ZehDon

I play at adept most of the time, but the leveling system of the enemies isn't smooth, so I adjust it, up or down to give a good, but not easy or impossible fight.

I read a lot of the books, but that is probably less than 10% of them.  I try to read the ones that have to do with the grand history.

I agree, that it works well is no surprise given how it was built for consoles as well. It's actually sort of funny that "modern" games haven't really pushed the need for consumers to upgrade their hardware, thanks to consoles. I think that's something good, it means we can play the games that come out. On the other hand, no doubt it has delayed the development of new technology. I guess it's one of those "polarizing" issues, where what you think more important is highly personal and in no way definitive.

I haven't gotten my soundtrack yet from skyrim... I'm choking!

I don't really get whats so bad about it.  It's slightly imperfect but it was easy to learn and doesn't hamper me in any way.

It's quick, it does the job, I leave it and get back to the game.

I wouldn't have even bought it if it didn't have a DX11 renderer coming, I sure as hell hope it fixes the random glitching I get in distant mountains and such.

Let's see....

First and foremost its inconsistent. Meaning they put hardly any time into the PC interface to ensure it works. The same key that opens a menu often doesn't shut it, because it's only coded to care about the default keys and even then it wasn't thought through. It doesn't recognize key-rebinds across multiple instances. The precision of click boxes is atrocious. Miss an item entry by a fraction of an inch and it kicks you out of the menu immediately. Or it sticks to the last highlighted item. Lists are displayed poorly considering they KNEW you'd have 50+ items in some categories like potions and ingredients. Half of the menus have scroll functions when there's no earthly reason WHY they should have scroll functions ...and then they default to a position forcing you to scroll (I'm looking at you, inventory category list.) Gratuitous amounts of space are wasted so it could look nice and clean. With so little going on, it STILL manages to be half done.

Secondly, the Dialog UI is similarly a pain in the ass. It can't decide whether it cares what your mouse is pointing to, or what your keyboard cursor is pointing at. Meaning you'll hit the keys to scroll dialog options just to see them, THEN you have to move your freaking mouse to highlight it, or its still stuck on the last menu entry the mouse was pointing at. Why not have the keyboard cursor move the selection as well? Oh, did I mention the click boxes for those menus sometimes extend the whole length of the screen, so if your mouse is in the extreme upper right corner, it may or may not think it's pointing to the first menu item.

Thirdly, there's so much hard-coded BS in the key config that it's not flexible, either. Like arrow keys? Screw you! Like your number pad? Too bad! Like using your mouse for basic stuff like unsheathing and resheathing your weapon? Get a job, commie!

And then there's the perks window. They force you to zoom in on a perk to even read its description or requirements, and often clicking or using the arrow keys to move to the next link of the constellation takes you....into another constellation group entirely. So you have to BACK out, go BACK in and do it a second time. All the time went into making it look pretty without making sure it wasn't obnoxious to use after the 5th, 10, and 70th time. Because it's not like we might want to do both, look at the shape of the constellation while being able to see all the names. Nope. You've either got your face pressed against it, or you're browsing all categories.

Considering how good some game UIs are, Skyrim's interface feels like it was made by someone who didn't understand what playing the game was like after 20 hours.

@kantock re map.    the 3d map is actually much more versatle with the 3D map mod (actually, a set of ini edits) that allows the map to be zoomed in right to ground level.   Very cool.  No more, struggling to find a road / path up that mountain...

 

@nenjen  re. UI.  yes, the interface is very awkward on the (my) PC.   And not being able to 'see' what items are equiped is a pain.  Why can't threre be a place for the currntly equiped head, hand, body, feet, necklace/amulet, and ring (singular) be placed all together, so the player can 'see' what is actually obvious to the avatar? 

 

Is it me, or can the avatar have only one ring equiped at a time?

TESV is awesome, beautiful, really cool quests, and some fights I can't seem to win.....

 

I am looking forward to ....

... Wyre Bash for V to come out... even if it just automates installing / uninstalling graphic (texture) mods.

... a decent UI that fits PCs.

... a decent quest organizer.

 

 

 

It's just plain silly. They patched in additional DRM, as if that's going to impact pirates who aren't using the game via Steam in the first place and won't even receive the update. It does absolutely zero but inconvenience paying users.

The Good

1. Enchanting is available to non-casters as it is not linked to known spells.

2. Dungeons all have a quick exit at the back.

3. The graphics are pretty good.

4. Shooting people from stealth makes them say stupid stuff like... "Huh? What was that?" wait a few seconds "Oh, guess it was a bat" sit down.

