Skyrim not digging it

TES games literally terrify me for their ability to cause such polarisation of views and ranted ire about , what is essentially, a decent enough game with rough edges like all TES games.

Never before have I subscribed to the, I believe, rather incorrect view that games cause real-world violence. After reading a few forums worth of Beth (admittedly I am not a fan of the company) fans vs equally verbose and enraged critics full of spleening hatred I may have to revise that view... I now tremble with fear at the thought of the next iteration of this series...

Thrasher said:

Yeah, I think mages got shafted in Skyrim without spellmaking. You're at the mercy of what spells you can find. Spellmaking was one of the things that made Elder Scrolls unique.

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I never really used spellmaking though, to be honest. It always seemed like a good way to have silly fun, but I am more into immersion and treating the world like it really exists.

I think they killed spellmaking because of the enhanced fps-style spell controls, which is a good trade-off for me personally.

Huh? The spell controls are identical except now you can hold the mouse for some spells and use the other hand. That's hardly any new functionality.

Thrasher said:

Yeah, I think mages got shafted in Skyrim without spellmaking. You're at the mercy of what spells you can find. Spellmaking was one of the things that made Elder Scrolls unique.

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Yeah. To add insult to the injury, Skyrim´s mage´s guild rather sucks, because there´s no sense of "guild-y" progression at all and its main questline is short.

DoctorNarrative said:

I never really used spellmaking though, to be honest.

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So?

DoctorNarrative said:

It always seemed like a good way to have silly fun, but I am more into immersion and treating the world like it really exists.

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What does this mean?
How was playing a mage who´s able to "compose" own spells immersion breaking?
If anything, creating spells required some research and thinking which went well with intelligence being one of the main attributes of mages.

But the intelligence attribute is now gone, so spellmaking would now be immershun breaking.

I think magic is way over powered in skyrim. I play a duel wielding thief but whenever I run in to someone I can't beat I just switch to flame. Run backwards, drink mana potions as need and 1 dead monster and I haven't focused on magic at all.( other than the few points I've gotten for just using it, no perks) I'm still fairly early in the game so this could change.

My gripe with combat would be no blocking while duel wielding. You can block with bows but not with a secondary weapon??? Maybe if they added a dodge other than just strafing as that doesn't work very well. As it is I go up to monsters hit quick then backpedal and repeat. Not too much fun and it just feels weird because you still feel like your gliding instead of running or dodging.(just like oblivion)

I get the elder scrolls games are more about exploration than combat but the fact is there is a ton of combat. It's hard to explore for hundreds of hours if the combat that you will probably engage in for 1/4 to 1/2 your time spent in the game isn't very fun.

It would also be nice if companions were more than human shields. Maybe they are later in the game but the one's I've met have no story, quests, romance or mind of their own really.

Everything else is much better than oblivion imo. 2 negatives compared to my laundry list of negatives for oblivion is pretty good I think.

Well having put a few hours into it I would add the whole overly streamlined character progression/skill system as the areas that they took a step back. Didn't expect much
more tbh so not particularly shocked or anything…

Other than that (and while I am not exactly blown away by the game at this point) I would say that it is a definite improvement over Oblivion in the areas I was hoping for (World Building, atmosphere and exploration) during my limited prerelease interest in it (I watched all of two vids). I think I will get my money's worth out of this one, as it seems a very immersive and addictive experience and I can see myself replaying it in a year or so with the multitude of mods that will have matured by then…

P.S: Far be it from me (being into indies, roguelikes and game from 20 years ago replays) to bitch about graphics but I have to agree they dropped the ball in the textures area. Very sloppy from a AAA company not to expend a minimum of resources to tighten a few, very visible, very low quality textures. It does a disservice to the very good world design. The game looks very good but this sort of inconsistent quality is a bit hard to forgive on a company of this size…

Thrasher said:

Huh? The spell controls are identical except now you can hold the mouse for some spells and use the other hand. That's hardly any new functionality.

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The spells feel much more like shooter substitutes in my opinion. The dual-wield mechanic is a big part of that, as is how they were designed. Even the simple act of putting them on the mouse buttons, which you could not do before, makes them feel much more like guns. The spells seem designed around that feel, so allowing spellmaking might have compromised that system. Just a theory.

DoctorNarrative said:

The spells feel much more like shooter substitutes in my opinion. The dual-wield mechanic is a big part of that, as is how they were designed. Even the simple act of putting them on the mouse buttons, which you could not do before, makes them feel much more like guns. The spells seem designed around that feel, so allowing spellmaking might have compromised that system. Just a theory.

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I don't see the relation there. You already have spells, but their stats are all fixed. I want to create my own light spell, one that costs more mana but lasts 2 minutes instead of 1. Or a longer range flames, or a flames spell that also drains stamina (all for the cost of extra mana, I don't want to break balance, I just want the freedom of customizing my spells)

wolfing said:

I don't see the relation there. You already have spells, but their stats are all fixed. I want to create my own light spell, one that costs more mana but lasts 2 minutes instead of 1. Or a longer range flames, or a flames spell that also drains stamina (all for the cost of extra mana, I don't want to break balance, I just want the freedom of customizing my spells)

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Sure, but by allowing those simple changes they would also have to support other stuff. They could have done that kind of limited spellmaking without changing much, but then people would just be annoyed at how limited it was.

