I like this idea. I think it is a recurrent problem in many CRPG. Every fighting NPC are murderous psychopaths. I think many petty fights should last until one is unconscioous or surrender. It should be possible to spare NPC if they just fall unconscious. I think that NPC and PC should be able to ask for mercy and surrender befoire it's too late.

To take things in the good order, I think that most bandits should first ask you to give your money bedore trying to kill you.

These types of threads are so funny. :tongue: The hardcoe options always win in the polling, but it's so far from reality. Yes I would absolutely love to have all these options too (or restrictions when it comes to map location and movement) but it's so far away from what the general gamer out there wants, so it won't be realized in the actual game. Sadly.

Well at least, it should be voiced that those kind of options are interesting ones for some players. If people do not express themself, there will be even less chances that their wishes will be fullfilled. I don't want the devs to think that all players agree with the ones who complained they couldn't find Caius Cosades in MW.
I don't know what are the sources of infos devs use to check potential players wishes and rants, but I hope TES forum are a place they consider.
Waiting to see what devs actually choosed for next TES, all we can do is to propose our ideas. Polls are a way to check how far they are shared by a majority of forumers or not. It is a bit more quantitative and easier to read than series of discontinuous posts.

I hear you, and I completely agree with you! Of course we must let our voices be heard. And of course Bethesda takes input, at least to some degree. I didn't mean to ridicule this thread in any way. I just tried to bring up the other side of it, to put light on the fact that there's so different needs and not all can be satisfied, and I wanted to sort of reflect the frustration we as hardcoe fans have, with us wanting to have so much complexity and detail versus the big masses of gamers who want easily acessible games.

i completely agree with you. no "gps", no exact map markers from NPC's, no constant compass, no location markers on map. please.

Bethesda, please, look at this polls, PLEASE!!!

I think it makes sense that if an NPC knows where you need to go, s/he marks it on your map. However, once you get to the mouth of the cave/doors of the ruin/whatever, you're on you own. It makes no sense that the NPC knows exactly where to go from there, unless they have done the route themselves, in which case they would have just done whatever needed to be accomplished themselves (or presumably died trying). I like the idea of the magic compass being something which is found/bought, and can be discarded or broken.

Well, I think this poll option really means something if you add maps a optional items of various quality. If you don't have a map, the NPC will never be able to point anything on your map. So will it happen if your map is false or unprecise. I think NPC should give you direction with various degrees of precision. If they are precise, you should be able to spot the good point on your map. If they are not, you'll have to test your luck! And a last point, some NPC may not be very good with maps, or may even don't know about their use at all, but might precisely know the path to a specific place.

Heeeeh, lots of interesting suggestions there ! Voted for most of them.

To sum up, I would like especially :

1) to have to find things by myself, with general directions
2) To face a more dangerous environment. Branches falling, plants poisoning me, NPCs ambushing me (goodie!), all that sound great.

If they could implement a Resident Evil/Golden Eye system where upon walking into a trap, you have to press a certain amount of buttons in a order, or risk being killed/losing50% or more of your health.

This could also be used for enemy ambushes and boss fights.

For some reason more people than I expected don't seem to care about balancing...

I'm quoting selectively, as the same points were brought up by different persons:



Imagine how much more random a fight would become, should characters randomly (well, agility checks are usually random to a high extent) fall down and be KO for some seconds.



This is the system of choice for pen and paper RPGs, but pen and paper RPGs always have a GM to help out with balancing. A computer RPG does not. 3 unlucky crits during a fight, no healing possible, you lose. Also, most pen and papers are multiplayer, and having one player unable to fight does not mean the demise of the whole party. Compare with TES...



Blight diseases were quite a problem for level-7 players in Morrowind. Imagine your Endurance of 50 reduced by 40 in the middle of a fight! Blight cure potions were too expensive for that level, and spells were totally unreachable (except by munchkineering).



Weather... again, something extremely uncontrollable by players, just making the game more erratic. "1% chance of instant death for no reason".

There are, of course, some really good suggestions in the poll and in the posts below it. Realism is not always gamebreaking or unbalanced. It just has to be thought over first.

I think that a balance has to be found simply because through UI we do not have neither the appropriate sensorial influx, nor the perfect body control. Therefore, the game must assume that our character have to manage correctly and automatically a basic array of tasks, like staying on his feet. But I think some little risks can interfere also with those automatisms. They are not purely random, but due to some specific, forseeable environmental hazards. You think it would be a problem to risk a fall on ice? Couln't the player understand before running on it that there will be a risk? You wouldn't like random heavy damages from a terrible trap or a collapsing bridge? But can't the player assess his character path before being trapped or walking on an obviously ruined bridge?

I think the idea of environmental risks is to ask the player to check for more dangers than the trivial and irealistic presence of hostile monster every 100m. Getting off track is more about finding the safer path than battling against hordes of gobelins.

