Not every playthrough is the same. You don't have to do everything with one character, that was one of the downfalls of Oblivion, in my eyes. It was too easy to do everything in one playthrough. Hell, you don't have to do them in the same order. Start again, ignore certain questlines, etc. just stop complaining that it's boring. Stop blaming Bethesda for making a substandard game when you refuse to do something to make it more interesting that would rememedy it just because you "shouldn't have to because it's their paid for responsibility"

Hehe, or the 'mal-apologists' who are fond of claiming "If you don't use your own imagination to make Skyrim more fun, then you're unimaginative and boring and not as kewl as me". That kind of tripe is just as tiresome and unhelpful, if we are ever going to get Bethesda to make interesting RPG's and not just pretty open worlds where you have to fill in the huge blanks with your own sock puppets. It can be done, and that's what we're asking for.

hahahaha, don't know where you have got that idea from. No one has actually compared any playstyles on any sort of "coolness scale". I just fail to see these blanks that you're talking about. Skyrim is a living, breathing world yet you opt to play as a mindless, soulless machine.

Meh. Just more of the usual 'change the way you play to make up for the game's shortcomings'. Would prefer a game without the shortcomings, but maybe that's just me. And no, that would remedy nothing, because the underlying quests and dungeons and loot and monsters and everything else have too little replayability. I'll stop blaming Bethesda for making a substandard game when they stop making substandard games, not because I can gimp up, screw up a normal playstyle for no good reason, and do sock puppet mental gymnastics in order to try to get around those shortcomings. I prefer quality, not that.

Unhelpful? You're assuming we want it to change. I don't. Well, if they hire on more devs for TES6 and improve the game's depth without hurting its scope and freedom, then of course I'm all for it. But chances are that won't happen, because as graphical fidelity improves, so do production times. Compare Oblivion's dungeons to Skyrim's. You think BGS's artists just 'got better'? No, they hired more guys, and I'm sure it took them even longer to design all the dungeons despite them being far more detailed and unique than Oblivion's. When you have a limited budget, you have to cut somewhere. You think BGS likes cutting features?

If you think there's a lot of negativity surrounding Skyrim atm, I guarantee you it would be far, far worse if they had kept all of Morrowind's features but the world was half as big and dungeons were still the same old copy / paste jobs.

What game did it right?

Then TES is the wrong game for you. I know I've said this to several people, but I really can't see what the complaint is exactly. I'm working on my second and third playthroughs and it's been different everytime.

i'd take everything we have now, wash it up and around and i'd feel good we'll be alright.

creativity. attributes. bonuses and negatives.

stength and dexterity and charisma.

robes vs non.

all the simple crap that they didn't include.

hud options

You don't know anything about how I play, so keep your insults to yourself, thanks. I play the game within the parameters we are all given, as long as it remains interesting. Once the game devolves into having to invent your own fantasies just to keep the used up and now-boring gameworld/RPG elements anything resembling 'fun' (a quite individual definition, yours probably isn't the same as mine and that's life), that's when I start to ask myself where the game went wrong, and how could it have been done better. Where the RPG and replayability elements went wrong, has been well categorized in hundreds of threads already, including this one.

There is no such thing as perfect, and there are no games that have hit that mark. Doesn't mean that more of them, including TES, can't try harder to get up there.

for all you people that go out of your way to not be poweful: do you feel you're justified?

Woah woah woah. Who's insulting anyone!?

Sorry I got the impression you played a mindless, soulless machine, but you can't blame me when you so vehemently stick to your "I don't want to use sock puppets" view. Explain to me your playstyle, then, because it would seem that your argument has more depth than you're putting across. I don't want to make mistakes in my replies.

If Skyrim's combat were as challenging as many people here seem to want it, I would have no interest in the game. I _want_ my character to be OP, and I don't want to have to screw around with spending lots of time on combat. Some people complain about having to "gimp" their character, but I see this as Bethesda offering a choice: people who want challenging combat can have it, while people like me can be way overpowered and simply ignore the combat aspects of the game.

For me, I love exploring interesting places, finding the stories behind those places, and even fighting different styles of NPCs, but I don't want to spend 15 minutes just trying to defeat one boss. However, that does not mean I simply walk into a room, bash everything and walk out. Even though I could probably do that and not get killed, I still prefer to sneak around and kill each opponent individually from the shadows.

Bingo, on the highlighted part. As for the 'limited budget' part, they aren't exactly paupers, after the hundreds of millions they've raked in from Skyrim. Unless the suits take the low road and give them another too-limited budget and not enough time to do it right. Guess we'll see then, if they want to improve all of the game, or just the pretties.

