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?

Definitely eat/drink, sleep, and add weight to gold.
How about terrain bonuses/penalties? Everything from movement/fighting penalties depending on obstacles and brush overgrowth, to line of sight/cover casting and marksman penalties, to higher ground bonuses. This would make engaging your enemy much like a chess match where you try to maneuver them to where you want them. It would also make the woods spookier and REALLY deadly. I think that, for those willing to brave this 'hardcoe mode,' there should be special perks or quests just for them. Like a quest path that can lead you to a better understanding of nature making you graceful and deadly in heavily wooded areas (bonus when fighting in that environment).

Gold has weight; necessary eating/drinking/sleeping; potions take effect over time; can only drink one potion per 5/10 seconds; can't open full inventory while in combat (could be replaced by a "belt" that you can open during combat. It could only hold a couple potions and an extra weapon; basically, only essentials); no difficulty slider.

I don't care, as long as it's optional.

Made a large thread about this earlier... http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1113864-hardcoe/

Perhaps make it so you can only carry "X" amount of a certain type of weapon (so you can't carry around 1000 swords).

Like:
1 Two-Handed Sword and 1 Dagger
or...
1 Short-sword and 2 Daggers, etc.

Have you played Daggerfall? remember the drop gold button? In daggerfall gold was cheap elven armor or weapon was more expensive for it's weight, you fond lots of gold on enemies but dropped it as it was heavy and you preferred to carry more valuable loot.

Gold does not have significant weight. Gold itself is heavy yes, but 1 kg gold in real world is worth around 40.000$, you can carry 50kg or around 2 million $.

In the game 1 gold is the smallest coin and you pay 1 gold for the cheapest items like a potato.
Now how much should a gold coin weight? it has to be far lighter than a potato.
Real world anybody with a currency system has coins with multiple values, classically copper, silver and gold coins. Copper is used for small purchases, a sack of gold could buy you as ship or a good farm.

Now gold is probably cheaper in a fantasy world, but still so expensive that people would not have to carry barrels around. If that was the case they would use some other materials like ebony or daeric or perhaps invent paper money.

Has no problem with weight of gold, but it would require that coins were lighter so you need a 0.01 resolution for weight. You also need gold silver and copper coins or a similar system.
So a lots of gold would not weight you down much, yes you would deposit it so you would not carry 100.000 around anymore than you would carry other items of little use.

Of course I know that. I wrote three posts in it. :rolleyes:

I think a hardcoe mode would be perfect in an Elder Scrolls environment, as long as Obsidian didn't patent it or anything.

Actually compared with Fallout Oblivion is hardcoe, ammo has weight and you can get diseases, who require special potions or spells to cure.
Not sure how much problem eating, drinking or sleeping would be, compared with the wasteland of fallout Oblivion had plenty of food and water, yes you can refill from any stream of water, you can eat that you hunt or gather. Some places like northern part of Morrowind or in large dungeons it might be a problem. For sleeping a sleeping bag is a must as many parts in the wilderness would be without beds.
Would also need to make the days in the game last longer,

Not sure about the belt thing, just don't stop combat if you enter the inventory like in most MMO. if you are preparing a sneak attack you might be "in combat" even if nobody attacks you and you want a special arrow. Yes pre poisoned arrows would be a must here, but if you use 10 seconds with your head in a bag somebody might spot you.

I've modded my own Oblivion to be "hardcoe" and here are some of the features..

1. Mandatory eating, drinking, sleeping
2. Can't run while casting spells or drawing a bow or drawing/sheathing weapons to prevent kiting combat cheese (thanks Phitt)
3. Potions heal over time, not instantly (thanks OOO)
4. Dead-is-dead.
5. Traps that can actually kill you (thanks OOO)
6. Going into your tab menu during combat should only pause the fight for a limited time, then continue the fight at full speed while you're tabbed if you wait too long (Combat Fumbling approximates this for Oblivion)
7. Potion making should be limited (10 potions per day?) and breaking repair hammers should have more of a consequence to make Armorer more useful.
8. Time limit to completing the main quest (Mehrunes Dagon won't wait forever for you to stop him..)

If you ask me, everything but 8.

I would love a good hardcoe mode, but Bethesda's attitude of do-whatever-you-please really is priceless in TES.

Although on a more localized level it should be implemented. If I am offered a quest that appears to be urgent and where time is of the essence, I would like it to be such. So if the timer didn't start until after you had heard about a quest.

But the only real reasons for Gold's value is because A: it looks good and B: its comparatively rare. However on Nirn, or at least in Tamriel, it might be far more common. And there are many far rarer materials around – glass and ebony only come from Vvardenfell and the surrounding area, Daedric is Ebony with a daedra in it, Stahlrim is only found in Solsthiem, etc. So these things would all be much rarer than gold, driving its price down. Also, TES gold is less shinny.

You're right that it goes against the sandbox spirit.. maybe it should be a separate option. Dead-is-dead maybe a separate checkbox too.

