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I've played a lot of Skyrim. I've played through the main quest, guilds, and a bunch of the side quests over and over (though I'm sure I've missed something). I've played as rogues and warriors and archers and mages but I've never really role played with it. I've min/maxed, skipped dialogue, taken all the shortcuts, efficiently built a war machine and completed all of my goals. I've never considered who my character was, if he was good or evil. I've never sat down at a tavern got drunk off 5 bottles of Alto wine and started a brawl only to spend a night in jail. I've never made sure to eat a lot each day and sleep a lot at night. I never really lived through the character which always led to an unfulfilled ending where I just make a new character. So what did this teach me?
It taught me one of the most dumb cliche things that actually means a lot to me now. It taught me that the goal is not the goal. Completion is not the most important part of taking on a responsibility or "quest". What's important is doing things. I learned that life, mine and my character's, is made up of more than just a list of what I've completed. Crafting a full set of daedric armor was not the fun part, getting there was. Completing my first one arm chin up was not the most important part of it, the work put in to achieve that was. It seems to me that the real goal isn't to complete and accomplish. In fact, completing and accomplishing is one of the saddest things I think anyone can do, because then you're done, and being done isn't fulfilling at all. The real goal is to do. All you need to do is do. I'm not saying having goals is bad but if your goal is to complete the goal and that's all, I think you're doing it wrong. I'm not telling myself "when I get to point X everything will be better" anymore. Just like my newest character, I'm no longer focusing on getting things done, I'm focused on doing them. I'm not focused on where I'm going, I'm focused on where I am.
Super cliche I think but I thought it was interesting that I really came to understand this through my latest Skyrim journey!
Thanks
 
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On August 12 2014 08:51 SKC wrote:
Fuck fast travel
in the next elder scrolls game they should make it so that whenever you get on a boat to go somewhere else the game locks up and won't start again for a couple of weeks
or maybe you have to leave it running for a few hundred hours while your character just stands on a boat and waits.
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Agree 100% and it's something I need to work on as well. And in regards to fast travel, I did one playthrough of Oblivion completely without it. It took a long time to do anything but really made me fall in love with the music and Tamriel
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Definitely. Achieving most difficult goals simply isn't worth the work you put into it, if the only good thing that comes out of it is the feeling of accomplishment. Like, your one-armed chin-up must have taken months or years of work to get. It's not worth it just for the feeling of "Holy crap, I did it!" Great feeling, sure, but not worth hundreds/thousands of hours of work just to get that one feeling. What makes it worth it is both the enjoyment of the journey, and the benefits you've gained from said journey, like the increased strength, better looks, and more self-confidence. So you need to either enjoy the journey or get something out of the goal's completion other than just satisfaction, preferably both. Else it's just not worth the time.
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On August 12 2014 09:31 bookwyrm wrote:in the next elder scrolls game they should make it so that whenever you get on a boat to go somewhere else the game locks up and won't start again for a couple of weeks or maybe you have to leave it running for a few hundred hours while your character just stands on a boat and waits.
I dont actually care about it being in the game, if thats what you mean, but just running around in your horse to do shit, getting sidetracked because you got a new quest or found a cave, or even just planning ahead your route and which quests you is a big part of what makes the game fun for me. Considering how crappy the combat is, if you remove most the exploration aspects it can become a bit boring.
A questline is fairly simple if you just hop between locations, but it can be a bit more epic when you finally finish it if it took you months to do it because you had to run all over the world, finishing other sidequests along with it. It also makes a bit more sense, since you end up starting most important questlines at a lower level, instead of starting as the scrubbiest thief after already being granted the title of the best wizard in the world.
Its a single player game, people obviously can play it however they want, but no fast travel is probally the biggest key to "enjoying the experience". Increasing horse running speed a little bit can also be helpful.
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part of whats awesome with no fast travel is at some point you go "that place, yea I totally know where that is." The immersion in beginning to really know the landscape and locations is huge in terms of connectiveness.
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I'm surprised that people enjoy walking around that much! I mean sure the end result isn't the only goal - that's fine, I agree with the OP in that regard. But generally speaking, when you're walking between destinations not a whole lot happens. There's a reason we play video games; its because the things you can do are more exciting and interesting than in the real world. What's the point if you just end up forcing yourself to do boring things again? Unless fighting the occasional wild animal or bandit really excites you, what is there to look forward to in walking 30 kilometers?
When you exercise every day, you see improvement every day. I get that. But when you walk back and forth across a continent, the only feeling of satisfaction you get is the sense that "finally, its over, I've arrived". It just seems like it would be so much more rewarding to actually arrive at your destination and begin spelunking or exploring some ancient ruins as opposed to walking down an endless dirt path that you've already explored multiple times.
The way Skyrim implemented fast travel is good...you have to find it first, and you get the thrill of exploration, but not the drudgery of having to do it over and over again. Anyway I can see that people clearly enjoy the game in a different way than I do, I guess we all have different preferences about the games we play. Maybe you guys really just love the scenery so much that walking those paths is not a chore at all but a pleasure? I guess its different with me, I get tired easily. If I've seen one tree I've seen them all lol
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Skyrim, being mainly a Norway simulator/Mod testing RPG, benefits a lot from a longer time outdoor running around. It doesnt even take that long unless you want to play like you would with Fast Travel, crossing the whole world all the time to follow a single questline. It also has the added benefit of increasing the time between the kinda crappy, clearly underdeveloped sections of the game, anything involving combat.
Im sure a lot of people also cant grasp how games like Euro Truck Simulator can be even remotelly fun to play. Its kinda of a similar thing.
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On August 13 2014 10:27 radscorpion9 wrote:
I'm surprised that people enjoy walking around that much! I mean sure the end result isn't the only goal - that's fine, I agree with the OP in that regard. But generally speaking, when you're walking between destinations not a whole lot happens. There's a reason we play video games; its because the things you can do are more exciting and interesting than in the real world. What's the point if you just end up forcing yourself to do boring things again? Unless fighting the occasional wild animal or bandit really excites you, what is there to look forward to in walking 30 kilometers?
When you exercise every day, you see improvement every day. I get that. But when you walk back and forth across a continent, the only feeling of satisfaction you get is the sense that "finally, its over, I've arrived". It just seems like it would be so much more rewarding to actually arrive at your destination and begin spelunking or exploring some ancient ruins as opposed to walking down an endless dirt path that you've already explored multiple times.
The way Skyrim implemented fast travel is good...you have to find it first, and you get the thrill of exploration, but not the drudgery of having to do it over and over again. Anyway I can see that people clearly enjoy the game in a different way than I do, I guess we all have different preferences about the games we play. Maybe you guys really just love the scenery so much that walking those paths is not a chore at all but a pleasure? I guess its different with me, I get tired easily. If I've seen one tree I've seen them all lol
I personally think that it's not just about walk down the paths but also about exploring, on a whim, the various caves, dungeons, and forts along the way. Some of the places aren't even linked to externally-acquired quests, yet they are some of the most interesting places in the game, sometimes with some really fascinating stories told by clutter or notes left behind.
Also, some mods add more enemy types and random radiant events that make the long hike more interesting as you're more likely to run into some sort of ambient happening.
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EPT
