Skyrim impressions

I got the game after work on Friday, and according to Steam, I have played about 17 hours worth at the moment.

Here are my impressions of Skyrim the PC version.

We get to the negatives first:

- Buggy, as in floating mammoths, not sure if this is a bug, when I press "E" I get to move the object instead of searching the object i.e. for books, dead NPC's
- "random or the infinite quests" disappears from quest menu when given to me, not sure if they belong in there or not,
- some of the few quests I have done seem to be broken or the "guidance" is incomplete in telling me what to do next

Positives:

- Graphics are great, has great atmosphere
- The dungeons I have been in are very unique unlike Oblivion where if you seen one you almost seen all
- Quests have been diverse so far
- The places I have visit are more "grander" in scale than most places in Oblivion
- You can take your time with the story line thus I haven't
seen any dragons, except the first gameplay so my travels have been clear of them
Of course you could do that in all of the Elder Scrolls games.

If you liked Oblivion, I see no reason not to like Skyrim. If you liked Morrowind, Skyrim is more streamlined in what you can do, and Skyrim may not be for you.
 
Since this thread is about as close as it gets to a general discussion thread, I'm going to ask here.

I'm having trouble leveling alchemy. I love making use of potions and poisons, especially the buff type potions. But I'm constantly running out of ingredients just trying to discover a potion. I have been just guessing this entire time and only discovered 4 or 5 potions, none of which I use :p Am I missing something?
 
tronmaster said:
not sure if this is a bug, when I press "E" I get to move the object instead of searching the object i.e. for books, dead NPC's
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I use an xbox controller to play and had similar problems at times. Just press E very quickly and do not hold it for an extended amount of time, and it should use/pickup the item. Holding E will allow you to move it.

- "random or the infinite quests" disappears from quest menu when given to me, not sure if they belong in there or not,
- some of the few quests I have done seem to be broken or the "guidance" is incomplete in telling me what to do next
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Did you check under the miscellaneous section? I missed this section at first and thought I lost some quests until I checked there. Some of the miscellaneous quests will allow you to show the location of where you need to go, while others show you nothing. I wish it gave you more details or the text of the quest given.
 
sKiDmArK said:
I use an xbox controller to play and had similar problems at times. Just press E very quickly and do not hold it for an extended amount of time, and it should use/pickup the item. Holding E will allow you to move it.

Did you check under the miscellaneous section? I missed this section at first and thought I lost some quests until I checked there. Some of the miscellaneous quests will allow you to show the location of where you need to go, while others show you nothing. I wish it gave you more details or the text of the quest given.
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Will try the E without holding, I might be pressing the E to long.

With regard to broken quests, yea, I have been checking the Miscellaneous part of the quests. Here is one example of a quest which seem to be broken:

Specifically a lighthouse where you find out a family has moved in and according to a journal, the daughter hears strange noises from the basement. The quest initiates in finding the source of the family's deaths.

*Sorry for me being so vague I don't remember names at all, plus I not at home.*

Anyways you finally get to fight a K--- Reaper and if you loot the corpse, you find the father's head. The quests says I have completed finding the source, but I have this head that I can't drop because it's a quest item. And not only does this quest doesn't tell me what to do next, I don't have it on my quest list in either the active or finish quests. Bug? I am trying not to cheat so early in the game and find out what to do next. Just seems buggy to me.
 
AMD_Gamer said:
Is the story good?
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To be honest, I have no idea. I haven't done a storyline quest since the mandatory one. LOL

All I know is I'm supposed to be Dragon Born, with dragon blood in me, something about creepy old guys on a mountain calling me, and FUS RO DAH!
 
Parmenides said:
Yeah, magic combat in Skyrim beats Witcher 1 and 2 magic by a looooooong shot.

Yeah, my health is suffering too. I'm staying up waaaaay too late.
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First, I have to add to the chorus of people staying up too late. I was up until 4:00 on Saturday night and got up at 9:30 that morning to get back at it. My wife wasn't amused :eek:.

As for combat in the Witcher vs. Magic combat in Skyrim, I will take Skyrim every day of the week. I now the witcher games, especially number 2, have amazing story lines, but the combat mechanics and lack of intuitive understanding of how it all worked, absolutely killed those games for me. Plus, you can't climb 2 miles up a mountain in those games.
 
Played it a shit ton this weekend and love the game. I have ignored the main story completely and I think I am about to complete the thieves guild story line.
 
tronmaster said:
I got the game after work on Friday, and according to Steam, I have played about 17 hours worth at the moment.

Here are my impressions of Skyrim the PC version.

We get to the negatives first:

- Buggy, as in floating mammoths, not sure if this is a bug, when I press "E" I get to move the object instead of searching the object i.e. for books, dead NPC's
- "random or the infinite quests" disappears from quest menu when given to me, not sure if they belong in there or not,
- some of the few quests I have done seem to be broken or the "guidance" is incomplete in telling me what to do next
Click to expand...

