I feel like Skyrim does not value my time.

I'm just glad I played Dark Souls and Chivalry: Medieval Warfare after I had already put well over a hundred hours in to it. While I still enjoy the game, I used to enjoy the combat at least somewhat. I can't say the same now.
 
Dresden said:
I remember going down a vault in New Vegas because I wanted to know what happened in there. In Skyrim, it would be to fill up some achievement or bar.
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That's pretty accurate for me and I also stopped playing at the 20 hour mark.

It just clicked suddenly that I wasn't having fun. I realised I was in a weird loop of playing to get to the next part of the quest or a new level but not actually enjoying the gameplay I was experiencing now. I think if the characters were interesting to talk to and the plot was more exciting I would have loved it but I wasn't really feeling any of it.
 
Ya know, I spent 150 hours on my first playthrough and I'm now over 75 hours into my 2nd playthrough and I'm starting to feel like this game is very time-consuming. Do they not realize that I have important things to do in life? I love to forego fast travel and walk to destinations, but its like.........this might not be a good use of my time. For the same time I spent walking from Whiterun to Markarth, I could have done the dishes. Did they not think this through beforehand? Why am I spending all this time playing? I feel like I have no control over it. Right now, I'm walking from Solitude to Riften and I'm pretty sure its going to take like an hour. WTF? That's way too long. I don't know what to do about this, GAF. Skyrim is ruining my life.
 
It does waste your time, yes.
I feel they could work more on some aspects to trim the fat, like looting and equipment in general.
Mods that add hotkeys are essential, imo, it is crazy the base game went for that favorites menu that demands you to pause the game instead of a hotkey scheme.
But even with that, most of the loot is useless; while this is true in ARPGs in general, something like Diablo is usually color-coded so you know right away which loot to ignore; in Skyrim you are always opening a dead draugr inventory to retrieve those 2 pieces of gold.

Thinking about it, maybe the game could, indeed, benefit from a system of sufixes and prefixes like Diablo, if only so you can streamline the loot without dumbing it down. If it works on those games, why wouldn't it work here?

As for quests and sidequests, their problem is that their rewards also grow useless very fast. Mods that mess with the economy, making everything more expansive and more difficult to acquire, may help in this feeling that the sidequest is only wasting your time.
 
krameriffic said:
Indeed. As I read this thread, I can't help but think "man, I wonder what all these people would say if they played Oblivion."
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Only reason I was interested in playing Skyrim is because it looked like they broke through a jank barrier. So I'm sure I'd probably dislike Oblivion too. And I'd probably rather gorge my eyeball out with a rusted spoon rather than play Arena or Daggerfall.
 
Skryim (And Daggerfall to a much greater extent) prove something about video game world and level design: Landspace means jack shit without density of interesting things. If there isn't a high density of interesting things, you just end up with a glorified hiking simulator. The problem with giant worlds is that it takes a lot of time and effort to program shit into them, and so you get a lot of repetition. Skyrim is varied enough that this repetition can take a while to set in, but once it sets in, it never lets go. Things that were once interesting or mysterious become monotonous. I remember having fun on my first time attempting to scale a mountain to explore new terrain. Now it's, "Oh look, another fucking mountain in the way." As the magic wears off, you also begin to pay more attention to the ugliness, the bland voice acting, the awful animations, the horrible interface, the never-ending glitches... And then you just hate Skyrim even when you once liked it.

Playing 1-1 in Demon's Souls after playing Skyrim is one of the most jarring experiences imaginable because their approaches to level design are so different. Demon's Souls has tiny worlds, and yet I remember more about one area in Demon's Souls than I remember about all the dungeons I traversed in Skyrim. Same with a lot of other linear, small games; by sacrificing some of that open-world freedom, you can create a more focused and memorable experience.
 
Seanspeed said:
Ya know, I spent 150 hours on my first playthrough and I'm now over 75 hours into my 2nd playthrough and I'm starting to feel like this game is very time-consuming. Do they not realize that I have important things to do in life? I love to forego fast travel and walk to destinations, but its like.........this might not be a good use of my time. For the same time I spent walking from Whiterun to Markarth, I could have done the dishes. Did they not think this through beforehand? Why am I spending all this time playing? I feel like I have no control over it. Right now, I'm walking from Solitude to Riften and I'm pretty sure its going to take like an hour. WTF? That's way too long. I don't know what to do about this, GAF. Skyrim is ruining my life.
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What the hell are you even attempting to drive at?
 
I got my money's worth from Skyrim, that's for sure. 150 hours on PC.

