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Skyrim is worse than Oblivion in every way
- Thread starter baronjohn
- Start date
The unofficial patches often cause problems, so I would try removing that. Also any mods you're using. I play totally vanilla and pretty much never have any crashing or bug issues.
circ
Arcane
Use TES5Edit on the DLC and patches. See youtube for instructions because it can fuck everything up.
Thing with Skyrim is it's completely unplayable without mods, if you think otherwise well...
Unfortunately it's also not mod friendly. Good work Beth.
AW8
Arcane
I agree with you on the price in correlation to the amount of content, but I'd also like to add the promise of "2 factions!" where the vampire side boils down to a dumber version of the Dawnguard questline (TOOOODD!!!). And a certain immortal follower that latches onto you like a tick, all the time. And the fact that much of the DLC felt like "more of the same" rather than new stuff.
If you like playing Skyrim, it is definitely worth playing though, it's not terrible, and there are some moments/quests/characters/items/areas which I really liked.
In comparison, Dragonborn lumped its already higher amount of content together on one big island, making it seem to dwarf Dawnguard (whose content is mostly dispersed onto the existing game world) even more. You're free to explore the island and most of its content without dabbling in the main questline. And you quickly meet new enemies, find new weapons and armor, enter new dungeon types, loot new ingredients, and hear new music. It feels like a slice of a new world.
So when it's time to release DLC for TES VI, I really hope to see something like Dragonborn again.
That really sucks. Like DalekFlay said, first disable your mods to see if they are the culprit.Neat. My game crashes everytime upon arrival in solstheim, when talking to that Adril Arano guy. All patches, unofficial too, installed.
If they are, then like circ said, try cleaning the DLC with TES5Edit:
If you get it to work without mods and you can't be assed to dick around with TES5Edit then by all means, play without mods. It's way better than to get bored halfway through your mod configuration and never play the game.
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20 million people bought that game and I would guess less than ten percent of them mod it.
DraQ
Arcane
Behold the megathread - now with a megapost!
It definitely bodes well for mechanics when the most reasonable fix that springs to mind is cooldowns.
It requires some tweaking to avoid somewhat washed-out, plastic look (thankfully nothing my LCD can't handle completely on its own), but the scenery is nice and has the right ambience, characters look like they should, and spells, especially stuff like lightning actually look like fucking elements they supposedly harness (yeah, they aren't cutscenes, no, I think I can live with that).
As for TW2, it was also a fraction of size and didn't run on antiquated hardware.
Other than the crime against humanity that was the UI, Skyrim looks fucking good and had Bethesda exercise atypical (for them) restraint and creativity when using graphical gimmicks.
Dragons were more of a letdown in terms of their role in game (and limited impact) than aesthetically. I dislike wyvern-like design, but it's been in TES since Redguard if not longer so what do?
First, while Bethesda has done a lot to limit grinding they are unable to fight it with any degree of effectiveness after dropping failure mechanics.
Second, Skyrim has no athletics.
Why increase the rate? So that everyone can have 100 Acr faster?
Finally, if you decrease benefit from having a high stat level, you might as well just remove high stat levels altogether.
Has Deus fucking Ex and its completely worthless master skills taught you people nothing?
Problem isn't with the rate of skill increase or magnitude of skill's influence.
It's with the fact that system has no way of telling what constitutes challenge if the skill cannot fail, with the fact that every build is going to pump-up stuff like athletics or acrobatics and with the fact that it's essentially free lunch.
I discovered it was actually enjoyable (if horrible mess) even in vanilla, and not in a guilty pleasure way, as well as massive incline from Oblivion in all aspects but mechanical complexity, so I bought it.
Then I modded it and never looked back.
Every single one of the remaining TES games curbstomped oblivion in at least one important aspect of dungeon design andd I'd rather have game excel at something even at the cost of sucking at something else, than be all around mediocre.
Oblivion was the epitome of mediocrity, dungeons included.
