(Sorry for any rant, I'm a little emo'ish tonight.)

I hope Bethesda takes the time to read this thread. Some might have been mentioned before (probably), but it's kinda important. On one hand, Bethesda claims to criticize their own game the minute its out and they're free to write down everything they did wrong with it. I respect that, and I also respect Bethesda's overall ability to create kickass games. BUT, certain "simple things" seem to continually get ignored by the devs (not just Bethesda) in favor of all the gimmicky game-selling grandeur. Selling a game is important yes, but game sales isn't just about the gimmicks - it's also about the little things that makes us, the players, feel like the game has a certain "little extra". A solidity and "infrastructure", sort of. Here are some examples of things I sorely missed in Oblivion:


1) Leveling toggle on/off:

Simply put, the ability to turn skill gain on/off would allow players to control the rate at which they gained levels. Some player would want to play a long low-level game, while others would want to get to maximum level quickly. This feature would put that power in the hands of the player, without imbalancing game progression. Encounters are still scaled, and you won't be getting Daedric stuff if you're level 5, anyways (assuming that Skyrim is anything like Oblivion). Also, since skilling is tied to level-up, you won't be able to exploit having superhigh skills at low levels since you DO NOT gain skill if this is turned off.

On each skill-up: IF toggle = ON, you gain +1 skill. If toggle = OFF you gain +0 skill. Should be very simple to code for such a huge positive impact on gameplay flexibility.


2) Gametime = Realtime:

Which one of you at Bethesda got the idea of letting the in-game clock go 50 times faster than realtime? Why would anyone need the time to go quicker when they can just hit the "Wait" button and use seconds to get to the other half of the day anyways? I can understand it if you're playing a fixed-clock game. But any game that has a "Wait" button?!!

In Oblivion, I'm running around in the Imperial City and I'm unable to explore even half the city before all shops close and I need to fast forward the time to the next day. Traveling between cities also eats massive hours, causing half of the travels to get me out of the hours I need to be at places - forcing me to use "Wait" button way too much, instead of when I personally want to use it. For ANY singleplayer game that has such a "Wait" button, one would assume that "gametime = realtime" would be a quintessential rule of game design. Please tell me why this isn't the case.


3) BIGGER Map Size:

One of my greatest disappointments for both Oblivion and Fallout 3, was the grocely minimized world map sizes - both in terms of screen coverage (in Oblivion is filled maybe 1/3 of the screen, in Fallout 3 it was even smaller) and in terms of the map size itself (e.g. the map in Oblivion should been scaled larger so that icons would be a little further apart). The latter is not a major issue IMO, but the screen coverage IS, imo. Not because its so incredibly detrimental to the playing value, but because it's completely unnecessary. Every feature that lowers the gameplay value, even by a small amount, needs to NOT be there.

The game is paused (although maybe not for Skyrim), and the current focus is to study a map of the world. Why should it not be covering the entire screen, more or less? Give me ONE good reason (for Skyrim), even in a realtime map reading. By the simple press of a button, the map is gone anyways, and it's not exaclty like a map read will make you particularly vulnerable either (due to that same button to take you back into the game world in 1 second). So please make the maps a little less cramped up, user-hostile and outright annoying. Fallout 3 is forgiven, due to how you wanted the map to fit within the Pipboy 3000 screen, but what about Oblivion and now Skyrim. Besides, why couldn't Kid 101 just bring his/her Pipboy closer up to his face?...


4) In-game notepad:

Deus Ex had this feature. Enough said. Why do action and adventure games have this roleplaying feature without effort, when an actual ROLEPLAYING game does not?!! Please give us the power to write own notes in an in-game journal and be able to group our notes in folders that makes it all easily reviewed. Wow suffers from the same, but EVE Online implements it masterfully. There's ALWAYS gonna be certain things that a quest journal doesn't pick up on, clues and whatnot. Player-written notes can also help with immersion, especially if we're presented with a lot of freeform clues and information that requires us to take notes. Just imagine being able to write down all the trainer locations in Oblivion, or a list of all the visited locations that you haven't yet fully explored (and you want to wait until later to explore them - but you need to remember which you didn't explore).


There are also several other things I'd like to see in Skyrim, but I think these 4 cover the most important features that I can't think of good reasons NOT to have in the game. They are simple to design, very user-flexible, balanced and they all make perfect sense. As for you fellow forumers, you're free to disagree of course.

