Skyrim CRPG-Meter for Skyrim

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
But it doesn't take much to make a lot of people happy whose expectations and standards are pretty much nihil, as confirmed by 10 Million sales.

Also, no sane person could put Skyrim into his or her top 10 after playing New Vegas and seeing a very relevant example of how Skyrim could have been better.

What does sanity have to do with it? Either you enjoy a game or you don't.

Out of those 10 million buyers, certainly quite a few of them have also played Fallout New Vegas. There are certain features unique to New Vegas that some might have enjoyed had they been implemented in Skyrim, just as the converse is true.

Of course Skyrim could have been better. New Vegas could have been better. Oblivion, Morrowind, Daggerfall, Planescape Torment, BG1&2, every game has room for improvement, especially considering different people enjoy different aspects of these games.

In my case, I loved New Vegas. I bought it at launch and played it more than 300 hours since, without even touching any of the DLC yet. As much as I enjoyed the game, I've found Skyrim to be even more enjoyable. Does that make me insane? :p I'm certainly not alone in feeling this way.

I've been having so much fun with the game, I was quite surprised to see I've already logged roughly the same amount of hours playing Skyrim, which I imagine averages out to something like 10 hours per day since launch.
 
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@villain of the story
I think we are all :cool: reasonable and experienced enough to settle things without the help of moderators :gorath:

@Roll-A-Dice and villain of the story
What are your main points of criticism for the game Skyrim ?
Which crpg-elements you are missing most ?


@rune_74 and CountChocula
What are your main points of praise for the game Skyrim ?
Which crpg-elements are working for you in Skyrim ?
 
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Indeed, that's why I'm asking moderators to cut rune some slack.

You know what? Acting like a condescending person does nothing to the conversation, maybe it made you popular elsewhere and this crap you are pulling here does not make me want to even discuss gaming with you. I already told you I'm not going to be trolled in to reacting to you. So you are on ignore, have a nice life.

Hidden X

The game really does exploration well, the atmoshpere is well done and storyline for an open world rpg is really good. It is not as focused as the witcher 2 say, but in order to have that you need to have a smaller world sample size.

What it comes down to is that in Skyrim, you feel like you follow this trail down the side of the mountain there are going to be some interesting things there, totally not related to the main quest.

There will be people who tell you it crashes all the time (doesn't for me so I cannot comment on that), looks aged...can't say I find that a problem at all. Or some other weird glitch. But at the end of the day if I can sit down and play for a few hours and not notice the time went by then it has done it's job....as a game.
 
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@rune_74
I agree with you that free exploring is fun and rewarding (Category Gameworld = 5). You can get lost in the lands of Skyrim …

I had only 1 hard crash in 200 gaming hours. Very few quests bugs (for example: Companions & house in Windhelm)
 
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@villain of the story
I think we are all :cool: reasonable and experienced enough to settle things without the help of moderators :gorath:

@Roll-A-Dice and villain of the story
What are your main points of criticism for the game Skyrim ?
Which crpg-elements you are missing most ?
It's story is inconsistently paced, and oft times felt rushed to the point of overload. GO HERE AND FOLLOW THE ARROW, NOW GO HERE AND PICK UP THE PLOT COOKIE. Do that 20 times and you are the leader of that faction, you became leader by being the toady. This is especially noteworthy, when the Companions haven't had a leader in nigh on a thousand years. And suddenly the entire world accepts you instantly as the head of the companions.

CRPG elements that are missing, USER FUCKING AGENCY. I do not feel like a person in this game, I feel like a player character in an RPG.

Allow me to explain, even though you required quest givers to sort things out in Morrowind, you still had more time to plot and get into character, without a constant barrage of go here, do this, this is plot important. The plot was more laid back, Cosades actually sending you off several times to have you make yourself a more known person in the land. It accepted that changing the world took time, and it was best to actually be a known figure before going and saving the world. You aren't instantly known as the Nerevarine until the entire group of major political factions believed that. Actually having to work for that, makes you feel incredibly independent, and often time very off the rails, despite being on them.

