hi all

playing skyrim on PC (top graphical settings and all...moves smooth), i bought myself a horse

but to be honest, i was horrified at the way riding is rendered, mechanics and all etc

having played Oblivion, its predecesor alot, i must say, that at least for now, riding a horse in Skyrim is like sticking a sharp tool in my eye balls slowly

the horse animation resembles rag-dolls more than horse, and the camera is locked in...this means i can no longer appreciate my character from sides, front etc while riding (no more RP while riding, to admire sunsets etc, like i used to do in Oblivion)

for all the accomplishements and beauty of Skyrim, for the hell did they come up with such a HORRIBLE, HORRID, noob ish way to animate horses and horseriding ?!?

why didnt they just copy/ pasted the system from Oblivion ?!

also... in Skyrim, when my horse is up an ramp / incline / obstacle, it s like ....AAAARGHHHH!!!
in Oblivion, horse would much more naturally follow slope or obstacle (not perfect duh!, but still 100x better than in Skyrim)


sorry for the rage/rant, but the riding animations took a 10 year step back, to before-Morrowind days!!!!
and riding is such an important part of any RP experience

EDIT: also, the speed on horseback is barely noticable faster than on foot!!!!
in Oblivion, on horseback, the difference was obviously instantly!

1) question for devs: why did you had to wreck the riding part ?
Skyrim is super, but why did you had to ruin it...?

2) question for players: after roughly 2 hours of looking, i found no riding mod that changer the riding part to feel much more natural and fluid, and to get rid of limited camera

basicly, does anyone know of a mod that makes horse riding in Skyrim like the one in Oblivion?

thanks

I am loving my time in Skyrim, but I've gotta agree with you on this. I don't know if I'll ever buy a horse given the way riding works.

It's funny. Clearly the devs wanted very badly for us to see our characters in 3rd person - they force it in riding, and you see it while crafting as well. Plus the kill animations. But for all that, they imposed some silly restrictions on how we could experience 3rd person. I just don't get it. I play in 1st person exclusively (PC also) - except for those vanity moments. But like you, I enjoyed riding a horse in Oblivion and looking around. Sadly, that won't be happening in Skyrim.

Hardly a gamebreaker, but definitely disappointing.

When I came to Skyrim, and I saw people riding horses, I said to myself WTF?
All day, all night, all day, all night. So I called my friend Johnny, and I said to him...
Johnny. La gente esta muy loca. WTF.

The basic attitude can be found in the Maiq the Liar script in Morrowind. They just put it in because people demanded it. It can't be integrated into the rest of the game due to combat balance issues. They could never do it as well as RDR so that is probably the go-to game if you like horses. I didn't notice any degradation compared to Oblivion.

- Horses are too slow.

- You can't look behind you unless you come to a complete stop.

- You cannot talk to anyone or pick ingredients.

- The AI makes them attack all enemies.

- They don't have saddlebags.


Yep, that pretty much sums up my opinion of them.

It's a bit like you can revolve around your character when moving.....what the hell? I always did that in Oblivion/Morrowind on the long boring trips for something to do, just spinning the camera around to look at my character when on the move.

Horse purely svck, when you can sprint nearly as fast there is really no point in using a horse.....esspeically when you cannot fight on horseback which means every 30sec you have ot get off to kill wolves.

Yea, horses svck. They are all the same speed which is very very slow, they are fat, they look like fat donkeys gimping around. Sprinting is a joke. They are bugged on a few levels. They cannot walk backwards wtf.

Now all skyrim needs is some horse armor.

I doubt anything regarding horses will get fixed, so it will be up to mods. The faster horses mod only changes sprint speed, so not really that great yet.

