I'm also in agreement with the OP. There seems to be no end of people struggling to distinguish between "I'm having trouble/don't like" and "the game is ****".

1) Yes. I started literally on day one of release, and by the time the mem was rampant I'd heard it twice. I had to go around deliberately talking to gaurds to see how common it might be. But I'd love to see a DLC adding more guard talk mocking this.

2) While in theory a quest chain may only have a few stages (the main Companions one is about six IIRC), each stage can be a couple of hours long, and there are almost always official side-chains as well. The TG questline alone is longer than many FPSs. Sure, I'd like even longer, but I don't think they are too short.

3) I've had about three game-killing bugs in 460 hours of play. At least two broke the MQ in the sense that the plot got stuck (in one case a cut-scene wouldn't finish, but kept looping). But old saves got me out at as loss of no more than about fifteen minutes play. The game auto-saves a lot, but offical advice to manual save a bit would help. I also had a texture and CTD issue that turned out to be me trying to run the graphics too high. Other than that, little things, often amusing (I'm still trying to work out if the falling dead dragons are a bug or a feature). Having done my own mods, and seeing the complexity of what Beth are up to in the background, bug-free is probably impossible before release. And trying to distinguish which bugs are common and repeatable from the odd thing on odd computers, is probably nealry as hard.

4) I find play plenty hard enough. If you really want a chanllenge, there are plenty of ways of gimping your character: try never using a perk for instance. I'd like a bit finer adjustment on the slider rather than just five fixed settings, but I can live with it.

5) Well, yes, but almost unavoidably. Again, try making your own dungeons, ad see how much work is involved. Now try that with a new set of textures and new shapes each time (both of which will have to be bug-fixed each time before use), and you've multiplied by 11. But within the limited number of basic sets available in the CK, the amount of variation is astonishing. And personally I'd like to see a DLC set entriely inside Dwemer ruins.

in my opinion, absolutely incorrect and easily proven so.

Perhaps if it weren't riddled with inaccuracies and misconceptions. Point by point, here is a simple rebuttal.

2. Guild Quest Chains are waaaaayyyyy too Short

Yeah, sorry they kind of are. Why? Because it takes me about two to three hours IRL, and a couple of days in game time to become the leader of, for example, the Companions. I show up out of nowhere, and being an Argonian I can effortlessly rise through the ranks of a guild with a 100% Nord leadership, and a heavy Nord theme/past. Furthermore, I'm leapfrogging over people who have literally been members of the faction since childhood, easily having 15-20 years under their belts. It's just not realistic. And for that matter, the entire premise of some of the factions is just stupid. The Companions are the Werewolf Rotary Club, and 'Anti-Silver Hand League', with almost no emphasis on doing what the faction is actually there for - skilled mercenary work. Very little thought was put into the factions, and there weren't nearly enough of them. Use past games, particularly Morrowind as an example of how Guilds should be.

3. The Game is a Complete Bug-Fest - All Hail To 'Bugthesda!'

I too am blessed to have Skyrim on PC and have played for 165 hours with reasonably good performance, and probably one legitimate CTD that wasn't my fault for minimizing the game too much, or experimenting with mods. That said, there are a significant number of players who have Skyrim on consoles who literally cannot run the game, let alone enjoy it. They're frantically trying to find solutions so they can enjoy Skyrim along with everybody else, while worrying if their game will ever be playable. In some cases it's been five months and people still have issues, and for someone on a limited income you could see how a $60 investment going down the tubes could blow your entertainment budget for a couple of months. To accuse these people of 'hyperbole' is silly, and while some people do overreact this is a very real, and important issue.

4. The Game is waaaaayyyyy too Easy

This is true, but doesn't tell the whole story. I have very few fights that I'd consider challenging, I either cut down a bandit in one power attack, or I find his big brother who can kill me in two swings if his warhammer while I flail my sword desperately, and ineffectively against his skin hoping to do about 8 attacks to each of his 1, and it only gets worse. Dragons in particular are obnoxious too, the entire fight is predicated on me running away to the flattest possible terrain I can find in hopes of 'tricking' the dragon to land so I can finally start fighting back. If Mr. Dragon was smart he'd just fly up and breathe fire on me over and over again, which would do a lot more damage to me than I could do with my bow. So while no, Skyrim is not necessarily 'waaaaayyyy' too easy, it does have poor balance.

