Icewind Dale 2 - Revisited (Part 3 - Temple of Gimmicks)

When you are travelling in an RPG, I feel that there is some sort of gauge that can tell you if something is going to happen or not. Like the more foreign the technology your characters are travelling on, the higher chances of accidents happen. So the party crash landed into some random mountain because some Auril guys thought it was a good idea to bring the airship down. My metagaming instincts tells me to prepare for constructs because, well, Auril is some angry snow goddess and this means frost the possibility of frost golems (at the worst case).

So here we are, out to complete an annoying errand for a crazy gnome. The crash site was pretty unspectacular as my party waded through a bunch of yetis, beetles and spiders. I ran into this Illium guy who is apparently related to the guys who took down my airship. He's this ranger guy that screams "YOU SHALL NOT PASS" so I took my diplomat to talk to him. Luckily my intimidate is good enough to scare him into opening the gates (thanks to our amazing and ridiculous feat of wiping an entire horde), but the half-dragon Sherincal swoops down, scolds Illium, kills his pet cougar and knocked my diplomat off the cliff. Poor Illium.

It so happened that it was night time and I fell into a bunch of what seems to be werewolves. Huh. My party met up with my diplomat and kills them. That's when I ran into Beodaewyn, who seems to be this suspicious merchant in the front of a wolves' den. It is pretty obvious to me who he really is so I attacked him and killed him since I'm feeling selfish and I don't like werewolves in general. I returned to Illium and surprisingly he didn't stop me after what I did to his poor pet. That's nice, I did not feel like killing an army of villagers who simply want nothing more than peace of quiet from slaughters like my guys.

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Somehow, I'm in the exterior of some Ice Temple. I don't really know why do I need to be here other than that there is nowhere else to proceed and I really need to find diamonds and some extract from some creature.  Evil temple means two things, clerics and weird shit, and where there's clerics, there should be diamonds (normally Resurrection spell costs diamonds). 

The Ice Temple content seems pretty okay that this point. Here I encountered Ice Golems as expected and there was this weird creature (Remorhaz) which I didn't trust to the point that I fully buff my tank character to a whooping 33+ AC with my sorcerer's newly acquired Ghost Armor spell. With this spell, really nothing can hit my tank, especially when he has Mirror Image up.  The fights were annoying at best, except for Sherincal's.

Sherincal's fight is really annoying. She stands at the top of some flight of 'flat' stairs, calls limited number of annoying creatures (including a Ice Golem, god why is that piece of junk immune to most of my spells), foolishly casts Chromatic Orbs at my Mirror Imaged tank and randomly shoots Lightning Bolt hoping to catch more than one character. The flat stairs 'pushes' my characters to the bottom every time I tried to get up, so getting to her caused me some trouble. Supposedly I need to exert enough force at the levers on top of the stairs to activate the stairs back to normal, meaning I supposedly need ranged attacks. However, it seems that Fireball does the trick just as well. 

After ridding of all the clerics, necromancers, Golems and maybe some other stuff, all there's left is the half dragon herself. She has lots of difficulty hitting my tank even without mirror image but boy does she hurt when she hits. I was nearly out of healing resources and my frontliners aren't exactly in good condition (after getting hit by random Unholy Blights, Lightning Bolts, lucky hits), I just threw everything my sorcerer has left at her (my Magic Missiles were 4d4+4), which took her down pretty fast. Huh, I really should've Magic Missiled her to death from the start I think. She does not seem to resist them that much. Oh right, being half dragon, she has a fear aura I think, which caused my Stormlord cleric to flee every now and then. Thank goodness for the item that prevents my tank from being panicked or feared. 

Before I entered the temple, I realized that I already have all the required ingredients for Oswald's repairs, so I headed back, though it feels strange since I have not entered the Ice Temple. Oswald was happy to see the ingredients and casted the incantation...and...nothing happened. Oswald started saying that it's gonna take a long time and asked my party to 'go ahead and find another way, I'll catch up'. What. So I got all the ingredients for nothing? Gah, stupid gnome wasted my time and money.

Off to the Ice Temple, then.