Its pretty clear that horses were just thrown together near the end of development as an afterthought. There's lots of bugs related to them and the mechanics aren't very good. There are only five buyable horses and they're all exactly the same besides color. And it feels barely faster than walking because it ISN'T any faster than walking. Horse's walk, run, and sprint speeds are the same as your characters walk, run, and sprint speeds. Horses can just sprint for longer periods of time, slightly increasing travel speed until you run into a bear or something and waste any time you gained on dismounting, killing it, finding your horse after it flees from combat, and remounting.

sorry, what about the attitude ?! i didnt get it ...maybe i m too tired and dissapointed

i really love the cold, mountain atmosphere guys, dont get me wrong!

in Oblivion, without any horse modes except for LadyLove (all it did was make your character gently pet the horse from time to time on the neck....quite lovely), the animation and even physics were 10x better!!!
i know, as allmost all my moving in Oblivion, was done via riding a horse,

the difference was huge vs running on foot, horse would sometimes fight, different horses had different characteristics (cheydinhall were fast but more fragile etc)

sure, there were occasion times when horse would go away, but they were RARE, and allways, for me, a simple in and out of a town, would summon the horse to my location

i dont understand how it was possible on an OLDER game, to have such an important part done BETTER than a newer, supposedly more advanced game ?!?

i have to ask: what is wrong with game makers these days ?!?

everytime i see, when moving from older to newer supposedly better game, they always wreck some crucial component that used to work just fine a generation ago!

see Unreal Tournament 2004 and its superb multiplayer (both on- and off -line), its sleek menus for selecting boths, game modes and arenas, easy to use interface to set up teams, symbols etc
then see the Unreal Tournament III by Epic Games, which despire boasting some impresive visuals, it had: 10x less diversity, wors ever menus (some mental sadist must have designed them...), FILLED to the teeth with annoying crippling bugs and glitches not solved today, very complicated menus for setting up multyplayer (both offline and offline ) and i could go on

and all for a few pixels looking better

same for faimous Starcraft game....BW was the epithome of balance and diversity, rewarding true skill - 3 vastly different races, yet equal opportunities in ALL phases of the game ...early, middle and late
fast forward to SC2, its all about : terran? must win or cripple enemy before 10 min else better save yourself the time and GG....zerg? make sling/bling/ muta and a move ....protoss? stalker/Kollosus/chargelot a move (a move proven to work 95% of the time for z and t...)


i must ask ALL game devs ---- what is wrong with you folks ? why do you always gotta wreck what once worked just fine, all because the newer generation has some prettier graphics ?

is there some hidden, golden set-in-stone law that states: ,,whenever a game has a newer generation coming out, what previously worked just fine, must be nerfed into oblivion! (some pun inteneded!)''


rant off...gonna sleep

sorry all

PS: if anyone has a link to mods like i asked, pls link them apreciate in advance

PS2: Da Mage also has a excellent point...magic SUX too!
its like they nerfed oblivion system by 50% !

switching axe to spell must go through menus, slowing game to a halt, then unpause!
wtf! why cant i bind spells 1, 2 and 3 to numbers 1,2 and 3, and axe to 4 and bow to 5 ?

why do gamemakers make stuff 1000x more complicated that it has to be ?

Anyone notice how horses can climb mountains and swim in water while your riding them?

Horses are the best mountain climbers in the game.

Horses are the best swimmers in the game.

those are bugs...horses were never supposed to climb vertical walls !
i m not referring to bugs, i m talking about stuff that was SUPPOSED to work in normal conditions (aka not cheating, just regular play)

right now, magic and horses are 2 such lame areas....all for a few nicer pixels and nice finishing moves

PS: why isnt there an option to disable the finishing moves small video ?!

Don't be too disappointed, not much point getting high hopes for horses in TES... I meant the attitude of the devs, as Maiq says:

"Horses.... Oh, M'aiq loves horses! Especially with good cream sauce."

"You would wish to ride upon a beast? There is a way... Go to one of the many silt-strider ports and pay your fee! You wish one for personal use? Bah! Walk if you must; run if you are chased!"

I think it was just not a development priority because you'd have to change all the combat around if you wanted to do it up right. Horses are just there because people wanted horses in some capacity. The only good horse combat around that I have found is RDR where it just involves shooting a gun out of the saddle, or throwing a lassoo. Or you can try Mount and Blade, which sorry but I don't thinki it is "realistic" from what I can tell... It changes the dynamic significantly, really you have to design around horses from the ground up (so to speak) and Beth doesn't want to do that.