I agree with all of that. I was not happy about the elimination of classes/attributes (although they did need to be fixed) or the lack of any penalty for mages wearing armor, and I have long been demanding better HUD options.

I was getting a bit burnt out at level 58 as an archer, which is one of the reasons why I just started a new game as a mage. The other reason is so I can take full advantage of all the quest fixes through 1.5.
Having said that, I can't wait until I can buy more than 1 spell at a time!

Good answer.

Calling anyone a mindless, soulless machine, is not a way to earn 'friend' points. I could think up some equally derogatory epithets for what I think about your game-play choices, but I refrain out of civility.

I create characters. I've made 5, played 2 of them to higher levels (63 is highest). I use the weapons I find or buy or make, I use the crafts available, I use the perks as they are properly intended to be used, I do the quests the game provides, I explore the world and everything in it. In short, I play the game the way it was made to be played by the devs. The level 63 is my main, and she has explored the entire world. Pretty much every NPC's chat selection has been exhausted (what little there was of it). I've met them all, seen every town, every dungeon, every tree. She has done the majority of the available quests. She has gotten most of the shouts, most of the uniques, and pretty much seen every kind and quality of loot the world has to offer. Multiple times.

What that leaves for the follow on 'replay' characters... is not much. I've gotten up a ways with several of them, but the quests are all old hat, can't be done any differently, there are no different outcomes, and the only real 'choice' you have is which ones you DON'T want to bother doing. Which, unfortunately at this point, is about all of them. Dungeons? Samo. Loot? Samo. Enemies? Samo. Different lines from NPC's? Hahahahahaaa!!! Sure, you can build a little differently, choose one or another of the few build options if you haven't already.... but the world you get to play with them in? Still the same. Still used up. Still not all that interesting now that it's all been seen and done once. Some people can put their mental sock puppets to work at that point and invent themselves a new game out of whole cloth... like the insane loin-clothed mammoth-cheese thief or whathaveyou... but I'm not into that. A lot of people aren't, and we are no less of a gamer or anything else than you are, for not wanting to do that.

I've played a lot of other games in my time that I couldn't wait to restart once I'd completely finished them, to make new characters and redo the entire experience multiple times, without ever having to resort to sock puppets. Those games had multiple elements that begged them to be replayed, for years sometimes. You didn't have to invent your own game, because they were their own well-made, self-contained dynamo of replayability. I haven't felt that at all, since my main character finished most of the content in Skyrim the first time.

TL;DR - Many ppl play the game normally within it's normal design parameters, and don't get off on inventing their own game once the content is (too quickly) used up.

Yes, constructive critisism is what makes games better, but just whining about how you didnt get Dragon riding or Guns or something else stupid doesn't get us anywhere. I believe Beth put alot of effort into this game and doesn't deserve to have to look on their forums and see 50 threads about how much this game svcks.

Thank you for your opinion of what the forums are for! Isn't this the point where that odd dude pops in and says "SKYRIM IS MOST AMAAAAAZING GAME EVER!11!!"?

I'm pretty sure 3.5 Million units sold in the first 2 days is enough to tell Bethesda Skyrim is "Teh amazing leetz", now they need to know how to raise the bar for future content. Considering how much better Shivering Isles was than Oblivion, more negative noise is better!

Meh. Double post.

I didn't call you a mindless, soulless machine. Next time you're going to turn hostile towards someone, at least have a reason.

And in a sense you are playing a "sock puppet"; you play your characters to become all-powerful beings and do everything Skyrim has to offer. Congratulations, you're ROLEPLAYING a power hungry, knowledge seeker that will do anything and everything in order to achieve those goals.

You can't climb higher than the top of the mountain.

Yep, playing the game normally, the way it's laid out to be played. I consider it pretty normal to start into a new game with an attitude of trying to do well and succeed by using the tools you are given, without having to deliberately gimp myself or otherwise do odd gameplay gymnastics or make unintuitive gameplay decisions in order to alter that normal goal. It isn't until later on, once you've discovered all the flaws and warts and shortcomings of the game, that those kinds of unnatural choices start to rear their ugly heads as a necessity to keep it interesting. Regardless of that, no matter how you want to roleplay it, the content isn't going to last very long, and it certainly isn't very interesting or enticing to replay much, after you've seen 'n done it once. So keep them sock puppets handy, you'll be needin' 'em for darn sure.