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Finally, a dungeon. Honestly though, the Ice Temple felt more like a playground of gimmicks more than an actual temple. There are some weird contraptions around the room like the Mirror of Life Tapping, an Arena game which somehow combined with tic-tac-toe mechanics (with its level of difficulty decided by levers), some machine that shoots lightning that open doors...they all just don't seem to fit that much.

Fighting clerics is rather relaxing since you simply have to be more buffed up than they are, which my team obviously is. I don't have to worry about annoying to heartbreaking spells like Fireball or lucky Chromatic Orbs throughout the 2 levels of the temple.

Notable encounters are the NPCs themselves. The rooms and strange devices are weird and all but they seem to be more gimmicky than interesting, like the whole temple could do without those stuff. My party ran into the 3 sisters: Lysara, Cathin and Oria. They weren't particularly hard fights since they are...well...clerics. I do like the scripts given to them and their voice acting though. Oria pulled an interesting stunt where she broke her staff of power that does maybe 1 damage, died and reappeared as a ghost to kill us, in which my party have to pull some lever in the Arena room that switches the whole damn level between Material and Ethereal Plane. Incredibly gimmicky.

The other thing I found interesting was Caged Fury, some spirit of a tempest which is pretending to be Auril. At this point, I don't really understand the relationship between Caged Fury, the 3 sisters and the temple. It seemed that Caged Fury is behind all the ice wall that is obstructing my path towards Neverwinter. How he got there...I'm not sure, I hope one of the sister's diary state why. I'm assuming someone summoned it to erect the ice wall. How nice, I spent a paragraph ranting about something I'm not even sure about.

Then we met Nickademus, the idiot behind all the contraption. I don't think it's fair to create all these content that has nothing to do with an 'Ice Temple' and slap a very experienced wizard who doesn't care about his lover's death into the whole scene. Feels like a really bad excuse to me.

I might as well talk a bit about the arena. It basically works like this: choose a character, and he will solo monsters that will come out of one of the square of a 3x3 grid he choose. Picking a square will spawn a monster. Winning will net you a cross on the square, losing will net a 'shield' or in tic-tac-toe terms, a circle. Match 3 crosses diagonally, vertically or horizontally to win, vice versa to lose.

I didn't get very far unfortunately because there is a time limit involved in each fight. Most of the harder enemies' Damage Reduction so retarded I don't know how is it possible to even deal damage with the weapons I have so far AND STILL survive their hits.  Maybe I can return later?

With the ice path out of the way, I wonder what's next?

Next

Icewind Dale 2 - Revisited (Part 2 - The Beginning)

Quick reference:
Tank = Deep Gnome 28 Dreadmaster/1 Rogue/1 Monk
Talos cleric = Drow 17 Stormlord/4 Barbarian/4Fighter/5Sorcerer
Diplomat = Tiefling 2 Rogue/14 Druid/14 Bard
Sorcerer = Aasimar 1 Paladin/29 Sorcerer

First Steps
Ah low level and gold woes! Of course, I didn't expect my team to start even with a simple full plate armor readily available to me. Anyhow, Studded Leather is good enough for my tank due to his high DEX. At this point he seems pretty ridiculous: 22AC at level 1 without shields and buffs, and is able to cast Mirror Image and Blur. My Talos cleric seem to suffer a bit though. Her low DEX means that she will have to live with crappy Chainmail armor. Since she will still be at the front row, I gave her the shield you can 'steal' at the Palisade, leaving her with a very average 18AC. Hey I'm poor! It didn't take me long after her first level up that I should've really given her 1 Fighter level so that she can be proficient with axes.

The initial Targos was pretty uneventful, if not irritating because there are some locks I cannot pick at the start. Having a dedicated diplomat starts to pay off a bit; I managed to avoid the fight against the Iron Collar dudes in the tavern and jacked up the price of some barters, which is really important this early in the game. The innkeeper is really stingy though, only 50gp for getting rid of a noisy ghost in his inn. At least the nice elf lady (Ulbrec's wife) is a bit more generous. Otherwise it's all fine and dandy.

Battle at the Palisade
I made sure to wipe out Phaen of the Rags before the battle. My party's resources are limited so less enemies is better for me.