The principle behind this poll is to add another gameplay dimension with its own challenges and its own player skills. As we already have to play against creatures in combat, and to some extent against the story intrigue, the idea is to play against the gameworld environment. Being killed by too dangerous creatures or NPC was a pain, but was often due to either a bad preparation or a bad assessment of the risks. So should it be with a travel or an exploration : you don't go mapping a mountain path of skirim with bare feets, a light shirt, and just a single piece of bread.

I have no objections to this kind of traps; what I do object to is when a random factor determines the outcome of battles. From a balancing point of view, there is no problem with falling on ice either, as long as it doesn't happen when fighting or fleeing. But this would be a problem when realism is concerned...

I do not agree, that is a part of this new gameplay challenge : the player will have to consider the environment. In Oblivion, it didn't matter where you were : on a solid flat road, on a hill slope under rain, it did not affect your character movement. I would like to play with the terrain, the environment hazard during fights, to set ambushes, to trap NPC or monsters myself... Environment hazards should also apply to NPC and creatures : running on a frozen lake with a very agile character to flee a clumsy monster may be an advantage, for the creature will have higher risks of falling. We may also imagine that NPC AI will make them avoid too hazardeous areas (if they can spot them off course).

In current TES, if you missed your risk assesment during a fight you have to load and replay, changing your strategy. So should it be if you badly assessed environment hazards. But I agree that the degree of penalty of not managing the environment should be carefully balanced, not to penalize the player with factors he couldn't forsee.

I think that there are two things behind the fast travel concept that are often merged while they should not :
1/ Fast gaming travel, which correspond to Oblivion one and which is a gameplay and storytelling feature aiming at keeping the rythm of the adventure.
2/ Fast means of transportation that have your character move faster from point A to point B than a walk, which were the ones of MW.

Now, I think both should cohabitate. The first is an assumption that your character can move to a known location with its current mean of transportation (feet of horse). I think some limits should be set to such system so that everything, everywhere, anytime may not be so easilly "fast travelable". I once proposed something about this like being able to activiate fast travel only when you find a direction on the road side. It may also be activable only if your character has a good quality map with both your current location and your destination marked on it. To finish, as in DF, you may have options like trying to take the faster path or the safer one, sleep in inns or camp. Such option could activate a random encounter system (attack by bandit on the road side or by a group of wolves in your camp). If a kind of survival/navigation skill or an optionnal compass were added, there may even be a risk of getting lost : the fast travel is switched off, and you have no clue about your position. Up to you to find a significant landmark, a road or a village to continue your trip. Anyway, such trip may take more time if you move by foot than if you ride a horse or take the second kind of fast travel :

This second system could cohabitate with the universal fast travel if it means :
1/ A faster trip, which should be something really interesting if some quests were timed. If someone has been captured by a band of ogres, the longuer you delay the quest, the higher the risk of the prisonner to be eaten. Or if an important NPC wants a messenger to inform another NPC of a great danger, it should be better that this second NPC get the message before the problem occurs.
2/ The hability to go to places you have not yet explored. If some limitations are set to the other fast travel as having a good map, knowing the place or finding a direction, longuer trips to fully new locations may require the services of skilled guides.
3/ A safer trip, with much less risks of being attacked. this should be important if it becomes possible at last to play non-fighting characters (I consider fireball throwers mages as fighting characters, not scholars!).

The principle of such system is to allow players to keep the rythm of the storytelling by removing some long and fastidious trips if they want, while not making it an exploit to avoid dangers of travels.

natural disastors
negative weather effects
Bad food debuffs good food buffs
basic needs
ALSO morrowind style travel balance with more mages guild locations or other boat locations so that way no Area is totally isolated. PLUS YOU HAVE A FREAKING HORSE!!!

After trying the eating/drinking/sleeping survival experience with New Vegas hardcoe mode (Harder hardcoe Rates + Expensive Wasteland mods), I started a new game of Oblivion with Real Sleep Extended, Real Hunger and Real Thirst. What an amazing and fun experience!

The discussion of hunting and cooking in the GI article, as well as the very detailed cuts of meat, imply that there might be some sort of optional "survival" type mode for eating/drinking/sleeping. (If you don't need to eat, why else would you cook food?) Really looking forward to this, otherwise if it is not included, I'll wait until the modding community adapts some of these survival mods for Skyrim.

Regarding the map markers and fast travel, I've heard lots of complaints, and personally I would enjoy the experience more without map markers for quests. But doesn't everyone realize you can simply deactivate the active quest to get rid of the green quest markers in Oblivion?

And I've played through one very long 160 hours+ playthrough of New Vegas only using fast travel on two occasions. I don't like using fast travel but I don't care at all if it's available because the player is the one who chooses to use fast travel or not. If you want an option to turn fast travel off, it's called "self discipline" - don't click on the dang map marker.

The complaints I've read about quests designed for a game that incorporates a fast travel system seem like BS to me. If you are playing Oblivion without using fast travel, for example, you accumulate lots of active, open quests and when you get to each general area there is usually some task from one of the quests that you started that can be carried out in the area you are in. It makes absolutely no difference to my enjoyment of the game that there is fast travel available for other players who want to use it. I had lots of fun in Oblivion as well as New Vegas by treating every journey to a different part of the map like a real journey, and often wandering around exploring new territory.

