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Skyrim Annoyances

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Xocyll

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Apr 17, 2013, 9:23:30 AM4/17/13
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I'm liking the game quite a lot, but some of the writing and scripting
is astonishingly bad.

Last night I did the mission at the Snow Veil Sanctuary (Thieves guild -
you and the leader of the guild going after the person who killed the
previous leader - you think.)

You start off with said leader picking an unpickable lock - sorry
Bethesda, flagging it as "needs a key" and then having an npc open it
without a key kind of makes a mockery of my 100% picklocks skill - why
can he pick it when I can't - super, super lazy writing.
Why not simply _have him have a key to the place_ - he has been there
before after all.

So here we are, two stealthy thieves sneaking in after a murderess who
is an extremely accomplished killer and thinks nothing about fucking
with the entire guild, and with every combat (vs draugr) I initiate
stealthily with a bow, said thief guild leader's only technique is to
drop stealth, bellow war cries at the top of his lungs and charge in,
usually pushing me out of the way and blocking my shots.
[Of course since he let them know where we were, (and everyone else
within half a mile,) my stealth is now neutralized and I lose the extra
bow damage for stealth shots - so what would be 4 stealth shots is now
12-20 shots while maneuvering to shoot around him.]

War cries like "You can't hide from me" when the only thing we're facing
is enemies which DO NOT HIDE EVER!
Finishing off with "Thus ends the lesson" which, considering the most he
ever managed to do was do maybe 25% of damage on one out of 4 enemies,
must be "you can be a guild leader and a total pussy at the same time."

Not once did he try for a stealth kill, he was straight up Barbarian
Warrior with Nerf Weapons the whole way.

Then he picks another unpickable lock (this time one of those dragon
claw locks.)

A little while later it's cutscene time as you get shot and poisoned -
Uh Bethesda, I'm a Vampire, I'm supposed to be IMMUNE TO POISON by your
game mechanics - super lazy, inconsistent writing and scripting and no
sanity checking whatsoever.

For that matter, why is it every time you go under water, when you
surface you do this big gasp for air noise, even if you have a water
breathing item/potion and/or don't breath on account of being undead or
were only under for a second?

So I guess my question is, when did Uwe Boll start writing game scripts
for Bethesda?

Xocyll
--
I don't particularly want you to FOAD, myself. You'll be more of
a cautionary example if you'll FO And Get Chronically, Incurably,
Painfully, Progressively, Expensively, Debilitatingly Ill. So
FOAGCIPPEDI. -- Mike Andrews responding to an idiot in asr

Adam Russell

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Apr 17, 2013, 10:54:55 AM4/17/13
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semispoiler:







































you find out how he did it later on

Xocyll

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Apr 17, 2013, 1:05:41 PM4/17/13
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Adam Russell <adamru...@yahoo.com.invalid> looked up from reading
the entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the
signs say:

>semispoiler:
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>you find out how he did it later on

I've complete the whole quest line on another character and all I
remember was that he had the Skeleton Key, and as I said, as implemented
in the game it doesn't open any lock automatically - it's just
unbreakable.

It's just lazy writing "We don't want the player in there until we say
so, so the door requires a key" so why not just give him the key instead
of having him supposedly pick it?
In Previous games in the ES series (Daggerfall certainly) the Skeleton
Key would unlock anything - so if it actually functioned like that in
Skyrim that would also be acceptable - but it doesn't as you find out
when you get your hands on it.

It's pickable or it's not, and making it unpickable and then having an
NPC pick it is about as bad and lazy as story writing gets.

None of that explains him behaving like an ADHD Barbarian in combat and
screaming battlecries instead of like a thief who is tying to sneak up
on an enemy.
Sound caries and you'd think the friggen head of the thieves guild would
know that and wouldn't be trying to alert every single thing in the
entire dungeon that we're coming, especially Karliah.

Considering how ineffective he was in combat, realistically someone like
that would NOT be throwing away his stealth combat bonus damage.
It's immersion destroying.

It's like the whole combat routines were written by someone who didn't
understand stealth at all.

I fear for the next ES game if the quality of writing and thought put
into the games is dropping this low.

Spalls Hurgenson

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Apr 17, 2013, 12:24:16 PM4/17/13
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On Wed, 17 Apr 2013 08:23:30 -0500, Xocyll <Xoc...@kingston.net>
wrote:

>I'm liking the game quite a lot, but some of the writing and scripting
>is astonishingly bad.
>
>Last night I did the mission at the Snow Veil Sanctuary (Thieves guild -
>you and the leader of the guild going after the person who killed the
>previous leader - you think.)
>
>You start off with said leader picking an unpickable lock - sorry
>Bethesda, flagging it as "needs a key" and then having an npc open it
>without a key kind of makes a mockery of my 100% picklocks skill - why
>can he pick it when I can't - super, super lazy writing.
>Why not simply _have him have a key to the place_ - he has been there
>before after all.

>Then he picks another unpickable lock (this time one of those dragon
>claw locks.)

While I can't defend most of the problems you bring up, these two you
mentioned should not be included.

