Haaa, that reminds me of how people used to tell me "Don't you want a car? When you get one you're gonna LOVE the freedom!" To this day I still think "car=freedom" is still kind of an oxymoron. I still kinda miss that no-car life sometimes. I was less financially burdened and hella fit. Cars are such a money pit sometimes. And really most of the opportunities they give you involve spending more money. They're essential for certain things, depending on where you live, but parts of owning them always kinda suck. I hate driving. People are dicks out on the road. And a lot of the roads around here are so poorly designed I wonder if we even have civil engineers here.
I made a terrible mistake with my Skyrim playthrough... I went right into the main questline and now these friggin dragons get in the way of everything I try to do. It's like they know when I'm breaking away to turn in a minor quest. So many just "Alright... so I just need to give so and so this annnnddd OH GODDAMNIT WHY! WHY NOW?!"
It's not like the dragon fights are hard... just obnoxiously tedious. Mostly they fly around and my character can't do shit about it. I've been console-killing them when I can... but even that, you still have to wait for them to stop flying around doing nothing but dragon stuff and actually land... not on a building - doesn't count for some reason. They have to land on the ground before you can console-kill them. Something to do with how the AI is scripted... it can't switch into the death animation until the script triggering it to land or crash is running, meaning it just won't do anything at all. Might be possible to make an xEdit script where you can trigger those scripts at will, but there's a good chance of breaking the game in the process. Forcing scripts is an easy CTD. Sometimes corrupted saves, too. It needs to be clean. There can be nothing left unresolved with all of the scripts related to the dragon. Would be easier to hook into what's coded in for dragonrend and rely on the console for the rest.
It wouldn't be so bad if there was an actual dynamic to the fights, but it's just wait-attack-wait-attack. Zelda-style boss fights, just done really poorly. And there's never a time when I think to myself "Gee, I could really stand to suddenly drop everything I'm doing to stare at a dragon flying around for a while and hit it with the occasional arrow till it dies." And then when you get dragonrend, it's not any more interesting... just a little more straightforward. I'm trying to get there as quick as possible. But along the way, I've been caught up with these damned things at least a dozen times. I'm just glad they haven't killed any critical, yet inexplicably non-essential NPC's yet... I have a mod that makes them all run inside. But what this means is that they often fly AWAY from me like they're lost, attacking whatever wildlife happens to be within a mile or two of town...
I think of their randomness like this. Usually for a boss fight, there's something big and important on the line... some reward you're working towards. But most times I am fighting dragons to turn in some minor thing for basic loot, or actually just START a quest. So it's like if you had to fight a boss to get, I dunno... some health potions or something. Or you had to fight a hard boss at the start of an easy dungeon for some basic armor. So it's never all that satisfying. It's just a punishment for nothing. You'd avoid it entirely if you could, right? Game theory, man.
I'll never forget when a dragon attack happened after I turned over all of my gear for that one part in the main questline right before a dragon attacked, leaving my ranger build with no defenses or ways to fight back except for the fire shout. I mean, how could I forget that when it happened in two separate playthroughs?
At least the second time I was on PC instead of a PS3...
I forgot why I usually skip the main questline until I have an OP "out" that I know will end them fast. I could say a lot about Skyrim's dragons. They really messed that up pretty badly. Sad to say I find the game 1000x more enjoyable without the dragons. Imagine that! A game that's better without the centerpiece feature! Only bethesda, man... and they really are SO cool. I love the dragons. I just really hate dealing with their BS.
