Imagine how much better it would have been had you been running to or from imperials before you got caught and thrown on a cart. Fight your way out or get captured leaving it up to the player if he/she is skilled enough. That both adds to the immersion and catches our gaming addiction right away.

If Elderscrolls ever develops an awesome MQ story I won't want to skip a thing, clearly this is a preference thing. Which is why there should be a preferential skip button.

At least the intro isn't as long as Half Life 2.
That ridiculous train journey.

I'm surprised that he didn't ask where he could find his Gear Score rating, how to get into Barren's chat channel, where the AH was and how to queue up for an instance.

Wow is really not a good benchmark to start with explaining his gaming experience. I have played wow a long time, even though the two happen to share 'RPG' in their genre titles, they could hardly be more different. Wow is about grinding, working as a team, grinding, getting gear, grinding and grinding. Skyrim is more about the adventure, the lore and a bit of dungeon grinding. Even though I could see some wow style gameplay in the smiting and alchemy parts of Skyrim, I couldnt recommend this to a wow player just because it is an rpg. Actually I would more than likely recommend this to a friend more into FPS, as they have more likely played Fallout or Farcry.

What is your friends IQ?

I'm a new player, heck, I haven't played a videogame in two years before getting Skyrim (just got a free Xbox this fall) and I had no problem learning the game mechanisms in Skyrim. I had one or two looks in the manual, one or two Google to confirm some info and then I was off.

I'm not going to say your friends is stupid but he sure is not putting in any kind of effort to learn.

Case dismissed.

You don't need a mod for that, just a save file that puts you right in the character selection screen... which you should be able to do, because there are a few "quick start" save files in nexus already...

BTW, any PC player can bring out the character edit screen at any moment via console commands... so, just make it to Riverwood, save and then you can bring up the character selection menu and create over 9000 characters that quick-start in Riverwood. (don't try it much further, it can bug out if you have skill points earned)

Also, @OP... your friend shouldn't be very bright to have ALL these problems... sure, the puzzle may be a bit hard the first time you see it, but dammit, the game is so freaking easy to jumb into that no thinking person could possibly have any serious trouble with, apart from simply not liking it...

And



The game was made to be played with a gamepad, not keyboard + mouse. It's that simple. It's like expecting to play FIFA with the keyboard or WOW with a gamepad - it just feels wrong because noone designed the UI and gameplay with the wrong input device in mind. Sure, you can aim better with a mouse in skyrim, but that's about it...

wow has been dumbed down umpteen times over the years so that an amoeba can play it. Perhaps your friend did not notice this devolution in his game playing ablities? The UI is bad, and the hotkeying is easily missed and badly implimented (try hotkeying and equipping 2 x iron daggers dual wield) so some of his complaints are valid but rage quitting? lol if that isnt classic wow behaviour I don't know what is. It's not a very conscientious review.

I would contend that he's just not used to playing this sort of game. My girlfriend is not a gamer by any means. She neither shares nor understands my hobby. I got her to play for a bit and she picked right up on it. Wasn't so hot at combat, but she definitely picked up things like levers and character creation immediately (once I told her that e was jump and space activated things.)

I don't think your friend is much of an example of anything, considering the only real measuring stick as regards the dumbing down of the game, are the previous games. It's definitely more shallow than Morrowind. SUPER definitely more simple and shallow than Daggerfall. In some ways, it's even more shallow than Oblivion, which is quite a feat. Skyrim is a pretty good game full of questionable design choices, staple game mechanics being cut, and a really, really shallow pool of quests. It may have a lot of quests, especially when you add in the radiant quests (which are nothing more than simple fetch quests in most cases.) However, the main quest is incredibly short, the faction quests are each ridiculously short (supplemented by the aforementioned simple, grindy radiant quests,) and at the end of the day there's just not much to this game.

So, I don't think a lot of people are talking about ease of use when they complain that the game has been dumbed down further. At least to me, they're likely talking about TES itself -- a hollow shade of its former self.


EDIT!:

The quest numbers are, upon further research, not as bad if, and only if, you count radiant quests (which I wouldn't.) Minus the radiant quests, looking only at joinable factions and not the main quest, I counted:

Daggerfall -- 111 faction-related quests.

Morrowind -- 298 faction-related quests. It's actually more since I forgot to factor in the Meadhall quests and such in Bloodmoon.

Skyrim -- 65 faction-related quests, not including radiants. The reason I don't include radiant quests is because they're so simplistic and don't really feel like quest, so much as usually trivial errands.


If you factor in radiant quests it's a lot closer to Daggerfall, and it really comes down to what you want out of questing. I also didn't factor in sidequests or daedric quests. Primarily because I couldn't be buggered to search them out and count them, but also because to me, it's the factions which make a TES game, not so much looking for some total stranger's keys.



DOUBLE EDIT!:

I also completely forgot about Oblivion. I believe it'll bear similar results, but for some reason I forgot it existed until just now.

Ehm what manual?
You mean those two pages with very minimal instructions?
Hmpf.

I wish this was a game where you needed a thick manual to get to know how it works.
I really dont care about people too lazy to read, I want a complex and engaging game.
A game that you can play straight of the bat by definition cannot be this.

I disagree. A manual is only needed for complex mechanics but a game like MW, where I never needed to read the manual, was engaging because the world was involved and complex.

