There are still some bugs, mostly in making sure the npcs to play their animation once they reach their waypoints and nailing down some time randomness. But at this point the ai's reached a state where I can start thinking about adding features people think need to be in an initial release. Some ideas I had:
Integration of Apep's dynamic commoners (Apep granting permission required): this allows commoners to automatically dress, get voicesets, names etc. I wouldn't expect permission problems from Apep. I view this as the "neat"-est thing that can be added.
Duplicate waypoint user detection: [edit: added this 7 April, and it worked on the first try! It also fixed the remaining animation bugs, npcs that elected the same wp would result in one getting bumped, and it would be too far from it's wp, so the animation would not play. Added feature and bugfix all in one!]
ensures an npc doesn't try to occupy the same waypoint that another one already is. Not so important for "cheering crowd", but the sitting and bed activities would benefit. Perhaps the most useful add, even if the benefit isn't highly visible except for specific actions.
Kemo sitting/bed support: for those halfling and dwarf commoners. Benefits the sitting/bed activities. I havnt looked at all at Kemo's system, this may turn out to not be doable. I think it should be doable, maybe not in a 1.0 release.
More detection of "appropriateness": npcs already equip their hands appropriately for activities. They could also dress appropriately, for instance making woodcutters wear leather armor.
Also in "appropriate"-ness: there are animations for female and male dance and seperate activity chances for each, but commoners don't currently only adopt the appropriate one (female npcs can currently choose the male dance animation and vice versa). Would people like commoners forced to adopt the "appropriate" animation for their gender? Would they want males being forced into the male dance animation even if the builder assigned 0% to male dance animation, or would re-selection of activity be preferable (that would mean a 50% chance of female dance would result in no males and 50% of females dancing) Or just leave it as is with no gender checks (females can play male dance animation and vice versa).
Holiday detection: allow a builder to use an area heartbeat to have a "holiday" setting, giving builders the ability to use a different set of ipoints for holiday action control (maybe the commoners all dance in the town square) This would be mostly on a builder to define when they wanted one, but a local int such as nIsHolidayToday could be set on an area to support that, and an alternate set of "holiday ipoints" could be included, with a small change to default scripting to look at that for that area variable and change the control ipoints appropriately.
Other, better ideas go below, or do you want to see a beta release first to play around with to see what you want?
Friday, April 6, 2012
Sunday, April 1, 2012
More on the commoner ai project
My wintertime funk has pretty much lifted, and so I'm spending much more time in the toolset. While I'm not working on Crimmor per se, I am working on functionality that I view as critical for it, my commoner ai system. It's at the stage of fixing bugs. Here's a link to my original blog post http://kamalpoe.blogspot.com/2011/07/commoner-ai-project.html
How to build with it:
There are premade ipoint placeables for each time period of the day, there are 6 periods, that can be set via script for whatever hours you want. These ipoints are placed in the area, and contain the local variables for the actions, the percentage chance an npc will adopt a given action. The builder sets the chance.
There are premade waypoints for each action. To be placed where the builder wants an action to take place. If you place multiple of the same type, the npc will randomly choose which one to go to.
A heartbeat script: any npc using this system needs to run this heartbeat, but does not need any other customization. No local variables need to be assigned (scripts auto set local variables), no creature tags required.
That's it.
How it works:
The npc heartbeat sets it's initial activity by determining the time, and checking against the ipoint for that time period, selecting an activity based on the percent chance as stored on the ipoint. It also determines a slight offset to the time period that shifts the time period for that npc, so not all npcs will change activity at the same time. The npc then selects a random waypoint tagged for the chosen activity.
The npc moves to the waypoint, and carries out the activity it chose until the heartbeat determines a new time period has been entered. It then selects a new activity based on the ipoint for the new time period and the process starts over.
Activities have predefined scripts to determine them, so a builder does not have to. These are pulled from Uncle FB and Lugaid of the Red Stripes systems. There are approximately 70 activities defined (and more can be added by a builder), covering things like farming, sweeping, working a forge, sitting and drinking, playing the lute, etc.
