Skyrim: what else can Bethesda cut?

i hope they leave it as it is as personly i think the things you'd change would ruin it i want the next one to be same but bigger
not eleder scrolls 6 the spaz edition

BOOOOO to this article BOOOOOOO I say.

Seriously man, a rare low point for you this, the writing is bland, the point is unclear and your arguments are weak. It reads more like a brain fart of bad sentence structure and unevolved ideas and points than an actual article of substance. Are you still hung over from the weekend or something?

Seriously, go stand in the corner and be ashamed of yourself.

Then, whilst you are there, consider this, if the blend of shooter and RPG in Rage is such that it makes a dissapointing game, then doesn't the moral there ALSO count here? That trying too much to blur the lines can be a dangerous path to take? Skyrim has done well to limit the stat crunching side of its RPG, but to lose anymore would start moving away from being an RPG altogether. Whatever people think of it, it is still the Roleplaying Game foundations in Skyrim that make it such a compelling experience.

Magelight is useful for being a sneaky sausage... shoot it at a companion and they walk round with the orb of light following them, meaning you can send them in bright as a button and backstab all those draugr and skeevers.

I would keep cooking but add a hardcore mode akin to New Vegas'. In fact, I'm more interested in Fallout 4 and the pending skyrim dlc of which we don't know anything about, not that I need it, I've done the thieves guild and that's it.

/innocently checks comments thread

BOOOOO to this article BOOOOOOO I say.

/falls off chair

Now I need a hug

This was more a conversation-starter than a sustained argument, I'll admit, though I do stand by the point about conveying data via your character's appearance. It makes for fewer breaks between world and interface, as I wrote in another blog a while back.

Do you mean fable style evil or fighting with sword beefs up arm... though you'd have to dual wield to not look unbalanced... can you elaborate on that bit please Ed?

Something along the same lines as Fable, yes, but the implementation would have to be considerably smarter. They'd need to rely more on third-person, obviously.

/innocently checks comments thread

BOOOOO to this article BOOOOOOO I say.

/falls off chair

Now I need a hug

That's what you have a new intern for

Now I need a hug

That's what you have a new intern for

Poor Jam is going to end up as the OXM hugs and cuddles sex slave Wake up the Gimp

Anyway, I have to disagree with that point about conveying data via the avatar. Sometimes you need that stats and RPG staples to organize your progress, and there are flaws in the aethetic approach you propose.

What if, like fable, my avatar gets changes shape and size depending on how progress? What if I don't want my avatar to be hulking and muscular even though I have a high melee damage output? Perhaps my character is just extremely good with weapons. So how would I portray that? And how would I know just how good I am at certain aspects in relation to the best possible rank? And what if I played the game to death, and got exceptionally high stats on all skills, would I be a hulking Bosmer death mage with lightning coursing through my rippling muscles as I cleave a giant Spider down the middle?

I think I'd rather just flip to my character page and add a few points into this or that statistic, its easier to judge.

I like the idea of changes showing on your character, but I can't see them being a replacement for levelling up and improving stats and abilities. It just doesn't seem feasible.

Oh.....god.....no.....

Why to I put myself through this again?

I know one of the thing that most annoyed my girlfriend about fable 2 was the changes in the avatar. She is a very petite 4'11" and was greatly peeved that every time she settled on a character she was happy with they would slowly evolve into a huge 7 foot hulking monster that looked more like a bad drag act than a girl. I had similar gripes in the first Fable when my Wolverine look-a-like kept turning blonde because I wasn't killing random people.

I think the problem would just become more pronounced in Elder Scrolls because Fable had a fairly cookie cutter starting point, whilst most of us would have spent a good portion of time designing our Skyrim characters and I for one wouldn't want that to be ruined by what the game 'thinks' my character should become.

Sometimes you need that stats and RPG staples to organize your progress, and there are flaws in the aethetic approach you propose.

most of us would have spent a good portion of time designing our Skyrim characters and I for one wouldn't want that to be ruined by what the game 'thinks' my character should become.

Agreed - I doubt they'd be able to convey everything entirely via the avatar, but I'd like them to try nonetheless. They could always implement the feature alongside the traditional menu setup, or something.

I'd go easy on the cooking there Ed me old china , veggie soup is the most overpowered stuff in the damn game! Seriously , have a few of them on you and no-one can stand in your way!

You could take horses out and i don't think i'd mind at all!! I know for authenticity's sake they should be there but seriously, they are worse than useless and let you travel <1% quicker. The fact it takes you an in-game day to get off the horse to fight the inevitable (and supposedly placid unless provoked) bear who's spotted you from the next continent renders them less use than the majority of shit i steal from each and every place in skyrim!

