Ideas thread. Not necessarily for the next game.


my ideas include..


1: Character appearance Changes with different attributes. Although the player has some degree of control with what they start out like.
- personality and intelligence alter facial expressions. Agility, Personality and intelligence alters body animations
- Agility, strength and endurance alter the size of muscles and reduce fat. (although at different rates- A warhammer wielding nord will be chubier than a shortsword wielding imperial.)
- Different races have different gains with muscle/fat/veins. Man generally get fatter and more muscular than mer (orcs being an obvious exception, bretons being a minor one)
- Characters with more magicka gain more visible magicka veins if they are thin enough. These would be faint veins similar in appearance and location to real veins. To avoid confusion they might be better a little bit greener or bluer.
- Characters with little magicka have iris' with lines going fairly straight inwards. Whilst characters with more magicka have their iris pattern change into a less organised mess of lightning bolts.
- Starved/fat looks. Mostly for wealth differences in npcs. Curses too


other notes/related
- Water/dirt/mud/blood accumulation on the body and face.
- Tattoos and paints should be different. Tattoos being gained from guilds/clans/tribes/daedra and can only be removed by expensive magics whilst paints are easy to change in the home. Both can be done anywhere on the body.
- Curses/chronic poisons/diseases can distort figure and add new additions (like boils) temporarily. Other magics don't change a person's build.
-


2: Activity whilst waiting
- It's realy boring to have to sort out your inventory/make purchases/Craft items/other stuff whilst you go into town. It would be nice if you had an option to Do all this stuff by using the wait function in a town and doing all your activities from an easy to use menu.

3: Subsets of each culture. For example- Dwemer

-Stone and gold buildings in skyrim with big, Stupid hallways and square doors. Curved ceilings and [censored]y generic tolkienness plus gold pipes and illogicaly shaped chests and stupidly placed traps in skyrim with the (skyrim clan here) Im joking of course. Skyrim's dwemer can use stone. But dwemer lore would feel.. less dumbed down if this dwemer weren't so tolkienized. Some more metal and lower ceilings would do well. Malachite (no, real malachite, not glass) would be a good material to use like marble in these dwemer ruins for the richer dwemer.
-hallways being made out of a bronze metal with smooth grey parts made out of stone in the minority. Angular walls and ceiling. Round doors made for sealing areas of from an overflow. Chests are sensible and the only traps are faulty machinery. Towers are pointy. Some additions to this might be occasional spots of green rust or different types of lighting.
-In hammerfell, golden metal is what the interior is made mostly of. Red metal and Various stones apear on occasion and on the whole these are the more colourful ruins. Everything is angular like how morrowind portrayed the ruins. Walls are more decorated. Mosaics would go well with this design.h This is a picture that i drew inspiration from http://images.uesp.net/4/48/Redguard-Orrery.jpg
- One dwemer clan could use a silver metal for their structures rather than a bronze/gold one.

4: Skills need more uses and more alternatives.

alchemy gaining more uses. An alchemist/enchanter should be able to make explosives. Enchanting should also gain more uses. In morrowind you could summon a scamp by calling upon the power of your scamp belt. You could send a ball of fire at the enemy with a destruction skill of 5 by using a magic sword. Basically- You could play a sorcerer- One who svcks at magic themselves but can rely on it through use of items.

Security (lockpicking as of late) needs more uses too. I want to disarm traps, Make traps, enchant my traps, rearm traps, identify traps, hunt with traps, Take resources from traps... Or use magic instead!

Speech- I want to yell at people, joke with people, incite people against me , incite people against themselves, flatter people, flirt with people, Sadden people, scare people, befriend people, eat people, sleep with people, get discounts, eat the discounts , sleep with the discounts, Accuse people of being criminal scum,Convince people that i am not criminal scum, Throw coins at people, Lead people, inspire people, Inspire horses, Eat horses, sleep with... You get the idea.

Anyway- All the builds need to be able to accomplish The same thing differently. Let's take a locked door with no way around
-Alchemy- Blow it up
-Destruction- Blow it up
-Blunt- Break it down
Alteration- Open with a spell, or ghost through it (we assume that ghosting through stuff can be ballenced by some materials remaining solid)
Enchant- Use a soul to attempt to open it, or sorcery to do whatever
Conjuration- Summon something with a skill to open/destroy it
Hand to hand- Try kick it down
Security- Open the lock
Speech- Yell at the [censored] on the other side to open it.
Illusion- Charm a [censored] to open it
Restoration- Drain the life/moisture from it's wood, weakening it for other attacks
Sneak- Pickpocket the key

So long as your not awful at everything but blades and acrobatics you should be able to get in. Similarly- If the door is made of ebony or enchanted or.. something then There is no way in and thus the developers Haven't let us break the game. With problems like "you need to get up somewhere" you are more restricted, but still likely to be able to get up there with Enchanting,Potions,Alteration,acrobatics or something that boosts one of those. You are likely to have at least one available method by that stage.

