Everyone is obsessed with it.



So love it, hate it, praise it, whine about it, constructively criticise it, it doesn't matter. As I was getting ready to go to work, just now, I heard my next door neighbor - 12 year-old kid - talking to his mother:

"I used to go to school every day, then I took an arrow in the knee."

I had to share that before leaving.

Have a great day everyone.

yeah, I do miss the days when Elder Scrolls wasnt played by everyone......but those days dissappeared with Oblivion.



oh well.....

Hahahaha, I'm ashamed to say that, that has become my sarcastic response to whatever people say to me:

"Please hand your quizzes forward please, time's up"
'I used to be faster at taking quizzes, then I took an arrow in the knee' etc. etc. You tend to get the 70% who don't get it 20% who laugh and 10% who believe you.


@ da mage Yeah I feel really hipster by getting mad because EVERYONE plays this game. I've played TES since Morrowind, and since then I've beaten all 5, and I'm going to work on the other titles after Skyrim.

What is wrong with it is that too many people said very silly things about 'balance' and 'op' and now we are stuck with lame magic and insurmountable barriers throughout the gameworld because we cant jump anymore.
Yes.
Because underpowered and unimaganitive spells coupled with glitching yourself up a mountain is such fun.

I'm totally going to start using this meme in everyday situations. 'Would you pass the potato salad, please?' 'I used to be able to pass the potato salad until ...'



OMS.

I don't like that attitude personally, no offence.

They're great games - why shouldn't they be played by lots of people?

Ahhhh it's not a me only club....

I thought the return of dragons, a civil war and the fact that vampirism and werewolvery run rampant were the primary issues to tackle in Skyrim.

Tell you what, that high king was lucky he was murdered.

Let me pose a question in retort to your query:

Is it possible to keep the niched essence of a game made for niche customers anywhere near the same when you expand the playerbase by a power of ten?

After pondering that, try to feel less offended that we few who have been playing this series since it came out lament the departure of its best-kept-secret nature.

"But then i took an arrow to the knee" seems to be the "Thats what she said" line of 2011-12. Lol i love that line (both of them).

A simple answer to that. If Bethesda would release a game similar to Daggerfall (only on a higher technical level), the majority of players (who bought Skyrim) would NOT buy it. And because Bethesda knows that, they are making their games for a broader audience. What the above poster tried to say is that this niche is gone. But that is business, you can not earn millions with niches. And that makes many people sad, because Skyrim looks and feels more like a casual game and less than those unique, nerdy, nichy games of our past. But that is - as already mentioned - history.

Every single forum I am a member of has a very long thread in the Off Topic section devoted to Skyrim, including a very serious forum that rarely ever touches on such frivolities as games. In comparison, only one of those forums has any thread about Minecraft, BF3 or any other popular game from the last year. The Minecraft thread was the longest, and it took several months to get to 9 pages (400+ posts). Skyrim got 10 pages in about three weeks. I am seeing people that you would never normally identify as a "gamer" being openly obsessed with this one. Skyrim seems to have mainstreamed games unlike anything else I have seen and that can only be a good thing.

The term WoW-Killer has been thrown around a lot, for a lot of different games, in recent years. While I don't think Skyrim is it, I would be fascinated to see Blizzard's stat's since 11/11 (especially since this forum has resembled the Blizzard forums in recent weeks). I've never played WoW, but I do play LotRO and I know for a fact that there are a LOT of players that play it as a single player game, refusing to even speak to other players "because it breaks [their] immersion" and I have seen the same sentiment expressed for other MMOs over the years. I am someone that was raiding on a daily basis until Skyrim came out, but I haven't logged in to LotRO once since 11/11 and I dare say I am not the only one. I haven't cancelled my subscription, but at this point I have no idea when i am going back (I had planned to go back for the latest update, but I don't even know if it's out yet... and it was due in November). I wonder, given the numbers of people that seem to play MMOs as single-player games, just how much of a negative impact Skyrim has had on some MMOs out there.

lol Didn't see that spin coming when I posted the OP. But hey, awesome, that's what I love about Forums: it's very organic.

I don't know guys, I think both sides have legitimacy to it. On one hand I don't think it's a negative thing to have a game increase its popularity, I'd even risk saying that many features that Skyrim has (and we all love) are present because Oblivion was popular, probably more so than Morrowind (at least in terms of sales), which was probably more popular than Arena, so on and so forth. On the other hand, I see nothing wrong in a more historical audience feeling as though they lost "control" over something they love. That's a valid sentiment. Numbers can, sometimes, bring about changes, and that fear of it is only natural. I don't meant this as an offense, but I feel that the old Morrowind audience is a bit like the original Beatles fans from Liverpool. When the Fab Four became an international phenomena, the local girls felt somewhat disheartened by it (there's a beatiful documentary about this btw).



