I would like to suggest a new system for implementation here called "Battle Story" .... I posted it elsewhere but I moved it here as its own thread to explore it more fully away from the other thread, which was just about Armour. This idea has multiple possible applications.....

Battle Story would be a Bardic skill that you use after each battle to help you collect data about your previous battles without having to do it yourself, IF YOU WANT TO USE IT, that is ....

What it does:

The game records the last 10 battles you fought (not just visually , but informationally as well, remembering all the various kind of attacks and weapons that were used against you, and specifically the damage done by each weapon, and how it impacted (bleeding, stunning, staggering, bruising, crushing) your character. It's only the last 10 battles, so the system won't grow larger in your save-game file over time, it's always only just 10 slots being filled. You don't need to see that information per se, but the game records it all for the Battle Story's algorythm. Then, when you meet the Armourer, you can "Relate Your Most Current Battle Stories" to him or her. They then listen to you recount your last few battles, which may start with just a few words ... All of this happens basically behind the scenes. You walk in, talk the Armourer, recant your story, and he simply recommends the best kind of armour for your character to be wearing at this time based on the kinds of recent battles you've fought, which you basically pretend to recant to him as some epic battle tales that only really take place in your memory and imagination between the fades. As so:

ARMOURER DIALOGUE OPTION: "Relate Your Most Current Battle Stories"
"I was just outside of town here, when I was attacked by a Goblin Lord with a large scimitar....." and then after a few moments of elasped time demonstrated by a fade to show time elapsing, the NPC says:

"Uh-huh, ah, I see. Yes. Ahh, okay, well, let me help you then. You ... seem to be vulnerable to lunging attacks along your sides because you only use leather there. Most of the attacks you mentioned in the last battle ... seem to indicate ... that you should switch to wearing Chainmail, because the most frequent kind of attack you are experiencing appears to be lunging attacks... why don't you look in my shop and find a good set of chainmail to trade in for your leather armour?"

The game could then anolyze your recent battles for a pattern of weakness, and the suggest the best kind of armour to wear for that weakness. Then the Armourer could take on the aspect of being a sort of "Guide" to your health, and thus be able to sell his Armour more like he would really try to sell it, by being a survival coach (think Insurance Salesman)...

BEYOND THIS USE, there are others which are potentially even more interesting and useful:

2. Personality ... Recount Your Battle Stories ... this for an increase in Fame or Infamy, depending on the style of life you are leading in your game ... resulting in some form of benefit either way. Are you the best fighter in Tamrial ... or the sneakiest thief in the world? Among thieves, your wretched exploits might seem like the coolest thing, raising your infamy and dark aires.

3. Bardic ... Tell a Story to a crowd of children or onlookers to earn travelling money on the road. Perhaps you can only do this once per town per in-game month. And the amount isn't very much, but it would be enough for a hotel, some food, and some basics.

4. Romantic ... Tell Your Adventures... this, to TRY and seduce a lovely gal (or if you're a girl, a handsome stud) ....

5. Fortify Town Morale .... Tell of Your Dragon Kills .... this, to help a town living in fear (and thus not going out to work or buy anything, causing the town to begin a slow death) to begin to feel that its possible to survive despite dragons, and that others are doing something about them to bring hope .... You can arrive in some towns to find the people missing ... not at work, the shops all closed. Posters are up showing frightful images of dragons terrorizing Skyrim. If you go into the homes, they are all filled with people who don't take kindly to your barging in and can force you out with a new ability of residents to "kick you out" ... But if you can first convince them to let you tell them your "story" perhaps their fear will lessen, and abate, and they may begin to take small steps toward rebuilding the community. You would, later down the line, become the hero of their town for helping to get the ball rolling again.

6. Quest Centric ... "Go and kill 10 completely different monsters from around the world in order to have the most interesting Battle Story to share in the world, in order to win a "Bard's Tale" Contest for a key that will unlock a secret chamber in a Dragon Wall atop a high mountain pass ...."
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EDIT: (I thought of some other ideas and so far no one's posted anything here, so I'll just add them to the original post...)

