Time4Pizza
New Member
First I will say that the world of skyrim is truly massive and wonder of design. However, with so much time and effort put into creating such a vast and varied world I wonder why other aspects seem so mediocre.
Combat is iffy at best, the graphics are so so, and the menu system on PCs is a nightmare. This is all easily forgiven. What seems inexcusable to me are the amount of game breaking exploits and balancing issues.
Certain perks and skill trees are absolutely worthless. Dual casting as a Mage is completely broken. The only upside to it is the stun perk. Dual casting spells cost three times the mana. In almost all circumstances simply casting two one handed versions of a spell is a patently better strategy.
Heavy armor dominates all other forms of armor. The perks in the heavy armor tree are immense. Being able to negate all the negatives of heavy armor and having the ability to enchant it for magic bonuses makes all other forms of armor nonsensical.
The ability to train with followers and then take the gold back makes leveling a joke. The ability to craft 300 iron daggers, enchant and then sell them breaks the economy.
The level scaling system, though not as game breaking as in oblivion, still punishes you for power leveling. I'm sorry, but I like min maxing. How come at level 15 bandits still pose the same amount of challenge they did at level 2? If they wanted to scale certain areas they should have made the enemies which spawn a different type. Instead of random bandit encounters, now you have random troll encounters. Simply making the same type of monster 15 times stronger ruins immersion. Level scaling = still broken.
The list of character design flaws goes on and on, add to it as you see fit. In game where it obvious how many hours were put into designing the world itself it baffles me that such careless was used in designing character progression. People love their characters as much as the game world. Is it too much to ask to have a great game world and a character progression system that is not completely broken?
I love exploring the world and seeing what is around the next turn. Too bad I never feel challenged in the game, and when I do it feels arbitrarily imposed on me because of level scaling and not because I am fighting a powerful boss. Character progression is shoddy and I never know when I am gimping my character or making him more of what I envision. I think these various character balancing issues could have been remedy with a minimal amount of play testing, and for a team which spent tens of thousands of man hours on designing a game world a little effort on making character progression feel more fluid is not too much to ask.
Combat is iffy at best, the graphics are so so, and the menu system on PCs is a nightmare. This is all easily forgiven. What seems inexcusable to me are the amount of game breaking exploits and balancing issues.
Certain perks and skill trees are absolutely worthless. Dual casting as a Mage is completely broken. The only upside to it is the stun perk. Dual casting spells cost three times the mana. In almost all circumstances simply casting two one handed versions of a spell is a patently better strategy.
Heavy armor dominates all other forms of armor. The perks in the heavy armor tree are immense. Being able to negate all the negatives of heavy armor and having the ability to enchant it for magic bonuses makes all other forms of armor nonsensical.
The ability to train with followers and then take the gold back makes leveling a joke. The ability to craft 300 iron daggers, enchant and then sell them breaks the economy.
The level scaling system, though not as game breaking as in oblivion, still punishes you for power leveling. I'm sorry, but I like min maxing. How come at level 15 bandits still pose the same amount of challenge they did at level 2? If they wanted to scale certain areas they should have made the enemies which spawn a different type. Instead of random bandit encounters, now you have random troll encounters. Simply making the same type of monster 15 times stronger ruins immersion. Level scaling = still broken.
The list of character design flaws goes on and on, add to it as you see fit. In game where it obvious how many hours were put into designing the world itself it baffles me that such careless was used in designing character progression. People love their characters as much as the game world. Is it too much to ask to have a great game world and a character progression system that is not completely broken?
I love exploring the world and seeing what is around the next turn. Too bad I never feel challenged in the game, and when I do it feels arbitrarily imposed on me because of level scaling and not because I am fighting a powerful boss. Character progression is shoddy and I never know when I am gimping my character or making him more of what I envision. I think these various character balancing issues could have been remedy with a minimal amount of play testing, and for a team which spent tens of thousands of man hours on designing a game world a little effort on making character progression feel more fluid is not too much to ask.