Scripts automatically ensure the npc is appropriately equipped (and eventually appropriately dressed). An npc that goes from walking around to playing the lute automatically has one generated and equipped, the npc does not need to be pre-equipped. If the npc then decided to be a woodsman, the lute is unequipped and destroyed, and a handaxe is equipped.
Nifty notes:
If you use Apep's dynamic commoner (http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2PrefabPlaceables.Detail&id=162), like I am, you can have your commoners also automatically randomize their appearance, soundset, name, hair etc. on spawn. Use his included npcs, set the variables you want for his system on the blueprints, and change the blueprints to use my heartbeat. Viola, a town full of customized commoners carrying out randomized actions. Apep's system works, so it's just a matter of getting my ai working. Ideally, town ambiance has never been so easy.
I've also done some preliminary work on random pickpocket results (including failure and being caught) for generic npcs, similar to how Baldur's Gate had it, as a separate script for the OnInventoryDisturbed. That's a separate but related project. Status for that is built but not working. It's on my "would be nice to have" list. When I get that working at some point in the future, I will post a blog on that.
How to build with it:
There are premade ipoint placeables for each time period of the day, there are 6 periods, that can be set via script for whatever hours you want. These ipoints are placed in the area, and contain the local variables for the actions, the percentage chance an npc will adopt a given action. The builder sets the chance.
There are premade waypoints for each action. To be placed where the builder wants an action to take place. If you place multiple of the same type, the npc will randomly choose which one to go to.
A heartbeat script: any npc using this system needs to run this heartbeat, but does not need any other customization. No local variables need to be assigned (scripts auto set local variables), no creature tags required.
That's it.
How it works:
The npc heartbeat sets it's initial activity by determining the time, and checking against the ipoint for that time period, selecting an activity based on the percent chance as stored on the ipoint. It also determines a slight offset to the time period that shifts the time period for that npc, so not all npcs will change activity at the same time. The npc then selects a random waypoint tagged for the chosen activity.
The npc moves to the waypoint, and carries out the activity it chose until the heartbeat determines a new time period has been entered. It then selects a new activity based on the ipoint for the new time period and the process starts over.
Activities have predefined scripts to determine them, so a builder does not have to. These are pulled from Uncle FB and Lugaid of the Red Stripes systems. There are approximately 70 activities defined (and more can be added by a builder), covering things like farming, sweeping, working a forge, sitting and drinking, playing the lute, etc.
Scripts automatically ensure the npc is appropriately equipped (and eventually appropriately dressed). An npc that goes from walking around to playing the lute automatically has one generated and equipped, the npc does not need to be pre-equipped. If the npc then decided to be a woodsman, the lute is unequipped and destroyed, and a handaxe is equipped.
Nifty notes:
If you use Apep's dynamic commoner (http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2PrefabPlaceables.Detail&id=162), like I am, you can have your commoners also automatically randomize their appearance, soundset, name, hair etc. on spawn. Use his included npcs, set the variables you want for his system on the blueprints, and change the blueprints to use my heartbeat. Viola, a town full of customized commoners carrying out randomized actions. Apep's system works, so it's just a matter of getting my ai working. Ideally, town ambiance has never been so easy.
I've also done some preliminary work on random pickpocket results (including failure and being caught) for generic npcs, similar to how Baldur's Gate had it, as a separate script for the OnInventoryDisturbed. That's a separate but related project. Status for that is built but not working. It's on my "would be nice to have" list. When I get that working at some point in the future, I will post a blog on that.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Icewind Dale and The Wizard's Apprentice 2
Not feeling particularly inspired on the building front recently, I turned my time over to playing the two big recent releases, the Icewind Dale remake and The Wizard's Apprentice chapter 2. They are both excellent and worthy of play, but for different reasons.
Icewind Dale remake is exactly that, a remake of the original game using the nwn2 engine and ruleset. It's not aiming for innovation, it's aiming for faithful recreation. And it succeeds. Everything you remember from the first game is in there (except the use of one substitute creature model). Yes, the frozen aquarium is in there, it's a custom metatile in all it's 3d glory. There is a lot of new custom content in terms of tiles and placeables. And the area design captures the feel of the original areas. The voiceovers, the book style cutscenes, all there. So is the difficulty of the original. Slowdive fan has already released a post 1.0 update to address bugs found post release. I played the 1.0 version and found it generally bug free.
