding myself very fond of the new magic system.

Bad: UI has random moments of sluggish to non-response with the mouse. Menu 'navigating' is a pain more often then not, it's very obvious that it was designed for platforms first, PCs second.

Ugly: Most person models. As others have said, 'realism' effects on everyone makes me wonder if bathing's a fade that never really caught on in Skyrim. Movement animations for the Dragonborn is oddly clunky looking. Also deep hate for being so bloody intertwined with Steam.

Posted by: Thomas Kaira Nov 15 2011, 05:05 AM

Lili: launch Skyrim directly from TESV.EXE and Steam won't interfere. It won't even start if you closed it previously.

Also, here's a few INI tweaks and setting changes that can help fix the sluggish mouse.

First, make sure you disable 360 controller support, this has been confirmed to cause problems with the mouse responsiveness in menus.

Tweak 1: Disable mouse acceleration.

Add entry "bMouseAcceleration=0" to the Controls section of SkyrimPrefs.INI.

Tweak 2: Disable V-Sync.

Add entry "iPresentInterval=0" under Display section of Skyrim.INI (NOT SkyrimPrefs.INI).

Tweak 3: Manually set mouse X and Y sensitivity.

Add entries "fMouseHeadingYScale=0.XX" and "fMouseHeadingXScale=0.XX" to Controls section of SkyrimPrefs.INI, change the Xs to whatever value you feel best. I use 0.0700 and 0.0500, respectively.

This should fix the sluggish mouse controls, but it won't fix the framerate-sensitive look sensitivity, unfortunately.

Posted by: King Coin Nov 15 2011, 05:39 AM

Let's be honest: If you didn't have indoor plumbing, how much bathing would you do? In the winter especially.

EDIT: I know where you are coming from but it just makes sense that people would be just plain dirtier. Bathing everyday is a pretty modern development.

Posted by: liliandra nadiar Nov 15 2011, 05:55 AM

Very true, but there's a pretty common mental disconnect between 'realism' and 'pretty' in most people.

Of course, it could be worse, we could have the shiny plastic hair from Oblivion.

Posted by: mALX Nov 15 2011, 01:57 PM

I've never seen so much clipping in any game before. My character's butt is clipping in vanilla clothes, her feet are constantly inside rocks or ground - I have to agree with you TK, Bethesda took a major step backwards in quality on this. I think Toddman thought we'd be so excited over the dragons that we wouldn't care about anything else.

I do like the game, but it has some major flaws that need to be patched if that is even possible. Every bit of mountains is a clipping zone, and the whole place is mountains.

I've been bitten by or fought with every creature in the game, and finally got a disease - what, are all the animals and undead cleaner than the NPC's?

The UI is ridiculous, I have to agree on that too.

Also, as far as that huge map to explore goes - the whole northern border is an empty sea with a few mountain tops sticking up that are mostly impossible to climb. Ice floats and sea bottom - that was really a waste of the map, they could have stuck something up there and made it that hard to get to - or even thrown a chest up there to sop the people stupid enough to explore that vast chunk of water and ice. (like me).

I've been disappointed in a lot, but still like the game. So far nothing has been game ending, just irritating that they thought a few dragons would blind us to the flaws.

Posted by: Feralikazam Nov 15 2011, 04:32 PM

Holy crap malX I swear to god I made this exact same thread on the official skyrim forum. Same name exactly.

Posted by: liliandra nadiar Nov 15 2011, 05:05 PM

Couple other irritants I've been coming across/found.

Alt+tabbing, Oblivion didn't like it, but I could do one or two, Skyrim just locks on the first one.

Bodies dropping below the map on defeat, not often ture, mostly only in dungeon maps and I rarely get anything I usually want to collect, but still...

One ring only. This is really annoying. Found a second ring I wanted to use, but it wouldn't let me have two rings anymore.

Posted by: SubRosa Nov 15 2011, 05:27 PM

Actually bathing every day was standard for the Romans, and they took their bathhouses all across North Africa, Europe, and Near Asia. It was an important place for socializing, and making backroom deals. When the Vikings conquered eastern England, they were very popular with the local women, because the Norse men bathed on a regular basis. Our modern society likes to think that we are so advanced, and that everyone who came before us were primitive savages rolling around in the dirt. But that is just hubris. Our ancestors were not as stupid, or disgusting, as we like to pretend they were. For example, the Minoans had running water and flush toilets back in the Bronze Age.

Speaking purely in the ES universe, in Skyrim we start the game able to shoot fire and lightning from our fingers. But no one has a spell to wash their hair, or their body? Give me a break.



Give me the Oblivion hair any day. Even the vanilla looks much better then what Skyrim offers. Much less Corean or Rens. The Skyrim hair looks dead and lifeless, not to mention icky. I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot poleaxe.

Posted by: King Coin Nov 15 2011, 05:56 PM

Romans - basically upper class bathed everyday, but the common rabble? No. They had to work. I wonder if they were even allowed in the bathhouses.

Norse - How did they bathe everyday? Especially in the winter months? They going to haul water and heat it everyday inside? I really doubt it.

Yes there are some ancient societies that had pluming. Very limited example though. It was hardly widespread and they made their pipes out of lead.

Posted by: SubRosa Nov 15 2011, 06:41 PM

The Roman rabble did take a bath every day. It was cheap, and part of their society. Just like it is part of ours. It is not difficult to bathe. You do not require a super high technology to do it. Just water. You do not even need a tub, or a huge amount of water. A washcloth and enough water to soak it will do. http://www.gallowglass.org/jadwiga/herbs/baths.html

And even reality aside, it is ridiculous to think that in a world where it is common to shoot out fire and lighting from your hand, let alone conjure up monsters from other dimensions, turn invisible, trap souls, and so on, that no one can cast a clean up spell.

Posted by: King Coin Nov 15 2011, 07:22 PM

Neither one of us are going to budge so I will not waste any more effort arguing.

EDIT: That was more unfriendly sounding than I wanted. We'll just agree to disagree on that point.

Posted by: Helena Nov 16 2011, 01:33 AM

Thank you, SubRosa! I get so tired of posting this exact same thing in different places. People tend to think that the history of hygiene is a simple, linear progression from "really, really dirty" to "moderately dirty" to "clean". Not true at all - attitudes towards bathing and cleanliness have varied wildly over different times and places.

