Well, that was basically my point, yes. If other people like to play that way, by all means do so, but I try to control myself. Same with looting really: I just take stuff I can use myself, or the stuff that’s really worth a lot, all steel armors and huge swords etc are left where they fall. The only weightissues I now have are with potions and ingredients: they add up unnoticed!
Btw: has anyone tried the hardcoremode where you have to eat and sleep regularly? Or didn’t that get included in the game at the end? Haven’t looked yet…
Razgon
1842
It was in Fallout New Vegas but not in Skyrim.
I’m amazed at myself for not having tweaked up my carrying capacity yet, but I think it is getting to the point where I’m just going to say, “Screw it” and just give myself virtually unlimited capacity.
I might have stuck with it if the inventory management system wasn’t so cumbersome.
Why would you make it worse by increasing the number of items in the list? Regular inventory maintenance means less time scrolling through the interface.
I don’t think crafting is broken at all. I think it can be broken. If you’re spending all of your time on those smithing screens making leather strips and iron gauntlets to drive up your smithing level, don’t complain when you get the most powerful armor you can make and suddenly you’re invincible. If you enjoy sitting on that screen making leather strips, then fine–there’s something wrong with you and you are weird, but fine. If you’re doing it as a shortcut to uber loot, don’t get mad about “balance” when you get there.
Same thing with enchanting. Same thing with alchemy. From my level-20ish character that has been dabbling a little in each of the crafts, it seems like they’re balanced to be slow-developing. If you only crafted things you actually used (or made jewelry to sell) and paid for trainers, I think by higher levels you’d be very powerful but would not have outpaced everything else in the world by exploiting the system.
It’s like jumping everywhere in Morrowind to pump your acrobatics skill all over again.
Or, like extarbags said, don’t want to break the game? Then don’t. It’s easy.
I got a pretty cool gear (nightingale) yesterday, what better way to celebrate it than by making another 1080p gameplay video :-) :
BTW, turning off compass is great thing. I found it is completely unnecessary anyway, and finally I use cool detect life and clairvoyance spells.
Interface isn’t so bad on the xbox, but I can understand you don’t want to go through it too often. It might take longer with a large list, but at least you only have to do it once then. Fair enough, but as I said: not for me.
Another good thing about a controlled loot-policy is the fact that it takes a bit longer to get rich. Which makes the purchase of that long wanted house just that little bit sweeter… Admittingly, I doubt I’ll still feel that way on the fourth+ playthrough…
That is always the dilemma for me in all the Elder Scrolls games. In the beginning, it’s really fun to try to use every little thing to gain every advantage you can in a hostile world. The game has wild swings in difficulty as you try to get the best stuff you can possibly collect from quests or make yourself through enchantments. And then you hit a tipping point where the game becomes so easy, you lose all interest in further play.
In Morrowind, that happened to me around level 22. I quit by level 25. Even though I absolutely loved the game until then, once I hit that tipping point, it just took me a while to realize that I just wasn’t having any fun anymore.
In Oblivion that happened to me around level 28 or so. I actively tried not to make the game too easy for myself that time, balancing the need to be all powerful in games like these with the knowledge that if I did so, I would lose interest in the game. But around level 28, just through the equipment I got from quests, I was an unbeatable god. In order to gain interest in the game again for the expansion (which was awesome), I had to create a new character.
In Skyrim so far, I so want to unabashedly scrounge for every advantage, but I know that if I do, I’ll eventually ruin the game for myself, and I don’t want to do that. It does suck that I feel like I have to do the balancing part of the designer’s job for him. I can’t just play a Bethesda game stress free about trying to be the best that I can be. I always have a fear that something I find or something I create will send me over that tipping point that will make the game too easy.
I’m treating it as a way to increase difficulty level. If you think of smithing as merely more damage and high difficulty as merely more enemy hit points, they’re both a waste of time. But if you combine them, the game is still enjoyable. Only now you’re using more of the game’s systems, so you can feel good about that legendary dagger you just made. And you can feel proud about playing on Master.
I’m sure you can eventually break things on Master too. But I haven’t reached that tipping point yet like Rock8man said. I’m in a great spot on the power curve right now for pretty much all these systems. It’s nice.
Awesome, awesome video Paul.
So stop using it if that happens. Look, you aren’t “doing that part of the game designer’s job for him,” that’s not part of his job. The game is as it is intended to be. What, you think they spent all that time and all those resources developing this and then gave it to some four year olds to playtest the difficulty and determined that it was a solid challenge throughout for all builds? Um, no.
