Yup. Some skills are insanely good and require no power-gaming (stealth/conjuration/illusion) while others are under-performing and require massive min/maxing (destro) to be any good, and others are just completely useless (lockpicking)

I think this is what the OP meant about bad balance.

Single really powerful enemies can't be frenzied into killing themselves, and in an encounter where some of the enemies are very powerful and others are rather weak you can't really kill the entire group with frenzy either.

Also, keep in mind, until you hit Illusion 100 it only works on half the enemies in the game, which makes it a pretty tough skill to rely on for all your damage needs.

I was not specifically talking about Skyrim, but games in general. Anyone with common sense would have figure that out.

A game isn't like a spaceprobe where everything has to work or nothing works, it's more like a collection of museum pieces, the collection as a whole is better or worse for the pieces in it, but the pieces can still be enjoyed individually. It's just hard to enjoy the whole collection if one of the pieces is a big stinking turd on a pedestal.

It's certainly a shame that lockpicking and some other skills are basically useless. I assume they were too scared to make lockpicking perks essential to opening things. Lockpicking in general is useless, even master locks at level one are not that hard.

The enchanting stuff though... most of the issues there seem to be min-maxing, which I have never understood the compulsion people feel to do. My level 40 spellsword has an enchant of like 60, because I didn't spend hours and hours leveling it up. I just play the game normally. Bethesda games don't respond well to maxing like that, they never have.

I liked your comparison.

I just looked at the current bug list in the PC forum:
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1283956-buglist-so-far-thread-2/

And by reading this you can clearly see the game was not finished. They just needed the 11.11.11 date.
Now at least I'm sure all these imbalances in the game mechanics were not intentional, they simply didn't have time to review them. I bet they just added random perks to the lockpicking tree in the last week, for example. IMO, they're probably going to tweak a few things soon enough.

The only way to get dragonbane to those levels is by looping enchanting and alchemy. This is something that has to be done on purpose, so please stop complaining about it. You have no cause or right to.

Hope Beth realizes a huge patch is needed to sort the mess out:


-add, somehow, decent LoS limitation to the real destruction school: Sneaking. No it's far more then destruction, it's like apocalypse damage.

-limit of one stabs performed to each mob. I, few minutes ago, 4shotted an all mighty uber fearsome GIANT with 4 stabs in a row with Slightly upgraded 2x steel daggers. Seriously i attaccked, kept myself on its back and he couldn't spot me. That's is as a response to the brilliant head saying "do that to a giant with simple daggers" I did. Its awkward. Obscene. Grottesque.

-opt: fix the infinite alchemy-enchanting loop. Limit upgradable stuff to legendary. And not twice the legendary, or three times the legendary. Never did that, so its really up to the player.

-Dramatically increase the Stamina consumption for power attacks, limit sneak attacks with multiplier higher then 2 to just daggers. Restict the stabs to be performend with "MAIN HAND" ONLY. Even if i use a terryfing 23 base damage daggers, it's still like 46*30 stab output. There's nothing at lvl 50s @ master difficulty balanced on a 1200+ damage burst from very basic gear.

-Rebalance dual wielding tree: damage need to be tuned down. 2*Steel sword with 100 capped skill are enough to 2 shots mostly everything.Stop the absurd run to the "stack the +damage perks" wich compleatly breake the others tree. Dual wielding is way too destructive.

-Sneak attacks multiplier 6 or 15 should be pinnacle of sneaking tree, and reworked as a CD'ed ability. Like power attack from sneak will trigger a backstab that will be liited by a 30sec cooldown or something.

-Rework +damage poisons to not work as a cumulative % "over 9 thousands" button but a flat low damage increase or, maybe better solution, place a 30/40 seconds cooldown between each potion usage if used while in combat.

-Rebalance marskman tree, dramatically lower the chance of paralyze on shot. Lower the damage output but rise (or add, i actually never catched the difference) the damage made by placing headshot. Adding some "aim" in such a class is needed to keep it low.Remove the slow effect from eagle eye.

-Increase, BY A LOT, destruction school damage. Remove - magicka used enchants with +minor casting speed bonus. Remove, as an optional choice, the chance to provoke Friendly Fire or lower it to half. Lower some the magicka consumption for such a school.