The battle itself was kind of hard. My tank was still level 1 with 10HP. Even though he wasn't getting hit that often, a couple of lucky criticals can still kill him. Because of that, focusing on smaller minions before the bigger ones seem to work like a charm. I also realized that I should have taken Burning Hands for my sorcerer. I had completely forgotten how useless Magic Missile + Chromatic Orbs were at level 1, and I took them because they were awesome at later levels. Because of that I had to use all 3 charges of the Wolf Charm from the drinking game at the docks, so that the goblin sorcerer would stupidly magic missile them instead of my party.

And my tank STILL hadn't leveled after the fight. I'm starting to worry about the 20% experience penalty should I ever find the need to take the monk levels. Hopefully it's not anytime soon. It shouldn't be.

Shaengarne Bridge
Ulbrec is mad, asking up to 6 level 1-2 adventurers to overtake a critical bridge that is obviously going to be held by a battalion.

God the entrance is hard. There is like a gazillion guys trying to hit 1 gnome. After dying a few times, I finally managed to defeat them, causing my guys to level up. Here I manage to grab the Bard level for my diplomat, the Fighter level for my Talos cleric and finally one more level for my tank, effectively doubling his HP. The rest of the area is much easier after the level up. I made sure to cast Command everytime I see an orc shaman cast spells and beat the crap out of him.

It is around here the first sneaking mission came about, which is easily solved with the deep gnome once per day ability of turning himself invisible. At this point I realized what a ridiculous scout he is. High AC, invisibility, cleric spells, mirror image, good damage, blur...now I'm sending him to scout fog of wars before I engage my enemies. My diplomat is having problems now trying to stand  near the fighters and granting them bard songs and doing nothing else though. Too bad you cannot hide while you sing.

The troll fight is pretty hard. He hits more frequently and harder than I would've liked. I don't have a rogue who can steal the blade from him without him noticing so I have to fight. I realized how much I needed entangle at this point and how useless Summon Nature's Ally I is. Also, Ray of Enfeeblement could really help in this case; it's flat -15 STR in this game for whatever reason.

I had a pretty big level up at the Harpy/Boar area. My sorcerer have one extra spell (I took Ray of Enfeeblement), my two clerics hit level 3, opening the door to level 2 spells which are immensely useful. The Talos cleric is becoming a beast with her new Returning Throwing Axe, Bull Strength and Destructive Blow. The High Priests who immediately cast Beast Claw, Summon spells and Cures are pretty trivial, casting the almost instant Command spell whenever they start casting crap. Yes I memorized Command to the max. The newly acquired Hold Person and Horror spells helped too.

The actual battle of the bridge was pretty easy with the new levels, except for one bitch that suddenly cast fireball in my face, wiping half my party. I did not manage to save the bridge though, since I neglected to buy potions in case of critical hits so I 'cheated' by resting in the middle of the battlefield (which makes no sense).

Goblin Fortress
The outside of the fortress wasn't particularly hard, considering that there is a free place for you to rest every time you are low on resources. The mini-boss fight at the top right hand of the map is tough though, with a couple of ice trolls, ogres, an orc shaman and a bunch of archers and wolf-riders. As if that wasn't bad enough, they would randomly orbital strike wolf-riders in the middle of the battlefield (screwing up my positioning) as long as there is an orc shaman beside the War Drum. Fortunately, that particular War Drum is snipe-able from across the bridge without attracting attention, so most of the problem is taken care of.

The warrens of the fortress (the Goblin Warrens) isn't that bad. 2 levels of things to kill, none of them particularly difficult. Scouting with my gnome proved so invaluable that it becomes the norm. As I level up and gain access to Barkskin, more powerful Chromatic Orbs, Fireball and Animate Dead, fights can become trivial at best, with annoying AI aggro management possibly screwing my plans. This dungeon is quite funny because the fights get easier as you progress, so level design-wise it seems strange. I remembered that the very first fight when you enter the dungeon can be pretty tough. The rest, not so much.

