First off: Amazing game, way better than Oblivion (not that being better than Oblivion is difficult). I'd even go so far as to say this game is on par with Morrowind (high praise right there).

However, nothing is perfect, and some of the problems in Skyrim have been haunting it since Oblivion or even Morrowind.


First off, problems new to Skyrim:


Leveling System:

It seems in your eagerness to dump the old-fashioned leveling system, you forgot why and how the old leveling system worked. You see, there are certain skills that everyone is going to want or use (lockpicking is an example, in this game, archery and sneak also) and I don't really want my mage to pound through levels because I shot 4 people with a bow and snuck around a corner and then picked a lock. I want to level up off of my magic skills.

You know, the function that major and minor skills were for!

As it is I'm level 24, and none of my skills are above 60, because my archery, lockpicking, and sneak are dragging me down (i.e. making me level faster than I should).

Horses:

Horses in this game are [censored], and are the number one source of frustration in the game.

First off, horses try and fight things, which is kind of realistic I suppose, but it really becomes a function of how horseback riding works (or doesn't work, I should say). There's no way to do anything on horseback (not even talk to people, more on that later), which means you have to go through the painful process of dismounting to engage in combat, by which time enemies have already plinked away at your HP, or closed to melee range (bad for casters and archers).

Why can't I just jump off my horse. It's not like encountering combat out riding around in the world is unexpected, this is literally something designed into the game -- it's no accident I randomly get attacked. And it's not like there's any escape, wolves (for one) run as fast or faster than my horse at a gallop.

As horses fight things, one of three things happens:

1. They die, which is stupid and frustrating, and doesn't add anything to the game (I'll just reload my last quicksave which is less than 60 seconds ago because Elder Scrolls games are so crash-prone you get in the habit of fingering F5 when you aren't doing anything else).
2. They fight, which is game-ruining because horses do overpowered amounts of damage.
3. They run, which is stupid because they run ~100 feet in a random direction and you spend ~5 minutes looking for them...or you reload.

So unless you're lucky enough to see an opponent far off, if you're on your horse, you're in for frustration, period, full stop.

That really shouldn't've gotten out of betatesting.

Falling Damage:

You either fall and take no damage or fall and die instantly, what the...?

Pathing:

NPCs seem to have a difficult time figuring out how to swim.

My frost atronach and a cave bear had an interesting staring contest when on opposite sides of a river.

Also, NPCs occasionally get caught on terrain. It's not fun fighting a boss only to beat him because he got stuck on a pillar and I could stand 2 feet away from him killing him with Flames.

Bounty System:

Sometimes I'll randomly have a bounty even after killing all the witnesses. I also can't find anyway in game to check my bounty (as you could in Morrowind and Oblivion), so it's difficult to tell when this bug has occurred.

Clairvoyance (the spell):

This spell was a good idea, but was implemented wrong.

Now, problems carried over from Oblivion:


Contracting Ability Pool:

It seems that magic and not-magic are going in opposite ways since Morrowind. Whereas in Morrowind you had a dizzying array of abilities as a caster, and you really only had left click spam and pray to God you live as melee, now the options as a caster are contracting and the options as a not-caster are expanding.

Not to hate on the new magic system, I love it. I'm hating on the magic behind the magic system.

First off: No Open Lock? Are you serious? I'm a mage, I don't pick locks I just tell them to open and they do. I mean I can should gouts of flame from my hands without being burned, I can summon creatures and weapons from Oblivion, but I can't make a few pieces of metal reorganize so I can get through a door/into a chest?

I mean at least you guys make some kind of excuse for removing Levitate and Jump (beyond the "consoles don't have enough RAM to uncell cities", which is the obvious actual reason), what's the excuse here?

This ties into my first complaint (about the leveling system). As a mage I either have to level lockpicking (throwing off my level-to-skill ratio) or I have to just not get things inside chests (more of a non-option...).-

Moreover, removing spellmaking was dumb.