- holding 'E' moves objects... maybe holding the key to long?
- Did you check the miscellaneous quest tab?
- try disabling a quest, then reselecting it.

The only bugs I had were two things:
like you I had an old quest marker stuck on a newer quest (even after I completed it). I changed my quests around and that got rid of it.

The other bug was that one of my shouts wouldn't work. I just used a racial power, and then went back to the shouts and they worked again. Other than that, no bugs! amazing

oh wait... I do have weird things with the UI, were clicking on something that isn't in focus doesn't always work... sometimes I have to scroll the selecting into focus.... consoles
 
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I can't even play the game since it won't let me rebind controls using the keypad...

thanks Bethesda...

Lefties are screwed if you FPS with controls like I do.
 
34 hours in. Main quest done. Imperial quests done. Mage quests done. Overall I am very impressed and can't stop playing.
 
dara said:
34 hours in. Main quest done. Imperial quests done. Mage quests done. Overall I am very impressed and can't stop playing.
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wow u finished main quest in less than 40 hours? I thought this game was supposed to be super long?
 
song414 said:
wow u finished main quest in less than 40 hours? I thought this game was supposed to be super long?
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Define "main quests".
From a certain perspective, the game consist of a dozen "main quests". The mage college chain took me about 6 hours by itself.
 
Bigbacon said:
I can't even play the game since it won't let me rebind controls using the keypad...

thanks Bethesda...

Lefties are screwed if you FPS with controls like I do.
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I think there's a mod that fixes the rebind issues
 
Korben Dallas said:
Since this thread is about as close as it gets to a general discussion thread, I'm going to ask here.

I'm having trouble leveling alchemy. I love making use of potions and poisons, especially the buff type potions. But I'm constantly running out of ingredients just trying to discover a potion. I have been just guessing this entire time and only discovered 4 or 5 potions, none of which I use :p Am I missing something?
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Yes. You go in to your inventory and eat the ingredients and it will tell you 1 of the 4 properties of that ingredient, you ought to check your ingredients menu before you do any alchemy and go through all of the reagents to find any you've not sampled.

Of the 4 effects everything has it's always the top left one that is revealed when you sample, so for example if you've revealed the bottom right effect through trial and error you can still sample it to find another effect.

From there it's easy, spam potions and you'll slowly reveal all the other effects of the reagents.
 
eggrock said:
RPS unhappy with the UI

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/11/14/user-interfarce-skyrims-silly-choices/
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Not surprised, they took the bad UI of oblivion (one of the most common complaints about the game for the PC) and made it worse, in fact they did almost exactly what they did in Dragons Age 2, the menu is so basic and so heavily orientated around a controller, it also feels lifeless and without any kind of theme that matches the game.

Navigating it takes some getting used to, often trying to use the mouse requires 2 clicks espcially on dialogue which just gets on my nerves eventually, and mixing between mouse and key movements is a pain, in the end i stuck to keys only as it was less buggy this way, mixing keys and mice movements just doesn't behave well at all.

Also the menus dont fucking loop top/bottom, rule 1 of long menus is to loop them so you can go upwards to skip to the end, makes me want to facedesk at the simply retarded mistakes made in such a high profile game. Consolization at its finest.

Seriously I'm starting to really dig the game but I'm not going to use that as a free pass for dumb things like this.
 
Damn this game is addictive. Meant to play for an hour last night before bed and I ended up being hypnotized for over 5 hours before I nearly passed out. Paying for it this morning :(
 
lol


skyrimrealestate.jpg
 
I agree that the UI is overwhemingly lacking. That pic proves it thoroughly.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
Yes. You go in to your inventory and eat the ingredients and it will tell you 1 of the 4 properties of that ingredient, you ought to check your ingredients menu before you do any alchemy and go through all of the reagents to find any you've not sampled.

Of the 4 effects everything has it's always the top left one that is revealed when you sample, so for example if you've revealed the bottom right effect through trial and error you can still sample it to find another effect.

From there it's easy, spam potions and you'll slowly reveal all the other effects of the reagents.
Click to expand...

Interesting, I did not know that I can eat ingredients. What is this ingredient menu though? And what do you mean by spam potions?

NukeDukem said:
Damn this game is addictive. Meant to play for an hour last night before bed and I ended up being hypnotized for over 5 hours before I nearly passed out. Paying for it this morning :(
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I'm right there with you bud, I finished up a quest at about 1am last night and decided to explore a little bit. Next thing I know it's 5am.. :(
 
Everything I've read, and seen, about the UI makes it sounds terrible and horrendously annoying. There is no way I'm spending $60, or even $40, to have to deal with that crap. Seriously, how do you not go insane with that? I wanted to get this game in not too long, but unless a mod comes out and gives me good 'ol item tetris or something I think I'm going to pass.
 
