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[Neyvn]

You know whats annoying... Starting a new game on Highest Difficulty, forgetting to put a Pot into Fav and then getting poisoned by the bloody spiders. And instead of hitting I for the potions you hit q where they ain't there, and then die because the poison depleats your health too fast...

[Reiina]

I love some of the comments of the guards after having finished the DB questline: "I was talking with the other guards the other day and they said you...the dark brotherhood...nevermind...". Nevermind indeed :p.
Done a few daedra quests, the molag bal one was ok, the sanguine one was quite funny, the sheogorath one was maybe the most disappointing, dunno if it was the voice actor or the writing but I wasn't really impressed with it.

[Bdthemag]

Yeah, I thought it was pretty cool when a guard went "Psst, I know who you are. Hail Sithis."

I love little things like that.

[nenjin]

I definitely think it was the voice acting on Sheogorath. He was trying a little too hard I think. And the quest itself felt a little rushed and unpolished. Kind of reminded me of some Oblivion quests actually, where they were still feeling out how to script stuff.

[IronyOwl]

Skyrim is a fun game, but it holds your hand all the way, you don't have to think at all to solve any quest. In morrowind there were no waypoints, no arrows to help you. You had a map, and a general direction.

You can unselect the quest to get rid of arrows. Most people don't find searching through vast swaths of wilderness for one specific cave very fun for very long, but you can just not check your map very often for a very lite version of that.

I've heard people say the same thing about Oblivion, and it just isn't true.  The game is designed around using quest markers, as no one gives any kind of directions.  Furthermore, very little quest information is recorded in the game's WoW-styled "journal" (read: quest list).  I wouldn't mind some markers (i.e. a location or NPC you've already encountered), but when the game marks the location of an ancient artifact that's been lost for generations or the next person you need to question in a mystery it becomes incredibly intrusive and highlights the fact that the game doesn't require you to think, it just points you in a direction and tells you who to kill.

True enough on directions, but I don't see why being given directions is massively better than being given a map marker. You still know how to find it if they actually told you anything, and in some cases knowing where it is on the map is less helpful (and requires more thought about the world) than being handed instructions due to impassable terrain. Plus, in a lot of cases it makes more sense for someone to know where something is on a map but not precisely how to get there from here. I guess I can agree that it'd be more immersive in general, but not by much, and not without a lot more effort on their part.

I also agree that it'd be nice if your journal recorded more information, but I also don't think there's a massive gap in effectiveness or immersion there. Or at least, if there is it's an issue with the quests themselves, not the way they're tracked. Most of the junk recorded in Morrowind was just that- junk, that you're never going to look at again, and that gets in the way of the stuff you might want to look at again. Oblivion was better, but even then, how often did you look at anything but current quest objectives?

Most people don't figure out how to break alchemy, enchanting, and spellmaking on their first playthrough.

Perhaps you're taking "break" to mean something more severe in this case, but I find it hard to believe someone could acquire Daedric armor without noticing that they can become a god using perfectly normal potions and enchants, unless they just weren't interested in those areas and so never looked at them. You really didn't need to chain int potions or abuse soultrap bugs to become massively more powerful than you needed to be.

[scriver]

A good RPG journal needs to be, and have, a lot of things. More than all it needs to be easy to browse. Being able to select quests and only show the entries relevant to that one quest, having a separate section for hints and rumours, being able to sort said hints and rumours as well as quest in order of time, area where you got them, and so on. Being able to write your own notes, and to connect those notes to the quest or entry they might be relevant to.

Of course, this would only be necessary if the game actually had any complicated quests, or focus on quests at all. Skyrim's journal is great for the kind of game Skyrim seeks to be, where quests just provide shallow excuses to go hiking, kill people and critters, and then take their stuff and put it on display in your house.

...Well, that's what I play it for anyway.

Also, does anyone but me get annoyed by all the damn clutter Beth insists on putting in your house when you buy upgrades? If I wanted bowls and urns I would steal them from my foes (I mean, it's not as they need them any more after I've gone through their hideout/dungeon, is it?) and put them there myself.

[IronyOwl]

Not really. It's easy enough to snatch if it's bothering you, and, uh... well, frankly I've had a hard time placing things myself, so shrugging and going with what's there is a common plan.

That said, I'd probably get more of a sense of satisfaction from decorating it completely from scratch. Maybe sometime I'll ransack the place and do that, but I actually like the style of most of what's there.

[Trapezohedron]

The only things I would've wanted to be included in this game are more detailed journals, and a revamped UI.

I don't have anything against objective markers, but if they made it possible to avoid using the markers and still complete your objective using only common sense, it would've been better. Most of these quests send you into a dungeon with minimal info, then provide you a waypoint towards your objective. But if it was possible to avoid the markers entirely, and proceed into the wild using your journal notes, it would actually make sense plot wise, instead of sending you into a dungeon, with some guy telling you to find a crown... and that's it.