Hills:

What you can and can't climb is random and arbitrary. Sometimes I don't want to run around something in circles looking for a way up.

Fast Travel:

Despite the appearance of carriages, the game is still designed around fast travel. There's no mark, recall, or interventions. Saying that these spells caused unintended gameplay consequences because people could escape from combat is disingenuous. There are so many ways to solve the problem of mark, recall, and interventions being used as an instant, free escape mechanism that it's ridiculous.

Moreover, Recall had a fail rate unless you leveled Mysticism in Morrowind, so it wasn't like click this button and you escape, it cost a lot of mana with low Mysticism, it failed quite a bit, and if you wanted to level Mysticism (and miss out of something else) just so you could run away and run back, why is that a problem?

I mean seriously. As I've mentioned, this is an Elder Scrolls game, it's not exactly stable. People finger F5 compulsively. If people want to run away to a town, and walk all the way back, rather than just hitting F9, why do you have an issue with that?

Or, you could've actually fixed the problem.

How about Recall/Interventions causing a fade out of some duration, possibly with an incoming damage buff during that, or with incoming damage cancelling the teleport?

There you go, problem solved.

The new fast travel system is immersion killing, and people who want immersion aren't going to use it, which means long walks because for whatever reason you literally can't get out of northeast Skyrim via carriage, you have to walk to Solitude, Whiterun, or Windhelm.

Celled Cities:

Cheating hardware requirements for consoles is not good design.

Distant Textures:

I literally can't tell the difference between Ocarina of Time's distant textures and Skyrim's.

My $400 video card isn't amused.

Stolen Goods:

Somehow this shopkeeper know one bunch of flowers was stolen but the other wasn't.

NPCs that never moved and never slept in Morrowind was seriously less ridiculous than this. I'm kind of curious as to how whoever suggested this wasn't instantly laughed at and fired, never to work in the industry again, much less have his idea accepted and incorporated into four games.

Essential NPCs:

Essential NPCs in Skyrim are actually worse than in Oblivion.

It's kind of immersion killing to be able to commit a crime, clean up the witnesses, and get away with it, only to have one of the NPCs be "essential" and be totally screwed. Moreover, unlike in Oblivion, essential NPCs just get back up and keep beating on me, rather than being obviously knocked out (with a message) and then forgetting about me.

Again, how is the person that suggested this not only still working in the industry, but has their idea in four games?

Last, problems carried over from Morrowind:


Lockpicking:

Lockpicking hasn't been fun or engaging or meaningful in any of the games. In Morrowind you just kind of spammed lockpicks, in Oblivion you just spammed auto attempt (especially with the Skeleton Key which made the skill utterly meaningless), and in Skyrim you just get really good at the minigame.

I've gotten good at the minigame (nice rip-off from Thief 3 by the way!) so the level of a lock isn't meaningful. Less than 5 lockpicks later it's open and my skill isn't relevant. The lockpicks consumed also aren't relevant because they can be bought easily and plentifully and cheaply.

Clairvoyant Faction Ejection:

You went and put in a nice bounty system (even if it doesn't work sometimes, see above) only to have factions remain clairvoyant? I can kill a bunch of Windhelm citizens, clean them all up, and get off scot free, but if I setup a kill on a fellow College of Winterhold mage perfectly, I get instantly ejected from the faction?


All-in-all a beautiful game, I'm having a great time, and probably will keep doing so for 50-150 more hours!

Horses are pain in the ass agreed.

There is a mod to slow down leveling already I believe. That with the warrior,thief or mage stone should balance out the leveling problem but I have no problem with the way it is now.

leveling system: Leveling doesn't mean crap character wise. It only means you get a perk. Perks define your character. If you don't want to level off of lock picking...DONT DO IT!
Contracting Ability Pool: Its called balancing
Fast Travel:THEN DONT DO IT
Celled Cities: a game can only have so much

all i got to say

I totally agree about the horses. Another mod I am waiting for is one where horses can't attack / can't be attacked.

