Elder Scrolls The appeal of Skyrim

[Valky]

Game is garbage. Just google some sexmod images of it and masturbate, there's the entire value it has to offer.

 

[Üstad]

Atheism/secularism/humanism, .

More or less gave a birth to rennesaince. What is wrong you with people? I don't know which is worse, moralfagging on an obsecure internet forum or being bethesda fanboy? Stop buying the /pol/ cool aid.

Spoiler

I was asked recently what i was that i really liked about Skyrim. Apparently many people misunderstand Skyrim here on this forum. I really think it is unfair that many people don't consider it an RPG, or consider it garbage. So i decided to start a new thread stating what i believe is the real appeal of Skyrim and the "Bethesda formula" in general, and begin a discussion about it.

Let's get the "review" thing out of the way. Everyone already has an opinion about Skyrim's graphics, music, voice acting, etc, so i won't bother mentioning those. This is not a "review" of the game. This is just giving the opinion of someone who genuinely enjoys Skyrim immensely and deserves his "bethestard" tag. I am just discussing what is the appeal, what is that i find that makes my mind tickling with it, so to speak.

Let's also get a few other things out of the way:

1) Skyrim is very easy. Increasing the difficulty can make the enemies hitspongy and make it closer to souls games but it is just cheap difficulty. You can also always break the game with crafting cheese. Let's just say that no one plays Skyrim for the satisfaction of a hard combat system.

2) Skyrim's writing is just... functional. It is not complete garbage, but it is not good either. It is just "there". It just exists, just for the purpose of making the locations and NPCs exist. No one plays Skyrim for its story or writting. The lore is rich in content but poor in quality, let's be honest. There are also retconns galore. Still, it is, as i said, functional. It gets the job done.

3) Skyrim is not a pure CRPG. It is an action-RPG hybrid. Obviously it having action controls introduces player skill to the avatar's skill. This dilutes the RPG element somewhat, and can't be denied. No one denies this.

4) Skyrim's skill system is not complicated. It is very streamlined. This does not mean that it is not well designed though. I found that the perk system was extremely flexible and could create (assuming typical levels of around 40, no i am not grinding to 100 ) an extreme number of different builds. The trees are designed in such a way that you can save perks by only getting what makes sense for a build. I love it. Still, it is not DnD... It is not Divinity Original Sin... Sure, it is more "casual". More streamlined. Again, no one denies it, if having a more hard core skill system is your thing, then Skyrim won't satisfy, not unless you mod it.

So, getting those criticisms out of the way, what is the thing that makes me enjoy it? What is the secret of Bethesda's formula?

As i said in other threads, i have played several hundred hours of Skyrim already. I have made more than a hundred different characters. Yet i have only completed the main questline once. I typically only complete the main questline until Solstheim gets unlocked, with every character. I really don't care about completing the main questline, it is boring, and i don't play the game to experience the story or get the satisfaction of completing the campaign.

The thing i like, is that i get to play an avatar of my making, in first person mode, and control its actions directly. When i play Baldur's gate using my Paladin, it is fun, but i always keep thinking "what if i directly controlled that character in a first person view? And Skyrim allows me to do just that. I make a new character, and shape him up to approximate a paladin build, getting perks in restoration, one handed, shield, heavy armor. Getting anti-undead items like Dawnbreaker. LARPing my Paladin and having fun!

I have attempted to recreate almost any DnD class/subclass in Skyrim. I have made many other builds like merchant-with-people-skills-who-sucks-at-combat, to a dwarven-armored-crossbowman, to vampire necromancers etc. And unlike most CRPGs, i get to experience them directly, with rich graphics, in an open world. I make them exactly like i want, pick the perks i want, the items i want, the lord stones i want, the other bonuses i want... I build them houses like i want, i marry them to whoever i want.

There is no real "end condition" in Skyrim. There is nothing to win, nothing to achieve. It is literally just a digital puppet theater. You get out of it, what you put into it. You are using your imagination, and you escape in its world. Not because it is perfect. It is not. But because it is fun and allows you to express yourself in it. It allows you to put your personal touch.

