In this epic installment of the Oda clan’s struggle to overcome their rivals and gain dominion over all Japan, my advisers contemplate the utility of yelling really loud, some empire fights some vikings or something, and I win at everything forever.
Or at least I would be winning at stuff, if I wasn’t so busy trying to figure out how to get that arrow out of my companion’s face. Seriously, isn’t that uncomfortable? I mean, couldn’t you at least take off that helmet? Did it actually go through your nose, or is it just wedged in there?
What’s wrong with your faaaace!?
Alright, so this isn’t actually about Shogun 2. In reality, I’ve been playing the hell out of Skyrim. And when I’m not playing Skyrim, I’ve been in the Old Republic’s latest weekend beta test with my brother, showing him around as he experiences the game first-hand for the first time. That, coupled with yesterday having been my birthday (and, due to my graveyard-shift work-schedule, still kind of is from my perspective), leads me to a less than stellar amount of Shogun 2 related writing. Mind you, I do have some of the next post done, but not enough that I’d dare to post it and call it a “post,” and I don’t think you’d catch me in my best form if I stayed up for the next few hours working on it, rather than getting some sleep. And/or playing Skyrim.
And/or dreaming about playing Skyrim.
But I’d be remiss if I didn’t leave you with something, so allow me to let you in on an (abbreviated) taste of my Skyrim experiences so far.
Skyrim is a lovely country at the top of the world, full of friendly Viking-people, Roman-people(?), hitting-me-people, and some dragons I guess. There’s so much to see and talk to and murder! Most of which is flying.
Like this skeleton.
Or this mammoth.
Or me!
I’m especially fond of the absurd Fallout 3 camera-blood-splatter holdover that looks even more out of place in this game.
Seriously Bethesda, I’m not going to say you shouldn’t aggressively expand your QA department – because you really really should – but if you never fixed the quirky, goofy bugs like these, I’d be a happy gamer.
Anyway, the next Shogun 2 post should be on track for next week, no need to worry. Maybe sooner, if I get my act together (and murder all the dragons). Spoiler Warning is still on schedule, so look for that tomorrow. At some point, I might get something written about Saints Row the Third and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations as well, since I’m apparently the only bum around here that’s willing to actually buy all three games at once. And hell, if the Old Republic’s NDA ever drops in our lifetimes, I just might write something about that too.
Remember folks, I make these sacrifices for you. Have a good week.
Internet News is All Wrong
Why is internet news so bad, why do people prefer celebrity fluff, and how could it be made better?
Video Compression Gone Wrong
How does image compression work, and why does it create those ugly spots all over some videos and not others?
Starcraft: Bot Fight
Let's do some scripting to make the Starcraft AI fight itself, and see how smart it is. Or isn't.
Autoblography
The story of me. If you're looking for a picture of what it was like growing up in the seventies, then this is for you.
Programming Vexations
Here is a 13 part series where I talk about programming games, programming languages, and programming problems.
Luck you getting into the TOR beta.
I’ve had the few problems with the quiver hovering about 4ft away from my back, but nothing like mammoths floating over cliffs.
I think there’s a chance that one of the TWELVE THOUSAND beta keyes RPS is handing out now is not taken: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/11/14/star-wars-the-old-republic-beta-giveaway/
So I’d hurry up.
But look out there’s a 20 gigs download waiting for you if you get in…
Which instantly put me off. The moment I’d finish downloading it, the stress test will be finished.
Sooo.. good luck with that.
Anyone who was signed up for the beta before the 11th (Skyrimday) should have gotten an invite to the final beta weekend – or so says Bioware, anyhow.
I got my key because of that. Funny thing is that the NDA is still on.
Just noticed my email detailing this, Thanks!
I got an email saying I’d be invited, but nothing about when, where, or how to do anything about it.
We are inviting you to prepare for being invited to sign the acceptance of being invited to prepare for the invitation to a beta,maybe,probably.
You will need Permit A 38 for that.
Which you can find in the basement, at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet, stuck in a disused lavatory, with a sign on the door, saying “Beware the Leopard”.
Hitchhiker’s guide reference for the win. :)
Actually, my comment was meant as a reference to Asterix. Am I getting old or is that one not so well-known in America?
…Which Asterix book is that in?
The one with the 12 challenges.
To clarify, this past weekend was not the final beta and if you signed up prior to the 11th but didn’t actually get an invite yet, that does not mean they hate you. I don’t think the final dates are specified yet, but their statement that “Invites will be sent in the coming weeks” means it’s still in the future.
Yepp, got invited for that one. But since it’s going to be the last beta weekend, for me it’s more of a “make your last preparations, ultimately decide on your character’s race, class and visual appearance, and just double check that the class is really something for you” weekend. That and a more realistic stress test for their servers. Which means – judging from all previous MMOs – it’s going to crash and lag a lot. Heh.
Unless you live in Oceania.
Bioware must have a retarded management team to think excluding an entire region on release will do better for sales, because, as I quote 1 yank “It’s an American game, all the Europeans can wait until the servers are stable :P” (although Oceania has to wait indefinitely, we have no release date, unlike Europe now). We don’t even get in the beta.
Atrocious.
If I were an optimist (idealist?) I’d say they’re probably going to make sure there’s less lag than usual for the game (since the servers are either in Europe or North America).
Of course the truth is that it’s punishment for you.
You know what you did.
>:[
Man. If I wasn’t at work right now, I’d be playing Skyrim.
Sooooooooo do you like it?
So,basically,you are sleeping like this now.
I had floating ashes.Lots and lots of floating ashes(playing a necromancer is so cool).
Is it weird that I watch that and think “That’s how I can steal his shit!”.
Im not sure,but I think they still notice you.Still,its fun to talk to them when they have their heads covered.
I haven’t played Skyrim yet, waiting for decent UI mod, but I saw a youtube video where a guy put pots, buckets, and bowls on the heads of everyone in a room. Then he just stole everything and no one cared. I think they patched it out though.