There is no alternative for opening things that are locked.

If this was Morrowind or Oblivion, I'd've leveled Alteration solely for opening locks (and then had fun with the silly things it can do), but this isn't Morrowind or Oblivion, so I can't.


Taking out Open Lock was "balancing"? Taking out Sound, Swift Swim, Jump, Chameleon, Charm, et cetera was "balancing"?

It's funny that you mention it like this, because magic was actually underpowered in Morrowind (because you didn't regenerate mana except for sleeping), and now is up to par, but has far fewer abilities.

I'm not even talking combat abilities either. Jump, Swift Swim, Levitate, and Open Lock were all non-combat abilities.


You missed my point, probably because you didn't actually read what I wrote and just read the header and assumed what I was talking about.

I'm saying that the devs use the new, casual-friendly, click-to-travel system to excuse themselves from building an immersive fast travel system. Morrowind had guild guides, interventions, mark and recall, boats, and the silt strider. There was literally a way to fast travel from every city or town, but not out in the wilderness.

In Oblivion, there was none of this, just horses and click-to-travel (non-immersive).

In Skyrim, you have carriages, but they can mysteriously take you places but not take you back from them (Winterhold, Dawnstar, et cetera). As someone who's currently playing a mage, living in the College of Winterhold, being stuck there everytime I go to drop off dragon bones or scales (which have a ridiculous weight) is kind of trying.


http://i.imgur.com/Q30EK.jpg

Agree with alot.

Pathing is bad and easy to abuse.

My absolute favorite thing in Morrow-wind was the massive amount of spell effects and stuff. Levitate, open lock, etc.

Oblivion cut back but still let you spell make which still gave you alot of varity.

Now Skyrim limits spells to a handful. Nearly no utility spells either.

Yeah, this riding is screwed. I totally wish we could have no fasttravel but some teleporting/travel system like in Morrowind. Would really greatly help with the immersion (I hope for mods!). Also I join your critique on magic.

Agreed on all accounts. I would go even further but I don't want to get in a huge argument over it. I hate to say this but I'm starting to slip away from Skyrim.

The only things you mention that I agree with are the horses, pathing find for NPC's and the new "level up"/character system. Horses and NPC's can get pretty derpy at times; however, I believe some of the points you raise are questionable.

For example, you mention the Hills being randomly walled off at parts. You should at least be able to figure which hills are too steep to climb (pretty much anything greater than 50 degrees) not to mention, not everything in life has a direct route. Essential Children: It's for the atmosphere of the game, have you ever seen a childless town before? Not to mention, I highly doubt Bethesda would condone the option of child murdering in their game.

Also, I don't know about you, but this has been the very stable for my part. Maybe 2-3 crashes in 40 hours of gameplay. A huge step up from the nightmare Oblivion.

I agree with just about everything OP said.

I think that if the sensibility of Skyrim was applied to a game with the amount of attention to depth and immersion that Morrowind had, Bethesda would make the greatest game ever. Assuming they didn't stick to a release date because it sounds cool

Having said that, I am loving the game so far, and can't wait to play through it!

I agree with you on a lot of your points.

However, lock picking may level your character, but that doesn't mean you should be spending perk points on lock pick. Save your perk points for when you actually level up your magical schools. No need to get mad about it. Also, there is a skeleton key in skyrim as well. Go out and get it and then you never have to worry about lock picking ever again.

Many good points stated by the OP.

Horse dismount in the middle of combat was disappointing, was figuring it would be fixed but wasn't.

Agree with pathing, even though it has helped me killed bosses that otherwise would have killed me.

I agree with hills and mountains, I was disappointed to see I can diagonally jump up the face of a mountain if I get too lazy to find the "path" to the top.

I understand why they need children to be essential, but it really svcks when I break into a house to murder someone and I see they have a child there, knowing that I cannot kill all witnesses.

Clairvoyant factions was a really good point that I did not notice. The same logic should apply to them, but for some reason Bethesda left it out.

