Skyrim

I have PC Morrowind but I also have Xbox morrowind somewhere. So, yes, it is crazy sadly.

LeeLee wrote:

That's like the one spec I haven't rolled in yet- heavy armor.

Smithing heavy armour and weapons levels you up crazy fast, and it's stupid easy to do.

Add to that some of the heavy armour perks (Well fitted, Matching set, Tower of Strength), The high-level heavy weapon perks (Barbarian, Skullcrusher, Devastating Blow), The Lord Stone, decent potion of resist fire and an Orc's Berzerk, and you're standing toe-to snout with almost any dragon in the game, cracking it right on the noggin and just shrugging off anything it does to you.

Alduin landed right infront of me and I wrecked his shit with no more than 4 solid cracks over the bonce. The 3 zombie goasts in the Gauldur Amulet quest were genuinely a more challenging fight. (They got their shit wrecked in one hit though, on average... The challenge was catching the fuckers to land it. And not having them yell at me so loud I dropped my freshly uber-smithed Daedric Mansquisher. )

Reidmar wrote:

WD40 wrote:

...fuckin' ps3...

Brb laughing at you for not having the superior PC version.

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If it was so superior, you wouldn't need to fiddle with it so much with your "mods" would you:

I kid... The only reason I don't have the PC verson is because the two compys I use still run off Windows XP - and not because of some ironic hipster choice, but because they're both about half as old as I am. I just need to show my desktop a picture of the windows 7 logo and it has a panic attack and won't turn on for 2 weeks.

LeeLee wrote:

I love putting off the main quest of saving the world so I can dick around the world exploring. Sorry, Tamriel, but I'm shooting some deer right now.

One of the advantages of the ancient compys, though, is that I still play Daggerfall, and must have clocked up weeks, if not months on that thing on my main file... I genuinely don't even know what the main story is in that game, all I know is that these dudes:

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Said something about a letter and a ghost in Daggerfall ciy.

I went to the city and some voice was all "Veeeeennnnngggaaannncceeee!" at me and I thought "fuck this noise" and left the country.

Don't think I ever went back either - the other places are far more colourful!

WD40 wrote:

It's good you didn't start with a heavy weapon, heavy armour build - because once you've played as that, playing as anything else is genuinely a struggle.

I hate it when the British are right about stuff.

The first character I made was all "MIKEY SMASH!!1!" Running around with tank like armor and a great axe that could split a mountain in half. Bandits died, Imperials died, Dragon Priests died, Dwarven Centurions died, the World Eater died, everything died. If I had stamina, whatever I was fighting had JUST enough time to shit itself while I was rearing back for a power attack before I ended its miserable life.

And then I tried to make a "thief" (sneaking and arrows and knives and cloth "armor" and shit). Holy Christ, that was suicide. Most encounters would be me creeping up on someone, landing a sneak attack with my bow, which only really succeeded in pissing the target off, and then fighting for my life against the target and his three friends with a goddamn butterknife.

I may get better late game when you can start brewing some vicious poisons, but early game is a fucking headache beyond reason.

Part of the problem is the simplicity of the fighting. There's no way to effectively dodge attacks. It's really not practical to ever block attacks either. It's really just open the biggest can of Whoop Ass you can in the shortest time.

I understand why my lumbering Nord wearing a half ton of steal is slow and flat footed, but some tiny elf wearing a cloth sack should have quick footwork in a fight. Furthermore, someone using a lighter weapon like a one handed sword or knife should be capable of parrying attacks while someone with a more cumbersome weapon would be less able.

However, what you end up with is a situation where, whenever you get in an open fight (which is ultimately unavoidable), barring magic, it comes down to if you can hurt your opponent faster than he can hurt you. Of course the guy in heavy armor with a big ole honking axe is going to be better at that than some squirt with a knife and a burlap sack.

It'd be neat to see them add side stepping, timing based parrying, and such into the combat of the next Elder Scrolls game (whenever that is). The combat really isn't bad, it's just kind of shallow for a game where, even when the open world and characters and quests and shit are the main draw, you spend a LOT of the time breaking shit.

They have to add that without breaking the game too far into the other side; that is, dodging mechanics making a joke out of other offensive/defensive options. The history of RPGs is riddled with the corpses of stat systems rendered completely irrelevant by the combination of gamer ingenuity and reflexes.

Exodia's Right Leg wrote:

They have to add that without breaking the game too far into the other side; that is, dodging mechanics making a joke out of other offensive/defensive options. The history of RPGs is riddled with the corpses of stat systems rendered completely irrelevant by the combination of gamer ingenuity and reflexes.

True.

But my giant ass axe, combined with my Two Hand+ armor, already does that quite effectively. Most of the time you're in some dungeon with limited room to move, so the ability to wipe out everything in front of you with a power attack is more game breaking than dodging could be.

