I agree.

So don't use Dragonrend... problem solved. I'll use it for my current build because my current character happens to love not only killing dragons but demoralizing them before he does by literally rendering their only chance at defeating him, their wings and mobility, totally useless.

My next character will not obtain Dragonrend, and he'll be a straight up mage. So, I'm sure the battles with the dragons will be much more intense.

They seem to be perfect at master difficulty.

Maybe, but that doesn't tell us much and it doesn't mean their complaints are invalid.

Yes, because not balancing a game mechanic we offer the player is good design.



With one mechanic, one, you render your main antagonist useless. That's not good design. The player should not have to hold themselves back if they want to have both fun and challenge.

Dragons should be deadly, grounded or not. The fact that they have such a lacking moveset both in the air, and on the ground does not change that they should, and Bethesda simply fail at making interesting dragon encounters.

They actually are pretty deadly. I mean I always play on Master setting with my best equipment ever so I never have too much of an issue as long as I remember to use a potion or two.

They are pretty sad. They stagger so easily that you can get it to the point where they cant even land a single attack. Dragon's Dogma's http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=GS18FZDyzqw#t=14s, a lesser form of dragon in the game world looks more fearsome, and dragons are not even the main feature enemy of the game.

Off topic, is that game multiplayer? My friend is a huge fan of Dark Souls and claims that it's the baby of Skyrim and Darksouls.

It has been labeled single player for a long time now, unless they suddenly announce otherwise.

Dragons were one of the best things about Skyrim. When I reminisce about Skyrim in the future, it'll probably be of my first dragon fight, walking the steps up to High Hrothgar and taking in the views, and Blackreach.

Could their AI have used some tweaking? Sure. But they're still a fun fight.

Powerful? I take it you haven't played it in Master Mode? .. Try to face one of those in Master Mode.

Good idea, how about a combat forced cooldown to stop the same shout from being used again in combat. It would be more strategic.

They are still dragons. Dragons is just the main thing they all go under but each are have their own 'tab', one may say. Just like how we classify animals. All Dragons are Dragons but the family tree can go down to 'Wyverns', 'Eastern Dragon' (Or Chinese Dragon ,some may call) and also, the classic 4-legged dragons are called Western Dragons since their myths happened on the West side of the original land. (Europe, Asia, etc are classify as the original lands since they didn't really knew about America, Mexico, etc).

There is a lot of other kinds of Dragons as well but sadly, I do not know them all on the top of me head.

Agreed... They should also use alot more shouts =/

I play Master and they are just... Too easy...

The first five or so dragons you ever see are great and epic experiances. I mean your level 13 walking in the mountains with your Imperial Bow and Steel Sword and Shield and you hear a dragon flying over head. It lands right in front of you. You use all your magic, potions, and arrows but you finally killed a dragon by yourself. EPIC. But then late game an Ancient dragon lands, you hit him with ten arrows, use one potion, done. Loses all its luster after the first few encounters. I want dragon fights to be exilerating and challenging no matter what you level is.

I've played it on master from day one. Ancient Dragons are no match for a high level character even on master.

So this! I ve had my butt handed to me by the ancients

They're a joke. All they do is clip through everything and when they slide across the ground after crashing it looks awful, sometimes they face vertical while they do it.

Dragons ARE amazing, and I make it a point to "visit" them on a regular basis, just to get some souls and a cool fight that other NPCs fail to provide.

When you can one shot backstab a Dragon... you're doing game balance wrong.

Bethesda had time restrictions, like all AAA titles... Skyrim didn't just pop out in 1 year. I work in Game Development so here is my opinion.

All aspects of a game are given a priority. Once that aspect has made enough progress, the team may be moved to develop another part of the game. So dragons were developed to a point where they would fit into the game. Then they went off to work the game to shippable status. If they had time a team would go back and refine that experience. Bethesda as a developer, probably will not change this aspect of the game in a patch because Publishers are not going to spend money to have a team work on it.

Thankfully we have modders and like someone has already mentioned before this post, a modder has added a mod that augments the Dragon Experience. So it isn't a question of what Bethesda could have done to make dragons better. They have a creative team that have thought of all of this if not more than what has been offered up in this forum about this subject matter. But it is all about balancing Deadlines versus Development.

Sure Dark Souls has a better Dragon Experience. But Skyrim has so much content, and other things than Dark Souls. Two completely different production goals, and development goals. So it isn't fair to compare the two.

Also, if I may talk about the design process a bit. It is very difficult to figure out what will be acceptable in a game to consumers. Sit down and do some concept art for a game idea. You'll come up with a bunch of horrible and unrealistic stuff. I'm just saying the design process is SO VERY UNDERRATED. It is very difficult stuff that can only be experienced if you work in the industry. Consumer's always have the gift of hindsight, but a Developer does not. Just a simple sword may look really cool, but people don't realize it took 30 different versions for that one sword to make it to that point. It is a very long and expensive process.

So in the end, even though I agree the Dragon experience could be better. ( I HATE when I'm fighting a dragon and it flies off to attack skeevers and other random crap and not ME) Bethesda made a very cool experience that made sense within the world of Skyrim. And even better, Bethesda (geniuses) make all their games moddable! They know they cannot make the perfect game experience. so they leave it to the fans to create their own experience. Will Wright coined this idea as "possibility space" and you can look it up on Google/Youtube if your interested.

Cheers,

That means they should have done fewer dragons (and a limited amount of them), and put them more scarsely through the game, with more variety (see "shouts") and greater difficulty.

One thing I'd like to add : It svcks when you're behind the dragon and try to hit his tail but some invisible wall won't let you come closer, so you cannot reach his effin' tail, even if you SEEM to hit it. sigh...

Really? I killed the one in Undeadburg just by shooting it a few times with the Blackbow of Pharis. It didn't even have any "Tactics". It just did the same flyby fire strafe, which was pointless because I was on the underside of the bridge pelting it's ugly wing.

And the one in Valley of the Drakes guarding the Straight Sword of Artorias was even easier. Just wake him up, and pelt him with more arrows while he does absolutely nothing.

And then that brings me to Seathe The Scaleless... First a Rigged-to-loose Fight, and then when you get all the way through that god-awful cave with the invisible bridges, you can roll over Seathe just by getting behind him and repeatedly stabbing him while he tries to turn his fatass around. Bonus points if you can get the sword by chopping off his tail solo like I did.(On accident on the first attempt to boot)


Assuming you don't just Ironskin cheese everything, Dark Souls has a lot of challenges... Dragons are not, and never were one of them. Their dragons svck! (And are really ugly)


Now on topic. Give Dragons moar shouts. I'm not sure if there's some kind of framework in place with Dragons that makes it impossible for them to use Dragon Shouts in game, but could you imagine how much harder they'd be if say, a Frost Dragon could Ice-form you, a Blood Dragon could dismay shout your allies away, or an Elder Dragon that could use Marked For Death?

Man I love your post.