Of course it's true that in general, rich people would bathe more than poor people. But even in the "dirtier" times in European history - which actually applies more to the Renaissance/early industrial era, rather than medieval times - people would at least try to keep their faces and hands clean, and several pre-industrial cultures (such as the Romans) had fairly advanced plumbing systems. Here's couple more links on bathing in the Middle Ages:
http://www.godecookery.com/mtales/mtales08.htm
http://www.family-ancestry.co.uk/history/vikings/uncleanliness/

Regarding Skyrim itself: I haven't played it yet, so I can't comment. Nothing in this thread particularly surprises me, however. I'm definitely going to hold off buying it at least until mods are available to fix most of these problems.

Posted by: mALX Nov 16 2011, 02:30 AM

Here is a Good thing:

The fatigue system is more realistic. My character gets staggered in fights, is weakened acting. She pants and coughs after fights like she's really done some hard work.

The enemies are tougher, no one is dropping easily with your sword or magic - and they have equal magic powers and use them.

Posted by: Thomas Kaira Nov 16 2011, 03:30 AM

Ugly: The revamped physics have an annoying tendency of throwing objects all over the place. Interiors are also frequently filled with thunking and thudding as objects get tossed around. Again, this is performance related; this time if your framerates are too high.

Posted by: mALX Nov 16 2011, 03:45 AM

Lots of dead body "havocs" on these larger beings. I've hit one and had it fly out in the sky (and seen several similar scenes on Youtube).

I liked the sound of fire better in Oblivion. Skyrim's fires sound like dust scratching your disk. I kept pulling the disk out and blowing the player clean thinking it had sucked up some dust onto the surface or something.


*

Another Good thing - the walrus's on the ice floes - cool as heck. Also that not every animal attacks. Some avoid you (like foxes, deer, rabbits) - and some will let you pass by but get threatening if you hang around too close - like the mammoths or the walrus's.

Posted by: McBadgere Nov 16 2011, 05:46 AM

Markath is bugged to hell...

I live there...Soooo many bugs though...

More noticable than New Vegas...



I hate the story...



And please Bethesda, stop contradicting everything...

Stupid game...I'm completely addicted...

I like it...I think...But I don't love it...And I probably never will...

Posted by: Kiln Nov 16 2011, 07:39 AM

You thought it was hard to organize your things in Oblivion? Wait until you try in Skyrim...sit two things on a plate and watch one fly off like a fat kid just hopped on the freaking seesaw.

The one improvement I can see housing and organizing wise is that there are automatic weapon displays, auto organize book shelves, and mannequins to show off your stuff.

Actually hand placing things in this game is like pulling teeth, worse than Oblivion.

Also, I hate the amount of unusable containers in this game.

Posted by: mALX Nov 16 2011, 07:43 AM

That bothers me too, because I feel the need to check each one and "see" if it is a real container or just a filler for display.

Posted by: Kiln Nov 16 2011, 08:08 AM

Me too and sadly a large portion of them are not actual containers. It bugs the crap out of me. There are also alot more environment objects that can't be interacted with this time around.

Posted by: mALX Nov 16 2011, 04:48 PM

Like shooter games. The first time I saw Halo I was all excited about the number of crates hanging around till I found out they were just display items, lol.

Posted by: Fuzzy Knight Nov 16 2011, 05:46 PM

Been playing Skyrim way too much and I like it a lot although there are several minor stuff that I don't like at all;

- The menu and interface, although not a minor issue but a big one, is pretty horrible - you can clearly see it's meant for consoles and not PC.
- The talent trees are filled with useless and uninteresting talents. They should have removed talents like Armsman for example which just increases your damage and just let stuff like that scale with your skills instead of implementing them as talents.
- Wish more objects and light sources projected shadows. The spell Candlelight as a light source looks great on the walls and other surfaces, but it doesn't add a shadow to my character. Some of the light in this game is great but it just seems that some light sources don't give off shadows sort of while others do. Think the whole physics engine could've been better.
- Finishers are cool and I don't mind that much but would've liked it better if it didn't appear as a cut scene and that you could finish people off from a first-person view or third-person view for a bit smoother combat.
- People also mentioned environment clipping and I have to agree on that. Think it's a step back when my character stands above rocks or ankle-deep on solid surfaces.
- And then there's the voice acting, which is great sometimes but the dialect just sounds weird, especially for the guards.
- I also think that some of the player and NPC interactions could use a bit of work when you take on misc. quests and such. At least in certain quests the NPC doesn't really ask for anything and the character is like "Oh, I'll get that for you. I have no problem venturing into a ancient catacomb filled with hordes of Draugr and unknown dangers to get your left sock back." If more of the quests/NPCs tried to involve the character into getting him interested and giving him/her a reason for doing the quest.
- Better view distance and long-range graphics. I run this game with everything on full and although it looks amazing it bothers me a bit that especially trees look really poor in the distance.

Hmm, other than that I can't think of much else but I'm bound to run into more sooner or later.

I pretty much love everything else. The scenery is great and they've managed to add a lot of diversity to the landscape and not just snow everywhere. I like the combat, stamina and how casting works etc. and that every dungeon is uniquely designed - although catacombs may look the same they're all different and that's really something I appreciate especially after playing games like DA2. I also think this has the best character creation menu so far. I'm like level 30 now and still haven't finished Act I on the MQ yet so looking forward to seeing how that story develops.

Posted by: Thomas Kaira Nov 16 2011, 08:26 PM

Regarding finishers: some are first-person and some are third-person. Seems to me Beth couldn't decide which they wanted, so they just did both. I don't really like that, I'd prefer them to be one or the other. And I actually do like the finishers, but I am going to mod at least one set out, likely the third-person restricted finishers while leaving in the first-person ones. Assassinations are the exception, however. If there is a way, I will leave the assassination animations alone. Kills to be savored should be savored, after all.

I agree about the guards, they sound really canned with that obviously fake accent. I'd have preferred it if good ol' Wes did them all again this time, he did a good job with the guard voicing in Oblivion.

Posted by: liliandra nadiar Nov 17 2011, 12:33 AM

Also wish they had finishers for archery/magic. Well, somewhat anyways. The cutscene sometimes jars one out of a rythem if it's an intense fight. Though when you can kill an opponet in one (power) attack and you get a finisher each time it deffinatly has a feel of 'Oh yeah, I'm a baaad mutha F****'.

Posted by: Fuzzy Knight Nov 17 2011, 09:01 PM

Come across a few things you can edit in the skyrimprefs.ini file to get sharper shadows and also more shadows for trees and the landscape. Going to test changing the FoV as well to 90-95 to fit my monitor and see how it looks.

Anyone tried out some mods yet? Some improvement mods have been released to make faces a bit smoother and more detailed for example, need to check those out.

Posted by: Thomas Kaira Nov 18 2011, 04:32 AM

Bad: In Skyrim, horses are aggressive. They literally engage other enemies in combat. That is just wrong. That is so incredibly wrong. And this is going to raise my number of horse-deaths to extraordinary levels, resulting in a huge waste of my money. I do not want to have to replace my horse every other play session because my horse reacted to combat exactly the opposite of how he should have.