Discuss!

1) Might be able to work, but it seems like something that would be too low-demand for the devs to implement. If the leveling problems get fixed, there won't be a need for this anyway.

2) Agreed. I've never understood this either.

3) Absolutely.

4) YES!!!!!

Literally none of those are must-haves. Not even close.

I also think Gametime = Realtime is a terrible, terrible idea.

Could you elaborate? Not being hostile, just want your opinion.

Consider this: Cyrodill is supposed to take WEEKS to cross in lore, but if Gametime = Realtime I can go from Cheyndinhal to Anvil in 20 minutes.

I also think it is a bad idea.
UNLESS
It's minute by minute, not hour by hour.
Can you imagine waiting for an exact time (for example 5:45) when it's 4:34?
You could wait for an hour, but you would be sitting there for 11 minutes waiting.

Maybe a to-the-minute wait system?

That would fix it.

Because games like Morrowind and Oblivion are set to scale. Imagine walking all the way across the province of Cyrodiil and back in the equivalent of an hour or two. That's the smallest province EVER. It would lessen immersion more than it would help it. Imperial City is supposed to be a huge city. I can't walk across Chicago in an hour, let alone all of the United States.

When you start up a video game, you're agreeing to suspend your disbelief. You gotta have the time set to scale with the rest of the game-universe. Sadly we don't have the technology yet to have the game be set to real life standards.

It would obviously take just 5 seconds like in Oblivion. I'm talking about the actual in-game time, not the "Wait" timer. E.g. if you try to walk from Bruma to the Imperial City (without fast traveling), it'll likely just take about 15 minutes realtime. But in-game, half a day will have passed more or less.


No offence, but I think that is a lousy argument. Most people see through that illusion pretty quickly, especially when most players don't even get to see the cycles fully, because they fast travel so much and use the "Wait" and "Sleep" options.

At it's core, your argument is always worth keeping in the back of the head (for Bethesda), but practically for an Elder Scrolls game it simply doesn't work (unless they remove fast travel and "Wait", which is NOT a good idea with respect for the fans of the series), and people DO NOT care. We all know how big the game world is and the most important factors for increasing the "size feel" is pathing and visual aspects - e.g. Todd Howards own explanation of the Mountainous terrain and how it makes Skyrim feel bigger than Oblivion, even though the map is about the same size. Also, most players are so focused on the world itself that the only times they notice the day cycles are when the stores open and close (because that's when it has an actual in-gme consequence). I can't speak for everyone ofc, but I can't say that I've ever felt that the day cycle increases or decreases my expectations of world size to any notable extent. It's a pure visual - the sun and the moon(s)/stars look neat when they show up. That's about it.

Besides, how big do they want us to think that Tamriel is, anyways? I mean, they've obviously gone away from the ridiculous sizing of Daggerfall and made Tamriel into a more realistic island continent the size of Ireland or even smaller. Again, It's pretty clear to most people how big Tamriel is atm.

Ofc, that's my opinion and not canon.

Just because some people "see through that illusion" doesn't matter. It's a roleplaying game and it's supposed to be catered to the player feeling like Tamriel is a real unique living breathing world, not a video game world. I've seen the full cycle of day and night hundreds of times and I've acknowledged it even when using fast travel, Wait, and Sleep a lot.

It CLEARLY DOES work for Elder Scrolls games. Not only that, but I'd say it works BETTER than this idea of having one minute in-game time be just like one-minute real life time. And clearly people DO care. I argue that the day cycle is a very important part of acknowledging how big the game world is. If I can walk from the Imperial City to Bruma in 15 in-game minutes, that makes me feel like this "Cyrodiil" province is the equivalent of a small city. If I can do the entire main quest within one 24-hour in-game period, then what the hell? What a small area! Not only that, but it really undermines the entire plot of the game. "Oh no! An Oblivion Cris--oh, it's over already." Oblivion Crisis ended in 24 hours, most people wouldn't even know it happened at all.

These are some pretty good ideas, although two stuck out, #2 and #4. The leveling toggle is interesting, and provides those who feel that the lower levels is the best experience an option to rest without worry of leveling up and getting to a point where the game becomes stale. I wouldn't say it's a "must-have", we haven't actually seen Skyrim in action and we probably might not be able to decide for ourselves whether or not the leveling system in Skyrim is fun in it's entirety or not until release.

