First of all this is a great game many hours of playtime makes for good value. There is already a jumbo general Skyrim thread but I specifically want to hear about the things you don’t like about the game. The only thing not worth talking about are the glitches
Combat is pretty terrible. The animations for physical attacks are way too slow. It’s really hard to get in a groove other than hacking away.
Bows draw way too slowly. I know there is a perk for faster draws but it’s way too deep in the tree to be worth digging to. They should have had a 5 stage perk right at the beginning for faster draw speed. Once an enemy heads for you you pretty much need to pack it away.
The Favorite select menu on 360 sucks balls. So many clicks to get to anything and you can only hot key 2 options in there. I’m not sure why they didn’t let us map to every direction on the pad and limited it to just left and right.
Though the world map is very pretty I would like the option of pulling up a list of destinations instead of having to point to it for fast travel. I’ve got so many locations uncovered on my world map that I can’t remember where the cities are if I haven’t been to them in a while. I spent like 10 minutes one time looking for Dragons Reach.
Also I wish the map had more utility meaning I wish I could zoom in enough to at least see which side of a mountain I need to climb to get to a destination. Many times I just head straight up because the map is ambiguous and end up stuck in rocks or something.
Companion pathing is atrocious. Just horrible. I ended up just leaving Lydia at home because she was constantly getting lost in dungeons with ledges and shit. I had to reload saves over and over to get her out. I don’t want to lose a full set of Dragon Armor because she can’t jump on a little ledge.
Also I’m not totally convinced that these companions are leveling up because even with full dragon armor and being with me for 20 levels Lydia still gets killed very quickly. She also goes to her ranged weapon way too quickly
The menus and player interfaces in Skyrim are dire, but there’s one that really bugs the hell out of me: saved games aren’t grouped by character. For a game whose entire selling point is the idea that there’s too much content to cover with just one character, you’d think they’d make it easier to play multiple characters. I’ve currently got four different characters going, and if I want to play one, I’ve got to scroll down the entire list of every saved game I’ve made, stopping on each one long enough for the information on it to pop, so I can see which character it is. Why not have a list of characters you’ve created on the main menu, and selecting the character gives you a list of all the saved games you’ve made with that character?
You could even pretty it up with a large picture of your character wearing whatever gear he has equipped in that save file. But instead, we get the Giant Text List of Doom. And they’ve been doing it exactly the same way since at least Fallout 3, if not earlier.
Damn, I hate the savegame problem Miller mentioned. I actually have a piece of paper on my desk right now which keeps track of which character is on which save file. This was fixed by modders years ago on Morrowind, but still persists to this day in vanilla.
I hate that all buffs- like mage armor, bound weapons, etc- are timed, rather than permanent (but with a maintenance mana cost). What’s worse, is there’s no way to tell how much more time you’ve got left on any buff. This means that playing a mage who uses a two-handed weapon, like a bow or hammer, is damn near impossible.
Luckily all of this is fixable by mods. I just wish that Bethesda would pay attention to the modders and steal all of the good ideas for their next game.
It’s kind of funny that it’s been ten years and several engine revisions since Morrowind, yet we still have many of the same UI and gameplay issues.
Menus are of course horrible, but I’ll mention two actual gameplay things.
First, dungeons are universally linear. Faced with a fork in the cave? Well, if you can go more than 10 steps down one fork, the other was just a little side chamber. Even the freakin’ maze in Labrynthian is linear. WTF?
Second, the countryside is just unrelentingly hostile. Outside of the cities (and farms nestled right next to them) no one lives in Skyrim except bandits and their ilk. That dude you see in the distance? He’s more likely to attack you on sight than a giant is. Because that’s just how people in Skyrim roll.
The combat mechanics are clumsy and uninteresting. You have three options: hit, block, or hit really hard with a slow attack (and maybe one or two more with perks). This is a definite step backwards from Oblivion, where you could dance around an opponent and precisely hit the unguarded bits. With some practice, you could defeat slower-but-stronger opponents. And you’d get your ass handed to you if you ignored the mechanics entirely.
The “perks” system is a little too oversimplified, IMO. Every character can run at the same speed, carry the same weight, hit as hard, use every spell. The only trade-offs are whether you want to get more health, magicka, or stamina on each level. However, I do appreciate that it’s much more streamlined. To get a decent character in Morrowind or Oblivion, you had to really study character build guides, and do lots of “metagaming” to optimize the attribute level-ups.
Companions seem pretty useless, especially for any combat style other than “run in and start smashing things”. And the few I’ve encountered so far aren’t even interesting characters.
