Forgive me if this has been raised before - I try and keep up with the forums but they have moved pretty fast since the announcement of Skyrim

I have noticed a few threads pop up about the archery feature this time round and how it is similar to a mod so wondered if there were any other mods you can see that have strong similarities with Skyrim

The one I'm going to mention is a Morrowind Mod by Razhkul back in 2005 - http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=2258

This was a sizable quest mod with very good dragon models and animations for the time - I can see quite a few conceptual similarities between what Razhkul achieved and what Bethesda are doing - coincidence - maybe or maybe they too thought it was a cool idea.

So do you see anything from Morrowind or Oblivion modding coming through in the design of Skyrim?

I believe the new Archery system is based on a "popular Oblivion mod".

I just loved Reign of Fire, and the chance to nurse a dragon until his advlthood was just priceless.

wow the mod is very similar to what there doing in skyrim

They've already mentioned that they have a lot of respect for the modding community and what it can achieve. It can only be logical that they would have picked up on some things that they thought would enhance the game.

It'd be nice if they could mention which mods it was, but from a legal perspective, I'm pretty sure it's impossible as you lot live in the l and of 'lets sue to get some cash for my idea being stolen!!!'

I think they said that the archery was inspired by Duke Patrick's Combat Archery mod (and possibly the reduced backpedalling speed feature of it too). Finishing moves and such may have been inspired by Deadly Reflex. The popularity of overhauls like OOO showed Bethesda that Oblivion's level scaling was flawed and that they had to change something.

The new leveling system may have been inspired by leveling mods like (N)GCD.

From all the screen shots and trailers released, I want to say mods like T.N.R. (better looking faces) and Deadly Reflex (dual-wielding/ finishing moves/ more blood) come to mind as gameplay overhauls that could have influenced Skyrim, but who knows.

MMM probably had an influence too. I'm definitely digging the variety in enemies shown so far.

I liked some of the AOE spells like those found in Mida's magic and multiple conjurations spells like those found in Supreme Magicka. I'd be surprised if some of these weren't implemented in Skyrim as well in some shape or form.

It does look a LOT like nGCD really. They even stole the "no class at all" mode from nGCD and made it the main and only way to play the game

Yes i thought the leveling was a lot like GCD

Other Morrowind mods that may have influenced the designers of Skyrim

http://lovkullen.net/Emma/kids.htm
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=4077

From Oblivion I think it is clear that the devs saw there was a real desire to have more animations - ideal for pic of the day threads - i'm not sure which was the first mod to do this but did think of http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.Detail&id=1609

I'm interested to see if the alchemy they do in Skyrim follows any of the modders ideas

Bethesda has stated that Deadly Reflex influenced their combat in Skyrim. They looked a lot on this mod when they did the combat.

I really hope the cooking part is influenced by the http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=8707 mod. I just love it. Simple to use, yet extremely complete and nice.

When you install the CS(now CK) you have to agree to an EULA that pretty much says anything you create using the tool belongs explicitly to Bethesda and that they can use it anyway they wish. Before any of you go on about how EULAs don't hold up in court you'd better be a successful defendant of publicized lawsuit involving a video game EULA otherwise you don't have a leg to stand on because the law must be negated in practice not speech.

That's a bit sour! So modders are money hungry creatures now? Unless I'm totally blinded there isn't a modder I know that would think that way, we all build our mods on the framework that Beth provided. Most modders would just concider it an honor to see their ideas make it into a big game like this. It's also a good way for some to get into the game industry or similar fields. Mods can make one hell of a portfolio.

No mods influenced skyrim...

I no longer walk. I troll around the forum ......

They certainly don't download and try every mod they can get their hands on, but I'm pretty sure they get a lot of inspiration from the most popular mods. It's a free, easy to use 'test audience' tool. If something like Deadly Reflex is popular then add gore/dismemberment (like in FO3) or finishing moves (like in Skyrim). If Midas Magic is popular and people want magic that looks cool and is not just as straight-forward as a simple fireball then let the player spit fire, cast trap runes on the floor and add dragon shouts. If most people use overhauls that get rid of the leveling system in Oblivion then change the leveling system (like in FO3 and now Skyrim). If Akatosh mount is one of the most popular mods then people obviously would love to see dragons in a TES game, so add dragons. And so on.

TESNexus has thousands of unique visitors each day, the most popular mods have more than 250k unique downloads. I couldn't imagine a better way to test possible game features on a large audience without investing any work or money at all (except for releasing the CS).

You seem to have your opinions of the Oblivion modding community a bit backwards. When people come together, develop new content for a game that can border on HUGE (including a complete new game), and then give it away for no charge at all, what would even make you think they would prefer Bethesda NOT mentioning them when they start borrowing ideas? They would much prefer that Bethesda DID mention where they got the ideas from. This is called giving credit, and this is something modders take quite seriously. Wouldn't it make Skycaptain or Duke Patrick feel that much better to know that their mods are now becoming actual features in the final product?

This.

Most modders would drop dead of excitement if Bethesda decided to mention them, and their mod, in a future game.

If you aren't modding for the love of it, you might want to find a different hobby...

But those other hobbies don't offer you nearly as much opportunity for BS internet drama, self-importance, and entitlement issues! Sure, you could try stamp collecting, but what if somebody says your stamp collection svcks? Yeah, sure, you could write them off as immature and just ignore them, but that's only because stamp collecting doesn't offer you the opportunity to throw a hissy fit and pull all of your mods stamps off the sites that host them, post only flawed/incomplete versions of said mods stamps on your crappy website when people beg for access to them, and subsequently let your website go down so that the only people who have your mods stamps are the ones who downloaded them earlier.

But anyway...

The two big ones have already been named: Deadly Reflex and Duke Patrick's Combat Archery. Both excellent mods (apart from DR's poorly-balanced stealth kills and laughably over-the-top dismemberment, and DPCA's tendency to break for no reason) and very good to have influence the new game. OOO was mentioned as well, and shades of its objectives are easily seen in Fallout 3, so hopefully they'll get scaling right this time. What hasn't been discussed are the obvious influences of other commercial titles: the visuals and balance of the magic seem to draw heavy inspiration from Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, the stealth in Oblivion drew on the Thief series -- badly, by the way. Emil Pagliarulo should be ashamed of how bad the stealth was in Oblivion, given his resume. Hopefully that will be better this time around. But the last one that I'm surprised I haven't seen mentioned anywhere is Gothic. Gothic had atmospheric NPC actions that the player could also perform back in 2001, some of which were functional (smithing), as well as cooking recipes. This carried over into Risen, too.

And don't forget Bioshock! The multi-hand equipment system is a very blatant rip-off reference to Bioshock's gun/plasmid system, only now a bit more flexible.

Emil wasn't the lead designer for Oblivion. He was lead on FO3 though.

I agree with you that the vast majority of modders would see as it as honor. Sadly, there would be this 1% screaming intellect property and demanding 15% of Skyrim revenue as a royalty. Also you need to understand people views and attitudes change when large sums of money are on the table. Beth needs to protect themselves and their investment.

You mean Bioshock 2. In the first one you had to switch between weapon and plasmid.

Bethesda's brilliance is this; give modding tools to the PC community for trail and error experiments and apply those to later titles....and the cost of all this testing= the cost of creating the devs tools in the first place that are required to make the game.

Open cities definitely wasn't one of these mods.

On a more serious note, I'm sure there's several mods they've looked at and taken ideas from. We will most likely not know what they all are until we play the game, or, more than likely, never at all.