This.
More accurately, sometimes the bugs Bethesda doesn’t fix are entertaining.
What’s wrong with the current UI? It’s pretty good (‘cept for the hardcoded keys, which’s already a mod to fix, and insufficient categorization)
Its not pretty good.We have moved away from the lists long ago for a reason.2d representations of an inventory had their problems,sure,but they were,and still are,far superior to lists.Especially when they can be categorized.And,like Ive said,the only good thing that came from console ports,a wheel for quick slots,is replaced by another pointless list.Granted,Id prefer something like in neverwinter nights(a bar with hot keyes 1-0,that can be expanded with the use of shift,alt and ctrl),but seeing how this needs to work with both controllers and keyboards,wheels would work just fine.
Also,there is a fact that when you are examining an item that you arent wearing,you only get the info about whether its damage/armour is better than the one you have,nothing about weight,enchantment and value.
And then,there is the skill system that somehow works pretty wonky when you are using just the keyboard without the mouse,despite every other menu working completely the opposite(way better without a mouse).
Then theres the first quickbar that has skill,magic,items and map,but no journal,which you can open only with the J key.
And lets not forget that whenever you want to craft something,you need to either have your mouse on the yes,or reach for the enter,despite everything else that you need to confirm working just fine with just a press of the E key.
No central character screen. What am I wearing? What are my stats? If you want to know if you have a disease, you have to look under “magic”.
If you miss-click any of the menu items while shopping, you instantly exit the store menu.
Pressing “E” at a store sells the item. Pressing “E” at a chest will CONSUME the item you’re trying to store. Why am I even ABLE to eat or wear items while rummaging around in a chest, and why is that the default action?
I can’t zoom out all the way on the world map.
WASD scrolls the world map, but on the LOCAL map you scroll via click & drag.
It’s a 4-step menu process to check on the spell’s you’ve cast and see what their timeouts are.
Also, all of this:
http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/5679/skyriminterface.jpg
This is better than Oblivion, but it’s still pretty frustrating.
Though in fairness a picture is only worth a thousand words if your potions don’t all look exactly the same. And even then I’d take alphabetical order over a thousand words any day.
Personally I think the UI is pretty handy once you get used to using the right hot-keys, it’s just that getting to that point is awful. Fortunately though, it could have been much worse if opening up your inventory didn’t pause the game.
It took a few hours of playing before I realized the lists scrolled. Because they started at/near the bottom of the screen, I just assumed that (for whatever reason) I couldn’t sell anything at the general store. Now that I’m used to using the keyboard for everything but combat it’s not a big deal, but it’s very counter-intuitive for a PC game and really does lend credence to the idea that Skyrim was developed for console first and PC second.
And, yeah, totally agree with every other point in that image, Shamus. Especially the lack of “see your character” without having to be in the game world and using camera rotation. I look forward to the mod that adjusts the inventory screen to use the proposed mock-up.
I don’t think it has anything to do with designing for the consoles first. It’s just bad interface design, as in Oblivion and Fallout 3.
Let’s be fair – flying mammoths would make ANY game cooler. Pick a game, add “flying mammoths”, and see if the result isn’t better.
Yup, that’s why it will turn out that the Takeda were only supposedly wiped out when, in reality, they sent most of the clan up into northern Russia to augment their cavalry with flying mammoth divisions. Near the end of the game they will return and their wrath will be swift and terrible.
i completly agree take a nice game like grand theft auto 4 and add a few flying mamoths here or there and you got positive frickin mayhem at every turn. though any game involving drugs or thought proccess inhibiting substance wouldnt work. people will already be seeing more more things flying than just mammoths O_o have fun with skyrim. its the boss!
I love the crazy physics in this game. I’ve seen my spells throw enemies across the room and apparently impale themselves in a corner of the ceiling. But, my favorite glitch found so far has to be this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rinIiHc4ueg&feature=player_embedded
I ended up flying in the air after getting smashed by a giant, same thing here I assume? :D
I think my worst bug was this: Right after the “tutorial” section of the game, I accidentally hit my questgiver, pissing him off. I ran away, played for like an hour just wandering, clearing out a random cave of bandits, and finally went to the next stage of the quest, to see his uncle. Instead, it’s my questgiver and his uncle, both trying to kill me, and the questgiver is immortal. Yup, any attempts to kill him and he leans over for a bit, then stands up again to kill me :\ No attempts to surrender (putting away your weapons) would appease him.
Ended up having to start the game over at the start of the tutorial, losing about an hour and a half >_<
on the subject of skyrim i read a funny Penny Arcade comic that rings true.
kill one dragon you feel badass
kill two you feel like a god
but
Giants don’t give a shit about how many dragons you’ve killed. (PC stomped on by giant) DON’T FUCK WITH GIANTS!
oh also i got the email about the upcoming beta test event so yay i get to test TOR and not be able to say ANYTHING about it to ANYONE.
great PR their EA.
oh and one final thing SKYRIM IS ASWOME. (aside the arrow glitch. that annoying, i think if she gets show again it fixes it? or wait for the patch, oh and it can happen to you as well.)
Long Live the Empire!!
Giants don’t care about anything other than trolling you to death. I was observing a Dragon flying around in the sky when all of a sudden I was a smear on the floor whilst the stealthiest giant ever wandered away after squishing me.
No idea the guy was even there.
That’s what a Stealth skill of 80 will do to ya, kid. Don’t think the giants have any penalty about it.
One giant hit the ground to warn me to stay away from his mammoth. So I just walked away, and so did he.
Reminds me of the old days in Outland in WoW… Hell Reaver Sneak Attack!
Nothing like going from fresh-faced level 60 new to Hellfire Peninsula to pancake in two seconds flat.
Ah, Fel Reaver, crazy stealthing giant robot. Never change.