On the PC, btw, you can get a map that’s higher-resolution and includes side roads and paths. I wish the map was flat though… it’s a pain in the ass when you’re trying to find your way in an area that’s hidden by the 3D mountains.
I played about 56 hours on my first character before I just got massively bored–and I’d been looking forward so much to this game. A lot of what’s already been said got to me, but the biggest was simply this: there were just too few choices in the game. There wasn’t much point in making your character into a mage or a thief or a warrior or a paladin because every character can do just about everything eventually. The perks aren’t powerful enough to differentiate characters, IMHO. Every character can smith. Every character can beat up enemies. Every character can cast spells. Every character can Fus-Ro-Dah enemies off a cliff.
And since it doesn’t matter what your character does to make itself better, every encounter becomes exactly the same. You use the best weapon you’ve got, occasionally throwing in a dragon shout or a spell if it’s a difficult enemy…and that’s about it. It feels like combat has been dumbed down to World of Warcraft levels (no offense meant to people who like that game, but that’s a reason I left it a long time ago)–all you do is min/max each encounter, but with the added penalty that your character has no specialization. You can play the entire game with one attacking spell and one healing spell, if you really wanted to, because spells level with your ability.
I’m starting to play another character with mods. I’m hoping some of the mods will change the game in positive directions–if nothing else, I’m hoping the game gets harder, because honestly it wasn’t much of a challenge before!
Followers triggering traps or doing other dippy shit is also high on my list of things that annoy me about an otherwise stellar game (this includes the horses, which routinely charge dragons or bandit groups and get themselves killed, forcing me to either buy a new one or reload). I also wish the game scaled better…my character is basically a god now and can do anything. There is literally nothing in the world that can take me, short of my horse falling off a cliff and killing us both.
I’m a bit annoyed that they don’t have a DLC out yet as well…and that the DLCs won’t be coming out for the PC at the same time, forcing us to wait. I also agree with those who say the menu system sucks.
Vegetables. Partially because the cooking system is valueless so they’re just clutter (versus using them for alchemy a la Oblivion) and more so because I’m tired of pluming the ancient depths of some catacomb and finding a barrel full of cabbages.
In general the dungeons leave me feeling “Eh” because I never have a “open the chest and find a magnificent sword” moment but lots of “open the chest and find a token handful of gold, some iron boots and a Weak Magicka potion” moments.
Agreed with the person who mentioned the bandits. From my survey, the population of Skyrim is 70% bandits and 65% of their agricultural products are stored in haunted barrows. That’s no way to run an empire.
There’s a useful mod on Steam Workshop called “Container Namer” or something like that which tells you what kind of item is going to be in that container. If it says “Barrel of Produce” you know not to bother with it. Useful.
But I agree with you that cooking is worthless. There was so much that could have been done with it. I hope modders are out there working on that.
[off-topic]That happened occasionally in World of Warcraft too. You’d fight through a pile of low-level bandits to get to a chest, and you’d find a bit of gold, a useless piece of armor…and a watermelon.[/off-topic]
I agree with the general thrust of your criticism, but just for completeness sake apparently there are slight racial/gender components to run speed and jumping based on height. So Altmer, who are the tallest race, are also the fastest at a sprint. But in practice I suspect the effect is slight. I certainly can’t tell the difference.
I agree with a number of the issues already listed. My biggest peeves:
1.) Over-emphasis on the crafting disciplines. One way to deliberately gimp your character is to ignore all three. I actually like crafting, but I’m not crazy about the way it was implemented.
2.) Underwhelming loot, as noted. This ties in a bit with #1, above.
3.) The oft-cited poor AI path-finding.
4.) The magic system is kind of frustrating. It is sorta close to working great, but the mechanics are just a little off. It is an odd mix of simultaneously cheesy ( Impact + using high-level Enchanting to allow endless spamming ) and gimped ( high-level Restoration and Destruction spells in particular are often counter-productive due to scaling issues ).
5.) Not enough voice-actors. A low-level annoyance, but still an annoyance.
All that said ( and I’m sure I’m leaving out other things that bug me ), I think it is still a great game :).
A couple other gripes I have (playing on Xbox360, fwiw)
I want experience points known instead of just a color bar. How many points in one-handed combat did I just earn? How many points until my next level up?
PLEASE let me skip over the dialogue and get to the quest. I’ve used the talking times as bathroom breaks. I’ve also gotten in the habit of having a movie on my laptop going WHILE I’m playing because the NPCs don’t STFU. That and the loading times.
I’m in a building about to exit because I want to go to a different building or town that I’ve been to before. Please let me just go through the loading once instead of “you can’t fast travel from this location” and then having to re-load again wasting a ton of time.
