Skyrim adventure

[Ingaras]

I’ve been playing a little bit of Skyrim over the weekend and decided to write you all a little story about my adventure into this beautiful world… Be mindful, it’s based on my own heavily biased experiences of playing on a laptop that’s barely able to run medium settings . I’ve tried to keep it as spoiler free as possible, but after the first paragraph, there’s one or two surprises from my first hour or so that might be considered spoilers, so ye be warned!

So, after installing the game and starting it up, the first thing I notice besides the awesome music you could expect from a TES game is the absolutely horrible mouse interface. As soon as you get past the intro and have to do things you get introduced to the worst PC UI I’ve seen since Windows 3.1. Picture the most mouse unfriendly UI you can think of in your mind and add some fancy effects and screen-sized 3D images of weapons and armour and you’ve got Skyrim’s interface. An example: Tab is used to open the main menu, which gives you a fullscreen compass with on top your skills, down the map, left magic and right inventory. Now, if you click on ‘Magic’ on the far left, a magic menu opens up from the right side of the screen… Or: Talking to someone, you get nice selection list with talk-options, now if you click one of those, the game will start the talk-option that was currently selected, like an enter-key. In 80% of the cases, that will indeed be the one you just clicked, but if you’ve also used the keyboard-keys to browse the list, there might be a completely different line selected than you just clicked!

Also the mouse sensitivity is waaaay over in the left field… a slight tremble of the mouse will flash the screen from far left to far right, yet looking up and down takes a mouse movement of a meter or two (and I’m supposed to be fighting flying dragons …). A quick search on the internet tells me I’m not the only one with these troubles and after fiddling a bit with ini settings (like disabling the X360 controller I don’t have, disabling software-mouse-acceleration, tuning mouse-sensitivity X and Y axes) and accepting that I just should not use the mouse for anything except looking around and stick to WASD+E for everything, especially the menus, it’s improved from ‘horrible piece of crap, $*%&!!@&^#~! I didn’t mean to do that’ to ‘bad, but I’ll manage’.

--- Ye be warned, here might be spoilers ---

Now, after I’d done some introduction-quests in Whiterun, the Jarl is very pleased with me and bestows me with an unfamiliar title, allows me to buy a house in his town (how nice, if I don’t have the coin), and assigns me a housekarl… Being new to Skyrim and Nordic customs, I had ofcourse no idea what a housekarl is, but with the offer of a house and all, I figured it would be some kind of butler.

After graciously thanking the Jarl for his generosity I walk out of the castle and get stopped by a lady… ‘Hi I’m Lydia!’ so I politely respond ‘Nice to meet you! What can I do for you?’. ‘I’m your housekarl’ she answers somewhat surprised. Uhoh! now, she didn’t exactly look like the homely type if you understand and clearly was ready to go on adventure with me, wearing what is best described as a heavy-armour bathing suit (somewhere inbetween the famous heavy-armour bikini and proper armour), a bow and a sword. So while she stands there clearly waiting for me I decide to carefully start a conversation, ‘So… uuh… look, I’m new here, what does a housekarl do exactly?’ ‘I’m sworn to protect you and your properties, my Thane’. Ok… not the very conversing type either, more the bodyguard kind… and I got all kinds of bad memories about Skirmish soldiers and Laila’s. So what to do? She’s clearly taking orders from me, so I could just tell her to stay where she is, but well, the Jarl might find out and I don’t want to seem ungrateful. He might even take refusing his gift as an offense and I’m just new here and don’t really need powerful enemies right away. Besides… Lydia doesn’t look like she’ll take no for an answer either!