Think a game like Baldur's Gate. You get to roleplay, yes, but you are rigidly structured in some ways. You can't really escape the class system of the game. You get to pick a class and pick where you assign some bonuses, but other than that, it is a rigid system, not fluid create-what-you-want like Skyrim. Also you don't get to experience the character you are playing directly.

Now, think about Witcher 3. Witcher 3, allows you to control Geralt directly, but it is just Geralt. It will always be Geralt. Yes, you do make C&C, and yes, you do pick if you want the light armored version, the mid, or the heavy, if you want a melee focused or a magic focused, etc. But in the end, it is just a Witcher. It is just Geralt. That is not bad per se, but it does not cover our need to express ourselves in a free way and just do our thing in a sandbox. Skyrim does.

In Skyrim, the only limit to how you roleplay your avatar, is your imagination. I heard stories of someone who wasted many hours just LARPing a Riverwood woodcutter. He would literally just chop wood and help at the mill for money and he even went to sleep at night and get back in the morning. Why he did that? To someone who is objective-based it will seem pointless, he didn't unlock any reward, didn't achieve anything. But to him, it was FUN. He was roleplaying a woodcutter, because why the fuck not? That was his thing, that was what he wanted to do, and he did it.

Skyrim is a virtual sandbox, a world waiting to be shaped up into what you want it to be. Unlike more traditional CRPGs, it is not a rigid thing waiting to be conquered by a brilliant strategic mind or a nice story waiting to be told like a great novel or movie. And that is what Bethesda is good at. That is what Bethesda fans really love about those games.

You need imagination to really get the most out of Skyrim. You need to input a part of you inside your game. You need to perhaps "pretend" to be the character, like a kid pretending to be Spiderman. Skyrim lets you experience a role playing Avatar in first person, directly, with as much freedom as possible, in an open world. Nothing else in the industry let's you do that, like Bethesda's games. That is what makes Skyrim so special. It does not mean that other CRPGs are bad or inferior. They are just different types of RPGs, and that is fine. There is room for everybody... Different strokes for different folks...

And that is why, denying that Skyrim is an RPG is retarded. I mean, it is a game you can role play anything, and shape your character into what you like with an extreme amount of options, and you say it is not a role playing game? Like, seriously?

TLDR: Remember when we were kids. Sometimes we played with toy soldiers, action figures we controlled. That was Baldur's gate. Some other times, we dressed like cowboys, we got our toy revolvers, and played cowboys vs indians, pretending we were aiming and shooting at imaginary indians, or our friends, dressed as indians. THAT, was Skyrim...

The main quest is too streamlined. Our choices actually mattered. Crafting was OP and bethesda has shown again they really hate the mages when it comes to combat. I don't want thieves guild questline is another dungeon sweeping. I don't want random loot in %99 of dungeons. I don't want that I'm being able to roflstomp everyone because I can drink 100 litres of health potions in 1 milisecond.

I want daggerfall style character creation and dungeon dwelling back for example. But will they add this? Fuck no, because they can appeal people with holywood effects. Because many people are too retarded to pick a game according to the fundamentals.

Many people are not satisfied because they have seen how much it could be better. The game is good waifu simulator and an action game but as an RPG it fails to fullfill its potential.

People don't say skyrim is a bad rpg or non rpg because they're plotting against todd howard, it's because they devalue the fundamental aspects of an RPG. I like voice acting for example but if it leads to less dialog options, just don't do it, there are whores in brothels that will voluntarily make the sounds that entertain you afterall and they don't call you a neckbeard incel when you are not satisfied with their services.

 

[gurugeorge]

I must say, Skyrim with Mod Organizer is a helluva lot better than Skyrim played any other way. This is going to be old news for many here I'm sure, but just for anyone who doesn't know:-

Basically, the best thing about the Bethesda games has been modding - and I'm not just talking about modding them into porn sims, but even just as straightforward mediaeval fantasy semi-CRPGs. And yes, Skyrim a pretty good game, you know, and with things like the "realism" mods, the graphics mods, etc., you can tailor gameplay, quests, companions and looks just the way you like, and it's easy to get into a particular character you've made, and immerse yourself in their adventures (mostly just wandering around at random - I don't think I've ever finished a MQ in a Bethesda game other than one of their early Terminator games ).