7. Other Adventurers ... the game could have other adventurers come at the same time as you to audition for the right to undertake certain missions. These could be high-profile adventures where you could gain some notoriety for solving them. They wouldn't be connected to the Main Plot, obviously, since if these quests were stolen from you, you couldn't complete the game. But here's how it works: the game records 1-2 "Battle Story" photos of you in combat with the more powerful monsters in the game (for your level) ... When something cool is about to happen (the CPU can be sort of watching for this), it automatically snaps 2-3 photos of your battle sequence when it's the most cool, from a 3rd person camera regardless of what view mode you are in. After the battle the system asks you choose which "memory" you want to keep from the battle, you can only keep one. This helps you "see" the important image of that battle so you'll always remember it yourself. And during the interview for whether you are to be accepted for this job, each NPC's "Battle Story" is displayed on-screen for you to judge, and then yours is displayed also. The imagenumber is recorded inside your savegame and the image is saved by that number. The imagenumber references what monster you fought, and how quickly you dispatched it. Those are used to form a hueristic algorythm as to the Impression you are leaving on the one doing the hiring. He then picks between the randomly-generated NPC and you. If your last 10 battles weren't all that interesting, then you can fail the interview and the job will go to your rival. Can't you just see it now?

"Hahaha, *I* killed a Giant Semi-Luminous Deviled Adder Demon from the Pits of Demolvogus .... but YOU only killed the 4-Headed Monkey to the South ... ! You svck!" So ... you have to go back and try to kill a few more advanced and interesting creatures.....

That could lead to some interesting outcomes. Where you could A) try to hunt your rival down and kill him to take the job away from him. If you kill him, the assignment meant for him automatically goes into your Quest Journal. OR ... B) He gets away and becomes a thorn in your side, returning the next time to try and outbid you again. The system does not allow for you to kill him in the presence of the man giving the job, and you are usually held for a time while the man is given a chance to leave town. So yes, you would have to actually track him using a tracking ability or skill of some kind.

I think this would a phenomenal way to show us, the player, is not always the center of attention, that there are other adventurers in the world, and if we want to be able to take the good jobs that come along, we will have to try to keep our Battle Story rating as high as possible. No killing rats! Now, that spell that makes enemies friendly toward you would be very very useful... you cast that spell on hell-bent vermin (dogs, rats, etc) and they stop attacking you and wander off in a daze.

Battle Story ... a system too detailed to possibly ever make it into Skyrim .... but hey ... there are always Modders. Go for it !

Then ... what would be awesome would be if someone, with this system already in place, couldn't somehow make it exportable ... so that our character's most current Battle Story would be compressed into a file that we could then "import" as a "save-game" file that automatically plays the Battle Story and displays the heuristics for that player's level. So you and your friend could compare Battle Stories of your character fighting similar monsters to sort of "compare" one to another. There was a guy on these forums somewhere whose signature speaks about battling him in Oblivion by sending your character to him. He would recreate your character and sent it into an Arena, and then judge if your character was more or less powerful than his character, and then publish the results for you. This kind of thing would do all of this for you.

Again, very complicated ... but potentially very cool. Later.

I agree very interesting idea - but I think we are talking next console/cloud computing as there are many variables that play into your idea.

Battle Story could be useful another way, too. Guild Advancement and Mission Assignment.

I think it would a lot more fun if Guild Advancement was tied in with your performance inside the Guild, and then they added in the opportunity to lose jobs to other Guild Members using this method. Since Battle Story is a way of comparing your value (based on your last few battles with other "adventurers (or Guild Members) in order to determine who gets the next mission), it would serve as an excellent way to up the ante for your Guild missions. That way, If you don't work hard to "live up" to the Guild Standards, then you won't get the good jobs. Other Guild Members of your same rank within the Guild would be taking them from you, and you would lose opportunities to advance within your own Guild. Your advancement would slow to a halt until you went out and raised your Battle Story Rating. (Or "Battle Rating") for short.)