The map coverage idea, or rather rant, is much wanted on my part. The whole map should be there at once, it was kinda annoying to have to only see a small section of the map. I guess maybe Bethesda wanted to map to feel big to the player, if you saw the map all at once, it might seem like your in a very small land. Nonetheless, hopefully the map for Skyrim is all there, all at once.

Now, to #2 and #4:

• #2 ---- I disagree with this. While, yes, it was very annoying to have shops close, if Gameplay = Real Time, I'd be trying to wait/sleep more often than usual. It seems to me like it's the same problem on a larger scale. Because of the "Wait" feature, the time of day matters very little. Also, after a while, I understand the general time for shops to close and prepare for a trip to the city earlier. What I do agree with is that the gametime should be alot closer to real time than it was in Oblivion. I'm not waiting around 100% of the time, and perhaps I'd like to go around major cities and go shopping. Or I'm running errands for my Guildmates, the list goes on. I'd like more time, but I think real time would be overkill. Closer to real time, however, would be awesome to me.
  
  
• #4 ---- I read this before on this forum a while back and loved the idea. It's such a great idea, and it's explaination for why it should be in-game is rock solid. Why don't we have a journal in an RPG? Oh, I'm sorry we do....but we can't write in it? We can get quills and Ink and we still can't write in it?! Ridiculous. I stopped playing Oblivion for a few months and decided to get it for PC, it was originally on Xbox. I forgot some things, and needed to scour the internet for answers. If that was on the same system, I wouldn't have to do this. Not to mention it would help me with my Alchemy and shopping lists. The only thing I fear is a limit; It's quite apparant that I tend to write large texts of words explaining my feelings and reasons in detail.

Hopefully these ideas make it in-game in some form; I'll be getting this for PC and will mod it in if it isn't in, but the option sadly, isn't available for console users.

Except that the Main Plot doesn't last for 24 hours realtime, it's approximately 60+ hours if you play non-stop (which is almost three full days, so you're not gonna be playing non-stop). Furthermore, those 60 hours can easily become 100-200 hours because most playing will likely do at least some of the side-quests, if not ALL of them. They're not just gonna do the main questchain asap and then just up and leave. Unless we're talking about the exceptions, of course.

But you feel how you feel anyways, no matter how much I disagree. So Bethesda obviously need to take both sides into account. I can respect that.

Yeah, I do acknowledge that I kinda polarized the issue a bit. My problem was mainly about Oblivion having waaay to fast day cycles, so if not gameplay = real-time, then at least it needs to be MUCH slower than Oblivion. Because imo, Oblivion time was just too much over the top.

1 Oblivion Hours = 2 minutes Real-time. So 24 Oblivion hours took 48 minutes real-time. For Skyrim, I would accept it if 24 Skyrim hours were AT LEAST 2 hours real-time, preferably 6 hours real-time IMO (assuming that the X = Y isn't happening).

Only one I really agree with is #4. A usable notepad would be a great thing to have. Dunno what you were talking about with the map. My OB map takes up my whole screen, though it might be UI mods doing it for me.

Leveling toggle? Meh, not a big deal for me. Game time = real time, don't agree with at all for the reasons Vel has stated.

So, thumbs up on the notepad idea. In OB we had parchment, quills, and inkwells and couldn't write a dang note or put an X on our map? Hope they fix that for Skyrim.

I do think it is a terrible idea too, sinceraly, the game time is shorter so that we can live in the game. imagine playing skyrim and it is always day, it would be boring ,everytime you want to switch to night you would have to WAIT, no, i want to let go, im going to spend some time walking into the wilderness and i want to see the nightfall as well as the dawn and dusk. real time would be horrible... i would download a mod taking it out, and i doubt im the only one...

1) Eh, feels too artificial.

2) Realtime is a bad idea because it's really slow. Most of the events in the game set for different times of the day, or even different days. Making it realtime would make you see even less of it. I agree 50 times is way too fast, that's why I mod it to be 20, and it's good enough.

3) You could always zoom out in Fallout 3. Also it's been confirmed that the map will be different and freely zoomable.

