Post reaction after playing Skyrim : V - Skyrim

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 7:56 am

And yet you played it for 200 hours.That's not bad going considering most games don't go much beyond the length of the main quest or roughly 10 to 20 hours. :smile:

Comparing Skyrim to other games is silly. Compare it with previous titles in the same series.

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 8:19 am

Hello people,

It's been a while since I last posted, been busy with skyrim, dark souls and Gears of war 3.

I just wanted to know the opinion of the community about skyrim and how you appreciated the game or not.

Personally, I'm done with the game and I don't even finished the main quest but I had a great time at first, The game is just not what I expected ; for me, the mechanics and HUD kind of ruined it for me on the longer term.

Anyway, what are your thoughts?

My viewpoint is about as neutral as you can get, since I had NEVER played anything related to the Elder Scrolls before this game (Fallout 3 is probably the closest game I've played I can relate to).

- I found this game to be simply amazing, glitches and all. VERY few invisible walls, if I want to try and get over that mountain vs. walking well out of my way (as the game intends) is just one small example of what I love about Skyrim.
- You can approach combat in literally dozens of ways, and almost all of them will be successful. Want to be a raging fighter? Check. Want to sneak and kill? Check. Want to fry them with magic? Check. Two or three of the above combined? YES!
- I also like the simplicity (but depth at the same time; you can't max all perks) of the leveling up system. The one thing Skyrim lacks that Kingdom of Amul. has is being able to reset and try something different. Only way you can do that in Skyrim is starting over. That's a minor gripe.
- I accidentally saved over my first playthrough (when I was LEVEL FIFTY!). Yet this game was such a blast, I had no problem getting back up to 50 again. And I will probably try 1 or 2 more builds before it is all said and done.
- What other PS3 game out there (save for Fallout 3) gives you 150+ hours of gameplay? If that's not worth $60 I don't know what is.
- I thought the story was well told, and some of the sidequests (especially the Daedric ones) were extremely well done. Too often "side quest"=tacked on. Not so much in Skyrim.

I'm sold and I've considering going back and getting Elder Scrolls IV, however I have heard there are numerous bugs that haven't been addressed on the PS3 side and one could even keep you from beating the game. Can anyone confirm/deny this and would it be worth paying $20 to play through IV on the PS3?

In short, once you get the combat down and work to get your armor up, anyone, even my wife, could probably pick up this game and be successful. Would she love the story...eh maybe not LOL But I know not just anyone can pick up a Call of Duty came and succeed. Anyone can pick up this game and do so.

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 6:16 am

Not too bad for a tech demo......

So when do we get the real game?

I agree it feels like a demo.

Maybe after the last patch and bit of DLC?

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 7:09 am

Skyrim was good for me for the first about... 3 weeks. I had a very fun time exploring everywhere and not knowing ANYTHING. After that it got kind of repetitive with questing and stuff. But after a good month break I am trying it out again in about 10 minutes

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 9:43 am

Bugs:
I know Bethesda said it was a new engine, but come on, it's still basically Gamebryo. I'd understand if the bugs were of something technical, but a lot of the bugs are of the "you broke your quest because you were playing the game" variety. I don't remember Oblivion having this many simple quest issues, even if you found something quest related... the game just seemed to deal with it and keep going.

I have my ingredients and enemies not respawning in or around their respetive dungeons, these two issues are unforgiveable bugs that is killing the game for me. I have more and more plants not respawning all of my cities have no plants left in them: then more and more dungeons are having no respawns above and below ground and this was with 1.2 or 1.3 and its very frustrating to be sure. The old Gamebryo never did that to me but on this updated version it does, I do not get it.

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 3:42 am

I really liked the game. Honestly, I think I it was a better game than Oblivion, but I enjoyed oblivion more, mostly because of nostalgia, and it was my first Elder Scrolls. Sure, the rpg and story elements were lacking, but that was more than made up for by the world.

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 7:05 am

Comparing Skyrim to other games is silly. Compare it with previous titles in the same series.