Contrast that to Skyrim, where everyone seems to instantly know you are Dovahkiin after you go to the Gray Beards, and that they really want you to help them with everything. And that's another thing, while there were a variety of Misc quests, most of the quests were related to the main quest or faction quests, and built upon them with foreshadowing and other thing, I can scarcely recall about 7 quests that were just miscellaneous quests. This gave the appearance that most of the people here could ligitimately solve their own problems and that they had agency of their own. Whereas in Skyrim, it seems like EVERYONE and their brother has some random task they want to send you on. And none of it bears any mind to foreshadowing, or even interconnection outside the respective questline. Again, it's just a constant barrage of information. And I can't even remember a line from the game proper that isn't a meme. That's how much it affected me, IE not very much.

What can change the nature of a man.

Come, come Nerevar, Friend or Traitor,

Welcome to camp nevvaro replacement, you're out of uniform soldier, WHERE IS YOUR POWER ARMOR!

Blood, it's your new leg of lamb, your new champagne, it's your new fucking heroin, kid.


There was absolutely nothing memorable like those lines in the game, as far as I can recall. That's another mark against it.
 
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Anyway, I have some problems with the handling of those criteria in the OP. I find some of them very deeply flawed. A dissection will follow later in the day.

As long as he uses the same criteria in evaluating all of his games (which he has), I think it is a valuable evaluation.
 
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I thought the review was well done myself. But perhaps something on the lighter side for this thread would be nice at the moment :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPHtAHxB3iI

Only makes sense if you are familiar with Skyrim of course. Its well worth waiting to the end of the clip :)
 
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@Roll-A-Dice

Summary of your points of critique

1) too much handholding - I agree but it is our personal taste

2) pace of the story is inconsistent - I don't agree because you can set the pace of the story yourself

3a) you are too fast well known as Dragonborn=Dovahkiin AND 3b) there are too many not main quest related quests
- I don't agree because 3a) and 3b) are a contradiction for me. Why didn't you play minor quests first, become a better warrior and push for the major/main quests later ? -> problem solved.

4) Not many memorable characters/quotes - I agree there could be some more. But I like that one:
"Be quiet, I'm doing the fishstick! It's a very delicate state of mind." -> The Daedric Prince of Madness, Sheogorath

***

@wolfgrimdark

Nice clip!
 
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@Roll-A-Dice

Summary of your points of critique

1) too much handholding - I agree but it is our personal taste

2) pace of the story is inconsistent - I don't agree because you can set the pace of the story yourself
Except you don't you are rushed through the quests. And there's always a sense of, YOU HAVE TO RUSH, YOU HAVE TO DO THIS QUICKLY, BECAUSE IF YOU DON'T, YOU FAIL, YOU HAVE TO GET THE EYES OF THE FALMER, OTHERWISE BANKRUPTCY.

Morrowind didn't have that. You were never rushed from one quest to the next, until the very end, and then the rushing didn't feel forced, it feel natural. And like it was your decision to rush.

In skyrim, Yes YOU CAN bugger off for 20 hours. But the game's story doesn't account for it. When you go back it's inconsistent. Morrowind did this better, because there wasn't much of a focus on a rush.
3a) you are too fast well known as Dragonborn=Dovahkiin AND 3b) there are too many not main quest related quests
- I don't agree because 3a) and 3b) are a contradiction for me. Why didn't you play minor quests first, become a better warrior and push for the major/main quests later ? -> problem solved.
That's not exactly what I was saying, what I was saying was there wasn't enough interlinking, between the factions. There were no interfaction conflicts beyond the rebels v the empire.

Case in point, in Morrowind a certain quest for the fighters guild ends with you having slaughtered the leaders of the thieves guild.

4) Not many memorable characters/quotes - I agree there could be some more. But I like that one:
"Be quiet, I'm doing the fishstick! It's a very delicate state of mind." -> The Daedric Prince of Madness, Sheogorath
 
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@Roll-A-Dice

Yes - Skyrim would be more interesting and political if the guilds had more conflicting interests and the war between the empire and the north rebels could be more intense (assassination of generals, kidnapping of hostages, stealing war plans … this kind of stuff).
As a programmer I have to say this much more complicated than non-interfering questlines. The question is:

a) did Bethesda avoid interfering questlines to satisfy casual gamers or
b) did Bethesda avoid interfering questlines because it was too complicated to implement ?

I can accept b)
 
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Morrowind didn't have that. You were never rushed from one quest to the next, until the very end, and then the rushing didn't feel forced, it feel natural. And like it was your decision to rush.

