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

We have a long way to go before we get another ES game. In the meantime, similar topics will be closed and referred to this one.

Note there is a separate thread specifically for http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1540764-tes-vi-location-and-setting-speculation-27/ suggestions for future games. Please keep discussion of Skyrim in the correct forums.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1563794-official-beyond-skyrim-tes-vi-68/

I'm very interested to see what they'll do with Conjuration in the next game. I'd like them to go back to the simpler system like in Oblivion where you have a ton of creature summons to choose from intead of these overly specialised spells that we saw in Skyrim, which also made mockery of any sort of decent necromancer build ( without the mods ). But first and foremost, moar creatures to summon. Skyrim simply had too few.

I feel that. Beyond the lack of summon variety in Skyrim, my biggest beef with Conjuration in that game was the vertical progression of summons. Flame Atronach, then Frost Atronach, then Storm Atronach, then Dremora - it wasn't as bad, since you could bring all summons up to par with a perk and they all did different things in combat, but as you progressed the skill it felt like there was no reason to use the earlier summons you got now that you have the better one. I do really like Skyrim's system of reanimating corpses, though, instead of just summoning undead creatures.

I'm really hoping they bring back spellcrafting, and model it more on Fallout's weapon modding instead of the system used in Morrowind and Oblivion. By that I mean, I don't want fine control of variables like Magnitude, Area, and Duration nearly as much as I want just a greater variety of options to mix and match, and putting set magnitudes behind tiered perks is better for balance anyway. Hell, Daggerfall was better, since you could make spells that scale with your level and choose area-around-caster as a delivery type. So for instance, knowing Wall of Flames and Frost Rune lets us mix & match flame damage, frost damage, streaming casting, rune casting, and the lingering damage well effect that the Wall of Flames leaves; so maybe we could use that to create a Flame Rune that leaves a lingering pool of Fire Damage after it gets set off, or a basic Frostbite spell.

This is slightly related, one of my biggest problems with playing a mage in Elder Scrolls is that they have to join a mage faction to really excel - warriors don't need to join a group to craft/find the best weapons and armor, thieves don't need to join a group to move in the shadows and steal (Skyrim even improved this by giving us a Speech perk to sell stolen goods to any merchant), but mages have to join a group to get access to the best spells, or spellmaking in Oblivion. My mages want autonomy, dammit! With spellcrafting, or some means of learning new spells from old ones, I'd only have to find basic spells (either from a faction, unaffiliated merchants, or loot) and I'd be able to expand on them myself.

I liked the idea of reanimating corpses as well, until I saw how it functions in the game, and it was bad. Aside the fact you needed to first kill someone to ressurect him, aiming it in the middle of the combat was problematic at times duo to the confusion of the combat and what not, not to mention there was not much of a point in doing it when you could have simply summoned a flame/frost/storm atronach instead. Long story short, it was impractical.

So for that reason, I'd like them to go back to classical undead such as different types of skeletons, zombies, wraiths and so on, but this time with the option to create them out of bones/harvested flash and what not, and not just summon them out of nowhere, and ofc make them permanent followers until they get killed. Nothing more annoying than a summon with time limit, especially since aren't daedric creatures.

Mhm, spell scaling was always an issue Bethesda never really invested time in. God I hope in next TES VI destruction magic is going to be viable beyond first 10 levels.

Well, magic is considered more rare than weapons/armour, but I agree there should be ways of studying it on your own besides needing to join magic guild. I'm still waiting for a TES game where you can join necromancers, or some other cults.

Here's a thought: you still need to kill someone to reanimate them, but there's no time limit on reanimated corpses, and you can't raise them again after they get killed a second time (unless you're a master necromancer, maybe?) And maybe instead of harvesting corpses for parts to build an undead servant, you just cast a spell on a corpse to turn it into an ash pile and summon a skeleton/zombie/ghost/wraith relative to the level of the corpse.

Not sure what the limit should be on how many corpses you can raise at once, though - that's a real easy way to become over-powered.

I was mostly fine with Skyrim. Add in a new new weapon/armor/enemy types, and maybe change some of the trees like alteration and lockpicking around and I would be fine with the game.

Not particularly. Proper set ups are not something you're going to just stumble across every five minutes, but they're not terribly uncommon. The benefit of a Guild is (or should) be having ease of access to higher end materials for a discount. You shouldn't have to be a member of something to make purchases, but joining in lets you play with more toys then you would ordinarily.

