Agreed. I'd kind of like the generic guards to be replaced with named NPCs with lives.

Did you read the rest of my post?

That they have no name and function like random guards and bandits feels very game-y. They'll also stick out when mixed in with the unique named NPCs. Since they have no permanence, it will also be very obvious when a whole new set of people live in a particular house every time you're in town. Generating them every time you get to town would also increase load times more than simply having more pre-made NPCs. I would, however, like a smaller number of larger settlements. Small towns in Skyrim tend to have a single quest and no other reason to go back. Oblivion's hamlets usually didn't even have that much. Cutting them to put more work into cities would, for me, be acceptable, even if not ideal.

Yes whch is also in my rather short post did you read it?

When I'm playing The Witcher 3 I'm seeing so many things that i think should be standard in the next TES game. Stuff like open cities, open buildings where you can look outside through windows, flocks of birds in the skies, NPC's run for cover when it's raining and the trees/foliage blow in the wind.


Everyone wants that stuff in the next game right? Do we think Bethesda and the current game engine is capable of this?

Sure. None of these things are engine limitations. All of them are either things Bethesda has done in the past (open cities), the present (birds in the skies) or that modders have done (see-through windows). It's just a matter of whether Bethesda thinks these things are cost-effective to include. I hope they do.

Those things, yes, and alot more: mirrors, ladders, realistic cloth and hair, larger scale fights, layered and customizable armor, more weapons actually shown on the character... The hardware is clearly here, it's just a matter of what Bethesda wants to prioritize. To be honest I expected more progress from Fallout 4, especially considering the years it's been in developmet.

I hope by the time they launch TES6 (2018 would be tolerable for me, 2017 would be perfect) they would use more power and know how from the current generation. The engine is crappy imo, I think something like Cryengine would look much better. Transparent windows and proper reactions to weather would be great.

I do want. The current engine is too much limited.

- Named soul gems

- Enchanting more like TESO

- Thrown weapons

- Spears

- Beast bodies for the beast races

- Optional hardcoe mode where sleep, warmth, food and diseases matter

We always see remnants of the Falmer and the Dwemer, and all the games have been years after the previous one. How about one of the next games is also later, but involves going back in time and being part or witness to the events that drove the falmer underground and that made dwemer civilzation disappear/collapse. Knowing that it's going to happen but either being unable to stop it or having no other choice than to cause it.

Or a game that takes place at the time. I wouldn't care much for time traveling in an ES game.

it happened very briefly with only a limited view and no real interaction in skyrim at the labyrinthian though, so having it happen again would follow an established canon

Yeah... except none of those are actually Engine limitations. The only real hard-line limitation of an Engine is the framework it uses to communicate between the included modules. And, as Huleed pointed out elsewhere, that entire dynamic needs to change to keep up with advancements in computing, but no engine right now really does that. What we need is a better, more thoughtful use of the resources that Bethesda already HAS. We know from numerous mods and better use of the same systems in other games, that it's all doable with the tools they have. They just aren't good at it.

I'd like to see all of them. But all of them are some significant effort to accomplish. Thrown weapons in particular would require a rather weird control scheme to properly cover the versatility and limitations... Their execution in both Morrowind and New Vegas was lacklustre at best, bad at worst.

These two, however... I don't really like. Enchanting in ESO is clearly inferior, and i personally like to think it's a product of the Dark Ages in Tamriel... no one really knows what they're doing, so they cannibalise bound magics from other things to create their Enchantments rather than doing it from scratch. It would be interesting if Runes served a supplemental roll to traditional enchanting, but overall i think Skyrim had the mechanics right, it just lacked sufficient options to make the system great.

As for hardcoe Mode... More and more, i don't really want 'Modes'. I'd rather a more 4X difficulty model where the difficulty of the game is dependant on the handicap scaling and features you have active. If you want to have to eat, but not sleep, you can do that. You can tailor your experience to your preferences, without having to take pre-set packages of what someone else things may be a challenge.

LOL, we have radically different opinions here. I think Bethesda has really good skills and ideas, but they sometimes loose the sight of certain details that can partially f**k up their game.

