Hello, my name is Aleksander, I am 23 years old and live in Norway. Like many oother, I am a hardcoe PC gamer who tries his best to fit as many hours of gameplay into already full daily schedule.
I dont play games for living, playing games is my life.
You are wrong in assuming that I still live with my parents, I dont. I live on my own and do my best to learn ins and outs of Game Design at Collage of Nord-Tr?ndelag.

I just wanted to come in here and say that I give up, I cant take this any more and no amount of BS story about The Voice can force me to start Skyrim again. It is NOT WORTH MY TIME.
I wont bash on how bad this game is, because it is a rather good game. There are just simple things I cannot wrap my head around.


1.0 Gameplay
The gameplay is solid and from what I've seen also diverse enough. You can do a lot of diverse things and partaking in different events, I just havent gotten far enough into Skyrim to experience them.

1.1 Introduction
For some reason Skyrim got a pretty basic tutorial teaching me things I already know. ASDW is used for moving, Space for jumping Mouse 1 and Mouse 2 for attacking. I know that, thank you. Besides, feeding people tutorial when an angry dragon trying to microwave the entire town works pretty bad.

What I want to know is:
How do I craft things?
How do I combine things?
What Items are the useful ones and what items are plain junk?
How can I perform special attacks if any at all?
How the levelling and stats system work?
If I push Stamina will my base damage rise?
If I push my two-handed weapon skill up from 15 to 50 without investing any perks, will my attacks become stronger?

The introduction was pretty mediocre, thankfully I got wide experience from other games and could rely on intuition and figuring things through trial and error. Eventually I got bored and discovered "Help" section under ESC by pure accident. To my surprise I found a lot of interesting information I wish I had access to sooner.



1.2 Leveling
When you level up, you gain basic stats, more HP more Mana and more Stamina. What happened to Strength, Intelligence, Agility? When did they become unpopular/obsolete?

What doesn't make sense is why do we have double levelling system and "Where is my XP for killing that Troll???".
The way I see things work: every time you skill goes up a level, your character level is filled up a bit.
Skill level for One-Handed swords or bows doesn't do much without investing perks in it. Skill level for Smithing allow you to improve your armor regardless of perks invested?
So basically if I pickpocket half a dozen people for no good reason then getting my own pockets filled, I will rise in level.The word of Skyrim will be adjusted to my level and become more hostile. Yet I remain a crappy fighter such as I were at level 1. Perhaps I should finish the combo and level up Sneaking and Alchemy, so that I can sneak about, placing poisons in enemies pockets, hoping their are dumb enough to drink them.

I dont really like levelling system, it works, but I dont like it. When I rised my Archery from 0 to 50 without putting a single perk in it, NOTHING CHANGED. At leas it feels that way.
Thus my question: What the point?
No, dont answer it, I dont want to hear it.

You've got level up your skills atop of your character, for what sane reason?
Just so we could scrap the basic, satisfactory feeling of being rewarded with 10.000 XP for killing a hard mob way out of your league?
Did it make the feeling of grinding through your character less persistent? More fun? Diverse? Better than Oblivion?
No.

The levelling system in Skyrim works, I just dont like it. It takes time, counter intuitive and unrewarding.
Speaking of levelling system: Why are you not rewarded points in Smithing when you mine or melt ore? If you are, it is damn well hidden.



1.3 Quests
Okay, so right after I my cat-like-woman escaped from the extremely dangerous beheading attempt (emphasis on dangerous) and much less dangerous dragon attack, I arrived at some god forsaken washed up town by the river bed. It's okay I was telling myself, many games got easy start, the big lively cities are ahead. I wanted to do quests, explore the (still) new and (still) exciting fantasy of "Skyrim". I opened my quest log and what do I see: Visit the College of Winterhold. Yes, magic, everybody loves magic. Lets have a cat-like-woman who can cast spells, just like the good old days of Oblivion!
College of Winterhold here I come! Than I consulted minimap.... *insert facepalm here*
It was on the OTHER side of the bloody map.
Fine, I get there eventually, I unchecked it and move on to Bards College. Sven seem like a nice enough guy, so being bard could be cool too. Consulting the minimap... Yeah, uncheck this one too.
In fact, I think I uncheck the whole Miscellaneous quests and go explore the closest cave.

What I am trying to point out is: Sending a new player wishing to learn basics of casting spells into a word full of danger, adventure and magical beasts and then telling him you have to travel from your starting location to the other side of the word is like.... Holding a bottle of water in front of a very thirsty person and singing "Cant touch it".
You dont have to cram every single location of interest into one single place like you did in Oblivion, but have a proper introduction for Christ sake. A safe starting location new players can call home for first 3-4 hours of play. Location that will introduce game elements to you and help immerse yourself into the world. Fable 1 did it and it worked.
When I saw Miscellaneous quests I felt discouraged to go after them, they were so many and distance were too great.



1.4 Interface
I could probably write a "Doctor grade in usability" based on Skyrims user interface. Not because its bad, it isnt. Very cool interface, thin and clean, but so damn hard to use.
Look, let me just point out one single thing:
When you press ESC and go to Save/Load, you are able to use Mouse to brows and select different save points. When you go to Inventory->Weapons subcategory, you cant do the same thing. My point being that Skyrim interface is unintuitive and difficult to use. You should be able to complete any task inside of inventory with either Mouse or Keyboard. I cant and if people think I am too dumb for this game, than perhaps I am.

