I just gotta say, Patch 1.5 pretty much disproves your point here. Bethesda went back (For better or worse) and worked on Killcams (Including new Animations) and better underwater transitions. While completely overhauling Dragon AI would be highly unlikely, as long as the community continues to support Skyrim, they can change and add whatever they want, Assuming there's not some huge programming-related issue, even giving Dragons different shouts, or even a little AR would solve the issue. Just for example of the "Shouts" each dragon can be given:

Lol... yeah there are strategies to kill some bosses cheaply, like Ceaseless Discharge, which I just waited for him to come to me and fall to his death lol... If you go head-to-head with the Red Dragon in Dark Souls, like you would do in Skyrim, I'm pretty pretty sure you'll be dead really fast, even at higher levels. Sure, you can shoot the hydras and some bosses with your bow, and that's cool if you do it, it's just don't compare Skyrim's dragons on that aspect because they can go practically anywhere, where a water-bond hydra is limited to its lake, and an undead dragon can't really move at all...

You may find DS's dragons ugly, but I find them all reaaaaally cool, creative (scaleless dragon? gaping dragon? undead dragon? cross-bred woman-dragon?), and they really look badass. Dark Souls' team did an awesome work in designing the enemies, the bosses, and the whole world of Lordran. Cheers.

I disagree mostly. I think Dark Souls is ugly as hell. Standard enemy design is particularly horrible. Many of the environments are also quite ugly (Undeadburg comes to mind), though to be fair, an equal number of environments looks really good (Anor Londo, and the area outside the Undead Parish, I forgot the name). Bosses are about the only aspect of the game that is universally awesome though. For someone not abusing Havel's Armor + Ironskin, the Four Kings of New Londo are perhaps the biggest challenge I've seen in gaming since Contra. I think the only reason I beat it (Fairly) was after so many tries, one of the Darkwraiths otw to The Abyss dropped their shield with a massive -80%MDT, which I could quickly swap between when 4KoNL would use that ranged missile attack.

I'd argue that except for Ironskin abuse, there's no real "Cheap Kill" in Dark Souls, since each "Cheap" Solution winds up being only applicable in that one scenario, almost so perfectly as to wonder if From Software intended that the whole time... Where as Ironskin is just Cast'n'slash... Which I guess plays more like Skyrim?


I will admit though, I generally liked the Armor design in Dark Souls better than Skyrim.

They annoy me more than anything else. I don't often fast travel (Only over large distances that would take a long time to cover) But the lack of rarity is amazing. 2 dragons dead in the last half hour, finally able to relax at a quaint little Fisherman's shack, and then suddenly I hear the dragon howl and I'm just like "FUUUUUUUUUUUUU"

You cannot say enemies aren't varied, deadly, wicked and twisted... undead shooting fire with tumors on their head that intoxicates you when he dies in front of you, weird creatures shooting clouds of cursing gas towards you, raven-women, ghosts you can hit (or block) only when you're cursed or have a cursed weapon... et cetera

The point is that Skyrim's team could have gone really deeper in the enemies' creation and development. Now we get one model of dragons, at the best only a few, and few kind of enemies : environmental (spriggan, animals...), then bandits, necromancers, etc... which are all pretty much alike.

Vomit and dung comes in many shapes, forms, smells and consistencies. That's about as good an anology as I can come up with for Dark Souls enemy design (Excluding Bosses, which as I said, consistently deliver)


Skyrim's enemy design is like a single Gold ingot. Yeah, not a lot of variance, but it's all consistently good. Draugr in particular are my favorites. NPCs in general are the biggest failure of "Enemy Design" mostly because it's all procedural. But this is both Visual.

From an actual combat point of view (Tactical variance) yeah... Dark Souls wins by a landslide. I've played FromSoftwares other noteworth Franchise, Armored Core for nearly fifteen years, and FromSoftware consistently delivers some of the best AI in gaming, so that's no surprise.

I didn't even know Armored Core, I'll probably check that out.

Back on topic, dragons COULD have been amazing because of all that we said

I admittedly was annoyed by the ridiculousness of the dragons in Skyrim upon release; but, there are now mods and user made patches that rebalance the game around to make it closer to what people expected. The only thing that really irritates me now is the draugr. Geez if I had a nickle for every draugr you kill in this game, I'd be richer than Bill Gates. See in Oblivion I was content with all the Daedra; at least there was a little diversity and the only time you really saw them was when you went into a gate; but, in Skyrim draugr are everywhere and there are basically 2 types, male and female... I hope in their next expansion that they come up with something a little better than flooding every dungeon with one type of mob, it gets stale.