-Muffle/Invis on Illusion should be pinnacle perk of the tree, increase its cooldown by a lot, make it not able to perform melee attacks. Make it VERY weak if used by a non-capped illusionist.

-Resto heals should be toned down and be casted strictly by standing still.

-Light Armor / Heavy Armor: remove a few stacking damage reduction perks, remove "no noise" perks. Rework the "set bonus perk" to just add minor bonuses based on the set currently wearing. Lower the damage reduction cap to something like 65%. Lower the magicka resistance cap to 30%.

-Lockpicking, Bartering, Speeching: add some meanings to those 3 trees. Dunno how, honestly.

-Enchanting: reduce the efficence of absorb health. Add a harsh internal cooldown for enchants like Paralyze. +weapon damage and +magic resistance enchant should be capped for a comulative way less amount.Consider to rework double enchant feature to either give a 2* effects that are like 75% of the original or limiting by type: i mean, no 4 pieces with +25% damage, but just one 2. Stacking like a boss health then abusing of +health regene / +health enchants is also a decent way to become the closest beeing to god.

-Daedric sets/weapons should not be craftable


ADD A CAP TO THE MAXIMUM TREE YOU CAN MAX OUT.i.e.: max 3 capped 100 (with final perks) trees, so if a rogue want to be rogue he won't be able to actually be a smither, an enchanter, a dual wield super sayan master while also beeing better then Copperfield with illusion things.And a tank wiith massive defense while wearing a deer leather armor. I just said 3, but it could be even 2 or 4. Dunno. A tree should start counting toward the cap once you start to invest 45 % of the talent point available on that specialization. (again i said a random number)

------------------------------------------

AI / mobs change:

- At lower levels, mob should have more defense and less attack/magic power.

- Increase their perception. Ancient Dragons, Death Lords, Dreamoras and final bosses should be VERY unlikey to get a stab. Elites should spot you way easier. Add thse creatures unique features like Piercing damage, immunity to crowd controls, Chance to use poisons, disarms for elite bandits/humanoids, stuns for magic creatures, decent parry chances and so on. Also gap closers like dashes/teleports to give a fight against archers.

-Better scaling mobs, that actually keep up with the gearing ungodly scale of playing characters. Adds rare "champions" that given a precise level range, will use very strong weaponry/armory. I mean, Bandit chiefs wearing a "omgsoawesome" full plate armor while i'm running since days with dragonbones and ebon stuff. Shouldn't work this way.At least with very rare/rare things

-When outnumbering you, npcs should try to get your back and recieve STRONG damage buff if that happens.If a mob spot a mate's corpse recently murdered shoul enter PERMANENTLY a state of vigilance making them almost impossibile to be "sneak-steam rolled". Also would be cool to see melees trying to look for a cover and healing thru potions/spells when facing a ranged opponent.

-Compainions once KO'ed should stay put 'till the fight is over. No compainions death, just a thing much more like Final Fantasy behaviour. Also, imporve their AI would be cool, most of the times are just a burden to carry on the missions. Actually, with a sneak assassin they're totally harmful.

-Dragons...C'MON they're pathetic.Fix their aim, make them TOTALLY unable to be sneak attacked if close. Let them fight smartly by using some CCs and healing some while flying. Let them be totally immuned to the Illusion spell, immune to the element they're using.Give them a very high chance to sync-kill (insta kill) summons or NPC characters. LOWER -THEIR -RESPAWN. Tired of tweaking mods to do that. My Riften is a Dragon graveyards, sometimes i met 3, 4 of them at once. Basic and blood dragons were totally wtfpowned by my shadowmere (bug perhaps, dunno).

Boost vampires and werewolves to actually be more threaty then crabs along the rivers. And, since you're there, make the vampirism, and lycanthropy mechanic more interesting and rewarding. Lol, seriously, the best way to nerf myself was running as a 4th stage vampire or werewolf. Clever use of mechancs, uh?.


Well i guess i ran out of ideas, hope at least 2 suggestions from this mad wall of text will be taken in consideration.

Then stop playing role-playing games? /facepalm

No, seriously. Nearly every gamer I've played with over 30 years has considered min/maxing to be a powergaming technique. Studying the rules and how the numbers interact, to make the most powerful character, skill combo, attack, whatever.

Looking up online definitions:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MinMaxing:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Min-max:

Yet you quoted my entire post where I explained in details how I did exactly that. Way to not even read what you are replying to?