In skyrim, Yes YOU CAN bugger off for 20 hours. But the game's story doesn't account for it. When you go back it's inconsistent. Morrowind did this better, because there wasn't much of a focus on a rush.

To some extent, yes, there are quests in Morrowind where you talk to some NPC and he says "go adventure around and come back when you have more experience," etc.

And there is some greater urgency in the quest writing for Skyrim, but if you are playing it from an RP perspective, if your character is on a journey from Riften to Solitude, this can take weeks or months. And you would be having all sorts of adventures along the way, perhaps getting sidetracked, staying for a while in some other city to earn enough gold to continue your journey, etc.

You might also be playing a character who simply denies he is the dragonborn and never goes to High Hrothgar. Or hates anything to do with the Blades, etc. Go try blowing the main quest in a game like DA:O, Witcher 2 or the ME series.

Case in point, in Morrowind a certain quest for the fighters guild ends with you having slaughtered the leaders of the thieves guild.

Yes, more brutal and bloody interfaction feuds would be a fantastic improvement to Skyrim. We can only hope for some of this in mods or DLC, but simply having fewer of these than Morrowind or New Vegas does not a shitty game make.
 
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1) too much handholding - I agree but it is our personal taste
Only partially, the other part is that handholding is, as usual, interwoven with quest design and nature of exploration. Pretty much every quest in the game was designed so that it could be easily "handhold-able" on one hand, while on the other hand not enough support was added for those who want to play without handhold-y features. Exceptions would be the treasure maps quests. The only other quest I remember being somewhat more ambitious in structure was the Windhelm murder one and while personally I was able to finish it, it seems it´s also one of the buggiest quests in the game.

2) pace of the story is inconsistent - I don't agree because you can set the pace of the story yourself
But you can´t set the pace of the story from the perspectives of other characters.
I think the issue isn´t that you absolutely have to follow the questlines from start to finish without a breather, but that the progression within the stories themselves (from A to B to C story points) is paced badly, lacks build up. The guilds especially have considerable issues with pacing, structuring and storytelling in my opinion, Thieves Guild being sorta an exception (bar storytelling).


As for the meter, great summary as usual.

Besides few minor points, I rather disagree with the difficulty assessment.
Pretty much the only difficulty in Skyrim stems from combat and since you can change difficulty settings on the fly, its influence on the difficulty rating is kinda moot. And you can save everywhere.
If I ignore the above, I would say that all things considered (combat itself + resource/character management), 3.5 rating for Skyrim´s combat on master seems fair, but what about other aspects?
For 98% of quests there are quest markers (which are sometimes even necessary), quest themselves lack intricacies (like hidden, extra-favourable solutions) and specific character requirements anyway, puzzles are imo 1.5 at most overall (besides the treasure maps I don´t remember any puzzle which I would rate higher than 1), dungeons are linear and the main quest is heavily scaled.
I´d say 2 - 2.5 points overall would be more fitting :).


If I would have some criticism in regards to the meter itself, I´d say it may be unnecessarily sidelining the player vs. character skill aspect, more specifically applicability of character skills and their importance on outcomes in story/quests or dialogues.
It is partially covered via being spread into some of the categories, but I think it should have more significant influence on the overall cRPG score.

It seems that the system sometimes allows this aspect to be effectively overridden by other elements within the categories - I checked The Witcher meter and you´ve given NPC interaction 5, even though there are no skill checks in NPC interactions or even a granular reputation system at work (TW´s reputation is pretty much binary).

The story category takes into account multiple quest solutions, but it doesn´t reflect whether these are open for and doable with every type of character, or whether the available options depend on character class or stats.

I´ve thought the line of "characters can have considerable social impact on more than one society" characteristics in the character category covered the player/character aspect, but it doesn´t seem so (otherwise Skyrim would have a hard time getting more than 2 in the category - how you develop your character is almost totally disconnected from how you can affect in-game societies).
The category also somewhat favours quantity over diversity (combat vs. non-combat skills mainly) or necessity (skill requirements in general and whether a character skill can be supplied by player´s skill, like lockpicking in Skyrim for example).

As it is, the meter seems a bit lenient towards games which go for breadth, not depth when it comes to RPG mechanics.

The question is:

a) did Bethesda avoid interfering questlines to satisfy casual gamers or
b) did Bethesda avoid interfering questlines because it was too complicated to implement ?

I can accept b)
Me too, but the motivation is no excuse, the game is what counts :).

