quote:Originally posted by Marlozhan: So, does it take effort to break the game through stat building, or does it happen relatively easily?
Here's the deal: crafting skills break the game. But until they break the game in your favor, they break the game against you; enemies are more or less designed to stack against your total level, and all crafting skills apply for that even if you haven't gotten those broken effects yet.
So, here's my proposal: just ignore crafting. Never use it, never level it up. You get to avoid a broken grind that eventually turns you into an invincible deathbot who presses one button to win everything in the game, and enemies go down in less time overall and make you feel buffer without gearstats.
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Sam, but there are a lot of skills that don't help you smash badguys. I mean, if you level Pickpocket, Speechcraft, and Lockpicking a lot aren't you looking at the same potential problem?
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Turns out even without a horse you can still climb basically any obstacle in the game. Jump mechanics for a first person game showed up with Quake, you'd think by now we could get them right.
Gothic II came out in 2002 and it's noted for having perfect jump mechanics, as well as having 100% of the terrain interactive. It was also completely seamless. If you could find some way to get up to somewhere you "weren't supposed to be" (by cheating, or using some elaborate trick), instead of seeing a lot of blue or black like in most video games, all those parts are just as detailed, and some of them even contain Easter eggs. The only real limitation on your movement is the fact the game is set on an island. And it does let you swim out pretty far - even to some small outlying islands. Swim too far and there's a nice video of you getting eaten by a shark.
Gothic III, which came out 4 years later, had horrible terrain, lots of places where you arbitrarily couldn't climb/get past, and lots of terrain bugs.
In other words: it's a laziness issue, not a technology issue.
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I'd say that crafting skills-notably Enchanting-*can* break the game, but it's not somehow inherent to using them if you don't cheese hardcore iron daggers for an hour or two of wandering purchasing and crafting, likewise with alchemy. As for Enchanting, I think it's a bit like the Chameleon Suit in Oblivion, or tweaking Alchemy in Morrowind or custom spells in Oblivion. You *can*, with the correct perks, build a character who effectively has unlimited ammo. But you have to work at it.
For better or worse, I think Bethesda has made the decision that these sorts of things are going to be in their games, and players can avoid or utilize as they like.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Maybe I'm missing something. How does all the dual wielding stuff synergize with the spellcasting stuff? Did you just swap between them a lot?
Most of that is irrelevant, that's just my FULL build.
If you want to break the game, you only need Impact and enough enchanting to reduce Destruction costs, in sum, by 100%. With extra effect, it can be zero mana costs for two schools.
Fun, huh.
Dual Wielding with enchanting would be its own bag of fun, since the Dual Flurry + Extra Effect would have you sucking life and stamina out of enemies far faster than even gangs of them could kill you.
Even without the no-cost destruction spells, Impact is pretty game breaking. I'm around level 15 and can kill anything just by running up to them and continually casting double firebolt over and over again.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: What's your magicka and difficulty level?
Playing on expert, don't remember my magicka level, probably between 300-500. Have about 175-200 regen bonus.
Level 14.
Generally before the stagger is done my magicka has regenerated enough I can cast double Firebolt again.
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Well, it sounds like it's not quite Impact that's as game-breaking as it is your creation of a near infinite ammo character.
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: Sam, but there are a lot of skills that don't help you smash badguys. I mean, if you level Pickpocket, Speechcraft, and Lockpicking a lot aren't you looking at the same potential problem?
Yeah, but these are fine to level up as you go. They won't pull you too far behind your offensive/defensive capacity as/is.
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It helps that they keep a lot of irons in the fire with their books, but it is nice to see how much they've built the plot off previously established lore.
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I'm concerned about the perks I've put into Illusion-3-5, I think. I really liked the silent casting and the 'works on daedra, automatons, and undead' perks-they sounded neat. But I'm hearing things-not much, since it's so early-about how even with the bonus perks chosen, these spells will cap out in the late 20s-30s level range. Has anyone heard anything definitive on this, or experienced anything?