Depends. If they use Skill trees again, hopefully much better version of what Skyrim attempted, its branches would probably be divided into between Daedra, Bound items, Undead, and miscellaneous entities. Tidbit, raising the undead by itself is a fairly easy feat and not particularly labor intensive, so Skyrim is mostly right on that mark. Building your own constructs could be possible, but I wouldn't hedge my bets on it.

Stray thoughts, if we want to guess what Bethesda might be planning for TESVI, it may be good to look at some of the major criticisms of Skyrim. Looking at what each game is good and bad at, it seems to me like Bethesda does listen to criticism, and tries to avoid making the same mistake twice... we can always count on them to make new mistakes, though. (common criticisms about Fallout 4 may apply as well, but a lot of the ones I'm hearing frequently are things TES hasn't really fussed with all that much)

From everything I've read, the most common complaints I've heard about Skyrim all have to do with the faction questlines. How short they are (minus the sidequests, which no one counts) and how fast it is to become the leader of all of them without knowing a damn thing about magic, thievery, or combat. Say what you will about this, but I'm taking this as a sign that Bethesda's going to re-think the pacing of their faction questlines for VI, and make it harder to become the boss. I don't think they'll do it by imposing skill requirements like in Morrowind, though; but I do think they'll tie in quests more, and design quests that require that faction's favored skills.

The master-level spell quests in Skyrim required you reach 90 in that magic skill - technically a skill requirement, but I was okay with it since the context of the quests was "Is there anything more that I can learn?". Daggerfall had quests where you were required to cast an Open Spell for an enchanted lockbox, or a Sleep spell on a noble cursed with insomnia. And the radiant Thieves Guild quests were great because they required you be a good thief, and you could fail if you weren't - it wasn't "you must have 90 Sneak to become the Guildmaster", it was "you have to steal a lot and not get caught to become the Guildmaster". That's the direction I want Bethesda to head in for whatever their archetypal warrior/mage/rogue factions are in TESVI.

The problem is that they DID do that in Oblivion and Skyrim. There were a number of places were you HAD to cast spells and such in order to advance the questline.

This however doesn't actually do anything because there are any number of magical items that can replicate the same result, allowing you to bypass said blocks without actually knowing spells of having skills.

You will never need to know spells, or have high skills, in any faction, because there will always be staves, scrolls, potions, and other magical items that allow you to get past it unless they make up some totally arbitrary and illogical restriction like "ITS NOT LE SAME KIND OF FIREBALL FROM A STAFF AS IT IS FROM A SPELL!"

I recall even as far back as Morrowind people complaining that you could just just buy your way to the top of guilds via trainers. And then Skyrim and Oblivion had the problems of being able to get to the top with 0 skill level because of items.

There is no actual way to get around this without removing all the magic items from the game... which they wont do.

I think if we brought back the Endurance, Strength, Intelligence, Agility and Personality you could fold most of the other traits and skills of the other attributes into these.

I also think its important to distinguish what it means between having a high leveled skill (Like 60 Long blade) and a perk. Perks that add damage should be removed all together. Perks should be physical things like deflecting arrows with your sword, Shield bashing, Summoning special kinds of daedra, pick pocketing wearables, crafting only using half the required materials, etc..

I don't have any personal problem with ranked perks that only add extra damage... it's not like Bethesda has to sacrifice five interesting perks to make room for five ranks of Barbarian, and a raw damage bump is still pretty useful. That said, they could try experimenting with a system where skill increases don't do anything to the base effectiveness of the skill, and only governs what perks you can unlock - one of Skyrim's problems was that (with Lockpicking and Speech in particular) the effectiveness bump just from using the skill was good enough that you didn't really need to invest any perks into the skill. But I'm not sure how I feel about something where the skill itself is "dummied" just to act as a gate and category for perks.

I'll never let go of the idea that they should turn ranked perks into skills nested within skills, though. So you pick the Blunt Weapons perk/skill within the One-Handed skill, and as you use maces it increases the armor bypass with blunt weapons specifically and the base damage of all one-handed weapons generally. They could even roll all of that into attributes, and then put the unique perks at the very end of the trees.

It's not that Bethesda has to sacrifice anything in order to make room for a perk that adds 10% to blunt weapon damage, its the fact that you, the player have to sacrifice your perk point from something potentially interesting (like the ability to dodge roll) to do something that should be naturally associated with either an attribute (like strength) or the skill itself. Adding the appropriate buff based on your skill level and attributes would put the value back in the skill itself. Like you mentioned, the last thing skills should be is a dummy that just acts as a gate to a set of perks.