Bethesda should contract Obsidian to make an add-in á la Night of the Raven for the game.
 
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For those of you who enjoy exploration, if you have not already done this, I highly recommend disabling the compass.

(in SkyrimPrefs.ini, change bShowCompass=1 to bShowCompass=0)

This was a game changer for me. Now I have to check the map and look for visual cues from the terrain, landmarks, mountains, rivers, hills, etc. Exploration and finding quest destinations is much more fun without the compass.

Before, I was always chasing after those black icons that appear when you get close to a new location. Now I discover locations in a more natural way.
 
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@Roll-A-Dice

Yes - Skyrim would be more interesting and political if the guilds had more conflicting interests and the war between the empire and the north rebels could be more intense (assassination of generals, kidnapping of hostages, stealing war plans … this kind of stuff).
As a programmer I have to say this much more complicated than non-interfering questlines. The question is:

a) did Bethesda avoid interfering questlines to satisfy casual gamers or
b) did Bethesda avoid interfering questlines because it was too complicated to implement ?

I can accept b)
I'll leave you with a saying then, if it's worth doing, it is worth doing well. Interlocking quest chains with foreshadowing towards other quest chains and consequences for them are HARD, however, I have knowledge of bethesda's engine, through their toolkit, it's actually fairly easy to set up branching quests. It's just difficult to justify to your superiors, that yeah, we want to record 2/3s more voice acting that most players are likely never going to see.

As far as the next posters points.

That travel time hasn't been expressed mechanically since Daggerfall and Arena. They've gradually shrunk the provinces to where roughly a quarter of a province was made up of 18 square miles in Morrowind, and now entire provinces are made up of 18 square miles.

Yes you suspend disbelief to play these games, but when I can walk across half the province in an in game day(Start at riften, end up in whiterun) it ends up making the world seem tiny and really insignificant. Atleast if I was doing something like that in Morrowind say from Sadrith Mora to Suran, not using fast travel, it would take me, through, lets see, over the sea, through a mushroom forest, into a burned out ashy wilderness, back into a grass filled mushroom forest this time with more other trees. Each environment would be distinct, and it wouldn't be, trees and light snow, snow and trees, less snow and trees, trees no snow. And the towns I would walk through would be, weird monumental solid solid rock structures(Molag Mar), Mushroom villages(Sadrith Mora, Tel Fyr), into solid shapped sandstone buildings(Surran) Rather than generic nordic stone and wood buildings, to generic nordic stone and wood buildings.

More than that, the architecture itself had a lot to say about the societies that lived in them. The wood shack villages, these were people who couldn't afford the builders and haulers to build them houses, so they cobbled together what they could from the surroundings, the Telvanni mushroom villages, these are people who embrace being weird, embrace the wonder of the world, and revel in being ABOVE everything else because of that. Redoran fossil houses, these are warriors who slay great beasts to form the living quarters they needed. they are heavily traditional as they live in constant reminder of those that came before them, they live in the deeds of their ancestors. Hlallu, they embrace the newer techniques of building, preferring sleek smooth stone, they are master artisans, using their own skill to build wonders without relying on magic, or strength of arms. They take in all they can, denying them only if they are found to be unskilled.

What does the architecture in Oblivion or Skyrim tell you about the people who live there.


I didn't have to force myself into an RP perspective to get into character in Morrowind, I didn't have to struggle against the fact that I just knocked that tiger down and now it's become a helicopter, I didn't have to deal with the fact that I accidentally bumped into a cart and now I have to do the dungeon from the beginning. Or NPCs being utterly incompetent, and me having to rescue them, even when they're supposed to be better skilled than the player. I don't have to deal in Morrowind with stealthy characters acting as stupid as the standard city guards and charging blindly into a room and getting slaughtered by dead nordic dragon worshippers. Morrowind succeed where Skyrim fails, because it provides a well designed world, with consistent pacing, and general good game design. Skyrim is pants on head retarded. Because it lacks as simple a thing as decently thought out politics. It has quest lines that result in nothing other than shiny titles for the player, and worthless loot because you can generally make everything better than MASTER CRAFTSMEN OF OLD, AND DAEDRIC GODS.