That's one thing I think is a substantial flaw in their perk system: short descriptions that aren't very helpful for some perks, such as those in the Illusion tree. There ought to be a *very* comprehensive description, I think, or even better some sort of little simulation so players can try it on a given enemy or see it working or something.
I'll be pretty peeved if this turns out to be another Bethesda 'wasted your leveling!' bit. Particularly since I'm playing on the 360-big screen, better sound, computer is on the other end of the house-and that means it'll be awhile before there's DLC which permits respec.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Well, it sounds like it's not quite Impact that's as game-breaking as it is your creation of a near infinite ammo character.
Well if it wasn't for impact I would never get the time to regen my magicka, and the stagger keeps them from killing my ridiculously puny mage.
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It's not the Impact perk choice as it is your use of Enchanting (which the game permits!) that is game-breaking, it seems to me. I mean if you couldn't just infinite-ammo your way to victory via Enchanting, you'd need to use other spells such as conjurations, runes, illusions, paralysis, alteration when they get close, etc.
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Investing in Illusion for silent casting is fine. It's a bit amusing to be assassinating people with very, very quiet lightning bolts.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: It's not the Impact perk choice as it is your use of Enchanting (which the game permits!) that is game-breaking, it seems to me. I mean if you couldn't just infinite-ammo your way to victory via Enchanting, you'd need to use other spells such as conjurations, runes, illusions, paralysis, alteration when they get close, etc.
No enchanting at all, wearing Morekei, Archmages robes, and an amulet thay regenerates magicka. I honestly haven't touched enchanting in my mage game.
My warrior on the other hand...
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Oh, definitely, Samp-in fact Silent Casting was my first draw, looking ahead to thievery and assassinations. I'm just concerned about the other perks, such as one which says illusion spells will work on all enemies-but *other* perks mentioning being cumulative with one another. It puts me in mind of Oblivion, where you had to know that setting your custom spell magnitude to max, but only having 98% effectiveness due to equipment, meant it *wasn't* in fact maxed out.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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My friend is having his copy sent to my house (his tv and xbox are in storage atm)...so I will get to play soon.
I just wanted to pipe in about breaking the game...with Morrowind, I totally used Alchemy to to break the game. There was a cheat (bug, design flaw, whatever) where you could sell certain potion components to certain merchants and every time they bought some, it increased the amount they had permanently. So, they start with five, you buy five and sell them back, and they have ten, you buy the ten, sell them back, and they have twenty, etc ad nausium.
So, I had a couple of merchants with 200 potion components, I would buy them and make INT potions, make five, drink five, make five, drink five. I would stop when my INT was around 2000 plus, and start making other potions, ones which were so unbalancing good that when I fought the end boss I only had to hit him twice, once to make him run away, and the second time to kill him.
Kinda took the fun out of it.
Also, my potions were worth over 10k each.
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It always struck me as strange when pepper would complain that those sorts of things 'broke the game'-I dig why you felt they way playing it, SW and others, just a difference of taste I think-but I always considered those sorts of bugs/features/exploits. They do break the game, if you use 'em-exactly like the ability to chameleon suit in Oblivion, or custom spells. I flirted with 'em, but got bored and stopped.
One thing I do think *is* broken is, as with all the other Bethesda sandbox games, is the economy. It's appropriate at lower levels-a suit of steel plate or a couple of new spell tomes will be costly, a substantial investment-but even without crafting, it'll be broken and laborious at medium or higher levels. Merchants won't be able to afford more than one or two pieces of inventory you sell, and if you perk up in Speech they'll afford maybe three or four, but after a couple of adventures you'll have to visit multiple towns and multiple merchants to offload.
The only thing you-or at least I-even need money for, really, at higher levels is training 5x/level which starts costing in the tens of thousands of gold per five past skill level 50, an amount in game terms that's an enormous, gigantic fortune. And the only way to get that amount each level is, even with Speech perks, is multiple location drop-offs every couple of outings. At least it's not *so* bad-chances are you'll have a quest that takes you to one of the nine towns aside from your home base, but still-Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 & New Vegas, they all suffered from in-game economic irrelevancy. Takes me out of things a bit each time I visit the premiere, supposedly world-famous blacksmith in the biggest city in the game-the trade hub, no less-and he can afford...one, maybe two of the weapons I looted.