I understand what you mean. But it's been said that the RPG element is severely lacking compared to earlier ES games (which I haven't played). So if Skyrim is seen as more of an action adventure FPW (first person wielder

), then I think it can be compared to other action adventures. I personally think there's plenty of varied content and if takes even just 50 or 100 hours to get to that point where it's boring and repetitive for some, that's still a much longer game and better value for your money than most, no? Perhap I'm way off the mark since I'm not a true RPG player, so what the game offers I really enjoyed without getting fed up with any of it. Until now, but then i have done over 500 hours and just about everything in the game.

» Sun Jun 10, 2012 7:22 pm

I understand what you mean. But it's been said that the RPG element is severely lacking compared to earlier ES games (which I haven't played). So if Skyrim is seen as more of an action adventure FPW (first person wielder :tongue:

), then I think it can be compared to other action adventures. I personally think there's plenty of varied content and if takes even just 50 or 100 hours to get to that point where it's boring and repetitive for some, that's still a much longer game and better value for your money than most, no? Perhap I'm way off the mark since I'm not a true RPG player, so what the game offers I really enjoyed without getting fed up with any of it. Until now, but then i have done over 500 hours and just about everything in the game.

It should be compared to other ES games so the series can hopefully improve upon itself.
That would be crucial in the feedback to what we want from Bethesda to improve this series and improve the depth of the series.

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 12:42 am

I think the game has its flaws but those can easily be overlooked given the quality and quantity of the game. i love skyrim and am just amazed at how much effort has been put into this game. just like other bethesda games, skyrim reigns supreme in the rpg realm sets the bar for all other rpgs to come.

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 5:03 am

And yet you played it for 200 hours.That's not bad going considering most games don't go much beyond the length of the main quest or roughly 10 to 20 hours. :smile:

What you don't understand is, you're talking to a fair slice of people who are quite willing to play many hundreds and even *thousands* of hours in a great game, if it holds their interest and has good replay value. Yes, I'm one of those too. It is sad when they can't turn a huge game like Skyrim, so chock full of potential, into one of those games. 200 hours? That's just the honeymoon period for a hardcoe fan and a good RPG.

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 9:17 am

What you don't understand is, you're talking to a fair slice of people who are quite willing to play many hundreds and even *thousands* of hours in a great game, if it holds their interest and has good replay value. Yes, I'm one of those too. It is sad when they can't turn a huge game like Skyrim, so chock full of potential, into one of those games. 200 hours? That's just the honeymoon period for a hardcoe fan and a good RPG.

Fair enough. Blimey, thousands of hours, that's a lot. Were players putting thousands of hours into Oblivion? (stock, before whatever DLC's were made). I put over 500 hours into Sky, but that probably doesn't count as I'm probably a slowish player who takes his time too much to explore every nook and crannie.

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 12:03 am

I have 500 plus hours on Skyrim. I stopped at 480 and change, and didn't think I could do any more. Made some more hours a few weeks later. First thing the boosters will point out is that 500 hours is a long time to play a game if you're disapointed. I agree-
Bethesda didn't gyp us on time spent making the game. But I have to agree it's ultmately a shallow play compared to the last two ES games and the improvements do not make up for this. 500 hours for an Elder Scrolls game is short for me. Some Elder Scrolls games I played not for weeks or months, but for years. I played that long in part because I wanted to fully make sure my perceptions about the changes were accurate. Without more choices in the character build, and more NPC interaction, Skyrim is dependent upon newness for playability. The newness has worn off. Three playthroughs is enough- and less than I gave Fallout 3.

Seems like there are basically two broad opinions- happiness, best ever; and good game but disapointing- shallow.

As one poster said- maybe Bethesda doesn't see the changes as a problem, and only time will tell if sales or other indications change their minds. I think they're at that point in success they could package cement blocks and sell them. They will always sell enough games that any changes at the top level in Bethesda will have to come from within- personal decision. I don't think that will happen, and this style will be the elder scrolls of the future.

» Sun Jun 10, 2012 11:09 pm

Fair enough. Blimey, thousands of hours, that's a lot. Were players putting thousands of hours into Oblivion? (stock, before whatever DLC's were made). I put over 500 hours into Sky, but that probably doesn't count as I'm probably a slowish player who takes his time too much to explore every nook and crannie. :biggrin:

I ad over two thousand five hundred hours in both Morrowind and Oblivion. Yes I have played them far more than any other title over the past decade. With about three hundred hours in Skyrim I am feeling let down with the game. For an ES title its lacking.