The Wizards Apprentice 2 continues the story from the first. TWA is a wizard adventure, so I eagerly played it to look at how others are approaching single class focused adventures. TWA1 was pretty humor oriented. TWA2 changes that focus to a more traditional adventure, though there's some significant early bits of humor in TWA1's style. TWA2 benefits from the transition, at least for me. The area design is top notch, there are well done cutscenes, and the scripting work is similarly excellent, and plentiful (for example as the player can knock icicles from the ceiling at one point and they actually fall, not just a fade to black and apply the effect of the fallen icicles). Similarly there is regular use of wizard spells to do things like optionally casting stone to flesh on a petrified dwarf to gain information. There's a lot for the wizard that doesn't launch fireballs all day, using spells in the environment or to aid quests.
Icewind Dale remake is exactly that, a remake of the original game using the nwn2 engine and ruleset. It's not aiming for innovation, it's aiming for faithful recreation. And it succeeds. Everything you remember from the first game is in there (except the use of one substitute creature model). Yes, the frozen aquarium is in there, it's a custom metatile in all it's 3d glory. There is a lot of new custom content in terms of tiles and placeables. And the area design captures the feel of the original areas. The voiceovers, the book style cutscenes, all there. So is the difficulty of the original. Slowdive fan has already released a post 1.0 update to address bugs found post release. I played the 1.0 version and found it generally bug free.
The Wizards Apprentice 2 continues the story from the first. TWA is a wizard adventure, so I eagerly played it to look at how others are approaching single class focused adventures. TWA1 was pretty humor oriented. TWA2 changes that focus to a more traditional adventure, though there's some significant early bits of humor in TWA1's style. TWA2 benefits from the transition, at least for me. The area design is top notch, there are well done cutscenes, and the scripting work is similarly excellent, and plentiful (for example as the player can knock icicles from the ceiling at one point and they actually fall, not just a fade to black and apply the effect of the fallen icicles). Similarly there is regular use of wizard spells to do things like optionally casting stone to flesh on a petrified dwarf to gain information. There's a lot for the wizard that doesn't launch fireballs all day, using spells in the environment or to aid quests.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Neverwinter Nexus
The Vault recently underwent a long quiet period with no content being posted. This led to concern in the community about the future of the Vault. To avoid repeating the whole story, you can read more in this Bioware Social thread.
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/172/index/9196246
The point I'd make here is the poster DarkOne is the owner of the Nexus group of websites, and has been willing to work with the community, both in that thread and via the NWN irc channel. Funnily enough, it's almost one year exactly since the gmod.com debacle, where that site simply took people's content without asking permission.
So DarkOne and the Nexus are providing the community with a Neverwinter Nexus site.
http://www.neverwinter.nexusmods.com/index.php
If you play the Elder Scrolls games, or the Fallout series, you are probably aware of the Nexus. The Nexus has been probably the primary community place for mods for those games.
You can see my content on the Nexus. I put it there. The Nexus has some good things, like no 25 meg file limit. You can post any size files you want without having to wait for approval. I'm hoping the Neverwinter Nexus draws in new players, people who like the other Nexus games and are made aware of all the content NWN has when they see a NWN Nexus. I'm also hoping we see some cross pollination of modders, with people that mod those other games getting interested in modding, or porting their existing mods, to the NWN series. My content will still go on the Vault as well, I will just be posting it in both places.
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/172/index/9196246
The point I'd make here is the poster DarkOne is the owner of the Nexus group of websites, and has been willing to work with the community, both in that thread and via the NWN irc channel. Funnily enough, it's almost one year exactly since the gmod.com debacle, where that site simply took people's content without asking permission.
So DarkOne and the Nexus are providing the community with a Neverwinter Nexus site.
http://www.neverwinter.nexusmods.com/index.php
If you play the Elder Scrolls games, or the Fallout series, you are probably aware of the Nexus. The Nexus has been probably the primary community place for mods for those games.
