That wont happen, the full radiant AI system used in Oblivion's pre-release was broken as hell.

NPCs would constantly kill eachother for food when they ran out
All the guards in a town would go out hunting for food at the same time causing NPCs to rob all the stores
NPCs would start fights with eachother resulting in mass brawls that would kill half the town, and force the other half to be arrested and thrown into prision
Skooma using NPCs would kill merchants, and quest NPCs, in order to get money for skooma
People woudld rob your house, stealing all your horded items, and you would never find them again

That actually sounds kinda fun. c:

IF they work out the kinks.

It would destroy the gameplay experience otherwise.

This, a vibrant world.

Guess who is in business, home security

I don't buy this "chaos theory" regarding the implementation of Radiant AI. Ok, let's say in 2006 they couldn't tweak all the parameters in due time so the advanced AI actions wouldn't break the game. How about 5 years later? How about 10 years later when the next TES comes? After all it's all about a big network of condition checks. This is a huge multimillion dollars company, not three lads in a garage trying to make an indie.

Is this NPC essential for a quest? Then make it killable by the player only and immortal to everything else (guards, creatures, natural hazards). Yes, he falls from a high cliff and won't die, been there, done that with the kids. It's always explainable in a magic world: potions, skills, luck, deus ex machina. The bandit stopped killing him in the last moment, because he yielded and or offered money. Makes perfect sense. So the "radiant AI would break the quest people" myth is dead.

Is this item essential for a quest? Then the vendor will only sell or give it to the player. The other NPCs won't buy it or steal it or pick it up from the ground because it's marked with a "player only" label. The player can't see the condition checks in every NPCs minds so it's all invisible and seems natural. Not quite rocket science. The NPCs will buy, sell and steal a lot of non-essential items instead and you can go into a shop and hear the buyer saying "I'd like to buy 50 glass arrows" and you hear the sound of the trade and then you browse the vendor's goods and he ran out of glass arrows. That would be very cool, organic economy. You can follow the buyer and steal his arrows or just go shopping somewhere else.

About the chaos brought by people following their needs and killing/stealing for a leaf of bread. How about the guards arrest them instead of attacking? Every NPC can spend some jail time when needed. If you need them for a quest you find them there, or wait until they're released. Besides, not everybody will start killing, because many of them have high morals and or good wealth. Once arrested, the NPC's stats will be automatically changed towards a better conduit so they'll try alternative ways of getting food: go to work in a farm or mine, go hunting or fishing in the woods. There could also be a conflict stopping invisible authority check. For instance, let's say 12 people have started a fight in a town because they are from rival factions and they don't like each other. The whole thing started from just two people, and then their nearby allies came to help. The game knows there is a big fight because the "in combat" label signals more than 2 in a cell. Then the game automatically sends an "authority unit" such as a group of guards to calm things down. Most people don't want to get arrested so they'll just stop. Maybe one or two will get arrested out of 12. This is hardly game breaking or far fetched. It's organic AI, courtesy of good programming.

By good programming they can also make thieves try to steal from the player's house only when you're around so you could catch them. This would also allow a good use for lock/unlock spells. A hard lock will be piece of cake for master thieves, but not all thieves are masters, some are petty and you'll see them try and fail. How cool is that?

The a.i. is my most anticipated feature for each TES because an advanced a.i. has beneficial influence in other major components of this game. Radiant or not, the a.i. must be better than Skyrim's because the npc reactions are more often than not disappointing and hurt my suspension of disbelief. Combat a.i., social interaction a.i., nearby events a.i., group a.i. (collective reaction), a.i. versus stealth kills, a.i. using objects, a.i. reaction to player actions, weather, terrain advantage, optimal pathfinding, equipping the best items they have in their inventory, using all their potions and looting everything they can, and much more... a.i. is the most important feature they should focus on as far as I'm concerned.

