The Elder Scrolls

[Fount of BadSpeak]

I don't get why magic doesn't just scale with level like every other weapon type. it was odd in previous games too but there they had the excuse of spell crafting but in Skyrim it's literally just a handful of premade spells tied to specific delivery methods such as short range flamethrower, fireballs etc. Why wouldn't they scale in a game where literally everything else does?
Well it's obvious no one at Bethesda gave a fuck about magic but it's still strange.

That's a problem, for sure, but I think it ties into the overall issue with poor damage scaling for destruction as a whole. The skill tree shows you that the skill really isn't mean to be taken seriously. One handed has a damage boost available from the first node for all one handed weapons, immediately, and you can upgrade it five times. Destruction doesn't have a damage boost until level 30, it only applies to one specific element, and each element can only be boosted twice with the second not coming until all the way at level 60. By level 30 in one handed, you have the option to increase damage output generally two times, get some really nice damage boosts for specific types of weapons, and/or increase your two handed attack speeds. One handed levels up way faster, attacks way faster, doesn't use stamina for normal attacks, damage scales way faster... Destruction needed to be reworked form the ground up to be a functional combat skill, but I suspect that @Observotron is right and magic was kneecapped to make the shouts seem more impressive, and necessary, in comparison.

Another one is critical hits. Destruction doesn't get any sort of random increased damage modifier, while all melee and bow can and do get these, as well as some specific upgrade nodes to further increase critical damage. There's also no sneak attack modifier, so you can't even combine destruction with sneak to try to compensate for its shortcomings by getting a sneak damage modifier. Damage scaling is completely broken for destruction, and I think more than anything that's why the skill is shitty. It starts off mediocre and gets worse and worse.

I can not help but think that magic will be even worse in TES 6, whenever that comes out.

I agree with Toward on this, because players WILL optimize the fun out of a game given the chance (pretty sure that's a Sid Meier quote)

The problem is Beth fixes this optimization in the worst ways possible.

If every player opts for an identical playstyle, that isn't the player "optimizing the fun" out of the game, that's just bad game design. A good game designer should be able to introduce enough pros and cons to make the various systems have their own reasons to be picked over another even in the age of internet guides; if they can't, then they did a poor job designing the game. Skyrim's magic is a good example of this, as there really is not any justifiable reason to pick magic over bow or melee for combat. It doesn't do anything better than just running in and chopping shit up with a sword does, and actually does notably worse even when you have put in 17 hours into trying to make it work. There should not be a scenario in which my character that was designed around destruction magic does better in combat by putting on armor they weren't trained in, and using a mace they weren't trained in, with low health and stamina, than they do using the destruction magic that they are specialized in from the ground up.

Developers claiming that players will "optimize the fun out of a game" is an admission that they can not design a game that is fun enough to play in a variety of ways, even if they aren't the most "efficient" way.

 

[Fathomless Eminence]

Pretty bummed that destruction isn't fun. I really have tried to make it work but I have to agree with some of the other posters: the lack of custom spells is extremely restrictive and limits you too much. At least you could compensate for bad design with custom spells, if it had them.

Enough to like that I am going to give the game another shake, though I am definitely not being a mage this time. I think I will try two handed and light armor, since I have never tried either. Hopefully it won't be such a frustrating combat experience this time around.

This isn't a defense of magic in Skyrim. It's shit. But you can make a mage work if you know how. It just depends how much you want to spite Todd.

The way I see it, ALL skyrim combat is shit. Fundamentally what you are doing every single time is chipping health bars and healing. There is no strategy, there is no skill. You are left clicking until something dies. The only thought that goes into it is will you level alchemy to make more efficient potions or will you increase your carry capacity to bring more store bought potions with you. That and juking the NPCs by finding a spot they cannot path to while you recover.

Melee is pure retard suffering. At least, as a mage, you are not getting your health bar chipped in turn, can ignore one retard meter and will spend less time tabbing into your inventory to drink potions. With favorite spells hotkeyed, you can even approach something close to a seamless combat experience.

 

[Mike Matei's Penis]

Skyrim is just a rip-off of the movie Beowulf.

 

[Sheep King]

Those things all worked fine for me.