So I decided to take her on my little mountain-climbing trip and see how it would work out. As we walk out of town and cross the river into the wilds, a rather shady looking figure suddenly runs out of the bushes on the side of the road. Before I realize what’s happening exactly, Lydia draws her sword and jumps in front of me, taking a few well aimed swings at the incoming bandit. ‘You’re ok?’ I ask, ‘I’m still here!’. The bandit clearly is not… I investigate his corpse and find to my shock that it’s not just a bandit, but a hired assassin by some sort of Dark Brotherhood trying to kill me. Suddenly I feel somewhat more secure having Lydia around… A couple of miles down the road we get stopped by real bandits this time, and a necromancer. The bandits are no match for my fireballs… but this necromancer seems to have invented some kind of ward against my spells. It’s not quite as effective against Lydia’s sword however, so afterwards we make a deal: I take the bandits next time, she starts off with the magic-types. While rummaging through the bandits stuff I find one of them has a nice steel greatsword that might fetch a nice price… So I call Lydia over (‘Yeah, I’m still here!’) and give it to her: ‘Here, I’ve got something for you!’, now she probably misunderstood me, but the effect was like buying a lady new shoes. She glanced in awe at the shiny sword, immediately put her own one away in her bag and sheathed the new sword on her back. I didn't really mind and let her keep it, after all she just got me an awesome necromancer's jacket and saved my life before. Ever since she’s valiantly defending me… She runs head-on at dragons entire villages flee from, and the other day some Orc in an inn decided to seek a fight with me (I was tired from the trip… he might have insulted me a bit and I might have suggested something along the lines of ‘Hey, I’m that guy slaying those dragons that you’re all so afraid of, so better watch your tongue’…) and she turned the whole place upside down, mercilessly killing the Orc while he was pleading on his knees (winning herself a brand new Orcish sword from me). She also does have her Laila-moments though... like the night I was sneaking out of an embassy I robbed (turned a bit into a bloody armed-robbery and they were after me...), she wasn't invited in, but as I was making my way out of the backdoor, I was standing on a ledge figuring out how to sneak past the troll guarding it... only to see Lydia come to the rescue from the outside, 'sneaking' straight into the Troll...

So how are your adventures going?

[Falcodoc]

Not a long post, just to say:

I got it for Xbox recently (I bought an Xbox specifically for it, sort of) and I love it.
I've been stuck in it since it came out. Fantastic.
also, Lydia is an excellent badass, really great support character.

[Ingaras]

Not a long post, just to say:

I got it for Xbox recently (I bought an Xbox specifically for it, sort of) and I love it.
I've been stuck in it since it came out. Fantastic.

Hehe... probably a good call! It's indeed once again a great game... and I love the voice acting and ambient sounds everywhere, I think they really managed to give it just that little bit of extra.

[Ninetoes]

It's garbage, pure garbage. I can't even assign my keypad keys. I'm a leftie, I use my keypad keys for movement, but those retards at Bethesda decided to "reserve" them. Hence, utter piece of consolized garbage. I'm just glad I tried the "demo" instead of buying it.

Let me assign the keyboard the way I want to and I might look beyond the utter garbage that is this game and even consider opting for a purchase.

[Ingaras]

I haven't dared to touch the key-assignments yet... read about some people who tried to reassign the E or F key, making it impossible to use the menu-system (and thus revert the keybinding!), since they'd lose their menu functions. My view on the whole control system is that I should just try to behave myself as console-like as possible otherwise the whole thing falls apart . You really wonder if they ever tested the PC version for more than 5 minutes...

[Ninetoes]

You really wonder if they ever tested the PC version for more than 5 minutes...

I don't, they didn't.

[Falcodoc]

Might explain why the PC version of Skyrim has fewer points on metacritic than it's console port brethren.

[Kairos]

So how are your adventures going?

Personally, I'm about to junk it. As you know, I play on a Mac using BootCamp, which has served me very well in the past, whether with LOTRO, Oblivion or Fallout. However, Skyrim seems unplayable. The mouse is almost completely unresponsive (needs about a three-metre sweep to turn 45 degrees), everything judders and shakes, 4 out 5 frames seem to be skipped, and it can take five minutes, staggering like a drunkard, to walk down a street. A hideous mess. As for the interface...

