Fallout 4 did something close to what I wanted from TES crafting but not quite and it seems like kinda a given bethesda will use some similar mechanic for the next elder scrolls, when you have a mechanic that works you want to use it as much as possible but I don't think the modular approach that fallout uses would quite work in a elder scrolls game for crafting largely because there just aren't as many meaningful parts to attach attributes to in swords/armor. A sword is basically blade/pommel/crossguard. I suppose you could things like gems, or inscribed words of power, but those would have to be carefully balanced to prevent being redundant with enchantments.

So here's what I was thinking, rather than try to go the piece by piece approach why not focus more on the materials the items are made of?

For example, normally when you find a weapon it's appearance is determined by it's 'quality' all steel items look the same, all elven items look the same and all glass items look the same and so on there's usually no variation in appearance, but what if there were? What if instead you could craft based off of design to set the appearance, so rather than going to a forge to craft yet another 'steel' sword you would go to craft a 'sabre' or 'broadsword' or 'longsword' or 'rapier' each with it's own set of base properties then you choose the material to make it out of steel/mythril/malachite/ebony/whatever. and that choice alters the appearance of the weapon as well as allowing a person to craft their favorite weapon types from materials that might not normally be found like making a mythril akaviri blade or a ebony scimitar.

Something similar would be done for armor allowing allowing people to make armor designs that look unique but also are crafted to fit player style want the protection of dwarf armor but wish it were a little lighter? Craft the design out of malachite instead it might look odd having a set of greenish dwarf armor but it'd be lighter still quite protective.

Now there's a few hangups here, deadric for example stands out and leathers/furs would need their own categories of patterns/materials since you obviously can't make steel fur armor. But you can make leathers or furs out of the hides of different animals making hunting more than just a diversion for role players or people hunting for alchemy ingrediants that come from animals.

Deadric on the other hand could have variations based off the deadra it's made out of instead of always having that generic dremora armor. let us get golden saint armor or scaled armor made from deadroth or clanfear hides or some form of magic armor made out of atronachs.(For those who don't know deadric armor is actually made out of deadra so this isn't as strange as it sounds)

What do you guys think? would it work? WOuld it be horribly unbalanced? too complicated? or what?

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1581946-official-beyond-skyrim-tes-vi-70/


We talk about crafting quite frequently in the Beyond Skyrim thread, and while I will leave it to the mods to determine if this is general-theory enough for its own thread, most of the specifics as they pertain to TES6, I think, are more suited for there (though more and more I think it may be time for anothe Crafting & Customization theory thread...).


On the whole, I think we''re largely on the same page though. You and I, at least, I can't speak for all the participants of our many discussions.

While I'd love to see that kind of flexibility, it's probably WAY too much development time to implement. I'll settle for a crafting system that allows me to produce the "normal" items and a few unusual ones, provided that the character has the high skills to do something beyond the norm. Daedric work (beyond basic repairs) should be something that only "legendary" skills would allow.

I'd love to have armor dyes and paints that we can craft and use. I'd also love faction-specific paints for armors, similar to how you can add them to power armor in Fallout 4. It would be in *addition* to faction-specific armor, not a replacement for them though. The only difference between faction armors in Fallout 4 is the paint job and I want to see *both* paint job *and* actual differences in armor.

I'm not sure about that. TES games already have separate meshes for each weapon type, and we're just talking about applying a set of standard textures. In terms of weapon damage rating, it would be a simple matter of creating a set of material/weapon values, and combining them to get a base value of the crafted weapon. And in Skyrim, there's already a perk requirement for each material type.

I wouldn't mind the level of crafting Fallout 4 has, especially if it lets us craft uniquely designed weapons instead of the standard stuff. Another thing I'd like is to see the settlement feature work to build a fiefdom which I have talked about before, the idea of what I want the next TES game to have is the player character inheriting a massive but poor fiefdom where you can build it up to be a large city and get pushed into a ever-changing political climate.

I was thinking something similar recently. My current character just obtained Lakeview (his first hearthfire plot) and has been building it up. Now I know there are mods, but I'm playing this game vanilla on console, and I was thinking how neat it would be to be able to craft buildings and fences and set up merchants and shops and make Lakeview into a little village rather than just a big house. Maybe one of the khajiit caravans can start using it as a part of their route too.

Yeah, particularly if the actual models are higher resolution, with most of the detail rendered on rather than in the texture overlay, the having interchangeable textures becomes even less of a problem. In principle, you could even apply a colour filter over a monochrome base texture to increase the shading... But Dragon Age Inquisition has already basically shown the system in practice, using Materials and Item as seperste variables in crafting, so we know it's possible.


Combining this type of material variability with Fallout's modular system (expanded to armour) has the potential of offering far, far more customization than Morrowind ever managed, without it being a confusing, mandatory part of gear management.