The exterior and interior fights after making out of the warrens can get a little overwhelming. Thanks to scouting and the awesome Entangle + Fireball spam combo, huge fights can whittle down to small brawls when done correctly. Deep Gnomes and Drows as frontlines are truly awesome, as they have spell resistance in case you misfire your fireball. If I didn't like them being in the front, I could always cast a couple of Animate Dead (really dumb spell in many ways) and let them draw aggro before letting lose my combo.

The Guthma fight is incredibly underwhelming. He failed my Chromatic Orb saving throw and was stunned for 3 rounds. With my drow's retarded Attack Bonuses (fully buffed with Bull Strength, Destructive Blow, Strength of One, Bard Song) and Faerie Fire cast on him, he went down so fast I mistook him for another bugbear. With my sorcerer free to do anything at this point, she simply fireball-ed the mirror imaged orc and goblin shamans continuously until they are dead. So much for mirror image!

Conculsion
This party really went through a lot. At the start I felt worried that this party might not make it, but towards the end, it really got a lot simpler as I gain access to better items and spells.

I think it is safe to say that having all the monsters attacking a Deep Gnome with 28 AC fully buffed with mirror image is perfectly okay. I also equipped him with Witherbranch Boots (immune to Entangle) and Houndstooth Collar (immune to Panic and Fear) so he can walk in and out of my druid's Entangle spell and silly spells like Horror don't affect him.

The rest of my party is running on 16 AC or less, with my Sorcerer running on a whooping 9 AC. If you are reading this and wants to build the same sorcerer for tabletop, don't be an idiot and stop right there. 9 AC will have you begging the DM for dear life at level 1. However, this is a computer game where AI can be abused a little, so 9 AC is fine as long as I am careful. Plus, the overpowered instant-cast Chromatic Orb helps a lot, as well as both my cleric's instant Command spell.

Now that Targos is safe, apparently my party thinks it's a good idea to fly in an airship in medieval-fantasy setting piloted by a half-delusional absent-minded gnome. I wasn't surprised we crash landed.

Next

Icewind Dale 2 - Revisited (Part 1 - Party Creation)

Back to IWD2!

I realized that even after playing Icewind Dale 2 to death, I have never completed it fully. There might be reasons for that; I might be busy, the party I created was not fun at a certain point, certain characters felt useless at a certain point that I want to recreate a new party...etc.

With the help of the awesome JUPP guide, I'm attempting to return back to IWD2, and possibly even clear the infamous Heart of Fury mode. The goal of the party is simple: it must be able to clear HoF (requires min-maxing), leveling from 1-30 must be reasonable and lastly I must be fun playing the party. I will be running a 4-man party, because I realized that 6 people can get difficult to control and is quite overkill sometimes to the point that it gets boring. Leveling 6 specialized characters is also really boring. I played enough PnP DnD to the point that so I really want each character to be 'self-sufficient'.

JUPP helped a lot in that process. Most of the characters suggested in the guide are min-maxed to the max, are really versatile and theoretically fun to play from 1-30. After thinking for a long time, it really seems that no matter how much I try to deviate, my characters will eventually 'become' one of his characters. In the end, my party composition is the only thing different; the characters in the party ended up being one of those in the guide. It makes sense; the game has only so many viable classes for certain roles as well as races. If I were to make a tank with 70+AC, there's only so many ways I can do it, so I simply choose the way I think I would enjoy.

Here is the party I'm planning out:
1) Deep Gnome 1 Rogue/1 Monk/28 Dreadmaster of Bane
This is the tank of the party and also the 1st character in the melee party of the JUPP guide.  Pretty straightforward. I love clerics a lot so from the start I had a 30 cleric planned out for tanker. 1 Monk is to convert WIS to AC and 1 Rogue is to get the crazy headband that gives generic AC. JUPP only finished the build when it educated me that Dreadmasters get quests that increase WIS. Cool, I always wanted to play an evil cleric.

Problem with this character is that it has 3 classes and none of them are favored classes of the Deep Gnome race. Dipping 1 level into monk will incur the 20% experience penalty. However, it shouldn't happen until I reach HoF since clerics can wear heavy armor and I don't think my WIS will be that much higher than the best heavy armor in normal mode at that point of time.