But the usual thing is to get caught up in modding and screw up your game, sometimes to the point that you can't even play the "main" game you've been playing any more. Well, with Mod Organizer, you can mess about with mods to your heart's content in virtual installs called "profiles." It has its own learning curve (mainly to do with learning the purpose and function of the "Override" folder, and understanding that sometimes you need several versions of a given mod in different profiles), but once you get over that hump, you can have several profiles - your main game(s), your porn sim(s), a few profiles to mess around with silly mods, etc., etc. And each one is totally independent of the others, you can flip between them at the click of a mouse.

Wunnerful!

 

[anvi]

Skyrim a pretty good game

No amount of modding makes the combat any less terrible. And that is mostly all you do. Read some crap dialogue, walk for miles to where they told you to go, and then a bunch of terrible mindless combat. Repeat this 1000 times.

you can tailor companions and looks just the way you like

Just like Barbie.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

And that is why, denying that Skyrim is an RPG is retarded. I mean, it is a game you can role play anything, and shape your character into what you like with an extreme amount of options, and you say it is not a role playing game? Like, seriously?

I guess then Minecraft is the greatest RPG ever made. Since the amount of larping options is greater than skyrim's.

 

[anvi]

it is a game you can role play anything, and shape your character into what you like

Even Batman? Or a surgeon in a hospital? Or Sonic the Hedgehog? Or John Travolta? Or... a thousand billion things you can't be. I would have settled for just being a Wizard but you can't even be that. Game is shit.

 

[gurugeorge]

Skyrim a pretty good game

No amount of modding makes the combat any less terrible. And that is mostly all you do. Read some crap dialogue, walk for miles to where they told you to go, and then a bunch of terrible mindless combat. Repeat this 1000 times.

Correction: no amount of modding makes the animations any less terrible (which, if you like playing in 3rd person as I do, is one of the few major negatives of the game). With that I'd agree. But there are several mods that go in several possible directions that make the combat mechanics more interesting.

And for me, the main attraction of the game is the random wandering through a graphically lush environment and stumbling onto things - odd situations, mysterious caves, etc., etc. That's what Skyrim is "for" from my pov, just those moments when you feel a sense of "being there," in another world.

 

[anvi]

Correction: no amount of modding makes the animations any less terrible (which, if you like playing in 3rd person as I do, is one of the few major negatives of the game). With that I'd agree. But there are several mods that go in several possible directions that make the combat mechanics more interesting.

No! I don't care about animations at all. Have you played KOTC? That has no animation at all but it is still far better than anything Bethesdumb ever released. The combat mods for Skyrim are shit. The problem is that the modders are too young and clueless, they think Oblivion is an old game, so they have no idea how to make exciting combat. Mostly the magic combat is my concern, I wouldn't want to play a melee even if it was good.

 

[gurugeorge]

Correction: no amount of modding makes the animations any less terrible (which, if you like playing in 3rd person as I do, is one of the few major negatives of the game). With that I'd agree. But there are several mods that go in several possible directions that make the combat mechanics more interesting.

No! I don't care about animations at all. Have you played KOTC? That has no animation at all but it is still far better than anything Bethesdumb ever released. The combat mods for Skyrim are shit. The problem is that the modders are too young and clueless, they think Oblivion is an old game, so they have no idea how to make exciting combat. Mostly the magic combat is my concern, I wouldn't want to play a melee even if it was good.

Ah that's the source of our main disagreement then. In fact I'd agree to some extent that the magic is a bit underwhelming in Skyim, but I'm more of a melee guy, and some of the mods for that do improve it from the point of view of gameplay interest, but as I said, it's the anims that are the main problem, there's not enough sense of solidity and momentum with the gestalt sense of fx combined with avatar control.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Radiant AI in action, eh?

