I've seen a lot of people complaining about UI,hotkeys,graphics blah blah blah. Surely this is all nitpicking? I'm running the game on a pretty old system, dual core amd 2.6k, 4 gig Kingston ram, an HD ati 5070 512Meg and on vista 32, with zero problems, game was even auto set to high graphics.
Reading the PC tech forum i got pretty nervous about this game but so far I have no gliching, no random or otherwise CTDs.
The interface works just fine for me, took only about 5 mins to get used to, using the faves menu to bind hotkeys dosen't seem so bad as people say, infact i think it's better than Oblivion as you can add a fair amount instead of just picking the 8 you used to get, then change them on the fly as needed, without having to go thru the menu, heck you don't even to bind them to a key just click n equip.
If i only had to gripe about one thing it would be the key bindings, the defaults are ok, nicely centered around the wasd player, my preferance anyways, but if you re-bind say F to R and vice-versa it also rebinds them for the interfaces or inventory/crafting etc.

Am I the only one liking the new menus and being able to play smoothly or are you guys just not posting 'cause you're happy with it?
I for one am more than happy with this game, and look forward to getting my construction set to start modding away.

also realised i typo'd the title :/ bugger

It's not nitpicking when the game is verging on unplayable.

The game is really good. The bones are good, but I do not think the UI is an ancillary concern. These are legitmate issues that should have been taken care of for a PC release. I think gamesas should know better, and hopefully a patch will get us going n the right direction. The game was OBVIOUSLY designed with console in mind first (understandable, it's probably their highest market share), but there's a pretty devoted PC crowd that understands certain ideas (multitasking, menus, etc) differently. You design for windows you build menus that work like windows.

the menus blow (as they always have in TES games), they key remapping is almost non existant, and the low res textures are a serious eyesore. oddly enough the textures look better from far away than they do up close. people on PC are complaining because we are sick of console ports. almost every game to come out in the last 2-3 years from a major publisher has been designed for console, and haphazardly ported to pc, so drooling idiots and drunken frat boys who own consoles can be marketed to. its genius really, but you can thank kimberly, the 26 year old with the marketing degree for ruining PC gaming.

other than that the game itself is good though, better than oblivion for sure.

I agree it does feel like a console port and indeed not very/if at all optimisted for PC gaming, but as a PC gamer i'm kinda coming round to expecting it and as such not being let down when it is. I'm more than happy to let consolers have their interfaces as long as i can keep sticking more gpu's and ram in and getting better overall results.
Not to mention we pc gamers are gunna be (hopefully) inundated with mods, especially ones to overhaul your UI to something more workable, which i think is why i don't care about this games UI, simply 'cause i know it will be fixed/changed and otherwise prettied up by modders. When i'm running round my new self created dungeons with my own created weapons i'll be lol'ing quite hard at 360/ps3 guys waiting for their DLC to add something new for em. Let em have their "priority" but we're gunna be happier in the end

Firstly I want to say that I love this game. The combat is amazing, the graphics are outstanding and I haven't seen many bugs. There are so many things that this game does well but there are some things that need to be fixed. The UI is not mouse friendly, in fact I'm pretty sure it's identical to the consoles UI. Sometimes it doesn't recognize where the mouse is and you will click to exit the menu, for example, but it thinks your mouse is still on a topic or item. Oblivion never had these issues. The UI works just fine if you plug in a controller but it should work for the mouse/keyboard. It takes longer to navigate through your items than in Oblivion because it took advantage of the mouse. The console gamers didn't like Oblivion's UI because they were using controllers and a controller is terrible for those kind of menus. So it's understandable why so many like this new UI. Personally I don't like it since I'm using a mouse. There was more info in Oblivion's menu which was better because you didn't have to scroll over each item just to find out it's effects. This is very inefficient considering that this is an rpg and it's nice to have information about your loot. I don't want this to be viewed as a hate statement because I love Skyrim. The UI is my ONLY complaint. It won't stop me from enjoying this game but I am really disappointed at Bethesda for not at least trying to make a UI that takes advantage of our mice and keyboards.

My experience:

Gameplay: Overall, about what I expected. A solid entry in the spirit of Morrowind and Oblivion. Several problems so far, and I'm sure I'll encounter more, but so far it looks like an improvement over Oblivion. Of course, it takes a lot of time to really get a feel for this, so my opinion could be different in another day or two.

Graphics: Better than expected. My video card was ranked by the list on this forum at below the recommended specs, but not by a lot. It autodetected as ultra-high, I overrode that to approximately high (some custom settings), and it's been pretty decent in practice. There have been some persistent problems with... I guess it's lighting & shadows? I'm not quite sure, but every once in a while bands of light and dark seem to shadow various surfaces in really bizarre ways, but usually only for a couple of seconds. More common in towns than dungeons or wilderness.

UI: Worse than expected. No major bugs, not even any moderate bugs, but tons of minor bugs. Lots of different UI elements fail to update properly at times, or have keyboard and mouse interface schemes that conflict with each other, or have help text that fails to take in to account non-default keys, etc. Any one of the issues I've encountered is not even worth mentioning, but there's a ton of them and they add up. Really, it looks like not a lot of thought or effort or testing went in to the PC interface.

Launcher, startup movie & main menu: Better than expected. They reduced the number of movies played at start, showing more wisdom than I expected. The picture used for the launcher conveys a sense of an epic open-world nordic game quite well. The only thing that underperforms is dragon emblem on the main menu suffering from aliasing issues.

edit: Music: Better than expected. The past few TES games have had good main theme music, but not stuff that I would want to listen to while playing.