[Charvel]

I did mention that you should leave the game for a few months until the community fix it for Bethesda !!   


You can change settings quite easily via Skyrim.ini \Users\[Username]\My Documents\My Games\Skyrim directory (MAKE BACKUPS OF ALL FILES YOU INTEND TO CHANGE)

for example ;-

[Display]
iPresentInterval=0 (0 Vsync Off Or 1 for vsync on)
bTreesReceiveShadows=1
bDrawLandShadows=1
bDrawShadows=1
iBlurDeferredShadowMask=1
[Controls]
bMouseAcceleration=0
fForegroundMouseAccelBase=0
fForegroundMouseAccelTop=0
fForegroundMouseBase=0
fForegroundMouseMult=0

bTreesReceiveShadows=1
bDrawLandShadows=1              -          changing these can improve performance, adding shadows to trees makes it look better obv
bDrawShadows=1

bMouseAcceleration=0            - turn it off, mouse acceleration is horrendous in most games

Press the Tilde Key to open the console and Type FOV 90 (or lower/higher) to change the FOV for the pc viewpoint as it's at a shitty console fov of 65 then Save Game..

INI TWEAKS GUIDE:

First thing to do, change your game graphics settings from the game Launcher:

-Set "Ultra" settings and max out Antialiasing and Anisotropic Filter.

-Go in Advanced:
Max out everything BUT leave UNCHECKED "FXAA" and "Object Detail Fade".
*FXAA makes the screen very blurry, Object Fade makes the details fade from a certain view distance.

-Ok and exit.


-Now, go in "Documents/My Games/Skyrim", make a copy of the file "SkyrimPrefs.ini" and name that copy as you want, it is a backup.

-Open the original "SkyrimPrefs.ini" with a txt editor, find these lines and change them if you want:

iBlurDeferredShadowMask=3 (change to 1) - Greately improves the definition of the shadows with no FPS loss (for me at least). If you think they are too sharp, set the value to 2 instead of 1.

fTreesMidLODSwitchDist=0.0000 (change to 10000000.0000) - Improves tree LOD distance (experimental).

iShadowFilter=3 (change to 4) - Probably slightly improve shadow filtering (experimental, doesn't harm anyway).

fShadowLODStartFade=200.0000 (change to 1000.0000) - Improves the LOD distance of shadows.

bTransparencyMultisampling=0 (change to 1) - Enables Trasparency MS (experimental, needs more testing).

iWaterMultiSamples=0 (change to 4) - Improves water AA sampling.

bTreesReceiveShadows=0 (change to 1) - Improves the tree shadowing by enabling shadows ON trees!

bDrawLandShadows=0 (change to 1) - Enable land shadowing, larger shadows are unaffected, this is a subtle effect.

fGrassMinStartFadeDistance=0.0000 (change to 400.0000) - Improves minimum grass fade distance (experimental).

iWaterReflectHeight=512 and
iWaterReflectWidth=512 (change both to 1024) - Improves the water reflections resolution.

bMouseAcceleration=1 (change to 0) - Disables mouse acceleration, which causes mouse lag with Vertical Sync, just be sure to also raise the mouse sensitivity in the game options.

uiMaxSkinnedTreesToRender=20 (change to 40) - Renders more tree's skins/textures (needs more testing).


-Now add these lines at the bottom:

bUseWaterReflectionBlur=1
bReflectExplosions=1
iWaterBlurAmount=4
bAutoWaterSilhouetteReflections=0
bForceHighDetailReflections=1 - These 5 improve the water rendering.

fBlockLoadDistanceLow=50000.0000
fBlockLoadDistance=125000.0000
fHighBlockLoadDistanceLow=20000.0000 - These 3 improve the mesh on long distance.


-Save, exit.


IMPORTANT: Forcing Anisotropic Filter 16x from your video card settings IMPROVES WATER FILTERING, also if the games already uses AF 16x!