I don't even know how you're supposed to kill a dragon with a knife or some flimsy spells. You can't sneak up on them and you can't dodge or block their breath attacks. You really can't get close to them without taking heavy damage, so you'd have to be able to just out slug the dragon to win in close quarters. And if you try to keep your distance, it's just going to go airborne where it's nigh impossible to hit with anything and strafe you with breath attacks.

I'm not too bent out of shape that the fighting is ALL offense. I'm good at offense. Offense is easy. It just that holding the right trigger and watching hordes of weaklings you REALLY think would have learned better after watching the last 9001 of your foes die horribly gets repetitive. There is nothing in the game (excluding DLC, which I haven't played) that I can't run in on and slaughter. Only the Dwarven Centurions or Giants pose any real threat, and the Centurions are made easier with the Slow Time shout.

As someone who has been playing as a mage thief I have two words for you: Lovers Stone. Also, followers. One allows me to jack up my magic like crazy while the other allows me to be ignored for a while so I can run up and stabbby stab the dragon priest in the gut with my sword from behind.

Also for mages- conjuration school up to 100, and using two Dremora lords. High hilarity! Just hearing those guys shout: "I SMELL WEAKNESS!" "IT WAS HARDLY A CHALLENGE!" is worth it.

I somehow aggroed a goat and kept summoning bound blade to get that skill up to 100. That goat was like "WHOA, WHAT???" Then I killed it.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

Exodia's Right Leg wrote:

They have to add that without breaking the game too far into the other side; that is, dodging mechanics making a joke out of other offensive/defensive options. The history of RPGs is riddled with the corpses of stat systems rendered completely irrelevant by the combination of gamer ingenuity and reflexes.

True.

But my giant ass axe, combined with my Two Hand+ armor, already does that quite effectively.

That's a valid point.

What I'm thinking is that, in nearly every game that lets you choose between attack, defense and speed, speed is by far the most useful. With enough speed, you can cause more damage over time than the powerful guys AND the ability to avoid stuff entirely ends up being defensively more effective than the ability to survive hits.

They will also need to improve the enemies to have some more variation in strategy to deal with speedy people. Space control, traps, leading attacks, mobbing, group attacks, maybe some combat mechanic that gives advantage to stronger/hardier people when trading hits...

Exodia's Right Leg wrote:

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

Exodia's Right Leg wrote:

They have to add that without breaking the game too far into the other side; that is, dodging mechanics making a joke out of other offensive/defensive options. The history of RPGs is riddled with the corpses of stat systems rendered completely irrelevant by the combination of gamer ingenuity and reflexes.

True.

But my giant ass axe, combined with my Two Hand+ armor, already does that quite effectively.

That's a valid point.

What I'm thinking is that, in nearly every game that lets you choose between attack, defense and speed, speed is by far the most useful. With enough speed, you can cause more damage over time than the powerful guys AND the ability to avoid stuff entirely ends up being defensively more effective than the ability to survive hits.

They will also need to improve the enemies to have some more variation in strategy to deal with speedy people. Space control, traps, leading attacks, mobbing, group attacks, maybe some combat mechanic that gives advantage to stronger/hardier people when trading hits...

Yeah, it would require a lot of checks and balances, and is best saved for a whole new game when they have the time to properly beta test* everything to make sure it's well balanced.

FFXI had a great balance between "faster" classes and the brutish classes. The faster classes could dodge well and shit (though it came down basically to dice rolls, and not skills with buttons) and the big classes could more easily tear through enemy defenses.

Skyrim seems to expect the faster classes to use potions and shit, but I don't see how spamming health potions while waiting for whatever is wailing on you to die of exhaustion is particularly engaging.

But it's whatever. I'm just nitpicking. The combat is good enough, it just essentially boils down to Pull Right Trigger to Win Game.

*I'm aware the beta tests anymore are the first group of people to pay full fucking price for the game, then the developers fix bugs based on which ones cause the most complaints from the player base.

So, question for those who have Skyrim on the PC and love mods, which ones should I get, if at all? I'm just getting it off Steam (my poor brother finally gets his Xbox back) and wondered if any mods are worth downloading.

Depends entirely on what's the most important thing to you (environment view, character creation enhancements, quest assisters, etc.).

DragonBorn has been released on PS3 finally, and I've just finished the main quest on it. It was good to revisit Morrowind.

I wish Bethsidia would just stop playing around and just start doing the Call of Cthlulu game some of their writers & designers clearly really really want to do.

bleachedblackcat wrote:

So, question for those who have Skyrim on the PC and love mods, which ones should I get, if at all? I'm just getting it off Steam (my poor brother finally gets his Xbox back) and wondered if any mods are worth downloading.

There's one on the Steam Workshop that's called Live Another Life, I think. It's pretty good for getting past the beginning of the main quest when it borks... which it does often. I can't tell you how many times me and Ulfric were catapulted half way across Skyrim by those damned doors.