2) Tiefling 2 Rogue/14 Druid/14 Bard
This looks like a really fun build. It's purpose is to do EVERYTHING out of combat. I am not sure if I can build this character as a scout; it does have druid levels as well as bard levels so it has a wide range of spells to it's disposal. I have to wait and see how that turns out. For now, it's there just to provide Barkskin and cover bard songs. I might even level Use Magic Device so that I can use more objects with this character.

I am wondering if early levels are going to be hard though. This character is running on really low STR and DEX stats so lockpicking is going to be difficult unless the Druid part gets Shapeshifting. Even then, I would need to level Druid up together with Bard because it will incur the 20% experience penalty, so shapeshifting will not be in the equation until character level 10 or so.

3) Assimar 1 Paladin/29 Sorc
Main arcane spellcaster. Really straightforward and effective build. However, it has to cover some utility spells since it is the MAIN arcane spellcaster after all. Thankfully, I have 29 levels for that, so I will have more spells learnt eventually, just need to pick the right one. Assimar is just there to prevent experience penalty.

4) Drow Stormlord of Talos 17/4 Fighter/4 Barbarian/5 Sorcerer
Main damage dealer of the party. This is also another character from JUPP, which I really like because of how versatile she is. She's the substitute cleric, offloading work from the 1st character, and also the main healer, as her alignment is Lawful neutral so she can spontaneously cast cure spells if needed. She can nuke from her Talos specialization, and with 18 STR + Draw Upon Holy Might + Rage and other cleric buffs, she's gonna do tons of damage.

Afterthoughts
Currently I'm not thinking about adding a fifth member. This party looks theoretically strong and fun to play from level 1-30 as it is. I'll keep posting how I do in each chapter and arcs with this party as I find time to keep playing. Once everything is over, I'll plan to eventually post this as a guide along with all the other posts for others to read.

Hopefully this party is good enough for me to enjoy throughout the game till HoF =)


Next

10 months later in America!

Welp.

I'm finally in America. Just one more semester to go! Seattle's pretty great so far. Everyone here is extremely friendly and nice to me. It's really cold though, and it's just going to get colder.

Yes, this is another revival post. Blogger has change so much since I last left. I hope they opened enough features for me to further customize the layout of this site. Thinking back then, adding pages and allowing users to scroll through years of blog posts is really difficult and annoying to implement. Hopefully all these have changed.

I have been setting my eyes on mobile and web game development recently, on top of trying to work on my portfolio. It's probably why I'm so keen on developing an Android game for my project this semester. The game development scene has really changed as compared to the last 2 years. Flash VS HTML5, Android getting stronger, iOS getting more fans, Steam getting crazier, Kickstarter kicking ass and people slowly getting tired of Farmville (I hope)...it seems as if there is going to be another shift in what people want in games and how they want to access them. Google web store looks incredible attractive the more I look at it, barring the restriction that you must have a chrome for most of their applications.

Ah let's talk about games themselves. As usual, lots of games, no time to play. Torchlight 2 was fun while I played it. I love the Engineer class. Somehow I love playing a zealot build, that is magic shields and beating the crap out of anyone before they can even scratch your hit points. It wasn't always successful though. Some stuff in veteran or elite just go through everything.

Other than that there's Dustforce. Very polished platforming game, really worth getting indie bundle for that. There's also Faster Than Light (FTL), an extremely cool rogue-like game where you control a spaceship and trying to get to one end of the universe to the other. Think of it like Star Trek or navigating the Normady in Mass Effect through space as well as controlling your crew members. It's great fun.

Obviously, there won't be any more posts anytime soon until I am free (I managed to rush out some of my assignments today), but it feels good blogging again.

Resuscitation?

Whoops! Wow. 6 months since last update? Unheard of! Well, I haven't given up yet, but work has been piling up on me especially for the last semester (which IMO is the worst semester of all). This semester, I have been re-prioritizing reorganizing misc stuff like sleeping hours, work, etc...so that I will hopefully breathe more.