Please let me know about new INI tweaks you discover, and report any problem these tweaks may cause, this will become a bigger and better guide thanks to you!



v1.1
-Added shadow fildering experimental tweak

and http://www.skyrimnexus.com/index.php is now up and running for all your needs !


 

[Kairos]

Thanks, Charvel. So, is this the first RPG game ever to be issued specifically for computer programmers?

[Falcodoc]

Sounds like the PC version is plagued with problems at present.
I've had a few Xbox glitches (NPC pathing is still apparently a problem for every developer in the world...) but nothing on the scale mentioned here. That's sad

[Kairos]

Charvel:
Can I bend your ear for a bit regarding your suggestions?

1. Couldn't find "Skyrim directory", but found "Skyrim Configurastion Settings" and "Skyrim Prefs" instead.
2. Found "bMouseAcceleration" in Preferences and zeroed it.
3. Found and zeroed "iPresentInterval" in Preferences.
4. However, there is no sign of any of these in either file, so couldn't adjust them:
fForegroundMouseAccelBase=0
fForegroundMouseAccelTop=0
fForegroundMouseBase=0
fForegroundMouseMult=0
5. Also couldn't find any of:
bTreesReceiveShadows=1
bDrawLandShadows=1
bDrawShadows=1
6. By "Press the Tilde Key to open the console..." I assume you mean go to Command Prompt? Question is, do I do this
as a blanket command? Won't it affect everything else running in Windows? Or if not, at what point/where do I do this?
7. "First thing to do, change your game graphics settings from the game Launcher:" - but I have to launch from Steam, and
I don't appear to be given any of the subsequent options...

With just the two modifications mentioned above which I was able to implement, the game is very marginally better, but
still effectively unplayable as far as the mouse is concerned - a full 360-degree turn takes nearly a minute. Also,
everything seems to load incredibly slowly.

I did some research, and the concensus seems to be that Skyrim is only slightly more demanding than Oblivion - so
why is it such a disaster on a machine which had absolutely no problems running Oblivion? Any suggestions?

[Falcodoc]

I can field the tilde key question

When you're in the game, press tilde and the games console window will open (all the lines of text/code etc)

[Kairos]

Thanks, Falco!

[Ingaras]

You can actually add settings to the ini file if you like and they're not there... but I'd watch out with the second batch you're mentioning there, as those are for improved shadows and such, making the thing slower instead of faster. I found the Mouse Acceleration and Present Interval settings to make the most difference for the menus etc.

As for the game settings, you got the 'Options' in the Skyrim-launcher menu, there you adjust the graphics settings, play with those a bit to see if you can get your framerate up (turn it both up and down, some newer systems seem to have better performance with higher settings...). I think your turn-rate might be affected by the framerate you're getting... For me horizontal movement is fine anyway, it's the vertical axis that's a pain.

Also, does your Mac have any kind of second graphicscards? Due to the way Skyrim launches my laptop initially insisted on running it on the integrated 'Intel HD Graphics' instead of my NVidia card...

Alternatively, you can add fMouseHeadingYScale=0.0200 and fMouseHeadingXScale=0.0200 to the [Controls] section of the ini and adjust them so you can scale the sensitivity of the mouse axis manually...

*hopes Kairos didn't just faint from all the technicalities* Really, once you get it playable it's a nice game!

[Kairos]

Inga:

My graphics card is an Nvidia GeForce 9400, and is the one Skyrim selects to use. Can you suggest some graphics settings to set under Options, as most of it is Chinese to me? I assume anything that affects framerate.

Otherwise, whilst the horizontal movement for me is utter crap, I currently seem to have NO vertical movement at all...

I'll try adding the two settings you suggested to the ini file.

Thanks!


(BTW, why does the text I am typing here extend to the right of the message window towards infinity (but out of my sight)?

