Ive played skyrim for 60 hours now. The graphics are good, besides the rather low quality textures. The combat is fine, fun even. Im yet to try stealth, but it seems an improvent over oblivion somewhat.

The voice acting is much much better. The cities are fine and realistic. There is an improved presence of lore in the game than oblivion, and the monsters have a similar veriety to previous games.

Why then, is this game less compelling to play? For my first 2 or 3 playthroughs of nehrim, morrowind and oblivion, i couldnt stop playing. By a playthrough, i mean every questline and main side quest, usually a 250 hour journey.

Im finding the quests in skyrim to be very very repeditive; its just dungeons after dungeons after dungeons with no real variance except the wall textures. Yes, the dungeons themselves are a massive imporvment, yet after doing one of each type, it feels as you have done them all.
The questlines seem to have suffered greatly in skyrim. I just completed the total of 6 quests for the companions (aka fighters) guild, and i was entirley unimpressed. It was 6 dungoens one after the other, with a certain event i wont spoil afyer about 2 quests. The fact that u gain access to their ruling council after one or 2 dungeons is entirley unbelievable, and each quest lacks backstory. In oblivion, you talked to the contractors or went to different cities such as the maglir quest or the amelion quest, and it ended with a massive finale. Companions ends with another dungeon.

The radient quest system is a massive failure. Because of this, or maybe just poor design, the quests feel more like chores than adventures or requests. The voice acting is good, but quest givers serve only to point me in a dungeons direction rather than give any interesting reasons for me to go there. I was sent to kill an ice wolf in riverwood. It was just standing there next to an npc, doing nothing. The npc diddnt react either; he diddnt aknowledge the wolfs presence or thank me after. The rat quest for the fighters guild in both morrowind and oblivion was much better, with the responsive npc.

There seem to be a major lack of non combat quests. There were multitudes of these in the previous games, such as simple armour delivery quests in morrowind or the mages reccomendation quests in oblivion. Many of the town quests in the previous games, such as the cheydenhall corruption quest, the thoroniir quest or the unexpected voyage quest from oblivion had small amounts of combat, yet had a massive twist or leadup that was interesting rather than hack and slash. That said, the deadric quests in skyrim are very good, and provide interesting and engaging environments and backstories.

Such repeditive quests with so little variation gives very little opportunity for roleplaying and reminds me of a fps more than a rpg. The world simply feels lifeless, with my character being pointed to objectives. This is enhanced by the inability to talk to the majority of npc's or the lack of random conversations between npc's. The conversations that do occur are obviously heavily scripted and seem very out of place.

The main quest itself, while a mild improvment over oblivion, isnt very compelling, not after playing nehrim which had a fantastic main quest that kept me glued to my seat for the full 60 hours untill its completion.

The enemies offer little challenge besides blow exchange; no tactics are ever needed exept for a high health bar, and i am playing on expert difficulty. I did play on master for a while, but it was just more tedious rather than mentally challenigng. The armor and weapon levelling is noticable once again, with a progression from steel to orcish to ebony ect as you level, which was a major problem in past tes games that still isnt fixed.

The dragons in the game are handled very well i think. Their animations are decent and their encounters are enjoyable, if a bit too easy in comparison to other enemies. The same cannot be said for the shouts. Collecting them feels like a rewardless chore; the only ones that are half useful are storm call (when it dosent hit ur follower) and unrelenting force to push enemies off cliffs. The rest often do negligable damage or are shrugged off by enemies as theyre too high level. Shouts seem to be the only major reward for most dungeons, besides a few pieces of levelled armor. This is almost identical to oblivions reward system for dungeons which recived much criticism for good reason.

There are a strange absence of quality artifacts in the game; my deadric sword blows all but molag bals mace out of the water, and the enchantments on most artifacts are petty and pointless, surpassed by random magic items. Some artifatcs simply fail to work as they should, such as the wabbajack wich is resisted by many enemies.

The crafting skills are very very tedious to use; id much rather pay npc's to do enchanting for me as in morrowind rather than grind over the altar.

I wont go to into the magic systems failures, as the problems have been complained about enough for everyone to understand. Its sufficient to say i will NOT be playing a mage character in this game, both from the lack of spell effects and spell making.