Are there things I wish to talk about? Not particularly since there's facebook/twitter available for idle talk and comments. I haven't been thinking about non-school related stuff for quite some time and school-related stuff are definitely not blog-worthy. I still love arguing with myself though, and would love to put some of my thoughts about certain game topics here, but I barely have the time to think of such things.

Anyway, I am officially in my 6th semester now. 2 more semesters to graduation! (assuming all goes well). Take this as a resuscitation post. I'm not dead yet. And I won't forget this blog. But perhaps I should change the layout...I just realized that it might be a little narrow? However, it looks nice on mobile devices. Hmm.

Well, I won't be blogging probably until I reach America. And hopefully get a new phone.

Merry Christmas 2011

Feels like some 'forever alone' post, but nonetheless, Merry Christmas to everyone before the day ends =)

It has been a heck of a long and busy year. I haven't been actively playing games nor watching animes. To me, it felt like the "Disappearance of Haruhi" movie came out just recently when it has already been a year old. Time has passed extremely quickly with me already in my 5th semester! Just one more year to go! ^_^

That aside, I have been drowning myself with some animes I've missed out and those that are currently airing like Working 2, Eureka 7, Guilty Crown, Ben-to, Xam'd, Ika Musume 2, Haganai...just to name a few. Currently trying to catch up on Bakemonogatari as we speak. Game-wise I stole Rorona from my friend and have been playing it everyday since. I think I'll end up completing it faster than Skyrim. The Captain America build I wished for was no-go =(

I'm still trying to look for a cheap legal copy of Flash CS5 to work on some stuff. Meanwhile, I'll use the trial to whip something random while I'm not watching anime, playing games, going out with friends. Looks like it's gonna be a nice holiday =)

Skyrim Review, thoughts and rants.

Already, ten days has passed since Skyrim's release and people are either enjoying it fully while other are beginning to compare it with other games. At first with the previous 2 Elder Scrolls, namely Morrowind and Oblivion (I didn't play the first two) , I thought they were rich yet barren. If you compare Skyrim to old classics like Baldur's Gate, where you plan your party and your characters, go to the deepest dungeons, slay the big dragon and get epic loot, coupled with excellent storytelling, itemization and combat mechanics, Skyrim will automatically seem to pale in comparison. I can see where old school RPG players are coming from and what they yearn for. I am a huge fan of past Black Isle and Troika games and I am still waiting for an RPG that is like theirs

After like 3 iterations, Bethesda refuses to give proper itemization and interesting combat mechanics. You still left click 100 times to melee a monster to death. But people still love it. Recent games I personally enjoy like Witcher 2 got flushed into being a cult hit, sharing the same fate as previous Black Isle games. Yet games like Oblivion (which I personally dislike) are cheered by most gamers as a great RPG. Obviously amongst all the bad thing I found in Oblivion, Bethesda is doing something right which I did not notice and care much about back then because I believed that they were in the wrong.

So the question is, what are they doing right? Why do they choose to stick with mechanics I disagree with after every iteration? I have to stop comparing to the RPGs I know and essentially ask what are they trying to achieve. From the looks of it, Bethesda wants to create an immersive and realistic open world experience, to a certain extent because we know it is not fully possible, feasible and desirable. At the same time, they want to provide constant challenge for the players.

There are a few things below they implemented for this design I wish to discuss and examine. A quick recap and disclaimer though, I do not particularly like any of the mechanics they implemented, but just picking them out and see how is it possible that such mechanics appeal to their target audience, which I assume is just "as many people as possible".

'Blend' Combat Mechanics
In combat, you do not 'autoattack' or execute 'moves'. You simply slash/punch/cast spell. As boring as it sounds, it's actually quite close to what you do in real life. It is debatable whether this is a good or bad approach, but despite arguments, it is a strange undeniable fact that some people do enjoy left clicking 100 times repeatedly to kill a monster so long as he receives the proper feedback. Throughout the past 2 Elder Scrolls games, they did nothing but improve the feedback. Whether the feedback is enough is irrelevant in this discussion. The point is that it is an improvement. Skyrim makes it a little more logical with their new dual-wield mechanic.

