- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Controversial gaming opinion: video games are good.
What are controversial gaming opinions you have?
LunaMoth
Wings of Kynareth is my comfort song...
- Pronouns
- He/They
Yeah, magic is at peak fun in oblivion, I always play a mage, the most natural stoping point the main quest offers is
when you are asked to look for a daedric aritfact
Mandemon
Gentlemen, I love brawl.
- Location
- Cookie Jar
Speaking of Oblivion, it kinda feels that people base their criticism of later Bethesda games as if they are Oblivioin clones? I have seen people complain that player can become leader of factions far too easily in Skyrim, Fallout 3/4 and Starfield, and... I am honestly kinda confused regarding that? In Fallout 3/4 you don't become "leader" outside of Minutemen (who have single surviving leader and who openly admits he is not up to the task and asks you) are Institute (which is pretty much openly stated to be nothing more than ceremonial role because everyone else dislikes you). Starfield you don't become leader of anything. Skyrim you got College and Companions, both which are very loose of whole "leadership" topic.
But then you go listen to various "critics" or "criticism" and you might come out thinking you can become leader of Freestar Rangers, Imperial Legion and Brotherhood of Steel, which is just not true?
But then you go listen to various "critics" or "criticism" and you might come out thinking you can become leader of Freestar Rangers, Imperial Legion and Brotherhood of Steel, which is just not true?
Reveen
Castro-Trudeauist
If Skyrim was an Oblivion clone the guild questlines would have content. I don't really care if those guilds make you the leader at the end because that can just be taken as "congrats you did literally every job the fighters guild had. You are now the best fighter, now fuck off so other people can take jobs for once".
Especially since for the thieves guild and dark brotherhood the vibe is in fact that "leader" means the ultimate thief and assassin. Not necessarily the guy who makes the decisions because they aren't centralized organizations.
Especially since for the thieves guild and dark brotherhood the vibe is in fact that "leader" means the ultimate thief and assassin. Not necessarily the guy who makes the decisions because they aren't centralized organizations.
Last edited:
- Location
- Ireland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Skyrim you get all four major guilds just like in Oblivion, it's just less formalised for most of them.
I've never really seen people complain about how you can go around and be leader of everything in any Fallout game - at most it's people complaining how quickly Preston makes you a General.
- Location
- Omniverse #1345
Though that at least makes sense anyway - Preston looks at the hot potato and throws it at you before you have a chance to really realize what he's just done.
- Location
- Georgia, US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The reason that being leader of four different factions (or high ranking member if you want to split hairs) is off-putting to people is because of how much it emphasizes Skyrim's indifference with particularly meaningful roleplaying mechanics. Just think about it, in what world would a single person be the Arch-Mage of the College of Magic and High Ranking Thief and Legate of the Imperial Legion (or whatever rank you get it- I don't remember)/the Stormcloak equivalent and Chief Murderator of the Dark Brotherhood. Etc.
It's absurd, these organizations should have mutually exclusive goals and even the possibility of trying to do that should result in one or all of them trying to murder you. Or at the very least it should require some truly outrageous hijinks. It makes no sense if you treat Skyrim as a living breathing world where choices matter and worldbuilding is significant. In other words, it makes no sense if Skyrim were an RPG.
Which is the heart of the issue. Bethesda cares a lot about making a really good open world game. They clearly put a very high priority about always giving players something to do and somewhere to go and gameplay systems that make doing that fun. That's why Skyrim exploded the way it did and why I'm in the middle of a playthrough right now. When it comes to designing a sandbox, they were the best of the pack. But that's all they cared about. Which is enormously frustrating if you want Skyrim to be a well written game that cares about narrative or setting causality.
Looking at those complaints and going "actually you're only the explicit leader of two factions at once" misses the point so hard it's not even funny. The meme may not be 100% accurate but it points to a real flaw that reflects deeper issues with how Bethesda designed Skyrim, Fallout 3, and pretty much all of their later games.
Edit: To preempt any clever comments, you could probably mix some of the factions. The clandestine ones like Brotherhood and Thieves Guild would have no problem infiltrating other factions, however let's be real- Bethesda was not thinking about these sorts of justification when making Skyrim. That's how you can have four+ high ranking positions and not a single person comments on it. Not even a "hey great job infiltrating the Imperial legion, we can use that".
Clearly Todd and co were not thinking about lore justifications when they designed the game.
Clearly Todd and co were not thinking about lore justifications when they designed the game.