Combat is a pretty easy one to figure out. You could tie your weapon skill to weapon attack speed, % chance to critical hit, % change to mitigate damage if you block with a weapon. Your strength attribute could account for a minor damage buff + the base damage of the weapon. Your actual perks could involve combo finishers, disarming opponents, deflecting arrows, firing magic through your weapon, etc..

Going to the complete opposite end of the spectrum is probably something like Alchemy. You could tie your alchemy skill to % chance to create a potion with better stats/effect duration, and % chance to successfully create a potion. Your intelligence attribute could account for your knowledge of ingredient traits, as well as how long it takes to brew a potion. Your actual perks could involve creating twice as many potions with the same ingredients, The ability to "spike" preexisting potions with more ingredients, The ability to "deconstruct" potions to liquids that have one effect, etc..

I don't think it should be naturally part of the skill or attribute itself.

Keeping it as its own perk gives players far more flexibility to define their character, rather then everyone who gets 100 in the one-handed skill all being forced to do the same the same melee damage. I really like being able to not take anyhting more then the first +20% damage perk in Skyrim. Its a great way to balance how much damage you do in the way you want.

That is largely the problem with attributes in general. The 1-100 attribute system is terribly limiting, and forces blanket upgrades across numerous aspects of your character, even if you only wanted one specific thing.

I've said it in the previous thread, and think I may as well lay it down here. I'd split up "perks" into two different categories. The first one would be Skyrim's Skill trees, but renamed as Techniques. They would primarily function to dictate and change how a specific characters Skill is ultimately used, and would play a more predominate role over base Skill level most of the time. They would generally be more expansive then Skyrim's somewhat limited model, and you could have a few different characters with similar Skills, but behave differently because how they use those skills are so radically different. Generally, I'd award a single point upon leveling a Skill, but the further up the Tree you go, the more points it would cost you in order to learn that specific technique, meaning that you would have to make the decision to commit to learning higher end moves, or spread out your points in different areas but not be truly great in any of them.

The other catagory would be Perks proper, and follow a similar formula to Fallouts. They wouldn't typically be involved in Skills most of the time, but be odd traits and quirks you can have your character learn. Things along the lines of replenishing a portion of your Stamina when killing an enemy, getting access to Powers like Berserk or Adrenaline Rush, perks that alter conversation like Inquisitions World History awards, and things of that nature.

Base Techniques where "You now do X Y% better" are still going to be around though. I'd gut them from Spell and Weapon base skills, and leave the Technique available toward something that changes the leveling speed and magicka/stamina used when initiating an action, but with things like Security, they sort of need to be around. You should have to invest in a ability in order to be great in it, and as of right now, skills like that are still best left to those devices.

As far as the Attributes themselves go, yeah I'd like to see them back in. No, not the way previous installments handled it. Probably will get into that later.

Oh for sure. Curbing your strength should be a player choice, which is why damage output would (hypothetically) be governed by the strength attribute -- a player made choice whether or not they want to invest in it when they level up.

I think I understand from a high level what you're saying and it sounds pretty interesting. I'd be interested to hear how the technique/perks could play out from two opposite sides of the skill spectrum.

The problem with strength is that strength controls more then just melee weapon damage, it also deals with fatigue and carry-weight.

If I want to get more carry-weight, I am forced to raise strength, and thus, my melee damage as well, which I shouldn't have to do.

This is why Skyrim got rid of attributes, to stop this "bundling" of stats attributes cause.

I'd tie off Carry-weight with Endurance for the most part, since what Strength would govern would be comprehensive enough. Or just raise it incrementally on level up regardless of your attributes, with them only modifying the total amount you have. I mean, its not like any of these things are hard and fast rules that couldn't be changed, and have to be implemented like they were in previous installments.

I think I'm with Possum on the idea that things need to be split up more than bundled, although really I want to see how it works organized in a top-down sort of way... so you've got a Strength tree that fans out into One-Handed and Two-Handed, then swords, maces, axes, then "Power Attacks with maces have a chance to knock enemies down." Which is essentially what Skyrim already does, although they nixed the attributes since they don't fit as well into the paradigm.

Honestly, my only real issues with Skyrim's system is that the weapon-specific perks in the 1h and 2h trees svcked, and you never needed to take a perk in Speech or Lockpicking to excel in those areas. If TESVI's character system is just an iteration and improvement on what Skyrim did, like Oblivion's compared to Morrowind, I'd be okay with that.