You can see my content on the Nexus. I put it there. The Nexus has some good things, like no 25 meg file limit. You can post any size files you want without having to wait for approval. I'm hoping the Neverwinter Nexus draws in new players, people who like the other Nexus games and are made aware of all the content NWN has when they see a NWN Nexus. I'm also hoping we see some cross pollination of modders, with people that mod those other games getting interested in modding, or porting their existing mods, to the NWN series. My content will still go on the Vault as well, I will just be posting it in both places.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Progress Update
I haven't posted much in a few months on what progress has been happening with Crimmor.
Wyrin's foraging placeables have been added. I didn't say the full wyrin system because I rewrote his script into a general forage script that checks skills party-wide to allow party cooperation in harvesting. (http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2Scripts.Detail&id=395). Crimmor is getting a modified version of my posted version of the generic forage script. The posted script preserves Wyrin's forage system, but for Crimmor I wanted to alter things.
Wyrin's stuff requires the pc have some survival skills to have a realistic chance, since survival is a skill always checked in his system and the survival DC goes up to about 20 or so. Crimmor is an urban environment, so finding the plant among all the things in the forest (survival) isn't needed. I removed survival checking, as I figured someone skilled in alchemy (the other skill wyrin checks) would be able to recognize the alchemical plants they can work with, even if they didn't have general plant knowledge from the survival skill. So survival checks are out except for the two plants, reeds and the retch plant, where the description of the forage process in the placeable description implies it's pretty much entirely survival skill. Those two still use survival. The craft alchemy check is made much harder (mostly over DC 20) now though to compensate, and make the foraging a reward for those that pursue the craft alchemy skill. Additionally, you must also have base skill points in survival or craft alchemy, it didn't make sense that the untrained person could harvest extracts, or even know that they could.
Several small fetch quests were added to fill out the world and give a purpose to some areas that were entirely for flavor previously. Hopefully people will find these better rationalized than NPC "I need some firewood", Player thinking to themselves: "There's an axe and a woodpile right next to you, you're able bodied and there are no monsters around." I don't like it when there's no rationale for why the npc isn't taking care of the task themselves. In Crimmor these often function as exploration quests, as the npc doesn't generally know where what they are looking for can be found. For example one npc is looking to find a particular kind of wood to have a lute made, as he's a hobbyist lute player in his spare time. He hasn't found anywhere that sells that kind of wood yet.
The scripting of some of the generic commoner things has started, to cover things like people in taverns sitting and drinking, bards playing. I found some useful scripts out there I can use.
A prefab area had all it's trees replaced. Crimmor doesn't have a perpetual windstorm like the Sword Coast, Chult, and Rashemen apparently do. A community member gave me access to redone tree spt files, that eliminates the trunk/branch swaying (the leaves still sway).
A number of placeholder conversations have been filled in. Tip for other builders, putting {placeholder} into a conversation allows you to search for "placeholder" in the toolset and find all these placeholders, but since it's inside the {}, it won't show up in ingame testing. This allows you to write out your conversations quickly if you're stuck on finding the right conversation lines for your characters, so you can add in scripts etc and test things even if you're having a bit of writers block.
Wyrin's foraging placeables have been added. I didn't say the full wyrin system because I rewrote his script into a general forage script that checks skills party-wide to allow party cooperation in harvesting. (http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=NWN2Scripts.Detail&id=395). Crimmor is getting a modified version of my posted version of the generic forage script. The posted script preserves Wyrin's forage system, but for Crimmor I wanted to alter things.
Wyrin's stuff requires the pc have some survival skills to have a realistic chance, since survival is a skill always checked in his system and the survival DC goes up to about 20 or so. Crimmor is an urban environment, so finding the plant among all the things in the forest (survival) isn't needed. I removed survival checking, as I figured someone skilled in alchemy (the other skill wyrin checks) would be able to recognize the alchemical plants they can work with, even if they didn't have general plant knowledge from the survival skill. So survival checks are out except for the two plants, reeds and the retch plant, where the description of the forage process in the placeable description implies it's pretty much entirely survival skill. Those two still use survival. The craft alchemy check is made much harder (mostly over DC 20) now though to compensate, and make the foraging a reward for those that pursue the craft alchemy skill. Additionally, you must also have base skill points in survival or craft alchemy, it didn't make sense that the untrained person could harvest extracts, or even know that they could.