You want scale and complex layout? Daggerfall has oblivion soundly trounced, you could actually get lost in the dungeons there. True, it's dungeons were repetitive and devoid of context, but so were Oblivion's.
You want shit setting one dungeon apart from another? Morrowind and Skyrim shit on oblivion high from the heavens. Yeah, MW's may be (on average, largest dungeons are actually big) smaller and Skyrim's more linear, but at least you don't feel like you're going through the same room over and over.
You want unique loot and stuff to actually find? Morrowind, duh - no 'but's here.
You want gameworld context and stuff being connected with each other? Morrowind and (to a lesser degree) Skyrim.
You want z-axis and layout that's more than just a graph? Morrowind, Skyrim and Daggerfall will serve you better.
So, in short Oblivion's dungeons are about as bland and repetitive as Daggerfall's, on average almost as small as Morrowind's and often not much less linear than Skyrim's. Yay?
In Morrowind you can have underwater grotto or mine unexpectedly break into caved-in dwemer ruin, or find a tunnel linking daedra infested (and devastated - environmental storytelling) tomb with a daedric ruin. Entering a cave doesn't mean it will stay a cave.
Not to mention Morrowind has more tilesets.
And bigger doesn't necessarily mean better. More repetitive content means more boredom. There is a reason why small dungeons are meant to be small. Oblivion's longer crawls only expose the shittiness of level scaling and lack of creativity on part of the devs, while the larger dungeons can't match stuff like Anudnabia, Urshilaku burial, Ibar-Daad, Indoranyon, Hlormaren, Berandas, Kogoruhn, Tukushapal and so on from Morrowind.
Anyway, regarding Skyrim's dungeons, most of them are atrociously linear (although they tend to have some unique and memorable aspects, to help make them distinctive), but this ignores exterior hostile areas and isolated exteriors accessed through dungeons. While technically not dungeons, they serve the same purpose and are often excellently designed, with fair degree of nonlinearity or at the very least allowance for sequence breaking. They really shine with mods making the combat itself non-trivial (like Requiem) which is more than can be said of anything in oblivion.
At the very least Skyrim does feel like a place, though maybe not to the extend Morrowind does.
Because after playing a huge game, what really stays in your memory is the very best. And oblivion's very best is every other TES game's mediocre.
If anything banalshitboring dungeons being smaller in Morrowind means bigger percentage of dungeon content being devoted to large and interesting ones, which is an undeniable plus.
This is the 0 fucking K of game writing scale.
You can't physically go any lower.
And it's Oblivion, obviously.
Ah, yes.
It definitely bodes well for mechanics when the most reasonable fix that springs to mind is cooldowns.
Because build dependent tedium avoidance is bad design and should be avoided whenever possible.
You, sir are a gigantic, metagaming fargoth.
It's like half of those people missed the last 3 downscaled TES games.
This. I have proposed (the first thing I did after joining the 'dex, actually) a good, consistent fix for use-based, but it requires skill to be defined as something associated with activities that can succeed or fail. Jumping, running or wearing armour don't fit this definition and thus shouldn't be skills even though they should be covered by the system in general.
That won't fix it being grindable in retarded and uncontrolled manner, and dual wield anything (AKA 'consistent mechanics for wielding stuff') was one of the few genuine mechanical improvements in Skyrim.
Actually, in terms of visual design, of both the world itself, characters and items, and spells, Skyrim was surprisingly good.Well, firstly I think the dragons are really too much of a cliche and unexciting. They just look generic. I wouldn't call them unique and interesting. When I think dragon, it's either something like this:
Look how majestic it is, it's incredibly huge but not full of stupid horns and spikes. Yes, it is a beautiful one of a kind picture but that's exactly what dragons should be. It's actually pretty close to Skyrim's design except it doesn't feel like pest. Dragons should be creature of awe, not crawling and flying lizards.
Or I think of something completely fucked up and crazy with an artistic license. Skyrim's dragons are just pest trying to look cool by adding stabby and poky parts on them.