Broken builds exist. Broken perks exist. Broken items are easy to create. It’s like that on purpose, because some players want to do that stuff. If you don’t, don’t. Complaining about the game being “unbalanced” is like sitting in a sandbox filled with hundreds of toys, scores of which are exactly the kind of toys you want to play with, but you have one in your hand that you don’t like and you’re just wailing about how much you don’t like it instead of putting it down and picking up one of the ones you do like.
Or: you might as well be complaining about the fact that you can get married in this game, even though that’s a feature you have no interest in.
Slow down a minute, extarbags. Other than Rock8man’s one sentence complaining about doing the game designer’s job, I think posts like his are exactly what we need. We need cautionary tales about what not to abuse, whether it’s stealth or crafting or custom spells. Some people are a little more present oriented and need help making sure they don’t ruin the game.
Jaded nerd rage about how everything sux0rs might not be useful, but friendly warnings are.
First, I want to be clear that I’m not picking on Rock8man or anything. I probably read his post in a more negative light than that in which it was written, so apologies! Apologies… all around.
Second, I don’t think we need cautionary tales, except for the one about how you shouldn’t take the 100 Stealth perk if you want to play a stealth character. Everything else is totally reversible from what I can tell–make a broken item, find out that it’s broken, stop using it. Or is just getting a taste of that power enough to make it impossible to go back for some people?
Good point. I’m always thinking of stealth when this topic comes up.
Or is just getting a taste of that power enough to make it impossible to go back for some people?
With so many players, I’m sure somebody suffers from that particular neurotic disorder. It’s probably harder with game-breaking quest items like Rock8man said. You’ve earned the reward, so why go back to the generic elven sword? I can see how that kills it for people. But it shouldn’t be too hard to throw out the crafted elven sword and use something else.
[EDIT] I still think cautionary tales are worthwhile. If the nitpickers did that instead, everyone would be a lot happier.
kerzain
1855
I don’t want tradeskills to be nerfed into oblivion (or balanced, if that’s what people want to call it). When I create a character I tend to focus on one tradeskill at a time. If I want to be a blacksmith, I don’t spend much time working with alchemy other than to make weaksauce healing potions. I certainly don’t spend much time screwing with enchanting, because that might seem to magey for my heavily armored tankish blacksmith. I tend to roleplay my characters in a way that limits what they’d want to do, and the choices they’d make. I don’t go out of my way to be the best at everything, because then all my characters would start to feel the same.
What I want, at minimum, is for each tradeskill to remain viable all on their own. If everything were nerfed to the point where players were forced to game the system in order to eek out a useful trade-skill build, that would seriously detract from the fun of the game for me. So what if the potential for exploitation/gaming of the system remains? All that does is give players more freedom to play the way they want.
Does Skyrim lend itself to some seriously overpowered combinations of skills? Yep. Are you forced to play that way? Nope. Are there viable builds without playing that way? Oh yea. I just don’t care if players are allowed to create characters that are masters at all tradeskills, because to me it’s an optional feature. As long as each skill can still stand on its own, I’m not going to feel forced to maximize everything, on every character, every time I re-roll. Screw sameyness.
I think part of the ‘problem’, if you see it as such, is the fact that the breaking point with crafting lies somewhere different for each and every player and each and every style. Some things will be overpowered to certain classes because they use them so much, while they are just fine for other classes or playstyles. Stealth for example: when you play a thief, you wont need the buff (after a while), while a hunter might provide from it occasionaly. What to do: leave it out? Or put it in, with the risk of breaking the game at some point? Either way, someone loses…
Anyway: I dó think Bethesda did a good job balancing the game in another way, in a sense that it’s playable and beatable while playing as a mage, fighter, thief etc, and that neither style or combination thereoff feels uber-powerfull. Not at the stage I’m at, at least…
Edit: was still typing when Kerzain posted, otherwise I wouldn’t have posted this at all: I fully agree!
KWhit
1857
Yeah. I mean how the hell do you balance a game that lets players play with such wildly varying playstyles?
Not just the mage/thief/fighter differences, but how can you perfectly balance the game for a person who loves the crafting aspect and makes 100s of enchanted weapons and potions versus a player who doesn’t give a rats ass about that stuff?
I’d much rather it be slightly unbalanced than to have to give up some of the fun systems we have at our disposal - or to require that you use those systems to beat the game.
As it stands I am constantly selling crap off, handing crap off to Lydia, going to the house, unloading various ingredients and items, crafting and repeat. I would much rather go through that routine just once at the beginning or end of my play session rather than have to fiddle with it constantly throughout my adventures. Of course with vendors only having a limited supply of gold on-hand, selling could still be an issue. =\
KWhit
1859
Or you could leave some stuff behind and not pick up every piece of crap you see.
I’m very picky about what I loot, but it still adds up very quickly.