Horses are passive animals whose first response to battle is to FLEE. Horses do not fight unless cornered, ever, ever, EVER. They will kick you if you kick them, but they NEVER start the kicking unless they have absolutely no other choice. If they smell blood being spilled, their first instinct is to run, not to rush in and join the frenzy.

It gets me so riled up every time I get into a tussle with Bandits and it becomes a battle to preserve the life of my suicidal mount. Why do they even do this? Why can't we just have the NPCs leave the horses be during combat? This just makes the whole problem Oblivion had with horses dying in combat even worse, because now the horses actively seek death and I am literally forced to console-disable them every single battle because of how badly it exacerbates that problem, and because such behavior is so incredibly unnatural and wrong for them.

Not happy. Not at all.

/rant

(Really needed to get that off my chest)

Posted by: Jacki Dice Nov 19 2011, 10:11 PM

Good- I like these random encounters

Bad- Wolves attacking me in the middle of my conversation so I have to stop talking so I don't get killed (and of course the person runs away) so I have no idea WTF is going on!

Also bad- Wolves are officially the cliffracers of Skyrim. I can't go more than ten seconds without "AWOOOOOO!!!" and there's a small pack of the disease ridden things.

Posted by: McBadgere Nov 19 2011, 11:13 PM

My bookcases keep disappearing!!!... ...

I own the Markath house, (A Knight of the Nine fan owning Vlindrel hall? Whatever next?... ) Markath being the most bugged city ever - I think - Aaamywho, twice now I've come to load up having saved last in my house and the bookcase, shelves on the other side of the room and the Mannequin have all disappeared...

If I load up the autosave from when I came into the house, they're all still there...But it scared the hell out of me the first time it happened!... ...

Oh, and presumably you should be able to display armour on that mannequin...Nope, it just goes invisible...*Sigh*...

Yeeesss...I started again...With my Argonian - J'Drell...He's level 8 in 3 hours...The kids hate me... ...I think J'Drell is just too cool though personally... ...

Posted by: liliandra nadiar Nov 21 2011, 11:30 PM

Not quite a bad, or an ugly but definatly not a good. More an oddity.

Running with my new one-handed warrior and many of the fatalities seemed wierd. Some started then got interrupted by another one, I think there was at least two cases my opponet was starting a cut scene before I countered with mine. :blinks: Never noticed this on my two-hander so I'm thinking it's limited to one handed weapons paired with a shield. It makes for some dizzying combat moments.

Posted by: Thomas Kaira Nov 22 2011, 05:19 AM

Ugly: A forced update was released today with no other purpose but to add Steam encryption to TESV.exe.

This has caused the Large Address Awareness patch for the game (where you flip a Boolean flag in the EXE to allow the game to use the maximum amount of RAM it is capable of using, 4Gb in Skyrim's case, being a 32bit EXE). This LAA patch was alleviating a lot of stability problems for people and overall improving the game's performance because it was no longer hobbled by the 2Gb RAM limit. But now that Steam encryption has been added, making the LAA tweak will cause Steam to refuse to load the game.

Basically, this is Valve spitting in everyone's faces, as they have now proved to us that DRM takes precedence over a good gaming experience in their eyes.

EDIT: Since this update has arrived, a number of people have developed tools that allow for the LAA patch to be used through Steam. Essentially, it involves flipping the flag AFTER Steam has validated the EXE. http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1013, as it was developed by the same person who made the LAA tool for Fallout: New Vegas.

Posted by: Feralikazam Nov 22 2011, 06:13 AM

Guys keep in mind I'm not on PC.

The good: Dwemer ruins are AWESOME!

You don't have to shoot an arrow at the ground and pick it up you just sheathe your bow.

There's actually a bit of difficulty. I died 7 times within the first hour and a half of playing.

Dragon shouts are fun.

You can now activate things like bookshelves and weapon racks/plaques and put stuff on them.

The bad: Horses are terribly slow even though the animations have been improved. It seems like you run just as fast as the horse and the horses have crappy stamina, meaning they can't run for long.

Some of the AI could use some tweaking.

Lots of clipping.

Forced 3rd person finishers.

The ugly: Fur Bracers. Blegh!

Posted by: McBadgere Nov 22 2011, 06:17 AM

Didn't know that...Cheers... ...



I laughed when my Argonian J'Drell got killed in Helgen 'cause he was watching the Dragon before he went into the keep with Ragulf or whoever it is...It landed, grabbed him and threw him in the air...Oh how we all giggled at that...

Posted by: Feralikazam Nov 22 2011, 11:29 PM

Also another good thing: The Radiant Story is quite impressive. I've had thieves run out of bars, they stole candle sticks, gems, basicly petty things someone would fence. Another time I was fighting wolves and a stray dog came up and we became companions But then a Frost Dragon showed up I told my new friend to wait..but the dragon killed me.

Posted by: Jacki Dice Nov 23 2011, 05:28 AM

I wouldn't say the Bad exactly but...:

A few days after I looted an alchemist's shop of everything of value, I came to town greeted by three hired thugs. Well, not only did the guards just stand there, but I found out that they were sent by the guy I looted. Well, that would be fine and kinda cool and all except for the fact that I hadn't been caught stealing. So how would he know it was me, especially living in Riften, home of the Thieves Guild?

The good: Wrothken was playing my character and noticed that if you use your fire spell on top of water, it boils That's pretty cool!

Posted by: Thomas Kaira Nov 27 2011, 04:27 AM

Ugly: it appears Skyrim's archery has an "arc compensation" auto-aim mechanic in place, which basically means that wherever you are aiming up to a certain specified distance, the game will automatically compensate for the arrow's flight arc to always put the arrow dead-center where you aimed your crosshair. There's why I have been so inaccurate in this game thus far... the game was interfering with my shots by trying to baby me with excessive auto-aim that I was not used to and I don't even need.

If you don't like this mechanic and wish to disable it, add these two lines to your Skyrim.INI under [Combat]:

f1PArrowTiltUpAngle=0.0
f3PArrowTiltUpAngle=0.0

Posted by: SubRosa Nov 27 2011, 05:00 AM

That explains why I could not hit a thing when I tried using a bow in the tutorial!

Posted by: McBadgere Nov 27 2011, 07:30 AM

Ooooh... ...That explains that then...It was really starting to piss me off...I loved accounting for distance in Oblivion...The kids thought it was brilliant what I could hit from the other side of a cave and not be discovered...Tried it again with this one...Nope...You'se crap you is...