I don't think our opinions are really that different. We both seem to recognise that while Bethesda is generally solid, and even visionary, when it comes to conception of its games, it tends to fall well short of that concept in execution. Better, sometimes even flawless execution of that base concept, by modders, shows that the problem isn't the engine, but rather the people using it. Whether it's lack of skill (as we've basically been told it is with Ladders) poor time management or a lack of focus is unclear, but it's certainly not an Engine issue.



Anyway... Lectra brought this up last page, and while I felt there was too much going on to cover everything, I sorta wanted to bring it back up... It's a discussion we've had many times... Resources. Not like Metals, food and luxuries, it Health, Stamina and Magicka.


Many people were against the regenerating resources in Skyrim. I'm not one of them. Everything else works at an accelerated pace, why shouldn't healing? That said, I do think that the resources were not optimally handled. They basically behaved the same across the board, and didn't really do much to add to diversity in combat or environmental interaction.


Here is how I would like it handled.

Health: regenerates at a moderate rate (say, 1% a second). This is to show that not all injuries are really dangerous. They may cause momentary numbness of pain, but you can shake them off relatively easily and keep going. This regeneration could be suspended for X seconds after you take damage, but really, that 3hp hot shouldn't have a lasting impact on you throughout the day. The catch is that your health bar is divided into milestone blocks, either of a set value or % based. These represent significant injuries that you can't just shake off. Health will only regenerate up to the last Milestone. So, of milestones are at every 25%, and you drop to 62% health, you will only regenerate back up to 75%. This represents lasting injuries that take some kind of dedicated attention to deal with. This basic system is already in use in Far Cry, and is basically the best of both worlds (while being both more strategic and more realistic).


Potions would then increase regeneration and/or heal through lost milestones. Bandages would unlock milestones, allowing your natural healing to carry you through. Healing spells would, of course, just power through everything. The natural regeneration rate and milestone values could also be affected by Attributes or Perks.

Stamina: Fast regenerating. More Dying Light than anything TES has used. Everything functions normally so long as you have Stamina, but at 0 you do next to no damage, are more susceptible to stagger effects (another topic for another time) and can neither run nor use Power Attacks. I'd like some sort of Magical effect, but I can't think of a good one without making Magic drain Stamina as well... The regulator here is, when you exhaust your Stamina, you gain Fatigue, a small amount automatically, and more for every stamina consuming action you take while at 0 Stamina. Functioning like Radiation in Fallout 4, this decreases Your maximum Stamina, meaning the more you exhaust yourself, the less you have to work with.


Food would primarily increase your maximum Stamina for its duration. Stamina Potions would regenerate Fatigue while boosting either max Stamina or regeneration. Perks and attributes could affect regeneration and how quickly you gain Fatigue.

Magicka: The most static of the resources. little to no regeneration at base, meaning it's a resource to be rationed since, well, you can do practically anything with it. Overall pool should be larger, but when a mage runs out it should make their blood run cold.


Potions only increase regeneration, they don't give you an instant increase in your pool, meaning rationing and thought is still necessary. A new Channel ability can increase regeneration, but at the cost of one casting hand.

If they did another spinoff in the style of Redguard, in the past with a pre-made character, Pelinal Whitestrake could be a good option. He's even a time traveler.

As for health, I'm for regeneration, but at half of the speed you proposed, just to make it a little harder and... realistic. But I'm thinking that health recovery should depend on the kind of wound, intoxication or illness, and it should depend on the place and situation where the char is in that moment. For example, if the player has been heavily wounded, frost could stop bleeding and health recovery could be faster than if the player is exposed to warm conditions in which blood flows out quicker. If the player has been poisoned, health regeneration should depend on the character resistance to poisons and it should be extremely slow or even 0 unless an antidote (not a more generalistic potion) is used. Potions, as it has been till now, have to boost health regeneration, but with a small amount of side effects. An illness effect caused by frost could be cured with warm food, alcoholic beverages (with dizzyness and short loss of stats as side effect), and simple health potions.

As for stamina/fatigue, they should be on the same bar similarly to health/radiation in Fallout 4. Stamina should be quick to recover if the char is not ill or wounded or poisoned, or fatigued for not having slept/eaten for a certain amount of time. I think that if you have stamina at 0 and do 0 damage you're virtually screwed in a combat, because with 0 stamina you cannot even sprint or run! So, stamina should have very high values, depending on the fisical constitution of the char.

It could be very interesting if Bethesda could implement visible physical improvements associated to stamina improvements during gameplay if the char makes physical activities such as fighting with swords and heavy armor.