There are also a few things that the OP stated that did not make sense to me.

Falling damage, I have taken varying levels of damage from falls. So not sure what you are talking about.

Distant textures being compared to an N64 game? Really? I thought the LOD was breath taking, again, not sure how you can make this comparison.

Essential NPCs, this did not make sense to me because I have raided and killed Khajiit caravans, only to be left with one guy because he was essential and when he finally got back up from the ground he just kept walking. So he did not retain aggro for my prior assault.

Lockpicking, I like the new system because it is more of a challenge than Oblivion was. You stated that you just spammed Auto Attempt, for some of us we actually figured out how to open the locks without Auto Attempt. Once I had the pattern figured out, I could open Master level locks with 3 lock picks.
This new system corrected that and made it an interesting challenge. Not sure how you can say this is worse than Oblivion.

All in all, I agree that Skyrim is better than the predecessors, but I also understood is was not going to be perfect.

It's not about a "direct route", it's about not wanting everything to be a frontal assault. Sometimes I'd like to come from behind.


It's a sandbox game, just because you can do something doesn't mean that you're "supposed" to do it.


Crashes at least once every few hours for me. Also does this for my buddy who's on vent with me a lot.


I don't think you understand my concern.

In Oblivion and Morrowind, you could level skills that weren't major/minor, and it wouldn't level your character.

In this game, things that you pretty much have to level (as in leveling up the skill, not perking the skill) level your character.

My friend who actually plays a thief (and therefore has archery and lockpicking as core skills) is a lower level than I am, but has higher skills.

You need 10 skill ups to level up. He gets skill ups from archery because that's all he does. I get skill ups from archery because opening with a sneak attack from a bow is always going to be an amazing option. He gets skill ups from sneak because that's something he does. I get skill ups from sneak because opening with a sneak bow attack is an amazing option.

So while I'm level 25 and my highest skill is Conjuration at 60, he's level 20ish with archery in the 70s.

Sneak, archery, and lockpicking are things that everyone is going to do because of the way combat in the game is balanced. There's no downside to sneaking up and opening with a bow shot, and there's no upside to just not picking locks and passing over treasure.


I either take such a small amount of damage that I basically didn't take damage at all (not even enough to make my health bar budge, and this is from a mage with 150 hp) or I straight up die.


If you find super low res textures and trees that are basically sprites "breath taking", then sure, whatever.


I've never experienced this. I just get pursued endlessly be "essential" NPCs.


I didn't say it's worse than Oblivion, I said that it's an ongoing problem. Your skill level in lockpicking is irrelevant with mastery of the minigame (defeating the point of having a skill in lockpicking), or your skill level in lockpicking makes the minigame obsolete.

I agree with everything you have said, minus maybe the LOD models. Unfortunately, the gaming world doesn't have that one unlimited detail engine yet so, LODs will always be rather crappy looking. I have played some very recent Next Gen games, and I am never impressed with the LODs, especially when you focus on them. Skyrim's lighting, and blurring etc, make it so I hardly ever even notice the LODs, so I'm ok with that.

The leveling system, lockpicking, sneaking etc.. I have felt pretty hard myself, being a full mage as well.

Although, nearly all of the issues you have described can be fixed via modding.

Children can be assigned to ignore crimes (They will also send mercenaries at you btw)

Essential npcs can almost eliminated entirely.

Horse behavior can easily be remedied.

Falling damage, pathing, fast travel, factions, all can be fixed, and will be. It was done in Oblivion.


Now before you say, "mods shouldn't HAVE to be the solution" I'll already stop you, and agree with you, however, it is very clear that they anticipated Modders heavily, by adding as many systems in as possible. A lot of stuff seemed to just be thrown into the game last minute, like vampirism, companions and wifes etc... Modding is such a heavy part of the game that Todd even mentioned in an interview, that they wish they could come up with a solution for console players to be able to enjoy them somehow. Bethesda really did overstretch their reach, though I feel like that was because they knew what the community could do.

