Skyrim - One Hour With Skyrim Finally Made Me a True Believer

The good news is, whatever things are bad in Skyrim (horrible menu system, anyone?), someone somewhere will make a mod to fix it at some point. :p
 
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Okay I am going to be an old curmudgeon and rant for a minute that I really hate this finishing move nonsense in RPGs and the fact that it has become absolutely obligatory at this point.

I couldn't agree more. Two Worlds 2 has been the tipping point for me into the category of, 'I really don't like finishing moves in RPGs.' IT MAKES ME MAD!

-2 points for making me look up the word curmudgeon. :p
 
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If he really was an old skool PC RPGamer he would have complained about how laughably easy it apparently is. I'm hoping (and this seems logical) that the demo version they were playing had the difficulty nerfed.

I'm about as old school an RPGer as can be, and difficulty is so far down the list of "must haves" in an RPG that I'm not even concerned about it.
 
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I'll say Amen to that too. I have no problem with being able to choose different difficulty levels, but I don't play RPG's for a massive challenge, I play them for fun; to relax after a tiring day; as a way of letting some of my frustrations out; etc, etc!!
 
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I'm with you, Corwin.


True escapism, I call it for myself.
 
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I'm about as old school an RPGer as can be, and difficulty is so far down the list of "must haves" in an RPG that I'm not even concerned about it.

Same here. I play for fun, not to puzzle out how to build the strongest character I can just to hold my own.
 
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Hmm.. there definitely has to be some degree of challenge for me. I have a hard time staying immersered when I can one-hit kill most things by the half-way point of the game.
 
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Hmm.. there definitely has to be some degree of challenge for me. I have a hard time staying immersered when I can one-hit kill most things by the half-way point of the game.

No, that's bad balance in the opposite direction. In open-world games in particular, designers really need to think about how they handle creature difficulty. How do you keep enough weaker beasties around to make it feel like you're becoming more powerful, and how do you add in stronger ones without it feeling like they've just been dumped into the mix?

We certainly don't want another Oblivion situation!
 
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Hmm.. there definitely has to be some degree of challenge for me. I have a hard time staying immersered when I can one-hit kill most things by the half-way point of the game.

Challenge and fun can go hand in hand, if balanced good enough. They don't need to exclude one another.
 
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The good news is, whatever things are bad in Skyrim (horrible menu system, anyone?), someone somewhere will make a mod to fix it at some point. :p
Don´t think so. Some of the stuff simply is pretty much "unfixable", at least not in consistent manner. This mostly concerns content involving voice actors, aka story/quests - without the original voice actors mods can´t do much about narrative aspects of these, which also means changing/adding quest structures is limited. Of course, it may be possible to add unvoiced lines and/or simply rip some of the original ones out, but that introduces the problem of consistency of presentation.
Some Oblivion mods do a good job of rebalancing stuff involved in quests (rewards, enemies), but afaik there are none which significantly enhance their structure and narrative.

Challenge and fun can go hand in hand, if balanced good enough. They don't need to exclude one another.
Yep.
I´ve always found sentences like "I don´t want challenge, I want fun!" to be of silly worded variety, "Challenge is not fun for me" would be preferable :).
Personally, challenge is one of the main constituents of fun in games for me.
And in cRPGS, for me the lack of challenge takes away fun from some other elements as well, like character development or loot progression.
 
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True, quests and character interaction's pretty much set as it is, but I don't generally use mods that affect those things. To me mods are all about ironing out gameplay, but if you want storyline changes, I think you're going to be out of luck as long as 100% voice acting's the norm.

And I don't think anyone's saying challenge can't be fun, just that a high challenge level isn't as important as other things.
 
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Couldn't disagree more. Difficulty is high on my list if not #1 on that list.

If it is too easy then it is a waste of my time and boring. The game will get uninstalled within a day. I don't care if it had the most epic plots of all time. If it is easy then why am I playing a game instead of reading a good novel?

Witcher 2 was great. It had a great story, decisions that matter and the game was challenging. Oblivion on the other hand was a snooze fest. Everything was perfectly balanced. There was no chance of finding some truly unique items and I even had to wait on finishing some quests till later in the game so the spell or item I received wouldn't be useless within a few levels.

I really tried to like Oblivion and modded the heck out of it, but in the end all the mods in the world couldn't save that game for me.
 
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Couldn't disagree more. Difficulty is high on my list if not #1 on that list.

If it is too easy then it is a waste of my time and boring. The game will get uninstalled within a day. I don't care if it had the most epic plots of all time. If it is easy then why am I playing a game instead of reading a good novel?

We all have our different motivations but I've never understood the "why not read a novel" argument.

Because a novel isn't interactive? A CRPG delivers story in a completely different way to a novel and some of us like that.
 
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We all have our different motivations but I've never understood the "why not read a novel" argument.

Because a novel isn't interactive? A CRPG delivers story in a completely different way to a novel and some of us like that.

I agree 100% but some here will say then you should play an adventurer game :)

For a RPG to be "great" number of different things need to be equally great. A great story (plot, the lore etc etc ), great combat mechanic (I include stats and combat rules here), open world (exploration, the mood, loot system) etc.
 
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ehh is it just me or did he use the already existing screenshots to match his writing?
 
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We all have our different motivations but I've never understood the "why not read a novel" argument.

Because a novel isn't interactive? A CRPG delivers story in a completely different way to a novel and some of us like that.

I could have easily said why not paint a miniature or play a game of pool or go jet skiing or *insert hobby*. The novel is just an example of something that is more entertaining than playing a game that is too easy and boring. They are a waste of my time. They are at least a great alternative to taking a sleeping pill ;)

Out of curiosity, name one game where the gameplay was very easy but you enjoyed the overall story so much that it didn't matter? I'm guessing you might say Oblivion. That dang game is too easy for me and a huge reason I tried to mod the heck out of it to make it more challenging, but in the end nothing saved that game. For me at least, I can't speak for "some of us" you mentioned. :p

I can't think of one game that I enjoyed where the "difficulty" or gameplay was at least decent to go along with a good story.
 
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Planescape: Torment has a few challenging fights, but they are rare indeed. Beyond that it's mostly talking and exploration.
 
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The combat in Planescape was terrible, one of the reasons i've never cared to finish it, that and the fact i became completely cluless of what to do after a while, i just wandered around aimlessly and couldnt find any hints of how to progress.

I think the combat in Oblivion was rather satisfying, sometimes in a rather comical way.. Using weapon mods was my biggest mistake though, towards the end of the game i was pretty much invincible, but many games has that problem, and maybe Oblivion is like that in "vanilla" too..

Exploration alone can make me want to finish a game, even if the game isnt that challenging. The Gothic games usually does a decent job with the difficulty (i know there are exploits but i restrain myself from using them) + fun games to explore.
 
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Planescape: Torment has a few challenging fights, but they are rare indeed. Beyond that it's mostly talking and exploration.

Torment was easy? Not in my book.

I always read about how bad the mechanics in Torment was, but I don't see it. I had a blast playing a Nameless mage in that game and it was no cake walk, but to each their own I guess.

In any case I'm talking about easy games that bore you to tears because they don't challenge you to come up with different tactics to survive the game. Planescape was great in that department. I had tons of spells to choose from, interesting enemies and I couldn't just steamroll past any enemy. I actually had to think about how to take them on.

A prime example of an easy game that I really wanted to like would be Gothic 4 "Arcania". I really wanted to like that idiotic game, but being able to kill everything on sight even on the harder difficulties was just too much.
 
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