Hello @ll,

this post should be a kind of feedback for Skyrim and my impressions about gameplay.

First, Skyrim is a wonderful game. Many, many games do not nearly achieve to same depth in gameplay like Skyrim does.

However, it may be due its exceptional state or just that Skyrim emphaizes on different aspects of gameplay,

still some things are terribly bad and plunge my overall good impression.

One of the most immersive aspects in such an open world, dungeon & adventure game is the lighting.

In Skyrim it was not really good, well it could be worse, but Skyrim's wasnt as outstanding as other things.

After trying about 20 mods, each different and full of promises, I accept this as something not being possible with the last console generation.

When my character steps into a dungeon with a torch, I do not expect some walls to flicker, some not. Well, do I need a torch at all?

There were so much irritating lighting based 'effects', they just broke immersion. Why having a day/night cylce if it is just lowered brightness?

In fact, we all know how night time, full moon, etc, automatically makes fantasy tales crawl out of their caves and tombs.

The lighting is a huge factor in terms of immersion.

Talking about immersion can be a endless discussion in Skyrim, or in the RPG genre itself.

But after hundreds of hours I do encounter the same behavior, in every city. Ok, there are dragons,

but why does no NPC slip on ice, stumbles the stairs, or just throw up his last meal in the corner.

I really thought Bethesda would offer some different DLC, like a NPC behavior pack, or a Better Bandits DLC, etc, etc.

I know there are mods, but they just reuse the same stuff, with different values.

After some time nothing about the NPC behavior was in any way surprising me.
They walk their route, they talk, sit, sleep, well, we all know, ....and they vanish through doors.

I think the fact how every room, city dungeon is accompanied by a loading screen is the most disturbing and annoying quirk you could possibly think of.

Usually I used this a my coffee break.

Another DLC I was missing could be like the 'Skyrim variants' DLC.

In every city static objects like chairs, tables, embers, etc, etc look just the same. Yawn.

...even in dungeons and ruins. Was mass production already invented in Skyrim?

Just a lot of those little things, break immersion so bad.

Why can't I light a torch with a fire spell, why cant I extinguish it with a frost spell?

Looking at some of the new mods for Skyrim, it is all about what was missing, not huge Quests, but little immersive things:

- locational damage...I loved bashing those giants by just repeatedly hitting their toes with a mace

- hair and cloth simulation...yummy

- water physics

- weather physics like seasonal foilage, volumetric clouds (my head aches because of Skyrims sky),

- interactive environments (did you every slip on Skyrims rocks?)....etc. etc. the list is long.

This wouldnt be a problem, if Bethesda would be aware of this, and how they could have provided DLC.

Why do they throw new story lines at me, when immersion is already broken in the main game, due repetetive elements?

Is it just that the common gamer doesnt take notice at all? Or doesnt Bethesda?

Well, I guess the last is most likely the truth.

All those things wouldnt be of any significance in a MMORPG game.

Conclusion:

I think Skyrim's gameplay elements were explicitly cut down towards a MMORPG predecessor, making a seamless transition of most gamers more possible.

It is just like Skyrim, but better and with real other companions.

In fact, thinking about how Skyrim has been 'planned' in such a way and the concept behind, is disapponting,

Elder Scrolls is not for the players, but for the revenue. I hope, in the end every of those calculations does prove wrong.

I don't disagree. But at the same time I feel it is unfair to single Skyrim out for these criticisms. Almost every single thing you say here in your post could also be said about the other games in the series. It is my opinion that this is more of a "Thoughts about Elder Scrolls" than a "Thoughts about Skyrim" thread.

To me it looks more like you are searching for the flaws after playing 'a wonderful game'. It's a bit weird how you do not mention the things that make the game great, like you are depressed or something.

Coding a game like Skyrim is one of the most difficult things people can do, and a really small amount of people on earth is even able to do it on the quality level of Bethesda games. Using this older engine, and looking at all the things they did put in the game, you must be pretty spoiled if you still think it is not good enough. Skyrim is the game with the most details in a single game. Look at all the books, conversations, questlines, random events, dragons, smithing/enchanting/alchemy, the number of different objects you can use, unique weapons and items, music, followers, magic, sneaking, guilds, etc, etc.

And then you say you would like to have hair simulation...

And that the sky gives you head aches... (o h r e a l l y ?)