DoctorNarrative said:

The spells feel much more like shooter substitutes in my opinion. The dual-wield mechanic is a big part of that, as is how they were designed. Even the simple act of putting them on the mouse buttons, which you could not do before, makes them feel much more like guns. The spells seem designed around that feel, so allowing spellmaking might have compromised that system. Just a theory.

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very doubtful.

What's more likely is that they were too lazy to figure out how to combine custom spells when you dual-cast at least one of them. But even that isn't hard.

4th day of Skyrim, liking it less and less. I feel like I've played this game recently, Fallout was its name.
I have a question. In the other TES games, there was a point in using light, medium or heavy armor. Light and medium were silent, but protected less. Light obviously didn't weigh much, medium some, and heavy was well... heavy. That naturally made it so mages (low STR) would use light armor, rogue types would use medium, and tank types would use heavy. Perfect. But now, since there are no stats, why wouldn't everybody (except sneaky types) use heavy armor?

It weighs more. And armor also used to weaken your spells. Don't know if that's still true.

wolfing said:

I don't see the relation there. You already have spells, but their stats are all fixed. I want to create my own light spell, one that costs more mana but lasts 2 minutes instead of 1. Or a longer range flames, or a flames spell that also drains stamina (all for the cost of extra mana, I don't want to break balance, I just want the freedom of customizing my spells)

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Extending the duration of spells would help a lot. I want stoneskin to last longer than one minute. I'll gladly pay the extra mana since I have robes that increase my recharge rate by 100%, but having to switch to stoneskin then back to whatever spell I'm using is sorta a pain.

I'm using a gamepad (the UI is too horrible with M&K) so I only have two hotkeys. The left arrow and right arrow. Left is for soul trap and the right is for conjure frost atronach. For destruction, illusion and alteration I have to change it every time. My usual order of spell casting is conjure frosty the snowmonster, stoneskin, soul trap and finally fear + firebolt. While frosty engages the bad guys I swing around get their soul and then wait for mana to recharge or drink some potions to recharge it right away.

That works for most of them, but in that time I've gone to the favorites menu twice in just one battle. Doing that over and over again gets a little tedious, but at least the game is paused.

That said I still love this game. Will switch to the keyboard once the UI is fixed or at least the mouse is fixed. Right now it's better to use the gamepad.

wolfing said:

That naturally made it so mages (low STR) would use light armor, rogue types would use medium, and tank types would use heavy. Perfect. But now, since there are no stats, why wouldn't everybody (except sneaky types) use heavy armor?

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I was wondering just that last night but haven't had time to look it up just yet. I hope there are some penalties "under the hood" for my battlemage when wearing full steel armor and casting spells ?

As far as I know, there have never been any penalties for using heavy armour as a mage in any TES game. The advantage of light armour is that it is lighter, which means that you need less of a stamina investment (stamina increases carrying capacity), which in turn suits mages well, because they don't want to spend as many points in stamina as other characters. Light armour further lessens the need for stamina with a late perk which makes stamina regenerate faster.

That perk also makes light armour quite interesting for melee fighters. Being able to spam shield bash/power attacks is a great thing for any warrior-type character.

Yeah I know I was hopping they compensated somehow for all the possibilities opened by the removal of stats...

Oh well this really does follow with the trend they started in oblivion allowing as much freedom and lack of "consequences" as is possible to the player that wants it all and want it now... I'll just try to ignore those aspects and enjoy the fantastic atmosphere...

Fnord said:

As far as I know, there have never been any penalties for using heavy armour as a mage in any TES game.

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Nope. Heavy and Light armor weakens your spellpower or "spell effectiveness" in Oblivion. For example, it makes frenzy and command spells not work against the strongest foes.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Spell_Effectiveness#Spell_Effectiveness

I seem to remember casting in full armor in Morrowind, though.

I'm sure in a years time I'll have one of my mile long mod lists posted hereand there will most certainly be a mod that adds penalties to people who wear heavy armor. It's pretty much guaranteed that someone feels the same way as us.

Can't wait to see what the modding community can do with this.

Thrasher said:

Nope. Heavy and Light armor weakens your spellpower or "spell effectiveness" in Oblivion. For example, it makes frenzy and command spells not work against the strongest foes.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Spell_Effectiveness#Spell_Effectiveness

I seem to remember casting in full armor in Morrowind, though.

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Exactly the kind of mechanic I was hoping they had in place (although it needs to be
much more severe). They did strip many things back even from Oblivion it seems...

My memory does not serve me well in regards to Morrowind but I guess the str requirement offset that ? (It should at any rate)