There ought to be a way to meaningfully spend that extra money, even if you don't have the Speeh perks because even if you do, you'll have extra coin to purchase...what?
I'm not sure what the solution is. I'm reminded of...Neverwinter Nights, was it...where you eventually needed to purchase a stronghold, and upgrading and even maintaining it was a serious investment even at high levels. Fable 3 did the money thing a bit, too-at least in the sense that you need a lot, and you've got something meaningful to spend it on.
-----
Anyone else started the Dark Brotherhood yet? I'm surprised and pleased the way it tied into an (at the time) strange and meaningless miscellaneous quest. And I'm not talking about the one you need to do to investigate rumors of the Black Sacrament.
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The PS3 version was so laggy. . . . I ended up buying a solid state drive. Smooth as silk. One of my load times (coming out of the Arch-mage's quarters) was under 1 second.
posted
Apparently steam decided to patch the exe so you can't load it without the launcher. I think this is the cause of my problem.
I'm pretty seriously considering looking for a pirated version and grabbing the exe from there.
Edit:
After a bit of digging around online, I was able to find a backup of the old exe someone posted. Fortunately, it solves the problem. That cursor issue was distracting enough to pretty much be a gamebreaker, and loading up steam and the launcher every time I wanted to play was annoying.
quote:Originally posted by Aros: The PS3 version was so laggy. . . . I ended up buying a solid state drive. Smooth as silk. One of my load times (coming out of the Arch-mage's quarters) was under 1 second.
Awesome.
This link shows a couple guys putting a SSD in a PS3, and finding absolutely no difference in speeds for saving, installing, and loading. I wonder if Skyrim accesses the hardware in a different way that allows the load times to decrease with a SSD.
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quote:Originally posted by Aros: The PS3 version was so laggy. . . . I ended up buying a solid state drive. Smooth as silk. One of my load times (coming out of the Arch-mage's quarters) was under 1 second.
Awesome.
This link shows a couple guys putting a SSD in a PS3, and finding absolutely no difference in speeds for saving, installing, and loading. I wonder if Skyrim accesses the hardware in a different way that allows the load times to decrease with a SSD.
With the older games that weren't constantly accessing the hard drive, that was true (your link was from 2009). In late 2010, Tom's Hardware and a few other sites posted that more intensive games, specifically the new Gran Turismo, loaded twice as fast.
I was only having a little lag too, at first. But, as a lot of PS3 users are reporting, it gets worse and worse as your save file grows. I was to the point where I had to reboot my PS3 once an hour to even keep it playable. Every time I went into a new area it was a good 15 seconds before I could even move.
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I'm finding the load times on the 360 pretty aggrivating. Lately I've kept a book next to me on the couch to read when moving in and out of dungeons/buildings/whathaveyou.
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I still find that my pc load times are so fast that I honestly have not managed to read 90% of the load screen texts. I mean, talk about the right kind of problem to have ..
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quote:Originally posted by Jake: I'm finding the load times on the 360 pretty aggrivating. Lately I've kept a book next to me on the couch to read when moving in and out of dungeons/buildings/whathaveyou.
Really? I don't think I ever had enough time to read anything during loading times.
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I'm really, REALLY enjoying the new character, because dual wielding combat is fun ... until you get enchanted/unique/smithed weapons and the default interface and keys bug out hard and you can't use hotkeys to re-equip twin weapons. Since I'm about to do that, I have to wait for mods. HAVE to.
Still, in exchange for twin weapons being unable to completely (sword and board) or partially (2h) block, you do horrendous amounts of damage, and the standing power attack with both weapons will kill bosses flat out in about 150 stamina.
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It's mostly too early, as I don't think the toolset is out there yet (I may be wrong, can't check from work). There are some mods, but they are mostly a few graphical tweaks and annoyance fixes. PC Gamer had an article about them.
