Does anybody else feel this way ? when I got my first quest with puzzles in it I was pretty stocked, but after completing a few of the I was like " oh, another claw with the answer right on the palm, yay " most of the bosses are all the same too. I wish they would have not made the game so redundant....... After a while there is absolutely no challenge. The turning stone puzzles with the eagle, dragon etc etc were so easy after a while it seemed like they were made for children. Next time I hope they make them more challenging like the game MIST that came out years ago...that, plus more enemies..... im so sick of fighting bears and drauger.....

*stoked* .... brah

Not really. I don't play RPGs for puzzles or combat, I play to roleplay.

There were some individual, interesting puzzles, but as for difficulty, how to gauge it? If the puzzles are too difficult for some players then it just sends them madly scrambling to Google anyway. I'd like more challenging puzzles too, but they can sometimes detract from immesion when you have to take time out and and start scribbling notes on a piece of paper. You will have to wait for the game engine that enables instanced puzzles, and a difficulty slider just for the puzzles...

Now THAT would be flat cool!

Having played a lot of RPG's which force you into hour-long puzzles that require dozens and dozens of different inputs where even messing up one thing can reset your progress (Runescape is one game notorious for this), honestly, I don't mind the puzzles. Sure it's a bit.....strange that the combination to the doors is on the key, but, where else would you put it? If it was like part of a code log or something that was in another dungeon across the map, it would quickly get redundant and unnecessarily annoying as well.

I remember back on the Interplay forums, a *very* common question was "How do I light the torches in Watcher's Keep." and the answer could be found in colored tiles on the floor.

I've seen several people ask questions like "How do I solve the pillar puzzle in (location)?" or "What do I do with the dragon claws?" Some people cant make out the details on the claw, or dont know that you can manipulate items in your inventory. Others miss the carvings behind the pillars or on nearby walls to solve the puzzles. Do I want a ton of puzzles in an RPG game? No. Have I played puzzlers like Myst or Return to Zork? Yes.

I guess I would have just liked it to be a little more challenging. Not rip your hair out challenging or anything.

"If the puzzles are too difficult for some players then it just sends them madly scrambling to Google anyway"
Yeah

I rember when we had to wait for an issue of gamepro or nintendo power to come out to get help with some old school games, back in the day, those days were good.

I remember the old days too. They were NOT good. They were DAMNED frustrating.

I dont want a ton of puzzles in the game either, just not the same ones over and over.....

Well, then, probably this isn't the game series you were looking for.

I guess they should have labeled the game ages 6 and up........

Im not really complaining, skyrim is a great game, but recycling the same idea over and over again is a little boring, I think they could have done a little more. That's just my opinion though.

I'm not sure whether to agree or not. Part of me thinks yes, the puzzles felt more like puzzles for 3 year olds, and were more a nuisance than anything fun. The other part of me remembers that even though they were terribly easy there were times where I got stuck for a bit and found it really annoying that they weren't more obvious.

Now, I don't know if you have ever played a game called portal, but it suffered a bit from this as well, and the only thing I can think is that good puzzle making is HARD and time consuming. In portal 1 they let you freeroam a lot more, I got stuck for many minutes and didn't mind whatsoever because the whole time I was sitting there thinking "how do I do this" or "if I do that, then I can do this, which will allow me to then do that, so I can finally end up there, AHA!". In portal 2 they tried to simplify the puzzles and make it mainstream, the only times I got stuck were times I couldn't find the little bit of concrete I needed to proceed. This left me thinking "Ok, I know how do do this, its ridiculously easy, now I just have to find the damn thing the designer has hidden somewhere to finish it" and getting pissed off and frustrated. Obviously one experience was more enjoyable than the other, sadly the first one also requires having a functional brain, a thing which game developers seem to often assume their audience doesn't have.

The description of the last thing happened in Skyrim a couple of times. I remember at one point there was 2 of those rotating bits on a top level and the matching pattern above them, I spun the pieces, and pressed the lever and nothing happened, I got mildly annoyed and thought it wasn't working, tried having the patterns opposite the symbols, looked around for other spinning bits etc. Took a little while before I noticed the one underneath me on the level below which I had ran past, all this left me with was a feeling of annoyance.

I know its possible to make cool puzzles, most of the tomb raider games did it brilliantly and I remember really enjoying the soul reaver games. I think in the end there are two ways to do puzzles. Make them require cognitive thought, present ALL the required information and make it obvious, then let the player work out what to do with that information. Alternatively you can make the puzzle super easy and the only challenge finding the required pieces, something frankly a dog is capable of doing and I personally only find highly annoying when I have to go looking.

Massive TLDR ramble, but basically I think they should either make interesting puzzles, or ditch them entirely.

=edit= Whoa lots of replies while I was writing!

This is pretty much exactly what I am talking about, missing some detail because it wasn't obvious to you is just really annoying. At least if you have actual puzzle solving puzzles its obvious what needs to be done and there is some satisfaction at the end. Mind numbing puzzles where the only challenge is not missing some detail the designer thought was obvious can only result in inconvenience all the way to enraged alt tabbing to look for the answer online imho.

I agree to an extent. There shouldn't be a reliance on them as they aren't so common place in the real word. Having said that I can't believe Beth reused the same claw/animal symbol 'puzzle' throughout the entire game. While I don't want hour long monotony in my dungeons, something along the creativity of the Zelda games or the riddles of the Baldur's Gate games would have been nice to mix things up.

I agree that they went way too far making them easier.

About those claws - I read a book in game that they were meant to keep the draugr in, not visitors out.

Generally I feel that they are about right. Remember, the game is based on the assumption of most people only playing the game once, and even then probably not finding every puzzle. If you are going to cave x for the third time and can remember how the puzzles work, this is not a reflection on the game. Yes, the Nordic puzzle doors are easy once you've figured them out the first time - one character even comments on how common they are (before picking the lock, which you sadly aren't allowed to do). But with those doors the puzzle isn't the door, or even how the claw works, but finding the -ing claw (or, in some case, working out which barrow the claw that you've found works in). That said, the first time I played in Bleak Falls Barrow I opened the door the hard way. Only took me two attempts as well (in most puzzles, at least two of the rings/stones need to be rotated twice - basic human psychology). But with the rotating pillar puzzles it seems to me that no two are precisely alike. There are ones where the key stones are in the open; some where they are hidden. Two need to you to read books, but give different types of puzzle clues. One needs you to stand on a trap to see the clues. Etc.

It's not a puzzle game, it's an adventure game. If it takes a player twenty minutes to figure out how to open a door, then you're doing it wrong for a game like this. I have no problem with the balance.

Those 'puzzles' are not even really puzzles, but more like Draugr-proof locks that require just a slight sense on intelligence to break through.

Well, I got mixed feelings about this.

Some puzzles add a certain gist, and some are just laid to waste my time.

Pretty much what Empedocles said.

The puzzles, IMO, are designed more to be representations of obstacles the character would overcome than actual obstacles to the player. Same as how the books that raise you skill aren't more than a few pages long and don't actually require you to read them, and smithing doesn't require the player to press the mouse button once for every hammer blow (and aim the hammer, etc). They effectively show that the ancient nords built puzzle locks, without actually turning the game into a puzzle to be solved instead of an action game.

Some games can already do that.. Somewhat..