With all the topics about suggestions about the whole game, I wonder how Bethesda cares about these. I didn't visit the forums before MW or Oblivion release (well not on the time after they announced Oblivion), so maybe someone who did could explain how Bethesda used the suggestions.

I'm thinking that the creators just see the forums if they feel like it, and if any one of them likes an idea, they might implement it, but that's about it. And since they're creating Skyrim for some time now, is still the game on a progress level that it still allows to implement many suggestions here?

Actually most ideas are so terrible that I hope they don't read these forums at all.

Ha haha :rofl:! You know what? Youre right!

lol, well I've seen many good ideas, but many are very unrealistic imo.

Well they do sadly(?)

I think gamesas pays attention to what we don't like about the gameplay and things like that, but I think most of our suggestions are ignored. Any suggestions made in this particular forum are pointless anyway, since gamesas is probably too far along in the development cycle to reasonably consider them.

Considering they are less than a year away from the release, none of the suggestions made since the announcement are going to have a significant impact on the game because all of the systems should be finished now. But suggestions/criticism from the past, like the complaints about Oblivion's excessive level scaling, are going to be taken into account. We've already seen this somewhat with Fallout 3.

That is true, I felt that Bethesda was paying attention to all the Oblivion critisizm when I played FO3.

Agreed. I do believe they will incorporate some ideas from popular user created mods for OB (like harvest flora, etc.) and maybe some consensus opinions like global lighting and stronger storytelling. But as far as considering current requests I think its probably too late and thats fine cause we gave them thousands of bad ideas to choose from over the years. :foodndrink: .

They listened to criticism of Morrowind for Oblivion and criticism of Oblivion for Fallout 3. Therefore, I am sure that they listened to criticism of Oblivion and Fallout 3 for Skyrim.

They are the professional game designers, and we are just fans. If an idea sounds good in our heads then it probably isnt.

I would hope they dont come on these forums for more than something to spark their creativity or maybe just to see what the fans are up to.

I don't think they ever implement ideas picked from the forums. First hand, it's exactly their job, they are paid for it and they surely enjoy it. I don't think we can put up brand new ideas that they never thought about. Then, there is this huge gap between what we are talking here (the ideal rpg) and what they are brainstorming every day (the best game that can be made with given marketing directions, deadline, resources). As cruel as it may sound I think what we do here is just spending some time together and nothing more.

Pretty much, this. For the large part, Bethesda would know exactly what Skyrim will have and work. The reccomendations they've taken would be the ones we've been complaining about for years, like level scaling etc.

Meaning 90% of the topics on this forum are for no reason, but still - discussion if fun, so I'll stick around

at this point, not much of anything.
End-users are by definition included in design research.
Whether or not Bethesda conducts research, I don't know.
These forums have provided a rich collection of data over the years though.

This is very true. The suggestion thread is full of horrible ideas that can not realistically be implemented or would not be worth the effort to implement. Ideas that have not been thought through or just plonked online without even giving it the slightest scrutiny. Just reading that thread embarrasses me sometimes...

So no, Bethesda doesn't look at the suggestion thread in all seriousness - it's not worth the money to have someone wade through that giant pile of dung to get one or two mediocre ideas out of there.
But yes, they do read these forums, they pop in from time to time, see what the general sentiment is, what threads are popular, you know. They have a community manager whom they can talk to for that kind of stuff.

Oh, they do read the suggestion threads and lots of plausible features are thrown around during their meetings. In the past they've also looked at popular mods and implemented those if they like the idea

Rumor has it they're already recording the voice acting (according to the pre-announcement rumor mill, which actually appears to be, so far, pretty much on the money), so I think it's a bit late to include suggestions anyway.

It's tough to say whether our pre-announcement suggestions will be used, though. On one hand, Bethesda has the budget for it (look at the huge voice cast and amount of choice available in New Vegas compared to Fallout 3- being the publisher, I'm almost certain that was thanks to Beth's financing), but on the other hand, Bethesda seems to gravitate towards the design decisions that will make them the most money, the fans be damned. Look at Oblivion compared to Morrowind.

Oh, nice to know that from a moderator. Thank you :goodjob:

I believe they should read the forums, there are many good ideas here, but i dont know if they could implement them in the game, many of them can implemented really good if they can do it

The game is less than a year from release. Our suggestions mean nothing now.

They aren't gonna take any suggestions. At this point, the game is beyond major changes. There's less than a year til release.

Sky seems to know the right thing to say, and when to say it lol.

I would say that it is still possible for NPC's to be added to the world, textures to be re-worked, bugs to be ironed out, and possibly quests to be written, though what more is hard to say. Maybe they'll be fleshing out the dungeons a bit more, adding the easter eggs and such as well.

They could use them for future games.

Those aren't major changes in any sense of the word.