My 3rd Dragonkill happened rather accidently. I went out Whitereach and I heard guards warning me about a dragon. I tried to find it…
Only to be held in a duel against a Giant. I felt sorry for the lizard.
I killed the Giant while he was distracted against the Dragon, who was then an easy prey with only 30% of its health left.
Btw, am I the only one who is annoyed at animals attacking the dragon, only to turn around and attack YOU when the dragon go into the air? BEAR DUDE, I AM ON YOUR SIDE!!
Animals attacking the player in general can be rather tiresome in all Bethesda games. *Oh, look. A mudcrab.”
Then again it can be rather unsettling; I mean Nirn is a planet where pretty much every single animal creature is filled with the eternal desire to murder all humanoid life.
Makes one wonder at times what the hell said humanoid life did to earn that hatred.
Probably an adventurer from ages past just wouldn’t stop smacking them, even though they were non combat, so the swarm and attack behavior activated and just never quit.
There are,however,some animals that dont attack but run away.Or,to be more precise,they dont attack before being smacked by the furry spell.
Maybe in Nirn the NPCs were a bit quest-happy with their “bring me 10 whatever-those-are pelts/tails/teeth/nails/eyeballs”? In the past, I mean.
I think someone like Link came along.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQQHFP9b1VU&feature=related
I’ve observed the exact opposite – random dragons completely ignoring Sir Pincushion of Fill-You-Full-Of-Arrows in favor of making sure that mudcrab is REALLY well-steamed. Not that Sir Pincushion is complaining, mind!
I was running along the wilderness west of Whiterun when I was attacked by a dragon. Stupid thing wouldn’t land so I just ran for a ruin that was up the road.
Turns out the ruin was a place called something like Ironbide, and it was filled with bandits.
I played it cool, laid low, and the dragon pretty much wiped them out by strafing over the main courtyard with its ice-breath. A couple of bandits found me, but I was able to dispatch them fairly quickly.
Eventually, the dragon got bored and wandered off (stupid thing never landed so I never got a shot at it) and I continued on. A couple days later I get a note by courier that says: “So you wiped out Ironbide using Tu’lum! You must be the Dragonborn!”
Yup. That was all me!
Tu’lum is the Dragon Shouts, right?
well, you did. You simply did not used your OWN Tu’lum, simply the Dragon’s.
You still cleared Ironbide using Tu’lum, my hero!
Yay for technicalities!
I think the dragon shouts are called Thu’um actually.
Bethesda did say that they didn’t fix amusing bugs, and flying sixty feet into the air after being hit in the face by a giant is quite entertaining.
Plus, it only makes sense that a giant would be able to send you flying that far if you piss it off.
That’s code for “we don’t actually fix bugs”.
Those arent bugs,those are features.
In all fairness does it damage the gameplay or make it any less enjoyable? Not really. For some people it will be amusing (and the landscape below you is fairly pretty) must other will just start loading a quicksave as soon as the camera switches to third person for the death animation.
There are more pressing/annoying bugs in the game (like, say, that whole “can’t unequip right hand unless you play with your inventory a bit” thing…).
I’m not talking about any particular bug. I’m talking about the way Bethesda makes games that are buggy as hell and are very slipshod about fixing them.
I feel the same way about it. I was actually moderately anticipating Skyrim. So was a friend of mine. One hour for each of us later and we both put the game down. Buhs, graphical glitches, poor scripting at parts. Why is bethesda allowed to release games like this?
And everyone else loves it while we’re left hating it because of all the bugs. Cruel injustice. ;~;
All the bugs?This is the most stable bethesda game Ive played so far.Ive had more bugs with my short play of the beginning of fallout 3 than with 2 days of skyrim.Heck,even if I compare it to non-bethesda games that Ive played recently,it is standing out as one of the more stable ones.
But then again,Im no Josh,so my bug finding skills are just rudimental.
I would note that “unplayably buggy” and “less buggy than Fallout 3” are NOT mutually exclusive.
I’ll have to agree with Demian, this game is more polished than others. But main problem is in that sometimes it takes a second or two for gravity to catch up with stuff, so sometemis your horse or mammoths.
I have a habit of running into bugs, but sadly I’m not as good at it as Josh. Though in the first hour I and a friend ran into:
-Spastic scripting as the first Dragon couldn’t find one animation to do (In my game it had the appearance of breathing fire from it’s bum)
-Horrific levels of voice-fade. I couldn’t hear any of the npc’s except for one unless I was staring it in the face.
-Wonkety controls. Took me forever to get out of Character creation. I *think* the correct button to press was X. I had to mash everything several times to escape the process. My friend had a similar complaint with Skyrim refusing to accept D-pad input at all.
My friend played a little longer than me and ran into entire sections of houses failing to load, creating bottomless pits of doom, enemies that would die and then fall through level geometry, and even more insane A.I. Like the hitmen who came to kill her. Hired by the first man she killed. We joked about ‘ghost dollars’ for payment for awhile after that.
The worst thing was all of this happening on Console. I hated Fallout 3 for crashing every 5 minutes, but accepted it was my computer’s fault. It was my driver being screwy. But this was on Xbox 360 in the first hour of content. That hardware hasn’t changed in six years.
I would love to, well, love Skyrim. I played a lot of Oblivion (even though I never finished the main plot), and was looking forward to this. So was my friend. The first bit of content left enough of a bad taste in our mouths to not want to keep going.
I would like to give PC a try, just because I know fan-patches can fix a lot of bugs, and can clean up any of the design I don’t like. But my first experience has left me extremely wary of the whole thing.
A console port that works better on pc?Remarkable.Well,at least Im not surprised this is a bethesda game anymore.
Wow. Now, I admit right now that I am INCREDIBLY lucky when it comes to games and computers and electronics. For example, I have the same XBox 360 I had when it first came out. It hasn’t RRODed on me. Ever. It’s been more than five years now.
