Realtime mod, synched to your computer/console clock is kinda cool.

Ah, ok sorry. I didn't really understand what you were suggesting.

It would be a nice option. I always like more options. But alas, time scale must be in! Maybe since it's (supposedly) bigger they will change the scale a bit

If the world is the size of Daggerfall's then I'm ok with 1x or 2x time scale In all seriousness for the most part I'm ok with the 20x time scale if the game was much larger or there were larger ares of openness without location then I'd be ok with the timescale going down.

Like poor character aesthetics, timescale is something that BGS has ignored the player demands (i.e., via modding) ever since Morrowind. I doubt that FO4 will change that refusal to listen to what we want, unfortunately, so we'll be forced to change it ourselves. Simple enough via console or mods, but still very annoying when a company refuses to pay attention to what we want, especially when it is something where the changes are so well-known. Todd claims that they pay attention to how people play their games, but I cannot figure out what/who they are anolyzing when they ignore some of the most popular and obvious changes people make (e.g., timescale, character aesthetics).

I always change timescale to 10X. This was perfect for Morrowind, Oblivion, FO3 (and FONV, although its other issues and the fact that it wasn't created by BGS make it somewhat irrelevant), as well as Skyrim. The latter had a huge issue with BGS' change to respawns being so slow compared to earlier games where they were far too quick. Simply put, respawn needs to be adjusted along with timescale. I normally change respawns to 1 week from 3 days along with the 10X timescale edit and this works extremely well in earlier games. Skyrim is an exception because the vanilla timescale of 20X is still way too fast while the vanilla respawn of 30 days is far too slow. I have no idea what they were thinking with such drastic changes, especially when the preferred adjustments can be readily seen in their player base.

It's actually very easy to offer a way to please everyone, of course. Simply add both timescale and respawn settings to the Game Options/Settings screen. After all, Todd and Pete keep claiming "be anyone, do anything" (a mistaken claim due to the very limited character aesthetics) so this type of addition is very obvious and not difficult to implement. Let the player set up their game to their personal taste/preference/desire. It's not something that BGS should worry about restricting, as players have demonstrated very clearly.

By the way, I cannot see anyone trying to play a BGS game for an hour or two. That would be like not playing at all due to the complexity and slow pace of the games. This is similar to complex strategy games like Civilization, Galactic Civilizations, and Sins of a Solar Empire. There's just no way to attempt to play such games if you only have 1-2 hours play time. That's barely enough to experience passive entertainment such as movies or TV shows, or even begin to read a novel.

Best solution: Uncompress the maps!

Seriously, I'd love for the world map to be scaled up 10x or so. Having a journey from one location to the next actually take a noticeable amount of time would add a lot to my enjoyment of the game. Would have to be a mod, though; I can't see most players enjoying a backpacking simulator.

One of the racing games I have allows that option, and it is pretty cool. Can get a bit "samey" if you always play at the same times every day, though. Also, I think it'd play havoc with any of Bethesda's games. NPCs would be teleporting all over the place, breaking scripts, quests, and probably your computer in the process.

that is NOT how games work, simple as that.

Says you.

Well, ignoring the infinite budget required to make a Beth-style map ten times more roomy ...... there's still the issue that most gamers out there don't have the time for it to take them several actual hours for a basic round trip to a quest location.

Most of the games with uber-large maps (Just Cause, GTA, Saint's Row...) tend to have lots of filler (procedural background NPCs & non-interactable buildings) as well as plentiful access to high-speed transport (cars, planes, etc).

...that said, maybe 50% larger wouldn't hurt. With view distances being longer these days, it becomes a bit more obvious in, say, Oblivion & Fallout 3 just how close some places are.

Yea no, I'm never going to buy a Bethesda game with a map the size of Steelport or San Andres. That would just be a damn nightmare to traverse.

Hell, even in Fallout 1 the time it took to traverse the map was annoying, to the point that in Fallout 2 they said screw it and introduced the Highwayman to make the journey more bare-able. If they want to introduce vehicles and none-destroyed roads with making it easier to traverse off-road areas maybe I'll consider it but controlling that would be so terrible.

Hell, if you do want to know what it's like use the XRE cars mod for New Vegas.

... which is one of the reasons I do that by loading a mod. When my preferred time scale (10x) is set on new game start, everything should add up nicely. It also has the nice effect that I do not have to update my preferred settings every time I start a new game.