Oblivion can borderline softlock you because you had no idea how the hidden math of the game was going to fuck you over. Skyrim, the worst you get unless you are being maximally retarded on purpose is "oh, this part was a bit more difficult than it could have been." People greatly exaggerate how "broken" Skyrim is because they need something to complain about. Fact is, just about anything you pick will get you through the game without too much trouble. Like I remember people telling me hammers were useless, yet somehow, my first playthrough--unaided, unmodded, no wiki, no metagaming--with a hammer went just fine.

Depends on what "get through the game" means. The definition of a Skyrim playthrough is pretty variable, yeah, if you're playing to 30 then anything is doable, but if you're going until Level 60-80 on Adept then combat will become intolerably spongy. Every enemy mage becomes a one shot kill machine with stunlocking becoming the only way to survive. Unique artifacts become too suboptimal compared to custom smithing/enchantments to bother with. As others have pointed out, magic becomes a repetitive loop of chugging fortify destruction potions to fire a shitty water pistol at enemies over and over until they die. It comes down to the fact that they didn't actually care whether people experienced Skyrim as a fully fledged world to explore to its fullest and just wanted to make an amusement park where the rides are held with just enough duct tape to stay standing long enough before kids get bored.

 

[Asian tech support]

Unique artifacts become too suboptimal compared to custom smithing/enchantments to bother with.

I think remember Todd saying in prerelease coverage that the game was designed with crafted gear being BiS, which of course would suggest that artifacts/uniques were reduced to mere flavoring. There was never a moment in Skyrim where acquiring some choice loot equated to the elation of finding a piece of daedric armor in Morrowind.

 

[Prophetic Spirit]

I think remember Todd saying in prerelease coverage that the game was designed with crafted gear being BiS, which of course would suggest that artifacts/uniques were reduced to mere flavoring. There was never a moment in Skyrim where acquiring some choice loot equated to the elation of finding a piece of daedric armor in Morrowind.

That explain how broken is Enchant in Skyrim.

 

[Sheogorath]

The story is really bland by comparison yes, but you don't really play daggerfall for that story.

nah the main plot in daggerfall is a wholeass crazy conspiracy set off by a miscommunication in correspondence with The Emperor Uriel VII that's ultimately leads up to unleashing an ancient war machine and ascension of a mortal to godhood

 

[JJLiautaud]

nah the main plot in daggerfall is a wholeass crazy conspiracy set off by a miscommunication in correspondence with The Emperor Uriel VII that's ultimately leads up to unleashing an ancient war machine and ascension of a mortal to godhood

Plus everyone lies to you not single quest giver in the main quest is honest with you its actually pretty kino.

 

[Sheogorath]

It was just the ones that require F4SE. Also, you know there are ways to roll it back via a downgrader, right

so it was just the mods that actually add anything worthwhile to the game besides reskins and random sdk poopshit and there are ways to roll it back via a downgrader so y'know just make the mod maker's lives harder having to compile 3 versions of a mod in different sdks because not every mod is getting constantly kept up to date

 

[Deus Exica]

This isn't a defense of magic in Skyrim. It's shit. But you can make a mage work if you know how. It just depends how much you want to spite Todd.

I have done a couple runs as mages in Skyrim and investing heavily in conjuration was how I always handled it. Pop down an Atronach or two and then ice spike melee enemies so their movement speed is slow, anything that survived the initial confrontation got mopped up with a melee weapon. It was fun enough.

There are several massive magic overhauls for the game that makes playing a mage more fun. People should check those out if they want to do a mage run.

 

[Sheogorath]

Morrowind discourse hasn't evolved in the last 10+ years, the only only thing that's changed is the people participating in it. I put most of the blame squarely on the Patrician video. IMO it's a good video but it's also introduced a bunch of fags that should be off playing their heavily modded Skyrim into the mix.

patrician is a baller his video is to the point and good he doesn't overcomplicate any of the mechanics in morrowind i put the blame squarely into ssethtzeentach's video that's just as informative as a max0r summary but without the adhd editing his video just focuses on some exagurated random shit "le scrib can paralyze you that's so frickin tuff dude litteraly unbeatable unless you've never felt the touch of a femoid", "le int potion loop = infinte gold dude", "le divyath fyr daughter wives is so hecking bonkers man" i think he actually fell for the fucking iron dagger meme missed a few hits not specing into short blade and decided the combat system is esoteric magic

 