The ONE problem I have had with Skyrim (mind you, I’m 15-20 hours in in my second game, and was four to six hours into my first game when I decided I wanted to play a different character) was when I was having a conversation with someone who was having a conversation with the Jarl of Whiterun at the same time, and his lines for both conversations came out at the same time. Fortunately, I had subtitles on, and so while hearing him speak what sounded like rapid-fire Hungarian was amusing, it wasn’t exactly difficult to sort out what was going on. That happened ONCE.
I have had no flying mammoths, nor the flying through the air when dying, though it would amuse me. I have stayed well clear of them AND giants, even when I needed to grab a mammoth tusk, I ran across a poaching operation, killed the poachers and looted THEIR tusks. I have been to four major cities and a number of minor ones, and been in most of the buildings in all of them, and not had a single loading problem. Could this have something to do with the fact that I installed the game on my HDD?
Even with that one bug, it’s been pretty effing fantastic, even if the Dragons can be damn hard to kill. Honestly, Dragons SHOULD be damn hard to kill. Further illustrating the fact that enemies don’t level WITH you, I (towards the middle of my most recent playthrough) got in a situation where I was alone against seven bandits and three zombie guys who had ALL decided to attack me. I was able to kill all of them in the space of about thirty seconds, losing only half my health in the process. These seven bandits, even without the three zombie guys would’ve annihilated me a few levels earlier. Let me tell you… it is FUN to decapitate bandits with a Skyforged Steel Greatsword. And if the low, sibilant chanting as you get close to a word of power doesn’t make you twitchy….
Look, point is, I’m recommending the game to my friends, but I’ll make sure to note that others have encountered severe bugs even in the console version of the game.
Try installing the game on your HDD and seeing if that makes a difference?
On installing to the HDD:
I should point out when I went back to return the game, the guy told me that installing to the Hard Drive could actually break textures, and make the game look worse overall. I didn’t install it. Doesn’t sound like you had it. Worth noting it’s another bug on console to consider. :<
a side effect of the giants auto-one hitting you, is that anything that has the same listed “force” as a giant hit will also one hit you. Including level 3 Fus Ro Dah. Which high level draugr spam. Have fun getting one shot by Draugr Death Overlords because Bethesda doesn’t fix bugs.
Also if you apply Update 1, it fixes the cant unequip right hand problem. If I were to take a guess, you downloaded the cracked version… the 6 MB patch is the wrong patch. Find the 125 mb patch. Your problem will be fixed.
Bugs can have side effects, or be side effects of something else, so it would be better to fix all bugs and then try to recreate the same results intentionally.
I’m wandering around some ruin, after a guy I cut from a spiderweb ran off (ingrate!) I am level 3, know nothing and can’t find anything.
Also, is the sound incredibly low for anyone else? And the cursor tracking in menus like 10x more sensitive than it should be?
Check the ini file tweaks on RPS for mouse issues. Secondly, you have to follow and murder that guy, because he has an item that you need for a vital quest.
The guy running off is scripted and intentional. I don’t remember if I killed him or found his body, killed off by something else.
The sound and cursor sensitivity issues, I noticed. My big problem is the voices being nearly inaudible. I’m only using the speakers on my monitor, but they can get pretty darned loud. If anything else is going on in the house… I can’t hear a word of what’s being said, even with volume maxed, in game and out. It helps to be pointing directly at the person (the volume is lowered by moving away or facing away). Tried just turning on the subtitles, but in a scene with several people conversing… guess what, subtitles don’t show up. Whee!
I have the exact same problem, though my speakers aren´t fused with my screen, so I can turn the volume up to Eleven. But then I forget to put it down when doing anything else. Cue to my eardrums imploding.
Damn,I keep seeing people doing all these things with low levels.I finished that quest with level 11.What can I say,I love improving skills by cneaking up to people and picking their pockets,letting enemies pummel me while I cast healing,burn them when I am low on mana and then reanimate their corpses,etc.
Happy birthday, Josh.
Seconded!
Have a great one Josh! Drinking a (virtual) cool one in your honour.
Oh look! Someone dropped their hat!
I am going to drink a cool one in honor of that hat!
No, seriously, Happy birthday Josh!
I can’t blame you, Josh. I was playing a good couple of hours of BF3 every day until Skyrim. Now I can’t stop Skyrim. Even while reading this I was thinking about what I wanted to do next in Skyrim.
Yeh, Skyrim. While I’m enjoying the game play, it has one of the worst UI’s of any game I’ve ever played and a one step forward, one step back leveling system. But at least the game didn’t throw a bunch of non-sense at me yet (i.e. not letting me respond to npcs in a rational manner, then again not much npc interaction so far either).
Yeah,what is this obsession with lists all of a sudden?What was the problem with 2d inventories?Its not like you cant scroll left/right on consoles.Who was the smart guy that thought putting everything in a list was better?
Also,one thing that was actually good about console ports:The quick slots wheel,and its replaced with another crappy list.
Plus the “stolen” flag.Its so bad.
Lists are awsome. I had to download a mod that makes your inventory in WoW a list to stop the game from being unplayable. The inventory is impossible to navigate without it.
What do you feel is wrong with the leveling system?
I feel it is a vast vast improvement over the previous TES skill and stat leveling system.
Some people might feel it a step back because now character planing is much less complex because you can have any playstyle with ANY race or setup. I mean, we can have Redguard archmages. Or Kajit tanks.
WHY IS THAT A BAD THING?
I mean seriously, being able to have any playstyle with any race or set up set up should be the aim of any RPG.
Its easier,and we need to be hard core.Also,quick saving needs to go away and be replaced by checkpoints.And the difficulty needs to be ramped way up.
Seriously though,I agree:Its much better that you can play what you want with any race.
I’m missing something here….why couldn’t you do that before?
My mistake,I wanted to say class.