And for the love of Talos, there really is nothing changed in Skyrim because it would be good for TES Online. TES Online will totally not be a game like Skyrim with real companions. It should not even be compared to eachother. TES Online only shares the game world and lore.

Well, I think the game is fantastic. Somethng has got to be right if I still play on a regular basis after two years.

No, I was quite sure about that. There was no option for an online variant of Elder Scrolls back in the time when Morrowind and Oblvion were produced.

Well, I remember how everyone freaked out because of the Pixel Shaders in Morrowind and the water surfaces.

Still until today I refuse Morrowind because of its horrible combat and animation. Skyrim has put this in the right direction.

But after every game, Bethesda does use the feedback, the new participant in the series introduces wonderful improvements.

The initial Oblivion presentation was generally accompanied by Awws & Ohh's. They were freaking out because of the graphical representation of the forrests and the big story/questline.

No one argued about an online Elder Srolls, probably due the technical limitations, which seemed to have too much impact on gameplay back then.

But I guess, while developing Skyrim, Bethesda thought about other strategic goals.

Still WoW was the most successful RPG ever, a money making machine, and a powerful technical platform of a new console generation has been awaited.

Powerful enough to allow for a MMORPG with combat mechanisms like in Skyrim, which we are all used to now.

I really wondered why they did not implement locational damage in Skyrim, as I mentioned above. To me it looks/plays like a quirk, when encountering dragons, or giants,

and suddenly you recognize it doesnt matter where you hit them, just hit the shape somewhere. Simplistic.

But....a lot of gamers will not miss anything when playing ESO, as they are used to Skyrims combat.

In fact, playing this style of combat online is an invention, as far as I know. WoW totally relied on the point & click mechanics. Boring but successful.

By knowing the Elder Scrolls series, you notice that many improvements Skyrim brought, came from the Mod Community (MMM, DR, DPCA, Vilja),

or they were improvements of Oblivion quirks (seamless body textures...lol, stutter animations, generic dungeons).

You are right about that, though nobody could deny why Skyrim still was put behind its possibilities.

Some of these criticisms are fair, some not. Your points about the lighting and some more locational effects are good points but you can't expect TES games to be pioneers in water physics/cloth physics/volumetric clouds. TES games have a big scope and they need to be careful with how to spend their development time and computing power. Other games don't have an open world or advanced AI so they can focus more on all kinds of physics engines.

There is a risk for bethesda that one of these days an open world RPG is going to blow TES out of the water. The TES engine is dated, the main storylines have never been great and NPC AI leaves a lot to be desired. Also how you progress as a character is pretty lame. All you do is receive less damage and do more damage. Combat is essentially the same in the late game as it is in the early game.

And your point about interactive environments is right on the money. TES worlds are already built up like legos. How much effort would it take to introduce a lot of legoblocks that can be interacted with? The oil puddles in skyrim were ok but completely out of place in most dungeons. And making the world darker and allowing people to light torches with either fire magic or by bashing it with a burning torch of your own would be a cool and simple step forward.

I completely agree. However, I believe that many of these flaws are due to the limits of the PS3 and 360. As for the PC, well, due to the limits of the PS and 360 they probably just didn't bother to add water physics and better lighting etc. I'd personally blame the bad AI on 11/11/11.

However, I think that in the next TES all of these small problems will be ironed out.

Regardless of the flaws and such, I enjoy and love Skyrim. It is the only game that I have played so far where you can do what you want to do, when you want to do it, and how you want to do it. The beauty of the land is awesome, the world encounters keep the surprise going, and I am still playing it since the day I received it on 11/11/11. I play on xbox so there are no mods involved. I still have not been to all the places in Skyrim. Enough said.

Fair to say someone else took notice of these limitations. Ok, a virtual world is virtual, dont expect everything to work out like 'real'.

But to take notice that this isnt the point, makes these limitations more visible, since they break immersion and gameplay somehow.

Jumping around in the mountains of Skyrim really reminded me of the late 90's games, where your character was able to run up every steep hill,

while looking at those strange texture blocks on your screen. Skyrims mountains look cool, but why cant I really fall down or slip?

Though, I took notice that enemies now hide behind objects if they cant reach you while your char is able to hit them from a safe spot vice versa.