[Ingaras]

Well, it's using the right card, that's a start... I would start with turning it just to the 'Low' preset and see what happens. I'd guess that a 9400 should be able to handle medium settings.

And having (virtually) no vertical movement starts to sound familiar! At least you haven't got a 'new' problem, just generally slow movement on top of the X/Y imbalance. Try tinkering with the MouseHeadingScale settings... from what I've heard those should be able to help.

As for the text running out of the box that seems to be an issue with some cached files lingering around. I've not been able to replicate it before anyway. Force-reloading (ie, reload/refresh button) the page should fix it.

[Charvel]

Sorry about the lack of replies as I was out all afternoon so I'll check up on the mouse movement malarkay for you. I'll be installing the game on this PC later and shall try configure an .ini file with all the best settings I can muster, then I'll paste it here for you to try.

I found out last night that the game, because of it's console development, has terrible memory management and in some cases only uses 700mb !!! Considering a lot of PC enthusiasts have between 4-32gig of ram it severely hampers performance in all kinds of ways. I know of a program that changes the .exe file and forces the game to use all your system memory so again I'll test and let you know.

http://www.skyrimforge.com/mods/

theres a lot of texture mods surfacing now, some are already looking very nice


 





http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1268362-relz-snow-texture-replacer/

[Kairos]

I've added Inga's two suggested lines to the ini file, and it's at least (only just) playable now, though not a lot of fun. Problem is still the mouse movement, on both axis - I nearly got wiped by a wolf, simply because I couldn't turn around fast enough to target it!

Charvel, the texture mods look great, but wouldn't adding them (or similar) drive my game's performance to its knees?

I'll feed in your suggestions as they come...

[Falcodoc]

if he manages to get the mod that makes the game use as much available memory as possible, your game should be much better.

[Charvel]

I've found the program to patch the exec to allow more than 2gig memory but like anything make a backup of your TESV.exe

goto http://www.ntcore.com/exsuite.php

download the multiplatform explorer suite

You might need to right-click on the TESV.exe and un-check Read-Only before you start !

Run CFF Explorer

Click the folder icon or go to File -> Open and browse your PC for TESV.exe.

Click on File Header at the left, find Characteristics at the right, and click the Click here blue button.

Tick App can handle >2GB address space > Click OK

Save by clicking the disk icon or going to 'File -> Save.

Overwrite the file

Hope this helps, I've applied it to my version but have not played the game sufficiently to see if the difference is noticeable... yet

================================================================================================

[Kairos]

Charvel:

As I'm essentially flying blind here, I want to make sure I'm not about to do something disastrous.

I downloaded the Explorer Suite, then looked for a TESV.exe file. The only one apparently on my hard drive is called
TESV.EXE-029CC85E.pf and lives in folder C: [forward slash]WINDOWS[forward slash]Prefetch.

Would this be the right one?

Thanks...

LATER EDIT:

OK, now I know that Windows has a Hidden Files feature. Using that, I found a file called simply TESV (no suffix) lurking
in the Steam[forward slash]steamapps[forward slash]common[forward slash]skyrim folder.

I assume that despite the lack of an .exe suffix, this is probably the right one?

[Zlin]

As I haven't had much chance to give this game a good go due to work and such I will give you my uncles opinion of it as he as put in over 30 hours game play already. As you can see from the first wagon trip the graphics are very detailed and its a nice touch, you go through all these "pretty" caves and think that somebody has spent a long time to make all this, However from what he has shown me and his own play there is a clear lack of things to do within this "pretty" scenery making to quite boring gameplay, running through 30 minutes of pretty tunnels just finding 4-5 monsters and a lot of crap loot (i.e. baskets and buckets brooms the works). Having no re spawns seems to be quite an issue as well, if there was a big stronghold of bandits and you slaughter them all, I'm sure once you up and leave some other group would come and take their place, not just lay bare for eternity scattered with the odd dead corpse. The difficulty also seemed an issue to me, I made a big ass Redguard with the sole purpose of finding the biggest 2h weapon in game and smashing with it, quite effective on Adept, making light work of almost any minion in one or two hits, making the few "baddies" you find a little disheartening to know its dead without much chance of losing more than 1/4 health, yet when there is a "boss" or elite mob it seems that im eating every potion in my inventory and one wrong click = a reload so i dare put the difficulty up in fear that when a dragon does turn up it doesn't just munch me in one shot. Anyways the map also seems a little small compared to the last 2 games, but perhaps its just me, or the stupidly designed "3D" map. Its not a bad game but it does leave me feeling the need to put oblivion back in just to get a bit of good ol' action! the plains of oblivion were nice and manic! (and you get to swim through lava!). at the moment Morrowind < Oblivion > Skyrim         