But…classes never limited you before either. Non-class skills just leveled up slower. It’s one of the things I really liked about Elder Scroll games…
But your general level was limited by the class.And so were your hitpoints and magicka.
I haven’t played Oblivion, but Morrowind didn’t have anything preventing you from making your character of whatever race and specialisation either. Sure, your base stats might not be perfectly melee-oriented as a Wood Elf (Breton? God it’s been so long…), but that never stopped me.
Bosmer I think.
I was doing a quest where I had to solve a murder. Even while having a written confession the game would not let me accuse that person of committing the murder, and instead forced me to do something very stupid and spoilery that doesn’t even make sense under video game logic.
My random thoughts on Skyrim so far:
-horrible UI. Seriously, it’s like it can’t even decide if it wants to be keyboard only or keyboard+mouse. And sometimes using a mouse causes the keyobard to become unresponsive until I change the menu screen. What’s up with that?!
-the “cannot unequip right hand” bug is annoying.
-I’ll give the game that it’s pretty.
-I’m getting some random pauses when travelling the overworld, probably as the game loads stuff into memory. Still considering the PC I’m running this on I am hell glad it works as it does (as in: at all).
-Hmm… the levelling mechanics is kinda simplified at the same time still exploitable (come on, keep biting on this shield little wolfie, there’s at least 3 more levels I can get from the block skill). At least it doesn’t require that “level proper skills each level to be able to increase a stat multiple times” thing but imho it does feel a bit bare.
-dragons are pretty impressive far as their behaviour is concerned (I’m curious about how they did that, as in, is that a really good algorithm or is there some semi-scripting), though not really as boss style badass as I was expecting. Didn’t encounter the problems that I’ve seen other people on the net mention like them flying away or getting stuck on the other side of the mountain… at least not yet.
-so far advanced the main questline a bit and then gave in to the urge to explore, toured to each of the main cities on foot discovering everything that dared to show on my compass. Frankly I’m not expecting much greatness from the main questline but I’m counting at least some guild and daedric quests will be imaginative.
Edit: Oh yeah, about that “arrow in the face” thing. When checking forums for various Skyrim glitchiness I’ve seen someone mention that they had an arrow actually hovering next to them rather than stuck in the model, and it seemed willing to stay like that forever. Supposedly the way to get rid of it, eventually, was to get hit with another arrow.
Personally, I’ve seen the dragon AI be completely brain-dead on the 360. I saw one do 10 meter circles in the air with nothing nearby for it to be stalking/hunting. On the other hand, most of the time, their behavior is pretty good: strafing and killing livestock, but still lenient enough to let a player kill them. With “good” AI, a dragon should be able to destroy anything on foot. As long as it keeps moving and breathing on me, I’m pretty helpless — even with the unlimited Magicka glitch I had last night.
I actually like the skyboxing glitch when a giant hits me. They one-hit kill me, I go flying into the skybox, it just seems appropriate. Actually, giants are just cool. I like that they don’t just kill you if you get within sight range. I had one smash the ground to warn me away from their mammoths — it was an awesome moment.
Yeah, I get that a lot too. It’s mostly a problem out in the world, or when there’s a waterfall of some kind, or when something interesting is happening. My computer isn’t exactly state-of-the-art either, so my first guess is RAM insufficiency.
Skyrim will not use more than 2 GB anyway. It’s probably I/O, which is the bottleneck in pretty much every current game. Get a decent SSD, you’ll thank me for the suggestion afterwards. Deus Ex HR loading times? Ten seconds tops.
Really? Skyrim will only use 2GB of RAM? Sad. My desktop is sitting at 16GB, and honestly I figured that’s why I didn’t have any problems with slowdowns while running around out in the world. I mean, the game’s just installed on a decent HDD, so it’s not like that’s helping me. Still, even my worst loading times (entering/leaving towns, generally) are barely long enough to speedread the flavor text on the loading screens.
note: I have that much RAM because of the other work I do on my desktop, not for games. Just to head off that sort of talk.
Actually the stuttering seems to be caused by using Windows XP for some reason, at least judging by posts on the Beth forums.
Ten seconds? I get less on my HD :/
From what I’ve heard Solid State Drives don’t live very long, so your mileage may vary.
Also the last time I checked they’re really expensive.
During the whole intro mission Hadvar had a arrow stuck through is head – nice start there…very immersive Bethesda :D overall im enjoying it though.
I attacked Hadvar relentlessly during the tutorial (and jacked up my One-handed skill). It was pretty hilarious with his “Stop doing that” and I’m all “I need more practice”
I did the same thing, constantly yelling at him to stand still so I could kill him proper. With a two-handed axe and given enough time, I probably could have. If he’d stood still.
Of course, he does stand still outside of the tutorial area. Turns out he’s not as forgiving there, though.
If Bethesda wants to make some characters invincible they should at least let us loot them while they’re keeled over.
Spoiler Warning Skyrim?
Just limit yourselves to the more cinematic stuff.. Like Daedra Prince quests (Meridia’s nice and nifty. She gives you a great view)
Who am I kidding? If you did only 20% of what’s in the game, we’d have 2 years of SW
This is a bad thing how, exactly?
I do see your point.
It’d be great!
Had the best glitch while playing the 360 version of Skyrim: the game stopped having actual Magicka costs for spells. I could still only cast things that I had a maximum Magicka to cover, but I could cast infinitely.
I finished a quest for the Mage’s College and saw a dragon fighting a giant — then killed both without breaking a sweat. I almost hope that the glitch lasts through my save and shutting down the system.
Hah. Bug? My level 36 character has 100 smithing and 100 enchanting. I made a full set of -destruction cost -restoration armor. I have infinite magicka now.Game is officially broken. I drop giants without them being able to move from the stagger of my fireballs. and if I feel like getting dirty, my daedric dagger with 44 base damage, 51 fire damage, and 40 shock damage makes quick work of everything. Enchanting is this TES game breaker.
