hardcoe Mode and Oblivion for V : The Elder Scrolls Series Discussion

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 3:19 am

I would just like to point out that Bethesda already has that implemented in the Elder Scrolls, how ever once you have that trained your a ok.

I know, however it did not reduced chance for hit/ make aiming harder, it also went away not only become less of a problem.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 12:57 pm

Honestly, rather than have Beth spend time trying to get a hardcoe mode right, I'd much rather they get the vanilla game out and leave the rest to the modders.

hardcoe Mode is exactly the type of thing that could be implemented and tweaked to perfection just fine by a mod. Todd & Co shouldn't be wasting resources on it.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 10:34 am

Considering that TESV isn't out (or even been announced) we can't exactly speculate on the effects a hardcoe mode would have on it but, given that many of us have played Fallout: NV and see what kind of potential hardcoe mode has for true roleplayers, it seems that it would only be natural to keep a hardcoe mode option for the new elder scrolls. Having said that, and knowing that we know nothing, lets speculate on what we DO know.

In that context, and in the spirit of potential for the new game, I ask you a simple question...

What would YOU feature in a "hardcoe mode" if you were to have it implemented into -Oblivion- (a game we know EVERYTHING about)?

In New Vegas you need to eat and drink, sleep and heal all major crippling wounds at a doctor or with a doctors bag (which seem to be rather rare to find from my limited New Vegas experience so far), ammo has weight to it and there are no instant healing effects from ingesting anything or using stim packs.

In Oblivion arrows already had weight but that's about the extent of similarities so far that I can see, possibly being limited to four potions at a time could be considered slightly hardcoe but nothing compared to New Vegas. So, what would you do for your "ultra real" hardcoe mode within the context of Oblivion (because it was the most recent elder scrolls). I think Eating, Sleeping and Drinking would be a given but i think I would add weight for gold, not much, but a little. How about you? What would yours feature?

Well, first of, in TES there is NO VATS, crippling...

What would be great in TES5 is that they make a merge of all of theire TES games best things. ... That would require taking all of the weapons from Morrowind GOTY(Which has the largest weapon diversity and lighting choices.)

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 12:19 pm

Honestly, rather than have Beth spend time trying to get a hardcoe mode right, I'd much rather they get the vanilla game out and leave the rest to the modders.

hardcoe Mode is exactly the type of thing that could be implemented and tweaked to perfection just fine by a mod. Todd & Co shouldn't be wasting resources on it.

The problem is bragging rights. There will be a hundred different hardcoe mode versions. How will anyone be able to brag "I beat TESV hardcoe!" :hubbahubba:

..OK maybe that's shallow. But I don't think it would be hard or take long to implement at all once you've got the vanilla game done.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 9:22 am

The problem is bragging rights. There will be a hundred different hardcoe mode versions. How will anyone be able to brag "I beat TESV hardcoe!" :hubbahubba:

..OK maybe that's shallow. But I don't think it would be hard or take long to implement at all once you've got the vanilla game done.

I agree, if it's not in the console versions it just isn't real or official.

I just want to say that I really like a lot of the ideas coming out of this thread but not all of these make sense from a RP perspective. Limiting the sets of weapons one can have (ie one sword and one dagger or a bow and a sword) or limiting the amount of potions you can make to only a few a day are cool ideas for a "hardcoe" mode but it takes away part of the customization that should be free in a sandbox role playing game.

The point is to open up options based in a more simulation-like concept but not to limit them. I would like to see a hardcoe mode where you can roleplay being a werewolf with as much ease as roleplaying a castle guard or a "robin hood" character as easy as a certain evil tax collecting sheriff or a Gandalf the grey as easy as a Dracula. A hardcoe mode that restricts you to only playing a certain type of character would be lame.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 1:09 am

If you really want to play the game that way, it doesn't need to be a checkbox, you can just exit the game if you die, delete all saves of your current character, and start a new one.