Secondly, (sorry I'm now in the process of playing PST so I gotta bring it up) I like magical effects in PST much better than in Skyrim. Spells should look cool, warm, naturalistic, organic and unique, but Skyrim's (as well as Oblivion's and Morrowind's) spell effects are so boring and plastic, I don't think I ever had that "Oh I got a new spell, I must see what it looks like" feeling.
The wilderness ..well, I can't help but compare it to The Witcher 2 wilderness which looked about 10 times more organic and exciting.
It requires some tweaking to avoid somewhat washed-out, plastic look (thankfully nothing my LCD can't handle completely on its own), but the scenery is nice and has the right ambience, characters look like they should, and spells, especially stuff like lightning actually look like fucking elements they supposedly harness (yeah, they aren't cutscenes, no, I think I can live with that).
As for TW2, it was also a fraction of size and didn't run on antiquated hardware.
Other than the crime against humanity that was the UI, Skyrim looks fucking good and had Bethesda exercise atypical (for them) restraint and creativity when using graphical gimmicks.
Dragons were more of a letdown in terms of their role in game (and limited impact) than aesthetically. I dislike wyvern-like design, but it's been in TES since Redguard if not longer so what do?
You guess wrong.
First, while Bethesda has done a lot to limit grinding they are unable to fight it with any degree of effectiveness after dropping failure mechanics.
Second, Skyrim has no athletics.
This is the most natural way. It makes sense, integrates ability into low-level mechanics, is fine-grained and impervious to grind - what more can one wish for?
What is acceptable level? Is it the same as worthwhile level?
Why increase the rate? So that everyone can have 100 Acr faster?
Finally, if you decrease benefit from having a high stat level, you might as well just remove high stat levels altogether.
Has Deus fucking Ex and its completely worthless master skills taught you people nothing?
Problem isn't with numbers so you can't fix it with numbers.
Problem isn't with the rate of skill increase or magnitude of skill's influence.
It's with the fact that system has no way of telling what constitutes challenge if the skill cannot fail, with the fact that every build is going to pump-up stuff like athletics or acrobatics and with the fact that it's essentially free lunch.
This. I pirated Skyrim, because I'd have to be crazy to just buy anything by Bethesda after Oblivion.
I discovered it was actually enjoyable (if horrible mess) even in vanilla, and not in a guilty pleasure way, as well as massive incline from Oblivion in all aspects but mechanical complexity, so I bought it.
Then I modded it and never looked back.
Ok, I have reconsidered - Beth should definitely add sex to their next game. Doing otherwise would be a crime against lulz.
So who's the plain old retard here again?
All of them?
Every single one of the remaining TES games curbstomped oblivion in at least one important aspect of dungeon design andd I'd rather have game excel at something even at the cost of sucking at something else, than be all around mediocre.
Oblivion was the epitome of mediocrity, dungeons included.
You want scale and complex layout? Daggerfall has oblivion soundly trounced, you could actually get lost in the dungeons there. True, it's dungeons were repetitive and devoid of context, but so were Oblivion's.
You want shit setting one dungeon apart from another? Morrowind and Skyrim shit on oblivion high from the heavens. Yeah, MW's may be (on average, largest dungeons are actually big) smaller and Skyrim's more linear, but at least you don't feel like you're going through the same room over and over.
You want unique loot and stuff to actually find? Morrowind, duh - no 'but's here.
You want gameworld context and stuff being connected with each other? Morrowind and (to a lesser degree) Skyrim.
You want z-axis and layout that's more than just a graph? Morrowind, Skyrim and Daggerfall will serve you better.
So, in short Oblivion's dungeons are about as bland and repetitive as Daggerfall's, on average almost as small as Morrowind's and often not much less linear than Skyrim's. Yay?
Actually, no, not like Morrowind.
In Morrowind you can have underwater grotto or mine unexpectedly break into caved-in dwemer ruin, or find a tunnel linking daedra infested (and devastated - environmental storytelling) tomb with a daedric ruin. Entering a cave doesn't mean it will stay a cave.