[TrainWreckWatcher]

nah the main plot in daggerfall is a wholeass crazy conspiracy set off by a miscommunication in correspondence with The Emperor Uriel VII that's ultimately leads up to unleashing an ancient war machine and ascension of a mortal to godhood

Fair point。

 

[Sheogorath]

Fair point。

it's only the main quest though the rest of the game is a starfield experience of doing random shit in a faction to level up and get money

 

[Squawking Macaw]

Unironically AI solves this.
A dev I follow has talked about using LLMs with game lore context only for its knowledge base using the NPC's, castes and locations for their knowledge. So think old PC games where you typed into the game and it searched for word context clues in what you typed and if it was a key flag it would respond in certain ways. Except the AI can respond to anything you say and with the trained list respond appropriately. If you start gibbering on about iphones or celebrities or other things it'll just think you're crazy and ignore you / call the guards.

There are a couple Skyrim LLM mods that do something like this, Mantella, Chim and Inworld. They let you have full conversations with the NPCs which they can remember, and some even let you do things like persuade the NPCs to join you as temporary followers, but the AI is still very primitive. The voices are stilted, the dialogue is what you'd expect from ChatGPT and sometimes it fucks up and the NPCs narrate their actions in the third person.

Here's a mod showcase from Mantella's devs, I wanted to find something more impartial but all I got was streamer garbage.

 

[TenMilesWide]

Apart from the Unity conversion, anything "mandatory" in terms of mods for Daggerfall ?

Make sure to get 'Falling Down', the mod that automatically catches you and puts you back on solid ground if you happen to clip out of bounds and fall into the void. Happens more often than you'd think.

nah the main plot in daggerfall is a wholeass crazy conspiracy set off by a miscommunication in correspondence with The Emperor Uriel VII that's ultimately leads up to unleashing an ancient war machine and ascension of a mortal to godhood

Saw someone sum it up as "Hey, so I definitely didn't try to send the nuke codes to my buddy (disguised as an adulterous missive to his wife) before he got stabbed in the back, but if I did you'd clear that up for me right? Make sure that vengeance he's screaming about isn't against me? Thanks."

 

[StacticShock]

nah the main plot in daggerfall is a wholeass crazy conspiracy set off by a miscommunication in correspondence with The Emperor Uriel VII that's ultimately leads up to unleashing an ancient war machine and ascension of a mortal to godhood

of course the god of madness would forget lysandus.

vengeance for my nigga lysandus.

 

[Sheogorath]

of course the god of madness would forget lysandus.

i had a lot on my mind those days it was busy

 

[The Ugly One]

The way I see it, ALL skyrim combat is shit. Fundamentally what you are doing every single time is chipping health bars and healing. There is no strategy, there is no skill. You are left clicking until something dies. The only thought that goes into it is will you level alchemy to make more efficient potions or will you increase your carry capacity to bring more store bought potions with you. That and juking the NPCs by finding a spot they cannot path to while you recover.

Melee is pure retard suffering. At least, as a mage, you are not getting your health bar chipped in turn, can ignore one retard meter and will spend less time tabbing into your inventory to drink potions. With favorite spells hotkeyed, you can even approach something close to a seamless combat experience.

i like bonking people with hammers

Depends on what "get through the game" means.

Beat the main quest, same thing it means in every RPG for normal people. I have no idea what level I was when I beat it, but I remember Daedric armor was around, so it must have been in the 50s. I was just a vanilla hammer guy, it was fine.

 

[Spooky Dogwood]

There are a couple Skyrim LLM mods that do something like this, Mantella, Chim and Inworld. They let you have full conversations with the NPCs which they can remember, and some even let you do things like persuade the NPCs to join you as temporary followers, but the AI is still very primitive. The voices are stilted, the dialogue is what you'd expect from ChatGPT and sometimes it fucks up and the NPCs narrate their actions in the third person.

Here's a mod showcase from Mantella's devs, I wanted to find something more impartial but all I got was streamer garbage.

I think the setup and system resources you would likely need to run this just isn't worth it. I have a feeling it's slow as shit unless you're running it from another dedicated machine or rented server too.

 

[Rick The Stick]

Melee is pure retard suffering

If you're retarded and don't know how to block, position or time your attacks, sure. But since you apparently can't get through an encounter without chugging potions, abusing terrain, or abusing alchemy loops I think that answers that. Like I cannot express how much of a skill issue it is to find TES melee any kind of suffering. It's so easy.