I went dungeon crawling for the sake of exploring a beautifull world, and ended up with enough ingots and ore on my mule to level my smithing to almost 56 (55 and 90% ><) on my first town run.

It isnt exactly hard, and it doesnt even require you to focus on it.

As I am reading through my own thread (comming back from work), I would like to stop and adress this with a simple question:

What makes you believe that you cannot have a game that can be both challenging, and not? What If I told you that all it took was a working difficulty slider?

There is no design paradox here: you can create a great game with great story and character, and if that game is well balanced, then players for who the point is the challenge can put it in hard mode and enjoy their challenge, while players who preffer to focus on the story can simply opt for an easyer setting and enjoy their piece of the pie. No one has to go home hungry!

This idea that balance would destroy anything at this point is just unjustifiable (i actually dare you to try it), because anything that is currently possible can be recreated via a difficulty setting in a balanced game, where the challenge a lot of players are looking for cannot be recreated in the current state of skyrim other then by severely limiting the player's character developpement options.

As it is there is no "play what you want".

P.S. to that other guy who's name i forget: bashing someone for playing a nuker archetype in a RPG is kind of silly...

Another little insert: What makes you think we are obsessed with maximum power? You would have a point if, to get to the "broken" point, or the "overpowere" one if you prefer, you would have to go out of your way and do very specific things, like actually exploiting a design flaw.

In this case it is people simply using regular game mecanics the regular way. My orc warrior went smithing enchanting not because i was obsessed with being OP, but because they felt like the logical things to use in order to improve my melee performance. I still ended up OP tho, to the point that I had to reroll just to keep the game challenging.

That is the problem: no one is exploiting here. Playing the game normaly results in the game being broken. And that, to me at least, is a big problem.

RPG is a reference to D&D role playing games, which video role playing games are derived from. it does not mean "playing a role" regardless of the terminology.

So i fail to see why you would tell a gamer to stop playing RPG games because he is not role-playing in the literal sence.

Absolutely agree 100% with the OP.

On a random note, the nice thing about the PC version is that I can give myself all the redundant perks (lockpicking, speech, pickpocketing) that are irrelevant.. At no cost to my character itself. Same goes for the crafting perks if I choose.

Well, I was referring, in my previous post, specifically to min/maxers, when I said "You". Yes, in my experience, min/maxers (powergamers, munchkins, etc) are looking for as much power as they can get.



I guess it all depends on what you consider "playing the game normally". Personally, I think that I'm playing it normally..... level 38, 60-70 hours played: my smithing is ~70, my Alchemy is around 50, and my Enchanting is in the 40's. Maybe half the Smithing perks (up the left side to Glass, plus Arcane), 4 or 5 perks in Alchemy, and none in Enchanting (I've had better things to spend them on). Game doesn't seem broken to me.

But, then, my "normally" is obviously different from your "normally".

The games difficulties just need to be turned up a bit. Master should be hard, regardless of your crafting proficiency.

I didn't tell anyone to do anything. Do you not understand what a question mark is used for?

Maybe if you removed your hand from your face, your reading comprehension would improve.

Well its nice to hear that the tactics of my lvl 14 mage are viable all the way up I guess haha.

You seem to be confused as to what min/maxing means. The idea is to optimize your character. What this means is that if i want to be a warrior, i strive to build the most effective warrior I can, if I want to be a nuker, i'll build the most effective nuker I can, etc. It means that I enjoy trying to figure out what works the best.

None of that means we want to be overpowered. We want to be presented with a challenge that makes us push ourselves to overcome it. When that challenge is provided by you -not- pushing yourself, or giving yourself a handicap, then the whole concept crumbles on itself.

While I understand that not everyone desires that, nothing stops game designers from making a hard difficulty that does provide it while also providing a "easy" setting for those who wants an easyer game. All it takes is balance.

What you are talking about is us taking different decision in terms of our character's developpement. I put more focus in smithing, you took alchemy up (I'd throw ingredients cause i wanted more room for ore mining). We both played normally in the sens that we used the game's own mecanics: we simply selected which perks to spend out points into, did so, and then used those perks. That is what I mean by normal gameplay; i mean that you are using the game mecanics as they were designed to be used.