5: Every weapon skill needs a weapon that's small, medium and big. Tiny being always usable, small being useable in any hand. Medium being better on it's own and incompatible with many combinations whilst big Being only useable with the tiny stuff.
Examples:
Blunt- Club (small), mace (medium), Warhammer (big)
Axe- Hatchet (small) War axe (medium) battle axe (big)
Blade- Shortsword (small) Longsword (medium) Claymore (big)
Spear- Most spears (medium) Poleaxe (big)
Staff- Scepter (small) Small staff, Big staff
Shield- Buckler (tiny) light shields (Small) Tower shields (medium)
Marksman. Shuriken/dart (small) light crossbow/throwing axe/javalin (medium) Crossbow/Shortbow/longbow (big) Dartgun (tiny)
Hand to hand- Knuckleduster (small) Katar (medium)... It would be nice to have an enchanted gauntlet known as the Powerfist. Also- some gauntlets should do more damage but slow punches, especialy if they have spikes on.
Magic- Spells that the player finds easy- Tiny. Spells that are harder for this player count as more.



6: That- Like morrowind- Not all cultures/materials make all weapons. Dwemer aren't going to make bows or at least all metal bows which wouldn't logicaly work. Similarly- Mithril wouldn't make a good warhammer .

7: in a slight contradiction to the above idea- The player should be able to make Weapons/armour/jewelry/clothes in different styles with different materials. Although each would hold a limit to what it works with (a bow made entirely of ebony or cloth would not work. It would be nearly impossible to make a bonemould sword the exact same shape as a steel nordic sword) This could be done with clever use of shaders and bodygroups.

- Flexible/light materials for use in handles/bows( Oak, Pine, Nord pine, yew, Willow, Hist, Ebony wood, Red wood,Bonemould,Chitin?, glass,moonmetal etc)
- Hard metals ( iron, steel, Nord iron/steel, Ebony, Mithril, Adamantium, Moonmetal, bronze, Orichalum steel, Orichalum adamantium , Bloodrock adamantium (the red metal that i am making up to explain the royal guard armour in tribunal) Bloodrock iron, silver, steel)
(Hair,furs, cloths,skins,Leathers,scales,Chain. ... You can guess how many of these there are. Scamp skin, Slaughterfish scales, argonian parts... Seriously- This would encompass a lot of things)
Decorative- Horns, Semi precious stones like jade, feathers, Extra fur, precious stones, Guilding by various extra materials, Extra metal parts...

This sounds really complex written down at first , But it's probably not that hard to develop. Each material is it's own item in the construction kit complete with weight, strengh,absorbtion, type,enchant value, skill to smith with, cost, Colour, texture(s) and occasionally even a trigger for dialogue (Because i think khajit will react to a pair of furry kitten boots)

Then for styles. You get to choose What shape the armour is with each shape having some different values. These include associated culture, weight, Value, Skill, Material types, absorption,stress, skill to smith with, Apparel slots taken, triggers... etc These two things come together with maths to make various armours. This system Would provide a stupidly large amount of items for only a little more work.


7: Now, After reading the previous idea, you're probably thinking it may be too complex for the player. The easy thing to do is provide more information about that skill to the player as his character gains in that particular skill level. Someone with an expert armour/smith skill (one of them) will know everything about it whilst someone with very little skill only know's it's protection and weight. Someone with a terrible enchanting skill might not even know it's enchantment. Someone with a decent people skill might know the social implications of wearing the armour (because who wouldn't be intimidated by a burly man wearing the deadric mask of terror) Whilst someone with a good sneak skill might know how attention seeking it is. New information and features should unlock for every skill as the player get's better with it.

8: a few things on armour/clothes
- Gender dimorphism. Tes isn't crazy enough to warrant non magical armours getting a pair of boobs when a woman wears it. Sorry, it just shouldn't happen. Similarly- A dress shouldn't turn into trousers and a shirt when a man put's it on. This went as far in skyrim as to Change the Ancient nord helmet's decorative Horns/deer prongs depending on gender- WHY?!?!
- Skirts need to be separate from pants. Shirt under Armour needs to come back. Greaves/pants need to come back. Pauldron's should probably come back, although it's fine if they are incompatible with certain cuirass' I care less for pants under greaves and robes over armour. Seperate gloves/pauldrons can look cool and gauntlets might be interesting in enchanting but both clog up the inventory so im on the fence. Masks under helmet's might be interesting.
- morrowind had the coolest design for glass armour. I did a survey on this on this forum to find that out. Daedric looked better too. Morrowind specific armours (netch, chitin,Indoril,bonemould) were Much liked.

9: Culture/designs have been inconsistent/ simplified and i want it to stop. The next bit became more of a criticism than an idea, so feel free to not read.
i want other ideas

I disagree with 99% of your ideas. Mainly the first one. I don't want anything messing with my characters appearance.

We need sunbirds and Hist space dreadnaughts to make an in-game appearance. Get the mananauts from the pocket guide and their spaceships in it too. That's improve both story and, with the addition of needing to avoid Thalmor Sunbird attacks ramping up the tension, the gameplay.

I want to be able to wear just one boot. In fact, I want everybody to be required to wear just one boot.

Well it's too late for Skyrim or MW or Oblivion so it must be for the next one or the one after in which case suggestions still go here:
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1361134-official-beyond-skyrim-tes-vi-8/