However, I got tired of it relatively fast. Mods make it look nicer and some add some decent "quests" or companions, but it just serves to highlight how superficial it all is.

Combat mods try their best to fix the boring combat, but it's become futile for me to even try to play. I get bored almost instantly.

There's just nothing interesting to do tbh.
 
ZealousD said:
What the hell are you even attempting to drive at?
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Its a video game. You can put time into it if you enjoy it, or you can do something else if you don't.

Its fucking simple.

Anybody who complains about the amount of time spent playing it after a hundred hours played is a moron who hasn't figured out how to prioritize their time properly. Its not the game's fault.
 
Everything was too damn gray and brown.

Oblivion was fun with a mixture of dread. Skyrim was just constant dread and depression.
 
eternaLightness said:
I played for about 30 hours and the game just never seemed to click with me. I never really grasped all of the crafting and leveling up and never really felt like I was playing the game the right way. The world, the characters all seemed really interesting and I enjoyed most of that stuff but the combat and a lot of the quest just seemed really boring and not very entertaining.
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I could have written this exact post, word for word - even the hour count. My experience exactly. Just way too much going on and it didn't hold my interest.
 
I burned out on Skyrim far quicker than I did on Morrowind or Oblivion. I also enjoyed closing Oblivion gates far more than exploiting dumb dragon AI every 15 mins.
 
Thats why I loved new vegas (200 hours played according to steam). Sure its not a theme park fun as Fallout 3 was in world design, but the quests, and lore, and effect on the world meant something in that game. Let Bethesda make the world, and Obsidian the quests, and reactivity.
 
Seanspeed said:
Its a video game. You can put time into it if you enjoy it, or you can do something else if you don't.

Its fucking simple.

Anybody who complains about the amount of time spent playing it after a hundred hours played is a moron who hasn't figured out how to prioritize their time properly. Its not the game's fault.
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I'm not still playing it after expressing these thoughts. I was previously enjoying it but as time went on I was enjoying it less and less. Eventually it got to the point where I stopped enjoying it and now here I am.

Now I'm to the point where I am expressing why I stopped enjoying it and why I stopped playing it.
 
I H8 Memes said:
Bethesda make game worlds, not games. Perhaps someday they will hire someone who understands the art of making games.
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You're quite right, but they've gone 20 years and had a lot of success without making games. Why change now? I'd rather play something that's more about the gameplay and has a more focused design, but many people clearly love their worlds. They're extremely successful for a reason, even if I can't stay interested in the results.
 
xtrasauce said:
Bethesda is ambitious to a fault, and that's what I love about them. They just go for broke... and then things break. I love the games that result from that unconventional approach, warts and all.
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Sure, they're ambitious when doing certain things, or just one, really: creating a huge world. Other than that, it's hard for me to praise randomly generated side-quests, followers who aren't characters at all and terrible, terrible combat. Not to mention the complete lack of attributes, gamebryo-with-a-different-name and overall poor gear variety.
 
A Black Falcon said:
You're quite right, but they've gone 20 years and had a lot of success without making games. Why change now? I'd rather play something that's more about the gameplay and has a more focused design, but many people clearly love their worlds. They're extremely successful for a reason.
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And they're successful with both a more mainstream crowd and the hardcore people enough to dive into elaborate giant mods.
Heck, I remember Jim Sterling touting the success of Skyrim as the anti-Call of Duty.

This "they make worlds and not games" might be correct, but fuck if they don't make excellent worlds worth of applause. It's this weird thing where I know, in theory, that the game lacks this and that, but I can't hate it while I play. It's an alternate world full of stuff to do, however meaningless they are.

It strikes a very powerful chord of "what games should be", which is, I believe, why it sells so much. It really feels natural that open world is the next "thing" on the upcoming generation.
 
Bethesda knows my weakness, they know that I can't just leave that blank area of the map covered or that dungeon unexplored, so they gave me a billion repetitive dungeons in Skyrim to keep me busy. It's sad that it worked, I have a problem.
 
I noticed this when I first played Arena back in the day. Every Elder Scrolls game is like this. Which is why I haven't bought one since Daggerfall.
 
ZealousD said:
Full disclosure: This is my first Elder Scrolls experience.

I was originally thinking of writing a very long post, being very specific about the elements of the game that bug me, but in the spirit of my original point I am going to keep this very brief.

I understand a lot of why people praise Skyrim, and probably the whole Elder Scrolls series in general. As much as the game has flaws on a technical level, there really is a great appeal to have a massive world to explore. I felt connected to the world and there were plenty of great moments that I wanted to share with friends. There are definitely highlights and things I liked about playing this game.