When they cant even get mouse control right its not nit picking.Paying 60 dollars for a AAA title with a multimillion dollar budget and not them not [censored] taking the time to make the mouse controls work right is disgusting.

Well the consolification is annoying, but it's hardly unplayable, or even close to it.

In what way does your mouse not work right?

Nicely said. Lots of little UI stuff that adds up to be an annoyance. For me the streaming/loading of the world is fairly good... but I recently put together a new comp. Hope it's playing satisfactorily for you!

Hi,

After more gameplay I think there are some minor issues.

While the mouse works for me, it can sometimes lack responsiveness and precision. I.e. An option might be highlighted, but the mouse needs to be properly over the text to work. Additionally, rarely, my mouse will be clearly over one item, but the item above or below it is actually highlighted - alomost like the hot-zones for selecting dialigue options are slightly out of alignment. Not too big an issue for me.

Finally, there is sometimes a small, fraction of a second, delay after you click something before the scroll wheel works. As well as this there's a delay after certain actions too. I.e. click to initiate a conversation option, change you mind and try to click the one you meant to and you cannot for a fraction of a second.

With this in mind I simply click more slowly in dialagues and they work fine. A slightly irritating niggle for sure, that can manifest anywhere you use the mouse to select Text, so menus, dialogues and the like.

Scoob.

If you're having issues with mouse controls on the UI, make sure that you have un-ticked the 360 controller option in the options menu. Honestly, I don't know why for a PC game they would have the 360 controller option pre-ticked to begin with, it's a PC port, not the console version, Mouse and Keyboard is what is default with a PC, not controller.

Very good point, I unticked this option before even starting playing, so mebe thats why i don't seem to have any problems, unless i try to use wasd then mouse in the convo, then i end up having to scroll to the top or bottom of the options to "re-align" my mouse and highlighted text.

Guess you are just lucky. I have a system that is slightly more powerful than yours, and I can barely run it at the lowest resolution with lowest possible settings. I'm pretty sure, my hardware should be able to run it on at least medium settings. I hope Bethesda will release a patch soon.

Yep, I have a wired xbox controller attached (for other types of games) and I couldn't even use my mouse until after the intro- there is no main menu option button, only ingame esc menu- and the controller is the default control device.

yeah its stupid this whole forum about complaining no feedback bethesda has done rally good job i doenst have any problems so far for me everything its perfect.... THANK YOU BETHESDA.............

It doesn't help that the console version controls have been dumbed down from Oblivions. I can only feel sorry for PC owners that have had this system shoe-horned onto a PC port. If it makes you feel better playing a Mage on a console is outright painful UNLESS your happy to spend the majority of battles just using two spells.

Personally I don't like things to take me out of the moment. So when a huge battle means I'm going to need to buff and replenish health to win, and this means spending 75% of the battle time in a bloody menu assigning spells and then re-assigning my battle spells once used, you'll forgive me for feeling a little peeved at this system.

I can only imagine that the developers feel the same way (and had any concerns outright rejected) as any self-respecting RPG or Action-RPG knows this system is terrible and counter-productive to immersion.

If you are left-handed it is very close to unplayable unless you use third party keyboard remapping tools. Not everyone can use the default keybindings comfortably. (in my case it causes wrist pains after a few minutes of playing which does make the game unplayable).

Consolification is not a problem, low texture resolution is not a problem (its only really noticable up close and the game looks pretty darn good anyway).

Thus i havn't actually played the game yet, (I tried it for a short while yesterday but gave up due to the [censored] controls), Kinda frustrating as i had looked forward to spending this weekend playing skyrim and even pre-purchased it on steam (waste of money, borderline scam)

This quote right here is a prime example of why the PC gaming industry is in trouble. It's the community, not the developers that make it hard to be a PC gamer. The elitism is verging on absurd. I actually agree that PC gaming is better, but it is also more time consuming and expensive. The casual gaming market is far far bigger and always will be.

i.e. too small a market, ignoring them is best? Yeah, right.

It's not elitism to ask for developers to develop a PC game for current PC hardware instead of 5-8 year old console hardware. It's just wanting a game that'll push your system NOW, and use the nifty features you have in your computer NOW. If you bought an XBox360 and only got games using the specs of a Playstation 2 as a baseline, would YOU be annoyed? I bet so.

PC gamers have been in the XBox360 vs. PS2 boat since before the XBox360 came out, in most cases. I guess some of us are getting tired of this situation.

I'm loving it ! Apart from the stupid thing with Steam trying to download it, when I have the disc in the drive..... It set up graphics at high for me from the start. I've had no issues with crashing, not being able to use the UI or anything else yet. It's a beautiful game and I'm totally drawn into the story after a couple of hours play. First of the Elder Scrolls games I've played, so maybe not expecting anything else has worked out well for me.

I might be the minority but since I know modders will fix many issues, I just don't get too upset about it. I know, I suppose I should be mad at Bethesda because it is not them fixing it but rather the mod community... but I just don't feel mad. I'm actually very happy that Bethesda has built this amazing RPG foundation warts and all, that I know will get perfected over time. The UI doesn't annoy me, minor glitches don't annoy me- I'm content from having seen the mod work on Oblivion that it is all temporary. I don't want to downplay other people's disappointment, I just don't feel it I guess.

hardcoe nerds - PC
Me and my sixy friends - Xbox360

You can see why there is a lot of animosity. Ugly people, when given a veil or shroud (in this case a computer screen), to hide their ugliness and horrible ability to withstand personal confrontation, will explode with that built up rage from high school.

No, I am not a doctor, even though it may seem like I have a masters degree in life.