My characters have always bent the rules a bit. If it's not nailed to the wall it may end up in my pockets.

If someone happens to see me, well, too bad for that someone.

It's a habit I developed in Ultima VII and fine tuned by playing Ultima Online for many years.

So I guess I'm an ingame thug for real.. or something...

This was really well said. While I do want killable NPCs, I want that choice to be mine, not the game's, through monster attacks. If *my character* goes on a murderous rampage, I'll gladly live with those consequences. If A Vampire or Dragon decides to? Not the same, to me.

My gripe is with the AI. As others have mentioned, they fight Dragons and Vampires bare-knuckled. When a "quest NPC" runs to attack a Dragon with fists a-pumpin', I call that a glitch

You know.... there are limits. And there are limitations. They are NOT one and the same. I don't appreciate an AI which decimates people I need because they're quest givers (and I ESPECIALLY don't appreciate that when I have a quest to turn in and - the AI has decimated the NPC who needs to accept that quest turn-in) - and that's the point at which I decide to recuse the limits.

I might still accept the limitations - but.... well, there ARE limits to my patience with game AI.

[and.... if that makes no sense.... I apologize. WAY too much wine tonight.]

I don't mind reloading for convenience at times either. I can't do the DiD kind of stuff after investing so much time into a character.

Essential or non-essential can go both ways, but I agree with you that we haven't really been consistent as a player/ fan base. In Morrowind, everyone was killable to which people complained that there was no way to complete crucial/ main quests after they killed some NPCs and then saved the game despite clear warning on the screen after doing so. In Oblivion we received some essential NPCs and then people complained they couldn't kill the annoying ones. Personally I don't mind some essential NPCs. At least for crucial ones.

Skyrim might perhaps have essential NPCs where they are not needed? Such as Rolff Stone-Fist. At least I can't figure out what he's crucial for, yet he's essential. Then again, not making some crucial NPCs essential can be an interesting game mechanic for some more interested in immersion. Myself, next time I find the skooma addict slain in Riften, I know now to reload if I want Honeyside. I for one also am not a fan of the frequency of vampire attacks in town. Ironically I never seem to get dragon attacks in town unless I fast travel. Dragonborn cultists usually aren't too much of a problem since they are mainly after the PC and they don't respawn if you don't pick up their note to start the Dragonborn quest line.


Hearing about the new gameplay mechanic in FO4 where you apparently can build your own settlement and people eventually repopulate it if NPCs die off, I wonder if town attacks will be less of a concern for future TES games. Of course, it can be a bit frustrating too that NPCs tend to be so suicidal thinking they can take on any foe.

Agreed. AI with more self preservation might be a good thing too.

Yes I do not reload when a follower dies...

I am too. For the record, I'm not at all bothered by essential NPCs. I don't go around slaughtering towns, guards or shopkeepers. I think that sort of behavior is juvenile. I'm perfectly fine with having essential NPCs in my games. I don't even notice them, to be honest. I couldn't tell you which NPCs in Oblivion or Skyrim are essential and which are not because I so rarely attempt to kill one.

I think I'm just fed up with ten long years (as of this coming March) of incessant whingeing and whining and petulant complaints about essential NPCs. To listen to some players you would think that Oblivion and Skyrim had been utterly and completely ruined in every conceivable way by essential NPCs.

*sigh* I guess I've just become overly-sensitive about it.

I don't really spend that much time worrying about what other people think or complain about when it comes the games I enjoy, or how I enjoy them. That's their personal preferences, not mine. If they want realism, maybe they should turn the game off and go outside. The whole point of playing a game is that it is a game, not real life. It should be enjoyable for the player, and centered around the player. People getting touchy about who wants to reload or who wants more or less killable npcs doesn't make sense at all. Who cares? Just play your game your way, and have fun with it.