(personally, I still advocate dumping Lockpicking as a skill altogether - of course they can expand it into a full-fledged Security skill for interacting with all manner of traps, but I don't see them heavily expanding on traps to make them a more prominent part of level design. And if locks and traps maintain the level of relevance they've had in every TES game so far, I'd much prefer a few lockpicking perks in the sneak tree, some Open spells/scrolls, and a perk for bashing open locks with melee)

I have the same feeling. Lockpicking isn't important enough by itself to be its own skill.

You could see this even in skyrim were several of the lockpicking perks had nothing to do with lockpicking at all, seemingly becuase they couldn't think of anything else to put in the tree.

Yeah, turning Lockpicking into a more rounded skill, Theivery, Fingersmith, Security, Sleight of Hand etc would be the best way to make it relavant without making is a basic necessity or an after thought. Handling anything that requires fine motor control and deftness, from picking pockets, disarming traps or opening locks.




That's a model ove always been against, actually. There are far more ways to mil someone I'm brute strength. Yes, you can have weapons and fighting styles centered around it, but it's not the only variable, and often isn't even the most important one.


Which is part of the issue that Attributes butt up against in almost every RPG. They are simplistic concepts which become no-Brainers for particular skills. Many games go so far as to just make the increases automatic based on your 'Class', since to take any other approach would directly hamper you. Playing a Knight, while investing everything in Wisdom and Agility, is just going to get you killed.


All Attributes should give some kind of benefit to all characters, and they should never directly infringe on, or be linked directly to, any particular skill. Having perks that allow you to gain bonuses for certain attributes is one possible direction to go, but linking Attributes directly to Skills was part of the problem afflicting the system in the first place.

Lockpicking and Pickpocketing fall into the same problems as the Daggerfall Skills did, in that they're just too niche to do anything interesting with, and that's not even taking the idea of Skill trees into account. I'd rename Lockpicking back into Security, and take the Wasteland approach and fan out what it can do, with its Tree governing Lockpicking, Safecracking, and Trap Disarmament. Having something govern a single action as basic as picking locks was never a good idea.

Bad move. Previous games major weaknesses was always making X Attribute essential to certain builds, while providing no benefit to anyone anywhere else. Want to play as a warrior who relies on their wit and intelligence? Too bad, you can only level Intelligence based off of magical skills. It was never a really good system to start out with, and branching out and having it so that your trees have trees is just a mess.

The One/Two handed trees were just bad in their entirety. They were both copy/pastes of one another with nothing there to actually differentiate them, and frankly there's only so much you can do with calling a Skill as broad as those without making disproportionately cluttered.

Sword are swords, be they one handed or two handed. TES isn't like Fallout, and doesn't have guns which can have all these various components on them.

What differentiates one/two handed is what always has, the DPS/defense trade off.

-2 one handed weapons = best attack/worst defense.

-Two handed weapons = medium attack/medium defense.

-One handed weapon + shield = worst attack/best defense.

And then you have individual weapon type perks like

-Sword = more crit damage

-Axe = bleed

-Mace = armor piercing

You're not explaining anything anyone doesn't already know. The system is still grossly underwhelming and needs to be torn from the ground up and restructured into something you can present into the daylight. And that's if we keep using the same banol system of having only three real weapon types to choose from, which was about as boring as boring could get. Its not specializing characters in a meaningful capacity whatsoever, so outside of dual wielding your still dealing with the same basic systems in place. You can easily get more out of a Skill by using its Tree to define and expand on what different weapon type does what. A person who picks up a short-sword and another wielding a saber should be able to have those choices vindicated and have each weapon type alter their playing style, however slightly.

Nothing you said solves the core problem of the One/Two handed skills, namely that they're too broad of a focus to actually do anything with, without resorting to a tree that is disproportionately large compared to everything else in the game. Unless you're not perfectly fine with what Skyrim did and nothing more, there's not much more we can actually discuss.

You are aware that TES is supposed to be an RPG? What you describe with all these small weapon type difference only really applies in a full on action game.

Now you're just being silly. If you can have a system where using perks allows a basic Blade/Ax/Blunt system to work, there's absolutely no reason to try and expand that system out into actual weapon types and differentiate gameplay from there. Hell, SkyRe did something similar to that, and it helped the game out a fair deal when it came to character development.

Come on, if mods can capture that kind of essence without it being to whatever hardlining definition of what genre of game goes where, it can well be applied here and lose nothing.