Skyrim - Creation Kit Update, v1.4 Patch Notes

crpgnut said:

I had one fun bug where the conversation choices would scroll at light speed, making it nearly impossible to click the one that actually forwarded a quest.

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I had that bug too in the KoA demo. After a few moments it resolved itself but it happened about 2 times during each of my two playthroughs of the demo.

If KoA turns out to be a bugfest, I've got plenty of other games I can play while I wait around for patching. I've been around a while now, I'm used to waiting for the fixes.

crpgnut said:

The demo code of Amalur was buggy as hell, so I hope that it doesn't disappoint those hoping to play it till Skyrim was patched. I had one fun bug where the conversation choices would scroll at light speed, making it nearly impossible to click the one that actually forwarded a quest.

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I had a similar bug on my 1st play of the demo, but I haven't seen it since then (replayed twice on 2 different days).

crpgnut said:

I think, after playing Skyrim for several hundred hours, that the thing I want most is fleshing out the game. For all the people in Whiterun, there are only a few quests to be had in the whole city. Many cities, guilds, and factions are like this. The problem for Bethesda is in getting the same voice actors to reprise all the roles. That'd be pretty hard, I imagine. There is a strong need for a sense of time passing. Certain quests shouldn't trigger until later in the game. As it stands now, every quest triggers the first time you meet someone. I'd like to see quests trigger based off of skill level, certain perks, and character level rather than first contact.

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I don't think it's gonna happen. If would probably need 'time' to be an actual factor. In Morrowind it was possible that a certain door opened between certain hours. So that's something that was already possible.

They could solve it by making certain quests dependant on earlier quests but that would just start them directly after the prerequisite quest is finished. Currently there is no 'day' factor in Skyrim. I don't think they can say 'make quest Y available 60 in-game days after quest X completed'.
Even the Gothic series didn't do it this way, they applied the trick of including chapters. Additional quests and 'progression' could be tied to whichever chapter of the story the player is in. However this makes 'progression' of the world dependent on a mainquest completion while the whole point of the open-worldedness is so that the mainquest can be ignored.

I hope that in future installments they make it possible the former example can be
applied. That way they can also reintroduce the Tamriel Holidays from Daggerfall to a modern interpretation.

Ofcourse a modder could trick it by having a mod that adds additional quests and delete vanilla quests but this would be an even less desirable than the chapter approach. This is basically what the last Fallout 3 dlc was but obviously only added quests related to the main quest, it didn't itterate on non-MQ finished quests.

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Well, I jumped the gun and didn't actually read your suggestion about required skill levels. I just kept my rant in up there because I still believe this could be something Bethesda could work on in the future. Anyway, below my response after fully reading your comment:
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I do agree and I kind of miss the Morrowind way where doing certain guild quests required you to actually have the skill level the guild is looking for. It would also prevent my oafish Nord Barbarian from joining the College of Winterhold. On the other hand here things I like about TES in certain instances (you aren't limited in picking up any weapon of a downed enemy simply because you don't have the skill) clash other instances where the game gives you 'too much' freedom.

If I was sterner in my roleplaying of the oafish Nord Barbarian I simply wouldn't do the quest.

It comes down to roleplaying or being roleplayed. If you can't wear or use certain items that are clearly in the looted chest because you don't have the 'skill' you're being roleplayed. If you're skill with sword is just 5/100 but you don't have anyting better you can roleplay that you'll use it untill you find a much handier axe (with your 50/100 skill). In a 'being roleplayed' game you can't use it, in a TES game you can use it with much more limited effect. If this was to be applied to everything including factions and available quests one would have to admit that Bethesda did exactly that.

I guess open-endedness needs to be contained in some instances.

I'd love to see following mods.

-Guild restrictions

Like The college of mages actually requiring the student candidate to be trained in magical arts. It is supposed to be the advanced school of magic for full time mages. There should proper tests before admission, some kind of entry exam. I also think that they let you progress too fast in guild. I'd have loved to see more actual learning quests before they sent to you dungeons etc.

