"Shields can only be equipped in your left hand" : V - Skyrim

» Thu Oct 13, 2011 5:09 pm

Yes, Morrowind featured you holding the bow with your right hand, with the draw arm being the left--making it a lefty weapon

I have a feeling it might have to do with weapons being placed in the right hand by default, so rather than change that for bows, they just adopted a lefty stance for it :shrug:

yea, now when you say it I remember, I didnt react to it at first, but I think it might have been a "backwards windmill case", the devs not totally familair with what goes where in real life, cool however that the lefties got a weapon, I'd find it hard to play as righthanded if I was lefthanded and I wanted to do a character based on myself, my brother is lefthanded and so is my gf and lots of ppl I know.

» Thu Oct 13, 2011 2:10 pm

This is one of those incredibly minor things that I honestly don't care about. I wouldn't care if someone made it so that you were forced to use your left hand as your main.

Why bother with the extra animation for something that is so incredibly minor?

» Thu Oct 13, 2011 11:20 pm

This was a really really weird confirmation. Because I'm 90% sure Todd said that you could turtle play, asin just hold two sheilds up with no weapon. So this makes no sense. hmmm, wonder if you can dual weild but only single weild with left hand. I wonder if this means you can't single weild weapons in your left hand.

He said you couldn't, sorry :\

i can't really blame them for not including it, as time is money and animations take time, but i can see how lefties might not like it. Though with the new control scheme it shouldn't really make much of a difference. Look to modders i guess. Sorry guys.

» Fri Oct 14, 2011 12:45 am

I'm a South Paw, and this doesn't bug me. :shrug: I have more important things to worry about than what hand my sword is in. ^_^

» Fri Oct 14, 2011 2:36 am

It's seems like a wierd and pointless thing to leave out, but hey. You PC guys have Mods right?

From what I understand, it's not so much "pointless" as it is maybe a little lazy.

It requires a completely new suite of animations to use the shield in the left hand. Maybe they felt the space used for static animations was better used on additional content, or maybe they just couldn't be bothered.

I anticipate 87% Of the playerbase won't notice.

» Thu Oct 13, 2011 9:08 pm

From what I understand, it's not so much "pointless" as it is maybe a little lazy.

It requires a completely new suite of animations to use the shield in the left hand. Maybe they felt the space used for static animations was better used on additional content, or maybe they just couldn't be bothered.

I anticipate 87% Of the playerbase won't notice.

When you provide a game with 300+ hours of content and it's fully explorable, I wouldn't consider any feature being excluded as "lazy". I find it offensive.

» Thu Oct 13, 2011 8:04 pm

Personally I don't have a problem with it and don't see it as a big deal but I understand that they said put anything in any hand that you should be able to do left hand sword right hand shield. If they decided to make it left hand only it was probably due to something like bugs that were happening or like others have said new animations making more work which i'm sure it's already hard to meet deadlines in a game with this much content. I'm sure they have a very good reason to make it this way. It's not just them randomly deciding to make restrictions on a whim.

» Thu Oct 13, 2011 6:55 pm

You'd be able to play as a Left-Handed Elf, and the Redguard can't be having with that.

» Thu Oct 13, 2011 9:24 pm

So PC mods are our only hope now.

What can we do?

If there an easy way to simply mirror the Player Character and flip left and right symmetry?

What sort of programing knowledge would be required for us to fix this?

Please serious and honest response would be greatly appreciated.

This really was the one biggest thing i was looking to in Skyrim and i want to get it in.

Left handed combat and dual wielding were near impossible in Oblivion, I believe due to issues with creating animations. So I suppose it's possible, but don't get your hopes up.

» Thu Oct 13, 2011 10:55 am

When you provide a game with 300+ hours of content and it's fully explorable, I wouldn't consider any feature being excluded as "lazy". I find it offensive.

Considering animators are completely separate from quest designers, writers, dungeon designers, etc....

» Fri Oct 14, 2011 2:22 am

Considering animators are completely separate from quest designers, writers, dungeon designers, etc....

I really think people expect too much from the game. How come Dark Souls story is severely lacking? From Software must be lazy.

» Thu Oct 13, 2011 7:45 pm

Dunno what you're on about. Dark Souls' story seems pretty boss so far Db1.

» Thu Oct 13, 2011 10:49 am

Dunno what you're on about. Dark Souls' story seems pretty boss so far Db1.

Lol. Even the most ardent of fans over in the Community Discussion thread are saying the story svcks plain and simple. It's a combat simulator. Nothing more, nothing less. It does do combat well, i'm not that blind. That's about it. The engine is really average and the NPC's barely even move their lips outside of cutscenes when they talk. Come on. Completely lazy.

» Thu Oct 13, 2011 1:51 pm

Lol. Even the most ardent of fans over in the Community Discussion thread are saying the story svcks plain and simple. It's a combat simulator. Nothing more, nothing less. It does do combat well, i'm not that blind. That's about it. The engine is really average and the NPC's barely even move their lips outside of cutscenes when they talk. Come on. Completely lazy.

