Admit it, a huge part of motivation in RPG's is our greed to acquire better, shinier weapons & armor for your character.

The itemization design in Skyrim is asinine. When I'm crawling through dungeons and finding the same worthless junk in every container, on every corpse I loot, then what's the point? Where's the variety? Same with stealing. Why would I make a thief character if there's nothing good to steal, in a castle, palace, store, anywhere? I liked the game so much at first, but now I see that the illusion of "depth" is on the surface. I could ignore my greed for loot if the lore was exciting, but it isn't. As soon as it starts to have intrigue and go somewhere, it gets cut off. You need to have a really good sense of imagination to feel like you're making progress, and that's hard to do when the story and quest lines are so bland. I finish a long dungeon, beat the final boss, and all I find on him is a falmer bow? What's the point?

This seems to break a cardinal rule in RPG's. There needs to be a reward system better than "the more time you spend playing/higher level, the better loot/skills you have". In a game so open-ended, this character progression design feels extremely linear.

Atleast its better than Oblivion wich bombarded you with 500-1000 gold and enchanted weapon in every chest when you reached lvl 20.

This isnt Diablo. The loot system is supposed to be more realistic i guess you could say. Your not going to be upgrading gear every single dungeon. Your going to occasionally come across cool loot. And like the other elder scrolls, the coolest loot comes from the daedric quests. Dont get it twisted though, there is a lot of unique weapons. I've found probably 10 unique weapons (non quest rewards) in 70 hours playing. I've only found a few unique armors, besides the dragon priest helms.

It all depends on your level.

Loot = Money, and that's about it. I rarely keep what I find during my spelunking ventures.

I'm trying to emphasize the sheer fluff you see everywhere. There are way too many utterly useless items you can click on, this is distracting and a waste of time and IMO ridiculous from a design perspective.
And they've insisted on doing this since Morrowind.
If they want it to feel realistic, they should have a huge variety of clothes, for example, like in Daggerfall. If they want to make it about variety and style they need to have a huge amount of customization, and not give me a sack of potatoes and mammoth snouts everywhere I look. I don't want to pick an expert lock and find an iron sword and a flawless garnet (yay). It's not so much that I can't upgrade my armor, it's that there is so much stale, useless, filler content as far as itemization goes.

Same here. I only keep special named items.

Pretty much same here too. I keep uniques; I either sell or destruct the others. I've found a handful of unique items.

And I actually kind of like it that Glass armor/ebony weapons are difficult to find - at least so far with my lvl 34 who gets excited when she finds a piece she doesn't have yet, runs home, upgrades it, and equips it. Not finding it on every single bandit is a welcome change.

The real thing that killed loot was overpowered and easily accessible smithed gear. And enchanting to a lesser extent, since player made enchants are also superior to the majority of those on found items.

I feel like they should've just had a non-combat skill list, with non-combat perks. Pickpocket, lockpick, speech, enchanting, smithing, alchemy. Then make the same bonuses of crafting skills(armor making, improving, enchants, etc.) available through NPC crafters for a price.
Have each non-combat skill have a few bonuses via the perk tree that are exclusive to it, but not a significant benefit in combat like the crafting skills currently offer over the others.
Give the player maybe 1 non combat perk for X levels, separate from combat perks.

Actually, the comparison to Diablo II was valid. There are only a handful of genuinely unique items in the game, but there are hundreds of "randomly generated" items that use the same prefix/suffix system that D2 did.

If you don't abuse the crafting skills, the loot you find actually is useful, you just don't find a lot of it until you are higher level. Dwarven items are exceedingly rare at low levels, but once you get into the teens they are almost everywhere.

You can go into any dwemer ruin at level 1 and leave with a full set of dwarven armor...if you can survive the enemies that is.

I think it's only one suffix. And there is no rarity beyond that single enchant items. A rarity that could have 2 enchants would be great if modders can put that in.

BTW what do you mean by 'abuse' the crafting skills? You just need to level them in normal gameplay and they'll make 95% of what you find useless.

i remember back in oblivion, stealing from npcs such as head of the mage guild was both exciting and rewarding.

well i agree with you that the only reason i go into dungeon now is for the exploration, not loots.

Not every facet of the game has to kiss your @ss you know. You dont have to start a rant thread if you pick a Master level lock and find a carrot. It's pointless. If youre telling me that you search *every* container you come across and expect to find something amazing and useful in each one, then youre even dumber than your pitiful rant suggests.

I'm gonna go ahead and quote one of my previous posts concerning this issue:

Oh really because I seem to remember people complaining constantly on how there was nothing good to steal at all.