Here is another example of how one can struggle against Skyrims interface. Did I mention that Favourites menu is a brilliant idea? It is, I mean it. I love it, but you could improve on it.
I wish to equip Fireball spell into my right hand and Lightning Bold in my left. Prior to this I used to dual cast lightning bolt and right now I hold two-handed weapon. So I go to Favourites and use my Left mouse button to click on fireball. Nothing happens. I right click on it and an arrow with letter L appear in it. Did I mention the overuse of white coloured pointing arrows in Skyrims interface?

Now I got Fireball in my left hand and Lightning Bolt in my right hand. Insanity does not stop here.
I try to cast one spell after another, holding down Left Mouse button to charge Fireball (which is firmly put in my left hand on the screen)................................ Charges lightning bolt in my right hand on the screen.
That is why my cat-like-woman goes Sith Lord style casting Spark from both hands.

In order for me to hold Fireball in my right hand, I first have to short-cut it to a number, than press the short-cut, then go into Favourites and select Lightning spell. Now I have Fireball in my right hand and Lightning Bolt in my left. But mouse buttons are still [censored] up. My room mate plays it on Xbox 360 and he has no problem with triggers on xbox controller... Some people report using Directional arrows to solve their, left hand, right hand problem. I just ask them "What the hell do you have a mouse for then?"



1.5 Time to wrap it up
I could probably write much more, I probably should write much more. But I just realized I've been sitting here for thee hours getting nowhere and my laundry is long done. What I wish to write at the end of this wall of text is that I, a PC gamer, are pretty much drooling over the future Xbox. Every day I wake up and pray to god for the saviour to come.

Did you play Witcher 2? The visuals are bloody amazing.
There is a reason why CD Project haven't released it for Xbox 360 yet and its not due to Witcher 2 being unfinished product.
There is a reason why people disliked Crysis 2.
Nuff said.
Time to make dinner and you know, the usual jazz.


P.S. I am glad I spent my monthly allowance from the study loan I am living of on purchasing Oblivion GOTY Deluxe instead of Skyrim. Call me what ever names you want, sue me if you feel like it, but I wont regret what I did. At least I have enough cash for another apple cake, that alone cant be so sad.
P.S.S. Please forgive my horrible English, I spent too much time playing games during High School to learn proper grammar.

I have played all the elder scrolls games and I still would rate this as the best, it simplifies some things for sure but it adds so much more.
Its a pity you dont like it but I guess they cant please all of the people all of the time, maybe you will like fallout 4 and the next elder scrolls .

I like it Skyrim, I like it a whole lot. Prior to launch date I was watching interview with executive producer of Skyrim - Todd Howard on the http://www.gamespot.com/events/the-hotspot/video.html?sid=6343995&hd=1&tag=bounce&pid=634491 and was like "OMG, Bethesda are so awesome for doing Skyrim" + "I wonder what my future in game industry will look like". But mainly UI and some small problems discourage me from playing.
Also my concious might have something to do with this all.

Not going to bother with a long reply here, but regarding your dislike of the leveling system and wondering where the basic XP for killing mobs went. I may be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure TES has been away from the whole "experience point" leveling system since at least as far back as Daggerfall. Which was the first one I played, no idea on Arena. As far as I can recall leveling has always been based on your skill increases. I will admit I didn't play much of oblivion, as I didn't have a computer that would run it or an xbox until recently. So if there was some sort of experience point reward system added in Oblivion, I wouldn't know.

My memory is pretty bad, but I don't recall ever being reward XP for killing things in a TES game.

I do somewhat agree with the perk being needed to feel like you are actually good with something, I found my level 20 character getting [censored] kicked since I was only puting one point into the "20% increase" perk, and finding myself weak.

Perhaps I did not elaborate enough on this point, just didnt wish to make too much of a fuss. But early in the game, following happened:
During "Retrieve the golden dragon claw armament for my store" quest I came across "Sedunda's Kiss" with two Big People. Being on my first character, just couple of hours into the game my cat-like-woman did the most logical choice. Lets make friends!!! Nya.
Did not work so well being clobbered in the head, at least I got to fly, though I doubt my cat-like-woman will remember any of it. The hit, the fall, it was pretty bad, the "no amount of healing potions can help you now" bad. Nya.
God bless Quick Save keys.

The next thing that went through my head is: Challenge Accepted... Nya. Thankfully AI is pretty bad and Sven was wearing the heaviest armour, namely his clothes. Nya.
Just kidding.

Thankfully I had enough arrows and decent bow from my "Thieving Crafting Adventure" in Riverwood. Also some angry [censored] elf offer me to train my archery skill for free and I gracefully accepted. With Sven's help (or what ever the kids name actually is), crappy AI and enough time I dawned both Giants. Being bellow level 10 and "one hit killed" by them, I felt I did something great and I wanted my reward. Which is, hold on, wait for it, a little longer..... 2 levels in bow mastery.
The reward was so insignificant that I felt.... Unrewarded I guess.


My memory is just as bad as yours, but Oblivion GOTY Deluxe is at 93% and my dinner is halfway ready.