Cheers for that...

Posted by: mALX Nov 27 2011, 08:43 PM

That explains why I couldn't hit anything with a bow in either game!

Posted by: Grits Nov 28 2011, 02:49 PM

The Ugly: I played around with a Bosmer archer this weekend. I’m sure this can be fixed on the PC, but she was taller than the Nord boys on the console. Yikes.

Posted by: mALX Nov 28 2011, 03:16 PM

I had that trouble with Maxical in Oblivion. Even at 90% she was equal height with most males. If I didn't adjust it she was towering over them. And she was supposed to be shorter than the average Khajiit, lol.

In Skyrim - one of the first things I did was make Maxical 95%. So far I've had no problems with this. I got some screens of her ogling Quaranir and she is shorter than him. (haven't checked them out yet, if they are good I'll post them).

I plan to remove his clothing and check out the goods what he looks like under that robe before deciding to risk messing up my College questline - but so far Maxical is all for it if we can code him into marriage. We'll see how she feels about that after seeing him in his diaper loincloth.

Posted by: Grits Nov 28 2011, 04:16 PM

OMG, I hurt myself laughing. No mystery package for Maxical!

Posted by: King Coin Nov 28 2011, 04:21 PM

I'll be adding that. The compensation doesn't even seem to work all the time either. There are times where I have had to aim above the target to hit it, and other times where I have to aim right at it. It's made archery frustrating at long range.

Posted by: mALX Nov 28 2011, 05:33 PM

Lol, well...his robe is clean, just wanted to make sure his flesh was too. I mean - the robe totally obscures everything but his nose and his fingertips.

Posted by: liliandra nadiar Nov 28 2011, 05:51 PM

Let me guess, you found Ange and took her Archery challenge? I lost nearly all the 'practice arrows' trying to get target four before realizing I wasn't getting auto corrected.

Posted by: mALX Dec 1 2011, 03:24 PM

The Bad:

The Player character has no head tracking. Makes it hard to get a decent screenshot if they won't even look at the person next to them, feels awkward talking to someone while looking away from them.

Also, the sneak appears to be miscalculated somewhere. When you finally reach 100 and get all those sneak perks - your sneak suddenly seems to be set at zero.

Posted by: Fuzzy Knight Dec 3 2011, 02:06 AM

Bad:

Decided to make a Rogue/Hunter-like character (to test out stealth, archery and all that) and since Orcs look so great in Skyrim I went with an Orc female, and is there one thing I hate when it comes to sheathed weapons it's when the weapon(s) isn't properly attached to the body. With Orc female, since their back has such a sway I guess, the bow and the quiver isn't attached anywhere close to their back. Shouldn't be that hard to fix once CK is out though but it looks really dumb at the moment.

Posted by: McBadgere Dec 3 2011, 06:22 AM

Yesterday I had the levitating mammoth, the backwards flying dragon (the kids thought it was hilarious ) and the spinning around glitch...Stood in one place and just kept spinning until it decided to stop...*Shrug*...

On the plus side, now I'm running everywhere, the place really is BEAUTIFUL...

Posted by: mALX Dec 3 2011, 03:17 PM

It really is, even with the bad graphics it is beautiful.

I've had Maxical exploring the land first before inciting any dragon activity (and sneaking a lot, trying to keep from fighting creatures as much as possible). She has not even ridden a horse yet, just walking everywhere and getting the feel of things in Skyrim.

She has cleared a few dungeons and taken on a few side quests, just not advanced the main quest at all.

Posted by: Fuzzy Knight Dec 7 2011, 11:32 PM

Been testing out some Archery now and I can't say I like it that much, mostly because of the arc of the arrow, both with and without adjustments and that it seems like the arrow disappears once you try hitting stuff from over 200 feet away.
Now, I've managed to kill a bandit from around 190-200 feet with a shot straight to the neck once (tested out with a quick save and it took like 2 tries) but decided to look into the whole thing today. Had some good target practice against outside Whiterun where I managed to bunch together two giants and a mammoth and fired over one hundred arrows from everywhere between 100 and 200 feet. At around "max" distance, nothing hit at all - which really surprised me. As the NPCs reacted as if the arrow went either over them or hit the ground in front of them, but nothing in between. Seriously looked like it went straight through.
Maybe it's just my aim that sucks or I still haven't gotten used to this engine, but it just feels so unnatural and weird at long range. I've played loads of BF2 Bad Company and BF3 as a sniper/recon so I'm pretty familiar to compensate for bullet-drop/gravity and stuff, but that's a totally different, and better engine.

Posted by: liliandra nadiar Dec 8 2011, 12:08 AM

I've had the same thing happen on my archer. She was at concideribly closer range. 10-20 feet and I saw the arrows pass through the Dragonpriest and impact behind him. It happened several times since then as well on differing targets at varied distances. Distances I know I've hit at before. Though I have no proof, I'm thinking there was another 'patch' in the last few weeks or it was something else 1.2 caused.

Posted by: Fuzzy Knight Dec 8 2011, 12:36 AM

Hmm, that could be. I think I got my long-range bandit kill before 1.2 although I must admit I don't really remember.

Posted by: Thomas Kaira Dec 8 2011, 08:15 AM

It seems Skyrim is rather forceful about you joining the College of Winterhold. In order to complete the Main Quest, for instance, you need to join the College, and there is also a major side-quest in the game that requires College membership to complete. Kinda puts a damper on the roleplaying when you are trying to do certain quests a certain way and then you are forced outside of your character's expertise just to continue things. My Bosmer is an archer, always will be. He rarely uses magic, most of the time Alchemy suits his needs just fine. But so far, I count two quests (one Main, one Side) that forced membership to the College of Winterhold on me. And now that the quest has kicked into gear, it just seems wrong to ignore it.

But I don't care. I've got what I wanted, so the College can go spin. My Guild is the Thieves Guild, and I have no intention of being a member of any other any longer than absolutely necessary to suit my needs.

Posted by: Fuzzy Knight Dec 8 2011, 02:07 PM

Indeed. This is something I found very disappointing with Skyrim actually, not only having certain things forced on you but the fact that there's very few choices in this game to really define your characters personality. Wish there was more depth to this game.

Edit: Finally got the arrow adjustments in the .ini file to work and after clearing out the bandits in the fort outside Whiterun I tested a bit with the training dummies they have on the walls. Things got a lot easier now with a more natural arrow arc and once I got "calibrated" I didn't have too much difficulties hitting static targets at what I'd say is about 300 feet. Why Bethesda even implemented that "arc compensation" as you called it Thomas is beyond me.