Exploiting is one thing. Thats when you find a bug that you abuse, or some flaw that was overlooked that you go out of your way to abuse. For exemple: if only abusing the crafting loops with all 3 trees would overpower warriors, then you would have a point. But the issue is that just having smithing or/and enchanting and using them each as they were meant to without loops is enough. And we still arnt talking about the magic scaling problems (which also affects resto and alteration btw).

What I think happened with the lockpicking is this: Innitially the perks for lockpicking were not for making it easier to open a lock, but to make it possible to tackle that difficulty of lock in the first place - like Morrowind or Oblivion, where locks had a skill minimum to attempt. That was too difficult to work with, because finding locks to even practice on at low levels was very hard, and with the perk system there is no such thing as a secondary skill anymore so someone pulled the emergency break on it and said "We can't do it this way, it takes way too much specialization to open any locked container" and the current useless lockpicking was born.

I am still not shure if it was intentional by Bethesda to leave all those god mode avenues in or they simply lack the expertise to scale a game that complex.

Hello Skyrim lover / haters,

I am about 120 hours into my Skyrim game playing a level 69 "paladin" (1 handed, block, smithing, enchanting, restoration, alteration, speech, w/ 200m / 500hp / 400 stam).. BTW frick'n fun build!! good resistances from alteration and you can heal your stam / hp while fighting with your shield or blocking...
I started noticing bugs, and balancing issues, so I came here and started reading....

Here's my 2 septims on this topic.

First look: Playing on my 360 and a big screen, first thing i noticed was the shotty polygon chins, noses, and lack luster of polished conversion in the normal maps. First day of release, some Joe blow fixed the issue with a mod for pc.. Faces are now more detailed with smoothed polygons! Bethesda couldn't do that?.... I'm over it, let's move onto gameplay!

First few hours: killed about 4 dragons and explored many many caves. Came to town with all my goodies and uppgraded my blacksmithing to about 40ish.On that note, 120 hours in now, and only 60 alchemy and 90 enchanting in comparison of skill gain difficulty, my general stats say over 1500 potions made for 60 skill ups, and 300 daggers made for max blacksmithing.... I was shocked to say the least, and im sure you see why..... I only had enough materials to get the steel gear, so I didn't feel like I was getting to far ahead... (I really like to keep the progression of my RPG's smooth, and jumping into dwarven armor would have made me upset).Well 5 hours later im in Orcish armour and havn't even collected enough for a dwarf set... What happened I thought?! (screams) OH well, moving on with 97 armor smithing after 2 smithing stops in only 10-15 hours gameplay. Got a bit more money came back and upped the last 3 points and had enough dragon mats (from my first 3 hours of gameplay!), and made a full set of dragon armor minus the shield. First thing I thought was, "with unlimited dragons in the game, 4 dragons should be enough for like half a helmet!".... I was extremely excited, and "lamely" disapointed all at once. "Look! im a cool dragon born warrior! Oh wait, I just started this game last night?!"

Here I am now, don't even have enough mats for a dwarven or ebony set, not to mention havnt even seen a deadric ore or anything like that yet, and im in the top armour in the game? Well, I still have plently of perks to pick, weapons to make, enchants to do, let's move on (all things that are considered "exploits" to half you people here debating). So my adventures end up taking me another 90+ hours into the game (wearing dragon armor the entire time! ZZzzZZ.z.zZZzzz). And I must say, the quest lines and areas are much more improved. I'm not finding I NEED a break after a few caves, infact, I want to persue more! So ya, I think the games storyline, lore, pathing, is all amazing stuff. I really enjoy it!

What I havn't enjoyed:
As far as this topic I hear alot of talk about difficulty and how it varies depending on play style choices and the "slider bar". I would consider myself a very knowledged and skilled gamer when it comes to TES, and even I was losing battles on adept until my dypers changed into dragon armor over night.... This personally got me bummed out, but I saw some guy whining on this thread that his dragon armor is worse than his deadric set.. From my point of view, THANK GOD!!!! I have a 4th set of armor to progress into! Yay!! no more dragon crap! lol..
So the game became alot easier after obtaining the dragon stuff, and I fealt the need to up the difficulty. I got smashed by a fireball or something and thought, oh damn, my guys only "OP" in one area (taking a beating from little creatures on Master)... haha.
I'm finding Master challanging in one area, magic. Once I have my alteration resistances, and enchants, it should be fairly easy and I have achieved Master status... But wait, I just played Oblivion on master and a bear 1 shot me on a level 70 character with maxed skills and created spells.... WHAT??!!!!! First thing I thought was, this game needs a Godly or hardcoe mode for people like me... A damn near impossible mode. (and if your a gimped mage, that damn near impossible mode would be Master...) Now were all happy... lol.

