Nah, the game came on time.

i dont think anything you said except the bugs/balancing/construction kit is a result of the game being rushed in the last months, even though i dont doubt it happened. but the things you mentioned are big design decisions that need to be long-term planned. anyway, i agree that giving a release date one year ahead cant cause anything but problems and so did here. lack of balance, bug testing and no construction kit. id rather buy a game "when its done".

meh, it has its quirks.
but I think the positives WAAYY outweigh the negatives.
I dont think the deadline had THAT much impact on the devs design choices of the game but I do agree with you to some extent about balancing issues and whatnot.

Nice wall of text. tl;dr

Thank god after 12/12/12 we won't have these marketing wet dream dates to put out titles or movies or books and people can set development dates when the product is finished.

And by that, I mean major bug free and no patches on release date. I can't play my PS3 version because it's broken now and I am convinced that is because of the rush to release date on 11/11/11. It was a stupid concept and should never have happened. Regardless of the too short quests and any gameplay issues, the game-ending bugs such as the PS3 lag issue is most concerning.

Apparently you've never played a game that was truly rushed an unfinished.

What game are you playing? :wacko:

Because in this thing I bought called 'Skryim', you can't even say no to 90% of the quests, and at best you have, maybe, just maybe two options towards the end as to how to complete it.

Yeah, you can choose different sides, but the way you go about doing the quest doesn't change at all.

Choosing whether Faenlin or Sven gets the girl is not exactly a dynamic quest. Neither is siding with the Imperials or the Stormcloaks, yeah, different names, same bloody quests. Legion: Go find some artifacts, capture forts. Stormcloaks: Go find some artifacts, capture forts.

Then there is the pathetic lack of counter quest lines. Trouble with the Thieve's Guild in Riften? Can you and Mjoll the Lioness team up to work against them? NOPE.

Why doesn't me refusing to become a Nightingale not have any impact? Why don't they find somebody else? Why doesn't Mercer become uber powerful? Does time just stop when I don't do a quest?

The only quest I can think of that offers lots of variation is the Forsworn quest line.

So the question to me is...what's the alternative? Bethesda says "we're working on the next TES but we don't know when it'll be out?" Have you folks read A Song of Ice and Fire? Do you have any idea how much people freaked out over not knowing when the fifth book was going to be released? It's a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't kind of scenario, IMO.

You can always say "No" to a quest. Just press TAB. I do it all the time.

I'd have to agree with Velorien. Comparing Morrowind and Skyrim's quest is just begging for Skyrim to rip Morrowind apart. Typical Morrowind quest-conversation.

- "Hello, I'm Drayven Hlaalu. I'm a Commoner."
- "Commoner."
- "I do what needs doing and get by whichever way I can."
- "Ring."
- "Yes, I lost my ring. It's in Servethi Ancestral Tomb. Can you bring it back to me."
(Long Pause while the Nerevarine notes this into his journal and then picks up the conversation)
- "Servethi Ancestral Tomb."
- "You'll find it south-east of Balmora. It's close to the Kwama Egg Mines."

Seriously [censored] BioWare. Their stories are loved by the ADHD kids, but their plot mechanics and scripts are ALWAYS the same, as if they're generated by some kind of machine.

Here is an accurate run-down of every BioWare game made in the last 5 years:

Impending doom looms over the land. You must find X amount of specialists to help you put together a squad so you can win. There will be Y amount of potential love interests among these adventurers, and Z amount of helpers will die spectacularly unless you play 100% like the developers intended.

BIOWARE ARE THE SHODDIEST STORY WRITERS IN THE GAMES INDUSTRY EVER!!!
OK, it was cool the first time, but not so much any more.

And as to Valve and their corridor/ bottom smacking game design, [censored] them too.

I... think... I... disagree... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

What color is the sky on your planet? You honestly believe that release day patching will go away because dates like 11/11/11 and 12/12/12 won't be popping up?

So just like the rest of the series... you can also just, you know, NOT DO THE QUEST!

And Skyrim is any different? I know this isn't an TES stitch, but would it hurt to add some variety, or at least try to?

Just to point out you can say no to everything, even if there is no other option except yes. Exit the conversation by tab or esc or whatever button it is on the controllers.

First off, OP, use spell check, it will fix your 'keyboard errors' that are so bad that it looks like you typed this out on your phone using your feet while trying not to be caught in class.