First off,I'm a huge fan of this type of action/adventure/RPG/sandbox hybrid game. I'm not a huge fan turn based, entirely stat driven combat, i like to feel like I'm a big part of the game. So the TES games from Morrowind forward are the perfect fit.
As far as where the game takes place and what the MQ is about I'll leave that to the devs. I will however add my $.02 to which changes and additions I'd like to see:

1. Most importantly, I'd like to see more "mutual exclusivity" and consequences to your in game decisions. I would like to see more instances where if you move up in one faction it closes doors in other factions. I know that a lot of the more recent Bethesda games have been trending to a more "amusemant park" single character can do it all style to cater to the casual players and expand their player base. I get that and am completely cool with it, I just think they have misjudged gamers.
Exhibit 1, the VGA game of the year, the most casual GOTY you'll ever find, was awarded to "The Walking Dead" that game was nothing more than a interactive comic book where you had to make tough decisions that had actual consequences.
Exhibit 2, The Mass Effect series. For those of you that have played this you know that your decisions that you made in one game carried over to the next. It was a major draw to most of its player base. Conversely, the way they ended the series, where all those decisions amounted to a hill of beans caused a great wailing and gnashing of teeth among those same players.
So, I am pretty confident in saying that players like consequences to their choices in RPGs, please give us more in the next game.

2. Hybrid races. Would it be too much to ask during the next game that we could be asked and choose our parent's races? I think it would open up tons of RP options not to mention the cool character creation stuff. I know that the mother's side determines most of your racial characteristics in TES, but it would make for some pretty interesting characters. It would be cool if you were a Nord with a Dunmer father, you would be primarily a Nord, but maybe you have red eyes, and a little less frost resistance and a little more fire resistance. You get the point. I think this would be a good way to add diversity without having to add new races, although it doesn't rule out adding new one either.

3. Can we make some fatties next game? I really want to make an obese Orc that uses a giant war hammer, not to mention it would en up lots of diversity in the NPC front, rich merchants could be chubby and such. I mean we can make buffed characters, we can make skinny characters, old ones, youngish ones, why not fat ones? Show the fatties some love next game, please.

Of course I have a few minor things, but those are the major ones. Anyway, feel free to pick apart, add to, mock, or agree with any of these.

AI <----most important

NPCs should be fully aware of what's happening in the world as it changes. They should recognize your status, what you are wearing, your race, your gender, your size, etc.


NPC movement <----second most important.

NPCs need hundreds of varied animations to feel alive. You shouldn't be able to recognize a motion! People never repeat the same exact motions in real life. People need to gesture as they talk.


NPC facial animation <----third most important.

The difference between talking to a robot, or talking to a person. I can't recall how many times I skipped dialogue because of the poor face animation. "Here's a sound file, now move your lips" Somehow they need to tie the lip sync in with the body gestures. They can't be separate or it will be robotic.

NPC schedules <----fourth most important.

Pretty much Radiant AI as it is intended. NPCs need daily, weekly, and perhaps monthly schedules. For example a daily schedule is waking up, eating breakfast, doing chores, so and so. A weekly schedule would be going to the marketplace to buy food, going to the library, going hunting, etc. A monthly schedule would be visiting a relative or visiting the capitol city.

Cloth and hair physics <----fifth most important.

Just icing on the cake for achieving maximum believability.

The guards DID arrest people, tons of them.

And they stayed in jail, only to be relased, run out of food, and get put back in jail again becuase they atatcked someone for food, and even if you give them alternate means of getting food, they would always try the easiest/closest, aka, another person, and attacking them.

Having the entire population of your towns in jail is bad game design.

I wouldn't like to see the next TES have only 8 dungeons,that would be a catastrophe. But I would love it if the next TES had 8 unique themed dungeons.
Let's say that there are 8 dungeons that each has a unique architecture and puzzles/traps,and that these 8 are only used by the Main Quest,and other than that there are plenty of the usual caves,mines,forts and the rest we have get used to see in TES,in the numbers we have got used to expect from TES.