It also protects you from losing your character from a glitch or something like that.

I would really enjoy seeing a hardcoe mode.

crippling..

I have no doubt that crippling will be in the next TES game. Its such a natural progression. As for something like VATS, I really don't think we need that, nor do I really want it in TES. Its entire purpose was to replace the lost tactical capabilities from moving from turn-based to first person real time. TES never went through that, and thus, really doesn't need VATS. I suppose one could argue for VATS for the next TES game so that its easier to take advantage of crippling limbs (of course, that means that melee weapons could target individual parts).

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 12:11 pm

Shouldn't this be in the ideas and suggestions thread?

Cuts slowly bleed until they heal and only heal when medication has been used. They scar. Bones break and slow you down/weaken you.

Not really, I'm specifically talking about the effect of a hardcoe mod on Oblivion. There are bound to be suggestions for the next game in the thread and that's ok with me but in reality we have no idea how different the mechanics could be so there's no point in suggesting a different mode for a game that doesn't have a "vanilla" mode that we even know of yet.

This thread is about "hardcoe" mode and how it could have been implimented into Oblivion (or possibly other games like morrowind and the like that have already come out) in cool ways. I, however, don't mind tangents. I'm a svcker for A.D.D.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 8:36 am

the vanilla game should always be hardcoe. If you wan to play easily, adjest the difficulty slider to give yourself more helthy and reduce the health of your enemies.

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 10:13 pm

No map marker. No fast travel. Quest givers are vague and sometimes wrong. No-one can repair any of your things. Diseases don't have little markers saying you have contracted it and it doesn't say what it is under the stat menu,, you have to look at the symptoms and treat with the right herb. Horses must be fed.

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 9:11 pm

No map marker. No fast travel.

Those should not be bound to "hardcoe mode" but be a option in the menus. Similarly mini map should be selectable. Fast travel should be optional to the user but aided better with aids how you should find your target location.
For this they should look at how "Arcania" did it, you have tons of HUD and game elements you can freely activate or deactivate including "quest markers".

Quest givers are vague and sometimes wrong.

Sometimes wrong possibly but it should not just make it "harder to find anything". I played a mod a while ago that did just that mistake, no map markers but the same time leaving hints where you have to go so vague they might as well be nonexistent including not writing down vital info in the journal and keeping it to conversations only which where NOT REPEATABLE.

No-one can repair any of your things.

That doesn't really make ANY sense.

Diseases don't have little markers saying you have contracted it and it doesn't say what it is under the stat menu,you have to look at the symptoms and treat with the right herb. Horses must be fed.

With those I agree.
Also diseases should NOT jsut pop up and be there, they should have a incubation time and even when they break out don't be a full WHAM and there but slowly get worse.

A little side not, hardcoe mode should NOT mean "Just make everything HARDER" it should mean "make it m ore COMPLEX but still rewarding". As mentioned before, eating should be in but as a reward gives you natural regeneration which you wouldn't have under normal gameplay.

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 8:37 pm

Sometimes wrong possibly but it should not just make it "harder to find anything". I played a mod a while ago that did just that mistake, no map markers but the same time leaving hints where you have to go so vague they might as well be nonexistent including not writing down vital info in the journal and keeping it to conversations only which where NOT REPEATABLE.

I like the idea of markers for locations you're told of. Like if you're told a particular item is at a particular dungeon, and you're told you where that dungeon is, you should have a map marker for, and quest marker pointing to, the dungeon. But once you get inside, you don't get a quest marker showing what door to go through or the specific location.

Also diseases should NOT jsut pop up and be there, they should have a incubation time and even when they break out don't be a full WHAM and there but slowly get worse.

