Im surprised and I feel that people are not talking enough about Immersion, exploration, or replayability. The 3 most important aspects of an open world role playing game, in my opinion.

There are many differant things that add to each of these 3 things and i dont really want to write a book on it so ill just list a few details that I feel are important, as well as a few things i think could be done better than they were done for the last games.

Immersion
- A believable world.
- Engageing story.
- Non-invasive game mechanics (for example in oblivion messages would come up and pause the game.This is bad for immersion)
- As for fast travel, i think it is important to offer a morrowind style of travel to players. Travel through mages teleportation, boats, beasts, spells rather than map clicks. Oblivions travel style (map clicking) was not good for immersion in my opinion, yet in a world so big a way to get around quickly is needed right?

exploration
- Unique areas, monsters, npcs, loot.
- I liked how top teir weapons or armor in morrowind could be found just laying around in certain dungeons, as oposed to being randomly generated on level based generated NPCs (oblivions style). Having static loot hidden away in secret places greatly increases my desire to explore, and my enjoyment of exploration.
- Areas of difficulty outside of your characters abilities.
This is one of my favorites :turned: for a few reasons:
-A sense of danger when you are exploring makes it more exciting to explore.
-Makes the world more believable and helps with immersion too in my opinion.
-Limiting the areas that you can successfuly explore at the early levels makes exploration more rewarding for early and late game.-Also: Remember that daedric warlord who chased you out of that shrine you shouldnt have been in anyways? Well your back, and you're no longer wearing that rusty chain shirt or carrying that wooden board with a nail in it, you now have a 365 pound suit of armor and a daedric soul shattering warhammer and it is vengeance time! :biggrin:

replayability
- High exploration value.
- Good roleplaying value. I roleplayed all of my characters in morrowind and oblivion and if you were like me you might have made a separate character to play through the differant stories offered by each faction. (with 10+ factions in morrowind and 5 in oblivion that is a lot of characters for me)
- making players face a "fork in the road" type of decision also increases replayability
- A world that reacts to players interaction with lasting consequences.

I could go on but i will leave it at that.
Please leave a comment i want to know your thoughts on Immersion, exploration, replayability.

This game is pretty important to me, i remember when i first played morrowind i was impressed with how immersed in the world i became and how much fun it was just to explore. I probably spent just as much time walking around randomly looking for unique loot in dungeons as i did doing quests. I even bought the game for xbox a month before i owned the console just because the game was so hard to find in my area. Now i own the computer version of morrowind and oblivion as well as the console versions and they are both still my favorite games and i still play them every now and then(i actualy have not bought any new games in a couple years). Thanks for reading.

I really liked everything you said.
These are important aspects for the experience and enjoyment (for me) out of The Elder Scrolls, which I adore.

I liked the random loot, like sometimes you find sweet stuff that is just there. I think I understand why they got rid of it... so you couldn't just go and be like "I know exactly where some sweet loots are. I'm lvl 1, lets go get it so I can be leet." But Perhaps some random top tier stuff could be randomly generated in different locations... looting caves and such becomes like a lottery.

I'm really a big advocate of the "danger" aspect. On Oblivion, I was never like "Hmmm.. maybe I shouldn't go in there." Or be nervous about going in there and just getting beat down by some random warrior or bandit that was better than I was. Nay! I could just run in with just about any weapon (or no weapon) and be like "I'm lvl 4, bow and bask in my glory!"

Best Thread I've read on here ! :biggrin:

TBH the second two are a given, they're taken for advantage as we're spoilt by Bethy babes with them.
Which we adore and don't ever take for granted, so it only gets brought up every so often.

Immersion is a contested ground, to some it means one thing to others another.

There are a few that try to bring it at least in story, dialogue and depth of gameworld up as much as possible.
However we tend to sound snobbish and elitist when we do so in every thread.
Put simply it's something that is overlooked in discussions, but carries great strength and often heat..

However yes those three you post are what would make Skyrim more of a pleasure for me at least.

I only wish I shared your enthusiasm good sir.

