So far I enjoy my Skyrim experience and so it looks like others do. However its time for some feedback so you don't get all lazy. Who knows maybe in the result you will improve your game and its future incarnations.

1. GUI
The ultimate reason why the game feels like a rushed console port. Controls are not bad, but interacting with the GUI is awful. The game detect badly mouse input, at times ignores it or even closes the interaction window if you apparently press a button out of it boundaries. We hope for a good fix.


2. AI, companions management.

a) Enemies AI. I know its a massive game with many interacting game systems so not all of them can be as polished and deep as you wish. However it would be nice if AI got a boost in this on the next title. If I stealthy kill someone in a bandit camp, but someone will spot the body straight away the whole camp should get alarmed and be almost overzealous in the attempt to find the killer ( me ). As it stands now, it way too easy to avoid detection. Add an option to drag bodies, so we can hide the dead body in a dark corner. If someone gets low on health, maybe he should run and seek cover behind his friends.

B) dragons AI. They should have a threat level detection. What I mean they should engage the most dangerous enemies around and not fly away to attack a group of neutral mammoths while a group of soldiers or even the main character hits them with arrow after arrow. They jump from target to target far too often.

c) companions AI. We need command system so we can set tactics and plan engagements: keep distance, engage on distance ( bow, magic etc. ), defend me. The present "do that for me" system is too basic and buggy ( companions go out of stealth if you ask them to do something ). Companions AI sometimes bug out and they don't even defend themselves if someone is attacking them.


3. Difficulty level scaling
I play on Master difficulty level and I checked how it scales in comparison to expert and the default setting. The base line is that some of the enemies are too easy to kill while others are too difficult especially if you happened to fight against a group. The highest difficulty level results in the most difficult enemies like Bandit Chief being damage sponges who most of the time one hit you. However if you lower the difficulty level, the less demanding enemies like simple Bandits are too easy to kill. You should give them health boost and tone down the Bandit Chiefs. I am sure it applies as well to other classes of enemies like Black Mage class ( acolyte, wizard etc. ). Giants, bears, mammoths and sabre tooth cats at least on the master difficulty level are too difficult. From my experience what makes them too difficult is mostly the present combat system.


4. Combat system This is a BIGGY.
The combat system is better then Daggerfall, Morrowind or Oblivion, but still lacking. I love the RPG in TES, but I believe you should make the combat system more player skill based. I like how the fact you hit a target depends on your aim, judging the distance from the target. I love that successful block depends on your good timing. I love how you can circle most of the enemies and with good timing avoid being hit by walking away from the incoming hit.
However...time for the things I hate:

a) the lack of consistency.

It shows up especially if you fight against a powerful opponent ( I am level 20 on master ) for example a Bandit Chief. Never mind that most of the time you get one hit by them. I could stomach that as long there would be consistency in place.

However I get hit while I am out of range of their weapons, they execute strikes on me WITHOUT the animation of the strike being properly executed. There is no warning from the animation that your enemy tries to make a swing and you suddenly get frozen to the ground and all you can do is to observe how they kill you with a finisher. It often feels like: "I wasn't even there !" thing.

Another example:I wait for an opener, the guy swings his 2 handed sword, I step back, he misses and wait again because I know he quite often does another quick swing, he misses again, I go in, strike him and he suddenly skips first half of the strike animation and executes a finisher on me. WTF just happened ?

Another example: I power attack a guy, he DOES NOT stagger and one hits me. Power attack should always stagger, at least your size enemies.

Consistency people FIX it as it svcks half of the fun from your combat.


B) blocking
I don't know how is it on the high levels but I tend to now use it with 30 block. Not enough damage gets absorbed by the shield, what's the point of it then ? Levelling of it is a pain so even if it's gets much better on higher levels of perks I rather side step that swing.

c) Escape option.

I noticed quite often I lack of escape option, especially against dual wielding enemies who have way too more health then I have. They get really really close and its hard to disconnect from such a engagement, block deflects too little damage How about you add dodge move, maybe even roll if you wear light armour left, right, forward, backwards. Something which will get you out when you are surrounded by too many enemies. Obviously you could base the whole system on stamina to prevent abuse.

d) Fast counters ? Interrupt ?
Some enemies are just a pain to fight. Sabre tooth for example, fast, huge damage output and a lot of health. You can't dodge it, you can't block it, you can't stagger it or interrupt its attacks ? I can't relay shouts as the basic combat mechanics. Any feedback on this ?

The bottom line, make the combat more about timing, right movement and counters.

5. Quests atmosphere. Acting is bad, dialogues as well. The scripted scenes are not atmospheric enough, they don't carry enough emotions, sense of danger, fear, you don't feel attached to what just happened on your screen. Sometimes they are cringe worthy ( Companions Circle initialisation scene for example ). Look to Mass Effect, Dragon Age and Witcher 2 for inspiration. Allow some characters to grow beyond their flat 2d characters. Makes us to like them, laugh at them, love them and hate them. Try to connect us better with the plot, build our relationship with a companion and then kill him with one on the main baddies.

Ok I finished.

Anyway I love my experience so far, despite those annoying bugs and design decisions. I hope you will learn something new about your game from my wall of text !

It would be nice if you create feedback topics on the forums. Combat feedback topic, AI feedback, new bugs feedback etc.

I accidentally took everything out of a chest and found out too late that there's no 'store all' button. Manually placing every single thing back in a damn chest is incredibly tedious. Why'd they get rid of 'store all'?

Some tweaks to levelling, especially in the crafting skills would be nice.
It seems I went to 100 smithing very fast.
I think it would be better if at higher levels, you got less and less xp for things like leather bracers, so there would be more incentive to go for higher level of gear.

The new placement system is more difficult to use than in Oblivion, and even that was tricky at times (but I love the new bookcases)! Maybe bring back the old style, where you were able to pick things up at their edge and manoeuvre it, as opposed to always picking it up in the centre? I think that's the big difference anyway.

More in-depth companions would be great next time round. I know it was Obsidian and not Bethesda, but I really, really loved how New Vegas did it.

That's all I can think of. Overall I [censored] love this game. :happy:

1. I'm playing on Xbox and even I find it tedious at times. Especially the skill screen (it jumps all over the place when trying to select a perk). I'm not complaining, just saying that PC users aren't the only ones feelin the hurt.

2. The AI is a nice jump over Oblivion's. In Oblivion, I could stealth kill someone in the Imperial City market and no one would react. When you're in a bandit camp, they do react when I kill one of them (for me at least).

I believe they do have a command system (albeit very simple) for followers. You activate the dialogue and select "I need you to do something". You can then click on certain objects in the environment (e.g. read a book, move them to a different location, etc)

3. I salute you for playing on Master. I'm modest to admit that I get my butt handed to me even on normal. That being said, it is to be expected that enemies such as giants, mammoths, and other bigger animals will be harder on higher difficulties.

4. This one bothers me a little. I share the same issue of getting hit while being out of range. I switched to third person to test this, and I was getting slashed with a dagger while being almost a foot away from their reach. On the flip side, I can swing my sword from a pretty long distance away and still make contact with them.

Otherwise I really have no issues with the combat.

5. When looked at as a whole, Skyrim is a bigger game than Mass Effect or DA. As a result, you only have a set number of actors to do dialogue for the hundreds of NPCs you encounter, so there's bound to be similarities. My only comment is while it does cost more to hire more actors, couldn't they have written them more lines? A little annoying when every shopkeeper has the exact same response for every dialogue choice.