As for magicka, I generally agree with your idea, so I haven't much to add, except that the same logic used for stamina should work if the char practices with magic and spells, in this way: the more he/she uses magic the less magicka he consumes for each spell, till he reaches a minimum of magicka consumption for each kind of spell.

Agreed, I'd take everything being holstered over an animation or graphics overhaul any day of any week. Skyrim has amazing graphics and imo very solid animations- I'm not against improving that at all, but first adding holstering for every weapon would be a much greater boon to immersion I think.

It really added massively to the immersion of playing Zelda Ocarina Of Time and Majora's Mask, how Link would sheathe his sword, and put his shield on his back. Very underrated feature imo.

Well I actually like this idea. Much much much more than Skyrim's health regen system. It would require a bit more thought, and strategy than Skyrim, without the ridiculous aspect of having to go to sleep just cause you lost one hit point stubbing your toe on something. For instance if a very tiny weak creature scratches me enough to draw blood, I'd probably basically have the real life equivalent of losing a single hit point basically- not even needing to sleep to recover, but if a tiger scratches me, it could kill me in a single hit. And there's all types of levels of injury completely between those two extremes.

Hmm gives me an idea for a potential Skyrim mod, that makes magicka pools larger, disables magicka regen, and perhaps adds some merchants in various locations that sell potions. The idea is partially inspired oddly enough, by the game mechanics of Deus Ex invisible War. I really liked the way that game handled Bio-Energy it's version of Magicka. http://deusix.wikia.com/wiki/Piezochem_W31V_Repair_bot

I also just always liked the concept of absorbing energy from something in the environment, where you're stronger in said environment, but become weaker and more vulnerable if you travel away from it. Hence journeying to some places potentially becomes more of a challenge due to increases scarcity of some type of magical resource or energy resource.

You could use Energy Cells to get it back- it's version of magicka potions, or you could walk to a Repair Bot to get Bioenergy back, but it didn't regenerate automatically. I personally liked being able to just wander back to a Repair Bot to get my resources back- and knowing I had to be extra cautious when my energy was running low.

Automatically regenerating magicka imo, makes it too similar in function to an archer with unlimited arrows, who also has a lot more utility than an archer has. Automatically regenerating magicka I think also makes it a nightmare to properly balance it.

I admit, I really liked in Morrowind how the Atronach sign, made you able to absorb magicka from shrines at the expense of being unable to sleep to regain magicka. Was it a possible accident, a possible oversight in game design? Maybe it was for all I know, but none the less, it felt immersive to me, and made sense to me, and added a layer of strategy in how the game was played. I knew that I had to rely heavily on shrines, as well as magical enemies to get my magicka back.

You know how on very rare occasions an oversight ends up making the game funner to play, and it really isn't that imbalanced? The soldiers rocket jump in TF2 was inspired by a said oversight from a prior game. I loved how the Atronach sign functioned in Morrowind in great part cause it reminded me so much of carefully using Bioenergy in Deus Ex Invisible War.

It made me feel very powerful when I was near a shrine, but a lot more vulnerable when I was far away from any nearby shrines as well, and it made it more important for me to take potions with me, and made magicka far more of a strategy based thing.

If archers have to go to vendors to get their arrows- as well as collect it off their fallen enemies, then when playing a mage kinda character, I want magicka potions to function kinda similarly to arrows, in that they are an important resource to manage. I also think it would've made staffs in Oblivion and Skyrim a lot more important as last resort weapons too. The short way of putting it is, I wish consumables were more important. The type of situations that made me think to myself early in the game, "Should I use this scroll of Summon Storm Atronach" or "Should I use this Scroll of Fire Storm?", when encountering a powerful enemy.

I also miss Almsivi Intervention/Divine Intervention scrolls because they allowed you to go on very risky missions, but they were also rather pricey, and you had to decide for yourself, rather it's a better idea to run away, or consume such a valuable thing. I remembered exploring under Vivec sewers not being that high level, killing and looting a few outlaws, and then one of them was way too strong for me, I didn't have enough magicka left to teleport out, my melee abilities were much worse than this enemy and a single hit from this enemy took out half my health.