God speed.

Yah, I forgot to mention that I've made hundreds of characters throughout the years, It's one of my favorite things to do, I just love how many different things you can do.
I create each Character with their skills and attributes and (personality or character compass) and go as far as *that character would go, for example if I had a warrior class, I would not delve too much into magic or too much into stealth related skills, nor join any guild that my character wouldn't be proficient at (role-playing wise) given his or her talents, such as the Mage's Guild, or what-have-you.

So, I'm really excited about Skyrim, regardless of what they do about this. Because I think I understand why they've done a lot of what they've done through the last stage in the series.
11.11.11!!!!!!!!!!!!

So in other words you want Morrowind 2.0.

I hope that quests are kept in a journal and you fold out a map rather than scrolling through menu screens. Has anyone seen how the journal worked in Uncharted, I'm not comparing the game to it I'm just suggesting it as an idea for the game to be less intrusive and more immersive.

- making players face a "fork in the road" type of decision also increases replayability
- A world that reacts to players interaction with lasting consequences.
- A believable world.
- Engageing story.

Wasn't in MW.

I thought the same thing after reading this.

I like the idea of Bethesda returning to some previous games like Morrowind and implementing features from that, then developing them more. I prefer the fantasy setting to medieval too.

There's so many threads hashing and re-hashing this concept, I'm surprised this thread hasn't already debased into a discussion about this alone already. It's a heated topic here.


Morrowind had leveled-loot lists, too. The difference is that some loot was hand-placed, and was static in its stats. The Ice Blade of the Monarch was what it was, no matter what level you were when you ran across it. In Oblivion, the stats on those things depended on what level you were when you acquired it. This concept is almost universally reviled by both Morrowind and Oblivion players.


I guess the key here is the word "successfully." Because I always thought one of the biggest strengths of Morrowind over Japanese-style linear RPGs is that freedom to march right up to the end boss and get yourself killed any time you wanted to.


I don't want something like in Knights of the Old Republic where you can be a light side all the way up to a certain point in the game and then just suddenly choose to go full-on dark side in the blink of an eye. The choice should be a natural progression of what you've been doing all along.


This is an awesome concept. I would like to see this.



My gaming experience was totally changed by Morrowind. I'd never played anything like it before. I had high hopes for Oblivion, and although I like Oblivion a great deal, I just felt there were too many compromises made just to make the game playable on consoles. I still play it, though. It's in my drive right now, in fact. And I have high hopes for Skyrim, too. I want this to be a great game, and for more than one reason; it seems that TES has become the "base" franchise for Bethesda. Fallout 3 was clearly an evolution of Oblivion. Some of the things from Fallout (perks) will be making it into Skyrim. What they learn in Skyrim will play a role in the next game they produce, and I'm still hoping for a proper Sea Dogs II. Also, I'd like to see Bethesda continue the western theme in Fallout 3 (and New Vegas), and just make a western-themed game in this style. I'd probably crap my drawers if they did that.

Very good thread! :thumbsup:

Well, I personally find this topic meaningless. What's the point of it? To give hints to the devs? It's a tad too late for that, the world has been built, the quests are there, many of the game mechanics as well... Besides, they've been in business for decades with almost all of their games they've made in the last 17 years being immersive open-world RPGs, so they've kind'a figured out all of this.

And a lot of it is just general stuff. A quick example: "- A world that reacts to players interaction with lasting consequences." What conseqences? The type where you kill somebody and nobody ever gives you a quest since you have been labeled a murder or what? "Please leave a comment i want to know your thoughts on Immersion, exploration, replayability." Leave a comment on what?! It sounds to me a bit like "I want to know your thoughts on TVs" Well, they are good to have and... yeah...

To talk about what makes immerses you in the game? If so, then sure, those points always help, but we are still left with general stuff that won't lead anywhere. You want to talk about how important they are to us or how well the TES games implement them or what?