Honestly, this seems more like a "dumb guy" problem, not a "WoW player" one. I mean, I've played WoW (and many other games). I don't see how a regular WoW player would have this much trouble with the game.

For ex....

WoW uses WASD. At least the basic controls do. You can keybind them to something else, but if you know how to do that, then you'd know to look in Skyrim's game options (also accessed by Escape, just like WoW) for a way to change your keybinds.


(Also, if you play WoW at any competitive level, you've got all sorts of UI mods, a billion commands, etc..... I don't see how anyone doing that would find anything about Skyrim complex. Of course, your buddy might just be one of those people who stumbles around getting kicked from groups by the other players because he svcks. Again, that's not a "WoW player" issue, that's a "dumb player" one.)




The only part of Skyrim that says "made for gamepad" is some parts of the UI. The in-game first-person-view actual gameplay? Except for the new "two hands" feature, it's exactly the same as previous games. WASD to move, mouse buttons to attack/block/etc, E to activate.... a couple keybinds are different, and the container interface blows, but that's it.

Well, that' what ADHD syndrome is - one of it's features is inability to concentrate. Another thing is, TES has never been for such a player.

I just got the game in the Steam sale. I've got as far as the following the guy to the village, and my first impressions aren't good.

I'm completely confused by the interface. I accidentally sold my boots (not sure how) and I didn't even realise until much later when I switched to 3rd person and saw I was barefoot - because there's no paper doll in the interface.

The animation is... stiff. That's the only way I can describe it. Everyone walks as if their clothes are starched.

Voice acting is poor - sounds like a read through. I'm pretty sure the guy who I followed to the village has the exact same voice as the guy he was talking to at the lumber mill. That was confusing for a moment.

Combat is weird. I mean, it feels like Morrowind weird. There's no feeling of connection. Then it suddenly switches to a kill animation for no discernible reason. In my memory Oblivion has better combat than Skyrim, but maybe it's just because I'm used to Mount & Blade combat, which is miles better than any TES.

So far I don't feel compelled to continue, and I actually feel like installing Oblivion again, which was intuitive and fun from the off.

Hahah, I've actually said this* before.

yeah this is why tes (and other games start to svck) i have a friend that i convinced to play tes over wow, well, as well wow. by the time i went round his house he had a wife proud spire manor and a full set of crafted/ungraded ebony, some how i dont think he owned by a door release switch!! My girl friend is playing shes only ever played some games a few times back in the day, shes progressing slowly but shes doing fine the only hicup was sealing away a follower left on wait, but i let her know they come back in the end, and not being able to buy the riften house but considering they dont say crap all about it and he have to get a quest from out side the city id say thats fair enough.
games designers should not pander to the less able, thats what 'fuzzy felts' are for...

OP, I met a lot of people like your friend in WoW and Rift.

They all go like this:

WoW: "I got to level 85 in 9 days and now I have nothing to do."
Rfit: "I got to level 50 in 5 days and now I have nothing to do."

The number of threads about this, in the appropriate forums, are staggering.

That's what happens when companies like Blizzard and Trion start putting those sparkling little stars on quest objectives. Might as well put a big hand with a finger pointing at the quest objective and say, "Hey, here it is, come and get me."

Leading players around the game with a leash prevents innovation, and reduces player's involvement to a minimum. I think it leads to many players wanting to be spoonfed, and if not, can't play a game. As your friend proved.

I hope he finds what he's looking for, but it's not in the RPG genre.

personnally think its bullcrap that ppl are to lazy to read millions of books, news papers, mags are sold everyday... we are on a forum were you read and wright and there are thousands of threads/replys...its just crap, beth put some [censored] dialougue for the playing in or just forget about convosation and hurry up and let us down with some kind of 4 term selection, like the ob persuasion mini game. currently player partisipation in dialougue is so shallow there may as well be none.

yes you got a werry good point ther.


yes most things sems simple when you hawe played erlier games and simular but if you are new you hawe no ide what to do.

and ex the hot key part is noteven explaind in the manual.... jsut printed on keymap
and the racial spec skill its no help to find...

just as in half - life series falout 3 and erliter TES games it was a werry well done ingame way to lern howe to play the game .... but in this one its none att all

No its not a lack of intelligence. Often these people are actually very capable, above average so. It is more likely to be the twin plagues of our time: poverty of imagination and apathy ie lack of curiosity. WoW repetitive-action style entertainment is hugely popular because it requires the aforementioned personality traits. It is a watermark for the degeneration of our youth.

Oh, horse manure.
People were complaining about the degeneracy of youth in the late Roman Republic. Doubtless it was nothing new then and doubtless in 20 years time my children will be complaining about the degeneracy of youth and how its not like when they young anymore.

thats the problem.... if you hawe to google somthing to find out the bace interface stuffs its def, somthing wrong whit the interface

I kind of wish there was no opening sequence, or at least the option to play as a dragonborn or a non-dragonborn(and therefore avoid the cartridge ride as well).

For me, the ui for PC was disappointing as well, and I decided I won't buy the game until the DLC comes out and not even then unless it's really good, like SI was for Oblivion.

The ui is just HORRIBLE and shows total disrespect towards the PC gamer. Have you Bethesda forgot your roots, and where you started from?