Posts: 5422 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Initial assessment is that patch 1.2 has broken my PC version of the game.
Menu interface has gone from being annoying to non-functional, both with my 360 controller, and mouse and keyboard.
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I've heard from a lot of people that 1.2 broke the PS3 version as well. Super crashes, dragons flying backwards, loss of all magic resistance, etc.
I think I'll refrain from installing it until I hear more.
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My 1.2 patch for the ps3 is working perfectly. fixed the game lag that occured after a few hours continuous play. I am very happy with the game and the patch
Posts: 1661 | Registered: Dec 2000
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1.2 has broken a few things on the PC version. Particularly with the interface. Not prohibitively so for me, but annoyingly so.
I'm also getting the dragons flying backwards.
I'm no professional in the game development industry, but I must question Bethesda's PC testing department. They've worked on this patch for three weeks, and I played a whole ten minutes before I noticed things that were now broken.
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quote:Originally posted by Aros: Who has time for a second character? My first is barely to level 40!
Depends on whether you complete the game, I guess. I've been a bit of an altaholic. Only one character has gone much into the main quest, and none have completed it.
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quote:Originally posted by Aros: Who has time for a second character? My first is barely to level 40!
I like to play multiple characters. My sneak-thief Daedra worshiping Khajiit is 32, I have an Empire loving nordic princess around 15-20, and a couple of dick-mages around 10-15.
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dick-mages, eh? I once drank deep of the font of dick magic, but some say that power comes at a cost ..
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Anyone else notice that dragons difficulty is dependent on your level, but not true for trolls, so you can kill a dragon pretty easily, but trolls kick your ass the first 1/4 of the game?
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It's not true for basically any monster but dragons. Giants, trolls, wisp mothers, ice wraiths, etc... even Dragon shamans.
Also you can occasionally encounter ancient dragons when they are nigh unkillable (that fight took about four tries!) and you continue occasionally facing blood dragons even once stomping them becomes child's play.
I think my previous grumpiness at the amount of leveling was unfair. They do it pretty darn well. I still prefer less leveling than they did, but I acknowledge that if they made me happy it would probably piss off a lot more people than it pleased.
Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I've just encountered a huge glitch that will require me to remake another character.
Basically, I was doing the main questline where you have to go and get a crown for Ulfrik. Then I went off to go do another quest for the greybeards. This particular quest involved getting the two warring factions to stop fighting. I went back to each side to convince them and they each agreed, but then when I went back up to see the greyboards they wouldn't talk to me. I tried everything but it was all for naught. Nothing worked at all. So then I went back and tried to finish the stormcloaks quest, thinking that if i did maybe it would fix it. Unfortunately, the guy with the quest wouldn't talk to me about anything except that he couldn't believe I convinced Ulfric to join the quest. So there you have it. Broken.
posted
I haven't looked it up, but I don't think any of the random dragons are scaled specifically to the PC, but they you simply start encountering them when your level hits the appropriate range-but the dragons don't continue keeping pace, once you top out at random Ancient Dragons.
I base this on my encounters-I never saw an Ancient or Elder Dragons in random fights early on, but the last six or so have been exclusively Ancient and Frost. Ancients used to be hair-raising, barely-make-it fights. Resist Fire potions were a must, because a steady sneeze of fire from one would kill me even before it finished exhaling.
Now, though, they no longer one-shot me with direct bite attacks, and their breath doesn't take me down near as much-I think they've topped out.
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All of the dungeons automatically level to you when you first enter. If you leave and return later, they're still leveled toward your first entrance -- monsters, loot, etc.
Outside, almost nothing is leveled except dragons.
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That's not accurate in my experience, Aros-the last bit I mean. In a given group of enemies, you'll likely find several non-leveled enemies such as bandits, Forsworn, but among them you'll probably see at least one or two Marauders and Ravagers.
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Maybe the number of enemies is leveled. I don't know, I'm just repeating what all of the sites (IGN, GameSpot, etc) have said.
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