It's absurd, these organizations should have mutually exclusive goals and even the possibility of trying to do that should result in one or all of them trying to murder you. Or at the very least it should require some truly outrageous hijinks. It makes no sense if you treat Skyrim as a living breathing world where choices matter and worldbuilding is significant. In other words, it makes no sense if Skyrim were an RPG.
Which is the heart of the issue. Bethesda cares a lot about making a really good open world game. They clearly put a very high priority about always giving players something to do and somewhere to go and gameplay systems that make doing that fun. That's why Skyrim exploded the way it did and why I'm in the middle of a playthrough right now. When it comes to designing a sandbox, they were the best of the pack. But that's all they cared about. Which is enormously frustrating if you want Skyrim to be a well written game that cares about narrative or setting causality.
Looking at those complaints and going "actually you're only the explicit leader of two factions at once" misses the point so hard it's not even funny. The meme may not be 100% accurate but it points to a real flaw that reflects deeper issues with how Bethesda designed Skyrim, Fallout 3, and pretty much all of their later games.
Last edited:
Mandemon
Gentlemen, I love brawl.
- Location
- Cookie Jar
I mean, two of those ranks are hidden ranks. Nobody but members of organization know you are leader of Thieves Guild or Dark Brotherhood. So it makes sense nobody would complain about you being member, since members would just see you as infiltrating
Meanwhile, neither Legion or Stormcloaks would really care if you are leader of College, because in their eyes what is the downside? As far as they can see, they just got a powerful ally.
These organizations don't even have conflicting goals. What does College care for Companions? What could conflict with them? There are only two factions with clear conflicting goals, and that is Stormcloaks and Imperials... who force you to make a choice. To me, it sounds like people wants to enforce artificial conflict into the game. College and Companions are mostly focused on their small area, they don't have cause or reason to fight. Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood don't exactly advertise themselves, you don't march up to Tullius and go "Hello, I am leader of Dark Brotherhood!"
Meanwhile, neither Legion or Stormcloaks would really care if you are leader of College, because in their eyes what is the downside? As far as they can see, they just got a powerful ally.
These organizations don't even have conflicting goals. What does College care for Companions? What could conflict with them? There are only two factions with clear conflicting goals, and that is Stormcloaks and Imperials... who force you to make a choice. To me, it sounds like people wants to enforce artificial conflict into the game. College and Companions are mostly focused on their small area, they don't have cause or reason to fight. Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood don't exactly advertise themselves, you don't march up to Tullius and go "Hello, I am leader of Dark Brotherhood!"
- Location
- Ireland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
As a point of order, you could be the guildmaster/head of almost every joinable faction in Morrowind and Oblivion too - the original complaint was pointing out that you can be the Master of the Fighter's Guild, Arch-Mage of the Mage's Guild, Listener of the Dark Brotherhood, and Gray Fox (de facto head) of the Thieves Guild, on top of being Grand Champion of the Arena.
Fallout 3 essentially has no factions in the way that Oblivion and Skyrim do, and the ones you do join you're explicitly not the head of. Same deal with Fallout 4 - all the factions you can join are effectively part of the main quest and you can't be head of them either unless you're talking about the Minutemen.
Asking for there to be a little conflict between the Fighter's Guild and Mage's Guild of Skyrim where the vast majority of Nords think magic is tricksey and untrustworthy and place far more value in strength of arms and body is pretty reasonable, I feel? Maybe the Companions don't trust someone who goes around shooting magic out of their fingers all the time, or maybe the Mage's Guild are suspicious that the leader of a group of warriors who made their name fighting suddenly wants to learn magic from them.
And like, there's a lot of dialogue for your standing and position that just plays incidentally - essentially every guard in Skyrim knows that you're the Listener and is also apparently a worshiper of Sithis, as an example. Since the game makes those acknowledgements, it feels strange to have no further acknowledgement when your identity is common enough knowledge in most cases.
Also, maybe the characters in the game should have opinions on whether you're a Stormcloak or an Imperial? That's a fairly decent point of conflict.
Last edited:
LordInsane
Loyalist to the Alvarian Merchant's Guild
- Location
- Bohuslän, Occupied Norway
Yes, Morrowind did have nods to factions being incompatible beyond the brute-force of the Great Houses being mutually exclusive (such as the Fighters Guild having a few trip-mines that block the Thieves Guild), and one of the factions you could join explicitly has you have no actual authority, just respect, despite mechanically still rising in rank, but it was still definitely where the 'head of more factions than makes sense' thing started for Bethesda
- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
These games are fundamentally sandboxes intended to facilitate player agency, so if you don't think it makes sense to be the head of multiple groups, just pick one and stick with it.
