Welcome to the General Discussion Group. This is a catch-all group for any kind of discussion whether is has anything to do with elder scrolls, fallout, or video games in general or not. Discuss whatever you want here, but please observe our ground rules.
1. You can discuss (almost) anything, but please respect everyone! Do not "bash" other people's beliefs or views, and do not be disrespectful. If we see misconduct here, you will be removed from the group.
2. No discussion related to pornography, pirating, or anything that violates Ning's Terms of Service are permitted here.
3. Racist, sexist, homophobic remarks are not allowed at any time.
With that being said, post away and have fun!
CLICK HERE TO ADD YOUR OWN DISCUSSION
Replies
Hmm, I'd say, at the very, basic play testing. You know, getting combat down, how this character acts, whatever armor and weapons you choose need to be ontained, etc
I’d say it’s essential. Without doing it you have no idea whether the build is any fun to play. And the whole point of making a build is to guide others on how to recreate a character they might find fun to play.
100% necessary in my opinion. Every build should be played from start to finish. A build might look good on paper but then you might end up not having enough skills or levels to get all the perks you want. Playthroughs help with progression and also to test things to make sure they actually work. If you have not played your build I can almost guarantee people will notice.
The best part about playtesting your idea is when your playthrough reveals ways to improve upon your original idea.
i can understand wanting to skip the playtesting. The very early parts of a build can be pretty boring. In cases like that I remind myself that i'm playin gon PC, so i'll will tweak my ini settings to have the XP gain a little faster. Nothing ridiculous, but maybe 20-25% so I can break through the early boring parts more easily and make it to the meat of the build. If a build is fine when it all starts coming together, that's great, but if it takes 40 levels to take off, and those 40 levels are an absolute slog, then it's not so great.
I think an interesting question to ask everyone at this point is: what is your playtesting process like?
I think that playtesting is an important step in Character Builds. However, I'm not going to say it's "vital", because sometimes you just know a build will work. And it isn't "just" because it looks good on paper, but rather it's because you've played the game for so long that you already have a firm idea of how everything will work. hell you've probably played a variant of the build you're posting beforehand; you just don't remember it. Now this applies more to vanilla Skyrim than modded, and moreso for less complicated builds, but sometimes a concept just works because you truly know it does.
So while playtesting a build is important, what's more important is the wisdom and experience to know what does and doesn't work and for what reason. I can't vouch for how "fun" a build like that would be, but at least on how well it works I can say if you've played the game enough you pretty much know the motion. My revamp of Ponty's "Paladin of Molag Bal" was like that.