» Tue Dec 06, 2011 9:25 pm So far I played a pure mage to 48, got bored and I tried a few other builds, namely one-hand melee, archer, thief, 2h melee. And every build showed up severe flaws in the system that made all characters either pointless to play or completely boring. Let's start with the mage:
At first the mage was nice and fun to play, till I realized that there is no spellcrafting and I really had to go through the entire game with 2 spells. Now there are some other spells, but either they burn down your mana while not even killing something, they don't work at all because of bugs or pointless effects or you require a certain perk to actually be able to properly use them. In the end all I did was summoning my daedra and threw firebolts. And eventually, after 31 levels and running through the entire main story, I finally got these spells high enough so I could get.... an improved firebolt (incinerate) that was wasting too much mana so I removed it from the hotkey again and continued to spam firebolts. And when I finally (at level 45) reached 100 Conjuration I went out to raise the most powerful undead I could find, just to learn that the AI is so stupid that my pets spend most of the time running against walls or obstacles or just randomly vanish because they can't find a path. So I went to a melee build.
The one-hand melee was nice for a while, till I found the first enemy mage. The first one poisoned me with a deadly posion (drunk 5 health pots then died). The second one was a frost mage that kept me at distance frozen with no chance to get to him (had to use the bad AI to my advantage) and the third one, a lightning mage just one-hitted my 330 hp. I am not sure if Bethesda thinks everyone is running around with 200 pots in their inventory or has enchantment as side-skill to craft resistance on his items, but that was just ridiculously annoying. Why the hell can't my shield block a spell? That would have been such an easy solution.
The 2-handed melee didn't make it far. The big thing is that once you swing your weapon, there is no going back till the swing animation is over. And with a 3 second swing of a 2h hammer you better bring a band-wagon of pots with you, because you will get beaten up like stupid till your first swing hits, the enemy staggers and you just beat him down. Why not just allow to interrupt the swing with the block button? What is the advantage of a 2h weapon to cover for the loss of defense except for a minor increase of damage? And how the hell am I supposed to afford 200 potions for each dungeon?
Thief/Assassin was next on the list, I actually loved that style in Oblivion so I figured why not try it? I went through the starter dungeon realizing that every enemy was able to see through my stealth (which is already kind of annoying for a starter dungeon) and then proceeded to rob the first town blank. Realizing that a pickpocket failure meant that I would be killed as everyone but the guards just grabbed their weapon and beat me to death because I stole one coin, I tried to just rob the local bandits. But since they could see through stealth at 2km away I proceeded to the good old save & load tactic, which is everything but fun. Once I got everyone properly robbed I proceeded to Whiterun with tons of crap in my inventory that I couldn't sell and eventually just dropped somewhere. The whole stealing got me about 1500 gold total, barely enough to buy a set of equipment and some potions. People in Skyrim must be poor.
Now the big thing was, that thanks to my pickpocket and sneak skill now being both over 80, I got to level 21 on the way to the first real quest (I skipped the claw quest in between). But thanks to the level adjustment system my enemies were now enhanced to be a challenge for someone who spent the last 21 levels bringing his combat skills up. Now I love a challenge so I made it through the dungeon towards the dragon stone somehow (and with a lot of loading), but then learned that I had to delete my character. The final boss who inconveniently has the dragon stone in his pockets and cannot be pickpocketed because he is an undead (so where do they keep their equipment??) forced me to fight him. He was 21, I was about level 2 if you just take the combat skills. I could remove a pixel of his life with about 10 swings, he could kill me with 2 hits. After reloading 20 times I just gave up and decided to delete that char.
So whats this all about?
The problems in this game summarize to:
- Bugs: whether it is the stupid AI, spells like alteration armor which have barely an effect or diseases that don't remove the negative effects once dispelled, quests that go wrong or get stuck and finally crashes.
- Balance of power: some abilities and builds are so extremely powerful that you just fall asleep playing the game, while others are so severely underpowered that you can't play the game at all. It feels to me like Bethesda made this game for combat-only characters that go exactly one way.
- Balance of usefulness. Why play a thief if you can just steal everything anyway and the crap you get is almost worthless or cannot be sold? Why use higher level spells if the one you get at the beginning is the most efficient one in the game? Why use 2h weapons if the damage is barely higher but you take so much more damage that you cannot survive? Why are some perks absolutely required to use a skill while others barely have an effect? That list could be endless.
- Break of immersion. Just one example: as member of the thieves guild I go to a shop and threaten the owner to pay his money by bashing down his beloved and very expensive urn. He almost crawls before me and promised to pay immediately. I decide to take 1 (one) gold from his desk as the beginning of his payment and immediately he and his wife draw their weapons, bash me down and a bunch of guards that magically knew I took the coin jump through the door and arrest me. The list of immersion failures like this are endless in this game.
I was really a great fan of Bethesda, but this game really killed the fanboyism for me. I am not your beta tester Bethesda, I payed money for this game and even endured crap like Steam and then you deliver such an incomplete an unpolished game. That is definitely not going to happen again.
