I "did" enjoy this game, don't get me wrong, but I encountered many issues that sort of left me scratching my head as to why this game reached "legendary" status.

I think the one thing that TES games suffer from has always simply been: The Open World Incentive

To expand upon this point, Skyrim's absolute greatest achievements are all numerous things that don't involve the actual game play itself. Its a fairly good game, don't get me wrong, but I get the feeling some IGN reviewer played the game up to the very first Dragon cinematic, blew a load in his pants, slapped his desk and yelled "SOLD!" aloud.

Lets get back to "The Open World Incentive".

What is it? In a simple way to explain things, It's the incentive to simply bask in and interact with the world manufactured before you. This game should be called, 'Elder Scrolls V: Revenge Of The Caves... Oh.. And Theres A Dragon Or Something..'

There is such a beautiful world! I had my sword ready and ready to conquer the piss out of it!

NPC: "It seems I have lost something in a cave.. could yo.."
ME : "DONE"

NPC: "We need to thwart our oppositions defenses, for some reason the most effective way to do this would be asking you to find something in a cave.. perhaps solve a door puzzle or something you will see multiple iterations of in the future"

ME: "Ehh.. okay.. sure"

My post in a forum regarding the issue: "Geez, there sure are alot of caves tied into the story and the related arcs.. does it lighten up?"
A response later: "Well, if you don't like the caves in the main quest arc, you can always go explore the unrelated caves"

So my first character is almost 50... needless to say, I'VE SEEN A PISS TON OF CAVES. You wonder why this game is 6gigs? Clever compression? No, limitless endless caves and tombs. Most very similar in style. For the sake of file space, I would go further to suggest that these caves are very similar if not replicated in some areas, but I wasn't paying attention at the time. I was too busy being pissed off in a murky cave.

So we have this amazing world to explore, but almost every interesting quest arc sends you into a cave or ancient tomb. You should also notice that the environment outside of major cities is fairly sparse with living inhabitants. The excitement of exploring the world is somewhat dwarfed by the fact that you won't encounter much anything of interest, short of the occasional bandit camp or CAVE.

As a legendary game, I was expecting to interact more in the cities, do something daring and adventurous. Experience more outdoor content and battles.

The next biggest glaring bane on this game is easily the most overstated. The unquestionably brief main story arc

I had a habit in older TES games to save the biggest prize for last, but once coming to the realization that they were all so painfully short anyway, I want ahead and got this all over with earlier in the game.

It was an epic arc, but unbelievable short. It introduced you to some great environments and threw some really cool themes your way. Playing a game bolstering this awesome pace in scenery, dialogue and plot would be an ABSOLUTE gem. IF they were able to maintain the pace for AT LEAST 30hours of gameplay.

This is what absolutely kills the motivation to go on about the world and it's activities. Because no side quest, guild arc or mundane searching will come even remotely close to the few few hours spent on the main quest. Your alternatives are: Repeating very mundane guild quests(FUN), exploring more caves(JUST AS FUN) or doing some stray npc assignments that ultimately involve.. more caves.

Then again.. you can buy a house... that you can't really customize.. and acts as a glorified storage box that you can also happen to sleep in.

Aside from bugs and nasty UI issues, you also have to look at:

Very poor mob variety. Literally 90% bears and humanoids with the occasional dragon flying around. The mobs aren't half as varied or half as visually threatening as say Morrowind.

Poor item variety. I'm using some Nightingale pieces and some thief guild pieces. No amount of searching or exploring has yielded ANY interesting replacements.

Which leads me to:

Punishing exploration. Like someone stated before, you will always find 9g in urns and jars in an area where you are killing people for 70-100g drops per. I haven't encountered a situation yet where my "exploring" has ever paid itself off. So I'm to explore and search caves and run errands knowing nothing will replace the build i have now? Or amass a fortune of gold to spend at vendors who always have a very poor stock, with items that seem to be a good 10 levels behind me?

I expected at least like one overprice vendor with some gear on a level that could at least contend with mine, but no...

I have no reason to "want" to explore the game after the main story because it yields nothing particularly interesting or lacks the ability to introduce something you have seen several times before.

No rare cave demons, no mythical forest giants, no 30 foot abomination.. nope.. just bandits, wolves, bears and bandits.. with the occasional mage or spider thrown in there.

If the main quest was satisfied and you brought down the baddest of the bad, then I could understand mingling in the world, pursuing goals that actually affected the game world. That is my concluding argument.. You never feel like you are helping to shape the world around you or even influence it. Even though you will have all manner of npc's "affirm you ARE dragonborn(like thanks dude, i never noticed) and killed some badass dragon, you sort of feel that Skyrim would just along fine without you.

Would like to add that I'm looking for any cool mods that might address these issues, any leads? =]

It wasn't that great of a whiney TLDR to begin with. It didn't need a worthless bump with you just quoting your original OP.

You aren't that important, and you opinion is simply just that, pookie.

There is a reason why nobody replied. Stop [censored] for attention.

I agree with alot of it, but to help cope with your anger to Skyrim. Play Oblivion for a month, and come back to Skyrim. You'll be singing god almighty and hallelujah!

