Let me reiterate: I love Skyrim and all the Elder Scrolls games I’ve played. I think they’re great games. Indeed, it is because they are so great that any perceived problem stands out to me.

What’s #9 on my list? Weapons and armour. Read on to find out why…

Decisions, Decisions…

Have you played STALKER Call of Pripyat? When you’re wandering the modern-day wastelands around Chernobyl weapons are important. You’ll have a rifle, probably a Kalashnikov, for defending yourself against bandits and other human enemies. You’ll probably keep a shotgun handy for when exploring ruined buildings, in case a mutant tries to bite your face off. And it’s always nice to have a pistol when you need a free hand to operate the anomaly detector, or for when your other weapons run dry of ammo.

Then there’s other considerations. Do you attach a powerful scope to your rifle, or will that make close-quarters use of it difficult? Is a machine pistol better for your needs than a large-calibre revolver? Do you need a fully automatic shotgun or can you manage with the much lighter sawn-off? Will you need armour-piercing rounds to fight armoured soldiers, or hollow-points to fend off squishy mutants?

I mention all this because it’s these kind of decisions that Skyrim is totally devoid of.

Skyrim Simplicity

What do you consider when choosing a weapon Skyrim? Firstly, you see if is a “fit” with the skills/perks you have or aim to have. If it’s a match, you see if it has the highest damage or statistic out of all other weapons of that type. If it does, it’s your new weapon!

Simple as that. Armour works much the same way.

There are only two exceptions I can think of. Enchanted weapons have charge and for some characters this may limit their use to tougher opponents only. And some players may go for style over substance, choosing a “bad” item because they like the look of it (if that’s you, more power to you).

How I’d Change Things

I’d like to see some more of the STALKER considerations coming into to Skyrim.

Firstly, I’d make weight matter. In Skyrim, it seems your speed and stamina regeneration are unaffected by what you carry until you cross the encumberance mark. I’d like every bit of carried weight penalise a character slightly in terms of speed and/or stamina regeneration. (It might be necessary to remove or reduce penalties for wearing heavy armour to prevent double penalisation.)

With this change, you want to minimise weight, not just stay below a certain threshold. The weight of equipment now matters in addition to its damage or armour rating. Now, instead of mindlessly loading up to your encumberance limit, you need to consider each item. The difference might not mean much to an already-slow heavy-armour type. But for a character that relies on speed in combat, paring down your gear to the least you think you can get away with can make for quite an interesting challenge.

Secondly, I’d like weapons and armour to be breakable. Let me be clear: I don’t want to go back to the Oblivion system of carrying sacks of repair hammers. I also don’t want items to ever be permanently destroyed. And I’d only want this breakage to be fairly rare. But it seems silly to me that you only ever need one set of weapons. Having to make do with your backup dagger, or something you scrounged from a foe, can add tension and excitement to dungeon crawling.

Finally, I’d like more stats than just raw damage. I’ve mentioned weight, above. How about variable swing speeds, or different stamina use for power attacks? What about the speed and noise of unsheathing the weapon? Perhaps different rates of critical hits, or chance to stagger? Weapons that do better against armoured foes? Weapons that suffer when employed against massive creatures? Weapons that hold a “charge” of poison for longer, or can’t be poisoned at all? Even better if the smithing skill can tweak all these values individually.

An Aside About Arrows

A bit of a separate issue is one of arrows. The current situation is silly. Arrows weigh nothing, so the sensible thing is to hoard them. You’re either a skilled archer with perks to make arrows rather painful, or you’re a bow neophyte who shoots only every now and again — either way you won’t be going through that many arrows. All my characters so far (archers and non-archers) have massive stores of arrows which are increasing over time. It’s totally pointless.

I would like to see arrows weigh something. Carrying hundreds of arrows should be a bad idea, as it would be in reality. Make them more recoverable to balance this out, if need be. The extra depth in conserving ammunition adds challenge. “Do I waste an arrow on this skeever, or just use my sword? Should I risk shooting that distant Falmer or wait until I can get a more certain shot?”

But… if that proves too much for people to stomach, how about we just ditch the whole arrows-as-individual-items thing? Let there be quiver items to put into your quiver slot. The quiver could have a decent weight but have unlimited ammo. (The archery arrow-recovery perk may need reconsidering with this idea.) Quivers could be upgradable (quiver of iron arrows, quiver of steel arrows etc) and enchantable.

You Disagree?

I would argue that my changes are very much in line with a game that is meant to be at least part RPG. But I understand that what I consider a fun challenge to determine optimal gear loadout would be boring drudgery for others.

So why not include a setting for this? Perhaps options to turn each feature on and off. Simulation games have been doing this for ages.

Then again, I suppose this is exactly what a mod is for. Thank the Eight I have the PC version.