Crafting is no more broken than any other TES game. In fact, I would say that Enchanting and Alchemy are probably the most balanced that I have seen in any TES game. Granted, I would have liked to have seen the ability to craft arrows, and I'm disappointed that items no longer degrade, but that does not make anything broken.

The cities are, for the most part, fine. For one, everything is scaled down a bit, from the size of the world to the size of the cities. Second, everybody who has a house has a job and a purpose. Granted, I think it would have been nice to see a bit more filler, just to make it look like there is more going on than there actually is, but that's all it is is filler.

For me, many of the quests have been quite different in how they start, as compared to previous TES games. I also like that they added interesting triggers and puzzles, as well as little stories for a number of the locations, as they give each location a unique feel. True, there are some quest bugs, and this, to me, is probably your only solid complaint, as these should have been tested and fixed a while ago. Some are, obviously, a little more difficult to encounter (like Raldbthar), while others should be quite obvious (like quests sharing the same location, or quest items not being removed upon completion).

The best part of your post (other than the horrendous type-os, grammar and abusive ellipses), IMO, is when you complain that the CK wasn't released with the game, but rather delayed until it was ready. My guess is that most of the CK was ready, but they decided to integrate certain features with Steam closer to the release of the game.

While the dialoge options in Skyrim aren't the most interesting, nobody can deny that they are at least MORE interesting. That is, immersion-wise. I am aware that you can ask any NPC in Morrowind anything and they will copy+paste an answer from Morropedia.

Of course you can, but from a roleplaying perspective, you have to be a real dike to just walk out in the middle of a conversation.

"Hey, we're getting close to our 11-11-11 release date. How's your work going?"
"Might be tough to hit that date."
"Why don't you just cut the city sizes in half."
"What? That's insane! We'd have to completely re-do the landscape, not to mention scrap all this work that was 80-95% finished."
"Oh, you're right. Well, can you make the quests more linear?"
"Well, no. Most of the quest scripts have been in place for months. We're just testing, really. Even the writing is done. It would take us more time to remove things at this point."
"Okay... how about crafting?"
"What about it?"
"Uh... rush it!"
"Well, I had this idea about having craftable items that could boost your crafting skills—"
"Yes! Perfect!"
"—And I put it in four months ago."
"Attributes?"
"The ones we settled on last year?"
"Oh. I guess these aren't the kind of changes we can make during the last two months of development."
"I guess not."

Quests are given pretty much the same way in any RPG I've ever played. At least in Skyrim they are voiced and have some dynamic aspects to them .

There's no way it's not an improvement over previous TES titles.

I find it ironic that you complain about Bethesda rushing the game, but beg forgiveness for your rushed post. I believe I smell the scent of hypocrisy floating into these forums...

Reading all these complaints everyday I'm desperate to find some of these faults in the game, like boring quests, nothing like Morrowind, lack of roleplaying (a little perhaps but you're never going to get perfection where this is concerned) and especially these so called 'broken' quests. Where are they?? One thing I certainly do not agree with, is that it was rushed! How can anyone say that?

The Irony of calling the game rushed whilst your Thread contains so many errors, spelling and grammatical wise, I gave up reading. Just like the game, your thread was rushed. ;]

That's not exactly saying no though. That's avoiding the quest-giver. It's kind of like choosing the "Not right now" dialogue option. However, sometimes even that isn't an option. In any case, I keep ending up with quests I don't care about in my quest log.


How are the DBH opener and civil war quests nonlinear? With the civil war quest, all you have to do is pick a side, and each quest has a mirror image. In any case, the kind of variation present most quests (e.g. in In My Time of Need and the two Daedric quests you mention) was also present in previous ES games. So I think it's a serious exaggeration to say that Skyrim's quests are more nonlinear than any other ES game; that honor belongs to Daggerfall.

This.

Most of the things you list, OP, are deliberate design decisions. Not things suddenly removed because they were running out of time.

It's not like they were making all the quests have multiple resolutions and then suddenly decided they couldn't finish them and made them all linear. If that was the case, there'd be a mix of quests - the ones they'd already finished (voice acting, text, quest paths, etc) would be there alongside the ones they couldn't finish (the ones with a more linear path.)



Or what this guy said.