So then I teleported out via scroll with the loot I got off of the weaker enemies, and it was such a thrilling feeling. I had managed my resources perfectly to gain a lot from that situation, when there was an enemy I couldn't kill yet, I saved that scroll for a dangerous moment, and that was the perfect time for it.

Or a much shorter way to put it... I liked how two different characters could feel more powerful in some environments but weaker in others than other characters. An Atronach character near a shrine or fighting enemy casters was very powerful... But in some ways weaker if far away from a shrine fighting several melee only enemies for a long period of time. Not to mention potentially being sleep attacked waking up with no magicka.

An Apprentice character was less dependent on absorbing spells as well as shrine blessings, but was also more vulnerable to spells, a Mage sign character had more magicka than most but... In some ways was a lot weaker than an Apprentice or Atronach sign character. I just liked how rather you choose Atronach or not had a huge effect on how you played Morrowind... Unless you pretty much never casted spells.

Yeah I hate closed cities... I don't think anyone likes closed cities. Even worse cause some mods try to alleviate the boringness of closed cities- and then they can become incompatible with mods that make the cities more open. Seeing through windows would be great, though I mainly want closed cities to never return. Closed cities were one of those flaws caused by technological limitations, and not something virtually anyone ideally actually wanted. In fact it was a step backwards, to compensate for now outdated consoles in an era of more demanding technology at the time.

I'll be thrilled if the newer consoles can handle open cities, and quite disappointed if they can't.

I think part of the problem is honestly how much stuff they change/add from game to game. They have a habit of nixing things that didn't work the way they intended and creating all new stuff in it's place. They seem to spend the majority of their time and resources on new things. Because of that, they seem to end up not spending enough time polishing most of their mechanics. We modders, for the most part, have the benefit of Bethesda laying the groundwork for most of the things we do, so we can spend our time mostly polishing and upgrading the existing mechanics. I think if Bethesda spent more time on improving what they already have and less time making entirely new mechanics we would end up with a much more polished experience. I would personally be very interested in seeing what would happen if they spent all of their time just improving upon what was already in Skyrim and didn't worry so much about adding new bells and whistles.

Modular difficulty would be very, very nice for TES. As is, the difficulty slider is basically just an enemy HP and damage modifier. Having a separate scaling slider for enemy HP, enemy damage, PC damage, and disease potency with multiple levels (0.5, 0.75, 1, 1.25, 1.5, etc.) along with simple binary options for needing sleep, food and water would be good for me and not require a terribly large effort on Bethesda's part.

i'd like to see them ditch the interior/exterior cells of cities and houses. have it all seamless and integrated.

I concur!

It is worse than that. The sliders in all of Bethesda's games adjust damage done and damage received only. None of them even touch health at all.

I hope Bethesda takes a good long look at what modders have been doing with Skyrim's Mod Configuration Menu. Deadly Monsters is a good example. This mod gives us four pages of difficulty sliders that allow us to fine-tune the strength of enemies. There are sliders controlling Health, Magicka, Stamina, Armor Rating, Melee Damage, Magic Damage, and Resistance. These seven sliders are applied independently to Creatures, Humanoids, Undead, and Wildlife. This gives us a grand total of 28 sliders that adjust the stats of enemies in the game.

Other mods, like Skyrim Immersive Creatures, offer even more. There are check boxes and sliders that give us control over spawn points, spawn amounts, and many other variables. I just cannot see Bethesda continuing their old primitive damage-only sliders after this.

We hope!

I'm pretty sure that one of the reasons why Bethesda decided to separate cells inside cities even you would think they don't need to was to separate fully hostile NPCs from the common NPCs.

With the current engine, could you imagine if say for example the bandits in Riftweald Manor and the rest of Riften or the Triggermen in the Warehouses and the rest of Good Neighbour shared one cell?

You'd have utter chaos as soon as one side is alerted to the other's presences with both of them trying to get through the locked/barred entrances which in the end would result in a bunch of folks staring at a building with weapons drawn whom you cannot interact with. It would also be unbalanced because as soon as you have the entranced unlocked you would have the city guards and civilians helping you while a separate cell allowed only you and possibly a companion to take on the dangers alone.

Of course, this is just me guessing and I don't know if this is true, but it does makes sense in my opinion.

Basically. I don't think it'd be too much of a problem, depending on what types of enemies spawn and if they spawn far enough away from everything. Again, the worlds scale really needs to be upped.