A Suggestions and Quibbles Thread for Sane People

Post » Thu Jun 07, 2012 4:19 am

Have a complaint, quibble or just suggestion about Skyrim, but you've avoided posting in the past because you're put off by all the whinier posts complaining about how OMG THIS GAME svckS and BETHESDA HAZ BETRAYEDS UZ and the like? The attitude of too many people - the self-appointed PC purists, the self-described "hardcoe gamers" and the Evangelists of the Most Holy Morrowind - tends to discourage any reasonable and measured discussion of any actual problems or flaws by the rest of us. I do have a few quibbles and some suggestions for improvement, but I rarely if ever mention them because I get tired of the flood of immature and half-baked complaints from a certain segment of the forum.

So here's a thread for the rest of us to make suggestions. It is not a thread for complaining about complainers, because they'll lock the thread for that sort of thing. Also, although I know there are a number of bugs and glitches, if it's specific to a particular quest, it probably belongs in the technical support forum rather than here. Also also, watch the spoilers, even mild ones. Please don't spoil quests for people.

Regarding complaints and the spirit of this thread, if you want me or anybody with a brain to take your complaints seriously, I suggest you avoid the following:

- Comparisons to Morrowind. I didn't play it, and I'm pretty sure I never will. I don't need to hear your nostalgizing about how great games "used to be". I've been playing games on PCs since I ran across Adventure (look it up) in 1985, on consoles since the Atari 2600 and in arcades since Space Invaders, Asteroids and Gorf (again, look it up) and I'm not impressed with people indulging in nostalgia for the days of yore back in 2003 or whatever. I'm sure Morrowind was great for its time, or we likely wouldn't have had Oblivion and Skyrim - I just don't need to hear constant complaints that boil down to "They should do everything like they did in Morrowind."
- Complaints about "casual gamers". I promise you that Angry Birds is not destroying TES or RPGs in general.
- The phrase "dumbing down". I played Oblivion a good bit and I don't see any way, really, that Skyrim is "dumbed down" compared to Oblivion. I find the interface a zillion times better than Oblivion's and I spend far less time mucking around in menus.
- Bragging about how real gamers play on PCs. Yeah, I'll jokingly make this comment with a console-only friend of mine, and yes, I've chosen to play Skyrim on PC based on the graphic quality, but playing on a PC is not some sort of badge of merit. I don't care about your hard-core credentials. I've played quite a few great games on the 360 - most recently, Mass Effect 1 and 2 and Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, all four of which are flat-out great games. Consoles are not some sort of harbinger of doom for "real" games.
- Hysteria and hyperbole in general. Skyrim is not the buggiest piece of software ever, it is not the stupidest game in history, and so forth.
- Use of the term "the community", especially in conjunction with the words "Bethesda has betrayed". This is not a community, it's a bunch of people who have purchased a product who show up on the internet to discuss it. Bethesda has not "betrayed" anybody. They built a product which may or may not be to your liking, and it has some technical glitches affecting a fairly small minority of the purchasers. There is no legal recourse against them, nor should there be. Caveat emptor.

Anybody that has some rational quibbles about this or that, I'm all ears. Too many posters' general tone of OMG NERD-RAAAAAAAAAGE is laughable, however.

-------------------------------------------------

Now, I'll start with my own suggestion: non-pausing menus. The only menu that should actually pause the game would be the "system" menu, so that you can pause the game to save or load, alter your options or just go to the bathroom or feed the dogs. No more being able to pause the game to drink six potions in the middle of combat, though. Out in the wilds and you wanna read that book to refresh your memory where the Lethal Dungeon of Molkirzbung or The Grotto Of Death might be? Better make sure there's nobody around and you're kinda hidden, so that you don't bury your nose in a book and have a bandit sneak up and plant an axe in your face or have a bear bite you in the butt while you're reading. It could be a selectable option; it should be fairly popular around the hardcoe-mode crowd, but anybody could use it for realism without having to jack the difficulty up to Master Level.