Posted by: Thomas Kaira Dec 8 2011, 07:50 PM

It's not all, actually. Even without the arc compensation, there's still a sort of target tracking auto-aim in play, too, because I have noticed my arrows flying off-crosshair trying to hit a target I wasn't actually aiming for.

Why Bethesda didn't give the PC users options to remove auto aim I will never know. We use more precise controls than the consoles, we don't need auto-aim. The above will likely need mods to fix.

Posted by: Jacki Dice Dec 9 2011, 03:01 AM

The Creepy: Post-Daedric quest glitch? (Location Spoiler!)



And about the archery thing... I was going to test out an archer-like character, but I can't do it. Even though I never played an archer ever, it just aimed wrong for me. :/

Posted by: McBadgere Dec 9 2011, 06:59 AM

Anyone tried the Civil War quests yet?...My son was going well with them, but he tried to deliver a message to Whiterun, and he found he couldn't because you had to tell the Jarl about the Dragon first, which - presumably - sets off the entire MQ...He didn't want to do that, and he got upset about it...

Like you said, surely we can decide when or if we want to do something...Does make it seem more like a game than Oblivion did...You know what I mean?...Oblivion you could choose when to do the MQ...Skyrim forces the choice...

Posted by: Thomas Kaira Dec 9 2011, 11:24 AM

http://i.imgur.com/qDQ7Z.jpg

I thought we went over this twelve gazillion times. Random road encounters in uber-gear = crappy leveling.

Posted by: Grits Dec 9 2011, 12:46 PM

I put a thread in the brand new section about postponing the MQ and still having access to Whiterun, but it's just my experience. Hopefully some others will lend their advice.

And, new section! Woo hoo!

Posted by: mALX Dec 9 2011, 01:28 PM

Tell your son that the dragons are not set off till you go to Bleak Falls Barrow. I also had to tell the Jarl of Whiterun about the dragons - and he immediately gives you the mission to go to Bleak Falls Barrow.

Tell your son to go into his quests and unclick that Bleak Falls Barrow quest as the active quest. Click on any other quest to set them as active - then just stay away from Bleak Falls Barrow.

I did that (thanks to King Coin's warning about it) and there has not been a single dragon in my game yet.

Recently I "discovered" Bleak Falls Barrow by accident - scared me to death! I didn't go inside - in fact I ran away from it like a banshee immediately after I realized what it was. I was debating reloading a previous save.

If I saw a dragon I was going to load a previous save, but thank goodness it didn't trigger the dragons. Going inside Bleak Falls Barrow triggers the dragons - but to be on the safe side I wouldn't even go near it if I was him.

Posted by: McBadgere Dec 10 2011, 05:35 AM

Ah...Yes, trouble is...All of us have been through BFB and got the Dragonstone..."Daddy looked cool doing it so so shall we!!"... ...

Oh wait, so long as he avoids the Wizard he might be fine...I'll see what he can do...

Cheers for that though... ...



Edit!!!...Ooooh the wife found something really funny...And it's something that only the wife would find... ...She married Farkus of the Companions...He's now following her...Well, you would... ...Aaamywho...She was sneaking one day and she saw that he was too...So - as you do - she went to kiss him...*Shrug*...Trouble is, she went right through his face so she could see out the back of him...Talk about getting into his head!!...It's pretty horrible, 'cause the mouth is seperate too...So you get face, then mouth/teeth, then the back of his brainpan/hair and out the other side...Eww!!!... ...

Posted by: mALX Dec 10 2011, 04:30 PM

Knowing any answer I give would be rife with dherty in-you-end-oh; I refuse to comment this !!!

Posted by: Black Hand Dec 11 2011, 09:52 AM

Played a little Skyrim recently.

The Good:

*A return of the True Lore.. I've said it many a-times, OB wasn't loreful....Skyrim is.

*Voice Acting The acknowledgment that I'm nude is back! Polar Bear Club in this case. Mostly good, there is some bad...

*Character LooksI'm actually impressed with the Dunmer in this one! The High Elves are...evil looking...and the Bosmer don't suck anymore...though they are offputting.

*AI Much improved.

*Smithing Well, it gets a little TOO reliant there in the end, but at last we have a solution to the Bandits richer than most Nobleman.

*Daedric Quests Niiiiiiicccceeeelly Done! It even hit me in some unexpected ways there.

Quest Writing Well done!

The Bad

*Holy Cut Content Batman!! I can achieve leadership of a Guild in under Five Quests? Wow!

*Wheres my Attributes? My stamina doesn't determine my Carrying Capacity!!!

*Perks? Really? If you're going to rip off your own game Bethesda, at least throw in a Barber!!

*Main Quest....really? I mean really? I can beat the whole game at level seven, with some shouting, and what has to be one of worst ending sequences I've experienced...the 10% of the Terrible voice acting is here...and the most useless 'Shout' given is the trick too defeating Alduin?...its literally better to never start the main quest.....

*The Dark Brotherhood.....Lucien just went from Epic to Epic-ally Annoying..

The Ugly

*With a certain pair of gloves, and one perk, Stealth has officially surpassed Mages in the Overpowered department...

*Released in Tradition as buggy as all hell. A la Daggerfall.

Overall: I actually like Skyrim, the races are well done, the Questing and the Voice-acting was better this time around, I can actually immerse myself in the game, despite the fact that its a dumbed down version of Oblivion, I guess you are sort of left with the challenge of deciding what perks to take.

*The fact that I read about the Thu'um almost ten years ago, and came across it in this game was actually...a pleasant surprise.

So basically, its okay...all the Dragons get a little annoying after a while...

*Disclaimer: This was made in the spirit of a Sports Talk Radio DJ, all is just opinion and a great deal is meant for lols.

EDIT- Toned the apparent meaness down a bit from the next comment from a well written gentleman. I realize that if we were sitting around a table talking, my tones and inflections would not come across as mean as text on a screen does, and reading over I can see where he was coming from.

Oblivion was still bad though

Posted by: McBadgere Dec 11 2011, 05:28 PM

Right, I'm getting that you don't like Oblivion, but please stop shouting opinion out as fact...

Have you played Brink fercryingoutloud?...Now there's an awful game...Aaand yet I've read reviews that say it's brilliant...

Oblivion is still one of the top 10 must have X-Box games...

And I dare say most of the people here have spent a goodly amount of time playing a game with an amount of cr*pness that seems to have passed us all by...

Aaand indeed the four of us in this house have nearly a 1000 hours between us playing a game that we thought was brilliant...

Oh, and I personally think that the fact that you can't tell the Daedric Princes to C*CK OFF!! in any of the quests is stupid...And I almost cried with joy when I discovered that you can kill the Dark Brotherhood from the off...Oh hell yeah...