I am sorry if I sound a bit rough, but I honestly neither get the topic, nor what's the point of it all. This game is pretty important to me as well and I can't wait till I get my hands on it, but I still don't get this

This two operate in direct conflict. Second time you play the game you know the locations, you also know the items are rare / unique so you can just as well go and pick them up as fast as possible. Go to Ghostgate and steal glass armor, go to Dren plantation and kill a guy to get daeric twohand sword.
No problem with it if the item is well defended or more cool than overpowering.

Agree with most of the other you say except fast travel who has been discussed to much

Not seeing this- it seems like "immershun" is the #3 subject behind Fast Travel and Spears. The term has actually been thrown around so much as to have become an utterly meaningless buzzword, unless you accept "the way [the current speaker] thinks the game should be" as the definition of "immersive." Its meaning lost, it is now simply a "huzzah" to the idea du jour: "Include [idea], because it will add to immersion."

The New Vegas forums did about the same for "exploration," the apparent new definition being "phat l00t at every map marker = 'better' exploration." And the map markers showing up on radar when you're within a certain distance is a vital part of the formula- apparently having to explore to find a location instead of being led there by a beacon hinders exploration. :shrug:

And replayability seems to be a 4-letter word to the many users who want to play the game once and do every quest, rise to the top of every single faction, gain every perk, max every stat/ability/whatever the game uses, and then move on to the "Ultimate game of this week." Disagree with that assessment? Propose any sort of quest that's exclusive to an exclusive faction, race, playstyle, or is in any way limited so that you have to play the game more than once to see all the variants, watch the reactions, and then get back to me.

This. Don't forget the "werewolve/vampire threads" and "will skyrim be more like morrowind threads". Those are right up there too.

I swear, elder scrolls fan are so obsess with this whole "immersion' thing. Can't you people pretend that you're traveling by boat or something when doing fast travel? No?

Ok, why not stop there. Lets get rid of the menus, add a world with that's bigger than daggerfall and has over 20 million characters, eating every 6 hours, using the bathroom, change the timescale to 24 real hours, and ending the game after you're killed. That should improve immersion. If you're so obsess with immersion, you would want all of these things and more.

Real Roleplayers (like pen and paper players) can go beyond game mechanics and immerse themselves with their own imagination.

That's mainly because anyone using the word 'immersion' here to support their idea gets shot down for bringing up an overused word (regardless of how relevant <_<).

Great thread. I think the idea is not Morrowind 2.0, but rather taking some of the things back from Morrowind that were dropped in Oblivion. Overall, I think Oblivion was a step up/better/improved on Morrowind, but there are still things that Morrowind did better.

I definitely hated the leveling of Oblivion to where every bandit has glass and daedric once you hit the right level (and I think Bethesda took the hint on this one), but there are definitely ways to make rare items truly rare without having to make it easy to pick them up right off the bat on your second playthrough. The design of Fallout was much better in this area, so I am not worried that it will be like Oblivion.



Totally agree with that. [see my faction thread]. "quest that's exclusive to an exclusive faction, race, playstyle, or is in any way limited so that you have to play the game more than once to see all the variants" is why I played through both Mass Effect games and Morrowind 3 times, but I only "finished" 1 game of Oblivion (though I did play the crap out of that 1 game) With Oblvion, I played for a few hours with another playstyle, but I quickly became bored from doing mostly the exact same quests that I had already completed.

Fixed. (sorry to seem offensive, but "So you want Morrowind 2?" posts annoy me.)

I hope Bethesda will have a look at this, great ideas. :biggrin:

What ideas? Throwing around words such as "immersion" is by no means a good idea. Not that it's good or bad, it's just not an idea at all.

Yeah, because the word "immersion" was the only thing OP said /sarcasm

Granted, in OP's immersion category, stuff like "engaging story" and "believable world" were "duh" statements, but he did have quite a few actual ideas if you read it.

If you had actually read the thread you would have stumbled upon a previous comment of mine that clears things up. Basically that's what he did, yes. There are next to no ideas and a lot of general stuff like "we want the world to react to our decisions". How? How would it work, to what extent, what do you actually mean?