No I think it shows that the game design is really unfocused.
If you don't like my rant thread why reply? Why do you feel compelled to defend your beloved gamesas likea f a n b o y and stoop to weak insults instead of replying with valid points like other more respectable posters? I'll rant all I want because I'm frustrated at how they design games these days, there is too much arbitrary marketing influence and too little innovation/risk-taking. And that's why they've stuck with this same pathetic design concept since morrowind.

I think they every category of armor should have lots of variations. So you could have 20 different looking sets of Elven armor, all with the same stats and ability to enchant/smith. This way one set of Elven armor you run across might be more appealing to you than others, and give you a reason to improve it.

Right now I find Elven armor on every quest and for sale at every merchant, and they are all identical. It also wouldn't be game breaking because the stats would all be the same.

I quite enjoy finding "stuff" and crawling dungeons for it, but Skyrim, to me, just isn't a loot-driven RPG like the aforementioned Diablo'esque titles. While they are centered on loot, Skyrim is more about exploration, the plots and "living" in an open, sandbox-style world. That aside, I find interesting loot just frequently enough to appreciate it, and rarely enough to not get bored of it.

I guess it helps that I set some rules for my character: I use smithing only for upgrading gear, not for crafting it, I don't overdo it with enchanting (not powerleveling it, no focus on the perks before level 50), and I don't "wait" 48 game hours for vendors to restock. So whenever I find something in a dungeon, it's often an upgrade (even white items can be), and I find that satisfying. Beats the "yawn, yet another magic item I can't be bothered to pick up" that Diablo'esque games usually trigger in the mid to late game stages. (I love those games too, but I feel they belong to a different sub-genre.)

What valid point is there to make? I think youre way too picky, that's my opinion. I dont think their design concept is pathetic, people loved both morrowind and oblivion and even more people seem to love Skyrim. How the hell does marketing influence have to do with what loot you find in containers? What risk taking? It sounds like this is more important to you than just the loot, you just dont like the game period (or so it seems). I dont think Skyrim needs me to defend it. It has it's flaws, I dont think this is one of them. The reason I responded is because you seemed like an idiot, and I enjoy telling people I think are idiots to shut up.

Need a longer explanation?

you honestly have no debate skills. saying "many people loved it so it must be true" proves nothing. i am looking for a rational argument, and you have proven to be nothing but a little f a n b o y incapable of higher anolysis.
i speak for the people who disliked the direction elder scrolls took after daggerfall. the loot concept is asinine, you still haven't found a way to counter that. fumbling around with useless items does not contribute to meaningful gameplay in any way. i think bethesda should have learned by now, but since there are a lot of console players who buy the game only to play it for a few hours or even days, they keep making money, and they refuse to refine their formula, as long as this same stagnant design keeps making them money.
they have refined it a bit in skyrim, which is why i enjoyed the game for a while, but they haven't moved an inch to fix the fundamental flaws.

if you don't understand the concept of risk taking in game design, or anything for that matter, then i guess you're probably just a kid.
so here's a history lesson for you, kid:
the genesis of elder scrolls came about with a bunch of rpg nerds who wanted to make the most open-ended pc game imaginable. they took a huge risk by pioneering a design concept that no one had dared to try before. this innovative effort was led by Julian Lefay and his inspiration came to a head in Daggerfall. However, the game was rushed to meet a release date, and while still awesome, it didn't manifest into what it could have been. Back then I hoped that Morrowind would carry this concept further.
Then Julian Lefay disappeared, and Todd Howard came along, and completely changed the direction of Elder Scrolls. This is actually the root of what I'm ranting about. Elder Scrolls became all about rehashing a trite formula to appeal to console players who will pick up the game and forget about it after a week. but there is no innovation or depth, just shinier packaging.

The blindness that I see in the design is symptomatic of development led by marketing over quality, and the terrible loot system is just one example. There are a lot of great things about Skyrim but as soon as i get a taste of what i call the "todd howard flavor" i stopped playing this almost as quickly as i gave up on oblivion. i know many people will not know wtf im talking about, but im sure a few can relate.

dont craft your own weapons, just use smithing to upgrade and trust me you will be stoked when you find a glass bow with an enchant on it

Yes i agree.

And i love the people who claim the game is more "in depth" than even Oblivion was and yet cant explain a single way how it is.

Just its real good, everyone likes it so its better.

Justin Beiber outsells any musical artist right now, so by that logic hes the best musician ever.

Get the lockpicking perk , to get more special treasure

i know what the op means, feel the same way...its also boring cause after 10 hours of gameplay you allready know 100% of the loot you will find in the game (because there are only stronger versions)...except very few unique items...

i wish there was a hardcoe mode where you need to eat, drink an sleep and where equipment is MUCH more scarce so that even finding a steel armor was a huge deal (why the hell should there be steel armor lying around in dungeones) and where weapons would also break with time....that would make the game more "survival feeling"