I don't mean to be confrontational Sulo, but can we really be so sure? The reason I ask is because I can't think of an example of a game that tried that and failed. I think there are a lot of assumptions (granted, educated and informed assumptions) that if a game retains its "hardcoe" feel to it, most people would not buy it. I don't know that this is true at all. I think we underestimate off the bat most of our youth (and its potential), regardless of the times we live in.

Last week I was reading that Cicero's work has a tremendous historical value not only for its content, but because a lot of the originals were preserved throughout the times and we can still have access to it in modern days. Well, here is this guy who lived more than 2000 years ago, talking about how the youth is lost, how young romans are losing their values, even the music they listen to is criticised by him (that part blew me away). I got one quote from him that I think fits this discussion:

"As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind."

What's wrong with Skyrim these days...?



Too many arrows...not enough knees.



:tes:

I love you. Well, not that way, but you know.

Finally someone who gets this place. The arrow joke was striking, good job.

You are far too intellectual for this forum, but I like a good discussion.

From the things I have read here, partly directed to me, I am a PC-elitist, an old nostalgic [censored] and a malcontent. And I have been told to [censored] off and go play Dwarven Castle.
It is a general trend that people (casual gamers) don't want to play something too challenging after a hard day's work. Bethesda responded to that general console-player attitude and cut out many things like the character / stat system, spellcrafting, too much reading etc. from the game. This game has been "simplified" to respond to a broader audience, a legitimate move by a profit oriented company. It is business after all. It is a trend after all. I have been reading about Kinect for Skyrim and stuff like that. I would not use it, but many people surely will, if it somehow will be implemented in the next TES game. TES VI on a Wii. Sure, why not. I am sure, they will sell 10 million copies just because of that.

But they have to cut out content that would be seen as too nerdy. And exactly that happened here. IMHO Skyrim is more family oriented than any other TES game. And it was coded on a console, a move that is justified by nearly 75% console buyers. Everything all right from their point of view. But personally I am bored and after having played approx. 100 hrs I have no motivation to do so. For me, as a TES fanatic, that is blasphemous, as I have all games except Battlespire standing on the shelf above the monitor. TES 3 / 4 / 5 even as collector's edition. And I don't feel like playing anymore. And this I share with MANY others, many of them being 30 or older just like me. You are right with the "Beatles" comparison. But I also have the right to state my opinion here and I do not allow to be shouted (written) down by a bunch of angry Dovahkids who try to defend their gaming idols, not having seen 25 years of gaming just like me.

I don't really share your point of view about the youth, for I have enough youth at my working place and they get dumber and dumber every year. When I started at my firm, many things like grammar, spelling etc. were taken into consideration while reviewing applications by young folks. But now? When I review applications with my boss, I can be lucky if we find one capable to write down full sentences in his mother tongue and show up on time to his hearing. Times have changed significantly and I doubt that is just like with Socrates:

"The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for
authority, they show disrespect to their elders.... They no longer
rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents,
pvssyr before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their
legs, and are tyrants over their teachers."

Many young folks nowadays give a sh*t about philosophers and education, I find your citation appropriate for many people found here on the forums but the general debate is lead by squashheads. Rome declined because people valued entertainment and powermongering more than the traditional republican values, that is why the senate lost power and the dictators came. But that is another story.

Back to topic: I am very convinced that NO COMPANY will try to make a complex game again because there is no market for that. Entertainment chnaged, people changed and old pricks like me who grew up with Westwood Games don't matter anymore. As í said in an other thread, even the caretaker at Bethesda does not give a damn about the "old gamers" because we are a maximum of 3-4% of sales. That is life, I can live with that very well. But I don't have to like or respect that. Besides that, name one more or less complex game being sold at the moment and having decent success. Even Dragon Age 2 has been dumbed down to the core.

As one guy at Bethesda said, they "wanted to get away from stats and things like that". That hurts a bit.

Thank for some intellectual exchange in this oasis.

P.S. Sorry for making errors, English ist not my native language.

Sulo, first of all, you are BOSS. Just came home from work and was flabbergasted by your response. Thank you very much indeed for a very in-depth and stimulating response, you do me much more credit than I deserve. Now some excellent points you made command addressing:

- I have to say that I don't feel as if you're a PC elitist. When I addressed you wasn't with that in mind, on the contrary. I think there's a fine line between a ) just feeling superior to the majority of people out of nothing other than the feeling itself and b ) having the courage of standing by what you believe, even if it makes you less "popular". You seem to be the option B imho.