[Ingaras]

Charvel:

As I'm essentially flying blind here, I want to make sure I'm not about to do something disastrous.

I downloaded the Explorer Suite, then looked for a TESV.exe file. The only one apparently on my hard drive is called
TESV.EXE-029CC85E.pf and lives in folder C: [forward slash]WINDOWS[forward slash]Prefetch.

Would this be the right one?

Thanks...

LATER EDIT:

OK, now I know that Windows has a Hidden Files feature. Using that, I found a file called simply TESV (no suffix) lurking
in the Steam[forward slash]steamapps[forward slash]common[forward slash]skyrim folder.

I assume that despite the lack of an .exe suffix, this is probably the right one?

Prefetch is NOT the right one, that's just Windows' quick-loading stuff. The prefetch-less is probably ok, Windows also has the awesome 'hide known extensions' feature which is the first thing most experienced Windows users turn off after installation... 

There's also a more user-friendly utility to do the editting here btw.

[Ninetoes]

Let me know once you can re-bind the keypad keys guys!

[Ingaras]

Best I've been able to find is to re-route the keys through Windows with external programs like AutoHotkey... Or try to find a key-placement that doesn't involve numbers 1-8 (I read someone that went for IJKL instead ).

[Kairos]

OK, I've run through the procedure suggested by Charvel, and there definitely is an overall improvement. What remains problematic is the mouse controls: the horizontal axis still requires a huge amount of desktop movement, and the vertical axis is incredibly slow and "sticky". This must be a software/programming problem rather than a hardware issue, since it doesn't happen with any other program. Can anyone suggest a solution?

[Falcodoc]

Skyrim - Mouse Acceleration / Lag Fix

If you can deal with a welsh accent, here's your fix.

[Charvel]

OK, I've run through the procedure suggested by Charvel, and there definitely is an overall improvement. What remains problematic is the mouse controls: the horizontal axis still requires a huge amount of desktop movement, and the vertical axis is incredibly slow and "sticky". This must be a software/programming problem rather than a hardware issue, since it doesn't happen with any other program. Can anyone suggest a solution?

the skyrim .ini file has to be changed in both Documents > My Games > Skyrim AND your main Program Files > Steam > Skyrim  (just making sure) . When I access the menus the mouse moves fast and smooth with a small feeling of weight however the mouse movement ingame whilst playing is still not perfect which I just put down to the engine also.

A new gfx card ? yep seems the easy suggestion because Skyrim only uses two processor cores (yes even on quad cores) so having a decent GPU is more than likely going to boost performance. I have a cheap nVidia 460 GTX 1gig of ram, roughly £80 now and I run the game 1920*1200 maxed settings and I have a load of MODS and extra shadows and other garnish. Gameplay is smooth, framerate is fast but there is always a small feeling of lag on movement.

** Its also worth pointing out I'm using Nvidia beta Drivers 285.79 that have some skyrim tweaks **

It wont be long until someone compiles a community patch for the game eliminating most of the problems people experience, it's always the case with Bethseda games.

[Milgarion]

Seems the PS3 version is busted too..

http://www.gamesradar.com/high-horse-broken-ps3-skyrim-was-inevitable-inexcusable-and-may-be-your-fault/

[Milgarion]

Patch inbound..

