Perhaps a nice read for you. http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/EricSchwarz/20111111/8866/Skyrim_or_How_Not_to_Make_a_PC_Game.php

Also, there is no harm in what you do, but you could have watched a movie instead if all you care about is graphics and storyline. I care for both of those, but one thing is more important if you actually want to play a game: playability. The UI is an important part of that experience. But you must admit, consoles and their controllers compare not to the level of control PC gamers have. Ergo, games are more arcade and easy to play. All fine when all you care about it graphics and story, I suppose.

+1

Especially agree about PC gamers. "We have more power, memory and processor speed than consoles, but we're finding it increasingly difficult to find games that have been developed solely for the PC. This makes us upset, frustrated and bitter. We must metaphorically stamp our feet in protest of such injustice!"

Aha, very nice. I started gaming when I was around 6-8 too. Twenty four now, so it's slowly coming up to twenty years. Good times.

Just to clarify why I thought it was funny. It made me picture a scene from the Blackadder Christmas special, when he glimpses his future and is proclaimed as the supreme ultra ruler of the galaxy, or something along those lines, with a Gimp-clad Baldrick at his side. 8D

There's quite a few reasons we play PC games rather than consoles.

Using a mouse and keyboard is one of the major ones. I've been playing first person games with a mouse and keyboard since the days when consoles were still exclusively 2d side-scrolling games. I've been using the same main keybindings since those days with few modifications taking into account new controls (remember the days when there was no reloading, lying prone, melee or grenade attacks with their own key while any weapon was out?) Been playing TES on the PC since morrowind, I'm about as precise with a Bow or fireball as I am with a sniper rifle in a shooter. Leading targets, adjusting for distance, speed and gravity like a pro.

Gamepads are clunky and lack prescision. No need for auto-aim with a mouse, and console games have a flattening problem because of the trouble looking around. You can also do alot more with a mouse. Like an inventory where you can drag and drop things to equip them and sort things however you like.

It's a crutch for more traditionally isometric perspective RPGs like dungeon siege. I tried the demo of DS3 and dropped it almost immediately as it clearly had no business being on a PC at all. Skyrim's may be unintuitive, but its tolerable. At least the quest compass and location icons aren't as intrusive with Skyrim.

And don't even get me started on the complexity of games. Again, look at Dungeon Siege. The first two on the PC were already considered pretty simplistic action RPGs compared to the meatier ones, but DS3 doesn't even let you make your own character.

From Morrowind to Skyrim we lost alot of skills. We had a full assortment of short and long blades: daggers, tantos, wakizashis, short swords, longswords, broadswords, sabers, katanas, claymores, Daikatanas. Blunt and axe weapons had their own skills. Now our only distinction is 1 handed and 2 handed and items don't even have a condition anymore, a shame given the addition of crafting. Daggers, "swords" and greatswords.....Really? In the Elder Scrolls VI: ? what are we just going to have, melee weapons as a skill and that's it? (Don't get any ideas Bethesda!) We've lost athletics and acrobatics entirely.

Don't get me wrong there are alot of wonderful things about Skyrim. The world is much more alive than even Oblivion was, but the elder scrolls is becoming much more like a fantasy action game than roleplaying game. The same thing happened to the Tom Clancy franchises, Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon were very realistic tactical shooters, now they have more in common with Call of Duty. And games are much shorter. Yes the advances in graphics and necessity of voice acting have a limiting effect on how much can be done, but very much of it is by design, for rapid consumption and 15 year olds playing and beating the game in a weekend. And the blame rests squarely on consoles and their limitations.

Wait.. wut? You play on PS3 for gorgeous graphics when you have a PC?

Something tells me you don't have a capable PC. You don't pay ￡10 more for a worse looking game if one of the two main reasons you play is the visuals.

baloney

It is using a peripheral that the PC can take advantage of to ease gameplay

By your logic, somehow using a Keyboard and mouse on an XBoX elevates consoles to the level of PC games

You seem to want to limit yourself so that you can feel superior. The PC can do so many things...and you won't consider taking advantage of this one factor that makes the PC potentially superior to a console? Bizarre logic. The big plus of a PC is precisely because it can do so many 'non-standard' things and gives you so many more ways to do a thing

Yes the UI kinda svcks, but you get used to it. It doesn't ruin the game.

You can switch between shield + weapon and any magic + magic or magic + weapon combinations at any time through hotkeys fairly easily once you get used to it, without having to open the menus at all.

Actually, it would. Because adding a keyboard and mouse to the XBOX would greatly enhance the level of control, and therefore upgrade the console.
A console controller on PC is rediculous. It would limit my level of control.

Yeah, well, the UI svcks . But you know what? In a month or so we will have - thanks to the modding community - a nice inventory. I'm pretty sure this will happen .

You cant get refunds on Steam / Steamworks games, so IMO PC gamers that purchased it and didnt like it have every right to complain.

I'm playing it on the PC with an Xbox 360 controller, and can definitely telll that the game was severely neglected for the PC, with far too much emphasis on being playable on consoles, but I still enjoy it and the 'consolisation' aspect of the game only really seems to affect the UI, which should eventually be improved with mods.