Several small fetch quests were added to fill out the world and give a purpose to some areas that were entirely for flavor previously. Hopefully people will find these better rationalized than NPC "I need some firewood", Player thinking to themselves: "There's an axe and a woodpile right next to you, you're able bodied and there are no monsters around." I don't like it when there's no rationale for why the npc isn't taking care of the task themselves. In Crimmor these often function as exploration quests, as the npc doesn't generally know where what they are looking for can be found. For example one npc is looking to find a particular kind of wood to have a lute made, as he's a hobbyist lute player in his spare time. He hasn't found anywhere that sells that kind of wood yet.
The scripting of some of the generic commoner things has started, to cover things like people in taverns sitting and drinking, bards playing. I found some useful scripts out there I can use.
A prefab area had all it's trees replaced. Crimmor doesn't have a perpetual windstorm like the Sword Coast, Chult, and Rashemen apparently do. A community member gave me access to redone tree spt files, that eliminates the trunk/branch swaying (the leaves still sway).
A number of placeholder conversations have been filled in. Tip for other builders, putting {placeholder} into a conversation allows you to search for "placeholder" in the toolset and find all these placeholders, but since it's inside the {}, it won't show up in ingame testing. This allows you to write out your conversations quickly if you're stuck on finding the right conversation lines for your characters, so you can add in scripts etc and test things even if you're having a bit of writers block.
Monday, January 9, 2012
Density and the Open World
No, this post isn't just about Skyrim. :-) Path of Evil was an open world on the scale of Faerun, and Crimmor is an open world on the scale of the city.
Open world games have something to keep in mind that more linear games do not, the density of points of interest in the world. Think of the overland maps in SoZ, and imagine if there were only 3-4 places you could go on them. That would create two problems. First, it would be boring, and second, you'd spend lots of time just walking from between place. Now imagine the opposite, several hundred of places you could go jammed into the overland maps. That creates two problems as well. First, there's a logic problem, "You mean there's a dungeon/cave/ruin every 2 meters between here and the next place I need to go?", and second, the player may very well explore all those places on their way to the destination, with the "saving the world waits for me!" problem.
There's a happy median to be found somewhere in there. Open world games need to provide plenty of points of interest on the main land map, but not pack them together so tightly that they run into the problems from that.
In Path of Evil, the points of interest outside the cities weren't always as interesting as they could have been. Most of the quests centered around cities, or areas you could travel to from a city without needing to move to the world map. There were a few quests you could wander into on the world map, but for the most part the world map locations were just random dungeons of no particular interest to the player other than for what loot could be gotten. I think ultimately the campaign suffered some for that. I'm not sure what readers might think of the density of locations on the campaign world map, but I think the density of interesting locations was too low.
Naturally, this perceived weakness is something I'm trying to improve in Crimmor. It's making a lot of work in order to fill out the gameworld with enough to do. Currently things are going relatively slow. I've been playing some other games (sacrilege!) and not been super motivated (this is normal in the middle of winter for me). I havnt posted to the Bioware Social thread for Crimmor because there hasn't been anything worth showing, just some minor sidequests in existing areas, and some frustrating work on my commoner ai project that seemed to go nowhere. I'm considering redoing much of the work on that and getting a cleaner start based on what I know now.
Open world games have something to keep in mind that more linear games do not, the density of points of interest in the world. Think of the overland maps in SoZ, and imagine if there were only 3-4 places you could go on them. That would create two problems. First, it would be boring, and second, you'd spend lots of time just walking from between place. Now imagine the opposite, several hundred of places you could go jammed into the overland maps. That creates two problems as well. First, there's a logic problem, "You mean there's a dungeon/cave/ruin every 2 meters between here and the next place I need to go?", and second, the player may very well explore all those places on their way to the destination, with the "saving the world waits for me!" problem.
There's a happy median to be found somewhere in there. Open world games need to provide plenty of points of interest on the main land map, but not pack them together so tightly that they run into the problems from that.
In Path of Evil, the points of interest outside the cities weren't always as interesting as they could have been. Most of the quests centered around cities, or areas you could travel to from a city without needing to move to the world map. There were a few quests you could wander into on the world map, but for the most part the world map locations were just random dungeons of no particular interest to the player other than for what loot could be gotten. I think ultimately the campaign suffered some for that. I'm not sure what readers might think of the density of locations on the campaign world map, but I think the density of interesting locations was too low.