LoS behavior in Sykrim, advanced AI, which had not been implemented til version 1.2, if I remember right.

But this didnt work out for me, the opponent choses still the same pattern.

A opponent, intelligent enough, should try to hide not more than twice behind an object and come running back at me.

Just in minutes I thought about a solution for this quirk, and gameplay was broken.

Well, this is just one of the quirks, but they break gameplay, and you can't really change them with the CK.

Roleplaying elements were taken out to a point it hurts. A low intelligence of the creature can be reflected by stereo-type behaviors, others don't.

Conclusion: Watering down a roleplaying game which was famous for its role playing elements is amazing.

Everybody started thinking this way, since they werent satisfied with Skyrim anymore.

Lucky you are.

That's me right there - exactly.

Anyways OP, I think there's a tendency - due to how seemingly close to perfection Skyrim is - to want every little detail to be that much more perfect.

That being said, I think it's good to keep throwing ideas and improvements like these out there.

....due to how seemingly close to perfection Skyrim is....

Totally depends on how deep your knowledge about software/gaming development and computer sciences is.

It is possible you even wouldnt notice if Skyrim wasnt. Differences in knowledge about a certain topic tends to influence your opinion, what is called subjectivity.

And exactly this is what I wanted to express by making this thread.

Bethesda doesnt work miracles anymore as a lot of gamers are not aware and honestly satisfied with the product.

Most likely caused by the trap of complexity, common in software development.

But this is not gaming industry in general, hopefully...

To be honest, I think a successor to Skyrim, really defining the limits, can't be done by standard development processes as Bethesda does.

Only steady and continous improvements depending on feedback from gamers would make it possible to refine a game to its limits over a long period of time.

Bethesda is still behind closed doors, and certainly not willing to change this yet.

You can't have everything. But Skyrim gives us a lot of awesome stuff. And I expect ES VI will give us some even more awesome stuff.

I just re-started Skyrim, after giving it a break for a while, having played for hundreds of hours on one character. In the few days I have been playing, I have found quests I hadn't seen before (I had no idea I could be helping the goddess Mara, heh), and am taking quite a different course with this character than I had prior. The ES games have always done that for me - they are broad enough to let me paint a new canvas whenever I feel like it, and I enjoy it. And frankly, the way people toss around immersion is just so... eh. I get engrossed in this game and a few select others. Most games I just have fun with and move on. Skyrim, Morrowind, Oblivion and a few other personal favorites take me in to the game - and provide hours of pleasure.

Well, I know all those fancy stuff, the pictures from the Dragonborn fighting a huge monstreous dragon, and still everyone has this impression what the pictures make you see.

But what is it? You are aiming at a single mesh, blood textures are applied, and some animations are played along. Well, thats it. Oh, dont forget the red health bar. And you are impressed.

Tossing around immersion? What?

Where is the spot my arrow pierced the wings of the dragon, what happens when I bash my axe in his thigh? I want to bone crush his tail with my steel hammer.

And what do I get? A blood texture, and a animation, still the same mesh. Oh, wow, how tricky Bethesda's FX Studios have become in impressing gamers like you.

Well, another quest, no problem, if I actually had to think about how to solve them, something like a mind-boggling puzzle, or a skill test. But most of the times I just am offered a mesh feast, bashing a red health bar wired mesh.

The factor immersion is not a luxury value here, my friend, but necessary. Playing games constantly through my fantasy googles from childhood, doesnt really help.

Hmm, I like this discussion, I m glad about everyone who posted so far. Makes me feel like M'aiq the Liar.

I am another who does agree with you. It is a shame that the game world is just repeated from one side of Skyrim to the other. One reason that so many people loved Shivering Isle and Dragonborn is at last we get to venture somewhere else and see some new furniture!

Lighting is huge part of any game that really needs to see an improvement. John Carmack has said at many keynote speeches that we have still got miles to go with dynamic lighting-shadow that reacts to the world around us. So fingers crossed that things keep improving.

Beth would have a long list of new things they want to try at the start of each project, but sadly very few ideas ever reach us. And most of those ideas are only a variant of things that have come through the modding community.

I really love Beth games and still would rather play their games than something like the rubbish that Bioware puts out, but I am very worried about the downward direction of story writing and character creation.

Skyrim is the most well-crafted game in ultimate summation that I've ever played.