Speaking of which, the thieves guild mini-quests (numbers, shill, et al). How about giving them to me all at once so I don’t have to return to Riften over and over and over (repeat 40x).
It’s a lot of the same interface as Fallout, I’d love to have the VATS system here as randomly swinging isn’t as fun, especially when the camera gets wonky.
Give me a friendly fire option instead of pissing off some NPC because they’re in the realm of battle.
Give me a location lookup.
Fix the clairvoyance magicka so it works. “Oh, it says go through this door with the loading screen” (now on other side of the door) “Oh, now it wants me to go back through the door from where I came”.
Let me just sell all of my crap at one store. I hate that I have to waste time going from store to store buying and selling specific items. It doesn’t make the game fun, just annoying. Skyrim needs a Target.
On the HUD, let me know if characters are friendly or not.
Bethesda needs to steal some ideas from Dragon Age. How about:
Letting me pause, then select things in the environment, then walking my character there automatically. I hate having to manually navigate my character to a book or something in a clumsy third-person view or nauseating first-person view.
Let me equip my companions. Yes, Lydia, I know that the Steel Armor has a rating of 70 and this Armor of Invincibility is only 65, but just put on what I tell you, OK?
How about a little light? The fact that you understand the need for a spell called “Candlelight” but not the need for an extra torch at curves in the cave’s path is confusing.
There’s no reason to get stuck in rocks. Just let me jump off of a slope already. I promise it won’t irreparably break the game.
–Underpowered unique loot. My mid-20s character can craft better items than nearly any daedric prince shrine artifact. Given the choice of being overpowered with generic smithed items vs overpowered with unique epic quest items, I prefer the unique.
–The damn blades temple is too big, dark, and zone-segregated. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve lost my follower in there when trying to rejoin her. Oh, this time she’s sitting in a dark corner behind a pillar, how convenient!
–Potions are boring, and the perk tree pointless and wasteful of perk slots. A better way to make potion blends or multi-effects needs to be implemented.
–Loading zones need optimizing, I should be able to shortcut directly into my house, the blades temple, etc. Getting in and out of the Ratway missions is the worst.
I made some enchanted armor and named it “[Character Name]'s Burden” to give myself a chuckle and keep myself from firebolting Lydia repeatedly in the face,
“Siiiigh… I’m sworn to carry your burdens”
“Yeah, here’s the three elven arrows you fired at that mud crab back. Bitch.”
On the PC, the hotkey system seems totally non-deterministic. It seems to handle two handed weapons ok, but any setups that have more than one item, say a sword and shield seem to randomly substitute other one hand items/spells at very inopportune moments.
Nothing quite like running up to a dragon that just landed, put away your bow to go for your trusty sword and mighty shield and bare knuckle punch that dragon right on the nose.
Most of the issues listed here so far are easily fixed with one of a number of mods available.
I guess the take away here is never buy a Bethesda game on console!
It’s funny, but Elderscrolls games for me pretty much always end up going through the same cycles.
1st I’m engrossed by the scenery. I spend many hours doing nothing but looking around and exploring.
2nd I start furiously going through quests. I go to a city and I don’t move until I’m done with every quest line there.
3rd I start, finally, working on the main quests but…
4th By this time I’ve sunk well over a hundred hours, I’ve done most of the quests seen most of what there is to see and I’m essentially bored. Too much exploration, too many quests, I’m burned out and I never finished the main quest.
Same thing happened in Oblivion. Still haven’t finished the main quest for that game… or Morrowind.
I’ve been taking a break from Skyrim and I’m still not missing it. I think I might wait until substantial DLC hits, or a really good mod crops up.
Yes, all valid issues. I especially dislike how it is easier for my character to kill a dragon than to place a vase on my endtable. Heck, or several dragons. Or several dragons and a giant and two mammoths at the same time. Or the entire city of Markarth. I mean, I’m like an invicible god with the worst case of butterfingers ever.
But yet, all the annoyance fades away by fucking with my companion. “Oh Lydia, I think there’s something over. No, not there. There. Right over the cliff. Do you see it? It’s…right… FUSRODAH!” Hehe. That or a pie to the face. I keep a pie with me at all times to toss at her when she’s been bad.
20 posts in and I’m the first one to mention a story complaint?
My big one is that there’s no sense of impact from your actions. End the civil war? Finish the main quest? Slaughter everyone in the last village? Doesn’t matter. Maybe the villagers should stop warning you about the dangers of the mages up at the guild once you become the freakin’ head of said guild? I guess in a way this ties into the above complaint about every character being more or less the same. The largest choice you’re given to make in the game is between the Empire and the Stormcloaks, and even that is pretty light on the repercussions.
