» Fri May 04, 2012 7:46 am
Well I think we should start small, but I won't. Here is the big thing that should be a necessity for any elders scrolls game.
Make what is in the Lore, in the game, as best as is possible.
Now for somewhat smaller things.
-EVERY Daedra type from previous games should be summonable at any point if you have the knowledge and skill for it. Introduce a few new ones now and again too. I doubt we have seen all of the denizens of oblivion.
-Be able to learn any spell despite your skill level in that magic. However impose penalties for using magic beyond your skill. All these spells should have a unnaturally high magic cost. Summoning a Dremora Lord below the prerequisite level should cause it to attack you. Fireballs have a significant chance of blowing up in your face, 40% of the time sounds reasonable. Healing spells have a good chance to damage you. Alteration spells usually fail and cost A LOT of magicka. Illusion spells cause random effects like casting a Muffle spell will have a chance to fail and instead causes a rather powerful but brief light spell to go off. Or they could all just fail and cause a little damage and drain a lot of magicka.
-Every province should have werebeasts. Depending on where it is they should have Werewolves for sure and possible an additional werebeast supposedly native to that province. Werebears in Skyrim, Weretigers in elsweyr, Werecrocodiles in Blackmarsh, Wereboars in parts of High Rock and Hammerfell, Weresharks possibly getting confirmed in a game somewhere and all of these variations in appropriate places in Cyrodiil
-Keep the racial bonuses fairly constant in terms of the culture, make sure they represent the culture as best it can as we know them or they are known. They are pretty superficial so its not like you really need to balance them. The Dunmer, Nords, Redguards, and Imperials had odd bonuses in Skyrim. The Dunmer are supposed to be a Jack of all Trades type of character with magic, combat and stealth skills based on their lore. Imperials need a speech bonus, they are kind of the talkers of the bunch. Nords are supposed to be rude warriors. Why do they have a speech bonus? Why are they not adept with Heavy Armor either when their ancient ancestors apparently all wore it? Why do Redguards, the least magically inclined race have two magic bonuses? There is in game dialogue supporting the idea that Redguards dislike magic in Oblivion. Stuff like that.
-Powers need to be one touch life savers or game changers. They are once a day powers. That is a rough penalty in of itself and should be last ditch efforts at survival or actually useful. An example is a leveled Ancestral Ghost be summoned to a Dunmers aide that acts nearly exactly http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=10776. It makes the Dunmer ancestor ghost a companion that becomes a more powerful ancestor as you get more powerful. The premise being as you gain power you earn the respect and help of more prestigious and powerful ancestors. There IS a visual change. Make race count dammit. Another example is something they already have done. The Orcish Berserk power in Skyrim. That is a potent and useful power that never loses its usefulness. A final example for [censored] and giggles is another power that was made into a mod. http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=12096 Last ditch effort scaling megaton of frost spell basically. The premise being previous games giving Nords on touch magic powers and they unleashing some innate frost energy when necessary to overcome life threatening or difficult situations. The powers should be something you can use throughout the entire game and actually be fun and entertaining to use. Shameless promotion of a friends mod series I helped with I know lol.
-Bring MORE skills into the game and make them have importance. Climbing+Jumping+Sprinting+Stamina Regenerationg+Swimming+Breath Duration could be rolled into an Athletics skill. Not movement as that is something you have no control over so is harder to control your level ups. If someone wants to gimp their way up to a high athletics skill let them. That will leave them in a punishing state of unpreparedness when they fight any high level monsters due to perks and skill deficiencies. Speech should let you avoid situations without conflict or cause peaceful situations to deteriorate into conflict. Let some quests be easily passed with a high speech skill and very difficult without one. Skills should provide benefits that are visceral and worthwhile. Have a skill in something have meaning in meaningful ways. Fallout 3 and New Vegas had this to a rather satisfying degree. Intimidate someone because you are a Weaponmaster. Or use a skill both you and the NPC share as incentive for the NPC to help you accomplish something. Both of you Skilled Archers? Have some dialogue that lets you boost your standing with them. Make each skill have a purpose. People like variety and quality. No compromising there. Many skills and each one something very useful in various ways.
-Diseases and Poisons should be something you need to really watch out for. Make them near crippling in various ways. Here are some very annoying yet useful ways of doing that. Drastically reduce carry weight, movement speed, visibility, hearing, jump height, health/stamina/magicka regeneration, skills(like by 50 points till zero), health, magicka and stamina. Cause a slow constant damage, paralyzed status or even stunted health/stamina/magicka. Then make diseases fairly prevalent with the more damaging ones obviously being rarer. Give diseases and poisons a higher chance of inflicting you based on your resistances and certain disease and poison types. Common very damaging diseases could be very hard to get for instance even while in contact with an afflicted specimen. While a rarer yet weaker disease is almost impossible to resist. Have variation with some potent diseases being impossible to resist and others easily resisted. Make a Survivalist skill that lets you mitigate these things a bit amongst other things. Maybe just make it synonymous with the Alchemy skill.
-More varied weapon types and styles of using them. At least back to the amount that was in Morrowind. Broadswords, Longswords, Shortswords, Spears, Halberds, Throwing weapons, Crossbows, Bows, Staves, Maces, Clubs, Daggers, Claymores, Katanas, Dai-Katanas, Tanto, Wakizashi etc etc... Make most of the weapons have different animations and damage types. Bring back weapons that do certain types of physical damage. Slashing, Blunt and Piercing. On each hit they do all of the damage types. There most effective type being the most effective against various opponents. Slashing being great against lightly armored opponents. Blunt being great against heavily armored opponents. Piercing being the middle damage type. Not as effective as Slashing or Blunt in their respective better categories but better than both at their weaker categories. Give melee combat some depth!
-Keep perks but make them interesting and useful but not entirely necessary for a skill to be truly effective. I It should be a nuanced thing. Baby steps the the top of the power pyramid. No 5 perk levels of 20% damage increases. That part should ALL rely on automatic perks you get at certain thresholds like Apprentice, Adept, Expert and Master as well as just scaling with your skill. Instead have things like using specific weapon types more effectively. Maybe if the piercing, blunt, slashing thing was brought back it could give benefits to a sword user for damaging heavily armored opponents. Cause critical hits to happen more often and deal more damage. Cause a weapon to make less sound when being unsheathed from stealth and make less sound when performing stealth kills. Skyrim actually has a system in place for 'louder' weapons during stealth attacks. Two-handers being the loudest for stealth attacks. Dagger being the most silent. Maybe a perk could make your Hefty mace more effective at stealth kills by causing you to 'learn' through a perk that if you hit a certain area or way it will make less sound blah blah blah.
-Oh I have plenty more where this came from...don't want to overload anymore than I already have lol.