I think that would increase the price..

I agree with Zaria, making currency weigh a significant amount is nonsensical for a country as civilized as Cyrodiil. Now, if the empire does collapse in V in a particularly nasty way, currency might become weighted in a semi-barter system.

if there are other naturally occurring things that are rarer and more desirable, than a substance which only has value on our planet BECAUSE it is desirable and rare loses most of it's value: it is no longer one of the most desired things, and it is no longer one of the rarest things. So it costs less.

Glad to see I'm not the omly one who thinks the hardcoe mode would be awesome in an Elder Scrolls game. The minute I started playing in hardcoe mode in Fallout New Vegas (awesome by the way! though a little buggy.) I said to myself "a mode like that would be really cool in either Oblivion or the next Elder Scrolls game". The replay value it would add to the game is enormous even though these games already have tremendous replay value.

2 About bows, you should get fatigued holding it drawn, reducing accuracy, effect is dependent on bow and reduced by high strength and marksmanship,

3 like self made potions? that was the main difference between self-made and loot / bought potions.

4 player choice, simply not reload.

5 agree, at least for the easy to spot traps,

7 would nerf alchemy it to much, if you are smart you limit your self in the start to get full effect of the +5, later you don't need the money, but perhaps like to experiment.

8 not time limit for a quest line, for a single task it's ok, also add level/ skill restrictions on some quests, you would not get them until high enough.

If they want to keep that attitude, wouldn't adding in hardcoe mode contribute to it? After all, doing whatever you please should entail playing the game the way you want too, and adding the option to use hardcoe mode (And if you have to call it a "mode", that would already suggest it's optional, if it was forced on players, it would be a "hardcoe system" or something.)

But I've actually been thinking that if Bethesda wants to appeal to the players that are obssessed with realism, following Obsidian's example with hardcoe mode in New Vegas would be the ideal way to do it. I'm not sure if the implementation in the game itself is necessarily ideal since I have not experienced it, and in any case, even if one wouldn't want to change hardcoe mode at all in New Vegas, the nature of the Elder Scrolls might demand a somewhat different design, after all, while eating, drinking and sleeping could be expected, in the Elder Scrolls, arrows already have weight so unless that changes in future games, you can't very well make ammo weight a feature of hardcoe mode. And no Elder Scrolls game so far has had a crippling mechanic. I guess potions could be given healing over time, although a least in Morrowind, potions made by the player already tend to heal over time anyway, maybe also a limiting the player to one potion with each effect at a time, or making potions take time to drink or something. Also, diseases could be made into a more serious threat, maybe their effects should be stronger, or they can get worse over time or even kill you if you don't cure them soon enough, maybe you also wouldn't be able to swim when wearing heavy armor. Also, if we assume that fatigue works like in Oblivion, in other words, it doesn't go down while running, it probably should in hardcoe mode.

Also, I'd change the name to "realism mode" or "survival mode" or something, since a word like "hardcoe" sounds kind of out of place in a psuedo-Medieval fantasy setting.



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.

Actually, I haven't played Daggerfell. But my suggestion was just saying how it shouldn't be possible to carry around 300,000 coins at once. Imagine walking around with that many quarters in your pocket.

My use of the word "gold" was just denoting the common currency that I've seen in use so far in the Elder Scrolls universe.

I love it how in Stalker, the higher dificulty not only means mroe damage, but increased AI. The NPCs use cover, duck between cover to get into better fireing positions, they flank you. they use grenades and various weapons for different combat situations. they ambush you, use gorilla tactics, etc. The AI in Stalker is done realy well. I would love to see something like that in TESV. NPCs with challanging AI.

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.

There's already a "hardcoe" mode for the TES series; it's called "Morrowind". If your skills are low, you can miss a swing, fail at spellcasting or potionmaking, etc. Some aspects were done RIGHT (you could have spells custom-tailored to suit your skills to "regulate" the amount of risk), but other aspects weren't (you couldn't adjust your attacks to minimize "misses" at the expense of damage or some other factor). From what I understand, DF was even more hardcoe in those respects.

I almost always add a "necessities" mod, to make eating, drinking, and sleeping mandatory. The only "down side" of that is the way most mods of that type work as an "alarm clock", and inevitably seem to like to trigger their effects suddenly when you're in the middle of something important (like fighting for your life). Effects of hunger, thirst, and fatigure should be very subtle and gradual at first, and only become significant after you've already gotten plenty of warning. You generally KNOW you're getting hungry, thirsty, or tired long before you start to wear down and weaken.

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.

Yes but you would never carry 80.000$ in quarters, you would carry it in large bills. Yes you would come over lots of quarters looting but the real money would be the large bills.
In a fantasy setting most coins found would be copper, but the real money would be the few gold coins.
Daggerfall mistake was making 0.1 weight coins that had equal value with the cheapest thing you could buy, similar to making quarters the only money in the US and make them large.