And one quibble: I'd like to see a little AI fix. It's not that I expect followers and enemies to be tactical geniuses, but I would appreciate it if Lydia weren't an utter moron sometimes. She'll just watch me walk off into the distance sometimes, and I have to come back and get her, and it's like she's just thinking, "Oh, you wanted me to follow you? What a novel idea."
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Sharra Llenos
 
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Post » Thu Jun 07, 2012 7:58 am

The UI for PC is poor. I would like to see Beth upgrade it but I am sure they will leave this to the mod community. Either way works but I must admit the UI was disappointing, hot keys also falls into this category, the game is still one of the best imo just not fully integrated for PC yet.
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NeverStopThe
 
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Post » Thu Jun 07, 2012 6:29 am

Well, I'm a particular fan of the interface overall, but I do agree about the hotkeys. I'm using a 360 controller on PC, and I'd like to be able to use the eight keyboard hotkeys. Also, I wish it was a bit less quirky regarding one-handed weapons and spells.
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Carlos Rojas
 
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Post » Thu Jun 07, 2012 9:12 am

Well, I'm a particular fan of the interface overall, but I do agree about the hotkeys. I'm using a 360 controller on PC, and I'd like to be able to use the eight keyboard hotkeys. Also, I wish it was a bit less quirky regarding one-handed weapons and spells.

I was speaking specifically about the mouse + keyboard gamers, for a gamepad the ui is pretty darn good for pc, minus the hot key issues.
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Stephani Silva
 
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Post » Thu Jun 07, 2012 8:54 am

I was speaking specifically about the mouse + keyboard gamers, for a gamepad the ui is pretty darn good for pc, minus the hot key issues.

Ah. I only played the game very briefly before getting a 360 controller to use, so what makes the interface bad for mouse+keyboard?
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Jacob Phillips
 
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Post » Thu Jun 07, 2012 10:48 am

Even using just the keyboard it isn't that bad. But if you click the wrong place with a mouse it can get screwed up. The lists won't update properly to being scrolled over with the mouse and clicking in the wrong place will cause the menu to close.

And by wrong place I mean if you are in the item menu and you click on the "Weapons" option to bring up those items, it will close if you click the "W"

My main beef with the UI is it just doesn't show enough information. With the UI mod I use I get 2.5-3x as much info and extra sorting options in the same amount of space.
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Taylor Tifany
 
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Post » Thu Jun 07, 2012 11:53 am

I love all your `terms and conditions`. You forgot one more:

-You can say whatever you want as long as I like it.
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FLYBOYLEAK
 
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Post » Thu Jun 07, 2012 5:17 am

I love all your `terms and conditions`. You forgot one more:

-You can say whatever you want as long as I like it.

lol

Yeah, I thought maybe I'd get that response from somebody. No, you can say what you like, I'm just letting people know that I'm not looking for another thread about how great Morrowind was, how people are morally offended by consoles, how Bethesda has "betrayed" the "community" and that they should have forgone millions of dollars in sales and made the game PC-only because they "owe" it to "the community". There are plenty of other places people can indulge their elitism and their doom-fantasies about the future of gaming and how the iPhone and Wii have OMG ROONED it.

None of my points were "conditions" for posting anyway. I'm not a mod and I can't enforce a damn thing, I'm just letting people know that I don't take them seriously when they make these sorts of comments, and I started this thread because there are legitimate complaints and suggestions to be made, and I think too many of them are probably never mentioned because a lot of us have a real distaste for the nonsense about how anything that is different than The Elder Scrolls Morrowind is the greatest game in the history of the universe., how consoles svck, how Bethesda should forgo tons of money in order to better cater to PC gamers, and so forth.
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kyle pinchen
 
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Post » Thu Jun 07, 2012 12:31 pm

I love all your `terms and conditions`. You forgot one more:

-You can say whatever you want as long as I like it.
Except that his terms are very reasonable. No acting superior to each other based on your system, how much you play or when you got started with TES; and just generally not being an ass.
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Laura Richards
 
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Post » Thu Jun 07, 2012 2:35 pm

I find it unreasonable to rule out comparisons to previous iteration/s of TES. The prior games are my primary reference point for evaluating the new game. I also like to compare to Fallout 3 because it was made by the same guys using nearly identical technology.

Most people complaining are doing so rationally, there are just a few that don't.

Quite frankly if you haven't played Morrowind and only got into TES with Oblivion maybe it's YOU that needs to temper your statements. Perchance folk who have supported the series for longer than you might at the very least have some valuable input to the conversation that can only be informed via comparison to prior titles in the series.
--------------------

I agree with you about the menus. It is my #1 technical gripe. The second is the way long load times on 360. These two technical aspects have stood out as even more horrendous for me because I have been replaying Fallout 3. In Fallout 3 I get 8 hotkeys, it's awesome. In Fallout 3 the load times are at least 4 times as fast as Skyrim's, it is really nice.