-More lively winterhold and mages college.

I understand why the place is meant to be in ruins and a mere shadow of it's former glory, but this would be a wonderfull quest opportunity..to actually to rebuild the town of winterhold and Mages' College to it's former status. More students, more citizens. Traders, inns etc. I think already saw some guy explaining on his youtube video how he is going to "fix" winterhold. I'm eager to see his vision come true. He had great ideas how to make the place feel more important

-Armored hoods / better looking helmets

I just love how my character looks visually while wearing a hood and light armour, yet the game doesn't really support this playing style, because all the armour bonuses are only applied if you wear helmet.. This needs to be fixed

-More spells

Destruction school in particular needs more variety. For example:
Damage health/stamina/magica spells
Drain mana, health, stamina spells
Weaken armour, weapons spells

I guess same can be said about other schools too. Restoration schools for instance cries more spell variety.

-Armour and weapon repair

I miss this aspect from previous games. It made the whole smithing skilll feel more worthwhile plus it felt more realistic that weapons and armour corroded in use. Just imagine what all snow and ice does to iron armour if you don't oil it reqularely.

crpgnut said:

For all the people in Whiterun, there are only a few quests to be had in the whole city. Many cities, guilds, and factions are like this. The problem for Bethesda is in getting the same voice actors to reprise all the roles. That'd be pretty hard, I imagine. There is a strong need for a sense of time passing. Certain quests shouldn't trigger until later in the game. As it stands now, every quest triggers the first time you meet someone. I'd like to see quests trigger based off of skill level, certain perks, and character level rather than first contact.

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There are a lot of quests that don't trigger as soon as you meet somebody. Quests can be restricted by level, by other quests or by having visited certain locations.

For example, Whiterun quests: http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Skyrim:_Whiterun_Quests

You will notice the quest "The Whispering Door" has a prerequisite of level 20 and also requires the quest "Dragon Rising" to be completed. The second White Phial quest would be another good example.

TheMadGamer said:

Even with 1.4, I think I will hold off playing. I really want as many quests as possible to be fixed before I start my first Skyrim character. KoA: Reckoning is going to make the wait a lot easier…

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All RPG's in existance have a few broken quests, im sure KoA will be no different, playing unpatched RPG's is always like asking for trouble I've played through Skyrim multiple times without any quests bugs though.

Skyward said:

I've played through Skyrim multiple times without any quests bugs though.

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I bugged a few quests in Skyrim by doing things out of others, example taking a quest item before being told to go pick that quest item.

Well thanks for all the feed back...
I am going to try and put sometime aside to start playing....
Hard with kids hockey, work, and my gym training this winter...
Sounds like they did a good job on the game though

I have 126 hrs in to skyrim. No major bugs, but the only major quest i've completed is the thieves guild. I haven't done any other guild quests and only followed the main quest up until getting the horn. (forgot the name of it). I did start over once at about 30-40 hours. I've installed a mod to slow leveling 40% and up my perks to 2 a level. I enjoy just going around and exploring the world.

I'm shelving it now to wait for some good mods since the creation kit is coming. A mod to reduce the endless spawn of dragons would be nice. I thought about not going to jarl of white run at all to not trigger the dragons, but I wanted to be able to use shouts.

I will probably get koa and play it then return to hopefully a very modded skyrim.

Here's hoping for a mod to allow for dual wielding block and a roll you can you all the time and not just while sneaking.

sakichop said:

I have 126 hrs in to skyrim. No major bugs, but the only major quest i've completed is the thieves guild. I haven't done any other guild quests and only followed the main quest up until getting the horn. (forgot the name of it).