The changes to the character development system and levelling are probably the worst alteration in skyrim. I dont feel the urge to level as i did in the other games. Without classes, my character feels very bland and vanilla while the lack of attributes makes levellign rather unexiting. Classes are a important aspect of rpg mechanics, and their removal makes the game feel even more like a fps. I really enjoyed progressing through previous games with my jump height or run speed increasing or perhaps my carrying capacity and weapon damage. In skyrim, i just feel as i can take and deal more hits rather than a progression to power and a feeling of accomplishment. Levelling itself is exeedingly fast; after 60 hours im alredy level 37.

All in all, skyrim is a decent game as games go, but not as TES games go. For every improvment, there seems to be a simplification to go with it. For every piece of new content added, there seems to be two pieces removed and replaced by generic quests. I may finish skyrim; ill definetly give the other guild lines a go, yet i think ill stick to replaying the last two games. While the quests arent new or surprising, i still find them more enjoyable than those in skyrim.

Your sig pretty much says it all.

I'm not in the mood to play so much since even if I have level 100 skills I don't have enough perks to cover all of them.

So I guess you won't be playing it anymore after that then?

I agree with everything youve written.

I would like to add that levelling is wholly too easy in this game.
It took me next to no time to reach 100 destruction, one-handed, enchanting and smithing.
A leather bracer should not give the same xp as a daedric sword.
Levelling should take longer as you reach higher numbers.
You should not be able to get to 100 destruction in under 50 hours playtime, by just playing. Not paying trainers, not powerlevelling, just playing.

On the positive side:
Skyrim is an excellent dungeon crawler. Like Daggerfall, but with better dungeons.

Maybe if a good quest mod comes out ill play through it. Tears of the fiend was a good one for oblivion, and the lich one (illuminated order?) for morrowind was good. If questlines of these calibres are released, ill probably boot it up again lol.

I disagree with most of what you said, but I will admit that the writing has taken a turn for the worse. The guild quests in Skyrim are all extremely tedious. When even the Thieves Guild quests are nothing more than mindless hack and slash, you know there's a problem. Also, unlike the interesting and varied side quests in Oblivion, most of Skyrim's quests amount to going to some cave and finding some item, or just killing everything in the cave. It's a bit disappointing.

haha. It is a good dungeon crawler, but it svcks for me that i dont particlularily like single player dungeon crawlers. I have diablo II / III for that, which is much more fun with a party.

you probably havent foud the right quests yet. i dont think anythig except the misc quests gets boring. theres always at least some nice dialouge or something unique to find, interesting characters or in the best cases some massive scripted events.

about classes: theyre in there, they just dont have the stamp "classes " on them.

I think the game is near perfect. It just needs a few tweaks. Hopefully Bethesda will tweak it a bit. If not there is always mods. The problem I see with many balance mods is they all seem to go way too far. Same with the mods which add new animals and enemies to the land. The most popular mod of this type adds way, way too many to the land of Oblivion I think

:D

Well said, OP. I agree with pretty much everything you've said.

I personally enjoyed the balance mods in oblivion. I found that fcom added an extra layer of diversity and challenge to the game, and it was easy to change if it was too hard or easy.

Skyrim is a REALLY good game that would not be judged so harshly if we didn't have such high expectations prior to release.

Imo we are a long way from getting the kind of game that we hoped Skyrim would be...Although Skyrim is a definite step in the right direction!

Quests always tend to end up in combat both in Oblivion and Morrowind as well. There are a number of non-combat quests, mostly fetch-quests with or without an actual target. And you should try the thieves guild for non-combat quests.

And this "no classes" thing... don't make any sense.
Why? What's different? How would it help that there's a sign for you how you are a thief and act accordingly, than not having that sign and act accordingly.
The starting stats, attributes, whatever, don't matter, they never mattered. You could just start out as a mage, then equip a sword and train in that instead in Morrowind and Oblivion too.
Picking a perk will make you hit harder, use magic more, makes you able to use more things than before... just like Attributes did.
Seriously what's different? It's the same thing, they do the exact same thing, only the execution is different, there's no depth, character description, whatever involved.
Characters are still different, you said it yourself, you haven't tried every aspect yet, you cannot with only one character.

Oh and spellmaking won't make spells better... at all.

A lot of it is probably personal taste. I find Skyrim superior to Oblivion in pretty much every way. I don't think it can really be compared to Morrowind because they're so different.