Their looks give me the chills, their majestic flight and their otherworldly sounds make me think about the pettiness of terrestrial life absent the gift of the winged. And when they land and turn their spiked head like a merciless turret of the evil Gods, I draw my bow and wait for the Hist intervention.

I must agree on master the dragon are hard to kill but so is everything else. Lastnight i watched from a distance a fight between a frost dragon and a sabercat and the sabercat won and then came and killed me.

Like someone posted earlier 6 guards can easily dispatch a dragon, so what is the point of the 'dragonborn'? I thought the dragonborn was the only one that could easily kill dragons.

They should boost dragon hp 100x more and give the player a active perk like dragon slayer or something that gives 100% combat damage vs dragons. That would probably need 30 guards to kill a dragon not just 6, that would make more sense.

PS3/360 versions though. PC gamers dont need patches that as the modding community sorts alot of the problems and details out.

I use a Bound Bow with a damage of 125 and it takes over 50+ hits for me to kill an Ancient Dragon. WTF?

To be more clear: Bethesda will not as a developer go back and add content such as different battle tactics or adding more variety of dragons. So I'm talking about content in relation to the dragons in this game - the topics of this thread. I did not bring up the other patch notes such as those killcams.

To speak about that now, an animation does not break a game. So you will see additions like that. Little things like that water transition, again, an animation, easy stuff to implement. An animation works with the same assets and rigs they have modeled.

Now, adding content (such as the aforementioned dragon improvements) , you go through the entire design process again. You cannot just add content to a game. It all has to fit together. Some talent on the team have other contracts too, so they leave after the initial launch. Like I said for the sword, for that one asset to look cool, you need many many hours of work behind it.

So if your going to talk about patch 1.5, this is not the place for it. As for my points on Dragon's and the creative process (reason why we won't see it) you have not said anything to disprove my statements.

Cheers,

Strange, was the dragon already injured?
Because on my Xbox, playing on Master, Frost Dragons can easily dispatch giants, bears and sabrecats...and even manage to actually kill someone during attacks on cities...

Speaking about city attacks...after patch 1.5, on my second playthrough, I've been attacked by a Blood Dragon (fire) in Morthal and it killed 3 guards and 2 npcs....don't know if the patch made the guards less "dragonborns", anyways I was verrrry satysfied lol

Posting this in a big bold link because this MOD makes everything discussed here a moot point.

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http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=3829

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The above link is everything people want their Dragon Experience to be like. Without it being Dark Souls obviously.

I encourage any who want more from skyrim to learn how to use Mod Manager and spend some time looking for mods. On the above linked website.

Actually the kill cam animations can be a game breaking element. I actually didnt think that before version 1.5, but the kill cams for magic do nothing but get you killed. I will cast flames on a dude who has a tick of health left, and it will put me in a kill cam that takes 5 seconds of my guy spraying uneeded amounts of flames on this guys dead body, meanwhile 4 other guys are attacking me and i cant move (and a mage on master difficulty you dont want to get hit even once or you're dead).
In the end, i cant play a mage character on master anymore because i waste too much mana with the kill cams when i dont get attacked whilst helpless, and if i do get attacked i die in one hit so i am dead before i even get control of my character. THAT is a game breaking mechanic.

So as other buddy said, bethesda went back and tinkered with a game mechanic that has potential of breaking the game, just as you say altering dragons behaviours has the potential to do the same. So therefore his points about their fixes with version 1.5 are completely valid, and that completely disproves your point. Bethesda could have at any time tinkered with dragon AI (Like give dragons more of their own language) instead of spent time and resources on more useless kill cams or (even worse) useless voice kinect functions.


Actually i disagree with that mod. I believe that mod is way too overkill on the dragons, and in the end removes the way dragons were meant to be as portrayed by bethesda in their own work. I found Improved dragons(or dragon overhaul forget what its called exactly) a much more suttle approach at giving you harder dragons with more shouts and not seem out of place with the game (deadly dragons feels very out of place with the game). Plus improved dragons gives alduin lightning breath and chain lightning breath.(which should have been implemented from the start)

Mod in Deadly Dragons

I think there should have been more variety of dragons as well,
they could have smaller dragons just larger then bears but much more powerful and travel in pack.
there could be dragons with four legs (like dragons are meant to)
the standard dragons
and ancient dragons should look older or more battle worn

That would most definately improve them, lol.