BTW: Morrowind > Skyrim > Oblivion. I love all three games though and I will talk about any and or all of them in comparison to each other or other games in any thread on this forum.
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Bek Rideout
 
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Post » Wed Jun 06, 2012 11:37 pm

I really don't like it when I jump off of my horse to thrash some bandits and the infuriating equine jumps in front of my sword to attack the bugger. Just have the horse run to a safe distance and chill until I'm done making the road safer for all the citizens. Also, when the horse does run away make it show up on the compass so I don't spend ten minutes trying to find it when it runs behind some random boulder 30 yards away or just let me whistle and it comes running.
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Dorian Cozens
 
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Post » Thu Jun 07, 2012 8:59 am

I find it unreasonable to rule out comparisons to previous iteration/s of TES. The prior games are my primary reference point for evaluating the new game. I also like to compare to Fallout 3 because it was made by the same guys using nearly identical technology.

Most people complaining are doing so rationally, there are just a few that don't.

Quite frankly if you haven't played Morrowind and only got into TES with Oblivion maybe it's YOU that needs to temper your statements. Perchance folk who have supported the series for longer than you might at the very least have some valuable input to the conversation that can only be informed via comparison to prior titles in the series.
--------------------

I agree with you about the menus. It is my #1 technical gripe. The second is the way long load times on 360. These two technical aspects have stood out as even more horrendous for me because I have been replaying Fallout 3. In Fallout 3 I get 8 hotkeys, it's awesome. In Fallout 3 the load times are at least 4 times as fast as Skyrim's, it is really nice.

BTW: Morrowind > Skyrim > Oblivion. I love all three games though and I will talk about any and or all of them in comparison to each other or other games in any thread on this forum.

I guess it's not that I can't handle comparisons to Morrowind in principle, it's just that the comparisons are so endless and that they usually just strike me as being "just because". I.e., spears should be in Oblivion and Skyrim because they were in Morrowind. The voice acting shouldn't even be there because it wasn't there in Morrowind. Medium armor should be there because it existed in Morrowind. Crossbows were in Morrowind, so they should be in Skyrim...and so on and so forth. Stuff changes, folks. Yeah, I'll grant you that there are likely people trying to make reasonable, sane comparisons to Morrowind, but when others start complaining that all the changes are due to consoles, or "casual gamers", or Call of Duty, for crying out loud, the crazies tend to drown out the saner people who might have some rational comparison to make with Morrowind.

Which is why we have this thread. If you wanna make a comparison to Morrowind, feel free, just be aware that others have sort of set a bad precedent.
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Adam
 
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Post » Thu Jun 07, 2012 5:39 am

I really don't like it when I jump off of my horse to thrash some bandits and the infuriating equine jumps in front of my sword to attack the bugger. Just have the horse run to a safe distance and chill until I'm done making the road safer for all the citizens. Also, when the horse does run away make it show up on the compass so I don't spend ten minutes trying to find it when it runs behind some random boulder 30 yards away or just let me whistle and it comes running.

lol

Yeah, I don't use a horse, but I have the same problem with Lydia. I've lost track of the number of times where she's ran straight into the path of my axe, arrow or shout.
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Marcin Tomkow
 
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Post » Thu Jun 07, 2012 1:09 pm

I will be honest, even though threads like these get more discussion I find it more worthwhile to put a ton of thought into what you would change about a particular aspect of the game. I shall return with links to ones I have made.

Edit: I ask that you don't reply to them as necroposting is a bad idea but here are some things I have written on Skyrim. Some aren't accurate as they were written before the release and were just speculation but it's still a good way to list grievances or ideas.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1321620-a-few-things-i-would-have-changed-for-followers/

The rest are ones from before launch, but are still relevant for the most part.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1152946-official-ideas-and-suggestions-topic-3/page__view__findpost__p__16911302

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1171001-my-take-on-guilds/

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1179339-i-dont-know-you-well-enough-to-talk-about-that/page__fromsearch__1

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1178413-armor-and-clothing-variations/page__fromsearch__1 (Specifically Shield Related Thread http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1162393-different-types-of-shields/page__fromsearch__1)

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1177339-will-we-have-hats/page__fromsearch__1

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1175152-generalized-perks/page__fromsearch__1

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1167794-background-realism/page__fromsearch__1

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1168639-enchantment-tweaks/page__fromsearch__1

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1164563-spellmaking-still-possible/page__p__17121860#entry17121860

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1159604-the-we-want-fast-travel-alternatives-thread/page__fromsearch__1

As you can see, I like to look in depth at an issue and devote time specifically to it. Then when a thread about general changes like this comes along I have my links.
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Vivien
 
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Post » Thu Jun 07, 2012 9:46 am

Maybe just have a discussion without trying to out people before the conversation begins?

