I've seen everything from permadeath save-lock ideas to sleep, food, drink needs and all the ideas inbetween in reference to Skyrim's potential hardcoe mode. Some people don't want hardcoe mode, though I'm not really sure why (a hardcoe mode allows the vanilla game to be less hardcoe). I've seen suggestions for multiple hardcoe modes as variations of hardcoe to satisfy different audiences. That's absolutely ridiculous. The game should have 2 modes maximum. So here's the idea.

You have Normal Mode and you have hardcoe Mode. hardcoe mode, turned on at the beginning of the game and maintained all the way through to the end of the main game's main quest, gives the Achievement/Trophy and any other cool reward the devs can think of. Normal Mode is like Oblivion. Nothing hardcoe about it.

So why is my idea any different from anything else? Well, hardcoe Mode would include every hardcoe element the devs see fit to include. These would be locked in for the duration of the game. Normal mode would include ALL of the hardcoe options. So if you don't want full hardcoe, you can tick off the boxes for the hardcoe elements YOU want in YOUR game. Maybe you want to give food and drink a purpose, but you don't feel like being tethered to a sleep meter. Maybe you want to play the base game with a save-lock for when you die. Any combination of hardcoe mode you can include, and, if the devs decide to have "hardcoe Mode" not include all the hardcoe aspects (like save-lock upon death), assuming there's going to be a hardcoe mode in the first place, then Normal Mode is where you customize your hardcoe experience.

This allows the game to have more customization in terms of the direction of the game and how restrictive it is. It allows people who want a really unforgiving experience to have it, while still allowing people who want to play a couple hours a day and be able to save/reload at will to get through the whole game and enjoy it like that.

I really think the game needs a hardcoe mode, and I really think hardcoe would be a huge success with this level of customization. You can't make everyone happy all of the time, but in this aspect of the game, you can, and I think they should.

Thoughts?

EDIT: Keep Mod discussion out of this. Consoles don't get the benefit of mods, so that's not a valid solution to this idea.

I really doubt we will be able to check stuff off, but there will probably be a hardcoe mode like in NV.
Bethesda may not do it, but at least we still have mods

... what makes you really doubt it? That doesn't make sense.

in a perfect world sure it's a great idea. in reality it just means that the devs need to balance two game mods. what a head ache not to mention a big money investment.
the must have thought about a lot of mechanics and decided to keep the mechanics that worth investing money on. if there was an idea bethesda thought that only 20% of their intended target audience will like using that it's a waste of money and wont be in the game.

so as much as i would love "feature check boxes" that i can enable or disable - it is not likely to happen in a large scale. maybe small features or really huge ones, but not the way YOU imagine it.

That's false. It doesn't take much balancing. Lol.

Although your plethora of options sounds nice, doubt we'll see that many toggles in a normal game.

wow a save lock sounds pretty awesome...

say you die.. the game will lock all your saves for 24 real time hours.

that would be pretty awesome when I think about it.

well I mean it would be a lot of work and would make the menus kinda convoluted. You dont see thing like RGB elements in games.

Yes as a developer I hate options, pretty often the support for customisation is half the code and more than half of the bugs.

Solution buy the PC version, download the creation engine and learn how to use it, make a mod. :bolt:

Um... permanently actually. Lol. It definitely adds a degree of intensity you don't get from the save/reload method. And if you don't like the idea of losing a character after death, it's something to try when you've beaten the game and seen everything.


That's not the solution, actually. Being in the Navy, an XBox is FAR more practical than a PC. A laptop works, too, but my laptop will not play Skyrim.


Also not true. You add a "hardcoe" tab or menu or w/e and then just tic on or off whatever you want.