Naturally, this perceived weakness is something I'm trying to improve in Crimmor. It's making a lot of work in order to fill out the gameworld with enough to do. Currently things are going relatively slow. I've been playing some other games (sacrilege!) and not been super motivated (this is normal in the middle of winter for me). I havnt posted to the Bioware Social thread for Crimmor because there hasn't been anything worth showing, just some minor sidequests in existing areas, and some frustrating work on my commoner ai project that seemed to go nowhere. I'm considering redoing much of the work on that and getting a cleaner start based on what I know now.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Everyone else is talking about Skyrim, so I will too.
I've been taking some time away from the toolset to play Skyrim. Let me get this out of the way; it's great and the money was well spent. They fixed essentially everything that was wrong with Oblivion. I've played for some 40 hours and totally ignored the main plot in favor of pursuing the backstory I came up with for my character. Also, I'd buy Morrowind again if they remade Morrowind with this engine.
Now, on to the nitpicking. (If you just want to read something very cool, skip down to the last two paragraphs.)
Logic:
Being told that there's a big conflict between some rebels and the Empire I took a logical (for an adventurer) tack and head for the border. That's where the conflict should be sharp right? Nope. I followed a path and found a border to the empire, and there was a gate marking the end of the gameworld. The gate was unmarked on the main map, meaning it was unimportant. It was also unmanned, I thought there was conflict? Right next to the unimportant, unmanned gate to the empire, and five feet from the road, valuable ore (gold iirc). Was that ore just ignored when they built the gate?
Later I found a map showing where the forces were, and found a number of camps from both sides. The empire's invading force was not near the border with the empire, instead they are all as far away from the border as they can be. The rebels? Close to the border. Shouldn't that be reversed?
I found two dungeons where I could turn off a few of the torches. Presumably this would improve my sneaking. Unfortunately, these were the only dungeons I could do so in the 40-50 I've been in. Either let me turn them off, or don't.
Lighting:
500 feet underground and it's light as day. Everything natural apparently glows in the world of Skyrim, water, fog etc. The natural world underground is actually brighter than the dungeons. Yes, I know, gameplay reasons... If you look up, many of those "light beams from the sky" are coming from hard rock. Not all of them though, some come from actual holes in the ceiling, so I know the maps can have holes in the ceiling.
I've entered a number of places where no living creature has been for centuries, and there are torches and candles everywhere lighting the place up? Apparently torches and candles last for hundreds of years in Skyrim, or maybe zombies like them? Also, dust in the air, hundreds of years and it didn't settle.
The sunlight in the various grottoes on the world map does not match the high mountains surrounding them, instead the areas are lit as if there were no mountains, or much lower ones. Daylight reaching the ground in some of these should be an hour long, at best. Some grottoes do not have a day/night cycle, despite even large openings to the surface.
Gameplay:
The "cleared" notification for dungeons is a great idea. The game tracks it as a stat. There's a Steam achievement for clearing enough places. So why aren't some places clearable? I'm positive I've emptied out a number of places (Skrim's levels are almost entirely linear), yet not received "cleared" or a notification that a place isn't clearable for some reason. It would also be nice if I got an information message of cleared instead of having to look at my map, though maybe I've just missed that.
Dragons are awesome, except when they stink. The tutorial dragon wrecks an entire town. So when I found my first dragon I thought, "This is going to be epic!" Nope. Three hits and it was dead. It didn't even get a chance to use it's breath on me. Perhaps the game should take note of it being the first time you fight a dragon, and make sure it's difficult.
The random "superboss" mob member. In one area I fought a boss, a master level wizard opponent using ice magic, and learned one of the dragon shouts for my trouble. The level of difficulty was such that I could take 5-6 hits before dying. 15 minutes later I was in another area fighting mobs, and one generic mob member, who also happened to be an ice wizard like the boss I'd just recently fought, kills me in two hits. Repeatedly.