So there, 'single best post in the history of this forum' exposed as a fraud!

Technically I'd say you're correct. If you know the difference between a guild quest and some other quest and then mow through just the guild quest chain I agree, they're shorter compared to Oblivion guild quest chains.

During the year leading up to Skyrim I avoided reading anything about the game. I wanted to play Skyrim knowing as little as possible. I know that there are 'hard-wired' quests and that there is something called 'radiant' quests. And I have a vague idea of what the differences are.

But playing the game, I really have no clue if the quest I just got from a winterhold college NPC is part of the mage guild quest chain or one of the 'raidant' quests. I look nothing up online, no strategy guide, nada. I just play it as it comes. Mixed together, the experience, imho, is far more satisfying than they were in Oblivion (at least to me).

But I can certainly see your point that if you isolate a guild quest chain and then methodically move through it without anything else distracting you... then yes, they are going to 'feel' short. I don't do that and as of right now I don't bother trying to distinguish guild quests from radiant counterparts - I find it more interesting that way.


I don't see how what I wrote is fraudulant. It is my actual experience playing the game. Yours may be different. That doesn't make your experience fruadulant any more than it makes mine.

The point wasn't that your post itself was a fraud. It has some good points and some mistaken points, I was more resenting the guy earlier who said your original post was the best in the history of the forum, which aside from being patently impossible is made further untrue by mistakes your original post contained.

I wasn't trying to say that you were lying about your experiences or anything like that.

1.>> Yes, it is a very rare NPC dialog line, but it's goofy and weird in its own way, which is perhaps why it became an internet meme. Once it becomes a meme it takes a life of its own and goes beyond the game's popularity. For example, the line "The cake is a lie" appears once, and once only, in the game Portal, scribed on a wall and you may even miss it if you're not paying attention. Yet, it became a meme even bigger than the "arrow in [to] the knee."

2.>> The Dark Brotherhood, Thieves Guild, and Companions quest lines are OK, but the College of Winterhold one is surprisingly short, and the Bards College is hardly a quest line at all.

3.>> I'm glad you've had such a wonderful experience with the game. I myself also had over 200 hours of relatively stable experience. However, you're lucky you started playing after patch 1.4. Those millions (yes, millions) of players who bought the game early on had to suffer through plenty of bugs that were there since release. Don't believe me? Look at the patch notes for 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 and for 1.5:
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Patch
Still not convinced? Look at the release notes for the Unofficial Patch 1.0 (http://www.dsogaming.com/news/skyrim-unofficial-patch-1-0-released-lots-of-bugsissuesquests-fixed-by-the-community/).
Still not happy? Browse the Skyrim UESP pages and look for bug notes on each. Almost all quest pages include details on related bugs at the bottom of the page.
And of course this page: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Glitches

4.>> I agree with you on this one. If you're a teenager (on your prime of quick reflexes and eye-hand coordination), and have played plenty of twitchy FPS shooters, Skyrim may indeed be easy. For the rest of us, well, it is not.
Also, it amuses me when some people complain that the game is too easy, and then go on to detail all the times their character has been killed. Hint: if you get killed, you were probably not up to the challenge!

5.>> I think dungeon design in Skyrim is indeed superior in some ways to previous TES games, visually and in the overall flow. But I also think that most dungeons are quite predictable and linear. In fact, most have an "exit" at the end, and most present you with the "boss fight", the shout word, or the boss-level chest right in the very last room. There are also too many dungeons filled with repetitive and tedious draugr or dwemer meca attacks. Let's see if, by the time you have played about 200 hours of the game, you will feel the same.

One last thing: we may appear sometimes, as a whole, to be complaining too much, but we know that Bethesda actually does pay attention to these forums. Isolated complaints such as "I don't like the look of trees in Skyrim; they are way too green" will most likely be ignored, but if the developers see the same complaints over and over, they will indeed pat attention and may start considering the issue.

Ok, I got it.


I haven't done the Bard's 'guild' quest chain yet. But like the nirnroots, I will make sure to pay attention to it now that it has been brought to my attention.


