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[Sordid]

I just want to be able to critically fail my door bash and be left with a dislocated shoulder.

FTFY.

[Toady Two]

I'm currently looking into some Skyrim mods. I must say that the mod support on Steam is outstanding. You can browse through a workshop filled  with mods and mod compilations and subscribed to the ones you want and they will automatically be installed. i think Valve and Bethesda might have realized that good mod support can greatly increase the longevity of a single player title. Even people who pirated it will now find themselves tempted to buy the game at a bargain price just to get access to the workshop.

I'm going to try out some mods centered around survival that add hunger, thirst, sleep and hypothermia to the game along with maybe some combat overhauls to make it more deadly.

There are tons of interesting mods so soon after release.  I think anyone will find something they like.

[MorleyDev]

There was an ingame ability to make it easier, but it relied majorly on the skill of the player to complete the minigame

And thus is my main complaint. I want it to depend upon the skill of my character. My brain dead warrior whose standard approach to everything is "hit it with big sword" and if that fails "find bigger sword" should not be able to pick master-level locks. Yet because I'm able to do it as a player, and the lack of any open spells/scrolls at the very least means I don't have much choice. It just feels wrong.

And the oblivion lockpicking game was still very easy. Maybe I'm just a demi-god with super-human reflexes, but I'd almost never break a lockpick even with lockpick skill of 5. In Skyrim I break more lockpicks, that's it.

It wouldn't be so bad if they took the approach Fallout 3/New Vegas and Deus Ex: Human Revolution did, keep the mini-game but make it so you can't even attempt to pick locks/hack computers higher than your skill.

[Antioch]

What I really dislike about the game is that it is simply impossible to fail or get stuck on a quest. The marker points directly to the next objective in dungeons that are already composed of 1 long corridor. It just requires no SKILL at all to complete a quest, which means quests could almost be replaced by long cut-scenes giving you loot.

Have you ever heard ANYONE get stuck on a specific quest in Skyrim?

[Sordid]

I got stuck on that Gaudur quest, or whatever his name is. Collected two of the MacGuffins, went to get the third and the game basically went "nope, this door requires a specific key". Only it didn't tell me where to get it, and at the time I wasn't aware that the dungeon in question was also part of the Mages Guild quest line. So yeah, stuck pretty badly there, but I guess not in a good way.

[Leatra]

seems its hard to make a good lockpicking minigame, that isn't TOO hard for newbies, or far too easy for anyone who's done it more than once... not real sure what they could do about this...

Dispense with it altogether? I don't really like lockpicking minigames, because the difficulty curve is completely backwards.

Well, you are supposed to pick locks easily as your character gets more skilled at picking locks. This is the way it happens in RPGs. I agree with MorleyDev. I want my character's skills to matter.

I think Skyrim's minigame is a lot easier than Oblivion's. I remember breaking 20-30 picks sometimes. Though I try to pick locks more carefully in Skyrim to not level up the lockpicking skill.

[BigD145]

There was an ingame ability to make it easier, but it relied majorly on the skill of the player to complete the minigame

And thus is my main complaint. I want it to depend upon the skill of my character. My brain dead warrior whose standard approach to everything is "hit it with big sword" and if that fails "find bigger sword" should not be able to pick master-level locks. Yet because I'm able to do it as a player, and the lack of any open spells/scrolls at the very least means I don't have much choice. It just feels wrong.

You could always tie one hand behind your back and put an oven mitt on the other hand while banging your head against a brick wall. That should pretty well simulate your warrior.

[Micro102]

There was an ingame ability to make it easier, but it relied majorly on the skill of the player to complete the minigame

And thus is my main complaint. I want it to depend upon the skill of my character. My brain dead warrior whose standard approach to everything is "hit it with big sword" and if that fails "find bigger sword" should not be able to pick master-level locks. Yet because I'm able to do it as a player, and the lack of any open spells/scrolls at the very least means I don't have much choice. It just feels wrong.

You could always tie one hand behind your back and put an oven mitt on the other hand while banging your head against a brick wall. That should pretty well simulate your warrior.

I tried this. It just takes longer.