ObiDamnKenobi said:
Everything I've read, and seen, about the UI makes it sounds terrible and horrendously annoying. There is no way I'm spending $60, or even $40, to have to deal with that crap. Seriously, how do you not go insane with that? I wanted to get this game in not too long, but unless a mod comes out and gives me good 'ol item tetris or something I think I'm going to pass.
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It's a small adjustment. Of course there are UI issues, but due to the fact that they will obviously be fixed by the mod community, and the outstanding replay value and gameplay, this game is a must-buy. UI issues shouldn't hinder the decision.
 
I disagree with one thing on the above cartoon about the UI, and thats the part where it shows the item. This area is a 3D view of the item, where you can rotate the mouse to look at the entire item. You have to do this on several items in the game to figure out the little puzzles. Plus on some of the armor and swords, its pretty cool to look at them in detail, as you can scroll in or zoom as well as rotate...
 
Loving this game so far. Just finished questing for the three missing books for the Mage College. It was GREAT. LOVE. No problems for me with the UI.
 
Q-BZ said:
DarN will fix that UI soon enough. Patience. :)
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Awesome, just let me know when! And I'll consider picking the game up!:D Hell if they just put that Morrowind UI in there that would be cool.

Man, 30 hrs in 4 days?! I put 60 hrs into dragon age, and that was over 10 months or so! If I had more than ~1 hr of game time a day on average maybe it would make more sense to buy day 1..
 
Unlike Oblivion I'm not finding loads of issues I want the modders to fix. In oblivion I had at least 8GB of mods just tweaking stuff like bow damage mechanics, arrow recovery chance, all that silly shit - in this all that I feel needs fixing is the UI and textures.

Well, and the constant (at least 1 per hour of gameplay) crashes to desktop. I had more of those in one evening of playing this than I have had in three replays of each of the Stalker games put together.
 
I don't have too many gripes with Skyrim; I'm having a blast playing it and losing sleep over it.

However, I do have two issues that really bug me:

1) Crashing to desktop on random fast travels or riding of the wagon. It seems that when it happens, reloading a saved game and going through the same motions completely replicates the crash. However, If I reload and walk into a different zone, and then fast travel, it will complete the travel without a hitch.

2) Pathing of NPCs. It was a pain in the ass in Oblivion and now, 6 years later, the same issues persist?
 
Tzzird said:
1) Crashing to desktop on random fast travels or riding of the wagon. It seems that when it happens, reloading a saved game and going through the same motions completely replicates the crash. However, If I reload and walk into a different zone, and then fast travel, it will complete the travel without a hitch.
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Sounds like a typical bugaboo but make sure your sound is set no higher than 24/44.1 if you haven't done so already.

Also be mindful: If you get too adventerous with INI tweaks and such you can guarantee more instability. I'm pretty avoiding any INI tweak that takes any setting past the "default" ultra settings on anything. Stability is priority one to me.



2) Pathing of NPCs. It was a pain in the ass in Oblivion and now, 6 years later, the same issues persist?
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A little bit, yeah, if I understand what "Pathing of NPCs" means exactly.






ObiDamnKenobi said:
Awesome, just let me know when! And I'll consider picking the game up!:D Hell if they just put that Morrowind UI in there that would be cool.

Man, 30 hrs in 4 days?! I put 60 hrs into dragon age, and that was over 10 months or so! If I had more than ~1 hr of game time a day on average maybe it would make more sense to buy day 1..
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1.) http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1256213-interface-change-pc/ closed from reaching post limit.

2.) http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1267229-modding-the-gui/page__p__19226673#entry19226673

Newest thread.

Keep an eye on DarN and other people's progress here in these threads.
 
Q-BZ said:
Sounds like a typical bugaboo but make sure your sound is set no higher than 24/44.1 if you haven't done so already.

Also be mindful: If you get too adventerous with INI tweaks and such you can guarantee more instability. I'm pretty avoiding any INI tweak that takes any setting past the "default" ultra settings on anything. Stability is priority one to me.

A little bit, yeah, if I understand what "Pathing of NPCs" means exactly.
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1) I've checked the sound, and it's at 44.1

2) Only things I have changed in my INI is the v-sync and mouse acceleration to 0. I don't even think the vsync off worked as my fps doesn't go over 60.

3) I was referring to:

a) your companion taking the long way round to catch up with you even if you go down a very small cliff

and

b) enemies that will just kinda get "stuck" allowing you to freely shoot fireballs at them without any fear of getting hit.
 
ObiDamnKenobi said:
Everything I've read, and seen, about the UI makes it sounds terrible and horrendously annoying. There is no way I'm spending $60, or even $40, to have to deal with that crap. Seriously, how do you not go insane with that? I wanted to get this game in not too long, but unless a mod comes out and gives me good 'ol item tetris or something I think I'm going to pass.
Click to expand...

Every time I read something like this I'm reminded of friends of mine that turn their noses up at a particular guy/girl because they have one or two minor flaws, and then complain about about being single and unhappy that they aren't in a relationship.
 
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