I believe you I believe you! I believe every person who has posted a bug on these forums is in fact experiencing whatever problem they describe. But for me, I just haven't had many problems at all and I think it's worth mentioning. I mentioned that I started playing at patch 1.4 purposefully so that everyone who read the post could be clear on just where I began.


I do agree with your criticisms. But I also take into account, rightly or wrongly, dungeon implementation of prior TES games. Skyrim is a big step up from Oblivion's richly deserved term referring to dungones as 'monster closets.' I'm also playing Skyrim off the heels of just having completed Two Worlds II - which in my opinion is great contemporary example of 'uninspired dungeons.' I do crave for dungeons that are a true environment - with branching sections and hard to find areas. Still, Skyrim is an improvement imho.

Thieves' Guild was so full of plot holes.
Dark Brotherhood was the only one I liked... until nothing came from it.

And

All of that is subjective opinion - you may think the guild questlines are too short, other's may be perfectly content with the length of the quests. You may not find certain battles challenging, other people may find it to be a perfect challenge.

Thus, my statement can still hold true, because using subjective opinion such as "I think the questlines are too short / battles aren't challenging enough" to criticize the game in an attempt at objectivity, and using extreme statements in doing so, is in fact hyperbole, thus making the OP correct.

thus, holding the opposite opinion is, in fact, hyperbole, as well. thereby, rendering our statements correct.

and, probably why many of us responded in the first place.

Hi there Neptiofpovar! It' good to see you.

Well, I haven't played past TES so have none against which to compare Skyrim. They're way to repetitive for my personal taste. The layouts themselves are varied enough, but since the components are pretty much the same throughout each dozen or so of them, the whole experience son gets a bit tiresome. I was truly dismayed when I found that the awesome Bleak Falls Barrow was but one among a dozen or so of nearly identical dungeons, which, of all things, shared the same Claw mechanism. Now, coming from Oblivion, is Skyrim a step in the right direction? I'll take your word for it. Is it good enough? Certainly not.

guild quest-line are much too short, the guild stories are all clearly made to be rushed through bu end waaaaaaaay to soon (after the first or second quest in some it becomes life-or-death story and the pacing is meant for you to race-the-clock [which was cut off for some reason and you will never, ever run out of time to save the people who are supposedly in dire trouble])
college spoilers**

I agree with all of that, except I would say the guilds really were much too short. The only one I've finished is the Companions, and I was disappointed by it. Compared to Oblivion's Fighters Guild, it was just stupid. I think some of the posts above me have already discussed the reasons enough. I haven't finished any of the others yet, but from what I've seen so far, they seem to be heading down the same path.

So on one hand you talk about subjectivity, and how 'extreme' statements can't or shouldn't be made. But in the next breath you argue that the OP can make an equally extreme statement accusing people of hyperbole who make very reasonable criticisms about documented problems, which the OP himself admits he takes as truth. And then you have the stones to label this entirely subjective OP, with extreme phrasing (hyperbole) as the 'single best post in the history of these forums'.

The cure to subjectivity is consensus. Even if a statement or circumstance is technically open to interpretation, if a broad agreement is reached that goes towards one or the other interpretation it becomes reality, and the subjectivity begins to fade. Just because one or two people hold an opinion does not make it worthy of equal consideration as the opinion of one or two million people. And, the fact is that most people in this thread and in all the threads I've seen agree that Guilds are too short, and you advance too quickly. Is this an empirically true, totally incontrovertible reality? No, that's impossible, but it's pretty much as close to the truth as we can get. One or two obnoxious contrarians don't change that.

Skyrim's dungeons are a step up, in my opinion, over dungeons from past iterations in the series.

If I venture out and compare the dungeon's of Skyrim with other games that I believe do dungeons better, then they become increasingly less competetive.

But then again, the games that I can think of that have better dungeons don't offer nearly the same breadth of features as TES games do.

TES games tend to have a wide breath of features that don't drill down very deep in their complexity. Other CRPGs tend to have a narrower feature set, but drill down further with the features they have. Understanding this helps put a game like Skyrim in perspective as to what it is offering.

But if you isolate the topic and laser in to critiquing dungeon design and implementation in Skyrim, like I said it's easy to monday-morning quarterback with improvement ideas. But if your an actual designer faced with the TES 'wide-scope' (and by the way, also 'do anything in any order') mandate, I can't see how you'd have that luxery.

