PigLick on 14/11/2011 at 07:56
You cant avoid leveling up like you could in morrowind, if thats what you mean. As for scaling, its a lot like fallout3 from what I have played so far. I have a feeling that main quests and the like(dragons) will be scaled to fit your current level, but the rest seems to be at a set level, so at low levels I have been totally caned a number of times just by wandering into the wrong place, but I'm pretty sure if I go back after beefing up I will make creamcheese outta em.
Briareos H on 14/11/2011 at 08:29
Leveling is pretty much the same as in all Elder Scrolls games ie. skill-based and broken. There is no XP but you level up by using skills (in that case stealth:lockpicking). Since the number of uses required to level up is exponential, you can in fact see it as a hidden XP system for which only the use of a skill yields XP. A good idea in theory.
In your case, I suppose Khad is pretty early in the game so it's not suprising if the first uses of a skill yield a level-up.
Problem is, they've listened to their fanbase and of course they've taken stupid decisions in return: In Morrowind, you could level up both skills and passive attributes, which led to players farming XP for a specific attribute, for example jumping all over the place to raise acrobatics. Since the XP threshold values for leveling were poorly balanced, it led to characters being nearly useless for the first 6-10 hours before becoming demigods in their specific skillset soon after. Many complained about that, so their first answer with Oblivion was to cap everything and make enemy stats scale up with the player level. It was so terrible that everyone complained again. Bethesda, rather than thinking over seriously their XP balance, chose with Skyrim to remove all attributes except the three major (health, stamina and magicka) and cap the skills, which amounts to covering your eyes and saying "if I can't see it, it's not happening". I hear that the dragon battles are also scaled with the player level, which is pretty silly ("People shouldn't have to level up and do secondary quests to play the main quest to its conclusion! Oh no!").
No attributes means that you'll never get better at jumping if you decide to do mountain climbing as often as possible. Let's not talk about the passive class-specific attributes which you can re-spec at any time. So yeah, it's still broken. Of course, they tacked on a skill tree since everybody does one these days, I can't comment on it since I'm so early in the game.
Of course it's still much better than Oblivion, which I guess is going to become my favourite phrase in the months to come.
Digital Nightfall on 14/11/2011 at 08:29
You will make creamcheese, especially if you bring a follower decked out in enchanted armor and weapons that you can't be bothered to use yourself because you're too busy duel-wielding lighting bolts. :D (There's some wonky physics though. Sometimes Lydia hits them so hard they fly clear across the map.)
PigLick on 14/11/2011 at 13:00
I havent even experimented with followers yet! Must say the magic system is excellent so far, I feel like a demi-god almost blasting stuff to oblivion with twin streams of fire. I feel it may be a little to easy with regenerating magicka and stamina though.
I find the jumping much better than in Oblivion, I have reached some pretty odd places with run and jump, gotta be careful not to get stuck in textures though.
Dia on 14/11/2011 at 13:07
Jenassa's my pal/bodyguard and she actually sent one of our adversaries spinning over the roof of a small hut-like structure. Awesome wonky physics indeed!
I'm not really crazy about the level scaling, but if that's the only thing that irritates me in this game I'll still be over the moon about it. Have to admit I was surprised that it didn't take nearly as long to be able to kick bandit ass in Skyrim as it did in Morrowind/Oblivion. I'm liking that.
Koki on 14/11/2011 at 14:08
Is there any way to tie the Favorite weapons/spells to numeric keys? I mean that's like, super fucking obvious thing to do.
Briareos H on 14/11/2011 at 14:12
I don't think so. Binding to the numeric keypad is a big no-no.
Welcome to Skyrim's UI.
Painman on 14/11/2011 at 15:54
You have to Favorite something first, and THEN you can hotkey it. Open up the Favorites menu, highlight it, then press 1-8 to assign it.
sNeaksieGarrett on 14/11/2011 at 16:11
Quote Posted by Brethren
Cool, sounds like Lucan Valerius in Riverwood is voiced by
Stephen Russell/Garrett! Pretty hilarious that he wants you to catch a
Thief. ;)
Glad to see I'm not the only one who noticed that. :cheeky:;) (I also checked the credits to make sure I wasn't kidding myself.)