But I've put in about 120 hours into the game and I'm not even sure that I could say that I'm halfway finished. There is a lot of content but there's also a shitload of fluff and things to do that waste my time. The UI is just astronomically bad and the amount of time I spend doing inventory management, crafting items, dicking with vendors, etc is staggering. It's like almost half the game. I go into a dwarven ruin or a crypt for the 5th time and it feels like I'm just going through the motions. Oh God, I have to fight ANOTHER dragon? I've got 20 Dragon Souls in my inventory and no shouts to use them on! Oh man, before I can become Thane of this hold I have to chop that wood, retrieve that satchel, and pet this cat.

The design is just not very focused. It doesn't seem like Bethesda was very interested in making sure that all of the elements that make up the game are interesting and polished. Just stuff the game as full to the brim with content as possible and people will overlook everything else.
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Then don't do those things?
 
sirfairfax said:
Sure, they're ambitious when doing certain things, or just one, really: creating a huge world. Other than that, it's hard for me to praise randomly generated side-quests, followers who aren't characters at all and terrible, terrible combat. Not to mention the complete lack of attributes, gamebryo-with-a-different-name and overall poor gear variety.
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There is quite a few good overhauls for skyrim now. Skyrim Redone is a great example.
http://www.skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/9286/? Which pretty much changes everything about the game. Here is a 102 page pdf explaining the shit ton of changes and a few other complimentary mods.
Http://www.skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/33995//?

I still think shit like this should of been released by Bethesda and not by the modding community.
 
I love most of the ES series, but after about 30 hours in Skyrim I started to see that nothing I did in the game had any meaning whatsoever and immediately uninstalled it. I can be leader of all the guilds, kill the emperor, kill dragons with my bare fists, and yet none of it matters because it doesn't affect the game world at all. That bugged me so much I couldn't stand to play it. The game world is just so static and empty, AI is just as bad as every other ES game, magic is devolved from Morrowind and even Oblivion, quests are a noticable step down from previous games. Cities are tiny and gated off by ridiculous load screens (A product of making it for consoles). Dungeons are repetitive and dull. The waypoint system makes a joke of quests and journal reading too, since they clearly built the game around the player just blindly following that little silver marker. The more I write about this game, the more I retroactively hate it.

/rant
 
EmCeeGramr said:
Yeah, at a certain point you realize that Skyrim isn't a role playing game. It's a Scandinavian walking and bar filling simulator. Walk over the next hill to see what the five markers on your compass are so that they're filled in on your map. Keep doing a thing to fill a bar and once that's done there's two dozen other bars to fill to no real end.
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I personally love this shit. It's the reason I seem to be in the minority that liked Donkey Kong 64. I like collectathons, making lists, checking off everything on that list one by one etc. The more complex and varied these objectives the more fun. Skyrim and Fallout 3 had this kind of stuff in spades, it feeds into my OCD where I have to do everything and gives me the most bang for my buck.
 
wow, i'm glad i found this post. i also got bored of skyrim after about level 30 or so (pretty close if not past the 100hr mark). i thought i was the only one. after a while i just didn't care anymore. i was just leveling up and running around following the quest log. i remember getting a quest, walking up to the little cave i was supposed to enter and just said fuck it. that was the last time i played the game. weirdly, i don't have this issue with new vegas. everytime i play the game, i'm having a good time.
 
Angry Fork said:
I personally love this shit. It's the reason I seem to be in the minority that liked Donkey Kong 64. I like collectathons, making lists, checking off everything on that list one by one etc. The more complex and varied these objectives the more fun. Skyrim and Fallout 3 had this kind of stuff in spades, it feeds into my OCD where I have to do everything and gives me the most bang for my buck.
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walk outside and bring a piece of paper

everytime you see something cool, make a checkmark on the piece of paper
 
I have a technical question. I accidentally killed a quest npc and now the quest is failed. It was one of the Daedra quests apparently so getting the achievement is gonna be rough now I think without restarting everything. Is it possible to reactivate a quest on pc with cheats, like spawn a new instance of the killed character?
 
EuropeOG said:
You played it for 120 hours and only now you complain about those mechanics?
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I see this post lots but this genuinely happens with some RPGs and MMOs. Games with lots of box ticking. Shallow mechanics that are ok to good can create a huge time sink that eventually hits a backlash.

People usually do not walk away from Mario or Counter Strike after hundreds of hours calling them crap but it has happened with every Bethseda game, MMOs, and probably some social games. There is a reason for it.
 