I hate it when games do this. I typically only have time to play in the late evening. I don't want to be restricted to only ever seeing nighttime in-game, and I don't want game time to pass when I'm not playing. I want to witness the continuity of my character's experience in whatever real-life time I have to do so.

Only if using extremely low or high values. I always have 12, no problems in any BGS games since Oblivion.

12 makes most sense to me. 5 minutes real time = 1 hour game time, 1 hour real time = 12 hours game time, 2 hours real time = 24 hours game time. It just fits

Except 'just add the option!' isn't viable. Why do you think they go out of their way to polish so much of that stuff out? Adding too many options is detrimental for many players, especially new ones.

Bull. Gal Civ I play in spurts all the time. Sins shouldn't take you more than 1-2 hours for a game (especially if its multiplayer) and I have read plenty of novels while sitting on the toilette, and that is far less time per session than what we are talking about here. Most people are advlts, with families and responsibilities. They can't just sit and play for many hours at a time (unless they get that glorious Sunday afternoon). They grab a an hour or two here, and an hour or two there. Most people don't even put 100 hours into games like Skyrim. You don't represent the general player base.

Fallout games should be like that; Fallout 1 & 2 were like that. I would loved to see a reasonably sized map for a change. Todd Howard has mentioned that they originally made a vast map, but decided to cut out most of it; a shame IMO.

*But don't mistake though: I would be using Map travel to get anywhere.

Fallout 1 and 2's map were square tiles you wandered through, the map system they had is no where comparable with how modern fallout games are like.

He did? I hadn't heard this anywhere. A pity if it's true. If they did make more of the map than we will be able to visit, I hope it's still in there somewhere for modders to unlock and allow access to it and start filling it up with player made content.

He said that in reference to FO3. They started with a bigger wasteland, but it felt too empty, too much distance between settlements. So they compressed it a bit, and filled in more wasteland content until it was fun to explore. Personally, I'll take fun over realism, and BGS are great at delivering that.

They tried that with Witcher 3. People complain that it's a whole lotta nothing of particular interest to travel through. Furthermore, that'd make maps prohibitively large, and then there'd be complaints about procedurally generated repetition in all the space they couldn't possibly be realistically expected to hand-craft.

WIth racing games, time of day is largely cosmetic, with maybe visibility being affected. With a game like Elder Scrolls games or BGS-era Fallout games, things work on a schedule. Basically the nocturnal players would never get open stores, and diurnal players would never get to enjoy the night critters. Any quests involved with the time of day would prohibit one or the other.

So, unfeasible in both cases.

I know what the Fallout maps were like, but do you? In Fallout, the overland map depicted the general terrain underfoot. At any point in any tile on the map, the PC can visit that area of the map, and Fallout will represent its general terrain.

http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/FO1_map_Behavior_zpsa30410f2.gif

They directly compare, and FO3's map could have trivially worked the same way ~only instead of generic terrain depiction, the game could have loaded the PC on the spot in the 3D worldspace.

My recollection was that it was less compressed city areas, and they decided that it was too much to walk through.

Same here. I think the timing is perfect in FO3 and Skyrim is perfect for that reason.

I used 6 in Fallout: New Vegas - One single playthrough, all DLC completed, 500+ hours. No problems whatsoever.

Also using 6 in Skyrim - over 650 hours so far, still playing. Again, no problems at all.

Set both via console at the beginning of the game (also running RND and no issues with that either).

Ooh, and it just occurred to me that some of the quests would get really hard to do..... "Meet the Assassin at 2AM, outside the shrine" turns into an issue with a synced clock

(Or even just "meet us at the Inn two days from now at Noon". Whee?)

I was thinking more along the lines of just taking the existing world model and scaling it on individual axes rather than creating and populating a larger, more "stuff-filled" worldspace. Not sure how Bethesda's overworld model is handled, but scaling individual axes on other models in Nifskope isn't terribly hard (read: I'm a 3D modelling troglodyte and I figured out how to do it). Provided the anchor points for interior entrances and whatnot are tied to nodes on the model (and I'm pretty sure they are), I'd expect it to be reasonably doable by someone who knows what they're doing.

And I'm aware that it'd have to be a mod, and likely a very niche one at that. I would really like it, but I'm fully aware that most people wouldn't.

For those with PC, in Skyrim, and I think the command was the same for F3, and FNV, you just open console and type:

Set timescale to <#>

For example, if you use "Set timescale to 10", 10 minutes will pass in game for every 1 minute in the real world.

If you're stuck by the restrictions of a console, then, there will likely be a mod available, even on request on Nexus, or another site.