Not to mention Morrowind has more tilesets.
And bigger doesn't necessarily mean better. More repetitive content means more boredom. There is a reason why small dungeons are meant to be small. Oblivion's longer crawls only expose the shittiness of level scaling and lack of creativity on part of the devs, while the larger dungeons can't match stuff like Anudnabia, Urshilaku burial, Ibar-Daad, Indoranyon, Hlormaren, Berandas, Kogoruhn, Tukushapal and so on from Morrowind.
Anyway, regarding Skyrim's dungeons, most of them are atrociously linear (although they tend to have some unique and memorable aspects, to help make them distinctive), but this ignores exterior hostile areas and isolated exteriors accessed through dungeons. While technically not dungeons, they serve the same purpose and are often excellently designed, with fair degree of nonlinearity or at the very least allowance for sequence breaking. They really shine with mods making the combat itself non-trivial (like Requiem) which is more than can be said of anything in oblivion.
Yay for random, completely out of context shit and one blatant Lovecraft homage. Very creativity. Much inspired.
At the very least Skyrim does feel like a place, though maybe not to the extend Morrowind does.
Well, there were ways around that as well. You could always do a backpath, you could do the nerevarine/hortator shortcut. Other than through a bug (like the one with Dwemer Coherer) it was hard to break quests in MW.
The best overhaul would be getting rid of railroading - just mapping out the actual critical sections of the storylines, and leaving the rest freeform.
Which no one fucking cares about.
Because after playing a huge game, what really stays in your memory is the very best. And oblivion's very best is every other TES game's mediocre.
If anything banalshitboring dungeons being smaller in Morrowind means bigger percentage of dungeon content being devoted to large and interesting ones, which is an undeniable plus.
Anyone who hasn't recoiled in shock and ran away in gibbering terror after seeing oblivion's world doesn't get to talk about anyone else's low standards. Sorry.
It's already less generic because of that. Additionally, it doesn't actively piss all over its own lore, has some structure to it rather than just dungeons using tileset X populated by Y dotting the forestmeadow (Orc strongholds, Khajiit caravans, landmarks, fucking Forsworn, etc.).
Let me try:
Bang. Dead.While gossiping about Mandill random IC citizen said:
This is the 0 fucking K of game writing scale.
You can't physically go any lower.
And it's Oblivion, obviously.
MG's problem is just that it doesn't hold water logically. The whole arc has no reason to be allowed to happen by you know who.
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Delterius
Arcane
If you are reading this after reading Draqs post, then congratulations! You are still alive!
If not, then TLDR Oblivion is still a vortex of mediocrity.
If not, then TLDR Oblivion is still a vortex of mediocrity.
DraQ
Arcane
.Revenant
Guest
Clearly an indication of a superior game. As for your extended Skyrim fanboyish sperging, this is all I have to reply: you bought, played, enjoyed and are defending a game with linear corridors for dungeons. You accepted Bethesda's consoletarded cock up your arse and are now trying to convince other people to take it too, well no thanks and just go back to playing your casual shit.
No one ever said Skyrim was perfect, edge-master. The dungeons are indeed way too fucking linear (as were Oblivion's if we're being honest). They were interesting though, and well designed as linear levels. In any case I would agree Oblivion had better dungeons than Skyrim, just not better than Morrowind or what I remember of Daggerfall.
In any case the dungeon debate really misses the point for me personally. I play all three games for the world design, lore and exploration, all of which Skyrim did ten times better than Oblivion (and Morrowind did ten times better than both). It's that simple for me.
Revenant
Guest
much?Morrowind had pretty interesting world design, yes. However, what world design can we talk about in both Oblivion and Skyrim? Both their worlds are just hiking sim environments. Really, I don't recall any noteworthy landmarks whatsoever from neither Oblivion nor Skyrim.