So reading on through here more, I find out that people use alchemy to boost enchanting, then enchanting to boost alchemy and rinse and repeat?!! Well noooo wonder there is talk of OP'ness!!! that's a fricken bug loop exploit, if I ever heard of one. I don't even have enchants yet, cause I didn't want to waste crappy enchants on good gear.. And im starting to find it EASY on MASTER. I fought a dragon, 2 giants, and a mamoth, all at once, while on master.... And won... I figured since it was a frost dragon, and im a Nord (resistance), I got lucky?... No maybe this games just catoring to the new TES fans... Who arn't used to spending the first 100 hours to make a character who isn't gimped... Now most builds are viable, even the lockpick, sneak, pickpocket guy with 1 point into 1 handers can cruise the games craziest epic battle moments, without having to restart the game cause he failed so hard... That's the Era we game in, you want challange, you buy daggerfall!! (which im going back to after cause im dying for a challange here)

I am not going to sit here and let poeple say, "YOUR MAKING THE GAME EASY THROUGH EXPLOITS!". Cause no, I'm not, infact im enchantless! It's called, playing TES series since 1994 and im ready to slay frickn impossible dragons now! BRING IT!!! Infact, the skeletons scared me more in daggerfall... I want that old NES impossible setting turned on if I choose too. THE OPTION IS NOT THERE!~ or wait, it's sorta half there if you play a mage...

I get it, dilly dally and mopey moppin your marry roll playing way, tralallala-ling through these happy joyful quests, helping all the people in this dark, cold, dangerious, land... Wait, what?! Tell me a dragon swoops down and messes up all my quests, murders my NPC family and burns down whiterun, UNLESS your OP, and can actually do something about it??!!! That's what I want! A reason to be OP!!!! so I never lose my family and house again in my 2nd play through..... (yells out cursed words, can somoene deliver a game I can lose?)

That's what most these people are complaining about. Sure we like to dilly dally and roll play too.. But, when the time calls, we also like it when our hands our shaking from fear, and our characters at 10hp, and there's nothing but dead bodies everywhere from an epic 5-10 minute battle! Something the master setting is failing to deliver. ATLEAST Fallout had hardcoe as an OPTION. <3
I was capible of playing through most of daggerfall as an eight year old boy (1995), I think I can handle critical, devistating, hardcoe loses, in a serious dragon slaying 2011 tittle.. No one held my hand through daggerfall, why are you deciding I need it now, when the game isn't AT ALL vague in comprehension.

People talk about this being that roll playing game where combat isn't important to them. blah blah blah... Well did those people play daggerfall? Morrowind? Cause im pretty sure the REAL fans enjoyed building hardcoe characters, because the games themselves fealt "OP". There should be no such thing as "OP" in a game like this, unless it's the dragon who's the OP (or well earned).

The whole synergy thing about the 3 crafting skills combined. That's Bethesda's fault for not thinking. It's called negating something in order to power something else. In otherwords, if im playing any other RPG, I most likely have to "give up" something if I want something else. In this case, if a player enchants a sharpened weapon, the effect should be a -50% result due to the fact it's already upgraded. Now take your pick, raw ELEMENTAL dmg, or raw PHYSICAL dmg, or half of both! Add in posions and we are working in 3rds. Now you'll think twice before spending those perks, as your not getting the full bang for your buck... If anything your getting handouts already...

