And yet....in Morrowind the "glass armor" was exactly that, crystalline armor.

As for the issue with confusing materials, I think it's related to how the crafting systems in Skyrim feel....incomplete. There are a lot of recipes that just aren't available to use. The cooking mechanics feels like there's a lot of room for improvement. And then there are crafting functions that simply aren't available in game, like brewing liquor, fletching arrows, tailoring clothes, and spell making. This is something that DLC and mods will need to expand upon.

From what you said it seems like you think that if it uses a word that we know and understand it should follow what we know and, well, understand. From that the dragons should be called wyverns, as the "dragons" in this game have two limbs, not four. All mythical elements should follow classic RPG and fantasy roots, not Bethesda's unique take on them. As said, ebony should be from wood, glass shouldn't be a green material that can be formed into sharp, strong blades. These plant and animal parts shouldn't be magical.

While I understand what you are saying, I have to disagree. I'm fine with the series using words and items we are familiar with and using them for the unfamiliar.

Yeah, that is a problem too, but less of a problem for me only because that ties in with skills which are abstracted character values which represent specific a person's traits not wholly defined in yada yada yada. As a programmer myself I know there is a level of abstraction that is needed between objects and values if their real life representation is too complex or costly to implement.



The exact first thing I thought when my torch died was "Hmm, time to figure out how to craft a torch with maybe wood, cloth and a flammable reagent!"

... It's still so dark here *sniff*

both glass and ebony is mined. Glass weapons is realistic, the Aztecs used volcanic glass in weapon it was very sharp however did not work well against steel.

However both glass and ebony armor sounds plausible compared with real world.
Ceramic armor plates are used today in high end body armor, backed by Kevlar who is cloth.

However some tanks uses explosive armor, that is blocks of explosives outside their steel armor, yes it makes perfect sense.

Game designers decided to use interesting-sounding English words, to refer to different materials in their game world.

Deal with it.


(ex: The quicksilver in the game is clearly not mercury, since you can't smelt mercury into solid bars. Therefore, "quicksilver" isn't mercury. Not seeing a problem here. )

Well, I think you're getting part of my gist but what I'm trying to stress as a footnote here is that it isn't about what is real or not, but what consistently follows and what doesn't.

Iron and corundum live up to their namesakes for the majority of the the game, iron is actually 100% authentic, so my question is why does it shift into made up at such an odd point in their function?

Ebony doesn't live up to anything at all, not even it's composition. So it's fine.

A hypothetical problem in the same line of reasoning would be fire melting one ice wall but not another identical ice wall. It makes sense to a point and then deviates in the middle with no rhyme or reason.

I'll complain about what I want to, if no one is going to listen or agree then you don't have to listen.

NUUUU MY IMMERSHUNZZ

All seriousness though, it really doesn't matter. If it did follow realistic terms then people would still be complaining.

Last time I checked, quick silver was liquid at room temperature.

Besides, all the cool people make their armor out of BROmine. How, you say? With magic.

I just finished reading most of the posts on this thread and I'm starting to agree with you. Some of these inconsistencies wouldn't be in the game if they chose a more appropriate (in the corundum example) material for being a metal, instead of choosing a mineral. But what I think is that some people (including me) are having a hard time understanding exactly what you mean due to not having more examples. Currently, all you got is corundum and leather. The fire and ice example is (no offence) not that great due to most of the ice in the game being part of the geometry of the world, while some is meant to be triggered by the player to melt when a fire spell is used on it.

The truth is probably as simple as Bethesda wanted to use the names of items and materials from the real world but just didn't want to have them 100% the same, or even remotely similar.

Nope, doesn't matter in the slightest. I think it's just annoying.


Psh, really cool people make their armor out of [i[pure[/i] magic.... or uranium.

"The name "corundum" is derived from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_language word ????????? "kuruntam" meaning "ruby", and related to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskrit "kuruvinda"."

Since there were no Tamils or Sanskrit on Tamriel, I think we can assume "Corundum" might mean just about anything.

:tryingtoblockplotholeswithagiganticgreenpear:

Yes and Now I am going to take my game back to GameStop and throw it at them and get a full refund, because my immersion has just been killed.....Blah Blah Blah......

lol! Its funny because its true! Good point.

True enough, I could use some more examples, the corundum one sticks out in my mind the most because it is the most blatant. The others have already been mixed in: malachite turning into glass, quicksilver solid at room temperature, leather strips weighing more than leather pieces, leather weighing as much as iron for that matter, etc. When I first found malachite I tried to make jewelry out of it, actually.

None of these things are important of course. It feels like they assumed that none of their target audience would know what corundum or malachite is and didn't care. But then, if it is just a name, and part of a real process, then why not use the real name instead of an unrelated name?

Kind of hard to throw a digital copy back to at people.

Or, it would be awesome *chucks hard drive at steam employee*

That'll leave a mark.

Yes, YOU think it's annoying, others don't. There's always a small group that will complain, no matter what Bethesda did with it.

Hey hey hey, last time I checked one person isn't a group.

That makes me the president, treasurer, and leading majority in Lima Beans Against Corundum Inc. or LBAC Inc.

Yea the leather thing is kinda goofy. I remember once I was making leather strips and suddenly I was overencumbered from them. How can that be? It should weigh roughly the same not more. Some things in the game just make no sense and you have to roll with it or it'll make you crazy.

Piece of leather weights 2. From it you get four Leather Strips that weight 0.1 each. I have no idea what you're talking about.

I apologize, I was one step ahead in the process by accident. Leather weighs more than the hide it came from in some cases.

get a life and stop nitpicking

Hey. Have you tried eating Lavender in real life before a mage fireballs you to see if it resists it? Didn't think so.

Glass isn't just one thing in real life either. Fragile wine glasses are entirely different from bulletproof windows and so forth. I just assume the ingame "glass" is something off the latter end, or even more tempered.


Anyhow, the loose relation to reality of the materials doesn't bug me much. The fact that Corundum is used by itself to make a much stronger armor then Steel, makes me wonder why anyone bothers degrading it by mixing it with iron to make steel is a head scratcher.

Actually Corundum ore often contains Chromium which is frequently used in crafting steel alloys, especially Stainless Steels which it is often >11% of the total mixture, so you're wrong about Corundum ore not containing anything to do with the crafting of steel. It does: Chromium.
P.S. Corumdum may be hard to form into ingots, but you don't go from a corundum ingot to a steel ingot, you go from corundum and iron ore to a steel ingot, so the steel formula is correct as is.

Never!


I don't really care if Bethesda does or cares anything about it. I just wonder what was going through their head when they decided on the name and process.


Actually, I never said corundum didn't have useful elements in it, just that it itself was not used in such a manner. You can't make ingots of corundum, and you certainly as hell don't fold them into iron to make steel. Besides, corundum is not a really viable source of chromium, that would be chromite you're looking for.