There are a couple particular examples where something like that may not work, though. With Porphyric Hemophilia and Sanies Lupinus, once you contract them, it's a 3 day incubation period before it becomes "uncurable" vampirism or lycanthropy. Though those two diseases aren't supposed to have very noticable effects, so in a way, it already works like what's suggested. It would just need to be made so they're not as visible on your character sheet.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 12:42 pm

Gold should have weight, because than we get banks, which provide additional interaction for the player, especially thieves.

Don't know about eat/drink/sleep, a little too much the sims for my liking. I would rather have potions not being instant heals, and things like, buyable map compass, instead of starting equipment.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 3:13 am

Essential NPCs can be killed.

I like the idea of adding urgency to certain quests. For instance, MQ NPC offers quest. If you take it, completing any other quests would cause you to fail the MQ, and would bring up some text saying that the MQ can't be completed, a la Morrowind. If you choose not to take it, no harm no foul, but Beth would have to be careful to structure the quests so that choosing to put off taking the quest doesn't destroy the sense of urgency.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 1:01 am

Definitely make it harder to heal. In Oblivion if you rested for 1 hour you'd be healed up completely, compared to morrowind where it could potentially take more than day (depending on how much health you had) and you ran the risk of being interupted and attacked in a weakened state if you were out in the wilderness. However, I think a hardcoe mode would push that even further.

Also something to consider - bleeding effects that drain your health slowly over long periods of time if you don't get them healed.

Maybe even a daggerfall-esque setup of required materials to kill magical creatures. Instead of Silver or better being able to take on anything magical, perhaps you'd need to use a weapon of a different material for different creatures, or there would be different tiers (being able to take on a ghost with a silver weapon, but not a daedra.)

I dunno if I'd even want any of this in a game, but it's interesting to think of how a hardcoe mode could be implemented in an Elder Scrolls game.

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 9:12 pm

MQ NPC offers quest. If you take it, completing any other quests would cause you to fail the MQ

Oh my gods, no. Just no. I wouldn't even buy such a game.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 7:56 am

Oh my gods, no. Just no. I wouldn't even buy such a game.

Indeed, that's not even hardcoe, it's just heartbreaking.

Another thing that would work is to be able to drop quest items. I remember in one of my first Morrowind characters I had dropped a Dagoth Chalice off in some random dungeon somewhere to clear up inventory space, I just picked it up because I thought it looked cool. Little did I know, losing it would cause me to not be able to go through the main quest...

Making quest items undroppable is some idiot-proofing in Oblivion that I didn't mind.

It would be kind of nice that if they implemented a hardcoe mode, you could also get a checklist of some sort so you could pick and choose what hardcoe options you did or didn't want. I think this would also allow for some /really/ hardcoe options that they wouldn't normally include to be choices, like an Iron man option that doesn't let you reload a save if you die, and you just have to start anew.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 7:43 am

As said before:

hardcoe does NOT equal "unfair/unnecessarily hard/just everything is absolutely difficult to use and uncomfortable".
In that they should replace the word "hardcoe more" with "realism mode" really, it should NOT be about just making things more difficult to play but actually feeling more realistic to play. As said the problem there is such modes are often just done badly, if you drop dead for being one hour over your time to eat it's crap.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 12:39 pm

Oh my gods, no. Just no. I wouldn't even buy such a game.

Sure you would. Ever play Mass Effect? They straight out tell you that if you take a certain mission, you can't complete any other missions. In Mass Effect 2, bad things happen if, after a certain point in the MQ, you do any other quests. Bethesda's writers would have to be careful to make the consequences obvious, but it can be done. And it certainly creates a sense of urgency and desperation.

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 9:15 pm

Sure you would. Ever play Mass Effect? They straight out tell you that if you take a certain mission, you can't complete any other missions. In Mass Effect 2, bad things happen if, after a certain point in the MQ, you do any other quests. Bethesda's writers would have to be careful to make the consequences obvious, but it can be done.

Just because you can make the game do that doesn't mean you should. You can also make the game end after doing the main quest, but hopefully Beth learned not to do that after FO3. It just doesn't fit an open-world sandbox RPG.