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-11-21-skyrim-patch-due-week-beginning-28th-november

[Falcodoc]

Just laughed like a drain at one of the comments on that article Mil posted:

You want to talk acceptable states of being ripped off?

I tipped my xbox over, destroyed my brand spanking new copy of saints row 3.

80 bucks down the drain because Microsoft rushed the system out to beat Sony in what I feel is normal use conditions.

Couple that with the fact that I'm on my fifth xbox..

I'm ready to just sell my consoles and go to computer only gaming.

"I'm blaming microsoft for breaking the disc because I knocked over my Xbox"

Never mind that they tell you all the time "don't move a console when the disc is spinning."

[Ingaras]

Just came across another nice fun story: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/11/21/skyrim-lydia-death/

... There she was. Dead. At the bottom of the slope. I’d killed her.

So after taking all my valuable stuff I’d had her carry, and nicking her armour to give to Jenassa, I paused to grieve. And then decided, for a reason I’m not even going to try to understand as I can’t afford the therapy bills, I thought it necessary to “give her a proper burial”.

It seemed only appropriate that I take her back to the top of the hill, and lay her to rest in the empty coffin of her killer. (Yes, I’m going with Volsung as her killer – he did most of it, I just finished her off with some errant Spark magic. That would work in court.) Yes, it may seem weird to put her in the grave of her murderer, but at the same time, I’ve just spent ten minutes looking for a dead NPC whom I now believe needs to be moved, so weird is relative. And, well, Skyrim leaves bodies there permanently! She’d be there, awkwardly slumped against that rock, for the rest of the game. And I’d know.

...

 

[Crucio]

Just a heads up.  Apparently the latest patch on Steam disables the ability to go past the 2gb memory limit and also seems to limit the ability to add 3rd party mods 

Not investigated too much yet...

[Arathrandir]

Been playing for a while and impressed overall, with little to find fault in (though I'm awaiting the dreaded memory issue on the PS3 that will destroy the entire thing!).  Joined Stormcloaks, completed the Companions and "cured" myself of their curse, and tackled a number of dragons, some much harder than others.  I'm not a fan of Oblivion (for me, one of the worst RPGs) but Skyrim has so much more freedom of choice, better storylines, and well acted characters in a truly huge world.  Near 50 hours and I've been to no more than 4 towns, and most of the map is unexplored. 

[Falcodoc]

Boo! The Stormcloaks are racist bigots!

[Milgarion]

Racism and bigotry have been an underlying themes in Elder Scrolls games at least far back as Morrowind, when I started playing them.

IMO some of the storylines in Oblivion were superb, especially for the Thieves' Guild and Dark Brotherhood.

[Arathrandir]

Boo! The Stormcloaks are racist bigots!

Better than Imperial oppression! Bloody tyranny of the Empire trying to come and rule the Nords!

[Kairos]

OK, this is beyond unacceptable...
RUBBER BANDING in a solo CRPG?
(In a dungeon, to be precise, and at two different points, making it impossible to go on).

Who programmed this pile of crap, Bugs Bunny?

[Charvel]

not too sure of your system spec's Kai but I think there must be some kind of bottleneck problem or a lack of system oomph! probably a combination of GPU strength and memory paging.

Skyrim is a classic example of developers building a high polygon engine to specifically run on 4-5year old console technology with no after thought or consideration for the PC.



 

[Ingaras]

To: General Tullius
Concerning: Our secret operation in the Pale

General,

with regret I inform you that our force in the Pale has been decimated. Although we built our secret camp high on a mountain to avoid any spies from the ground, a frost- and blood-dragon did spot us today and attacked our camp (I somewhat have to admire their combined tactics). While finally Dragonborn arrived and dispatched with the Dragons, whose bones are now displayed in our camp for the glory of the Empire, we lost almost all of our troops in the initial assault. Fortunately I was able to survive by hiding in my tent.