I'd quite like the lock picking to go back to the oblivion one too, even though im better at the on in skyrim!

I quite like the character appearance being affected but i agree that using just that to gauge a characters abilities would be a dodgy road to go down. agree that when it goes too Fable and changes your dude beyond all recognition it's irritating too, surely though there's a happy medium?! That's my biggest annoyance with Fable, they introduced this stuff years ago and haven't experimented enough so would be glad for another RPG to give it a go!

What do I miss!!

TORCHS/LIGHT
All the dungeon/caves seem to be well lit, are there any creepy dark places in Skyrim, I used to like that in Oblivion. Ayelid ruins used to really freak me out. I have yet to use any torch or magelight in Skyrim I miss creepy dark places.. or point me to a creepy dark place!!!

Grummy I understand that you are very defensive of Skyrim, and rightly so. It fully deserves it's 10/10 score and is one of the best games I've ever played. But that doesn't mean it can't be improved upon in future. You seem very quick to dismiss suggestions in how to do so and should try being a little more open-minded.

I'd totally agree with the point about removing the cooking mechanic. It adds very little to the game and the only time in my many playthroughs that I've ever bothered to use it was to get a daft achievement.

I'd also suggest, as Ed commented on, that Bethesda needs to shift its focus to making the Elder Scrolls primarily third-person. I know this will ruffle feathers but realistically the series began as first person game to due to technical limitations and the priority was to create an immersive world (kudos for doing so). But now they can do both first and third person views the focus should be on the latter. I'd argue that melee combat works better this way while it doesn't detract from other mechanics i.e. spells, ranged combat, npc interaction. In any case when your building your own fantasy character and customising every detail don't you want to see what you've created, and more importantly see it all of it working in action?

Skyrims biggest shortcoming is I agree its clunky menu system, not necessarily for stats and attributes but more for items, spells, equipment. Maybe it could be better compartmentalised and integrated more naturally. We see plenty of apocathary satchels throughout the game, so why not have one on the player? And have that menu separate from the rest of your gear. The same could be said of the spells menu, why not turn it into a book you can examine and read like the thousands of other books within Skyrim? Only this one would be personalised to you. Ideas like Alone in The Darks interactive menu system could be implemented well here although I admit it gets more tricky when you apply that to things like armour and misc items.

I really like the idea of having your characters attributes reflected in his/her appearance, or their presence, however I agree it would need to be implemented far more delicately than it was in Fable. I didn't enjoy the fact that just because I used lightning magic my characters face became a cross between Hellraiser and Tron and would have terrified the inhabitants of any settlement I went near. If anyone saw and enjoyed the film Drive (I'd highly recommend it if you haven't) that came out last year you'll know what I mean when I say less is more. I'd also add that this should ideally be something that should work alongside a stat system rather than replace it. Nobody wants to judge their characters strength by having to measure their bicep.

However I don't think you could ever do away with leveling up and stats all-together. It's the bread and butter of the RPG player and has been since the dark basement days of Dungeons and Dragons and to remove it would be to no longer make it an RPG. Skyrims 'Constellation' and 'improve what you do more' systems work very well but that doesn't mean they can't be refined, added to and improved in future. So how about some examples, I love examples;

You improve stealth - your characters shadow becomes larger and more defined. Noise from footsteps deceases the higher the stat. The characters outline becomes blurred and harder to make out in low light.

You improve destruction magic and focus on fire based spells - you could have the hand that uses the spell glow or smoulder. It could ignite when the 'threaten' option is used in conversations. After battles footsteps could leave scorch marks on the floor or embers could fall from their shoulders.

You improve two-handed - Your swings become faster and have more emphasis on impact.

You improve one handed and opt for the dual wielding - Your swings become more refined and graceful, resembling something like a simple Prince of Persia combo. I'm not asking for Bayonetta style fluidity but something more creative than left slash, right slash, left slash.

By adding these physical manifestations of attributes to your character, alongside a stat based system, while at the same time trimming the fat off the edges by removing redundant mechanics such as cooking and first-person. Then re-designing the bogged down inventory system would in my opinion be the way to improve Skyrim.

P.S.

Phew... what I intended to be a short reply has turned into a monster. Apologies for the length but really its Ed's fault for suggesting the idea and Grummys for knocking it down faster than game of Jenga in a retirement home.