You can be a thane in every hold, somehow be the champion of every daedra mentioned in the game, you can be the leader of all the factions, and you still don't have to be GOOD at anything. The game doesn't even force you to advance any of the skills you'd need to be the leader of a magic guild, or a warriors guild. More than that it forces completely nonsensical plots at you left and right. Again I've done what 2 actual real non-radiant missions for these guys and I'm already leadership material. You want me to be in your circle of TRUSTED and KNOWN friends. What about the Australian dark elf, or the former drunk that Vignar saved, or Vignar himself considering he's never mentioned as being a circle member even though he's been there since likely forever.

Or the thieves guild, how did those guys not realize that, as the guild has fallen on hard times, that the second in commands might want to check the treasury a little more closely, I'm sorry when a business, any business is going broke, you start COUNTING EVERY PENNY YOU HAVE. And if you are criminal, you generally start pointing fingers. Why do they just instantly accept the journal, THE TRANSLATED JOURNAL, IE THE ONE THAT COULD BE COMPLETE HOKEY as fact.


Mages guild, oh gee, I've done 2 missions and already an ancient plot has been revealed to me. Psijics, really, and THEY WANT ME TO DO SOMETHING FOR THEM. These guys are mages with the ability to MAKE TIME STAND STILL, and they don't need to shout in a foreign tongue to do it. That shit would have made more sense in a Deus Ex game.

I mean, that's what I'm talking about when I say rushed plotting and poor pacing.

Bethesda used to do so well, at low level and high level politics combining to create a high fantasy fun sphere.
 
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What does sanity have to do with it? Either you enjoy a game or you don't.

Out of those 10 million buyers, certainly quite a few of them have also played Fallout New Vegas. There are certain features unique to New Vegas that some might have enjoyed had they been implemented in Skyrim, just as the converse is true.

Of course Skyrim could have been better. New Vegas could have been better. Oblivion, Morrowind, Daggerfall, Planescape Torment, BG1&2, every game has room for improvement, especially considering different people enjoy different aspects of these games.

In my case, I loved New Vegas. I bought it at launch and played it more than 300 hours since, without even touching any of the DLC yet. As much as I enjoyed the game, I've found Skyrim to be even more enjoyable. Does that make me insane? :p I'm certainly not alone in feeling this way.

I've been having so much fun with the game, I was quite surprised to see I've already logged roughly the same amount of hours playing Skyrim, which I imagine averages out to something like 10 hours per day since launch.

There is nothing wrong with enjoying Skyrim more than New Vegas. There are a lot of things wrong with putting Skyrim higher on a list of top 10 RPGs, as in, a list of games that are supposed to represent the cream of the cream roleplaying experience for you, you know? If you are putting Skyrim, that might have more enjoyable action game qualities above New Vegas which have inarguably better role-playing qualities, in a list about role-playing games, that's just all kinds of twisted and illiterate. No offense to anyone. Not that it should what with the current rates of literacy and the level of quality of mass entertainment.
 
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Please let us all return to a fair objective discussion - emotions are great - for a soup opera :)

The CRPG-Meter encourages a point for point discussion based on facts not feelings.

PS:
Personal attacks are leading to nowhere except frustration.
Easy for me:
No stats.
No real use of the RPG system rules. (Morrowind was the last to truly do so.)

IMNHO they've completed the transition started in Oblivious from RPG to action-adventure w/VERY light RPG elements, but don't worry yourself about that as at this rate they'll be entirely gone for the next iteration. No need to their new "fans" to worry themselves about anything even remotely about the trivial level of complexity.

Sheesh! Even MOST ARPGs are more RPGlike than skyrim.
 
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No stats? This game has more PC stats than probably any other game in history. There is so much data that PS3's are having some sort of tech issue with save games on long playthroughs.

Or were you referring solely to STR, DEX, etc.?
 
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No stats? This game has more PC stats than probably any other game in history. There is so much data that PS3's are having some sort of tech issue with save games on long playthroughs.

Or were you referring solely to STR, DEX, etc.?

Sorry, gonna be honest little stupid comment there. The data issue is common, when you do stupid things with Bethesda's engine, it causes something called bloat. It was typical in oblivion when you used too many changing GMSTs or used too many intensive global scripts, or didn't store NPC data properly. It doesn't indicate anything like PC stats, it's indicative of shitty coding, or improper use of the toolset.

He's talking about actual RPGish stats, of which there are about 20(skills mostly with 3 abilities).

Perks are just an added feature that go along with stats.
 
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