I do like the Oblivion mods that add the ability to book passage on a ship for a price, but other than that and the daedric shrine teleportation spell from Supreme Magicka, I try to not use any sort of fast travel at all.

The ship passage thing is cool, but basically it is just fast travel with a bit more game play balance by deducting some of your gold. The real immersive/survival experience involves taking the time to make the journey to wherever it is you are trying to get to without using any sort of fast travel. In New Vegas, there were lots of interesting NPCs with backstory and little bits of story you uncover in almost every location. In Oblivion there are a lot more randomly generated dungeons and creatures without much story going on, which can become tedious over the course of 100-200+ hour playthrough unless you have a lot of mods installed.

Hopefully Skyrim will weave more interesting backstory and compelling characters into the land to make it interesting for those of us who try to avoid fast travel.

Map markers are not optionnal in Oblivion because NPC never give you directions to follow. You have to use your GPS, even if your are "hardcoe", or you never find anything except by luck.

Your strategy of collecting lot of quests to do, so you are never really out of work is more an adaptation to this gameplay structure flaw than a realistic scenaristic option. I mean, most of the quests in Oblivion are presented as emergency ones... but in fact, none are time limited (hostage can be kept for years, bandit sack a village for monthes...). I feel it strange to delay quests that are supposed to urge. It's a bit broken. I would prefere more dynamic quests, where a time counter is automatically activated once you pull some scenaristic triggers. But it would mean having more local quests, so non fast travelling players may still do them... So fast travel or not, it all depends on the quests structures and map organisation.

I once favored the idea of various optionnal gameplay elements, but I realize today that it is not that easy and that if you remove a gameplay element or add an exploit to bypass it, it quickly break the challenge balance of the game.

Well its already been confirmed that the map of Skyrim is going to be where it shows you panning out from your character and the view ascends to an unimaginable height above Skyrim showing it's geography in game. Personally I like that idea. There is nothing wrong with quest markers. I liked the quest markers when they were on the main map to show you where they quest giver showed you on your map where to go. However I didn't like the magic compass showing you the way and I didn't like quest markers inside of the dungeon showing where to go too. Quest marker showing where the dungeon is, is great but not showing pinpoint things which hopefully they removed from the game.

As for the "GPS maps", have you ever seen old maps? They look similar to those in Oblivion. They are uncannily precise. Now morrowind had more like a satellite image view to it's map which was hideous and annoying lol.

When I talk about GPS, I talk about a precise, perfectly true geolocalisation of you and places. No old map, especially by middle age, had the level of precision so you could navigate with them without using landmarks such as mountains, rivers, cities... to find your way. TES work like all CRPG, they always give you your localisation, as a GPS does. when you use a map, you have to find yourself your position. The same goes for places you want to reach. Their position is always precise and true and you can NEVER get lost... which is by essence the challenge of navigation and exploration. As long as you can't get lost, always know your position and the precise direction of your target there are absolutely, definitively, no exploration-navigation challenge.

A simple way to put it in the game, without going too far with realistically unprecise maps, would be to give the player a map of cities and landmarks and a compass, to have NPC give directions or add details on the map... but without any information about the player character position : up to the player to spot the city where he is, to find the north road to city Y, not to miss the left path at the 5th crossroad....

In fact, I realize that the problem is just that you always know where you are on the map. May be the player position marker may be a switchable option. It would only require NPC to give real directions like in MW.

You can't make this a percentage yes, percentage no poll? For each item, I mean.

Great poll, and I'm sure if some of the good proposals here aren't implemented, they will be by the community (myself included, if I find the time).

For the examples of gameplay elements, you can pick different ones. If they are much supported they will be better placed than those people dispise. You can compute, for each, its success among voters by comparing the number of supports for one option with the overall number of voters (for example in the first question the idea of having general directions for mysterious places got 184 votes among the 243 voting members, which means it is supported by around 75% of people, with 25% not much fond of it or with no opinion). I also proposed some "like oblivion" or "like morrowind" options, which were two games with their own low level set of exploration challenges, and which can sumarize a general opinion of "it is already good as it is, no need for new development".
To finish, I fear that changing the poll will purely and simply erase all the past votes, even if I keep some questions as they are... so, maybe I'll do it in another poll when this one will be over.

The principle is just to see if people are interested by a deepening of this gameplay side of the game. Until now, I got a general feeling that people would be happy if it were a bit more serious than what it was in Oblivion, and even in MW.

I agree with some of the options, some were just not practical. I agree with the sleeping part! Why bother with installing loads of Inns when they're not used! (only if your not LvLing though) Sleeping needs to be changed!

I mostly voted to keep these things as they were already. Morrowind was too vague and I don't wanna wander around for two hours looking for some tiny Kwama mine entrance. I don't wanna have to eat or drink or sleep. I mostly voted yes for the things in the last section. Though not much of that either.