It's just an opinion...

I was happy to read what you said...Then I got bored with the Oblivion hate...I loved it...So basically I'm pretty sure you insulted my taste... ...

Posted by: Black Hand Dec 11 2011, 07:14 PM

Sorry I should have added the disclaimer prior: I too individually have over 1000 hours in OB. I don't necessarily have as much hate for it as is presented, though I do have strong opinions over the non-Jungleness of Cyrodiil and the Mudcrab speech.

Even Morrowind could present a similar conundrum to those who loved Arena. And while it isn't fair to compare one game to another, I had just gotten off a Zero Punctuation binge, and a partner listening to Sports Talk radio for 12 hours.

I actually liked the elimination thingy in it too. And in some of the quests you actually can tell the Princes to shove off.

And I've never put down another persons love of Oblivion, if they enjoy it, I have no place to tell them otherwise, and it has spawned some awesome fanfic, so it can't be all bad.

Sooo if I insulted anyone, sorry, that wasn't the intention, it was just for laughs and I hope folks here have enough sense of humor to see it for what it is.

Posted by: McBadgere Dec 11 2011, 10:08 PM

Fair dues and fair enough... ...Now I know... ...

Edit....Zero Punctuation Binge...Qu'est ce?...

And cheers for the thing about the Deadric shove off...I have tried to avoid as many as poss...And the ones I did, or re-loaded the earlier save I couldn't get out of...

Manly hugs?... ...

Posted by: Black Hand Dec 12 2011, 04:30 AM

Bring it in! *hugs* And there's the love!

Oh and Zero Punctuation is this: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation

Posted by: King Coin Dec 12 2011, 05:07 AM

He was uncharacteristically kind to Skyrim.

and the end: LOL

Posted by: McBadgere Dec 12 2011, 07:07 AM

I am lolling my F**king ar$e off...Oh thank you for that... ...

Posted by: Nemetor Jan 4 2012, 04:22 AM

The good:

Scenery is amazing, nobody can deny that they haven't felt awe-inspired at some point whilst travelling through the holds.

The score is equally as impressive.

The kill animations, some are verrrrryyy cool. Just did one earlier where a Draugr came out of a coffin, I spin-sliced him and he fell back in it.

The whole Nordic atmosphere. Liking it a lot, just seems like they've put a lot more effort into the culture of Skyrim than they did with Oblivion.

The Bad:

Character creation - been mentioned before but I mean seriously why do all my characters end up looking like William Wallace. I think a second chance to customise your character a last time before you start playing is a must.

The Ugly:

Still get the repetitive npc chatter. If I hear Nazeem ask me if I've been to the cloud district one more time I swear to god...

Arrows in the face.

No dual-wield blocking.

Posted by: mALX Jan 5 2012, 02:49 AM

I noticed that too, didn't know how it could be done either but it was why I ended up going one-handed.

Posted by: McBadgere Jan 29 2012, 08:13 PM

Still freezing...Actually, I've had more crashes in the last two days than I did with Wulff's game...

Still silly writing...

Bizzare speech ar$e-ups...

I'm pretty sure there was a quest foul-up but I think that one of the crashes was the result of it, so the quest finished properly on the reload...

On the plus side though...

I'm a lot more accepting of it this time...I know what faults it's got, so I'm playing around them...No Companions (so no werewolf and thus sleep benefits)...No marrying...No MQ...Possibly no house, but I really like the Markath one ...I'm going to see if it was the Forsworn Conspiracy quest that lets loose the raide...ummm...Forsworn around the place...'Cause all I've found so far are Bandits, and I'm happy about that...*Does dance*...

Yes, more accepting... ...

Posted by: SubRosa Jan 29 2012, 11:01 PM

I figured out how to get the hotkeys working.

Favorite your items or spells as usual. If you remapped the change view key (from 1st to 3rd person), you have to use that key to favorite things, not what it says in the game).

Open up your Favorites list. (the default key is Q)
Select the item you want.
Press the hotkey number you want associated with it. You will see the number appear beside the item name.
Done.

Posted by: King Coin Jan 30 2012, 02:40 AM

Then that's why I've never figured out the hotkeys, I've basically ignored that favorites system.

Posted by: mALX Jan 30 2012, 08:14 AM

Thank you, Thank you !! I didn't know how to get them working !!

Posted by: SubRosa Jan 30 2012, 09:40 PM

I have found that the combination of the working hotkeys and SkyUI makes most the interface workable.

However, the Perk selection is still a nightmare. Someone needs to do away with that whole constellation business and just give us a simple list view like in FO3, or a list with an expanding tree just like in Windows Explorer. It could start with just the skill names on the left, then you click on them and it spits out the perks in ever expanding trees, in order that you have to take them.

Posted by: Fawkes Jan 30 2012, 10:01 PM

I'm on a Ps3 and its rather hard to chose the perks :/, You push the analog in one direction it goes to another direction, after a couple of minutes I can finally pick my perk

Posted by: SubRosa Jan 30 2012, 11:43 PM

It is the same way with the mouse on the PC. Whenever I try to zoom in on one skill tree, the darn thing just spins one way and then the other. It is a serious pain in the bollocks.

Posted by: mALX Jan 31 2012, 04:57 AM

That whole skill tree screen seemed like a juvenile and pedestrian addition one would not expect in a TES game, whose fan base is one of the (if not the) most intelligent in the industry.

Posted by: SubRosa Jan 31 2012, 11:40 PM

So is it normal for Khajiit to be http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v90/subrosa_florens/Skyrim/Skyrim008.jpg

Posted by: King Coin Feb 1 2012, 12:38 AM

Looks like the AA issues I was having. Got yourself an ATI card? Make sure Adaptive Multi Sample is off in Anti-Aliasing Mode.

Either put it at multi-sample or super sample.

Posted by: Fawkes Feb 1 2012, 12:39 AM

As normal as the 2-3fps on the Ps3


Yes, I'm grumpy

Posted by: SubRosa Feb 1 2012, 01:08 AM

I have an Nvidia card. It just started doing this all of a sudden earlier today. I do have my AA Trasnsparencey set to multisampling. I try supersampling instead.

Posted by: SubRosa Feb 3 2012, 01:53 AM

A warning about the 1.4 patch. Since upgrading today I have twice had lockups in the transition screens when going from one zone to another. I am going back to 1.3, which has never locked up or CTD'd on me. If you keep 1.4. I suggest saving every time you enter or leave a building...

Posted by: Darkness Eternal Feb 8 2012, 01:50 AM

The good: Some gameplay. Story. Some lore is good.

The bad: Faction quests are short. And some lore had been butchered for the sake of gameplay. And the removal of attributes.