Signed,
Legate Rikke

[Brenn]

Still holding out on buying this until some of the pc issues have been ironed out - has the patch made any difference?

[Eowren]

Looking at buying this soon. Have the patches helped? I hear there's another patch hitting the pc first this week.

Thoughts?

Cheers
Eo

[Falcodoc]

I love it, about 50 hours played and I'm nowhere near to running out of stuff to do.

[Ninetoes]

Can you re-bind the keypad keys yet? I heard the latest patch broke a lot of stuff?

[Falcodoc]

http://www.autohotkey.com/

?

[Ninetoes]

Does not function the way I want it to function.

Meh, with SWTOR on the horizon I think I'll give Skyrim a miss.

[Falcodoc]

http://www.geforce.com/Optimize/Guides/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-tweak-guide?sf2686171=1

a tweak guide for Skyrim, might be useful to you Kai.

[Brenn]

Meh, with SWTOR on the horizon I think I'll give Skyrim a miss.

I live in hope they'll sort out the problems... but still haven't bought it until they do!

[Kairos]

a tweak guide for Skyrim, might be useful to you Kai.

Thanks!

[Zlin]

I have Skyrim on console but dont get so much time to play it, would it be as good or better on a PC?

[Eowren]

Finally bought it and had a little play. Looks very nice and have experienced no problems. Well aside from the (deliberate) right mouse button activating left hand weapon/spell/thing and left mouse activating right hand.. logic   

[Falcodoc]

Finally bought it and had a little play. Looks very nice and have experienced no problems. Well aside from the (deliberate) right mouse button activating left hand weapon/spell/thing and left mouse activating right hand.. logic   

Fairly sure you can change that Eo

[Kairos]

I have Skyrim on console but dont get so much time to play it, would it be as good or better on a PC?

No. Much, much worse...

[Charvel]

The PC version has many many advantages over the console. As long as you have a decent PC and a little bit of knowledge of the modding community you can easily transform the game to look and play a million times better than the consoles. Play the PC version at 2048 or 1920 resolutions with a few tweaks and graphic mods and it looks stunning and very immersive.

The console version isnt free of bugs and problems either, plus your stuck waiting for patches because you can't fix them yourself. The PC version out of the box patched up now works, it was the initial release that had mouse problems and struggled on older PC hardware.

My advice would be to aquire Skyrim on PC, test it out first before spending more money on another copy, but if you want the definitive version of Skyrim you have to buy the PC version there is no debate!


 

[Falcodoc]

Or just get it on the platform you want to get it on, asking people's opinions about consoles and PCs will only leave you confused.

[Arathrandir]

Or just get it on the platform you want to get it on, asking people's opinions about consoles and PCs will only leave you confused.

Indeed, PS3 version works out of the box (1 patch) without the need to re-code the game for shoddy Bethesda (how they continue to get away with their unprofessionalism I do not know - well actually I do, they have an ridiculously apologetic fanbase who believe "bugs are the way of all games", an attitude that only makes it easier for them to release broken products)

[Falcodoc]

It is pretty ridiculous when someone has to fall back on "get the PC version, because modders will fix everything."
I haven't had a single bug on Skyrim on 360, and I'll have had it for a month on Monday.

[Charvel]

Like Morrowind and Oblivion before it, Skyrim is no different in the way the community were there to fix and rescue the game. It is a complete shambles for a company to release unfinished/tested software but deadlines, funding and lazyness rule the day. I hear it from games dev's everyday at work, most of the time its a case of 'get the product out then worry about fixing it funds have ran out'.

People's opinions should be heard, infact it should be encouraged and if it leads to a debate then all the better. It's fact that console versions are limited in what they can do, If you have a PC capable of running Skyrim at twice the resolution and detail with none of the tacky auto-aim assists inbedded into the code you will have a much richer and immersive experience.