I was 50 hours into Oblivion before I realized I hadn't actually done anything. I wasn't mad about it though.

Finished the main questline 5 hours later. LOL
 
Zuhzuhzombie!! said:
Then don't do those things?
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When "not doing those things" essentially amounts to not playing the game, then you're essentially asking me to stop playing the game.

Which is exactly what I did. So now I'm talking about it why I stopped.
 
This video basically says what I think about Skyrim:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JweTAhyR4o0

Skip to about 7:11 for main arguments. For those who don't wanna watch, his main arguments are:


  1. You can't fail
  2. No consequences for faction membership
  3. Little to no impact on the world
  4. Quest structure and journal system
  5. NPC conversation being heavily reduced
  6. Massively oversimplified puzzles
  7. The value of items being reduced

I agree with all of them but especially points 1-4. They make Skyrim a very shallow rpg because these things exist in the game and this is coming from someone with 150 hours in Skyrim.
 
I think the dungeons/caves took a nice step forward but the quests took quite a big step back. I remember how focused the fighters, mages and thieves guild quests were in oblivion, mainly because they were all designed by hand. Skyrim kind of forced you to do those radiant random quests at times which are mind numbingly boring and pointless.

Also the journal took a massive step back. Wayy too oversimplified in skyrim. Puzzles doesnt care about because oblivion/morrowind didnt even have them.
 
If it doesn't click for you, it doesn't click for you. Maybe you'd enjoy it more with mods. As someone who's only played the 360 version, I'll say that I'm not even close to tired of Skyrim after well over 100 hours. The mechanics people complain about don't bother me much. In fact, the only thing I had a problem with initially was the stupid weight limit, which forced me to go through five loading screens after every dungeon just to store or sell my latest batch of loot.

I took care of that nonsense with a potion exploit. Now I can carry the world in my pocket.
 
Most won't agree with this but I used to enjoy running to my destinations in Oblivion. There were alot fewer mountains and traveling on foot was so much easier in Oblivion. I just can't do that in Skyrim, too many mountains. Other than that, I enjoyed Skyrim though I will admit that it took more than a year for it to grow on me.
 
100-120 hours is where I usually start to get a little burnt out on a Bethesda game. But then I just take a break for 6 months plus, and I will be able to come back to it.

It is a shame how you tend to be almost a God after a while. I love the rush of being weaker during the beginning of the game where you had to try to be strategic (or cheesy) to try to kill enemies. They need to carry that farther into the game and limit how powerful you can become.

Then again the relaxing time-wasting pace of the game is part of the appeal in a way. Skyrim is what I play when I want to just mess around and chill. If I want something more intense i will usually play Halo multiplayer or the like.
 
BRocknRolla said:
I played Skyrim for over 100 hours, and while I was largely enjoying it at the time, looking back on it, I don't think highly of the experience. So much of it seemed like fluff and filler and so few of the experiences seemed memorable. It all seems to me like a bunch of random caves full of zombies and underground dwemer ruins. Even the dragons became boring once you got powerful.

Those big exciting moments were just too few and far between and the general landscape lacks the density and character of something like a Fallout. Skyrim has killed my excitement for the Elder Scrolls, so I hope Bethesda lets whatever new title in that series they're creating marinade for a long time.
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Glad I read through the thread first before posting; I was going to say the exact same.
 
Played through the main quest, Civil War quest, Thieves' Guild, and Dark Brotherhood.

Went into one cave after that, fought the 40th dragon, and gave the game to a friend in exchange for GTA 4.

Had a shit load more fun with GTA over the course of 100+ hours with GTA than I did with 30+ hours of Skyrim. What a soulless game.
 
I hate to say it, but I think Skyrim might be one of my greatest disappointments this gen. I ADORED Morrowind and was obsessed with Oblivion, having put 500+ hours into both. And I thought Fallout 3 was brilliant. But Skyrim just never grabbed me, despite giving it another try every few months.

I'm not sure if it's the horrible gamepad UI (I thought the quickselect in Oblivion/Fallout was just fine), or the bland realistic Norse setting, but I just couldn't get into it. It does look and sound beautiful though.
 
Despera said:
It's unintentional, but it seems that I could only do ~40 hours for each of Oblivion, Fallout 3/NV and Skyrim. Once I get bored of the side stuff, I focus on the main quest and finish the game.
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I was able to go a longer time but eventually I switched to the main quests. I don't see this as a problem.

I really think more people should try playing similar. I think it is just the trophy/achievement hunters that cry when they can't earn them without combing through all the fluff to completion.
 
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