This thread is for ideas and suggestions for future Elder Scrolls games, and to keep all the discussion in one series of threads.

We also have an official thread specifically for http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1530488-tes-vi-location-and-setting-speculation-26/ suggestions for future games.

Now that Skyrim has been released the number of suggestions and ideas for the next ES game are starting to show up. We have a long way to go before we get another ES game and all topics like this will be closed and either transferred or referred to this one.

Please keep any discussion of Skyrim in the correct forums.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1538772-official-beyond-skyrim-tes-vi-65/

@Lach

Okay, that clarifies things a bit. If that's the case, we're pretty much on the same page as far as Skill Trees go.

@Jackal

I'd like to see Classes come back in so much that you can pick what Skills you start with an edge on. Doing much more then that is a bit overkill though, and falls into the same pit as Morrowind/Oblivion, or worse, Dragon Age. You don't need "class" trees to be representative of what your character did before the game.

I didn't mean to make each attribute only viable for that particular archetype. I meant it entirely based on organization, to avoid attributes that come off superfluous or unimportant. Ideally, I'd still prefer for each attribute to increase the effectiveness of a wide variety of perks within each skill.

I also didn't mean for each "class tree" to be picked entirely before the start of the game. I was bringing up class trees as a format for perk picking, rather than the Fallout attribute model, and I was trying to consolidate it with the new notion of techniques that you and Lachdonin mentioned.

From here, I was going to potentially advocate for a system where picking a class from the start of the game could lock you into a particular tree that would control where you pick perks (not techniques as we've been discussing them) from. Or, in a softer system, during each level up, you could pick a perk from any of the class trees. I was trying to make a suggestion for alternative ways that class could work as, considering so many people tend to have issues with gaining skill bonuses/having skills level faster that are picked from the start.

The entire thing was just an idea for how perks could be organized, as opposed to being set up in an attribute format, while still being general in nature.

Hopefully I've clearly explained what I mean now.

For the next Elder Scroll, or maybe next next, or maybe some day. I would be really happy to see an Elder Scrolls based on Daedric realms, playing the antagonist, and with their points of view, so Would be nice to have a game about for example The Deadlands, Oblivion, You would play like a Xivilai or a Dremora, and the "bad people", If you are a Daedra would be the Mortals and Aedras, so would be nice to have a game related to that. so maybe the main quest of the game is take control of a location of Tamriel, so that would not destroy the Elder Scrolls lore, would be nice to have a game you could play by the "other side", and anti hero
Or other game about other Daedra realms like Coldharbour or Apocrypha

What do you think about?, would be nice to have opinions to know, Why always you have to be the hero and save the world? I liked what happened with Dawnguard dlc game, you can play evil and finish the main questin a evil way, I like to have to take decisions on quests, I think is one of the things most I like about Elder Scrolls, that kind of things would be nice to see even more on next Elder Scrolls, more deep and complex quest, more options related to end quests, different ways and different consequences, something unpredictable, that would be really great

I'd be up for a TES: Adventures game set in some plane of Oblivion. Not sure about the antagonist thing, as it's stated numerous times that daedra shouldn't be thought of as bad/evil. I wouldn't be against a main-line game that allows for the ability to screw over an area to a daedric prince, though.

In terms of realms, I'd like for there to be a few areas of many different realms that are able to be explored in a game. It would be cool to have some sort of ability to access many different realms or perhaps a spell to allow one to "surf/travel" through Oblivion.

That still gives off the impression that they're inherently specified for each individual "archtype." Frankly, that just seems to superfluous addition if it doesn't hold up to be explicitly for those actions.

The Skill trees as is are actually operate fine. Turning it all into a singular web is just too huge of a mess to deal with that demphasizes the role of Skills and turns it into something like Dying Light. Like I said, actually separating the Skill Trees from Perks is far more preferable. Much easier to organize too.

I had a thought on the way weapons could work and would like some feedback,

Rather than the blade/blunt or 1h/2h system seen in the last 2 games, each weapon type could exist at a point on both a sharp/blunt and a light/heavy scale. So for example a dagger would be far on the light and sharp ends of the scales (i.e. 1.0 S (sharp), 0.0 B (blunt), 1.0 L (light), 0.0 H (heavy)), and would therefore use only these levels to determine the skill level for the dagger, whereas a broadsword is heavier and perhaps not quite as sharp as some swords and could be represented as something along the lines of: 0.8 S, 0.2 B, 0.7 L, 0.3 H

So the effective level for a certain weapon would be calculated as:

((S(lvl)*S(p)) + (B(lvl)*B(p)) + (H(lvl)*H(p)) + (L(lvl)*L(P)))/2

p = proportion

so for a character with: sharp lvl = 72, blunt lvl = 26, light lvl = 50, heavy lvl = 24; the effective broadsword level would be:

((72*0.8) + (26*0.2) + (24*0.3) + (50*0.7))/2

= 52

However for a dagger the effective level would be:

((72*1.0) + (26*0.0) + (24*0.0) + (50*1.0))/2

= 61

This would allow for greater variation in weapons, especially those added by mods. The weapon proportions could also be tied to certain weapon factors like swing speed, stagger chance/magnitude, armour piercing etc.

Then again this may be an unnecessarily clunky way to deal with weapons, I don't know.