This seems strange as it is the reverse of what game designers would want to do with their RPGs. Usually you would think "Let's have this mechanic where players can do combo A or do combo B and get different results!" Witcher 2 had some form of a combo system, Dragon Age was a hotkey-fest, Dark Souls have much focus in tactical maneuvering and usage of weapons. What if there are people who actually find all of them too difficult? Going through playtesting sessions for the games I make, it might not be far from the truth. Ultimately, clicking the left mouse button 100 times is not only logical to the common player, but also easy to adjust to. If you complain about your swings missing because the AI is moving around you, you obviously have not been in a fight.

Seriously, you either like this mechanic or you don't. It offers almost little to no depth, which may seemingly be a bad thing, but can be a good thing.

Scaling
Enemy and item scaling according to player level has been something in Morrowind, Oblivion and now Skyrim. This part is really tricky. For one, it theoretically gives constant challenge to the players. However, it does break immersion or 'suspension of disbelief'. For example, I should be able to defeat the same named monster easier when I level up. To make matters worse, itemization scales with level as well. The designers are probably hoping that most players do not notice this scaling mechanic and only see the challenge before them. This has improved over the past Elder Scrolls though. It is no longer possible to make a level 1 character and kill trash mobs until the end of the main quest.

On the other hand, without scaling, it would mean that designers have to separate areas into level ranges, just like what most MMOs are doing now. This could run into the risk of players not visiting certain areas because its 'level is too low'. Also, if not done right, players will feel that the world is deliberately crafted and that his path is determined from the start. It's like how in Everquest where players who start in Freeport and just go from Freeport -> East Commons -> West Commons -> etc. In the example of WoW, players who start as an Orc just go from Valley of Trials -> whatever the troll village is called -> Razor Hill -> Barrens.

Somehow they must empower players the freedom to explore where-ever they want without making it too boring or too difficult AND at the same time ensure that certain monsters are a dangerous threat to the new player. They want to provide a world where players can explore, yet they want players to survive most encounters so that they don't feel frustrated. This really feels like some tug-of-war relationship between immersion and the need to provide constant challenge.

I have mixed reviews about Skyrim's execution of this mechanic. Some people said the game scales badly (as in they are getting killed at later levels), some say that the game is too easy (they just kill everything with or without min/maxing). Most of them are still playing Skyrim despite this, so I assume that it is working fine. For me, I haven't encountered any problems yet.

Pitiful Quests
Lack of carrots at the end of most trash quests demotivates many players from playing. Most of the quests do not promise good rewards for the effort you put into it. Is it really a problem? Is it okay to be asked to clear a fort of bandits for nothing more than 100gp and no further progression afterwards? For good measure, 100gp in Skyrim is worth as much as looting 2 or 3 of said bandits you slay. Not to mention that it is possible for you to just travel to the destination without triggering the quest and kill the bandits yourself if you need the gold.

But what if that was not the point of the quests? Essentially, going by their design of having an open world, the main point of quests is probably to gives you a reason to explore. Maybe it allows the players feel that they are doing favors for the NPCs, as opposed to mindlessly walking around to kill monsters. Most of us veteran players know better, but will others know? I myself feel cheated when I was awarded the 100gp, I mean seriously they could really give me more. Then we talk about 'pointless' quests that don't even ask you to explore OR reward you with anything. Maybe the design was to let players feel that the game is more alive? I don't see it, but is the problem with players like me?

The quests does not work out for me, but I can appreciate what they are trying to do. Amazingly, non-hardcore-RPG players I know are able to talk about "the lady who sells potions in Solitude whose daughter was missing in action". For those who don't know (spoilers), there's this alchemist lady in Solitude who simply ask you to talk to a certain person, and return to her once you get information out of him. The reward was non-existent and it is really pretty pointless as a quest, but somehow, people who explore the area remember.

Immersion + Numbers?
I mentioned immersion, but yet there are numbers. What gives? Well, there is a limit to how far you can push the idea of immersion into the game. The hard fact is that for some things, players need to know its exact details. It won't help much if I were to

You can see how they evolved from Morrowind to Skyrim. Morrowind was very detailed as they gave me actual base stats and derived stats to try to min/max. In Morrowind, I can see my Strength, Willpower, Intelligence, Agility, etc. Skyrim is almost totally opaque. The only numbers I see are my gold pieces, the amount of stuff I got, my HP, MP, SP, my weight limit, my skill points, armor rating and . That's about it really. You can tell that they are pushing towards that direction of game play, where players should not need to worry about anything more than what is directly affecting them.