 

[Egosphere]

TemplarGR hasn't been here since january? What a shame

 

[Falksi]

I must say, Skyrim with Mod Organizer is a helluva lot better than Skyrim played any other way. This is going to be old news for many here I'm sure, but just for anyone who doesn't know:-

Basically, the best thing about the Bethesda games has been modding - and I'm not just talking about modding them into porn sims, but even just as straightforward mediaeval fantasy semi-CRPGs. And yes, Skyrim a pretty good game, you know, and with things like the "realism" mods, the graphics mods, etc., you can tailor gameplay, quests, companions and looks just the way you like, and it's easy to get into a particular character you've made, and immerse yourself in their adventures (mostly just wandering around at random - I don't think I've ever finished a MQ in a Bethesda game other than one of their early Terminator games ).

But the usual thing is to get caught up in modding and screw up your game, sometimes to the point that you can't even play the "main" game you've been playing any more. Well, with Mod Organizer, you can mess about with mods to your heart's content in virtual installs called "profiles." It has its own learning curve (mainly to do with learning the purpose and function of the "Override" folder, and understanding that sometimes you need several versions of a given mod in different profiles), but once you get over that hump, you can have several profiles - your main game(s), your porn sim(s), a few profiles to mess around with silly mods, etc., etc. And each one is totally independent of the others, you can flip between them at the click of a mouse.

Wunnerful!

Skyrim is a piece of shit.

Modding Skyrim & saying it's good is like taking an 8 year old piece of shit, making a Stonehenge monument shape out of it, and claiming to have discovered something wonderful.

Ultimately you're still playing with shit, despite what shapes you make out of it.

 

[Max Damage]

The amount of time spent for searching&installing&making sure mods work for Skyrim would be better spent playing better games in first place.

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

No new Elder Scrolls saga game in 8 years. That's the appeal. Beth shows us new pussy, then the old pussy ain't worth a bucket a piss.

 

[gurugeorge]

I must say, Skyrim with Mod Organizer is a helluva lot better than Skyrim played any other way. This is going to be old news for many here I'm sure, but just for anyone who doesn't know:-

Basically, the best thing about the Bethesda games has been modding - and I'm not just talking about modding them into porn sims, but even just as straightforward mediaeval fantasy semi-CRPGs. And yes, Skyrim a pretty good game, you know, and with things like the "realism" mods, the graphics mods, etc., you can tailor gameplay, quests, companions and looks just the way you like, and it's easy to get into a particular character you've made, and immerse yourself in their adventures (mostly just wandering around at random - I don't think I've ever finished a MQ in a Bethesda game other than one of their early Terminator games ).

But the usual thing is to get caught up in modding and screw up your game, sometimes to the point that you can't even play the "main" game you've been playing any more. Well, with Mod Organizer, you can mess about with mods to your heart's content in virtual installs called "profiles." It has its own learning curve (mainly to do with learning the purpose and function of the "Override" folder, and understanding that sometimes you need several versions of a given mod in different profiles), but once you get over that hump, you can have several profiles - your main game(s), your porn sim(s), a few profiles to mess around with silly mods, etc., etc. And each one is totally independent of the others, you can flip between them at the click of a mouse.

Wunnerful!

Skyrim is a piece of shit.

Modding Skyrim & saying it's good is like taking an 8 year old piece of shit, making a Stonehenge monument shape out of it, and claiming to have discovered something wonderful.

Ultimately you're still playing with shit, despite what shapes you make out of it.

Meh, there are lots of reasons to criticize Skyrim, from several different points of view, you can say it's flawed in numerous ways, but to say it's "shit" as an absolute judgement is just silly hyperbole.

 

[luj1]

Meh, there are lots of reasons to criticize Skyrim, from several different points of view, you can say it's flawed in numerous ways, but to say it's "shit" as an absolute judgement is just silly hyperbole.

No, it's really shit. You just aren't well informed.

In addition to being creatively deficient and sterile (which I won't discuss here), the game was also incredibly messed up and half finished on the technical side. Skyrim was partially written in some horrid FPU code which was introduced with the Pentium 1 CPU. Also the developers at Bethesda compiled the game without using any of the optimization flags for release build (!). Most, if not all, of the optimization are typically performed by compilers. To put it simply, a compiler is a program that can turn code into something a computer can understand. So basically they opted for a 20 year old coding standard in 2011 plus rushed it. This resulted in Skyrim not even being able to use 2 CPU threads (!). Furthermore, you still can't fix z-fighting because of terrible errors in code (it's impossible to fix).