Banalshitboring TES lore. Again, Morrowind was slightly better here, but Oblivion's generic medieval fantasy is actually preferable to me than completely retarded viking theme park of Skyrim (not to mention Bethesda was desperate to jump the mainstream bandwagon of Dragon Age/Game of Thrones here).
I guess this can be included in world design, but what is there to explore in Skyrim? Nordic meadow, nordic forest, nordic tundra, then another nordic meadow? Yawn.
Yes, I know all this is just picking on someone's personal preference, but in my opinion it takes a really boring person to enjoy anything TES games have to offer. These games are just so bland and soulless, just like the people who seem to enjoy them.
Man you just cranked the edgy-o-meter to lesser-race pacification levels. Did you flex muscles when you typed that? Did your dick get a little hard at the idea of the lesser races who enjoy these games looking up to you on high, on your mountain of gold?
Revenant
Guest
People enjoying boring shit deserve to be mocked.
adddeed
Arcane
- Joined
- May 27, 2012
- Messages
- 1,476
Listen bro, Skryim is not boring. Go enjoy your pretentious RPGs if you want, but you look like a fool arguing when you're so obviously wrong. Skyrim is a HUGE improvement over Oblivion, and i enjoyed Oblivion. Go be ridiculous somewhere else.
Revenant
Guest
+1 shit alt trolling point for you, good sir
Delterius
Arcane
When even the possibly retarded alt knows slightly better about Oblivion than you, something is wrong.
Revenant
Guest
"At least Bethesda is improving" lol
Lhynn
Arcane
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2013
- Messages
- 9,852
DalekFlay defending linear and repetitive dungeon level shitty design. 
What the fuck mang, i thought we were friends, how can you do this to me?
Some of the dungeons in skyrim werent that bad tho. There were a couple with multiple entrances and alternative paths that were almost decent, but you could be forgiven for never actually finding one, as they were very rare.
Other than that the tiny amount of enemy variety shits all over their dungeons as well.
What the fuck mang, i thought we were friends, how can you do this to me?
Some of the dungeons in skyrim werent that bad tho. There were a couple with multiple entrances and alternative paths that were almost decent, but you could be forgiven for never actually finding one, as they were very rare.
Other than that the tiny amount of enemy variety shits all over their dungeons as well.
circ
Arcane
All Skyrim dungeons are shit. I probably haven't been to ALL of them, but of the ones I've seen, the design has been linear and uninspiring. Who cares about Oblivion? In Skyrim's defense though, with texture and mesh replacers, atleast a few of them look good. And seeing my ragdoll swing his dick extension around in pretty dungeons seems to be enough for me from time to time.
Lemming42
Arcane
Old image, but:
That said, some of the dungeons in Skyrim managed to have some cool stuff going on. I can't remember the name of it, but there was a Dwemer ruin which began with you getting trapped in a cage, the floor of which then collapsed and sent you down a huge tunnel leading into an underground lake. Then you had to climb out, and there were multiple cave systems leading to different areas of the world map and/or other dungeons. That was fantastic, it's a shame the dungeons couldn't be that consistently good.
That said, some of the dungeons in Skyrim managed to have some cool stuff going on. I can't remember the name of it, but there was a Dwemer ruin which began with you getting trapped in a cage, the floor of which then collapsed and sent you down a huge tunnel leading into an underground lake. Then you had to climb out, and there were multiple cave systems leading to different areas of the world map and/or other dungeons. That was fantastic, it's a shame the dungeons couldn't be that consistently good.
Since you included Morrowind in your statement and it's like #7 on the Codex top RPGs, I guess you find the majority of people here boring. One wonders why you joined and keep posting.
I did? Pretty sure I just wrote they're probably the worst in the series.
Lhynn
Arcane
- Joined
- Aug 28, 2013
- Messages
- 9,852
You said "They were interesting though, and well designed as linear levels.". But they werent, even for their linear nature which should allow for interesting moments they fail to deliver. Every room is just another room with another draugr, heck i was happy to play the shitty vampire dungeons just to mix it up a tiny little bit, given that they are a bit rare.
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