4) Deus Ex had a notepad? If you want to take notes get a pen and paper and write it down there, I tend to do that myself all the time. And I just hardly see it as a roleplaying element, unless it's a shopping list or something. But the main reason are the consoles, if you play on a console you could hardly write any long winded note. So blame the consoles for ruining your roleplaying experience, that's what the cool kids do today anyway...

I certainly agree with #4. It would be a wonderful feature to have. I'm not sure the maps need to be any bigger though, I mean ye gods, to me they are huge in Oblivion and Fallout 3.

I just want to drop in real fast and say this depends entirely on the zoom... Of course if you zoom out you can view the entire map. How horrible would it be if even when you zoomed all the way out, you couldnt see the whole thing. That would be a brainfart. The actual map size was pretty damn big, and they have already stated it will be about equal in size to Fo3 and Oblivion.

It probably is, there's a great mod out there that not only makes the map cover the entire screen, but it's also in colored with stylized map markers. Really great work. As for the basic Oblivion map, the horisontal length is fairly ok (70% of the screen or so), but the vertical width is way too small (1/3 or so the height of the screen). Makes the map interface look cramped up and not taking enough advantage of the screen - a lot of dead, unused space, both in Oblivion and (although a bit differently) in Fallout 3 and even New Vegas (but that was Obsidian and not Bethesda).



You're talking about the map itself, which was fine (and in Fallout 3 it also had zoom). I think that could've been somewhat better as well, but I'm not talking about that here. I'm talking about the size of the map interface "window" (for Oblivion) and the Pipboy 3000 display (F3/NV). The frames of the map screen (as opposed to the map borders themselves).

yea thats more like it... maybe 1 hour and a half, lets remenber that some people dont play 6 hours a day, and if those people are adventurers, than exploring would be completely boring for them (i hate exploring always on the day, i love when the night fall comes, everything stays slighty more interesting, until i get bored of it.. but look.. the sun is back! thank you day light for turning once again my explorations slightly more interesting... until i get bored of it.. get it?)

For the real time thingie, consider that the main quest of Morrowind or Oblivion take around 15-20 hours if you stick only to them.

Unless there are main quests that take place at a specific time of day and that the average player will want to use the "Wait" button to simulate time passing (Which he would not), that would mean that the whole main quest events could unfold in only but a day in Tamriel. Sleep is not a requirement, so stick to healing potions and scrolls you can indeed finish the main quest or rise to the top of a faction in one Tamriel day.

Oblivion:



It's not only about not having time to shop or to simulate province distances, it's about consistency for the actions the player does. In two Tamriel days, the player can complete the main quest and become head of all factions. Doesn't make too much sense.

Even if the player does every quests in the game and spends around 100 hours in his game, that's still 4 days.

I was just thinking about the time scale problem. It is annoying to constantly have the clock racing ahead of you, but at the same time, as others have said, if it was real time, or even half of quarter time, you could cross what is supposedly dozens of miles in minutes. Now, it didn't help that they had a brainfart when they designed quests which send you across the map, without much reasoning.

One way you can reduce this effect is to increase the size of the map. I would really like them to do this. I really don't think doubling the size of Oblivion would have been a challenge (and I'd be sorry to find out that this wasn't done because of console limitations) but many other games have maps that are 3x, 4x larger with no problem. There generally tends to be more content in an ES game, but there's a solution for that too. Long load times. Some people might not like it, but, as long as quests are sending you to the other side of the world every 5 minutes, you'd spend more time in a specific region anyway. And one 5 min load screen would be better than five 1 minute loadscreens. There would be one pause, and it would be long enough to make a sandwich, phone call, bathroom break, etc.

The other option is time distortion. Time spent in a shop, fighting, or doing other static activities have a reduced or even paused time. Only when you are traveling would the clock run at the normal 1/24 speed or w/e it is. That way, it doesn't go from day to night in the space of a business transaction, but you can't cross the whole map in a single hour either.

You would still have the "Wait" button though.

real explorers only waits if they need to do a quest or somenthing at a specific time, in oblivion and morrowind, the only thing that made my days alot shorter were the fast travels... i only used the wait buttons because of the shops, or to wait somenthing happen, but, while exploring, you don't have to wait for anything, your free. your ussualy not folowing any quests.. so you don't wait...