I think most of these complaints come from PC getting hand-me-downs ports from consoles because consoles are more important to Bethesda, while launch day 232,000 PC gamers, at the same time, were playing Skyrim on Steam. Xbox isn't their bread and butter, it's an excuse to cut corners and avoid the costs of development for PC. They have every right to be disgruntled about the UI. It's a poorly optimized port.

That is Bethesda's job, that's why I payed them good money.

Cool... but what does this have to do with the PC?

TBH I dont think that the ￡30 I paid for Skyrim is equivalent to the 4+ years of programming and hard work that has gone into this game, nor is it equivalent to the end product I recieved ....

The development and the game is worth a lot more than that, and the initial purchase price is more than worth what you get with this game.

As long as the game works without any crippling bugs, you got plenty more than what you paid for. UI, texture and other content mods are fully optional, and at least Bethesda give the community the opportunity to modify those things, unlike in other games where you are stuck with what you get on day 1.

I dont think anyone has issues with this, most TES series pc players know how awesome the mod community is and what they have done to make the games better. The issue is we were charged $60+ for a unfinshed, poorly ported console port that's up to the player to fix.....gamesas could have have given PC players a bigger FU!!!

That is really nice brainwashing they got there. You actually believe that?

exactly...however nice it's not the job of the community to finish their product.

Baloney times two

I note that you have a lot of PC game experience. Good on ya. That doesn't make what you say re: controllers anything but your own elevated opnion

What would you say if I told you that military EOD robots that cost a quarter of a million dollars use precisely an XBoX 360 controller? Not one like it, but off-the-shelf XBoX360 gamepads. The troops love it. It's easy, convenient, and it does the job well. The tool suits the job.

I prefer the K+B myself on a PC game like Skyrim, by far. The mouse is so much more precise and fluid. But if I had a problem, what in the world would I be thinking if I refused to see if there was another solution??

You're not the only guy that has experience with anything. I've made some very popular 3rd party things, and in that realm of PC gaming (simulation), choosing the control that best suits the task at hand is paramount. People spend hundreds (in some bizarre cases close to a thousand) of dollars on controls that allow the PC to do things more conveniently and more easily than a keyboard and mouse allow. That's not my opinion, that's a fact.

If the gamepad helps PC players play because they don't like the UI- and it might help, in many cases- then for the luvva mike it's only logical and intelligent to use the advantages of a PC being able to use that control. You may feel it sullies your mental image of your PC but that's your opinion, and it's very much your problem, not anyone else's. People who refuse to take advantage of a machine's technological abilities are hurting themselves


Now, here, we are in agreement at least in principle

It was a very poor move by the developer to think that the PC player would not want a better UI. And worse, it almost seems that they thought PC players wouldn't even notice that it could be so much better for PC by the use of some pretty simple things. So far it is the obvious flaw of the game, and unfortunately too many players can't work with it well

Not sure what you mean by it not telling you that items are stolen or not. It will either say in the top right corner of the stat box, or if you have the items in a container, they will be red.

"Sicknesses are just hidden to the player, so are the levelups" Do you mean you don't know how to find out which are active? It's under active effects in the magic menu. If you have Ataxia or Rockjoint it tells you there.

And I don't see how the favourite bar is such a hassle. If you have a shield on favourite and you want to take it off, you find it difficult to go to Apparel and unfavourite it?

I don't have a high-end one and I tend to buy PS3 games more likely since, although the cost more, a PS3 doesn't degrade and get errors which a computer does.

I got an NZXT Rogue case, 2.8GHz Dual core (it's enough for about everything), 4GB DDR3 RAM, ATI Radeon 4670 1GB DDR3 Dedicated RAM, 500Gb Hard drive and 144Mb/s 802.11n internet connection.
It isn't the best one but I can play alot of games on it without giving up too much graphics.

Also, to the guy that said that I might as well buy a movie, I'm not a graphics [censored] like some people are. And with storyline, I include gameplay.

QFT. For $60, this game should have been optimized much more on PC.

Where's there's smoke, there's fire. I don't believe all the people complaining about the UI are doing it because they're bored or having a bad hair day. I've been playing PC games for a long time. My first PC was a Pentium 60. The UI for Skyrim svcks. It's made for an XBox controller...period.

I'm not into accepting the bugs and BS as the norm for products I buy believing the seller is acting is good faith. If Bethesda didn't know what a giant PITA the controls would be for a whole lot of folks...no, forget that. They knew. And didn't care.

I didn't feel this way about Morrowind or Oblivion. Call me a whiner if you want. I'm p***ed.

Indeed. Controls that best suit the task. And in this case, the task doesn't need the level of control K+M gives, as it was aimed at the console. Which makes it more arcade. And that's just not what I had hoped for. I bet if I put a top PC clan of COD against an XBOX clan, 9/10 times the PC clan will win. Still, I do not wish to have to grab a console controller to play a PC game. But then again, I think we've established that Bethesda ported the game poorly to the PC, especially in terms of control and UI, therefore it won't classify as a PC game pur sang.

I'm not having the issues others claim about the UI but the Perks thing completely baffles me. I can't navigate it at all. I managed to get one Perk and am not even sure how I did it. I think I have three or four more in reserve. Anyway, I guess the publisher thought this constellation thing really cool but to me, it's not nearly as useful as a plain list. I can't imagine this aspect of the UI being better on a console, either. It's just one of those ideas which seemed really neat in the studio but which isn't working out in reality.

OK, when you put it that way, I can agree with your point