I like the the idea of learning special perks/techniques as a reward from a quest. Gives you more incentive to quest and adds a bit of depth to it, sort of reminds me of learning class abilities from your teachers in wow. Also wouldn't be opposed to attribute requirements to some perks along with other things.

Alright, I agree with you about would be nice to see Daedric realms. And yeah not all Daedras are bad, Would be nice to see more quest related to Daedrics

Imagine a combat system that is implemented into elder scrolls VI with a checklist/slider style customization option. You could make your elder scrolls experience different and change the mechanics of your game without downloading mods.

Examples:

Combat similar to dying light, parry by attacking a weapon, throw weapons ( smoothly) and the OPTION of allowing the game to be more punishing and cause damage to be locational, more realistic and what not. So an arrow to the chest makes you pull a boromir and you get slowed down and bleed out and eventually die a dramatic death. Or lol an arrow to the knee makes your knee unusable and damaged until it's fixed by a .. Magic healer because you can really just walk that off

A strength and weight as well as hight system.
Strength causes the avatar to become more muscular and capable of greater force and carrying ability and can cause a character to be able to interact with the environment according to their strength ( forcing open doors, picking up rocks boulders and other characters or even horses and monsters) and lets players wield a 2h sword with one hand. Weight of character determines the force needed to stagger or topple the character. Strength and weight determine the size of weapon the character can wield ( ridiculously big swords like clouds buster sword or swing an opponent around) . Hight could determine the point at which a character could both weigh and be strong enough but yet not be a tank. Taller characters can put on more muscle and not be overly bulky and yet still weigh more.

Heavy armour could have a certain force threshold needed to puncture it. So unless you have the required strength you can't run your sword through a fully armoured target. Heavy armour has a chance to deflect arrows and swords as they just glance off. The material of heavy armour would also effect this as well as weather or not the armour is enchanted to deflect all attacks or raise the armours threshold for direct force.

Armours should have weak points and some should have straps which could be cut in order to remove pieces of armour so a rouge style character could sneak of up a heavy armour character and cut off his shoulder straps causing the briastplate to fall to the ground damaged and rendered unusable while leaving the core of the character open to damage.

Magic could be expanded to influence the strength of a character and their weight without influencing their physical appearance. A Mage might look slender and fast but they can toss a boulder at you ( would look funny but would work like the armour rating buff spells from skyrim)

Hand to hand combat should also be employed with grapples and the ability to break limbs or even hit pressure points. If a character has the hand to hand skill and strength they could grab a heavy armoured enemy and crush their helmet to their head knocking them out or killing them.

Perhaps there could be a new school of magic that draws from the style of Kung fu that focuses around directing your chi to points of the body to make its stronger. So this combined with hand to hand could allow a player to finger jab a heavily armoured target and rip out their heart.

I think it would be extremely clunky... I don't necessarily dislike the ideas (though i think the variables would need some tweaking) but the implementation of, and more importantly the character tracking of such a system would be far too complex. Keeping Skills, and their modifiers, straight forward and easily trackable should be a main goal in everything, i think. Concealing variables and mechanics and making things complex for their own sake isn't good design (regardless of what the people at From Software and their fanclub seem to think).

Some of those systems i like, others i think are too complicated, and some i don't even think are really possible.

Parrying, Location Damage and Strength impacting staggers are all ideas i like, and have openly supported in the past.

Puncture thresholds, proper unarmed Martial-arts hand-to-hand and too many Height/Weight variables are too complicated. They'd either require a huge amount of background calculations, leaving the player always unsure of exactly how effective they are (while realistic, its not exactly good gameplay) or totally overhauled and specialised control schemes and animations that would over-complicate the game, or simply don't work well in certain viewing modes.

Cutting straps and targeting vulnerable locations is, for the most part, not something that can be accomplished. We HAVE seen combat systems where you can smash off bits of armour with sufficient damage (hell, even MMO's make extensive use of the mechanic in boss fights) but it's rendered more on a health/durability system than any sort of precision strike against vulnerable components. It's also not actually that realistic, as even the most simple armours are held together (and on) by a dozen or more fastenings, usually underneath overlapping structures to prevent just that sort of failure in combat.

I'm also generally against more realistic mechanics like 'Headshots are instant death'. Yes, they're realistic, but they don't really add anything to the RPG experience other than to allow your super powerful demi-god to get dropped by a lucky shot from some peasant farmer with a sling. I think games like Destiny and Borderlands have the best idea in regards to how one can make Headshots more impactful, but also fit with the inherent scaling of RPGs... Headshots are instant criticals, regardless of other circumstances.

I think headshots should be automatic crits and not automatic kills.

I suggest that headshots not be automatic critical hits, but be automatic chances of critical hits instead, with the critical probability decided by your character's stats. If, however, successfully hitting the head is based on your character's stats, then I would be happy enough with automatic crits for headshots.

Pretty much my feelings on how head-shots should work. How much damage the crits deal can be modified by your Skill level/specific Techniques within the Skill Tree.

I hope the next TES is set in Valenwood's jungles and there are creatures like dinosaurs. That would be epic and not much of a stretch. Valenwood is allegedly a home to strangest creatures. There were already cliff racers in Morrowind aka pterodactyls.