- Location
- Georgia, US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I like how I foresaw this exact argument and edified it in beforehand, sometimes I'm so good I even scare myself
Unicorn Overlord my beloved, god I hope they make another one.
- Location
- Georgia, US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Right but that's the complaint. These games are sandboxes first and meaningful RPGs a distant, distant, second. You could do this (and I usually do) but that doesn't really address the issue people have with it.
It perfectly encapsulates the indifference Bethesda has towards meaningful choice in their games. Which isn't bad if you just want a sandbox game but it's very bad if you want more then that. I mostly belong to the former group but I feel for those who are the latter.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
hol' up bud
Magic is ridic powerful in Skyrim too, I'd take it over any of the (worse) alternatives any day of the week.
Miath
Perpetual Depressant
- Location
- 1632 Revello Drive, Sunnydale California
- Pronouns
- She/Her
But daaaaaaaaaaaad, the mean bandit with the pig iron ax beats me to death and my shitty flames spell doesn't do enough DMG.
"Well my child, you did remember to cast with your shitty flames spell with both hands to staggerlock the mean bandit into Oblivion, right?"
Realtalk Foamy's constant shilling for "vanilla magic is good actually" did finally get me to do a pure vanilla mage run a few years ago, and yeah it's actually pretty great once it gets off the ground? Once you start getting your perks and equipment in play, you've got low-cost spells that stagger basically anything repeatedly and that's just destruction, you've also got the option to just generally go "I want to do what the other builds do anyways". Stack Invisibility, Muffle and Bound Bow, congrats you're a stealth archer with no actual bow. Throw down some Mage Armor and summon some atronachs, you've got actual durability and something to tank for you. Pump up those Illusion Magic levels, cool now the bandits are doing the killing for you.
It's no Oblivion Custom Spells where you do nonsense like 2 second duration spells with absurd buffs to break the game in bursts, but it's still more than viable.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Flames, cast from both hands, has 16 DPS direct damage, plus another 4.8 DPS delayed by 1s from the DoT as long as you can maintain the blast on target.
A basic L1 bandit has 35 health. You can kill them in two seconds: Two seconds of direct fire is 32 damage, and setting them on fire will get you the rest.
A default iron sword does 7 DPS per hand (though it escalates quickly with the perk). Flames is better by default, though, and also has range... and you can get Firebolt, which leaves every other melee or ranged option other than Conjure Bow behind for quite a while, immediately on arrival in Whiterun; simply cashing in the loot from Helgen should allow you to afford it, or you could chop wood for a bit.
And that's without considering the dualcast DPS boost or the perk that allows you to stunlock people if you dualcast. Personally I don't find either necessary: just smacking people in the face with Fireball from each hand does the job on 90% of enemies, and for the rest, well, that's why Chain Lighting exists.
Heck, the one guy who is 100% immune to magic I simply fistfought to death by virtue of being able to outheal his damage.
EDIT:
there's a reason one of the tags for this thread has for years been 'destruction is a perfectly valid school of magic'
Last edited:
Hykal94
Orange Estus Kitteh
- Location
- Firelink Shrine
Legate Rikke: General, the new Legion recruit is the head of the local magic college. Do you think we can ask them to teach some of our recruits magic? Maybe pay them to have their mages to be healers or combatants for our soldiers?
Legate Rikke: Also, the new recruit is apparently the Harbinger of the Companions. Perhaps we can use their influence and reputation to recruit more locals to the Legion.
Legate Rikke: Lastly, we heard that the new recruit also has connections to the Thieves Guild. Maybe we can use their less than honorable stealth skills for spying on the Stormcloaks.
Tullius: bugsbunnyno.jpg
Legate Rikke: Also, the new recruit is apparently the Harbinger of the Companions. Perhaps we can use their influence and reputation to recruit more locals to the Legion.
Legate Rikke: Lastly, we heard that the new recruit also has connections to the Thieves Guild. Maybe we can use their less than honorable stealth skills for spying on the Stormcloaks.
Tullius: bugsbunnyno.jpg
- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
If they want to role play they could perhaps play the role rather than having the game lock them out mechanically
- Pronouns
- He/Him