Also, the UI is an absolute mess. It is impossible to navigate through it without using the keyboard, and there's no scrolling bar in the menus, forcing you to mash up/down/W/D to wield your Notched Pickaxe with your Ebony Blade. It's also even more confusing in the stats menu, forcing you to circle around and look for the ability constellation, instead of having all the info you need in one screen. Whoever thought of that "innovation" should be taught the value of efficiency.

[IronyOwl]

More organic quest instructions would have taken a lot more effort, though, since instead of just pointing the player at a dungeon you have to figure out exactly how the player's supposed to get there, write the dialogue where the NPC describes how to get there, write the journal entry that describes how to get there, make sure there's no other haunted forts nearby confusing the issue, make sure the dungeon's visible from wherever the player's supposed to be, etc. All in all, it probably just wasn't worth it.


Most of the UI issues are a result of designing it with consoles in mind. It certainly seems like it'd be nice and easy to use with a controller.

I actually like the skills menu, though. I never really use it except for leveling and checking up on very specific skills, so the thematic feel outweighs the burden of scrolling through it, for me.

[Rose]

There's already UI mods, actually.
http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=667

[scriver]

Not really. It's easy enough to snatch if it's bothering you, and, uh... well, frankly I've had a hard time placing things myself, so shrugging and going with what's there is a common plan.

That said, I'd probably get more of a sense of satisfaction from decorating it completely from scratch. Maybe sometime I'll ransack the place and do that, but I actually like the style of most of what's there.

[Microcline]

More organic quest instructions would have taken a lot more effort, though, since instead of just pointing the player at a dungeon you have to figure out exactly how the player's supposed to get there, write the dialogue where the NPC describes how to get there, write the journal entry that describes how to get there, make sure there's no other haunted forts nearby confusing the issue, make sure the dungeon's visible from wherever the player's supposed to be, etc. All in all, it probably just wasn't worth it.

Morrowind did this with a budget and dev team that was a fraction of Skyrim's.  The main thing that's required are competent, dedicated writers and artists capable of creating unique, memorable terrain.  Instead of making a beeline for the quest marker, players examine and interact with their environment.  I could probably put most of the features of Morrowind on a map because I have a sense of their spacial location but I'd be hard pressed to remember anything from Oblivion other than the Imperial City and the Niben Bay.  Furthermore, a good journal system allows players to understand what they've done so far with a quest and their motivation for doing so.  I don't know how many times I've seen quests in my log in Skyrim summarized in five words or less and wondered "why am I doing this?"

Most of the UI issues are a result of designing it with consoles in mind. It certainly seems like it'd be nice and easy to use with a controller.

This is true.  However, many of the problems come from the terrible port, such as it sporadically switching between keyboard and mouse control, that remapping keys isn't supported, and that the horizontal and vertical axis have different sensitivities.  Even with a controller, many of the UI faults still stand, such as the gratuitous screen wasting mentioned in this previously posted image

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Yoink]

Well, since the invincible NPCs problem (definitely the worst design flaw I have discovered so far in the game) prevented me from

Spoiler: Mild spoilers about Thieve's Guild (click to show/hide)

  clearing out the evil gang of criminals in Riften's sewers, I decided perhaps doing the first quest would then allow me to kill them, since it's revealed to the player that they're the Thieve's Guild quest-givers. No joy, they still get back up with their inexplicable invincibility.
So, the next desperate course of action for my character is to deliberately fail the second quest, where you have to extort a bunch of shopkeepers. The only way I can see to fail is... To kill them. But alas, we all must make sacrifices in the course of justice, and that is the course my character is now set out upon!
I just need to get the bounty-money to stop the guards from hunting me for wiping out half the Black-Briar family. Surprisingly, my spellcasting hired thug managed to survive my disastrous attack on their manor, and caught up with me many miles away outside of another city, after I'd considered him dead.

[Onlyhestands]

Having played Skyrim for a first few hours last night:
What I like:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The general feel of the game
Maybe it's the way the terrain is set up, but the game feels much bigger than Oblivion, hell it feels bigger than Morrowind.
The wildlife and new monsters
The skills-I miss having more specialized categories for weapons (long blade, short blade, blunt, axe, spear), but Skyrim finally distinguishes one and two handed weapons. I miss acrobatics and athletics, but pickpocketing and smithing are nice.
Perks-I thought they would suck but they actually let you specialize your character more
Very well optimized, I was surprised it runs so well on my 3 year old laptop
The world feels more alive than Oblivion
The wilderness feels like wilderness, like you are actually in a dangerous uninhabited location when you get off the road

What I don't like:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The interface, whoever designed it should be shot
Magic and archery seem very clunky
There needs to be more things happening out in the wildnerness. Look at Red Dead Redemption, maybe not the random quests every two minutes, but RDR had lots of trafic and cool things going on the roads
Can't skip the long intro tutorial
Guilds seem unimpressive, I'm not far in the game but I miss the way guilds were in Morrowind

[The Merchant Of Menace]

So, where exactly can one obtain a wood axe? I want to chop me some firewood.