Perks / Skills system: In the previous TES series, we were to pick our major and minor attributes which determined how we leveled... This making sence, as a warrior should not be practicing destruction to level up his sword. Well guesse what, In skyrim, you will level up destruction, just to perk out your 1 hander! So here I am, practicing fire balls so I can one day power slam with my mace! WTF?! They totally just threw-out THE FORMULA of success! The point was to play one play style, not all "three".... Unless you CHOOSE too!! My warrior in oblivion capped out destruction and made his own spells. infact, i maxed out a warrior under the birth sign of mage, and I was a high elf!... I played stratigically to make an arcane warrior, by choice!..

here's the options of skyrim now:
I can't be an arcane warrior due to not being able to cast with a weapon out and being anoyed with the slow swapping and crappy 2 keybindings apposed to 8! (console)
I can't play min/min a warrior without having to also play a mage and thief to max out my warrior. So replay value drops as I feel like I played each class 3 times in order to try them all once.... Make sence?
I can't make my own spells as a mage, and I can't kill anything with destruction - Total reason you have to play oblivion if your new to the series and like mages. In otherwords, I'll wait to get this on PC so i can keybind and mod the game so a mage is even a viable class... (not viable on console)
I can't play my warrior to his full potential. In the series, my warriors had the oppertunity to try out several styles of gameplay. In skyrim you pick a weapon and lock into that choice pretty much before level 20...
I never once got to try out a perked out 2 hander, perked out duels, or even a sword! (I picked maces) I'll never get to feel the crit of a sword, unless I reroll and re-perk up. There is no option to spend YOUR time, to invest in something "extra" so that you may have the CHOICE to use it. if you want to try the differant warrior styles, play three warriors, OR don't spend perks for 20 levels, save reload and try them out for 5 minutes or so...
I can't pick these perks, cause they feel pointless and a waste of time... WHY have them?! Alot of these perks are cop-out fillers for a lack luster of ideas in the design department. I can think of a million cool ways to improve destruction alone. Bethesda comes up with 50% less mana reductions perks, 5 times over! One word of advice: Go watch the Blizzard WoW Talent tree rehaul video's (I don't play wow, so don't even comment on it, I watch design philosophy to improve my knowledge as a game designer period) . Watch the logic they put into the thought process of the players choices.
An Example: A player wants to pick the obvious 3 perks for 100 storage increase in the speech tree. But i'm sure they are tempted to get some useless 5% increase elsewhere (for the same price)... You need to present all the available options as equals, and the player finds himself biting nails... We still enjoy upping %'s, but not when they compete with viable mechanics or long term benefactors....

In the end, and beginning actually, I found myself saying I CAN'T in Skyrim alot, I fealt robbed of choices compared to oblivion, and even daggerfall.... Which is the opposite of what they promissed to deliver... MORE CHOICES!!! Guesse what?! you can duel wield now, but that's your ONLY choice for weapons, so CHOOSE CAREFULLY!!.... There is waaay more choices, but less to make....

MY anology of skyrim vs other TES: Pick any ONE of these HUNDRED pretty ladies to take home with you (skyrim). OR, pick any FIVE of these TWENTY pretty ladies to take home (other TES).... Not only does the 2nd option gives me more choices to bag, and less room to regret a wrong choices! IT also allows for a whole lot less time spent thinking about it, as I know i'll be satisfied with whats at hand. But when im presented 100 more options and only get to pick one, im going to plan it out, think on it, waste time, and most likely see that later on, other options were a bit more "perky" than the "one" I am officially stuck with... I am sworn, to carry your burdans......(such a happy choice:)

However, Skyrim makes up for the stats system crappyness, with good quests and interesting storyline. A real disapointment to those who look for 10+ possible character builds in there RPG's. You really have three choices with basically three very minor game changing subchoices. Play this game with the desire to learn about TES lore, as TES series has done a very good job at keeping the universe very cohesive. That's the one thing you can always count on, if your disapointed elsewhere. And alteast that will deliver behond your full expectations and deliver you with a "wow" feeling in some way or another...

Skyrim Is buggy as heck: NPC's forget they gave you quests (important ones!, game reloaders / breakers), tuns of collision bugs especailly noticable when using knock downs, mobs fall through the ground, important quest mobs too! (lol, reload and use less fun skills to avoid bugging a boss). And my PET PEEVE OF ALL PET PEEVES!! YOU CANT OWN A HOUSE IN SKYRIM!!! Ok, I lied. It just explodes when you enter or leave... All your long hard adventures and collections to show off are in pile on your floor... Never fails, all my houses do this. And a common Bethesda bug is, houses CRASH. Fallout 3 I wasn't able to go in my house without a crash, and all my stuff was locked inside, I QUIT!... Guese what, in skyrim, I CANT LEAVE my house in Riften, that's right. Once I enter, I cannot leave, the game freezes. Luckily I am willing to sack everything inside (just moved in) including the NPC house carl and move on with my game... I really wanted to beable to decorate my house like I did in oblivion... Not yet, and sadly to say, maybe never for console gamers (never got fixed in fallout 3). It seems like most people will have to mod this game for pc in order to fully enjoy it as a "10 / 10" title. I didn't care to get it on PC cause I figured I'd be happy with the game itself. Well the game itself will not even allow me to properly own a house...