This is a Steam one, and maybe the Xbox/PS3 as well since it's an achievement thing. The "Master Criminal" achievement is when you've got a high bounty everywhere. That's not a "Master Criminal", that's a bad criminal, the good crooks get away with it. Wanted Outlaw maybe, Scourge of Skyrim perhaps?
Armor/Weapons:
Dwemer armor is quite valuable, so naturally dwemer scrap (used to make the armor) is fairly valuable too, right? Nope. It's seems to be least valuable type of "ore" for smithing, and it's value to weight ratio is worse that virtually any useful item, even the lowly iron dagger.
Light armor versus heavy armor. The light armors elven, glass, and dragonscale all have a hard plate armor look. This visually groups them with the "heavy" armors. It also would mean in practice that the usage would be more akin to "heavy armor" usage, the hard plates deflecting blows. Except light and heavy armor are different skill trees. I've purposely avoided "upgrading" to these armors just from the look. I'm not playing a melee fighter, I don't want to look like one.
Falmer are blind, so their helmets have no eyeholes. When the player wears a falmer helmet, they can apparently still see despite wearing a helmet with no eyeholes. I know npc's can be blind, see the infamous bucket stealing trick.
Some non-realistic looking weapons. I was granted a unique ghostly sword for completing a quest. That was pretty cool, everything else in skyrim goes for a realistic if sometimes stylized look. So I liked the sword even though I'm not playing a swordsman. Shortly thereafter, I found a dungeon full of lootable ghost weapons. So much for the uniqueness of my quest reward, and the ghost weapons are out of the "look" of the rest of the game.
Other:
Oddly inconsistent texture work. The texture work is mostly great, but in a few places it's not nearly the same quality/resolution. Fast travel to the mage college and look at the snowy bridge for an example.
All the jarls have the same "bored slouch" pose, even the ones that take an active interest in things.
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Best moment ingame: Fairly early on, I wandered into an archery trainer, who has the player complete several ingame archery tests for training. She gave me a bow for completing them. It was about the same as the bow I already had, but I started to use it anyway since I quite enjoyed the ingame tutorial. I kept using the bow even as I got better one, until I got one that was much better. I still kept the bow out of fondness for the training/trainer, and carried it around since I didn't have a home or anywhere to store it. It even meant having to leave loot in dungeons sometimes.
Much later ingame, I wound up against a boss enemy, who used it's dragonshouts to disarm me of the bow I was using. So I pulled out another bow from my inventory that I'd picked up in order to sell. That too got disarmed. Now what? I looked through my inventory and there it was, the bow from the archery trainer I'd met in the middle of nowhere, and carried around solely because of my fondness for the training. That bow, "obsolete" and carried around solely because of my character's fond memories, saved my character's life. That's a gaming moment that will last.
Now, on to the nitpicking. (If you just want to read something very cool, skip down to the last two paragraphs.)
Logic:
Being told that there's a big conflict between some rebels and the Empire I took a logical (for an adventurer) tack and head for the border. That's where the conflict should be sharp right? Nope. I followed a path and found a border to the empire, and there was a gate marking the end of the gameworld. The gate was unmarked on the main map, meaning it was unimportant. It was also unmanned, I thought there was conflict? Right next to the unimportant, unmanned gate to the empire, and five feet from the road, valuable ore (gold iirc). Was that ore just ignored when they built the gate?
Later I found a map showing where the forces were, and found a number of camps from both sides. The empire's invading force was not near the border with the empire, instead they are all as far away from the border as they can be. The rebels? Close to the border. Shouldn't that be reversed?
I found two dungeons where I could turn off a few of the torches. Presumably this would improve my sneaking. Unfortunately, these were the only dungeons I could do so in the 40-50 I've been in. Either let me turn them off, or don't.
Lighting:
500 feet underground and it's light as day. Everything natural apparently glows in the world of Skyrim, water, fog etc. The natural world underground is actually brighter than the dungeons. Yes, I know, gameplay reasons... If you look up, many of those "light beams from the sky" are coming from hard rock. Not all of them though, some come from actual holes in the ceiling, so I know the maps can have holes in the ceiling.
I've entered a number of places where no living creature has been for centuries, and there are torches and candles everywhere lighting the place up? Apparently torches and candles last for hundreds of years in Skyrim, or maybe zombies like them? Also, dust in the air, hundreds of years and it didn't settle.