Even this could be addressed. Just add a Baker in town,and make him produce X number of bread each day,more than enough to fulfill the requirements of the city/town he is at. And make every NPC to always have enough money to buy some bread. Let's say that the NPC's money are replenished every 24 hours.

People would still probably simply attack another NPCs becuase it is closer, and it costs less.

For the faction brawl sometimes it'd be funner for the guards to come in with staffs/batons to break up the fistfight, plus for fun you could join in
Course you get dragged to jail after a certain amount of "damage" or maybe lost of fatigue that knocks you out or just downed.

That argument can be so easily reversed to say, "a lot of things people scoffed at are now reality."

Star Trek portable phones. The ether disproved in favor of a vacuum that constitutes outer space. A manned mission to the moon, hell rockets that work in space (scientists scoffed at the idea that a rocket could work with no surrounding medium). Even a lot of the things you mention are vastly superior to when they came out.

1. Picture phones? What do you mean? Phones take pictures, do more functions, and have the capability to video conference with people now. An ipod has more computational power than the entire Apollo 13 spacecraft.

2. Colonies in space - Astronauts live year round in the ISS and private space companies are now looking to develop the technologies to shuttle 80,000 people to Mars and back each year.

3. Synth instruments - computers can accurately mimick the sounds of any instrument now. Whether or not you want to consider that art is up to you. I personally prefer to hear a person play still, but how would I know the difference on the radio?

4. Electric cars are around, not sure what you mean. They are still expensive, which is why researchers are looking for ways to bring down the cost. In one of my sci-fi short stories, the US ditches conventional vehicles for an electrically powered "grid" that cars ride along like a train. Everything is automated and the chance of an auto accident is slim. That might not be feasible in terms of $$$ but it is most definitely possible within today's technology.

5. I'll have to hand the laser gun to you. We still don't have a phaser from Star Trek. We have lasers that are so powerful that they could literally eviscerate a person though, its just that their oh so big.

6. Hovercraft will be reality in 30-50 years. Will they be personal? Probably not. It would be hard to take a society prone to car accidents and then give them flying cars, but superconducting materials in EM fields make it possible.

7. Cars come with more features than ever now, and while still petrol-based are way more efficient than older cars. Google is pioneering driverless cars, and while the whole process is still prone to complete failure, its on the right path.

8. Guns use the same ammo but the efficiency of guns has improved a hundred fold since their invention. Certain sniper rifles can pick off a target from a mile away. There are now smart bullets that can track a laser to a target.

9. Christmas lights are probably more due to the culture. I wouldn't bother buying new Christmas lights if my old ones are still bright and they'd be the same colors anyways.

You are right that technology hits plateaus, but only for a certain technological era. The bronze age hit a technological plateau, then advanced into the iron age, etc. We are in the information age of computers and technology and are on the verge of passing into the quantum age once quantum computing becomes viable, which will in turn allow us to discover even deeper mysteries about our universe and derive technologies from them. Will we ever become masters of the universe with technology? Maybe, probably not, since my own personal belief is that the universe is probably an infinitely layered mystery that goes on forever (not infinite in size, but in complexity). Even if we could probe down far enough to examine a single string in string theory, we'd just discover more laws governing the string.

Races in TES don't really interbreed. The children mostly take the race the mother was, with very very few traits from the father's race. Beast-folk (Argonians and Khajiits) can only breed with other beast-folk. The only known example of species interplay are the Bretons, but they aren't half mer half man, they are full human with magical traits from the mer, most likely meaning that the elven men that moved to High Rock early in Tamriel's history were the primary instigators of inter-species relationships.

Oblivion's NPCs do have alternate means for getting food, though only less-responsible ones will attempt stealing or murdering for it. Because responsible NPCs do not murder or steal for food, it would appear the AI has a way to distinguish between lawful and unlawful food acquisition. I was thinking (more like assuming) that an irresponsible NPC first goes for food as a responsible NPC does, and then goes for food unlawfully only when all responsible means are exhausted. If the AI does not function as I assumed, then maybe it could be tweaked so it does.