They should drop horses and give you something cooler to ride...i vote for saber cat, mammoth and dragon mounts

Worse thin about horses is NO MOUNTED COMBAT! Seriously? How could they skip this? It was one of those features that were missing in Oblivion that was complained about the most. You'd thought that a feature would be implented right away.

to be honest, the horses svcked in oblivion almost as much as they do in Skryim. I was apualed when Bethesda said that they had the best horse animations. RDR has that IN THE BAG!

No matter how you look at it, the RDR horses are way better, but then again, why in oblivion would you use a horse? you see more when on foot, you do more when on foot. and it's a waste of money in my opinion. I once found a large gorge that would take 5 minutes to cross on a horse, but there was a fallen tree across it, one of the coolest things ever!

- The Speed could be faster, but I run away from enemies just fine. I travel to places much faster than walking, though I do stroll with my horse a lot.

- Same with not being on a horse.

- Do you really think itd be possible to pick up stuff on the ground when youre on a horse? Talking to people, and combat is an issue.

- They are too aggressive. If anything, they should be running away more often than not.

- Never even thought about it.

Horses arent as useless as everyone makes them out to be. Like I said, I can run through camps and forts, and away from dragons and any other enemies just fine. Traveling is slightly faster as well. I havent used a horse for a while on the account they keep dying because of their aggressive nature. Though, once I get Shadowmere, I will never be without a horse.

in oblivion, they did had a point...if you fast traveled alot between points at great distances, they were useless too

but i never fast rtaveled, as it ruined my immersion experience, and on the loooong journeys from say, Imperial City to Cheydinhall and so on, a horse was a god sent!

especially since i didnt cheat at skills and leveling either, so many times running from animals / enemies on something very swift was pure gold!
it made me feel reely good !

also, my horse would fight for me, drawing attention of enemy and giving me precious time to kill that enemy and so on so on ...

movement was much much better and more fluid, camera was free to pan arround, they didnt looked like inbread donkeys etc


escuse me for quoting myself:

i must ask ALL game devs ---- what is wrong with you folks ? why do you always gotta wreck what once worked just fine, all because the newer generation has some prettier graphics ?

is there some hidden, golden set-in-stone law that states: ,,whenever a game has a newer generation coming out, what previously worked just fine, must be nerfed into oblivion! (some pun inteneded!)''

They seem really sluggish and slow, the sprinting/accelerating etc. doesn't do much either, I'm really unhappy with the pretty much everything about horses in this game, now I don't even bother with horses.

Use sprint. Who needs a horse?

This right here

Yse the horses are worse than in Oblivion.

Horses...eh...I love almost every aspect of Skyrim. I don't love horses. The AI makes the horse seem like he's Battlecat from He-Man, instead of Queen Ally from the Whiterun stables. And if I steal a horse and dismount, all of a sudden it gets svcked away by some kind of giant vacuum. Weirdest glitch I've run into. And lastly re: horses, for some reason running with a horse can cause lag at random for me. Luckily, I don't mind traveling on foot most of the time.

Horses are for milk drinkers without enough stamina anyway

I`m not really an FPS player, but UT was one of the old UT games I stuck with, a bit like I stuck with the old rpgs.

Anyway, this paragragh is exactly how I feel about Skyrim and games Devs in general.

Horses are indeed rubbish in Skyrim, but personally, it was because they removed the 1st person view completely. This is exactly what they did in UT3. UT 2004 was almost perfect, everything you could in 3rd or 1st, but suddenly they decided to screw with that for... let`s see.. NO REASON?

Why not keep the good stuff as it is? I was hoping for horse combat, but would`ve at least lived with how it was in Oblivion

I sacrificed my horse to a sabretooth tiger and a bear and haven`t looked back. Haven`t wasted 1000 gold on another.

Shame on you, Bethesda.

aka Mages.