I live with the consequences of "my" actions. While on the 360, I came up with my own set of "rules" for keeping NPC's alive, from both Dragon and Vampire attack's. Even so I always made a save before entering a town in the evening hr's and never entered at night. Very rarely did I loose my "essential" shop keepers or other NPC's and more times than not I left it as is.

On the PC I make sure to use "When vampires attack", "Run for your lives" and I also have "Dawnguard Sentries plus" .. I could through "Deadly Dragons" make NPC's and Followers essential and for one play through I did, but it seemed to me that NPC's who don't run should have a chance to die, so I do not do that anymore.

This is my choice and I understand those who feel differently, I never griped about essential NPC's in Oblivion, reason being that I felt and still feel, that after XXX amount of time someone else should "spawn" and start another shop if all the choices have died. ....In skyrim most especially as the town's don't really seem full as it is.

I live with ALL consequences no matter how inconvenient for me. Life has a habit if throwing you curved balls......I allow that to repeat in game. It doesn't mean I don't hate vampire attacks with a furious vengeance. I rush in to save my fav npcs if at all possible....often it is not, but c'est la vie.


How often I have lost very high hours Dead is Dead gameplay when a dragon just plops down right on my char and instantly does the chomp, shake, spit, rag doll thing in kill cam. How often I have accidentally shot Lydia in a fight when she is weakest and lost her. How often has Lydia or a stupid dog nudged me off a ledge to my Dead is Dead doom. How inconvenient to have Alvor and Lucan killed in the street leaving me no traders in Riverwood. But these things happen and I svck it up and press on.


But wait I have reloaded a very rare time or two when I do something like........if I'm enchanting stuff and I have limited materials that are hard to replace (say dragon bones) and then I accidentally quickly click the wrong enchantment like say magicka Regen when I Intended Stamina Regen. Then yes...I have reloaded to undo my error......but it has nothing whatsoever to do with game play or characters.


To me....reloading to change the course of history is tantamount to cheating.....and it feels like it. I can't live with that feeling. The Dead is Dead play style is strongly tied in with that ethos.

I could understand it being cheating IF you're playing a Dead is Dead competition, but I think cheating might be a strong word for an individual game. Cheating to me is exploiting glitches, or grinding skills to level up. Reloading when a follower pushes you off a cliff or plunges itself into the way of your power attack seems fair because it's not your actions or choices whose consequences you're living with. It's the AI's actions.

Just had an excellent example of this happen to me. A blood dragon attacked Riverwood and managed to kill a guard and, more unfortunately, Alvor and Sigrid before I could finish the beast off. Being an imperial, and having followed Hadvar, this presented me with a very nice roleplaying opportunity - the death of one very close to me who helped me in hard times gives my character the desire to continue with the main quest and find a way to stop the dragons. Sure it's annoying, but in a way it's a pleasing way of advancing my character's story.

Bad.zombie.....yep....I absolutely understand that most people would reload lots of stuff that I simply won't. And I also understand that where I Regard a reload as a cheat on game world destiny.......many people will simply choose to decide it is ok......for them!


For me.....the consequences of AI choices or even foul ups......equates at least in spirit.....to the way our real world deals out unfair and unforseen problems at us all of the time.


If I park illegally and get a parking ticket......I can't reload life just because in my opinion the traffic cop should have stayed on his lunch break instead of booking me. I have to svck it up and get on with it. That's how I play Skyrim....life like choices and consequences. BUT I accept that it a very harsh discipline and very punishing to play this way......I do not expect others to follow suit.


Playing Dead is Dead on Legendary is also a harsh discipline and punishes imprecise play.......see a pattern here. I like it tough

Rick.... the reason I play games like this one is to get OUT of the whole "real world" I live in.

I get enough harsh realities in real life, I guess for me gaming is about providing an escape where I'm ultimately in control and if I fowl up somewhere, I get a do-over. If I ever got to a point in my life where my biggest dose of reality came from a video game, then that would be pretty awesome. Unfortunately for most of us life is a constant struggle with no mercy or forgiveness, and no reset on the bad decisions we've made, or way out of the consequences of the actions of others or ourselves. So gaming provides a tiny fantasy world where you can have that control over things you wouldn't in real life. I can't keep my friends from dying in the real world. But at least in Skyrim I can reload.