I saw evidence that an Oblivion guard may confront NPC criminal without attacking him. One evening I visited the Merchants Inn in the Imperial City. As soon as I stepped through the door, I heard various NPCs calling out variations of "Stop, thief!" I was immediately curious, so I moved to a corner of the inn and waited. Soon an Imperial watchman entered and jogged up to a group of relaxing NPCs. The watchman stood there for a moment, and then he peacefully turned away and left. There was no animation or dialog to tell me what exactly transpired, but I like to think that an NPC paid a fine instead of resisting arrest. Arrests would be nice, though.

This

I would very much appreciate a skippable tutorial area and out of control cinematics.

Another thing I hope will be improved is the quest journal, I wish there were longer description texts for every quest. Additional info about quest givers, locations, quest related lore, hyperlinked key words like in Morrowind. And above all I love journal entries written by the character like in Morrowind ( ' I was sent...' , 'I should explore...') because it emphasized the immersion of a first hand adventure. Being able to type your own notes below every quest entry would be very useful.

Now I know it might sound stupid,but I still hope that the next TES game will have that "wow" factor that Oblivion had when it came out regarding its graphics.
Basically to be the nicest visually game at that time. I know most don't care,and even I put things like better AI and else above graphics,but graphics are always a positive multiplier for the experience you can have with a game.
As I see Bethesda limiting the visual fidelity of the PC version of the game and offering to PC the same things consoles get I'm afraid that won't be the case.

But you know what ? Look what Cryengine 3 could achieve before Skyrim is out:

[img]http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_nosbk-7sr-c/SxD_RSaKULI/AAAAAAAAGRs/_KbYk9jasdo/s1600/CryEngine3_4.jpg[/img]

[img]http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jkDVHAwOOnY/T8fw1g7E6rI/AAAAAAAAA44/TFVA457k0u0/s1600/v-444-cryengine-3-screenshots-2.jpg[/img]

[img]http://tuhinternational.com/wp-content/uploads/Crysis-3-CryEngine-3-Tech-Trailer_10-1024x576.jpg[/img]


I hope that AT LEAST if Bethesda can't catch up with the competition regarding the graphics aspect of its game,it will at least catch up with 6-7 year old technology and provide us at TES:VI AT LEAST as good graphics as Cryengine 3 can already provide today

The problem with (air quotes) "catching up with the competition" is that none of the (air quotes again) "competition" has the scope of a TES game. And that scope does in fact influence the upper limits of visuals given a set of hardware.

So we can hope for the best, but never expect THE best. But cheer up - new hardware cycle - new possibilities.

The graphics evolution from Morrowind to Oblivion was impressive, I'm expecting something similar now with the new hardware generation. Let us pray the consoles will have at least 4 GB ram if not 8 GB.

Of course they won't. Microsoft and Sony will want to sell the 8gb Xbox 1080 and PS4 to gamers for $800 five years later, with 6 gigs of ram. You won't see a console have 8 gigs of ram until the Xbox Infinity and PS5.

It actually has the potential of being the most impressive Elder Scrolls yet.

Oblivion = Launch window game / under 1 year into console cycle
Skyrim = End of cycle game / 4-7 years into console cycle


Next ES = Early mid-cycle game / 1-3 years into console cycle

Which is usually when the most graphically impressive games come out, also the most innovative gameplay.


Bethesda will learn the new consoles with Fallout 4, then use that knowledge to make the next Elder Scrolls game.

Release TES6 PC only, port to a console that can run it, after the expansions and GOTY edition are out. If it doesn't work on anything but PC, don't port it.

Combine every good aspect of TES series, don't dumb down anything, and you got a game that makes console gamers buy PCs for this game only.

Make a good enough game and you can do like MMORPG developers: release a huge expansion every 1-2 yeas and watch the money flow in.

I don't understand why all gamers should suffer from worse games just because of consoles.

While we know this won't happen (Bethesda are Xbox fans) I agree that the game should be designed for the strongest platform available (PC) and then scaled down for the other platforms.