Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;494336Just hit level 50. Falkreath, some of Markarth, Bard's College, Thieves, Dark Brotherhood, and main quest still remaining. Haven't finished the Gauldur thing yet (keep on getting distracted), or started the politics.

Damn. You've got days worth of playtime yet.

The only reasons ive been to falreath and markarth is because of getting lost and also that darned dearic quest thats basicalyl the hangover done elder scrolls style. ive managed to mostly avoid the questlines there with the exception of the one that lets you have barbas as a follower and that broken great elk one(that they really should either change the route it run away in or else add a timer before it resets).

Quote from: danbuter;494339Damn. You've got days worth of playtime yet.

I have a personal goal of knocking over every barrow in the game. I currently have four of the dragon priest masks from it (Morokei, Volsung, Rahngot, Otar), and I think I know where at least two others are.

I spend a lot of time basically just wandering around, going from icon on the minimap to minimap. It's pretty fun, though a bit slow.

I just hit 20 the other day. The only quest line I've completed so far has been with the Companions. I decided to cure my lycanthropy, tooled around in some dwemer ruins, got killed by a bunch of giants and I've just now started the Forsworn Conspiracy quest, although I think I mght put that on hold for a bit because I just found out you can get a dog and that sounds really cool.

Quote from: Kaldric;494324Skyrim assumes elves and dragon-soul eating in the milieu, and explains them. It does not assume or explain being able to swim in freezing water while carrying hundreds of pounds of equipment and armor. Hence, the entirely understandable strain on one's suspension of disbelief.

Welcome to the world of modern graphics and AAA game development.  Resources are spent on "teh shiny", and so you get stuff like swimming in heavy armor, or like in Deus Ex, where you're asked to break into a morgue, and once in, none of the police question who you are.  Or you could give it all up and play Dwarf Fortress, which has so many discrete subsystems interacting the emergent complexity and detail is beyond ridiculous and is almost soul-crushing.

But it's a good thing immersion in games isn't completely dependent upon SoD, so it doesn't bother me much.

You have a lower, or simply different, threshold for suspension of disbelief. Nothing wrong with it.

I'm not saying it doesn't kill SoD, I'm saying that immersion in video-games and other media isn't about SoD, it's about flow.  The frame never magically drops away -- that's not the point of it, especially because of all the cues and signs that what you're experiencing is merely media.  There isn't a point where you forget you're just playing a game.

I find Borderlands to be extremely immersive, but it's got meta-game out the whazoo and a very unrealistic presentation.  The whole 'realism' thing in video-games is pretty misguided, and I think swimming in armor is a pretty minor thing given all of the inconsistencies you experience in nearly every RPG, especially since CRPGs cannot respond in a consistent and logical manner to all of your actions, and the point of most RPGs is to have choices with weight to them.

It's all about the play.  If the play is satisfying, then concerns about story or minor inconsistencies in the environment tend to fade away because you're wrapped up in the experience of the game regardless.  Skyrim manages to be a pretty responsive environment even in spite of its technical limitations, and so I'm more willing to forgive arctic diving in heavy metals because the rest of it is just that much fun.

Also, putting in such a limitation on swimming probably wouldn't add much fun to play.  Having to strip/drop most of your inventory every time you encounter water isn't exactly fun.

I'm not sure we're using the same definitions of immersion and suspension of disbelief.

Every game is going to have its quirks and rules changes merely for convenience.

The water thing is odd, but, to be fair, you can play the whole game with only one place where you "need" to go into the water.

They could have just had a "strip for water" toggle, for convenience sake. Seeing as you can't fight under water anyway, the only real gaming advantage is armor, and slaughterfish aren't even a threat to a naked adventurer of any levels.

There are plenty of things that could use improving even in a great game like Skyrim, but the water goofiness is not near the top of that list.

I realise it's a fantasy setting but when i'm at the coldest point on the map and a courier dressed in only a loincloth comes up and hands me a note I just laugh.

The level scaling on the other hand isn't so funny.

Quote from: Kaldric;494407I'm not sure we're using the same definitions of immersion and suspension of disbelief.

I think we are, but I' just from the school of thought that doesn't believe the purpose of media is to foster a suspension of disbelief.

I think i'm done with this game. The ridiculously overpowered mobs that appear just ruin it completely. They take no damage and can kill you in 3 hits, if that. Fucking stupid way to design a game. You think they'd learn after the mess taht was Oblivion.
I got to the Azura star mission where you go inside the artifact and get clobbered by 3 fire wielding demon dudes. Absolutely appalling game design. Yet again though it's 'shiny shiny!' for the masses who will excuse any old crap.

It's "shiny shiny" for the masses because it's too hard?

Uh...ok.

Peregrin, it was more the general sense that we were talking past each other. I get the feeling that what you are calling 'immersion' is the very general kind of semi-hypnotic state that accompanies any task that requires a certain steady amount of concentration. What others might call 'immersion' is a specific type of it, specific to certain ways of experiencing fictions.

The definition of 'immersion' specific to role-playing for many seems to require the assumption that what you're immersed in isn't a only task, but a fictional milieu, and suspension of disbelief is a requirement for that. Can't immerse in a fictional milieu if you're constantly shocked by things that don't seem to fit.

Thus, you can be immersed in Skyrim as a task - a videogame, in the same way you can be immersed in Pac-Man. Or driving, or washing dishes.

Whereas the immersion specific to roleplay, and certain kinds of media, seems to require that you suspend disbelief - because to do otherwise would break the immersion.

Thus: You can be immersed in a film without suspending disbelief. Perhaps you're immersed in an impromptu analysis of the mise en scene, lighting technique, whatever. This type of immersion is not the type of immersion sought by most filmmakers, I would argue.

You can be immersed in a game without being immersed in the fiction of the game. If you're immersed in Skyrim as a videogame, swimming across a freezing lake in heavy armor won't break that immersion. If you're immersed in Skyrim the fictional milieu, it might.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;494465I think i'm done with this game. The ridiculously overpowered mobs that appear just ruin it completely. They take no damage and can kill you in 3 hits, if that. Fucking stupid way to design a game. You think they'd learn after the mess taht was Oblivion.
I got to the Azura star mission where you go inside the artifact and get clobbered by 3 fire wielding demon dudes. Absolutely appalling game design. Yet again though it's 'shiny shiny!' for the masses who will excuse any old crap.

I agree the auto-leveling stuff, while improved from Oblivion, still has a ways to go. Now that I'm level 51, I'm mostly just victory lapping through a few hundred side quests before deciding whether or not to start over.

I hope there's a mod that slows the leveling down to a crawl, I can't control it in this game like in Oblivion.