There's actually a reason he pick these unpickable locks, which you
learn by the time you finish the Thieves Guild quest.

<spoiler>

Ur unf n qvivar negvsnpg pnyyrq gur Fxryrgba Xrl juvpu nyybjf uvz gb
cvpx nal ybpx.


Xocyll

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Apr 17, 2013, 1:45:31 PM4/17/13
to
Spalls Hurgenson <spallsh...@gmail.com> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

Uh Spalls, I mentioned that. Except that when YOU have the key, it
doesn't do that, so they can't claim that's how he's doing it.
It's just lazy ass scripting at it's worst.

They obviously couldn't make the artifact actually work like that
because then it would let the _player_ open any "requires a key" door
with it, which would defeat the whole reason they put those doors in, in
the first place (and removed unlock spells,) keeping the player out
until they decide to allow you in.

It's unpickable or it isn't.
If an artifact lets an NPC pick otherwise unpickable doors, then it has
to let the player do the same if they get it, which they do.
It did in previous Elder Scrolls games.

This kind of inconsistency is indefensible and frankly I expected far
more from Bethesda then this halfassed nonsense.

Thus the Uwe Boll as writer comment, it's the kind of crap I'd expect
from him.

Xocyll

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Apr 17, 2013, 3:44:14 PM4/17/13
to
Xocyll <Xoc...@kingston.net> looked up from reading the entrails of the
I just finished the Labyrinthian mission and ran into another stupid
scripted event.
After you get the staff and head out you run into a Thalmor guy.
When I encountered him I was sneaking (100% stealth) muffled and using
the vampire invisibility power (like the invisibility spell.)
As soon as I reach about 15 feet from him he starts his speech demanding
the staff etc, I say no, combat begins.

His battlecry?

"Where are you?"

followed a moment later by

"I must have scared him off."

Because he couldn't detect me at all, but as soon as I got near him
again, *bing* conversation interaction starts again as though I had
pressed action on him.

3 friggen times the scripting tried to force me to follow the script
someone there wrote and fuck whatever my actual character skills were.

Then I ate him.

I *really* get the idea that whoever wrote these interactions assumed
that no one would have any kind of stealth (sneak or invisibility), so
there's no way they could avoid these scripted events.
Yeah a thief who just got the staff and is sneaking out is going to be
visible when he sees an _enemy_ mage faction instead of just sneaking
past or planting a dagger in the enemy mages neck/back.
Or a mage with invisibility seeing that enemy mage - SUUUURREEE he's
going to stop and talk to him and maybe lose the staff, SUUUREE he is,
and if you believe that I have a castle to sell you - yeah the Jarl, he
rents it from me it's not his.

The number of times I've had a guard run up to me an initiate the
scripted you've committed crimes against the people of Skyrim, surrender
conversation while I've been full stealthed is also stupidly
impressively.

Including one where I ran past the guard and distantly heard him start
his speech, and he followed me for about a mile to finish the
conversation and let me surrender.
He couldn't see me, he couldn't hear me, but by god the scripting could
lead him to my exact location no matter what the distance.
(I was running to get out of the sun after doing the east empire company
mission for the thieves guild (just before the sanctuary mission I
mentioned in the original message.)
He stopped half way up the tower I was in but initiated the
conversation once I came down within 10-15 feet of him, still completely
stealthed.
When I declined to surrender he waved his sword about a bit then
wandered off since he couldn't detect me at all.

Talk about an immersion breaker.

Scripted events with no bounds checking, lazy, sloppy and stupid.

It was originally a joke, but I'm starting to think Uwe Boll really does
write for them.

Trimble Bracegirdle

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Apr 18, 2013, 11:02:53 AM4/18/13
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This Unofficial Skyrim Patch should help;

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tes5Mod:Unofficial_Skyrim_Patch
@@@mouse@@@

Xocyll

unread,
Apr 18, 2013, 2:55:26 PM4/18/13
to
"Trimble Bracegirdle" <no-...@never.spam> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

>This Unofficial Skyrim Patch should help;
>
>http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tes5Mod:Unofficial_Skyrim_Patch
>@@@mouse@@@

Uh dude, that's already installed.
It doesn't fix any of the things I was bitching about.

The problem is that Bethesda cheated in essence.
Instead of creating a real artifact and then having the NPC use it, they
created a non-working artifacts and then scripted it's function for the
NPC.

For that matter the whole mage's guild quest line bugs me.
After the blowup, all the mages become useless refusing to interact and
just say one line over and over again until _after_ you save the day.

Right so they leave the fate of the College and possibly the World in
the hands of a new student who has been there for a couple weeks and
won't give that student any kind of help.

Does that make any sense to _anyone_?

It really bugged me that this applied to the entire college mage
_faction_ not just the ones actually at the college - so a guy elsewhere
involved in another quest was also frozen, locking that quest until
after the staff had been retrieved and the baddie fought.

Man, Bethesda took a lot of shortcuts making Skyrim, and consistency and
logic checks seem to be one of the things they skipped entirely.

I really wish they'd finish the core game before they skip ahead to
making DLCs.
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