Fix these 2 things for me and I will forgive the rest, (I will greatfully forget the broken perk system) and rate this a 9.5/10....
1) make the fireplace in the house SAVE STATE on all current objects in the house, A LOCK feature or something. GAWD. So even if they fix that damn house exploding bug, my damn house carl wont knock over my basket of red rubies, lol....
2) Allow ME to set the rally point, and default clothing on followers. Example: I tell Sven to wait here (click a chair) in my house. Then say it's time for us to part. He goes and sits in my chair and waits there. And he DOESNT flip to his old shabby robe when hes WEARING full orcish armor.... That way, I can get my house carl in a sixy suit, or a chef suit, and still have my homeboy Khajit following me around, And maybe even have a couple other of my old followers kinda hanging out in my house in differant armor types. Almost the like Maniquins you get to armor up and have hanging out at home. I prefer real people!
3) actually 1 more: I need something to spend my money on and save up for. Don't let me buy a DLC castle with REAL money. Just add a 500,000 septim castle into the game with the ability to move in all your NPC homeboys, give them rooms, and have a hall of (20+) maniquins, cause I never got to actually craft all the armor types since dragon armor is so damn easy to get, Atleast my maniquins will get to try them on...... ATLEAST!!!! <3

I'll give it a 7.5/10 since ALL my houses are broken, i lost alot of stuff and time due to game breaking bugs, and I really havn't gotton overwhelmed in combat yet (since lvl 20, prior dragon gear), in a heavily combat orientated game. I didn't even take off points for a half ass lazy perk system which looks exactly like a cheap American version of FFXIII's upgrading system... If your gunna copy Square Soft, do it right.... lol. Funniest part of all, they broke the games true stat formula to make a crappy version of FFXIII, and even worse off, they called the points "perks". OMG, CMON!!!!! You guys are taking your little fallout side projects a little to seriously now.. (Skyrim was unique, why tie them together in anyway shape or form) Notice how everything from fallout got poored into Skyrim... Followers, Children, work benches (oh the poor smithy), and now perks too!? Cmon, you could have chose anything else, but they did it as a darn marketing scheme for all those fallout fans. You hear the director say the new "perk" system, and your ears "perk" up cause you played fallout and liked it!. OMG PERKS!! I GOTTO GET THIS GAME NOWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm totally forgiving on the broken perk system, it is what it is, let people mod it and play around with it, to make it seem more balanced, that's all fine. Bethesda knew they can rely on us, this forum was expected when they saw these issues in play testing...Who cares, they don't, we do! So let's fix it, Eff em... What I NEED from THEM is to fix my damn broken houses and lame NPC's, and possibly add in a hardcoe difficulty to give us TES pros a challange, without having to play daggerfall... The things we can't mod, let's address those first! Cause console gamers want a bug free game, not improved features in an already broken glitchy game.

Skyrim as is - still an 8 / 10 - (A generious score to say the least, but it's TES (lore/story/histroy) that saved the day here) I gave my reasons why, ask me to re-review my modded version for pc 6 months down the road, hopefully I should beable to bring this game up to par (9-9.5) with the help of all those who agree with this article!

@whoever telling us to 'role play' the game: how the hell can you roleplay in a game whose quests are basically "go to A marked on the map, fetch the item, get back to B marked on the map also". No pondering around required at all. And dont tell me to turn it off also: how am I supposed to do the quest if the game doesnt give me any alternative whatsoever? No hint. No lore to back it up. Just "to do this" and a mark on a map?

Aside from a (very) well made world and a good main plot, many aspects of this game are half-baked. From questionable balancing act, to half-baked quests. A true role-player will not be 100% satisfied, nor a RPG-player playing the game from pure character development standpoint. Utter failure esp. with the later case. This generation's gamers aint the same from Morrowind/Daggerfall era, get your head out of you 4ss Bes -,-