Enjoying it thus far, but the first little things that bugged me were the UI (no surprise there) and the fact that the audio is low. Yes, my audio is set like it always is, and the in-game master volume slider is all the way to the right. I've tried a few things to increase the audio, nothing has worked. The only way is to jack up my speakers volume. Another thing that bugged me was the mouse movement, but considering changing mouseacceleration to 0 or 1 didn't make much difference, I ended up just dealing with the mouse movement. I read about adding some yaw and pitch lines to the ini, which I did but I'm not sure how much that really helped. It's not that bad though I guess.
I'm really liking the environment, looks better than oblivion. I actually looked at the water and thought wow this looks like real water! Also, those Draugr creatures look awesome. They really made creatures look more sinister than before it seems.
Renault on 14/11/2011 at 16:31
My quick (maybe not so much) take:
This game is heaven for an exploration freak. The world is huge, and beautiful. The mountains and rocky terrain really make the gameworld interesting and fun to travel. The graphics are gorgeous, I'm able to play on High setting with my 2 1/2 year old PC (triple core, 2.8 ghz, Radeon 4890, pretty much fits the bill for the "Recommended" settings). I get a stutter here and there, but nothing drastic. The water is awesome, sometimes I just stare at some of the waterfalls and rapids like a dork.
After the intro, I did a thing or three in Whiterun, then I wandered down one of the main roads just to see where I would end up, and found a very cool city called Markarth, built on Dwemer ruins. This little corner of Skyrim could be a whole game in itself. I've been playing for seven hours and I already have like 30 quests in my journal to complete (overall, from everywhere I've been). I look at my world map, and I see 5-10 other icons that look like similar cities to this (btw, I love the world map). This game is going to be insanely long and ginormous.
The combat feels great, very satisfying and violent (I'm trying to avoid using "viscereal" which everyone else seems to be using). The hilarious thing is, with all the extreme grades and slopes, dead bodies slide forever, like they're going sledding or something. The perspective switch when finishing off an opponent ala Human Revolution is awful, I'm hoping a mod will allow me to get rid of it. Sneaking is fun, if you're into that kind of thing (hardy har har), I like the eyeball icon as kind of a "light gem lite" - it works and does the trick. I'm hoping I can find a blackjack somewhere in the world too (not holding my breath though).
I've been through three "dungeon" areas so far, and as has been mentioned, they put a lot of work into this - they aren't as bland and boring like Oblivion where every corner and turn looks the same. Another hot topic, voice acting, seems good, although for having supposedly 70 voice actors, I've heard many of the same voices repeatedly already (yes, including Stephen Russell on about 4 different NPCs). The Fargo-esque accent on the Nords has the potential to drive me batshit insane, hopefully I'll get more used to it.
Sometimes the NPCs talk over each other, which is annoying as hell, especially if one of them is giving me a quest. The sounds levels (effects, music, voices) some really uneven in some areas (and not in others), I suppose I just have to adjust my levels in the settings.
The game seems fairly easy, I've not died yet and I seem to be able to casually handle everything that's come my way, including bosses (I'm on whatever difficulty comes standard, so I suppose I could up that). Related to that, I've traveled a good distance so far, but there seems to be a lack of a feeling of danger while traveling in the world, not just because enemies haven't been hard, but because I haven't run into that many at all.
Most of the criticisms of the UI are valid, although it's WAY better than Oblivion's so I guess that's something. I do like some of the little indicators that tell you if what you are looking at is better or worse that the current armor/weapon you're carrying or using. As far as the leveling system goes, I don't get too hung up on stuff like that, but I do like in theory at least the ability to form your character by actions as opposed to some huge involved process that the beginning of the game, where you make decisions you can't change. The game seems like it's too big and too much of a commitment for that.
Overall - Holy crap, I see a lot of 4 hour sleep nights, the game is a blast and there's so much to do. I know people love to criticize things, but does gaming get any better than this?
