Honestly I enjoy watching Skyrim Let's Plays much more than playing it.

everything from the title to the OP of this thread is spot on for me.

I'm not gonna get too in depth in my explanation but I'll just say that the over-hyped expectations and shallowness of this game are the biggest contributors to said case of apathy.

I'll admit my expectations for this game were sky high. I mean, why wouldn't they be? I knew I wanted the game ever since I saw the first trailer for it.

So that's my first mistake. Always keep your expectations low and you won't be dissapointed.

Someone in an earlier post talked about how awesome the first couple days of playing this game were. Well I can relate to that, because everything was so fresh and new.

But this game is a serious case of deja vu, been there, done that, and with the amount of money I have already, what is the point of doing all these mundane fetch quests for lifeless npcs? Idk. I was expecting more than this.

The more i'm playing the game the more i find it enteraining. Even when i get new games now, they still find themselves taking a back door to skyrim. There is just so much to do in the game outside of quests. Yesterday i spent a hour gathering material and making armor for my wife Mjoll the Lioness, so i could take her out adventuring with me sometimes and not worry about her. Then i sent her home and did the same thing for my normal follow Anarea. Its things like this that keep me coming back for more. I feel Skyrim is a game that give you tools to create your own fun. But, it requires some imagination on your part too.

You're apathetic because so is the world around you. Save the day or don't, nobody cares or notices. Argonian, Dark Elf or Nord, nobody notices. And even for the things they do notice, such as skills you're good at, the system is flawed (guards notice for any skill above....30? Kinda low...) and the WAY they notice doesn't effect the gameplay at all (they just provide short, meaningless comments).

To top it all off, there's no need to do quests. Why? Because self-crafted items are superior to every possible quest reward you'll ever get. You don't play a character and think "oh man I'll be so powerful once I finish that quest and get the Cheydinhal Shield" after having to wait til level 26 or whatever to get the best version of it (as an example from Oblivion), but rather....it just doesn't matter. There's very few items that you receive from quests that feel like useful rewards at all.


NOTHING matters. NOTHING.
It's very depressing, though that makes your apathetic attitude quite logical: you're apathetic because so is the game.

This is one of the biggest let downs in Skyrim. It is doubly surprising, considering the direction Bethesda went with in New Vegas, where choices mattered and membership of various factions affected disposition with others, though either not liking you or even attacking you.

This was also in Morrowind, i.e you joined the Telvanni and the Mages guild memebers were less disposed to you. I can remember having to charm mages guild members in order to trade or use the portal chamber, because at a certain disposition they wouldnt even deal with me! No need for the charm spell now, because..

Disposition is gone. On a personal and factional level. And it leads to a feeling that nothing you does has an effect.

gamesas didn't do anything with NV besides produce it. Obsidian entertaiment are the devs of NV.

Maybe they should have let Obsidian in on a few gameplay choices, because as well as factional and personal disposition, I would love to play an equivalent of the hardcoe mode (hopefully a mod is coming), and for Alcohol, maybe even skooma, to have the same visual and physical effects.

Well if you want to play more games like NV I suggest trying out the Original fallouts, Most of the Dev team from the original fallout are on the Obsidian dev team now anyway. That is if yo udon't mind older graphics and turnbased iso's.

I played Fallout 3 to death, but haven't tried the first ones.. I will look them up at some point, thanks for the tip. I'm not too bothered by old graphics, still play Daggerfall now & again!

FO3 is a horrible stick to measure the originals, NV is a much better one.

What? Console gamer here, ive got over 300 hours of play out of it. lol i wish all games where such a waste of money id be more keen to waste it more often...
indeed fo3 got me in on it, somhow fo1/2 past me by even tho ive been an avid game for the past 25 years, it wasnt untill i went back to fo1/2 after fo3 that i relised beths butchered alot of what was established, i like nv much bettef, screw the bugs, nv was one of the best games ever, i guess i was a fool to think beths next game would be similar... shame skyrims great but i dought ill get 1000 hours that i would get if it was more nv like, for instance i want to speak to people on subsiqent play throughs currently i feel whats the point, all ill beable say is 'yes' if im luck 'yes sir' and if my really lucky 'yes sir, ill do that'...speech skill my ass...the games just resolves round me and whats in my head, the game gives you very few tools for rp outside the guilds.

That's another thing I didn't understand....


Oblivion, Skooma was awesome. Like, it could PERMANENTLY lower your intelligence, so yes it was a dangerous drug. However, like a drug, it gave you motivation to use it: it completely maxed out your speed and strength and made you move crazy-fast, which was a fun little effect. In Skyrim? It's a stamina potion....

I just don't get it. So much detail lost, when there's literally no reason for it.

Maybe you don't like the game now.

Why is this a big deal? Was there an expectation that the game would hold your devoted interest for 50 years or something? Go do something you LIKE doing. Jeez. Is this the world of today? "Why don't I like the things I don't like"? Really? There's a perception problem here, not a video game problem:

You are not required to like Skyrim. Go do something you enjoy. Now. Go. Life is short.

I totally see where the OP is coming from. Skyrim's entertainment value wore off for me before 92 hours. I haven't played since 11/29, per Steam.

