Some here are using roleplaying as an excuse to cover up some glaring problems with balance, when thats not what roleplaying is, and whats its suppose to be. A character that only takes items from chests and ignores burial urns for a reason of his own chosing is roleplaying, a character that stops smithing iron daggers because he's just getting to darn good at it to fast, is not. Thats a ruleset, not roleplaying.

And skyrim is detrimental to roleplaying in some pretty asinine ways. What those are have been gone over quite remarkably in these forums since release. So if you want a list, do a search i'm getting tired . For those "inexperienced" roleplayers out there, I'd suggest finding a different game to learn that trade. Skyrim won't teach you much.

Not doing it is not role playing, but doing it is called grinding which should be a word so horrible for a single player game that a moderator should censor my use of it here on the forums.

Every time you grind your skills in TES a cute fluffy Khajiit baby dies. That is why there are no Khajiit children

+1

Smithing skill in particular, I wouldn't associate the word grind to get to mastery of it. Thats pretty much a give me skill. I know what your saying but I don't want a game of freebies either. For me personally, gainin skill and becoming more powerful is secondary to what I"m looking for in what is suppose to be an rpg. I've played a quite a few MMO's and Skyrims "grind" is no where near comparable.

If that were true i'd probably have to become the first Khajiit Dictator and kill everyone who ever thinks about grinding >:|
I didn't even like Grinding in an MMO, those leveling Hoes deserved to be slapped.

Edit : That reminds me, I'm gonna have to go Slap my friend because he invented "Horse Training" by Burning his horse then waiting for it's health to go back up, repeat. so his Destruction would go up.
come to think of it, i probably already did because i claimed for Animal abuse

Can you compensate for bad design decisions? Sure. Does that make the game better? Maybe. Self imposed limitations will only get you so far, and they can't compensate for much other than a perceived lack of difficulty.

Skyrim unfortunately has some fundamental problems than simple self-regulation can't fix (the complete lack of depth, for example).

If I'm not mistaken, all skills are in the same manner. Swing the sword, cast the spell, sneak, draw the bow, etc. Why smithing should be any different? The only thing I can think of about non-combat skills would be a further decrease of the experience gain rate, the more you get them close to level 100. This, as I said, goes for all non-combat skills: smithing, alchemy, enchanting and lockpicking.

No. I think it's kind of selfish to think that only a 'seasoned RPGer' can get the most out of a game. It's not hard to explore to every single inch of Skyrim - more time consuming than anything else- and a story you enjoy RPing to is all that you need. No amount of roleplaying can make you 'better' at Skyrim, because the only person you need to impress is yourself. Sometimes my 'characters' are only small things, like my Nord Warrior with a Skooma Addiction, or more complex like my mage/archer Bosmer. But both satisfy me a lot, and I feel like I've got the most out of Skyrim since it came out.

Not at all...I am quite seasoned and I never employ self-imposed rules (other than sticking to my character concept, but within that concept I will use any method that the system allows me to use to develop and advance my character), if I can 'break' the system than it is either poorly designed, or intentionally made that way, either way is a poor excuse for me not to use it.

No

A "mature and seasoned" RPG player will likely get less out of Skyrim than a game with genuinely interesting characters to interact with, and more meaningful dialogue. Bioware or old school Black Isle/Interplay games being an obvious example. Skyrim is a great RPG sandbox time killer game, but it sacrifices depth for its size and freedom. There are less limitations, but fewer meaningful choices and consequences. I don't think that means it takes a seasoned RPG player to get the most out it. Depends on what you expect from an RPG game though I suppose.

Someone can self impose rules to make a game more challenging in any game, I don't see how that's relevant at all to what kind or quality of RPG it is.

@ the OP: would a seasoned gamer see greater game depth than a casual gamer? Probably. Could a casual gamer have just as good a time without the depth? Certainly. And for those who think the game is shallow, please keep in mind that FRPGs are fairly formulaic: get the maguffin in order to stop the dreaded evil from destroying something important. To that extent, they're all shallow. It's what else there is to do/see/experience along the way.

Unfortunately, I'd assert the opposite is true. The game is shallow, and shallowness tends to be appreciated while you're young enough to not know any better.


And Skyrim doesn't offer much, apart from the pretty graphics and the daedric quests.

I disagree. Skyrim is very easy for most people to get enjoyment from for a fairly large amount of hours. It actually is harder as an experienced TES vet to enjoy the game unless you willfully look past the flaws which I try to do.

RPG player yes

seasoned no

Now I need deffention to ''RPG player''. When do you become one ? When I buy my 2nd RPG game ? xD

one of the good things about skyrim is that can be picked up and played by pretty much anyone, including someone who never played an RPG in his life.
of course it's better if the player already knows what's an RPG and even better if he already played previous TES games, sure his experience will probably be better than the one of the casual gamer.

Is 25 years plus playing rpg's seasoned enough....despite its many faults it still has a lot to offer....if only they would have put as much effort into immersion into the game as they did in trying to make it look pretty.....the main quests are pathetic....the ones you find just out exploring are usually more fun....I am still playing a heavily modded Oblivion and still have a lot of fun with it and I am sure there will be plenty of mods for this to improve the game play....,,What would really improve this game 200 percent would be getting rid of STEAM.