- Being 33 years old myself, I can't disagree with you on your impressions on youth. You are right. But my point was more directed at the fact that, if values corrode, the youth cannot be blamed alone. I don't have enough knowledge of roman history, but doesn't it seem safe to assume that older people were just as guilty as the youth for the loss of republican values before the they became an empire? We are of similar ages, don't you think people in their 40s and 50s are as guilty as kids for messing things up? I so can relate with your impressions of the work enviroment, but what kills me is that I see advlts dumbing themselves down in their own little worlds, not giving a flying [censored] about others, just as much as kids. I wouldn't presume to know what the hell is wrong with our society, but I feel it in my bones, my soul and my balls that it's not only about spoiled-rotten kids. When I compare people in their 70s nowadays and people in their 70s when I was a kid, I can't help to think that something was lost for them as well.

- That being said, I think sometimes the feeling of getting older clouds our perception as to how bad things really are. I can agree that Skyrim is much more family oriented, but indulge me in making a comparison with Morrowind if you will, in terms of content:
a ) Look at the Civil War Quests. We have both sides being depicted in shades of gray. Neither the imperials or the stormcloaks seem to offer a clear-cut position that could seem the right one as default. The main characters, motiffs and quests have a "bad" side to it no matter who you choose. You have the empire and all its common-place problems about being tyrannical, bigoted towards old Nord values etc. But on the other hand Ulfric - which at first seems like the victim - turns out to be bigoted himself, mirroring some of the very same reasons for hating the empire in the first place.

b ) Speaking of irony, look at the Forsworn in Markath Sulo. They're persecuted by the Nords exactly for sticking to old gods and traditions, just like the Nords are persecuted by the empire. I remember - during a quest - dropping a forsworn woman down, she yelled "Mercy!" and I just finished her off with a full swing to her spine, breaking her in two with my warhammer, without a second thought. I actually felt bad after the quest was done and I was looting her body. I never had a feeling as strong as that when playing a game, it actually gave me pause and I went into that vibe of thinking (like that beatiful scene in The Two Towers when Faramir kills an enemy from a distant land): "How different is that woman from me? What are her dreams? How different is my right to fight the empire for my beliefs from her fighting me for hers?"

c) There are Quests in this game like the begining of DB. I mean, we get to a house where a child lives alone and, as we walk in, he's summoning dark gods to bring assassins to his door so he can have his headmistress killed, so that he can escape a life of oppression inside an orphanage. How PG13 is that, really?

d) Now take a look at Morrowind. Looking at it objectively, we were fighting this old bad guy, nothing else. It was easy is Morrowind, I actually feel MW motiff much more bland than Skyrim. Mowing down twisted evil creatures, deformed monsters, just so I can prevent a devil-type enemy from coming back to the world to bring about a reign of blood and destruction. Thinking back to my old fond MW, I gottta say that's my honest feeling. Granted, Skyrim Main Quest was a big downer for me. I mean, seriously, Dragons? That's it? Big bad dragons that want to devour us? Oooohhhh... But still, there seems to be much more intellectually-challenging motiffs in Skyrim than in Morrowind.

Anyways, this response is long enough as it is. I'll eagerly wait for a response to continue (if you want to, of course).

Where I agree with your statements, what rings to me about Skyrim is -That it stops to soon- everything is like a taste or a nibble and then quickly drawn away from your lips. the taste lingers you could only dream what more was possible as the sensation fades and distorts from what you originally sampled. blandness sets in as the mundane track of the games returns to fruition, I know I know it has to end sometime right? not my point, it ends too soon and falls short.

I don't want to delve into the "you can't have it all camp" but too much seems like a taste meant to be a meal but the dish never came.


if that made any sort of sense.

Coming to think of it, that actually made a lot of sense, I couldn't agree with you more. Despite their inherent value, they do seem short.

More people playing TES games=

More TES games with a bigger budget!!! Wooohooo!!

if you dont want to be called a pc elitist then stop saying things that make you one genius.

No I don't know what's wrong with Skyrim these days, cuz I've experienced nothing wrong with it

Me and my history professor were talking about skyrim today, yea it's surprising just how many people have this game.

You know what's wrong with Skyrim forums these days? everyone is obsessed with these arrow in the knee jokes! :wacko:

I found Skyrim to be like an Olympic-sized swimming pool full of beer. Only you discover that the pool is only 1" deep from end to end. Sure, it's still a whole lot of beer, it will still be fun to get through and will take you a long time to do, but it's deceptively shallow, and disappointing when you realise there isn't as much there as you first thought.