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That was more or less my experience too, but when I decided to follow the main quest around the ~110 hour mark I found a rather serious one:


Thankfully downloading the 1.3 patch (that had the necessary LAA fix to support my Ugrid and other tweaks) fixed that immediately…

crpgnut said:

The demo code of Amalur was buggy as hell, so I hope that it doesn't disappoint those hoping to play it till Skyrim was patched. I had one fun bug where the conversation choices would scroll at light speed, making it nearly impossible to click the one that actually forwarded a quest.

I agree that the community will end up addressing many of Skyrim's bugs. Bethesda is doing a much better job, but at the end of the day they've made their money on the title and their urgency isn't as high as the rabid fan base.

I think, after playing Skyrim for several hundred hours, that the thing I want most is fleshing out the game. For all the people in Whiterun, there are only a few quests to be had in the whole city. Many cities, guilds, and factions are like this. The problem for Bethesda is in getting the same voice actors to reprise all the roles. That'd be pretty hard, I imagine. There is a strong need for a sense of time passing. Certain quests shouldn't trigger until later in the game. As it stands now, every quest triggers the first time you meet someone. I'd like to see quests trigger based off of skill level, certain perks, and character level rather than first contact.

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Just so everyone knows, the demo build of Amalur: Reckoning was 3 months old and not polished at all (obviously). Curt Schilling has apologized but it was out of his hands as EA hired a 3rd party to create the demo, and in order to even create the demo they had to use 3 month old code.

And believe it or not, Amalur may have some of what you're looking for in the quest design. I noticed early on that a new quest opened up after I completed a prerequisite quest. The devs have also talked about new content opening up after you've beaten the main quest. I'm not sure about quests unlocking based on skill levels or player level though, but there does appear to be an interconnectedness to the quest structure, with new quest content opening up based on what you've already done. I like that a lot, but it also means that unfortunately I'll have to play with quest markers ON, in order to not miss any of the new quests that open up.

Also, it's pretty amazing to see the continued support for Skyrim. These guys made an awesome game and they continue to bring the goods long after it's been released. That's some dedication that I for one really appreciate. It's just great to see.

Fluent said:

Also, it's pretty amazing to see the continued support for Skyrim. These guys made an awesome game and they continue to bring the goods long after it's been released.

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Long after release? 2 months is a long time? Continued support after 10-15 years i'd say is impressive (i believe blizzard still patches some of their older, 10-15 year old games, like Diablo or maybe it was the first Starcraft).

2 months in the gaming industry is a life-time I'd say. Some games get abandoned as soon as they are released, or maybe if lucky, they get one patch and that's that. Skyrim has had multiple patches already and if you believe what the developers are saying on their blog, there is much more to come. They are constantly fixing bugs and glitches and trying to make their game better, that is commendable and impressive to me. Patching 10 year old games is cool too, obviously.

Fluent said:

Patching 10 year old games is cool too, obviously.

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Patching 10 year old games is a *massive* boost in reputation, imho.
And this is why it is never done by major companies : They count in coins, not in reputation.

I don't know, is patching a 10 year old game really good. That means they let the bugs sit for 10 years.

I don't find bethesda's continued support all that impressive although I do appreciate it. It's simply a good business decision. They plan on releasing a bunch of dlc and some expansions. They don't want lingering bugs to affect the sales.

If they continue to issue updates and maybe some mods of their own after the sale of all their dlc and expansions that would be above and beyond. That would be impressive imo.

sakichop: every game in existance has bugs, most games has thousands of bugs left, most of which of course are minor and unnoticable to most. You could probably patch a game for 10 years and still have a lot of stuff left to do. I know of fan patches for old games that has been going on for many, many years. Still people could play those games without too much trouble at release (Fallout 1/2, Bloodlines, Arcanum, Morrowind, Oblivion… There are numerous others). I think the one for Oblivion fixes like 2000 things, i remember i read the changelog some years back..

And i still dont think it's common that most devs abandons their games after 2 months.. This greatly has to do with the success of the game, obviously it's a really smart move to continue to support a successful game.