Posted by: Fawkes Feb 8 2012, 02:37 AM

The Good: Gameplay, in Oblivion everything felt like it was on ice, Skyrim seems to have more weight to everything. Part of the character creation, finally I can make men look like manly men , The same sex marriages! Overall the whole game allows my creativity for Roleplaying to explode like crazy, I can create many new Rping types that I could not have done in Oblivion.
I love the voices, especially the best voices, and ESPECIALLY the male argonian voice.
Oh and the spells make playing a mage very fun.



The Bad: The other part of the character creation, It's rather hard to see the eye color even on a HD tv, they could have let us zoom in at least! What no option to change the character before we exit the tutorial cave?!
Also all the Nord/Imperial/breton Females look the same.
It feels like the game is trying to force me to be the dragonborn and that sucks. :/
The lack of a spell creation system.

The Ugly: The fact that I'm on a Ps3, the fact that they assured us that they will be the same, yet when we got the game it was freaking broken, then the guy from FONV had the nerve to say that it was the Ps3's fault, that really struck a nerve because Oblivion was ported by another company and it worked fine, hardly any noticeable lag, It has never crashed on me once, ect ect.
I wanted to go up to the guy and tell him, Just because you suck at coding does not mean it's the systems fault, followed by a couple of hits with a chair.

Posted by: King Coin Feb 8 2012, 02:45 AM

I've heard there is a way to zoom using a controller, it involves pushing one of the thumb sticks in while manipulating another. Try experimenting.

Posted by: Fawkes Feb 8 2012, 02:57 AM

You can do that during character creation? I know you can do that when your already out and stuff.

I'll check later, I'm to sleepy right now t-t

Posted by: King Coin Feb 8 2012, 03:09 AM

I misread, didn't see that you were talking specifically about character creation. I don't think you can.

Posted by: SubRosa Feb 8 2012, 04:27 AM

I am not sure if this was mentioned before. I just found out the other night. Magicka only regenerates at 33% the normal rate while in combat, and none at all while using spells. In Oblivion the latter would not have been a big deal, since it only took a second to cast a spell. But Skyrim has many spells that you have to keep the button pushed, like the starting healing and flames spells. It makes the ward spells useless, as using one for just a few seconds completely drains your magicka, and you cannot get any of it back.

So if your pure mages are getting their butts kicked, now you know why. One of the first things I did with the Creation Kit was make a small mod that makes magicka regenerate how it should, at the full rate all the time.

Posted by: Lady Saga Feb 28 2012, 01:56 AM

The Good: too much stuff to mention. I don't have time to type it all right now.

The Bad: I miss all the numbers! The Attributes system. I grew up with numbers and stats, I'm old-fashioned in this regard and proud of it.

Skyrim's Favorite's system is also bad, in comparison with Oblivion's hotkeys. I only get 2 hotkeys in Skyrim, but had 8 in Oblivion. Therefore, gaming in Skyrim is unfortunately clunky, especially if I need to pull up a lot of spells (or whatever is Favorited). One thing Oblivion has over Skyrim is that gameplay is interrupted less often since 8 hotkeys can be assigned and used at will.

The Ugly: pretty much everyone in Skyrim is rather ugly. And I'm finding it difficult to make good-looking females especially.

Males, however? It's okay if they're ugly! Most of the men in Skyrim look like actual men. Cyrodiil's men (with their lack of facial hair) are more doll-like

Posted by: SubRosa Feb 28 2012, 02:45 AM

You can have 8 hotkeys. I do. I could not play this game without them. Here is how:

Favorite your items or spells as usual. If you remapped the change view key (from 1st to 3rd person), you have to use that key to favorite things, not what it says in the game).

Open up your Favorites list. (the default key is Q)
Select the item you want.
Press the hotkey number you want associated with it. You will see the number appear beside the item name.
Done.

Posted by: King Coin Feb 28 2012, 03:39 AM

Renee is on the PS3.

Posted by: SubRosa Feb 28 2012, 03:48 AM

I thought it worked the same on all platforms?

Posted by: King Coin Feb 28 2012, 04:02 AM

Console players are stuck with a meager 2 hotkeys + favorite system.

Posted by: SubRosa Feb 28 2012, 04:48 AM

Wow, that bites.

Posted by: Grits Feb 28 2012, 05:03 AM

Indeed.

Posted by: McBadgere Feb 28 2012, 05:16 AM

I just use the favourite system, I never knew there were hotkeys on the PS3... ...Blimey...

Posted by: Lady Saga Feb 28 2012, 05:18 PM

Yea, there are. Left and right, that's all we get. There are basically 4 extra positions which go unused on the PS3's controller, and (I'm assuming) Xbox's controller as well.

Depending on the character, I'll hotkey what I consider the most important stuff. Crystal Beth's left is her Fire spell, and right is healing. Healing (Or healing potions) is always right with all my characters, in Sky and Oblivion. That right hotkey has saved my DiD characters more times than Donald Trump has fired interns. Lol.

Posted by: SubRosa Feb 28 2012, 08:21 PM

Is it like that in Oblivion too? I always thought the consoles had the same number of hotkeys as the computer versions.

Posted by: King Coin Feb 28 2012, 08:25 PM

Oblivion was like Fallout 3 with hotkeys. You had 8 of them corresponding to directional arrows below/above the left thumbstick.

Posted by: SubRosa Feb 28 2012, 11:31 PM

So they had 8, and purposely chose to reduce it to 2 for consoles? Wow, talk about being A-holes.

Posted by: King Coin Feb 28 2012, 11:43 PM

They should have done it like Fallout New Vegas. There were 7 hotkeys and then 'up' had a special function. 'Up' should have been favorites and the other 7 should have been hotkeys.

Posted by: Lady Saga Feb 29 2012, 11:47 PM

It's one of the main things I dislike about Skyrim. Lack of spellcreating? I can live with that. there are lots of things like this that I'm not missing in Skyrim because I can roleplay around them, or I simply never used them much in the first place.

But less hotkeys? That's a functional issue, affecting the actual mechanics of gameplay. It blows not having extra hotkeys, makes gameplay clunkier. I can see why Bethesda did it, though. I am open-minded enough to see why they changed this. People complained about not having enough choices in Oblivion. With the new Favorites system, we can have all the choices on-hand we want, we're not limited to just 8. Problem is, they gutted several hotkeys to get this system to work. Apparently.

I'd rather have less favorites on-hand, and have Oblivion's system of 8 hotkeys at all times.

Posted by: McBadgere Apr 4 2012, 01:47 PM

Bloody quests ar$ing up...