True,from word to word.Although Skyrim is a fun game,all thing just feels simplified and dumbed down.

Hmm, now that I think of it, there sure are an awful lot of caves in this game.

You gotta be kidding, I am at work lol

Someone tl'dr please

You already know what it says;

Blasted through the main quest too early, doesn't like fetch quests, doesn't like caves, can't comprehend the amount of content and work put into this game, not entirely sure OP likes RPG's to be honest.

Thats about it

EDIT: Oh, and is surprised his maxed out smithing outdoes anything a standard vendor can provide. How can we miss that classic.

Played every TES every released from beginning to end.

I've played more pc RPG's than most people will play in a lifetime.

Take that.

The OP has a point, in fact a lot of them. I totally agree, I hope TES will get slightly more an outdoor experience in the future. My character got all pale and sickly because of all those dungeons and caves.

I apologise for the slight snarkyness of the last post. I know it never helps, just a bit worn down by it now


Thats because the Main Story... is you. Not the central quest line. Its you. My main story arc is 40 hours at the moment, and has barely touched the surface. I've learnt a lot about my character, and I'm not sure how I feel about the choices I have made.. I'm not sure about the choices I know I'll have to make in the future..

Ever wondered why most of the people who loved morrowind state that they never finished the main questline... think about it....

EDIT:

And yet you still don't get it.. thats even worse, sorry. I know I'm coming across a bit harsh, but theres a ton of content, and your argument oversimplifies and trivialises some exceptionally decent RPG content.

Well, I like exploring. The caves seem for the most part to be quite varied - a lot of them have little themes or storylines or something else that just makes them more interesting. And there are a lot of quests to go into these caves, so you never really have to just wander, you can always find someone to tell you to go somewhere, if you want.

Fail troll with painfully scripted response is fail.

It did actually need a bump you see. For upon posting it, it was knocked back 8 pages within 2 minutes of posting it.

You didn't read... meaning you would have noticed half the post was pretty satirical.

Trolls are getting lazy.

"TLDR - It svcks. I didn't read it, but I'm sure it svcked".

I actually agree that to much of the gameplay is based on cave exploring. For example, the whole thieves guild quest is based on going around in caves. What?? Whats wrong with the thieves guild quests in Oblivion? They were not perfect, but much funnier.
Another problem is the diversity of the dungouns puzzles. Every puzzle is about turning the snake/bird/fish pillars. And in the full demo, I thought the door puzzle with the claw was really smart, but hey, Ive gotten a bit tired on it when I did it for the sixth time
Dont get me wrong, I love the game, but I felt that there were alot of quest in Oblivion that didnt force me to go into a cave.

There are some unique monsters outside of Bandits and Undead to be found in some dungeons.

If you don't like open dynamic world, Dragon Age 2 would be more up your alley.

Yeah, I also like to pretend that all the Dwemer ruins, caves, mountain passes, barrows, groves, word walls, giant camps, cities, towns, mills, farms, meaderies, temples, forts, towers, daedric shrines, shipwrecks, dragon shrines and bandit camps are exactly the same.

I'm over 50 hours in. I'll let you know when I feel the fun ebbing.

Most mods you will see at present are texture mods. Won't see big game changes til a creation kit is released. There are however two cool ones I picked up, No helm mod and a fletching make your own arrows mod which are pretty sweet.

All Elder Scrolls fans knew to expect tons of caves in the game. What I'm happy about so far is that there is actually more variety on display between the caves than any previous title. I'm not referring to textures of course, but more to dungeon layout, scripted convos on NPCs, clever setups for opportunities to use the environment against enemies, etc.

I do agree the puzzles need more variety, and yes sometimes it is a bit forced when NPCs send you into caves for questionable reasons. However, my avatar really doesn't need much of a reason to go clear out a dungeon; it's what he signed up for. So far it's great.

I wasn't actually planning to spend much time on this. I just wanted to sort of absorb a few intellectual counterpoints vs "you're wrong", "you just don't get it".

I still feel like you are praising the the game for the same reason I praise the game and are sorta sweeping the dirt under the rug.

The main arc is amazing and the guild quests are neat. These account for a very very small amount of one's end time played. The rest of the game could honestly use a lot less 'filler' material.

Try The Sims. It has none of those problems!

totally agree, fun but lackluster. sometimes i feel TES isn't for me no more.

mods will help a tons, but gotta wait for a while.

Aaagh please don't say that. I'm sure the devs would be very pleased to have their workload on future titles lessened by trimming out the 'filler' as you call it and the series would lose yet another of its trademark qualities. An unreasonable amount of optional content is part of what I and many others absolutely love about the Elder Scrolls series as it allows us to play our characters until we are tired of them as opposed to when we run out of content. As profit motive will continue to compel Bethesda to trim development time for games I fear they will shrink the game world in future titles until they become a MQ with a few side distractions like most other RPGs and that will be tragic.

Right now the series still offers amazing bang for the buck - let's keep it that way.

I love skyrim i play it a lot but.... i would like some more like non cave dungeons like those ruins in oblivion.