There is a way to see your bounty, and the falling damage doesn't do that to me? I've falling many times and my health bar has halved.

Although I don't have a problem with the current leveling system, I just prefer the old one.

They're both fine though, just miss attributes.

Essential people and the Shop keepers knowing what's stolen should have never been added.

But if your character levels from lock picking, it doesn't matter. The enemies don't scale to your level like they did in oblivion( idk about mw never played it)... So I don't see the big deal

Agree with almost everything, except falling, which feels realistic to me. It certainly is immersion breaking to notice low quality textures (and having to load cities separately). And not because they appear obviously unrealistic, but because I am unable to avoid drawing the conclusion that constraints were placed to accommodate consoles. I know that is not Bethesda's fault, and it would be a terrible decision for them as a company to develop for PC only, but still, there it is there. Hopefully 4th gen consoles will give TES VI what it needs.

The leveling/skill system is I think the only major flaw in the game. I am attempting to play as an Orc Paladin(2H Hammers, Heavy Armor, Smithing, Restoration, Speech). I have been playing on Master difficulty from the very beginning, and in the majority of fights I have had so far (~40 hours of play, lvl 14) are impossible using only my 'core' skills, as I almost always have to perform a string of retreats, bow shots, and retreats. Which is all fine. In fact masterful. I love the intensity, the fear of running for my life, of turning to some desperate last resort. I feel great realism and immersion during these fights. But then, to level up due to advancements of Sneak, Archery, Lock-picking, is a very unsatisfying experience, and makes it nearly impossible to build the character I want to role play. The system seems to push me towards leveling all skills, and going out of ones way to avoid that breaks immersion. I guess they are just hoping we will max everything, and build classes with perks? I guess power gaming is the new can't miss component of role-playing?

Just to be clear, Skyrim is the greatest game I have ever played(I think better than Morrowind, never played Oblivion or TES I and II), which seems strange to say that after reading what I have just written. I would call it beautiful and brilliant. Visually, stylistically, emotionally a terrific work of art. But it could be better.

While I miss open spells and bashing open locked doors, if my character isn't a thief then I just don't get those items/have to take a different route. Deal with it.

Of your points, which are all valid, the only ones that really bother me are the uselessness of the horse and the poor pathfinding. Other than then those two gripes (mostly the horses' inability to move faster than my sprint) I am LOVING everything about this game.

Not sure what you want with lockpicking since you say it is annoying how there isn't a spell to open locks but then you say opening locks is easy anyways.

And it is.

You have 32 times more ram than the 360 has, COUNTING the 360's vram, which probably almost halves it.

one thing the OP keeps harping on about that's really bugging me in this thread is how apparently *everybody* will use the sneak+bow method, you sir are clearly speaking for yourself - YOU consider it the best way to start a fight, i personally prefer to sneak up a little on people then scorch their asses with fire before they've so much as drawn their sword. Stop speaking for the masses, the only skill in the whole game that would appear to be pretty much mandatory is lock picking i agree with that, but please stop speaking for the rest of us.

-Horses: Are indeed waste of disk space.They look nice as creatures but that's all.

-Falling damage: Is in.You just need to find the proper height XD

-Clairvoyance (the spell) : CHEAT.

-Hills: Levitate is much more necessary in this game!

-Stolen Goods: Why break something that was fixed in FONV? At least let us sell the stolen items to merchants from other cities!? But no.Bethesda is here to teach us right and wrong.After all,thieves are dagger wielding honorable warriors,they totally do not break in houses at night to steal stuff and sell them.And sneaking is for multiplying bow damage,definately not for taking items without the owner noticing it.Ah,and of course,pickpocketing is not for taking stuff out of one's pocket but putting poison in the big bad guys' stomach.

-Essential NPCs of all ages: Waiting for Construction Set.

-Clairvoyant Faction Ejection: Oh thy fail.