As far as physical changes to the character, they should be indicative of what is leveled. One handed or dual wielding fighters tend to be rather lithe, but swing a big hammer for days and you'll bulk up a bit, depending on how you eat. If the ever changing avatar approach is to be pursued, some serious study into body mechanics should be made by Bethesda prior to implementation. It could be interesting if done carefully, but could break the suspension of disbelief if poorly implemented.

Hypocritical much Calig?

Protip mate, take your own advice.

You're quick to have a dig at me, but haven't taken the time to see read the bulk of my posts about the game. Do some back reading first, I've never claimed the game was flawless, and have suggested on many occasions a large number of things I'd love to see changed.

Just because you disagree with me, it doesn't mean I'm dismissing Ed's suggestions out of hand without considering them, and it doesn't mean I don't think there are ways to improve the game and am unable and/or unwilling to hear any options. I just simply don't think Ed's ideas are a feasible idea and have posted my reasons why.

Seriously man, don't jump to conclusions and assume I'm not giving ideas their due consideration just because I don't agree with them. Telling me to be more open minded with such little background info on the situation is pretty ignorant y'know.

I wasn't having a dig at you Grummy. What I actually said was "You seem very quick to dismiss suggestions", which was based on;

BOOOOO to this article BOOOOOOO I say. Seriously man, a rare low point for you this, the writing is bland, the point is unclear and your arguments are weak. It reads more like a brain fart of bad sentence structure and unevolved ideas and points than an actual article of substance.

Which I didn't think was too much of a stretch.

Then I suggested you be a little more open-minded. Hardly a dig. And I don't see how exactly I'm being hypocritical by suggesting that you shouldn't be so keen to trash any solution to a problem without being able to offer an alternative. I agreed with you that to lose too many of the stats would no longer make the game an RPG, but then suggested that you could combine the stat based leveling with physical changes to your character.

You lifted the game mechanic from Fable, applied it directly to Skrim in order to demonstrate how awful an idea it was, and then said;

I like the idea of changes showing on your character, but I can't see them being a replacement for levelling up and improving stats and abilities. It just doesn't seem feasible.

How can I be hypocritical as you never offered an alternative suggestion for me to pan?

Instead you want me to search back through your 3156 posts in order to find a situation in which you did the aforementioned. I'm afraid I don't have the infinite cash and free time necessary to spend all day researching background info for any comments I intend to leave on a forum. If you don't like an idea that suggests how to fix or improve something then fine. But at least try and offer an alternative at the time that could prolong the discussion rather than using "this is a crap idea" then "I like the idea but it just couldn't work" as your argument.

I wasn't having a dig at you Grummy. What I actually said was "You seem very quick to dismiss suggestions", which was based on;

BOOOOO to this article BOOOOOOO I say. Seriously man, a rare low point for you this, the writing is bland, the point is unclear and your arguments are weak. It reads more like a brain fart of bad sentence structure and unevolved ideas and points than an actual article of substance.

Which I didn't think was too much of a stretch.

Then I suggested you be a little more open-minded. Hardly a dig. And I don't see how exactly I'm being hypocritical by suggesting that you shouldn't be so keen to trash any solution to a problem without being able to offer an alternative. I agreed with you that to lose too many of the stats would no longer make the game an RPG, but then suggested that you could combine the stat based leveling with physical changes to your character.

You lifted the game mechanic from Fable, applied it directly to Skrim in order to demonstrate how awful an idea it was, and then said;

I like the idea of changes showing on your character, but I can't see them being a replacement for levelling up and improving stats and abilities. It just doesn't seem feasible.

How can I be hypocritical as you never offered an alternative suggestion for me to pan?

Instead you want me to search back through your 3156 posts in order to find a situation in which you did the aforementioned. I'm afraid I don't have the infinite cash and free time necessary to spend all day researching background info for any comments I intend to leave on a forum. If you don't like an idea that suggests how to fix or improve something then fine. But at least try and offer an alternative at the time that could prolong the discussion rather than using "this is a crap idea" then "I like the idea but it just couldn't work" as your argument.

Yes it IS a dig, and a baseless one at that. First up, my original post was not an issue with Eds point, rather I was needling him because the quality of writing in the article is not up to his usual high standard, its the kind of thing people do with other people they like and respect, we tease them. Ed got that, you didn't.

Second, you're being hypocritical by having a dig at me and saying I need to be more open minded and less dismissive, and yet you've decided that I am close minded and dismissive based on one post which was neither. THAT is being close minded and dismissive, and THAT is hypocritical of you.