I don't think it is a matter of a person's past gaming experiences, moreso than what they bring to the game with their character. Just read many of the threads and posts in all of the series sections, and you'll see how many will still play and defend playing an open-ended game as if it is linear and state that if it were linear it would have been better. Some role play deep; I know I do, putting less stock in the mechanics and nomeclature of the game (levels, classes, lore heaviness, etc.) in favor for a deep backstory to my character, and infusing in him, the edicts that either I live by myself or would live by given that environment. Like many upon putting the game into the system, I was wowwed right away by its beauty, while at the same time noting how some things were sacrificed for that beauty. I can keep my character in full immersion, but there will always be those moments in the choices and dialogue that will never fit, because like the previous games we are limited in our responses such as Yes-optimistic/ Maybe-Undecided/ and of course, No, which unfortunately almost always is delivered by a sarcastic remark from the player character. Almost part and parcel contemporary sarcasm sadly for the negatives.

I think many use some sort of limiting aspect to the game, but not so much a strident thing like "I'm a cleric so I will only use blunts!" or "I'm a thief so I would never wear armor!" but from reading many posts, I see a lot of this still exists. For me, I like to treat it the same way I treat such nuances in the tactile world. The frail late age lady that unbeknownst to you and I is a Tai Chi Chuan master. The gal who bags groceries with a Neopet button that on her off time hunts game with a bow come the season. The guy who from the outside looks like a former wrestler but in actuality is an operatic singer that still performs on stage and has never once lifted his hand against someone in anger. I treat characterization with that amount of freedom because I enjoy it better. Everyone (NPC's) have a story, I would imagine. Like the quest 'In my Time of Need" with Saadia. There is no clearcut resolution to know if she is telling the truth, or Kematu. You just have to trust and hope, you made the right decision. But you can also decide to do absolutely nothing about it. I did this, until traveling the land I noticed how all the Redguard women were being harassed by the A'likr as they hunted the one they want. So given my character's want of helping, doing the good deed, I started it if for no other reason that my character would want to stop the poor women from being surrounded and harassed. Or when I come upon a killed person in the game from some terrible incident, like the girl who just wanted to bathe in the cool water, even at the risk of her eventual fate. Some, see this in game and loot her belongings, and keep walking. Me, I remove her from the water, place her under the tree, cover her with a hide of a Sabrecat and throw some lavender flowers on the corpse. Does it mean anything at all to the mechanics of the game or the main quests? Absolutely not. Would this be something that my character and by extension I myself would do if I came upon such a scene in that world? Absolutely.

It is this, that makes me enjoy the game. The freedom to decide the character and the history of my character. One of my characters is a carryover from Morrowind, since being Nerevarine, he is immortal. That is not synonymous with invulnerable. Even the Nerevarine can be killed, it is just that he would be ageless and thus would explain how he ended up there, even after an unsuccessful time in Akavir. He may decide to change the world and help, or he may just decide like the Greybeards, that dragons are part of the natural world and this belong. Given some of the talks with the dragons that speak to you, it is not as if they don't have a reason to want to put humans to the task. Especially after the Akavirii.

The beauty of these types of games is that regardless of what you might be expected to do via the storyline, you are under no obligation to do it. Right now, when I make a character, instead of following the usual roped in thing of getting free, going to Riverwood, starting with the Claw and the keystone, I can go in the opposite direction, finding Dragon cairns and word walls without even inciting the dragons to come about, until I decide, which can be even as late as level 30. I can devote a character, once he became the Arch-Mage, to just doing that, staying at the College and doing "step and fetch it" things until he decided to take a student on exploration adventures. I don't pigeonhole my immersive gaming to what is expected, rather, I like to take it in the oft times odd directions of what would this or that character prefer to do. Such as one time with Morrowind, I actually took that package to give to Caius Cosades, and placed it on a dead body. Boom! It was gone from the Vvardenfell world and that meant that I (and by extension all the NPC's) had to live with the world as it was when my character first got off the ship a Seyda Neen.

What an elitist way of thinking, " If you played the very first TES ever and hate everything after it, you are a vet and the vets are all knowing" Get off your high horse.

This vet knows better than to think like you...

Is every post you make negative? Or only the ones I happen to see...

On topic, I don't think judgement can be made on something that is purely subjective...I obviously enjoy the game more than 'Main Event' does, and I do enjoy it a lot more than other games I have recently bought, such as Rage...however, I don't post on the Rage forums about how poor the game was, or what I consider its shortfalls to be, I just move on and play something more interesting.

People, and its only a very tiny minority of players, post on a game's forums...and they can generally be broken down into three categories: Those after information, those with positive comments, those with negative comments. But in general, most players won't bother, and couldn't care less. The only way a game can be judged as generally successfull and enjoyable is by the number of sales over a reasonable length of time...once a game gets a bad rep, it doesn't sell, and if a game has no rep, then it's unlikely to sell either.

I doubt anyone of us can honestly say: I enjoyed/did not enjoy the game more than anyone else.

-WOW- someone that actually understand that the people on the forum are only a minority :: golf claps ::

You can't seriously be comparing Skyrim with the game that shall not be named. Now I know not to take the "veterans" seriously.

Ah, yes. Stereotypes are so conducive to discussion...

So hes putting restrictions on himself cause hes a seasoned RPG player.

Eg the stuff he picks up and what hes carrying, what he learns his character etc etc.


So i can call myself a seasoned RPG player as well, started in 1995 with Phantasy star (yes JRPG are also a form of RPG), followed by Final fantasy 7. If i impose limitations on Skyrim with these games as startpoint than my limitation would have to be me achieving Godmode, unlimited carrying capacity, getting better weapons and amour etc etc.