Is this a good thing? I prefer my game transparent, but honestly with their design, I can see why they just choose to hide everything from the players. It is mainly because of this Skyrim feels so mainstream, I believe.

Conclusion
These points are some of the gripes I have about the game (I might add more), which I think makes the game successful. Having written the points down allows me to appreciate the game more than I did before when I was just bashing. Despite this however, I stand by my feelings that Oblivion isn't a good game (Morrowind is better) because there are other points about that game which I totally don't agree with. Skyrim, however, is a huge improvement, enough for me to accept it as a 'good enough RPG'.

I can see how Besthesda's game designers are constantly pulling off a balancing act with all those implementations. They are always pursuing a white/black color but constantly end up somewhere in the grey area.

Finally, I am going to quickly label what I like and hate about Skyrim thus far aside from its game design philosophy.

First with the likes:
- Level Design. Not fantastic, but at least every dungeon I walk into isn't some direct copy of another. At least there are books (yes, I read them, some of them are quite interesting) as a lazy way to fill me in about the dungeon. Some dungeons are actually interesting enough to leave me wondering about it (I think there was one with a forge and ingots of moonstone outside a tomb).
- Graphics. God, I love the harsh snowstorms.
- Performance. Remember when Oblivion was lagging like crazy because it is compiling shaders and scripts on runtime? Skyrim's performance is awesome. I only managed to crash it once by running other games behind and alt-tabbing Skyrim like crazy.
- Shouts. Seriously, I didn't see this coming. Although some are useless, they are quite interesting to have.
- Dragons done right. Last dragon I saw was Dragon Age which isn't really interesting to fight with given its predictable behavior and small arena. I think I saw my friend fight a dragon in Dark Souls which was quite impressive, but it is scripted in an area. Dragons in Skyrim can appear anywhere and they kind of manage to get its AI working for every area they are in (i.e. they have to dynamically allow the dragon to access its surroundings). There are rare bugs of course but I don't really expect them to get it perfectly right even with tons of testing .

And what I didn't like:
- Talents. Firstly, they are badly designed. Secondly, I think they do not fit the design philosophy of their game. They could execute it more elegantly by letting NPCs teach you certain talents, maybe make you get talents by doing something (block 100 hits to get 20% better a blocking perk!). They could do some Fallout 3 thing where they give you perks based on the random things you do (kill 100 rats = 25% better at killing rats). I strongly believe that will fit in much better than what they have now.
- Spellcrafting. It was there in Morrowind and Oblivions. Where has it gone? It was easily one of the more unforgettable mechanic they implemented. I suspect it's because of the new implementation of the dual-casting mechanic which could cause problems for the spellcrafting system.
- Horses. Goddamit just get it right already!
- Riding horses. Why is it not in first person?
- Interface. I suspect that they are catering more towards console. In fact, it is quite obvious. The mouse input is occasionally buggy.
- Ugly interface. It's just looks really primitive to the point I think that they are placeholder art.
- Fast Travel. I should really have a whole rant dedicated to this topic. I hate the concept of Fast Travel, especially in the game like Skyrim. The carriages that transport you to main cities are actually good enough and it works just like how subways work. I'll probably talk more of this another time.

I think Skyrim is a pretty good game and an improvement from its predecessors. It is great in its own way and I really shouldn't compare it with conventional RPGs. It is different. It is a game catered more for Explorers than Achievers, almost just like how there are people who like Minecraft and those who don't. I can see how Achievers can easily get bored with its content, but for Explorers, this game is a friggin' gold mine.

I will definitely keep playing the game with my 'Captain America' unarmed cat build. I'm honestly not that much of an "Explorer" type player (I actually prefer to 'explore' different builds and play-styles) but I would love to see this build being viable in the game at Master level. Once I reach near end-game, I will try to post a guide on my build =)