Shall we have epic battles? Now i know what you are thinking, we can't do that!!! But betheda is (hopefully) getting a new engine, So maybe, just maybe... we could have epic battles. Imagine (if you said no you probably can't) 415 Nords/Allies (including you) vs 424 enemies... it would be so awsome. so anything is possible, maybe difficult but never impossible... (Like in Dragon Age: Origins! that battle was epic!) :gun: :gun: :flame: :flame: :flame: bliviongate:

You have convinced me to change it to: 400

*I have changed the number from 2,000-1,000.

So put your comments below and tell me what you think, thank you!

Well 3000 is a bit to much for first person game.. They could maybe give you the illusion of 3000, but if it goes with the plot, then yes

I would be great if they can do a proper job implementing large scale battles, otherwise, I can do without. In my opinion, something like the battle for Bruma is laughable at best, and should be avoided if the team lacks the skills or time to develop it properly.

new engine confirmed

For a first person perspective game like this I'd consider 20 vs. 20 to be "epic." An engine that can handle over a hundred combatants at a time is going to have drastically scaled down graphics compared to one that only needs to display a few dozen - and an engine that has to handle hundreds or thousands would have to scale the graphics down even further.

An Elder Scrolls RTS with strong RPG elements could be a lot of fun but that's not what I'm looking for in Skyrim.

Personally I'm not a fan of epic battles like this, I'd rather face smaller groups with more advanced AI than a horde any day.

TES RTS.. I like

It seems that by "epic battles" you mean battles involving lots of enemies, in which case, before Bethesda could pull that off, they'd need to have an engine that actually handles large scale battles well first, because Oblivion really doesn't work that well when large amounts of combatants are involved. If we can have that, then maybe a few large fights like this would be nice, probably not over 3000 combatents on either side, since, frankly, we don't know if the game will even have that many NPCs in it, but larger battles than Morrowind or Oblivion had, honestly, I'd agree that a couple dozen combatents on either side sould already be pretty epic in a game like this, maybe that could be done, but even a hundred NPCs probably isn't going to happen any time soon unless Bethesda decides to do an Elder Scrolls RTS. I would actually not want most of the fights in game to be like this, though, as the game should focus foremost on the player character. And when you have battles of that sort of proportion, the focus is taken off the player, as its how one side as a whole performs thst decides victory, not the player's performance. Unless they made it so that the other characters are just fighting in the background, and you still have to perform key tasks to decide the outcome of the battle.

mount and blade warband lets you fight with over 200 combatants at a time. 250 seems to be the limit before the AI ends up hampering itself and soldiers start getting stuck. i used to have several texture replacers and mods that added new gear and it made the game look very nice indeed. of course then i updated and forgot to carry them over so now i have to redownload them. :banghead: personally i think the weapons and armor are much better in warband than in oblivion but im a realist when it comes to weapons. everytime i see one of those ridiculous oblivion warhammers i just cringe.

unfortunately we wont get to see this for one simple reason..........consoles. a console could never hope to run a game like warband and thus you will never see it in skyrim. yeah to flushing another good idea down the drain for the sake of "mainstreaming".

I'd want no less than 20 active participants on either faction as well as more "eye candy" stuff on the side to simulate an epic battle. Nothing like the Bruma silliness.

I liked the way Dragon Age did "epic" battles. You could see all kinds of things going on around you and it gave the feel of a large-scale battle.

Yes they could, dont be silly.

Perhaps they could set it up to look like an epic battle is going on but in reality your only fighting a dozen, maybe 20 depending on how powerful this new engine is. I also hope they wouldn't over do it with epic battles because then they just become like Oblivion gates, cool the first time, boring and repetitive after like the 5th time.

well, i was really disapointed in the oblivion final battle, it was 10 town guards vs 30 daedra minions. if it was around 30 guards vs 90 daedrad in waves id be god.

This is The elder scrolls...I suggest Mount and Blade warband...which is epic battles of 2000+ (With a mod) on the battlefield. The multiplayer has more like 200 though. More thing on screen = more cells and less graphics



No they can't. You need to understand that the PC can handle about 1584561 times more then a console...if consoles become stronger then PCs will be even stronger. It will always be like this. Get with it. :intergalactic:

I doubt the engine can handle 3,000 NPC's on screen at a time with out major lag or a crash. I'd say 100 at the most.

Yes to both, though fairly sure there is a new engine but who knows? (there is). As for epic battles I doubt any engine could stand having thousands of NPCs battling it out but if you mean a couple dozen then I am sure that is able to be done.

I like the way Kingdom Under Fire 2 is doing it..where you not only get the feeling of a large battle but can take part in it.

id love to see how many npcs can be drawn on screen before the 360 or PS3 run out of RAM. :laugh: at a measly 256 MB i dont see very many combatants and they would have to use the lowest res textures. there is a reason that NPCs popped into view on the console versions of oblivon.

then you have the "all powerful" console processor that will have to deal with all the flying arrows that you can actually pick up and reuse. at least it would make for an interesting slideshow for youtube. there is no way in hell that a console could handle warband without having to severely nerf it.

for a TES game i think that a battle of a 100 or so would be perfect for a big endgame fight. i hope they do better than oblivions epic endgame fight. :rolleyes:

I'm going to say, HELL YES... However, I have sincere reservations. For one I'm not deluded and I know its not going to happen, and no one should kid themselves. The reason isn't because it wouldn't be cool, and they don't want to, or because their fan-base doesn't want it, its because its impractical considering system requirements. The TES series has remained near the forefront of graphics at least in the last two games, and arguably throughout its entire existence, the trade-offs for such battles would be too great. They would either have to make it a cutscene destroying the entire purpose, take you away from the actually world and put you in a closed off section of TES world so they could create invisible boundaries and create animations beyond those boundaries simulating hundreds or thousands of other NPC's fighting, which would be horrible, and completely out of place in the open ended TES world, or they'd have to scrap graphics almost entirely as previously mentioned and render the entire sequence with the clarity of a Medieval II total war battle, which from a first person perspective would look worst then Morrowind (Which at the time was great graphics, but today, lets not kid ourselves...).

So considering my reservations it would be much more reasonable to accept that they're going to improve combat AI, and maybe we'll have the pleasure of doing some 12 on 12 battle sequences with a much better streamlined engine, or if its a EXCELLENT engine, maybe a 24 v 24. However, even if they kept it to no more then 10 combatants on the screen for most of the game, considering the style of gameplay I wouldn't be too disappointed.

That being said, in future games, with another next gen console, or the next gen top of the line computers, I expect this sort of thing with landscapes being constantly rendered to rival lord of the rings scenery and indeed battles with thousands of people. But that's not for awhile to come. probably not til TES VI or possibly even VII, and I can wait, that's what I love about the constant improvement of technology, always something new to look forward to.

I personally would like to defend a castle during a siege or siege the castle. Just 20 v 20. 1500 vs 1500 would be horrible, each guy would have bad AI and Daggerfall graphics for the Xbox/PS3/PC to handle it.

Lol, just stop.

there are a good many ways to allow mass ai. the first would be to get rid of half of the backround npcs intelligence while lots of npcs are on screen, the second would be to make npcs in the backround look like crap while there is lots going on.


problem is- the ai characters in oblivion were morons- i got a bounty in the battle of bruma because guards kept jumping onto my sword. the ai needs to be improved greatly and optimised. it would be very cool if they could form formations rather than swarm one character without thinking

i would love to see this in TES game. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2GCwJdvDUI

Eh, I would love large scale battles of 20 on 20 as long as the AI isnt stupid in this game.
Anything larger then that just seems to spell lag for me, especially in a game like this.