The sunlight in the various grottoes on the world map does not match the high mountains surrounding them, instead the areas are lit as if there were no mountains, or much lower ones. Daylight reaching the ground in some of these should be an hour long, at best. Some grottoes do not have a day/night cycle, despite even large openings to the surface.
Gameplay:
The "cleared" notification for dungeons is a great idea. The game tracks it as a stat. There's a Steam achievement for clearing enough places. So why aren't some places clearable? I'm positive I've emptied out a number of places (Skrim's levels are almost entirely linear), yet not received "cleared" or a notification that a place isn't clearable for some reason. It would also be nice if I got an information message of cleared instead of having to look at my map, though maybe I've just missed that.
Dragons are awesome, except when they stink. The tutorial dragon wrecks an entire town. So when I found my first dragon I thought, "This is going to be epic!" Nope. Three hits and it was dead. It didn't even get a chance to use it's breath on me. Perhaps the game should take note of it being the first time you fight a dragon, and make sure it's difficult.
The random "superboss" mob member. In one area I fought a boss, a master level wizard opponent using ice magic, and learned one of the dragon shouts for my trouble. The level of difficulty was such that I could take 5-6 hits before dying. 15 minutes later I was in another area fighting mobs, and one generic mob member, who also happened to be an ice wizard like the boss I'd just recently fought, kills me in two hits. Repeatedly.
This is a Steam one, and maybe the Xbox/PS3 as well since it's an achievement thing. The "Master Criminal" achievement is when you've got a high bounty everywhere. That's not a "Master Criminal", that's a bad criminal, the good crooks get away with it. Wanted Outlaw maybe, Scourge of Skyrim perhaps?
Armor/Weapons:
Dwemer armor is quite valuable, so naturally dwemer scrap (used to make the armor) is fairly valuable too, right? Nope. It's seems to be least valuable type of "ore" for smithing, and it's value to weight ratio is worse that virtually any useful item, even the lowly iron dagger.
Light armor versus heavy armor. The light armors elven, glass, and dragonscale all have a hard plate armor look. This visually groups them with the "heavy" armors. It also would mean in practice that the usage would be more akin to "heavy armor" usage, the hard plates deflecting blows. Except light and heavy armor are different skill trees. I've purposely avoided "upgrading" to these armors just from the look. I'm not playing a melee fighter, I don't want to look like one.
Falmer are blind, so their helmets have no eyeholes. When the player wears a falmer helmet, they can apparently still see despite wearing a helmet with no eyeholes. I know npc's can be blind, see the infamous bucket stealing trick.
Some non-realistic looking weapons. I was granted a unique ghostly sword for completing a quest. That was pretty cool, everything else in skyrim goes for a realistic if sometimes stylized look. So I liked the sword even though I'm not playing a swordsman. Shortly thereafter, I found a dungeon full of lootable ghost weapons. So much for the uniqueness of my quest reward, and the ghost weapons are out of the "look" of the rest of the game.
Other:
Oddly inconsistent texture work. The texture work is mostly great, but in a few places it's not nearly the same quality/resolution. Fast travel to the mage college and look at the snowy bridge for an example.
All the jarls have the same "bored slouch" pose, even the ones that take an active interest in things.
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Best moment ingame: Fairly early on, I wandered into an archery trainer, who has the player complete several ingame archery tests for training. She gave me a bow for completing them. It was about the same as the bow I already had, but I started to use it anyway since I quite enjoyed the ingame tutorial. I kept using the bow even as I got better one, until I got one that was much better. I still kept the bow out of fondness for the training/trainer, and carried it around since I didn't have a home or anywhere to store it. It even meant having to leave loot in dungeons sometimes.
Much later ingame, I wound up against a boss enemy, who used it's dragonshouts to disarm me of the bow I was using. So I pulled out another bow from my inventory that I'd picked up in order to sell. That too got disarmed. Now what? I looked through my inventory and there it was, the bow from the archery trainer I'd met in the middle of nowhere, and carried around solely because of my fondness for the training. That bow, "obsolete" and carried around solely because of my character's fond memories, saved my character's life. That's a gaming moment that will last.
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