Ah, game breakers! What would the Elder Scrolls be without them?
Enchanting is always a game breaker in an elder scrolls game. I’m just pissed they removed spell creation.
This. That was some serious fun.
I’m level 15 and have infinite Magicka. I plan to make a character similar to the one you’re running who is just an uber-mage, but this one is a jack-of-all-trades.
Edit: Not anymore. The glitch doesn’t persist through hard reboot of the 360. Now I am mortal again…
Jack of all trades tends to level up pickpocketing the fastest,it seems.Just pass through whiterun and youll quickly level it by 20 or 30.And with about 50,you can already get practically anything with 90% chance.The only reason for 100 is that you can loot clothes and jewelry that are being worn.
Now if only I can reach a fence so I can sell all this crap…
Max out the speech perks and make every merchant a fence?
Yeah,Im aiming for that.But in order for that to work,I need to get bribery,and in order to do that,I need to sell tons of shit.And in order to do that,I need to get my hands on non-stolen shit.And that takes time when you are going from house to house stealing everything not-bolted down(ok,not really,but everything with a value of 5+/pound).
I’m still desperately holding on to my resolution not to buy Skyrim for six months. It’s buggy, right? Way too buggy to be enjoyable? Sure, that’s it. I’ll just keep telling myself that.
Just as well, since I was in the SW:TOR beta this weekend too. (And apparently that’s all I’m allowed to say about it.)
I’ve played Skyrim for about 40 hours now.
I had one crash, no bugs.
Enjoy the wait!
Yeah my experience have been surprisingly stable. There are bugs certainly (and you can’t alt-tab it which is unfortunately what I have come to expect of games, to the point where I’m really surprised if you can) but nowhere near Oblivion, Fallout 3 or Morrowind at launch. Actually I think it’s more stable than Oblivion or Fallout 3 ever got. Of course I might be the odd duck this time around, the asshole who goes “it works for me it must be something you’re doing wrong”. I saw that defense for Alpha Protocol at launch so clearly it’s omnipresent.
Actually you can alt-tab.Im writing this because I took a break to eat something,so I alt-tabbed to browse the web a bit.And the two crashes I had were completely unrelated with alt-tabbing.
Granted,it seems to only work when you have another window open,but ctrl-alt-delete overrides even that.And the game works fine even after that.
Thats with windows 7 though.
I’m on W7, but alt-tab auto-crashes the game for me. *shrug* YMMV
I had little to no bug. The only bugs that happened to me was when I seemed to be stuck someplace, like after getting out of the enchantment station.
I usually unstuck after waiting 20 seconds, about. They seem to have an unstuck feature.
I got stuck once, after I jumped somewhere I shouldn’t have and got myself wedged in. ~ + TCL fixed that right quick.
Had… maybe four crashes to desktop in ~25hrs played, so far, and alt-tab’ing crashes the game. Also, twice I had textures not load (once on all humans, once on all the leaves on all trees, but not the trunks). Sometimes, hitting the wrong category (mostly misc.) while talking to a vendor will kick me out of the buy/sell screen. And… hrm… I had a couple minor bugs where books stopped being selectable in my inventory screen until I closed that screen and reopened. That’s it, though, which for this company? Friggin’ fantastic.
Try Alt Tabbing back to the game twice. Seems to be the main way to do it at the moment.
I’ve found that alt tabbing into the game produces a blank screen, but if I alt tab a non fullscreen window over the top of the blank one then click on the Skyrim window it loads ok. No idea why this works, or if it will work for anyone else.
Oddly enough,its not buggy at all.I hade exactly 2 crashes in as many days.Aside from that,the only bugs that Ive noticed are the floating ashes.And thats just funny.
But Im sure Josh will be able to find a dozen more interesting bugs.
Is the “kill a chicken, get finned and hunted by the whole town” a bug or a feature?
Well the whole town gets mad if you are caught stealing even the most worthless junk,so its probably not a bug.It still is pretty dumb.
Oh, I’m glad the farmer didn’t see, then. Why does chicken have to be so tasty?
Chickens wonder that every day.
I bought a horse early on because it seemed like a good ideal Little did I know it was the best idea ever. Horses in this game are basically the Mako, but without any of the downsides. I can ride up cliffs, through rocks, over mountains, and my horse doesn’t even break a sweat. It also packs a hell of a punch against random wolves and bandits.
Horses are okay, but I’ve lost two of them so far just because I rode off a slightly-too-high cliff…
One thing I’m VERY annoyed about is the exclusion of the acrobatics skill. I really miss being able to jump off mountains and take only minor damage; I don’t know why it got cut. To me, at least, it was one of the more iconic skills of the series.
Because they didnt want the game to be about skipping through meadows and picking flowers.It is now just about picking flowers.
Now I do it because I want, not because I must! Also, it helps to jump if you’re being chased by something. It’s fun to pick flowers with two or three giants chasing you.
And butterflies.I forgot about catching butterflies.
My guess? It didn’t fit perks system.
One weird thing about that:The perk for no fall damage is in the heavy armour skill.
Maybe it’s to limit bugs or exploitation? I really miss it too though. I remember jumping around the rooftops of Balmora being a lot of fun.
Now I have promised myself to actively combat nostalgia fueled resentment towards this game (considering Morrowind is in my top 5 of games all time this seems like a distinct possibility). So I will mention things I really like about the game whenever I compare it to it’s ancestor.
Here we go. The sprint function is a really nice and needed feature, it adds another level of strategy to ranged combat without adding any complexity (the depth being equal, added complexity is always bad Skyrim and I disagree on how much depth can be cut to combat complexity tho) it also breaks up the monotony that the travel sometimes brings by having smaller bursts of a rather liberating sense of speed.