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 8:22 am

My first reaction after playing Skyrim for the first time:

"Wait... it's morning?"

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 10:28 am

Well, the PS3 version (my version) is incredibly disappointing (inherently sub-standard, unwieldy, inconsistent fps indicating little actual optimization or care for my platform in Skyrim's development coupled with severe potential long-term issues and all the multiplatform bugs and scripting errors on top of it) and completely contradictory to lies claimed pre-release by Bethesda. For that reason alone, I'm severely disappointed in Skyrim and in Bethesda and I see it now... they can't be trusted with anything technical, especially if it's not on their designated lead platform, even after being buried so deeply in money and fame and so I'm extremely skeptical of any of their future releases. For this reason alone, never again will I purchase their games anywhere close to release day, if at all, unless they really get their act together. This is pathetic. Moving on, ignoring the technical issues, it's an entertaining game, but a disappointingly shallow and rather empty-feeling one (certainly not something I really consider much beyond a shallow, barebones RPG if it may be called an RPG). They scrapped and/or cut back on several important RPG features (reputation system, any meaning or substance to factions practically whatsoever, several character customization options, whatever little choice and consequence this series might have had in the past, which admittedly was little yet certainly more than this... should have improved upon it, not cut it out almost entirely) and I'm really disappointed by this. In addition, Bethesda's skill to write compelling stories and quests still have not improved and the dungeons, toted for being unique, really are very limited in variety and lack proper incentive for exploration. The world, aside from the forced, drab color palette that's asserted its way deeply into the gaming industry for being "realistic" and "gritty" is well-designed in terms of geometry and terrain and the soundtrack is unsurprisingly beautiful, but that's really about it to the one-trick pony here, in my opinion. Skyrim's little more than a pretty sandbox dungeon-crawler and it doesn't take long to realize nothing you do matters and that you're given very few choices in regards to anything in the first place while stories are boring (even if there much), dungeons/quests are repetitive, and tying back into the technical issues, I can't even enjoy the pretty world as the framerate goes into varying degrees of sub-30 garbage on my platform when doing practically anything short of moving around inside my house or moving around in certain barren areas such as the glacial north of Skyrim and a select-few dungeons or rather parts of those dungeons. In the forests, the framerate is inconsistently in the 20-25 range. Particle effects almost assuredly drop framerate into a similar range. AI and towns do the same, and this is all while doing nothing except panning the camera about. It's very much a disappointment not just on the technical front, but the gameplay front (still would have been much happier if the performance was simply smooth, however), as well and future Bethesda releases have, unfortunately, guaranteed themselves a highly skeptical and critical eye. The impression I get is this company is fraudulent, lying, and apathetic to the treatment of their consumers on the technical front (some of the worst self-called "cross-platform developers" I'm aware of... more like hasty, money-grubbing porters...) and just moving into a direction I found disdainful on the gameplay front. Though again, much of my newfound hatred for the company itself instead of just a pure distaste for the games themselves stems not from disappointing game design choices, but from their poorly-performing, lied-about product.

well said.

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 12:11 am

Lol, I've also been going to bed at stupid o'clock for the past 3 months because of this game. Fortunately, it hasn't interfered with work commitments. But I just couldn't put the game down, far too addictive. I must say, it's nice to hear others who have played similar or as long as me (which I now know is still short for them by oblivion/morrowind standards), because when I mentioned my gaming time on another forum before my current 518 hours logged, people were like "wtf, 400 hours?" and "I've done more than you in 70 hours".
I've treated the game like svcking on a piece of luxury chocolate rather than chewing it fast, swallowing, and not savouring as much of the taste.

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 1:17 am

Am having a blast playing Skyrim since the first day of its release. For me its like every Frank Frazetta, Ralph Bakshi, Michael Moorcock, Simon Bisely movie book and work of art i've seen since childhood as well as Warren horror magazines.

Skyrim is the first Elder Scrolls chapter since Tes 2 Daggerfall i feel no urge to play with mods because everything is so fleshed out and complete with layers of depth. I feel the same way about Fallout 3 but as always Modders always create masterpieces which fit in so well i cant refuse to joyfully use them

Alot of people complain about the hud and ui but for a ui that is supposedly made for consoles it is really slick and intuitive giving me the same level of speed of a pc oriented ui when getting things done.