Yup. Welcome, my brother.

I've been there and done that in real life. I'm old enough to want to quit remembering 50 years or more ago - but then again, if I remember those stupidities, perhaps I (at the very least) can not do those very stupid things again.... I would hope....

A game like this one (or any of the others I play) allows me to be somewhere else and someone else. I don't have to deal with the real world thank all the deities. I get to escape every bit of the world I must deal with every day.... in real life....

Now. I'm not a purist of ANY sort. Each person plays this game in the manner which suits her at that given moment. I shouldn't have made such a pointed "attitude" post earlier.... as everyone really should play this game however fits him or her at a particular point in time. My apologies if I offended anyone....

I don't have any sort of "always" about this. It's quite true that if I'm playing a game like Skyrim, it takes me out of this "real world." But, if I'm doing it right, it takes me into a different "real world."

The really neat thing about TES games is that I can decide how that "Skyrim reality" works. I don't have to abide by one set of rules, as we have in the "real world." So every character can be governed by a different set of rules, some quite harsh, and others quite lenient. And it's never "cheating," because I'm following the rules I established.

It's the wonderfulness of the single player game.

Yeah, that's also very true. I honestly have a serious issue with the whole "you're CHEATING" thing in a SPMR game.

This thread is actually a pretty cool look into individual philosophies on not only gaming, but life.

I think there are some people who invest quite a bit into role playing their characters, getting into the whole immersion thing. Some even to the point of having deep emotional reactions to the death of their favorite npc, or treating an npc as if it's an actual person. (reading Skyrim Confessions is a pretty good look into how seriously some people get about it) I'm not slamming that by any means, but I don't understand it at all. Those people seem to be more the ones who play the total consequence style of playing. But in my opinion you can't get truly immersed into any video game, because ultimately you're still sitting on the sofa with a controller in your hand starring at a tv screen or computer monitor. So you know it's a game. None of the mechanics in Skyrim are even remotely realistic. Hunting, preparing food, finding shelter, engaging in melee combat, are all very different things in real life. Much harder. So applying a rule of thumb that my game has to be realistic in the sense that I have to live with whatever consequence no matter if it was a poor decision on my part or a glitch in the game is illogical when I'm applying that to a game centered around unrealistic concepts.

For whatever reason you decide to play your game in whatever way you've chosen, just remember that your rules don't apply to anyone else. Everyone plays how they want to and that's ok. But the game itself has no preference. There is no ideal way that was chosen by Bethesda for you to enjoy your experience in Skyrim. Were this not the case, saving and reloading wouldn't have been an option to begin with.

Oh so true. I've BEEN elk hunting late October in the snow (or on a "good" hunt, the rain) - we had a tent for cooking and getting out of the weather - more or less. We slept in the back of the truck (a cab-height shell over the bed, with an air mattress between us and the cold.... it didn't work all that well let me tell you - I wasn't warm for FIVE MINUTES in FOURTEEN DAYS - oh, and btw, that was back when I was "young"....) and we had to walk the horses a mile down the road to water a couple times a day, which not only was miserable for ALL of us, it meant we had to deal with.... well in Skyrim they'd be known as "bandits" probably....

Seriously.... every person needs to play this game in the way that's most fun for that person. FUN is the operative word. Yeah, I think at some point back when, I probably said those elk hunts were fun. Well....

I never have hunted, but when I was 17, I broke my leg. I remember thinking if only I had a loaf of bread or an apple I found in a tomb that had been sealed for 4000 years, I could fix this and walk home.

Realism!

Oh jeez. I've never had a broken bone. Not once in 68 years. I can only think how miserable that was.... but I can't know....