With enough time and money, anything is possible. So maybe someday someone will have enough time and money to make a TES game (or TES-like game) with a feature-set that is as deep as it is wide.

i keep hering people talk about how when they have a kil cam that enimes can advance on them but i myself have never had this happen not once in my probably ether almost 200 or over 200 hours of game play. so i have no idea what you and any one else is talking about cause this has yet to ever happen and i don't think it ever will happen for me.

do you play on a consol or a pc cause maybe its just a pc thing ????

The first time I heard a guard say the arrow to the knee line, I thought the game developers were just making fun of the line by including it in their game. I then googled the history of the line and went O_O when I realized I had just heard the original arrow to the knee joke.

You were never curious enough to ask anyone where the meme originated from?

You know, I've been wondering if level design in Skyrim may be a victim of its own virtues:
There are lots of "dungeons" in Skyrim, and they tend to be very large and extensive. While this may appear to be a good thing at first, they can get tiresome, repetitive and tedious after a while.

But this is all nitpicking. No one is forcing us to explore EVERY and EACH damn dungeon in the game, right?

It's too bad we didn't get any more areas like Blackreach.
By the way, I still think dungeon design in Fallout 3 is superior to that in Skyrim, but of course there are far less of them than in Skyrim; so, quality vs. quantity...

Hi you all. How have the two of you been doing?



I understand your point. It-s always possible to say the best they could do was the best that could've been done, given the constraints. But the same could have been said about Oblivion's, say, voice acting. Thankfully, people voiced their criticism and Bethesda ended up improving a great deal upon it. Here's hoping the same will happen to dungeons.



Black Reach is paradigmatic. Bethesda set a wonderful premise, bu didn't deliver on it. No unique architecture, no unique fauna, no unique flora. The giant glowin mushrooms are useless, unharvestable and unclimbable pieces of cardboard scenery and crimson nirnroot is just nirnroot with a different hue. One would have thought Black Reach's ecosphere would've given birth to some endemic creatures and plants. Some dungeons just have to be unique. Anything less is a disservice.

Well, I thought Blackreach was really a very interesting and compelling place to explore. It certainly looks different from any area in any previous TES game, and it is a vast underground cave system, which holds an entire Dwemer city now in ruins, overrun by Falmer and some fanatic weirdos (which I don't recall seeing anywhere else). And the layout is VERY different from any other underground/indoors area.
And no unique architecture? Yes, it is Dwemer, but at the center you have the gigantic glowing orb floating above the city, which doesn't look like anything else in the whole game.
And I believe it's the only place where you can mine geode veins. And crimson nirnroots are quest-related by the way.

If you are dismissing the value of Blackreach because you cannot harvest or climb the glowing mushrooms, well... I mean, honestly?

And Blackreach is not an ecosphere. Nirn as a whole planet is. If anything, it could be said that Blackreach is an ecosystem with SOME unique flora (including the giant glowing mushrooms).
Any unique fauna that could have developed there may have been overrun by the Falmer a long time ago.

Blackreach is supposed to be about four square miles in total area. When was the last time you saw a cavern of that size developing truly unique flora and fauna? Microscopic organisms and perhaps some insects yes, but everything else would be just minor variations of what you see in the surrounding region, especially considering that the place was inhabited by humanoids for many centuries and now it is populated by the Falmer and other humanoids.

My original point remains: Blackreach doesn't look and feel like any other area in the game. I wish we had more areas like it instead of dozens and dozens of the usual dungeons (cave/mine/fortress/barrow).

problem with that is like the companions guild, they force you to do the main arc, you do the main arc quest and then a radiant then when you comeback its always such and such is looking for you, forcing you to do more of the main arc, if it was more like the thieves guild where you had a couple of people give you radiant quests i would agree.

the companions also was very rushed in the story telling it was a cool buildup and a good ending but like someone said it was like their was no middle to the story it was cool lead up with the silverhand but then they rushed it and it was over and im harbinger and people under me telling me to go kill bears

There is no reason for each guild to feature a chain of quests or a main arc, and it might be better if they didn't. If a guild isn't worth playing without its main arc, then it isn't worth having.