The world itself is a miraculous marvel of gaming art. I have yet to get bored looking at anything in the world from the epic buetiful mountains to a smooth iron ingot.

Dungeons are a terror filled joy to explore bringing back a vastness of scale which makes treasure hunting alot of fun. The etchings and wall murials describing certain events add a Morrowind level of mysticism to everything.

Kill animations are very brutal and i still wince every time one occurs. Its pretty funny at times hearing the enemy groans and final words as they are dying. Combat is alot of fun and i like how stamina is used for power acttacks along with the usefulness and need of poisons. Using bows is so much fun am actually having my character make it one his main stays something i never did in previous Elder Scrolls rpgs. Too bad in the real world i am completely lame with a bow and arrow. So much for my ingame character being a reflection of me ha ha.

Dragons are living nightmares to defeat and ooze malevolent machismo. That Dragon language is some spooky sounding stuff they speak.

Love how the different environments are layered on top of each other. I can be walking along a road seeing what is before my eyes without realising there is a whole other world within the lake filled with all sorts of treasure and challenges next to it. Everything about the world feels and looks very real. Its like every few feet were carefully crafted to make things as believable as possible.

Alchemy makes much more sense now with my character just having to experiment or taste the ingrediant to discover its effects. Alot more immersive compared to Morrowind where it always created a mental disconnect with reality.

Once more Bethesda has created a masterpiece with no equal which i will be playing easily for ten or more years if i am so fortunate.

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 9:39 am

I needed a change of pants....and it wasnt because I crapped myself. If you know what i mean

amazing game. I love it so much.

» Sun Jun 10, 2012 9:42 pm

2nd post for me.

I do in-house beta work with another company who is very devoted to producing games where they focus on both supporting the modding community, and providing long-term support to the games they release (no names, but it's not an RPG/Action game company, so there is no conflict on interest on my part).

Now, with one of their recent releases, we are still doing beta work 16 months after we started, 11 months after release, as well as doing testing on upcoming DLC. That's a massive workload for us, and we are all community 'volunteers' albeit hand picked ones. Now, if people think skyrim has 'balance' issues, I can honestly say that they pale into insignificance compared to what this specific game that I'm talking about has...we have rebalanced the multi-player aspect at least 6 patch releases, and it's returned to patch version 2. That's an 'unfinished' game, or one that has development problems...it also highlights the problem with having a beta team drawn from the community, a problem that we eventually resolved by separating the 'mob' from the more experienced old hands who have direct access to the dev team.

I doubt that we can class Skyrim as unfinished or imbalanced, or lacking, until we get decent DLC and the accompanying patches out. Fallout 3 was a good game, then they brought out a series of DLC which made it into a great game...same with FNV. I personally maligned FNV, until the DLC...sure, it didn't have the scope of F3's, but it did pick up on some of the feeling. Now, I think if the same question is asked again in a few months time with DLC under the belt, we might see some different answers...and we should consider that big games these days aren't really complete until the full and final product is delivered, and we are yet to see that with Skyrim.

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 7:42 am

What you don't understand is, you're talking to a fair slice of people who are quite willing to play many hundreds and even *thousands* of hours in a great game, if it holds their interest and has good replay value. Yes, I'm one of those too. It is sad when they can't turn a huge game like Skyrim, so chock full of potential, into one of those games. 200 hours? That's just the honeymoon period for a hardcoe fan and a good RPG.

Fallout 3: 800+ hours.
Fallout New Vegas: 600+ hours.

:/

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 9:49 am

judging by how you have a starcraft 2 profile pic, I doubt your really into this game at all

» Sun Jun 10, 2012 7:03 pm

Fallout 3 800 hours? It's terrible :sick:

» Sun Jun 10, 2012 9:25 pm

I don't understand how there is 800hrs worth of entertainment in any beth game after Morrowind. (not limited too morrowind mind you) there is just nothing substantial enough.

» Mon Jun 11, 2012 1:14 am

I'm having fun and I feel like it finally is real difference between different characters.

» Sun Jun 10, 2012 10:34 pm

Fallout 3 800 hours? It's terrible :sick:

Yup, oughta put some perspective on how bad Skyrim is.