And no, you don't need to go through all my 3000+ posts. If you're going to make such deductions about people, you need to have something to base it on. You assumed you know my mind based on one single post, and you couldn't have been more wrong. Based on that one post you decided I was close minded and defensive, and yet it never occured to you to check other relevant Skyrim articles? I don't have 3000 posts about Skyrim y'know. A quick look through the Skyrim forum thread alone will yield some examples. It took me all of 30 seconds to pick a random page and find a post by me criticising parts of the game. I'm not expecting you to trawl through all my posts I've ever made, but if you want to sit there and declare that I'm close minded and defensive about Skyrim, you should be able to back that up with more than one post you completely misread. It really doesn't take long to flick through a persons posts on a particular subject.

And that doesn't ever answer the question of how you even came to decide that I had dismissed Ed's points out of hand without giving them their due consideration. How exactly do you know how much time I spent reading the article then mulling over his points? How exactly did you come to your conclusion? For all you know I spent 20 minutes or more thinking it over, looking at it from all sides before I even made my first post. But no, you decided I just dismissed it out of hand, and why? Because I was twitting Ed over the quality of the writing? How exactly do those 2 factors corrolate? In fact I said very little about the content of his article itself. Only in a subsequent post did I dispute one of his points, a post which, if you check the timestamp, I made a half hour after my original post. That's 30 minutes. Would you like to know what I did in those 30 minutes? What I always do in these discussion, read other posts, continue to mull it over, gathering other peoples opinions then settling on my own. The Fable example I used was prompted by the small discussion between Ed and Bez, it was in the field and it was a viable example of one reason why that particular suggestion was perhaps not feasible. Why would you like me to do in the future, spend 2 or 3 hours considering every single absolute reason why something won't work then list them all? This may come as a shock to you, but in a discussion 'do you have a better idea' is a poor argument. I wasn't providing a counter argument for anyone to debate because I didn't care to, I had no reason to, I don't think the stats system is flawed and needs to be replaced with something more aesthetic. What I did was give that one particular point due consideration then provided a single argument against it, had that particular point continued to be debated, I could well have found more arguments, or indeed be persuaded otherwise, but it didn't, I had no reason to continue to think of arguments against that one point or to come up with counter arguments and alternative ideas.

TL;DR?

You were being hypocritical by telling me I was close minded and dismissive when you too were those things regarding your opinion of me.
You completely misread my opening post.
I quite demonstrably gave Ed's points due consideration before singling one out for a counter argument.

In other words, in this particular case, you were wrong man.

As I said in a previous article (and was then quoted by Ed in an edit) one area I do think needs improvement for ES6 is the weapons combat. In 1st person it is a fairly boring Left-right-left slash animation, which is pretty boring to watch. In 3rd they have done a nice job with the animations and the slow motion kills, but it's the same regardless of being level 1 or level 50.

I'm talking more about your fighting style developing as you get better. At level 1 you should be holding the sword like it's going to bite you (I've seen people hold a sword for the first time, it's pretty much a universal facial expression, normally quickly followed by them making lightsaber noises) and swinging it like it has as much control over you as you do of it. By the time you hit the top tier you should be moving like the sword is part of you; no loss of balance, no over stretching just perfect control.

Let's extend it a bit and have the same apply to the enemies. It would be nice to look at a group of bandits and think "Losers, this will be easy," as they stumble around, but come up against a master swordsman and think "run away, he looks a bit tasty. I'll come back later."

Let's extend it a bit and have the same apply to the enemies. It would be nice to look at a group of bandits and think "Losers, this will be easy," as they stumble around, but come up against a master swordsman and think "run away, he looks a bit tasty. I'll come back later."

That happens to me now at level 48 to be fair, except I don't run I just crack out some fireballs. I really shouldn't have mastered Sneak, Smithing and other useless skills as my guys swordplay is lacking a bit. I don't have to change difficulty halfway through fights anymore now though.

Let's extend it a bit and have the same apply to the enemies. It would be nice to look at a group of bandits and think "Losers, this will be easy," as they stumble around, but come up against a master swordsman and think "run away, he looks a bit tasty. I'll come back later."

That happens to me now at level 48 to be fair, except I don't run I just crack out some fireballs. I really shouldn't have mastered Sneak, Smithing and other useless skills as my guys swordplay is lacking a bit. I don't have to change difficulty halfway through fights anymore now though.

I haven't had to do that for a while either. I possibly amped up my smithing skill a bit too much through grinding, as it left me facing bad guys that were of too high a level for my combat skills. My shiny new set of Daedric armour and my matching swords, Fire and Ice, seems to have balanced that out though.

Still not sure why the Dragon Armour isn't better than the Daedric though, given that you need 100 skill compared to 80.

I'm on light armour so I can sneak around faster, I might switch it up it's pretty useless regardless of my 700 armour rating.