[Alastar]

Regarding difficulty and skill: Lockpicking is the least of the problems here, the Elder Scrolls games have never worked as an honest challenge if you're a bit of a tweaker. At least "Minutes to Invincibility" is on a trend upwards.

[Knight of Fools]

I tired this. It just takes longer.

You could just not pick master level locks, since your warrior isn't able to. He's completely under your control. Your desire to limit your own control shouldn't be the reason others are limited in theirs.

Let us play the game how we want to, and you can play it how you want.



Sorry, in retrospect that came out a little harsh. I'm not trying to be rude, I'm just trying to make a point. :S

[Microcline]

I tired this. It just takes longer.

You could just not pick master level locks, since your warrior isn't able to. He's completely under your control. Your desire to limit your own control shouldn't be the reason others are limited in theirs.

Let us play the game how we want to, and you can play it how you want.

If that's the attitude that you're going to take, why have skill levels and perks in the first place?  Surely we can decide whether our characters use magic or one-handed and light or heavy armor, and having metrics of our character's skill just limits our own control.  I would argue that in this case the idea that any character build can open any lock in a game that prides itself on character customization would be considered the aberrant opinion (note that if you were really bothered by your barbarian being unable to pick locks, you could always use the console to boost your skill, meaning that the game could still cater to this if players really wanted to).  While it is certainly possible to make an RPG without character metrics, TES has prided itself since Daggerfall in allowing the player to customize their character in a way such that the gameplay reflects their roleplaying.

[nenjin]

This has always pissed me off about Bethesda, and it's symptomatic of their issues as game developers.

There's no fucking bash door/bash chest mechanic, you have go to mods for those. Even though there's been a) spells that open locks, b) quest items that open locks and c) custom built trap mechanisms for some traps, in Bethesda's world, decades of good RPG precedent pretty much goes ignored. "Why wouldn't anyone pick locks?" the discussion went at the Bethesda dev meeting. "We put lock picks everywhere, beginning locks aren't hard to pick AT ALL, you don't even need the perk tree......Letting fighter types bash locked stuff open is more work for little pay off for us."

In how many games is there a convention for fighter types to smash locked objects? How often does that have meaningful consequences that actually impact your decision to break something, or go look for a key? Having done plenty of lock picking in real life, it's a fucking skill. It's time consuming, delicate work and the outcome is not certain. There's plenty of reasons why modern criminals don't learn to pick locks, why it's reserved for master criminals. It's easier to smash and grab.

So sorry for the diatribe, but it's the combination of little things like that which show me time and again Bethedsa isn't thinking that hard about their design. They're thinking about how they can recycle things and tweak them ever so slightly in order to push another release out the door on the same code they've been using for 8 fucking years now.

Also, the "just don't do that" response doesn't really work when half the game is sitting behind locked doors and chests. You either pick locks or you don't get to find a vast majority of the loot.

[Knight of Fools]

I'll concede to that point. The lack of a bash lock feature is kind of odd, so you really have no choice but to pick locks if you want to experience all the content.

I usually play a kleptomaniac thief of fighting with magics, though, so I never really noticed, because I do everything.

I completely agree about other points on lock picking, though. I preferred Oblivion's more than Skyrim's because it actually required a bit of skill on the player's part, which the lock picking skill itself enhanced. It took some practice and skill to open a master lock. In Skyrim, it's just guesswork that the lock picking skill just makes more convenient. I'd prefer something more challenging than either of those, but I doubt Bethesda is going to dance down that road any time soon.

[Micro102]

I tired this. It just takes longer.

You could just not pick master level locks, since your warrior isn't able to. He's completely under your control. Your desire to limit your own control shouldn't be the reason others are limited in theirs.

Let us play the game how we want to, and you can play it how you want.



Sorry, in retrospect that came out a little harsh. I'm not trying to be rude, I'm just trying to make a point. :S

Lol I knew I should of made it more sarcastic sounding. I meant that lockpicking was so easy that you could do it with one hand while banging your head on a wall ect.

[Sensei]

In how many games is there a convention for fighter types to smash locked objects? How often does that have meaningful consequences that actually impact your decision to break something, or go look for a key?

KOTOR let you bash a few doors and most containers. Bashing containers open would usually destroy a couple of the items inside.