No game is perfect, and im surprised you can say bad things about a game. Because I sure never saw you complaining about a TES game.

also, there is plenty of lore if you look for it.

The entire story is about Gwyn trying to prevent the switch to the dark age. I won't spoil whether that's good, bad, or even how he's trying to prevent it.

» Thu Oct 13, 2011 4:16 pm

No game is perfect, and im surprised you can say bad things about a game. Because I sure never saw you complaining about a TES game.

also, there is plenty of lore if you look for it.

The entire story is about Gwyn trying to prevent the switch to the dark age. I won't spoil whether that's good, bad, or even how he's trying to prevent it.

Atrocious lip synching in a near 2012 title. Completely lazy.

» Thu Oct 13, 2011 11:50 pm

Atrocious lip synching in a near 2012 title. Completely lazy.

Neckseams in a near 2012 title. Completely lazy.

Or perhaps... the priorities have been somewhere else?

» Fri Oct 14, 2011 1:55 am

Neckseams in a near 2012 title. Completely lazy.

Or perhaps... the priorities have been somewhere else?

Exactly my point Finedandy!

» Thu Oct 13, 2011 4:01 pm

This is a repeat thread, but I will explain it again.

The reason they don't support left handed is because they would have to use a lot more memory to have right handed block animations, right handed bow animations, etc. There is only 512 megs of memory and animations, code, model vertices, scene vertices are all loaded into memory. So they have to be as efficient as possible and cut things out that only appeal to a small % of players. And it's not just two animations (block and bow) it's HUNDREDS. The whole body is animated to walk with bow, crouch with bow, sprint with bow, move diagnal left with bow... etc etc etc. To support true dual wielding with any configuration would increase the memory usage beyond what consoles can handle. It's almost no bang for the buck to so speak.

To mod it in you would have to import the animations, flip them, export them and they you would destroy the right handed animations in the process. Then you would have to flip the bindings around so left trigger is right, right trigger is left etc. At the end of the day all you have accomplished is making it look like it's left handed, but it would still play the same.

» Thu Oct 13, 2011 10:21 pm

This was a really really weird confirmation. Because I'm 90% sure Todd said that you could turtle play, asin just hold two sheilds up with no weapon. So this makes no sense. hmmm, wonder if you can dual weild but only single weild with left hand. I wonder if this means you can't single weild weapons in your left hand.

He never said that. We all hoped that.

» Thu Oct 13, 2011 3:42 pm

But im a lefty

But hey i got used to using a mouse in my right hand i think i'll be just fine.

I'm a lefty and I haven't. My mouse is on the left hand side of my keyboard. <_<

» Thu Oct 13, 2011 8:25 pm

the impression i have is they got rid of it so that while holding a sword in your left hand you can punch with your right...
as opposed to just using your far superior sword.
doesnt make any sense to me..
my guess is they got rid of it so they wouldnt have to make all the extra third person animations. but who knows.
im a righty, but i think itd be awesome if lefties could play the game as lefties. i know if i was a deformed and weird lefty ide want to play like that.

edit: sorry madmole didnt read your post prior to posting... but i think your right on.

» Thu Oct 13, 2011 4:00 pm

First of all for those that could care less, just move along please don't post your useless comments that add nothing to information or options to this dilemma. Thanks.

Ok i wont do a long post this time, but ever since i saw the first videos of Todd explaining you can put and item or any spell into any hand i was overjoyed i could play like the leftie i always wanted in TES weapon in left, shield in right.

I was the guy who asked Nerdtrek who went to PAX to test for right handed blocking and they said it WAS POSSIBLE.

http://nerdtrek.com/skyrim-answers-bethesda/

Then Pete twittered it was out.

"DCDeacon Pete Hines @outerheaven313 You can put weapons or magic in either hand. You can only equip shields and torches in your left hand. Bows as well."

However, some of the info coming from Pete on his twitter account has been conflicting before but since I've seen on other places online not to be named that i cannot link to it is positively confirmed that

"Shields can only be equipped in your left hand"

OK so we positively know you cannot hold a shield in your right hand.

So PC mods are our only hope now.

What can we do?

If there an easy way to simply mirror the Player Character and flip left and right symmetry?

What sort of programing knowledge would be required for us to fix this?

Please serious and honest response would be greatly appreciated.

This really was the one biggest thing i was looking to in Skyrim and i want to get it in.

it is plain and clear besides other things bethesda is biased towards left handed people

» Thu Oct 13, 2011 4:25 pm

Ever heard the expression, "You're picking fly crap out of pepper."?

Also in history people were raised not to use their left hand as dominant in every known culture reaching all the way back to egypt, babylon and beyond. south paws were always frowned on and called evil, effeminate and possessed.

if it's a lot of trouble for you still.... set up a mirror and play through that. automatic lefty.