I'm with Rick on this one...for me reloading for anything just feels wrong and I don't seem to enjoy the game afterwards.


It also adds some tension, unpredictability and twists to each playthrough's story. If I drop my PS3 controller on the floor and hit the right trigger, shouting Dragonfire all over the nearest guard then to me that's my character unable to control this new power they have discovered and they probably need to get out of town sharpish.


You never know where you will end up or what cave you will seek shelter in and what this will lead to.


I seem to be lucky in that so far on my playthroughs Vampire attacks have been rather insignificant, in fact on my last one I was up to level 16 and never set my eyes on a single vampire. So when Durak comes up and tells me about the Dawnguard I was all 'huh, vampires?'. If vampires slaughter my favourite NPC there's your perfect motivation to go join the Dawnguard and continue the story in a different direction.

And it tastes good too! I always love to tell the bandits and draugr - Hey stop that! I'm eating!

Sulu (metaphorically mate).....yes.....it is the FEELING that after a reload the game FEELS wrong........FEELS like I have cheated. It is a feeling that, like I have said, is tied in with the DiD ethos. That FEELING ruins the game and takes the satisfaction out of it.


Playing lots of DiD ( 100% in my case) CAN kinda CONDITION you into a particular "MIND SET"........you might call this a spot of " do it yourself Brainwashing" if you like, but I could no more play on a reload than I could say keep a character alive that I had plainly seen killed on screen. And believe me I have tried.


A brief story.....

A couple of months ago now I lost a very high DiD "char" ( yes Ulda) with well over two hundred hours on her (on that particular play through, I mean). It was blatantly unfair. She was one hit kill cam'ed by an archer. Despite having very high armour and health.....no regular archer in that location could take even half her health......but this one single archer did. After much deliberation me and my DiD compatriots realised the archer had been bestowed with the special npc only "extra damage" perk ( 3x kill power). There is no way to know this for sure....it's a variable game mechanic AND you have no advance indication that it's going to occur. Very very unfair....I felt sick. In desperation I decided to regard it as a fluke and just carry on. I COULD NOT. The knowledge that I had seen Ulda sliding backwards through the dirt in kill cam haunted me over and over. I agonised over the pros and cons.....the unfairness...but she was dead, but shouldn't have been, but it was a game mechanic not a glitch. For the amusemant of my player buddies....I penned out in forum my thought processes as a fairly real looking court case.......arguments for pros and cons becoming defence and prosecution. My conscience become the presiding judge and common senses becoming the jury.


You would expect me to cheerily decided that my char had 'got off' and survived.......but to my own surprise....the arguments fell the wrong way. She was convicted and sentenced to total deletion.....harshly, to teach myself a lesson ( the judge decided) ...that sentence included her progenitor save. The sacrosanct build save that can resurrect her. I was gutted....destroyed. I had lived with her for THOUSANDS of play hours. Now I had to really kill her to satisfy my inner demons.


THAT is how seriously the feeling of a reload affected me.


In the end, on a happier note....I simply could not live without her in my world....many days elapsed and I found that I simply HAD to have her back. Other chars held no joy for me. I spent hours with her remembered character personality rebuilding her 'On screen likeness' It took a long time (there's no preset save on Xbox), but eventually I had her body rebuilt....like Frankenstiens creation.... Ulda lived again. It felt weird at first like breaking in new shoes, but we gelled rapidly as her old personality acclimatised to the rebuild.


So....you see.....for me.....Reloads are never an option.....the price is too high

I don't know, Rick, I think you might take your games a little 'too' seriously for my tastes. I think it's good to have a competitive spirit, even when competing with oneself, but when that becomes an act of self abasemant or punishment, then where's the 'fun' in that? Ultimately, if you love a character and have hours invested into them, you shouldn't dog yourself out for reloading when the investment is ripped away form you. Especially when it's an out of your control event, game glitch, or other Skyrim nonsense that plagues the game. I don't think sadism makes for good game play, imho.