The Bad

1. Overall i felt the character customization way too reduced but this isn't too big a deal, oblivion wasn't that good either in this area but mods fixed it later.

2. No custom spells, instead of working to balance the custom spell system they just removed it.  Magic is just weaker than using weapons as the damage doesn't scale well.  On the other hand combat is super easy no matter what you do so i guess magic being weak isn't too bad.

3. Most dungeons/quests are unrewarding/repeditive.

4. The controls were clearly made for consul and are terrible on pc.  Clicking on one item in a list sometimes selects 1 3 or 4 rows away ;/

5. The favorite list instead of a more convenient hot bar is really lame.

6. There are several perks that remove annoying game mechanics... there mechanics just shouldn't be in the game.  Perks should be little bonuses, not things i feel like i must select on every character as to prevent myself from /wristing after a few hours with poor mechanics.

 

As with the other games in the series, i enjoyed it a but just after release, then it got dull as the various issues outweighed the good stuff.  I hope that as with the others, mods will solve a LOT of problems and breath new life into the game for me.

No, it honestly wasn't. Bethesda games are solid investments by virtue of the modding fan base. You just chose a.....embarrassing time (for Bethesda and Steam) to pick it up. You're going to get your money's worth right now, unless your in that small group of people who needed LAA to get Skyrim running to their satisfaction.

Already seen people claiming they have a working LAA fix that doesn't alter the .exe too. It's kind of hack job now and not everyone can get it to work, so in another day or two it will be solidly compiled and tested.

That addresses one problem. Steam effectively having put Skyrim on DRM lockdown, there's no real legal fix for.

Nenjin: It's not a question so much of whether I'm getting my money's worth as it is of whether I want to support the company. Skyrim is a fun game that's well made (bugs notwithstanding) which I have and will continue to sink quite a few hours into. I thus prefer to own it legally for moral reasons. I also wanted to indicate with my money that the PC is a viable market, in the hopes that Bethesda will put more focus on it in the future. But I don't want to indicate that this sort of pointless and annoying DRM is acceptable.

 

Delmoroth: Okay, the fence thing is a fairly good point. That's not a poor mechanic in and of itself, though, it's just a mechanic applied poorly. If I was in charge, I'd have them track theft only for items which are unique or exceed some arbitrary value threshold, and have that specific to the hold from which the item was stolen. But the notion that you can't sell stolen goods to a normal merchant unless you're a fast talker is a perfectly legitimate idea.

You can learn what ingredients do by eating them without the perk, you just learn more potential effects with it. I haven't tabbed out to look things up at all. Random combination has worked just fine for me, though. It's more fun than getting the whole alchemy system handed to you on a silver platter anyway.

Nice job.  I was just coming to post this.  

Anyone who has consistent CTDs should try this fix.  It removed my 1/hour CTD problem completely.  I played for ~25 hours with zero CTD after making the exe LAA.  Which Bethesda then promptly screwed up.  The file linked by Savyg allows you to do LAA again (since the old method now breaks the steam wrapper and kills your .exe).  

I've definitely seen plenty of physics caused deaths involving mountains or walls and Fus Roh Dah or impact knockback.  

No horse heroics though.

The update to the game's .exe was to keep compliance with Valve's requirement for games that use Steamworks - namely, that they require the Steam Store Client.  Failing to comply with Valve's requirements would have led to the game being removed from Steam - this would have prevented new customers from even installing their game thanks to the way Steamworks functions.
Bethesda did what they were told.


I think the consoles have fixed an issue that was creeping up in the game's industry prior to their dominance: optimisation was optional.  A lot of PC Games were released that had high system requirements, not because they were actually demanding, but because they were so poorly optimised, designed and executed.  Developers would simply bump up the requirements to save themselves some work, and call it a day.
With consoles, it doesn't really work.  It has to run well.  Unfortunately, this has given rise to the bad PC Port - look at basically everything from Rockstar Games - where PC is treated as an afterthought, and gamers should be happy that their console overlords even allow them to still play games.
Crysis 2, for example, does impossible things with DX9.0.  And it does it because the developers were forced to utilise DX9.0 thanks to developing for consoles.
When done correctly, it gives gamers more bang for their buck and hardware that doesn't need to be replaced every three months.  In fact, Skyrim is first game I've played that I couldn't just hit "Ultra" and have it run perfectly.  It took four years for this to happen.  "Back in the day", your PC was obsolete before you opened the box.