First, Roerek completely refuses to sell me Vlindrel Hall in Markath...Not once, despite the Jarl saying I can be Thane at that point...

And now, the dude who marries peoples in Riften has disappeared...

Oh, and my wife's game still freezes, despite this latest update that apparently fixes everything...

*Sigh*...

Posted by: SubRosa Apr 4 2012, 08:10 PM

The wife probably needs to start a new game. If she is playing off of saves that are corrupted/glitched, then those issues are most likely going to follow her, no matter what version the game files are.

Posted by: Kiln Apr 4 2012, 09:19 PM

I've got a ton of broken quests where characters ask you to find something for them and when you do it is a quest item...except when I actually take it to them the dialogue option isn't there to actually turn the item in so I'm stuck with it.

The worst part? They each have weight and I've collected up quite a few of them so I'm constantly forced to carry like 20 lbs of literal junk in my inventory.

That said, Skyrim is one of the least glitchy games that Bethsoft has ever released.

Posted by: Darkness Eternal Apr 6 2012, 01:40 AM

Skyrim's unescessary removal of things that could of been used. Seriously, they removed "Night eye". Why would you even do such a thing?

Posted by: King Coin Apr 6 2012, 01:57 AM

Huh? I use night eye all the time!

I am disappointed that short swords aren't in the game.

Posted by: SubRosa Apr 6 2012, 02:24 AM

That is because you are playing a Khajiit, and get it as a racial power. So far as I know, that is the only way to get the spell.

Posted by: Darkness Eternal Apr 6 2012, 02:29 AM

King Coin: Khajiit gets night eye. Vampires gets Vampiric vision. According to the Construction Set, werewolves were suppose to get Night Eye too, but it was removed. Everytime I walk into a dungeon, my Imperial has to use a torch . It's totally anti-immersive.

Posted by: King Coin Apr 6 2012, 02:57 AM

My cousin (on the Xbox) was b!tching about having to constantly cast night eye as a spell. I'm going to look in the CK now for it.

EDIT: Weird... I'm going to have to talk to my cousin. As far as I can tell, it isn't a magic effect.

Posted by: McBadgere Apr 6 2012, 04:07 AM

Um...Speaking as an heretical nermal here...Couldn't you just turn the brightness up?...

This is what we like to call, an solution... ...

...

Posted by: Darkness Eternal Apr 6 2012, 03:01 PM

It. Ruins. The. Immersion.

You think a person walking in a dark cave would just shrug and tune on the brightness level of their surroundings? I'm a big Rper, so this is not a solution. I'm more annoyed about Bethesda not adding that ability to something that would need it.

Posted by: McBadgere Apr 6 2012, 03:26 PM

It. Is. A. Game.

Posted by: mALX Apr 6 2012, 03:33 PM

Nothing is ever just a game, lol.

I found the dungeons almost too well lit in Skyrim, I never needed to use the night-eye and had to constantly in dungeons in Oblivion.

Posted by: King Coin Apr 6 2012, 04:29 PM

They are too well lit IMO. Before installing mods, nighteye wasn't needed. Now that I've found a lighting mod that I like, nighteye is useful again.


I'm not against McB's solution to the nighteye problem either. Sounds good to me lol. I'm really surprised that nighteye isn't a spell. What the heck?

Posted by: McBadgere Apr 6 2012, 04:39 PM

That's another huge bad for me...Where the hell did all of the spells go?...

What, Winterhold doesn't have all of the spells that Cyrodiil has?...Or was it all you Immersion (cliched now btw) people who complained that the feather/fortify strength spells made it too easy?...

I used them all the time...I enchanted (another thing that's c*cked up like the non seperate armour, which was a lot of fun to combine looks with) my entire armour with strength...That was massive fun...Loved it...

This is another place where the "Story" is completely screwed...There's noone in 200 years that remembers Ease Burden as a spell to teach?...Really?...Nooo...Methinks that was for the...True gamers...

Posted by: Darkness Eternal Apr 6 2012, 04:54 PM

Maybe for you. But some of us put efforts into our own playstyles. We like to play the GAME in our own different ways. I like to RP, some people like to hack and slash and whatnot. Got a problem?

Posted by: McBadgere Apr 6 2012, 05:00 PM

'Course not...I haven't the slightest problem with whatever anyone wants to do with their time...It's not my problem how you play it...

I merely gave a light-hearted and obvious solution (hence the huge grin at the bottom) to something that people seem to be having trouble with...I personally have never needed to do it anyways...But I did in some places in Oblivion...

I do, however, dislike being annunciated at...Or should that be punctuated at...

Espescially with a cliche...


EDIT...Oh, and just so we're clear...All of my Knights have some sort of different playstyle...So I RP too...

Posted by: Grits Apr 6 2012, 05:26 PM

One of the things that defines my characters in Skyrim is whether they use torches or Magelight for dark corners. That leaves my stealthy throat slicer in the lurch. They made the game bright enough not to really need a light source, but it bothers me that there isn’t a good choice for him. Luckily everyone sleeps with candles lit and a blazing fire going. Even the dead.

Posted by: Darkness Eternal Apr 6 2012, 06:22 PM

I should of put a smiley face at the end of my inquiry. I keep forgetting. The last remark was not meant to spite, but just a playful scorn haha. I see. And I had no clue it was a cliche, should I replace "immersion" with "Realism?"

Posted by: McBadgere Apr 6 2012, 08:23 PM

Umm...No...

I appreciate that a smiley at the end would change the tone...That's why I always add the smileys, to make sure if my tone is intended to be light, that is obvious...I know that what I say could be sometimes taken wrong...This is because I am, at my basic level, a git... ...

Unfortunately, what seems to be a very vocal majority of a very minor section of the people who play the game and post on the Bethesda site, appear to be repeating, parrot fashion, the phrase It Ruins The Immersion. And I absolutely believe that it's being said without really understanding it...Hence, its repetition to the point of cliche...

And once more, I say that while it is an amazingly immersive experience that it is absolutely possible to lose onesself in, whether it be my way, where I can happily play for 20 mins as the dual Bound Sword wielding Bosmer Knight of The Nine, Caerellin, before I go to work and do a bit, or anyone else's way, where they absolutely refuse to fast travel, and all that...It is...Only a game...

Sorry if I offend anyone with it but, that is my - however different to anyone else's it may be - Opinion...

Posted by: mALX Apr 6 2012, 08:37 PM

McB, you could never offend! That's why I wrote my (lol) at the end of my comment, so you'd know I was teasing you.

Posted by: Kiln Apr 6 2012, 09:14 PM

I'm upset that there aren't too many actually unique items, the magic system has been greatly simplified, and the creation system makes you able to make the rarest items rather than searching for them.