And it certainly creates a sense of urgency and desperation.

If you want to add a sense of urgency and desperation, then give it a simple time limit. If the world's going to end in 10 days, it shouldn't matter what other quests I do as long as I do the world-saving quest(-line) within that 10 day time limit.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 10:59 am

Essential NPCs can be killed.

I like the idea of adding urgency to certain quests. For instance, MQ NPC offers quest. If you take it, completing any other quests would cause you to fail the MQ, and would bring up some text saying that the MQ can't be completed, a la Morrowind. If you choose not to take it, no harm no foul, but Beth would have to be careful to structure the quests so that choosing to put off taking the quest doesn't destroy the sense of urgency.

Downside of killable essential npc is that they might get killed by accidents. This is mostly a case for npc who moves around outside of cities.

No problem adding urgency of a quest, just add a time limit or more subtitle make the quest harder or the reward less if you use to long.
The thief guild initiation quest was a race, if you used to long you failed and had to do an extra quest. Could easy do the same but on a longer time scale like getting something from a dungeon, an enemy is also trying to get it.

The idea of accepting quests after accepting the urgent one can easy give you problems. You can actually get a quest from someone you question for directions or help on the way.
You might also complete a quest by talking to a guild member or shopkeeper you had to see anyway for resupply.
And it does not add more urgency than any Oblivion quest just a restraint, after accepting the quest you can use as long as you want as long as you don’t accept other quests.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 11:40 am

If you want to add a sense of urgency and desperation, then give it a simple time limit. If the world's going to end in 10 days, it shouldn't matter what other quests I do as long as I do the world-saving quest(-line) within that 10 day time limit.

Almost every quest should have a time limit. 95% or so.

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 10:47 pm

Almost every quest should have a time limit. 95% or so.

Depend, a get me back my lost item quest would not time be time sensitive unless you are ordered to do it by guild leaders or similar.
A rescue mission would be time sensitive.
However if they bring back areas with higher level enemies this might work against this as a weak character might be unable to finish the quest until later.

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 8:47 pm

Almost every quest should have a time limit. 95% or so.

They'd have to be careful about it. I, for one, can't stand time limits in an RPG, and it would be very odd to see them in an Elder Scrolls game. Nothing kills the level of immersion like being shown a timer or being reminded that your cunning enemy is going to meet you at this exact time and at these exact coordinates. The first Thieves Guild quest in Oblivion did it pretty well, and I also like Zaria's idea of scaling the quest reward negatively with the amount of time it takes to complete the quest.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 5:11 am

Essential NPCs can be killed.

I like the idea of adding urgency to certain quests. For instance, MQ NPC offers quest. If you take it, completing any other quests would cause you to fail the MQ, and would bring up some text saying that the MQ can't be completed, a la Morrowind. If you choose not to take it, no harm no foul, but Beth would have to be careful to structure the quests so that choosing to put off taking the quest doesn't destroy the sense of urgency.

So you have an open ended world where you can do everything you want, until you activate a quest and then it turns into a linear game where you can't do anything until you've finished the quest? No thanks.

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 10:27 pm

I'm in on some quests should have a urgency behind them, not all but some. The "Someone lies ill and is in danger of dieing" variety should have a timer to them and encourage you to do those quickly. But the "Find me this artifact" variety usually don't need a timer. Just the ones that would feel odd if you could hang around forever.

Also for the main quest there should be alternate paths at least, like if an important person in the quest line dies it tries to continue another way. If that person only assigned you missions they could still be given to you by someone else, if the person was essential the path could change entirely. Like that you don't need an alternative path for every single person in the main quest line that could potentially die but only for the ones really essential to it.
In Oblivion for example, if Jauffre would die early on his position could simply go to a successor who acts on instructions left behind OR you directly act on said instructions. If Martin however died it would require a new quest lines but there could still be potential to finishing the main quest an alternate way.