Also a medal for whoever designed the fireball spell. In Morrowind fireball meant orange sphere that makes a weird whistling sound. In Skyrim it means an explosion of fire and death that would make the most hardened warriors think twice about crossing you and it sounds like a bombing run in a WW2 movie. It’s the most impressive combination of visual- and sound-design for a weapon I have seen in a long while. The fact that enemy ragdolls fly through the air like shot out of a canon when killed doesn’t hurt either (although it still looks ridiculous when you kill people with arrows, seriously Bethesda you didn’t learn from oblivion?).
Ragdollizing enemies with the second-level lightning spell never gets old, either. They fly everywhere.
A horse costs 1000 gold and will sun straight into any baddy no matter how dangerous. I allready lost 3 horses to bandies and wolves. That’s 3000 gold to kill couple enemies with loot not surpasing 10% of the price of the horse. Also there is a bug (at lieas at me), if you walk of a low ledge your horse will continue walking on thin air even with no ledge under it. If you do this on a slope, it’s quite easy to kill your horse, because by walking on air for a second or two he gained height above ground.
That´s interesting. I´ve seen the psycho horse problem (which is dumb, what kind of horse tries to kill stuff?) but I actually thought they were immune to all damage since it fought a Dragon for five minutes and survived. Or maybe they have a “dragon´s can´t kill it” box.
“(which is dumb, what kind of horse tries to kill stuff?)”
I think that war horses were trained to trample people,so its not really that dumb.At least,not when you make your horse attack wolves,humanoids and such.A dragon on the other hand…
Yeah a warhorse, but we are in Skyrim, land not known for excellent cavalry, whose horses are according to the game itself slow but sturdy. Basically draft animals. Definitely not horse.
Also if you borrow a horse from one of forts (you can do that without stealing), the moment you get of it to fight some wolves, it will turn around and head back. And you are stuck with no horse.
How about stealing a horse in places where you have Guild contacts, and then simply paying off the bounty when you got the chance?
What is the bounty for horse-stealing?
That does not work. If you steal a horse it does not become your property. The moment you get off the horse it tries to run away. And if you manage to get back on it again, it counts as another theft
I usually only need a horse to get quickly from point A to B. Fast travel will do the travel back, so I hardly need a horse much longer after reaching point B.
I didn’t knew I could take a carriage at first, and I didn’t had ennough money to pay for a horse. So I had to walk Whiterun –> Riften on foot. Man.. oh man, that was long and boring.
But all the butterflies,flowers and animal skin you can collect on that trip,how can that be boring?Think of the shit youll make when you reach the city.
I am ALWAYS overburden, damn it.
ALWAYS. ALWAYS. And I don’t want to boost pickpocket JUST so I can have the +50 carry weight.
Level pickpocket to 50 and you can get the perk that gives you +100.
What part of “I don’t wanna boost pickpocket” you did not understood?
You said “just” so you could have +50 carry weight.
+100 carry weight is more than +50. Thus, you wouldn’t be doing it “just” so you could have +50 carry weight.
It’s still… what, 4 perks to go into a skill tree I have remotely no interest in?
3 actually.Out of 50 you can get.But,if you think 100 additional pounds isnt worth a small sacrifice(and it really is a small sacrifice,since pickpocket is the easiest one to achieve,besides illusion).
I walked from Whiterun to Riften on foot for the scenery, and boy was I glad I did. That birch forest is my favorite area of the game now.
You know, I think I have an idea. Maybe Bethesda could increase the toughness of horses through some kind of armour DLC pack!
You mean,like adding some kind of armour for them?Heck,people would pay money for that.
You know that we expect a Let’s play of Skyrim :)
Am I the only person who has no interest in playing Oblivion 2: Skyrim?
You mean Oblivion 2: Snow Edition. Now with bigger textures!
It also has dragons, you know.
I though this thing was called “Scrolls”?
Indeed, because you spend half the game exploring, and the other half scrolling down through branching rows of lists.
From someone who disliked Oblivion and utterly despised Fallout 3 (including NV): Skyrim is loads better. It’s much closer to Morrowind than to Oblivion.
Yes.
Yes you are.
You and me against the world.
It’s more Morrowind 2 than Oblivion 2. It lacks many of the biggest problems Oblivion had.
If you didn’t like Morrowind, well…
I didn’t like Morrowind, but I’m losing days to Skyrim already
I was watching a friend play when he encountered an already-dead dragon which was somehow still intact (which he said shouldn’t happen since they’re supposed to disintegrate upon death). He then tried to cast the ressurection spell on it which made the corpse spasm and get pushed, tumbling wildly for a good sixty feet. He punted it into a bandit-filled ruin.
He was hoping to raise it in order to kill it himself to get its soul, but this was still fun.
So I guess they don’t burn up if they’re not killed by the player.
They only burn up if the Dragonborn is nearby to suck out their soul-thingy. Shame really as I wouldn’t mind a dragon skin rug.
You know, I’ve got 26 hours in the game by now and I haven’t experienced any bugs like that. None. It’s really wierd and not what I was expecting. I mean, I’ve only crashed to desktop like twice. I don’t get it. You always hear about those people who are super lucky and never get any real bugs in a bethesda/obsidian game but it hasn’t happened to me before. However I am getting really pissed off at the shitty physics engine. Everytime I walk over a random loose object the engine seems to choke and has it shoot off at a hundred miles an hour and do damage to me. So it’s not all good.
OT: Having a lot of fun with the game, which is odd because I was never able to get into TES 3 or 4. It seems a lot more idiot friendly which helps.
That’s one impressive piercing in that top picture.
By the way, does anyone have any good tactics for killing giants? I have successfully used one melee tactic: Get into a stream or lake, get close enough so the giant will use his attack, then back off before the attack animation. After that attack quickly, because the giant will run away (apparently they’re afraid of water touching their knees). Hack at its heels until it’s out of range. Don’t get out of the water. Get close to the shore and it will return. Repeat till either you or the giant is dead.