I'll probably play less total hours than I played on either of those though. But that's just me/my life changing. I have a lot less free time now!

No Bethesda Defense Forces needed. You obviously don't like the game so go back to whatever you enjoy.

Personally, I enjoy this game immensely. I'm about 60 hours in, am Level 22, and have not taken any skill to 100 yet. It all depends on how you play. But there's no need to torture yourself needlessly.

This post made me LOL..



No, some of us are enjoying it, and realizing this is what the game is, some of us have a few problems with it let them known so they can be rectified in future patches but still playing it and accepting thats the way it is, and there there's bashers who just moan non-stop like a stuck [censored] record.

Yeah Dungeon crawlers are +-.. If I wanted to hack and slash to meet objectives which were pointed out to me I'd probably jump onto WoW or something..

Go replay Oblivion or Morrowind then.

Go and Play WoW Then? And get of these forums as its so BAD for you.


But you won't will you?

Weird thing is i find that some side quests in Skyrim are much more interesting than that of the guilds. For example im doing this quest now which
Which is quite interesting And as far as i've gotten to on the guild quests, they've been "blahblahblahblah go to that dungeon go to this dungeon"
which is kinda :sadvaultboy:

No.
And this comment that is repeated ad nauseum is bloodcurdlingly irrelevant.

There are a few major gameplay problems with this type of play. I thought them obvious but as it appears i misjudged, i will elaborate briefly.

Without classes, you level so fast as you increase all the skills though various use. This levels u up. If the skills you increased do not help you in combat, such as lockpicking, pickpocketing, sneak (if you arent a stealth character), or if you level many skills but none of them very high, such as 15 skills around 50, your pretty much stuffed. Enemies will level up yet you will be incapable of dealing with them effeicently. With classes, you can pick a few skills which you want to focus on, and have them level faster. You can then feel free to still use the other skills without fear of levelling too high. In skyrim, i completley avoid the magic skills. I would love to use them, but cant as they will level me too fast and leave me useless in dungeons. This, i feel is a terrible restriction and i see it makes hybrid classes impossible.

For a second, this new system feels so boring and lifeless. Your character has no identity, nothing that defines him/her. The lack of attributes cant be compensated by perks. I dont see a perk for better jump heights, I dont see a perk for better running speeds. Stamina boosts increase carring capacity, but this isnt good if you want to be a mage and put your points in magika. The attributes were like a record of your characters progress in the world, without them it just feels unrealistic.

As for spellmaking, it did make spells better in the last 2 games so why not this one? I made spells that had over 7 effects in oblivion. I varied magnitudes, durations, combinations and the like for different situations, and i feel that my mage character was very fun to play because of it. He could take out enemies with the same speed as combat or stealth characters, which i found fun.

I disagree with you on the main quest line, i thought Oblivion had a wonderful but short main quest and it was much more compelling than killing a couple of dragons.

Mythic Dawn, Daedras, Tiber septim, The Blades, Oblivion gates, Paradise, theese are just a fraction of the things you encounter during the main quest, it has so much more content and story to it.

It's definitely still suffering some blandbilivion syndrome with the random perfect fit magic item 4 U syndrome where there's nothing unique in the world. Hell there's very little quests that are non combat. *sigh* It's good, but will never be AS GOOD as Morrowind in my opinion. Unless their DLC goes back and rewrites tons of quests to be more interesting. It's got that bad dungeons and dragon vibe still where you look up the 100 chart and it rolls up random encounters on this d100 chart. Unfortunately they seem to have forgotten unless you want to play hack and slash or something resembling reality you cant always fight and random quests are just there to fill the gap between more interesting ones. Not be the bulk of the game, it's even more irritating when I have to do these stupid boring quests to advance to the fun ones. Take the Thieves guild.... grrrrr! There's just too much little things for Skyrim to be game of the year for me.

i agree with pretty much everything of what you sayd...but..........

i really enjoy the enchantings system where you have to learn your spells before using it on your weapon.
the smithing is really cool but gimme some unique weapon i can create...its bugging me that most of the things i built in the forge, i have big chance of finding them in a box somewhere.
no dragon weapon?????? and why would i bother mining ebony if i cant make mixed ebony/gold unique great sword that i can only forge and not find on a bandit dead body?????

the quest and dungeon part i agree...far more intresting in Morrowind and oblivion.