Koki on 8/12/2011 at 07:53

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- Perks are insanely lazy. Light/Heavy Armor trees are almost completely the same, so are One/Two-Handed trees. Many of the perks are just +% performance, which is not what a perk should be; that's what the skill level itself should be doing. Perks should be special actions - Silent Roll, Ranger, etc. are what ALL perks should be like.
- Some of the perks are outright worthless. For example, your skill level in Lockpicking affects size of the "sweet spot" in a lock. What is the point of getting Expert Locks at Lockpicking of 75 then? When your Lockpicking is at that level you shouldn't have a problem opening Expert locks anyway because your Lockpicking is 75.
- Many skills are broken. Smithing is the most obvious one. Destruction is another. Unlike all other combat skills the damage doesn't scale with the skill level and there are only two perks to boost the damage. At high levels it takes forever to kill anything.
- Unarmed, Acrobatics and Mysticism are not in the game. I have no idea why they're not in the game. It's retarded to read a kill book like Thief which is obviously about jumping and gain Pickpocket from it instead. The only option for melee characters is heavy armor. Spells from Mysticism don't fit in their new schools.
- Non-combat level scaling. Even (http://cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/75/75543.jpg) videogame cartoonists figured that shit out before Bethesda. That's like losing in special olympics, good job Beth.
- Armor scales badly. At low armor rating levels the protection is minimal. The more AR you have, the more damage reduction you get; the growth is hyperbolic. So at low levels mobs can one-shot you and at high levels you're almost immortal.
- Effects in general are way too easy to get. You can get to 70% magic res on passive effects alone. You can get to 100% casting cost reduction, effectively making Magicka worthless.
- Light/Heavy armor difference is almost nonexistant. You can sneak in Heavy Armor(with Conditioning) and you can reach max damage reduction in Light Armor. In fact Light Armor provides better protection in the end because of Deft Movement. And Heavy Armor is better for sneaking because of Ebony Mail. Many armors don't have relevant perks in the Smithing tree, which means they're garbage because they can be upgraded only half as much.
- Weapons scale badly. The large smithing bonus means damage difference between, say, Orcish/Glass and Daedric weaponry is ~10%. The low damage values in general and tight fit of various weapon types means some of weapons are just too much trouble for minimal gain. Swords are the best because of fastest attack speed and abovementioned upgrade bonus. They also have the best special perks. Skyforge stuff is junk. You can't smith arrows.
- Race balance is nonexistant. Altmer rule all universe forever as usual because of the 50 Magicka bonus alone - like being 5 levels ahead of everyone else. Some race bonuses are worthless and "once per day for 60 seconds" powers are universally shit idea. Height values were introduced probably as a way of making races distinct movement-wise, except the differences are so minimal they don't matter (Except for Altmer who have height value of 1.08. Which means they run 8% faster, jump 8% higher, do 8% more damage with everything and take 8% less damage from everything)

There's probably more.

This must be the most broken video game I've ever seen. Pretty much all indie games made by a few sweaty fat nerds in their mom's basements blow it out of the water. If this was a master's project in Videogame Making, it would've gotten an F. I don't even know what to say. I always rant about videogame mechanics and how they're more important than storytelling and shit and this is like a kick in the nuts(Which will make many people here on TTLG happy at least). Do you even realize how bad it is? It's like having chess where Bishop can't move, the more Pawns you have the stronger they are, the Rook can teleport anywhere on the board, if you lose a Knight the enemy gets two extra turns and for every time Queen reaches other end of the board you can punch the opponent in the face.

Let's talk about how you never read about any of these horrors(with the sole exception of non-combat level scaling, maybe) in a review of Skyrim. Or how a game can be so fucking broken mechanics-wise and still be enjoyable.

The Alchemist on 8/12/2011 at 08:35

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Scumbag Koki. Underminds incredibly gaming acomplishment, nitpicks mechanics. Why hasnt anyone murdered you in your sleep yet? Oh right, it's not illegal to be an asshat. Asshat away!

Edit: THIS USER HAS BEEN FINED FOR IMPROPER USE OF AN INTERNET MEME.

Briareos H on 8/12/2011 at 09:16

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You probably missed the part where he said he likes the game.

Anyway, I think I voiced it in another thread but I can only agree that the game is broken beyond repair. "How a game can be so fucking broken mechanics-wise and still be enjoyable" is the most interesting question to take out of this with regards to gaming as a whole, as everything Skyrim does besides its RPG mechanics seems to be exactly what you need to make a game immersive.

Thirith on 8/12/2011 at 09:43

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I love the knee-jerk reaction to Koki's post, when he even writes that he's enjoying the game.

Kuuso on 8/12/2011 at 10:43

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Because, in the end, stats/leveing et al is not the point in RPG's (I hear RPGcodex arming up as they're coming to take me. :() or at least one that is a 3D sandbox world. A roguelike broken like this would just be awful altogether, but Skyrim is mainly about the exploration and doing interesting quests. As long as the game is not too hard or frustrating, they can continue as they're doing. I'm not at the highest levels yet, but I stopped Oblivion right when the mobs became crazy good and took ages to kill.

I would say that Skyrim has more in common with GTA and FPS games than Baldur's Gate.

Now, the good thing is that once modders overhaul the game as usual, it might turn out to be fucking fantastic. The bad thing is that once they have fixed the RPG-side, the exploration is null, since there's no new places or quests. Once the game is fully-realised via modders, I am not probably going to bother playing it anymore.