Running away and pelting them with long-rage attacks has been my strategy, mostly. Ice magic helps, since it drains their stamina, and if their stamina’s low, they can’t charge after you. I can’t imagine trying to hit one with a sword.
Arrows and Ice bolts, mostly. Kite them around the bonfire.
But I’m a one-handed sword user, giants level up my skills very quickly, I don’t want killing them to cripple me. Now if I can find a way to kill them with a sword without requiring water….
Haven’t found any major glitches myself. Weirdest thing that’s ever happened is that the bard put down her flute half way through a song and the music kept going. Also once the game suddenly closed on its own mid-fasttravel.
Companion NPCs (or Lydia at least, haven’t had anyone else) do seem to get lost a lot, so I find myself taking one hour waits to let them catch up fairly frequently.
I’m level 15 or so, focusing on heavy armor, 1 handed swords, and magic. Haven’t managed to do any alchemy at all, because I have no idea where to start. And I haven’t done any blacksmithing yet because I have no idea where to get a reliable source of leather strips, and I don’t want to waste the two I’ve found so far on some iron piece of junk when I already have a full set of steel armor. Enchanting’s nice but most of the enchantments I can do are so weak that it seems a waste to use up the item’s only enchanting slot. I did enchant my bow and steel sword with frost though, and that worked out pretty well.
Argonian racial bonuses feel severely nerfed compared to Oblivion. For instance, they’ve lost all their poison resistance and some of their disease resistance. Haven’t tried any of the other races; are they toned down too?
Tanning stations. I forget what the actual word they use is, but it looks like some skin stretched across a square framework. They’re everywhere, in Riverwood alone there’s at least two. At one of those, you can turn any piece of animal skin into 1-4 pieces of leather, depending on the animal it came from. Any piece of leather can be turned into 4 leather strips. If you need extras, blacksmiths usually sell leather and leather strips alongside various metal ingots. I often ran out in the beginning of the game, while I was still in the Oblivion mindset of animal pelts being worthless, but once I started making a point of gathering them, I always have more than I need.
You start Alchemy by eating literally everything. Random flower? Eat one. Spider egg? Eat one. Mountain lion eyeball? Eat one. At base level, you can learn the first effect of an ingredient by eating it; there’s a perk that lets you learn more. Otherwise, effects will fill out as you happen across successful combinations.
I’ve been finding that pretty much all race differences have been subdued. They can give you a small head-start towards the way you intend to play, and the abilities can be incredibly useful (the Orc’s berserker rage is great, for example) but mostly it’s just picking the race you feel like playing as.
You can also just randomly combine stuff to unlock their properties. Since most ingredients are worthless when sold, that is a great way to make some money of selling random poisons.
Alchemy is pretty easy to pump up if you wander around the wilderness and pick flowers and catch butterflies.You can also swim around and catch fish.
As for blacksmithing,again wilderness is your friend.Kill all the animals you find,and youll get plenty of leather.Bears are pretty useful for this,because each of their skins gives 4 leathers.So with just 2 bear skins,you can make 5 hide bracers(2 straps,1 leather for each),and that levels up smithing fast.It also gives you some nice buck.
I dont know about other races,but altmer are mighty fine with their +50 magicka.
And why didnt anyone tell me that tes games have a place called elsewhere?Seriously?Elsewhere?!
Haha, yeah, that was a real surprise. I mean, really? Elsweyr? Is this a joke, Mr. Khajiit trader? You’re telling me, with a straight face, that your homeland is Elsweyr? There was literally a second where I was able to take that name seriously; it was in between reading ahead in the subtitles and seeing a miscellaneous fantasy place name, and actually hearing him pronounce it “elsewhere”. I wondered if he was just fucking with me, but no, that is seriously what the place is called. Jesus. Sometimes, you can really tell that this world was built in the nineties.
I’m fairly sure Elsewhere is somewhere west of anywhere. No, elsewhere and somewhere are different places….
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0226.html
Why is the land of Khajiiti called “Elsweyr”? Who would agree to live “Elsewhere”?
Elsweyr did not exist as a separate polity until the kingdoms of Anequina and Pellitine made an alliance. While doing so, they recalled an old Khajiiti proverb that went along the lines of “perfect society is always elsewhere”. In their optimism about the new alliance, they tried to bring forth good luck by appealing to that proverb.
Source: Ted Peterson, in an e-mail
http://www.imperial-library.info/content/general-elder-scrolls-weaseling
Okay. I’ll accept that. I had assumed that Elsweyr was along the lines of the Terry Pratchett story of the highest mountain peak in a region being known in the native language as “Your Finger, You Fool.”
It still makes me laugh.But,I guess asimov is to blame,since he did name a place wye(yes,it is pronounced why).
“Life is always better elsewhere”
Khajiit claws do 15 damage, so in the early game they are more dangerous than most weapons you can find. Better than in oblivion, at least for a bit.
I started alchemy by just mashing together random combinations of three items until I had found enough useful combinations to start making stuff. I love alchemy in Skyrim, in fact crafting in general.
Oh, and happy birthday, Josh. Hope you had a nice weekend.
I remember the producer saying that they actually keep in any silly bugs that don’t completely break the game. There was a bug that had chickens report your crimes to the town guards that they had to take out since that would be really annoying to deal with in their opinion.
Pixar’s next movie: Chicken vigilante.
As I mention above, bugs can be or have side effects of something else and more serious. So it’s good to try and fix all of the bugs.
I think I’ve heard that the physics bug with the giants was something Bethesda recognized during development and was within their power to fix… it’s just that they left it in because it evoked way too many lawls for them to take out. I just think that the only issue with that is balancing. I’m fine with it being purely cosmetic, but I think it’s a bit s**tty if dragons become fodder by comparison to these guys.
this is a great game. its tuesday about 5 hours before i go for a 5 day weekend. as soon as i get off work i am laying down to skyrim for 5 days strait. or maybe minecraft…..or team fortress 2…..or zelda skyward sword….