Anywho back on topic:

I just want to agree with the person above and their criticism of the horses. I don't like how your horse tries to get tino the fight. It should just run to a safe spot away from the action and not make itself an added obstacle in the battle.
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Peter P Canning
 
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Post » Thu Jun 07, 2012 10:59 am

The Irony here is that certain posters will have to "Roll play" in order to take part :)

BTW Im in agreement though.
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Irmacuba
 
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Post » Thu Jun 07, 2012 9:10 am

I will be honest, even though threads like these get more discussion I find it more worthwhile to put a ton of thought into what you would change about a particular aspect of the game. I shall return with links to ones I have made.

Good idea.

Maybe just have a discussion without trying to out people before the conversation begins?

The only people I want to shoo away are people making extremist points. Hyperbole is pointless, PC elitism is pointless, and so forth. I like having a sane discussion.

Anywho back on topic:

I just want to agree with the person above and their criticism of the horses. I don't like how your horse tries to get tino the fight. It should just run to a safe spot away from the action and not make itself an added obstacle in the battle.

Agreed. Perhaps only trained warhorses should join in fights, as they're trained to do? I expect most horses in reality (warhorses excepted) would simply avoid the fight.
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OJY
 
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Post » Thu Jun 07, 2012 3:08 am

My advice is dont let the stuff you read here affect you.

:D
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Heather beauchamp
 
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Post » Thu Jun 07, 2012 6:48 am

That's the truth. Some people argue like TES is the only thing they have going in life...
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Jamie Moysey
 
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Post » Wed Jun 06, 2012 10:48 pm

Also, another suggestion: more armors. I'm not talking about adding a new class of medium armors or anything like that in particular, just a greater variety of armors for cosmetic reasons. They're already made improvements in this compared to Oblivion; Ebony is only so much better than Orcish anyway, so if you really like the look of Orcish and can't stand Ebony, you aren't giving up much armor quality by sticking with Orcish. I'm running around in steel plate at level 36 and it works just fine. I think you're giving up more armor protection if you miss out on smithing skill than if you give up the higher-level armor types. I could have saved a few perk points by having a high (87) smithing skill and just not taking any perks past steel smithing.

Anyway, more cosmetic variations within a given armor type, like how you can make steel armor with and without pauldrons, there are steel helmets with and without horns, and so forth.
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Devils Cheek
 
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Post » Thu Jun 07, 2012 9:40 am

Anybody that has some rational quibbles about this or that, I'm all ears. Too many posters' general tone of OMG NERD-RAAAAAAAAAGE is laughable, however.

See your avatar :wink:

At only 100 hours or so I'm still too near the beginning of my play experience to make many suggestions. So far just more of the same - Skyrim has some really great moments. I love the lore bits and 'high fantasy' elements especially.

If I had to be specific - allow us to melt down items to (a reduced number of) raw materials.
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maria Dwyer
 
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Post » Thu Jun 07, 2012 4:06 am

I'm at 160 hours and I still havent explored the entire game or done all the main quests. Its a great game!

:D
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trisha punch
 
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Post » Thu Jun 07, 2012 12:27 am

@ kalniel: Oooh, that's a good one. It would certainly make sense.

Also, I've seen people say they'd like to be able to craft more unique items, and I agree.
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Rhysa Hughes
 
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Post » Thu Jun 07, 2012 10:17 am

Agreed. Perhaps only trained warhorses should join in fights, as they're trained to do? I expect most horses in reality (warhorses excepted) would simply avoid the fight.

I will let you in on a secret; Horses are insane. Ive seen horses in RL go from nice as pie to raving nutjobs a the drop of a hat. You would be amazed at the load of little things that can send the off the deep end.
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Sarah Edmunds
 
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Post » Thu Jun 07, 2012 4:22 am

There, added links to my post above with things I have written addressing various subjects/concerns, it should be number 14.

Link for people who don't want to scroll: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1327636-a-suggestions-and-quibbles-thread-for-sane-people/page__view__findpost__p__19961677
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Louise Dennis
 
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