TLDR: Skyrim is a sloppy, half-finished travesty coded in pre-cambrian 32-bit FPU. Bethesda produces half-working industrial algorithmic garbage and gives you the toolset to fix it yourself. All their money goes to marketing and Hollywood voice actors.

 

[gurugeorge]

Meh, there are lots of reasons to criticize Skyrim, from several different points of view, you can say it's flawed in numerous ways, but to say it's "shit" as an absolute judgement is just silly hyperbole.

No, it's really shit. You just aren't well informed.

In addition to being creatively deficient and sterile, the game was also absolutely horrid on the technical side. Skyrim was partially written in some horrid FPU code which was introduced with the Pentium 1 CPU. Also the developers at Bethesda compiled the game without using any of the optimization flags for release build. Most, if not all, of the optimization are typically performed by compilers. To put it simply, a compiler is a program that can turn code into something a computer can understand. So basically they opted for a 20 year old coding standard in 2011 plus rushed it. This resulted in Skyrim not even being able to use 2 CPU threads. You still can't fix z-fighting because of terrible errors in code.

TLDR: Skyrim is a sloppy, half-finished travesty coded in pre-cambrian 32-bit FPU. Bethesda produces half-working industrial algorithmic garbage and gives you the toolset to fix it yourself.

I believe you, but I'm talking about the game as an end-user experience, I don't care what's under the hood. There are many professional products, from music albums to solicitors' contracts, that are strung together was earwax and baling wire when you look under the hood, it doesn't matter so long as they work from the end-user's perspective. Unless it's mission-critical stuff, like for the military or something, all professional product is like that, because there are always severe time/energy/personnel constraints. All Bethesda had to do was make a game that worked well enough on console to be a huge hit, which is what they did; they were under no obligation to make (nor would there have been any ROI for them in making) a game satisfying some Platonic ideal of game development.

 

[Falksi]

I must say, Skyrim with Mod Organizer is a helluva lot better than Skyrim played any other way. This is going to be old news for many here I'm sure, but just for anyone who doesn't know:-

Basically, the best thing about the Bethesda games has been modding - and I'm not just talking about modding them into porn sims, but even just as straightforward mediaeval fantasy semi-CRPGs. And yes, Skyrim a pretty good game, you know, and with things like the "realism" mods, the graphics mods, etc., you can tailor gameplay, quests, companions and looks just the way you like, and it's easy to get into a particular character you've made, and immerse yourself in their adventures (mostly just wandering around at random - I don't think I've ever finished a MQ in a Bethesda game other than one of their early Terminator games ).

But the usual thing is to get caught up in modding and screw up your game, sometimes to the point that you can't even play the "main" game you've been playing any more. Well, with Mod Organizer, you can mess about with mods to your heart's content in virtual installs called "profiles." It has its own learning curve (mainly to do with learning the purpose and function of the "Override" folder, and understanding that sometimes you need several versions of a given mod in different profiles), but once you get over that hump, you can have several profiles - your main game(s), your porn sim(s), a few profiles to mess around with silly mods, etc., etc. And each one is totally independent of the others, you can flip between them at the click of a mouse.

Wunnerful!

Skyrim is a piece of shit.

Modding Skyrim & saying it's good is like taking an 8 year old piece of shit, making a Stonehenge monument shape out of it, and claiming to have discovered something wonderful.

Ultimately you're still playing with shit, despite what shapes you make out of it.

Meh, there are lots of reasons to criticize Skyrim, from several different points of view, you can say it's flawed in numerous ways, but to say it's "shit" as an absolute judgement is just silly hyperbole.

Morrowind............

Skyrim.........

Don't get me wrong, if you can find the innocent joy in a simplistic, shallow sketch of a previous outing - which is akin to the step down you'd take from work by Leonardo da Vinci to that by a 4 year old blind retard with no thumbs - then you might not call it "shit".

 

[Primordial Ruination]

 

[Danikas]

Bethesdatards should be drawn and quartered in the town square for all to see.