So now, there would be a lot more pressure to strategize which quests to take, and which monsters to kill, in order to keep your rating high so you can score more Guild missions and prove yourself to your Guild. If not every Guild job is yours for the taking, but earned by your overall performance and value to the Guild, then you have a new pressure-building dynamic at work that changes the flavor of your quests. Your outside adventuring would then be heavily influenced by how your Guild might judge your value.

This would mean you would work harder to find ways in combat to improve your effectiveness and be much more lethal so that your Battle Rating would be higher. Couple this with a system for Quests that you can fail such as "Bounty Hunting" missions where when you catch up to your mark, the games saves 1 minute before you arrive, then turns off the save feature, spawns your target, and you get one chance to take them down. If you fail, the failure is saved into your save game and you can't go back and try it again. If you win, you raise your Battle Rating. If you fail, its as if your target "got away" ... and you can either spend more time tracking them down AGAIN which will take a lot longer and be a lot harder to track this time... or you can go and collect a new easier Bounty Mission. If you collect a new Bounty Mission, your Battle Rating won't increase, but only return to what it was before the previous Bounty was assigned. But if you chase that guy you lost a 2nd time, your original bounty, and catch up with him, and defeat him, then you GAIN the Battle Rating you lost plus a bonus, putting you ahead (which was your goal)...

Now, when tied with Bounty Missions that can win/fail based on a one-time shot against your enemy, the reward for winning will be a lot higher adrenaline rush, which would make the game a lot of exciting than the current system where you can always reload and try it again until you win every time. Some non essential missions should have the ability to be failed and still continue the game, having to live with the result of failure. The current system does not allow for any failure in the direction of your play, so if you fail, you die and just reload and try again. But what I am saying is there should be (for non-essential missions) a branching path system of success/failure and the results for each. And then we'd have something really fun in the game we've never seen before.

I think it would be immensely fun and rewarding to try and stay in your Guild's good graces!

HUMM.. interesting. but whats the point of actually telling my "battle story" to the armourer? i don't see it, lol when i was reading i tought that you wanted us to implement our 10 last battles in our armour. in form of some sort of runes and stuff lol.. that would be a cool thing, maybe you could tell your story to a actual bard and he would sing it to you and to other npcs in the tavern. yea... even tought i don't think it would be in game, there always a *coff *coff * "MOD"*coff *coff * possibility..

Sounds kind of cool, but I could do without. It would probably be better to just have more armor variety to choose from.

Definitely cool but a monumental challenge to mod. It requires you to program an entirely different feature into the game to record your battles and what happens during them. This is one of those mods that would frustrate me so much trying to make it that I would put my eyes out with a red hot poker just so I would have an excuse not to finish it :tongue:

It's a good idea no doubt. I think it would be cool if you could brag about the best fights you have been in, so it would record your 10 most recent fights, and your 10 hardest fights, which you could pick. Unfortunately, will never be implemented in the game, but if a modder sees potential, I think it could make a very good mod after a lot of work.

It's a very interesting idea. I like it. I doubt it will be moded in the first two years though (well, who knows), so don't forget you idea and proppose again every few months, untill moders are used to the new system and one decide to implement.

Wow this is a Great idea! well speaking in inmercion therms this could be EPIC

i like the bard idea and the quest of search 10 diferent creatures to fight in order to perform the best story ever.

but the armorer part isn't good, you dont need collect fighting data to say "that armor isn't for you" you just need character data,

Example:

if the character is the sneaky guy and he is wearing heavy boots, then this could happen:

ARMOURER DIALOGUE OPTION: "Relate the kind of warrior you are"
"i use bows and arrows, i preffer the silence, if the enemy dont know where i am then my armor shouldn't be that heavy"

"Uh-huh, ah, I see. then why are you wearing those big boots? well thats not of my busines anyway maybe the mithril is your kind of metal, look this are the items you could be interested on, or maybe you just want clothes rather than armor, my wife can help you she sells some items you could be interested on"

or something like that

That's definitely an AWESOME idea, I LOVE IT!
I have doubts on how you could make that in Skyrim though... but then again, they already surprised me so...

Maybe in TES 6 is we can't have it in Skyrim