It all comes back to the fact that Skyrim doesn't flesh out any of the content. It creates a great atmosphere, and fills it with randomized quests and discardable (Literally. It's what Radiant Story is designed for) NPCs. If the NPC is easily replaced, why do I care if I help him now, or in three years? If the quest is obviously randomized, why do I bother except because I can? If I don't remember any of the nPCs, why even talk to them? The same thing with my character: why care about him when his progression took no effort? When the avenues of progression are so uninteresting that I stopped taking perks?

I'd like to like the game, but it's just so full of emptiness.

Bethesda has done better. Why didn't they manage this time?

I'm assuming you made a destruction necromancer with permanent undead, vampire minions.

1. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.
1a. The Elder Scrolls Morrowind is the greatest game in the history of the universe.. Hard. I enjoyed Oblivion, and right now I'm thoroughly enjoying Skyrim. That's my opinion. See "1."
1b. Just because you have played multiple characters over hundreds of hours on the most difficult setting with arbitrary self-imposed RP restrictions does not somehow make you elite (at all) or your opinion any more valid than anyone else's.
2. Everyone can get burned out if you are exposed to it enough. I love Fallout New Vegas, and I played it for a long time with all the DLC for it and everything. But I sure did put it down eventually. Then I picked up Skyrim. I'm still loving it.
3.There are always going to be critics and whiners that want nothing more than to say how horrible a game is compared to its predecessors because most people are more likely to share something negative than something positive.

shallow and linear? ROFL its so shallow thats why this forum has like 500 people on it day and night. and the new vegas forum has like 2 people on it...yeah ok.

show me somewhere where it isn't linear, and shallow, Alex.

For me, it's kind of the same. When MW was out, I had a hard time not being lead to my quests, with the difficulty, etc. of course I was a lot younger and it was my first TES game. Oblivion and Skyrim are bland to me though, because I always know exactly where to go and what to do for a quest, and I just know that whatever creature I kill, whatever quest I complete, I will never run into an awesome enchanted weapon, ingredient, or whatever that is really above the other stuff I can get from anywhere (like vendors). The exclusive fights, loot and hidden stuff pushed you to keep playing. Now, I just know it's a matter of time before my gear is upgraded, and it will be upgraded in a linear fashion. I won't be able to find the most awesome gear at level 10 if I am crazy enough to go into an extremely dangerous dungeon and lucky enough to make it out alive.

And that just svcks

80 hours for $60, I call that a success. I got bored a while back, too, then I started over by making a totally new character class and add restrictions to your gameplay. Read my post in this thread (the 2nd post) for an example on how to make something totally fun with a little bit of pre-planning and thought: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1336524-what-are-you-playing-right-now/

You're old at heart, that's all.

Yeah I kinda lose the urge to play as well.

Cause of the learn by doing system I find quests hard to get excited about as the rewards are hardly ever any good.
I don't need any money as I sell Ebony stuff constantly.
I have the skills I need at 100 and the perks to go along with them.
Dungeons are unrewarding and has become terribly repetitive. (Yeah they might be handcrafted this time around but a draughr dungeon is still a draughr dungeon with draughr enemies and draughr loot.)
NPC's barely have anything interesting to say.

It's hard to find any motivation to keep playing.
For me it has become all about getting my character the best stuff for it's skills and playstyle and now that I have them I've lost direction of what to do.
"Well do quests for their storylines then?"
Well, I would like to do that, but quests are not challenging anymore and most of them take me to yet another dungeon which is just tedious.
And the actual "story" to the quests in comparison to the "gameplay" of the quests (Meaning: Reading notes and journals and talking to NPC's in comparison to dungeon crawling) is very minimal.

Skyrim was fun as hell at first but now I feel like I've seen all there is to see with items, dungeons, enemies, puzzles, quest designs and environment.
I'm going to take a break from Skyrim and play New Vegas, I suggest you OP go play Morrowind or something else and come back to Skyrim when you've forgotten it's flaws.

I'm losing motivation with Skyrim, stuck in an endless "start new character" loop & need to put it down for a bit, It's been a great 500 hours & there are so many good things in Skyrim & just as many negatives, happened to me in FO3/OB/NV too & was expected.
Put it down for a bit like i am, Come back when the CK is released & you will enjoy it again.

I am also looking forward to 1.4 & some quest fixes, Finally being able to clean up my journal on my main character will spur me on over another few hundred hours.

+1

I agree to all your points.

The first time I played it I loved the newness of it but at level 30 I started again because I was too powerful (without Smithing, Enchanting etc) but the 2nd time and other times just feel like drudgery. There is NO emotions when playing this game. I played FO3 and FNV many times and loved it every time.

I love the voice acting, graphics, game world and combat but it is too easy and I don't mean the enemies are easy, but nothing seems like there is a challenge to it and like you said nothing has impact or meaning.

Such a SHAME.

I know right!?!?
Sick of the PC rules argument. I have been playing TES since Morrowind and played it on both Xbox and PC. Right now I am on 360. Just waiting for GW2 release date so my wife can have something to play also. Off Topic: But has anyone read the synopsis of GW2 almost exactly Skyrim. Over 200 years passes and Dragons come back. But their story is slightly different. No wonder BGS wanted to rush their release date. Really seems to me ArenaNet, Bioware, and BGS are all piggybacking off one anothers ideas.