How can you care about Elder Scrolls when even the creators dont give a fuck about it, as seen in the hundreds of retcons going back to the days of Daggerfall, and it only got worse with each new instalment. Like establishing Cyrodiil as jungle province with oriental influences then retconning it to shit or showing the capital of the whole empire having the great population of 30 people.

Cyrodiil is the capital province of the empire guess how many Imperial Legion forts they have? 0 all of them are occupied by banditsl. Bethesda worlds and lore dont have any consistency they switch it up as they see fit. You can see this in their Fallout imitations too. Like in Fallout 4 they made ghouls impervious to hunger or thirst just so they could make 2 retarted quests with ghouls: ghoul kid that spends 200 years in the fridge and retardo chinamen ghoul that sits for 200 years in his submarine.

Last Bugthesda game I played to completition was Morrowind and I played it mainly for the lore because gameplay as most people know was shit even for 2003 standards. When I saw what they did to Cyrodiil in Oblivion I stopped caring about this studio lore and writing only gets shittier with each new instalment while gameplay stays in the sewer, Gaybro engine doesn't help either.

 

[DalekFlay]

No amount of modding makes the combat any less terrible. And that is mostly all you do. Read some crap dialogue, walk for miles to where they told you to go, and then a bunch of terrible mindless combat. Repeat this 1000 times.

Pretty much every game of this type is that in the end. Even beloved Codex classics like Morrowind, Witcher 3 and New Vegas are basically that, they just have good writing and quest design that makes it seem more involved. P.S. bow and arrow combat in Skyrim is pretty fun.

 

[Lemming42]

The day of reckoning will come - I predict at some point in the early 2020s - when people on the Codex finally realise that Skyrim is basically just Morrowind with janky action combat instead of janky RPG combat, and no spellmaker. Other than those differences, both are games about walking around, getting ultra-linear quests, beating the shit out of 85% of individuals you meet, meeting boring NPCs, stuffing your inventory with relics and equipment you'll never use like the Gauntlets of Unending Wanking, and reading books. I like both games btw.

Unable to escape this fact any longer, Codexers will face a brutal choice - start bashing Morrowind and pretend they never liked it anyway, or become fluent-esque husks, meekly begging for the latest godawful combat rebalance mod and posting through clenched teeth that it "really makes those early fights against draugr pretty intense" or some shit like that. It'll be a gruesome time, collapse of the Codex social order.

 

[anvi]

No amount of modding makes the combat any less terrible. And that is mostly all you do. Read some crap dialogue, walk for miles to where they told you to go, and then a bunch of terrible mindless combat. Repeat this 1000 times.

Pretty much every game of this type is that in the end. Even beloved Codex classics like Morrowind, Witcher 3 and New Vegas are basically that, they just have good writing and quest design that makes it seem more involved. P.S. bow and arrow combat in Skyrim is pretty fun.

I tried the bow thing, I didn't like that either :/ Half the stuff died with 1 shot with a critical hit from stealth. And the rest I had to run away pew pewing them as they chased me. I wanna be a Necromancer or something.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

The day of reckoning will come - I predict at some point in the early 2020s - when people on the Codex finally realise that Skyrim is basically just Morrowind with janky action combat instead of janky RPG combat, and no spellmaker. Other than those differences, both are games about walking around, getting ultra-linear quests, beating the shit out of 85% of individuals you meet, meeting boring NPCs, stuffing your inventory with relics and equipment you'll never use like the Gauntlets of Unending Wanking, and reading books. I like both games btw.

Eh, I don't enjoy any of the elder scrolls games, though Daggerfall was an okay time waster as a kid. But this is like saying Fallout: New Vegas is basically just Fallout 3 with better content. Trivially true because that "better content" goes a long way.

Sure, Morrowind shares most of Skyrim's flaws. People love it because they enjoy tooling around with the magic system and they like the setting, which is a hell of a lot more interesting than Oblivion or Skyrim. Skyrim is like a gigantic bowl of oatmeal and Morrowind is like a smaller bowl of oatmeal flavored with cinnamon and maybe some apples. Though, personally, I'd rather eat real food, some people who can't stand plain oatmeal will eat that shit up when you add a little flavor.