I want me a gun and until I get one I'm not going to be happy!
On a more serious note I've decided to right back to the start and do things properly. I've sussed that archery is probably the best method of dealing with long range nasties and I want to get into the magic side of things as well.
Stealing is anathema to me; I just won't do it. This time around I'm going to avoid them there Vampires like the plague, if that's possible. They do pop up when they are unwanted. I do second the idea to get rid of 'the local village children'. I avoid them like the plague in the real world as well and find it annoying that I've got to put up with them in cyber space. This is where a gun would come in very handy, oh yes!

Allow me to pause a moment and be amused by the fact that most of us posted, not what we think Bethesda should CUT from ES6, but what we would like to see added....Okay, done. It occurs to me that the majority of us don't realise what is superfulous and what is not, just as few of us would have questioned the slightly clunky leveling procedures of the previous iterations. I like cooking, but perhaps it should be either sidelined, or an entire skill set, for those who don't necessarily feel like hacking their way through Skyrim/Cyrodil/Morrowing/Hammerfell/Elsewyr(my hope!)/the Vallenwoods et. al. If there's going to be a thousand tankards on every table, let's have some nicer ones that are worth some coin. I like the idea of avatar changes with skill set, continued improvement of the society, maybe a TOUCH more tweaking of the leveling. I'd like to see skills be less hard set into the constellations, because not all the skills are quite as dependent upon the previous perks. Maybe a drop-ship kind of training option within a natural growth of skill. Don't ask me how to implement it, I'm just the ideas guy, but perhaps streamlining the process of leveling to the point that certain perks become an automatic outgrowth of accumulated skill, i.e. you get hit enough times and you begin to block/avoid hits automatically without having to actively pick perks, or train with someone who's known as a duelist and you can directly select a perk that does it. Esoteric trainers who teach self-control techniques that allow automatic perks in combat or casting, but not necessarily added levels. As I said, tough to do well, but would create even more an attitude of immersion.

I haven't had to do that for a while either. I possibly amped up my smithing skill a bit too much through grinding, as it left me facing bad guys that were of too high a level for my combat skills. My shiny new set of Daedric armour and my matching swords, Fire and Ice, seems to have balanced that out though.

Still not sure why the Dragon Armour isn't better than the Daedric though, given that you need 100 skill compared to 80.

I'm assuing its because it's easier to get the materials for making Dragon Armour than it is to get the Daedra hearts.

Talking about the smithing, I don't think they took things far enough with it. All they've really done is changed how its used, but you still end up moving progressively through them from Iron to Daedric as the next ones become available, even if you have high smithing skill, and get your Dwarven armour fully reinforced, fully reinforced Orc armour will be better and so on. What they needed to do was add one last perk that lets you pick any one of the materials you like to specialize in, which then lets you reinforce them to a much higher level than the others. Sure, again, if you used this perk on Orc armour, its new highest level would be better than the new highest level for Dwarven, BUT, as you can only pick 1 of them, it lets you make your favourite armour much much better than normal so you can use it throughout the game and not be hindered because of it, especially if the perk let you reinforce the armours enough to even be better than the best Daedra armour (without this perk obviously).

Sorry about the awkward explanation, it was a bit of a train of thought and I was typing to keep up with myself

Skyrim isn't a patch on Oblivion.
There I said it! In terms of the way it's made and the menus and all stuff like that it's brilliant. But these three things have turned me off it after a mere 50 hours!

1.Cities are boring and have no life to them. The only decent looking city is Solitude and the only one with any cool history is Windhelm and even that place is a bit lifeless! give meback the bustling streets of an imperial city any day!
2. Can't talk to everyone. Pointless sometimes but it was immersive and you could get rumours from everyone which is more realistic than some bloody barman knowing everything.
3.Better quests. On Oblivion you had epic quests like the who dun it murder mysteries house for the Dark Brotherhood and the find out who stole the painting quest in Chorrol castle! you had so many cool quests with lots of dialogue and following and interactions but on Skyrim with the exception of a few gems all you have is: "Oh no i'm sad I've lost some piece of shit spoon my dad gave to me 40 years ago can you go get it in that troll riddled cave?"

Love playing it but it isn't a patch on Oblivion in those aspects.

I would cut out the current version of bounties. Apparantly, in real life if you stab someone when they're the only witness, you receive a 1000 pound bounty on your head immediately, but then its promptly taken off of your head when the universe realises that the only witness to the crime has been killed. The bounty system should be more like the Red Dead Redemption version: the witness or witnesses to the crime run off and tell the police, so they have time to actually put the bounty on your head.