Guilds could allow you to hire fellow guild members to accompany you during quests, splitting the reward. Allows you to choose difficulty for every quest, and possibly helps create bonds between your character and other guild members. Lower level members might ask for a lower cut, and vice versa for higher level members. Bringing the same companion with you for several missions raises disposition with positive effects.

Yeah, it's pretty bad. I would never expect BGS to give us control over spawn points or spawn sizes like IC does, although I agree that they could definitely take some pointers from a lot of IC's options as well as many of the other great mods that use the MCM.

That's very possibly part of their reasoning, although it doesn't have a thing to do with the engine. If they kept the spawn points a reasonable distance from cities and programmed the AI not to chase random foxes or whatever past a certain point near the city so they didn't run into the city NPC's by accident like that it would be fine. Or even just have the surrounding baddies just not be aggressive towards NPC's in the city, aside from maybe guards so they don't start slaughtering the town if they do happen to wander too close. And for the love of Akatosh stop every random NPC in every city/town/whatever from attacking any monsters and dragons in sight and make them run away and hide in their houses or guard barracks like sane people.

That's reasonable!

It's not just a Bethesda problem though. Every developer i know of, from Larian to Gearbox to Bioware to CD Projekt Red to even From Software rely on the same system. Its all about damage numbers and health pools. Modders seem to have an understanding of the direction in which difficulty dynamics need to go, but like combat, no one in the industry its self is innovating at all. The most we get, at default, is some restriction on healing, but even then it's usually superficially and doesn't alter behaviour in any meaningful way.

I considered that, and the main issue i can see is that, if we're basing it off a Dying Light style stamina system, those little dings in your Stamina wouldn't amount to much. The system takes a few seconds of inactivity (or at least not using Stamina draining actions) to start regeneration, but it recovers like 20% a second. So, if you were hit and lost some Stamina, stepping back for a second would recover the loss, without expending the entire bar and accumulating any Fatigue.

Yeah, i think that's part of the issue too. There wee some problems with Morrowind already, and with NPC's moving around in Oblivion, they clearly were trying to contain the issue. As Dargor said, i think it's manageable in other ways, but particularly if buildings are open, one poor spawn could result in a depopulated city. We already got enough of that problem with the Vampire Attacks in Dawnguard. And can you imagine the problem if Guards weren't respawning generic smucks?

Bad Penny! Good to see you back, even if only for a drop in. If we could get Absinthe and SkyrimSniper in here, we'd have a party.

I've actually put a lot of thought into Guilds, their presence in the world, and how radiant quests factor into them to keep them relevant, and i think we agree on the whole 'Choose your own difficulty' notion. The idea i've been playing around with is that Guilds offer you a more reliable difficulty scale, allowing you to pick how tough a job is and making it more transparent, because they want the mission to succeed so they get paid, as well as not having to look for new members if you get killed. On the other hand, Bounties from Inkeepers and such may offer the exact same jobs, but with no clear indication of difficulty, because, frankly, the barkeep doesn't care.

open cities and houses should work despite spawns -- the real reason was always given performance, as gamesas prefers more detailed interiors and cities rather than less detailed and open. seeing as the game tends to choke up with a number of npcs and objects in a given cell, open houses would be a few orders of magnitude worse with their current engine.

townpeople should be able to flee reasonably from combat, just seems like the devs never really bother setting up the AI correctly.

Pretty much this. Morrowind had open cities and the NPCs didn't get eaten by random animals because the spawns were far enough away from town to make it safe. Ald'ruhn did get the occasional cliff racer attack over by the temple, though.

It should have been extremely cool in Skyrim to see dragon attacks and bandit raids in the cities.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say. Dragons do attack cities. Or, when you write, "...should have been extremely cool..." are you saying that the attacks should have been cooler, or what?

O_o' In 1078 hours of gameplay, I haven't ever seen a dragon attacking Whiterun or Solitude... When I was inside the city, I mean!

PS: about the "should..." thing, I meant "could". Sorry, my bad.

The games Bethesda has created sit among my favorites and the nuanced level of detail in the game-worlds rival almost no other... almost.

The almost being, The Witcher 3, which IMO matches or exceeds any Bethesda games I've played (from Oblivion onward) in terms of size, detail, and depth AND it's their first open-world Witcher game. Just let that sink in.

While I like the Witcher 3 and it does have good detail and world-building (and definitely better writing than most BGS games), it's lacking something major that just doesn't bring it up to Bethesda's games in my opinion; and that's interactivity. The world is huge and detailed and there are a ton of people but it's largely just a big, pretty background. You can't talk to most of the people you meet, as they're just generic NPC's. Skyrim already annoyed me with the nameless guards, I don't think I could get the game if the next TES featured random nameless npc's filling the vast majority of the settlements like W3 does. You also can't really interact with the environment much at all. Fallout 4 has already irked me with the amount of things lying around that I can't pick up, but that's nothing compared to W3 where you can't actually interact with much of anything other than looting containers. It's all just a big set-piece. In all honesty, I really wish W3 wasn't open-world. It just doesn't do the story justice, and I wish it had stuck to a more structured layout like W2 did.

All in all, the games and series are entirely different, and aside from a few elements where they overlap, I don't think comparing them ever does justice to either one.

Fair point. Also TES is more about creating your own character so the narrative won't be as contained and refined as Geralt's, who is a character with a backstory and tone already set it stone.

Speaking of interactivity, the more there is doesn't equate to more depth. I do feel that in Skyrim there was a ton of meaningless interactivity. Even though you can interact with most NPCs that lead you to a quest, they follow a predictable and shallow structure of "go retrieve this" and "kill that"; basically a whole lot of radiant-ish quests. On top of that, the loot at the end of dungeons these NPCs sent you to were unsatisfying. Ten gold coins and an iron mace for killing an army of druagr and a dragon priest, are you kidding me!?

CD Project Red have put a great effort in storytelling, quests, world details. The possibility to see through the windows in many houses and shops in Novigrad is wonderful, but it is just one of many incredible details. I'm playing it on ps4 so I cannot post any screenshot, but when I'm in a forest, during the day, I find amazing the detail of shadows and areas hit by the light.

The weather system is wonderful, with the clouds and the wind often blowing and moving plants and herbs. The night is a little too bright, though.

Yeah The Witcher 3 should be a technical blueprint for what TESVI should achieve, but I think the game has more in common with say Red Dead Redemption than TES (besides being medieval fantasy). However, things like boat sailing, open cities with open buildings, character design are something Bethesda should take note of. Although I LOVE the interactivity of Bethesda's worlds, things like being able to sit on a chair in an inn, pick up an apple little things like that. They are unmatched in that regard.

I actually found it lacked depth, at least as far as many of the small details went, because they were entirely window dressing and didn't add anything beyond 'Ooh pretty'. Beyond a few cut scenes (in which case the whosle thing was scripted ans you couldn't capitalise on anything anyway) being able to see through windows was never useful nor did it influence play in any way. The swaying grass didn't impact your aim with a Crossbow, or serve as a tell for lurking monsters. Like Axe Blade and Blunt in Morrowind, it was all just fluff that was there for its own sake, without adding anything to the game. A polished turd is still a turd, after all, even if it looks better (not saying Wild Hunt was a turd, it wasn't. It's a great game, but many of the visual elements add nothing functional to the game and can't be considered elements of Depth because... Well... They do nothing).


Meanwhile, they fell flat on their claim that every NPC would have a life and unique routine, the Hunts left little in the way of options (it was predominantly about using the right abilities against the right monster, not about multiple approaches to the encounter) and even it's leveling system didn't really impact behaviour in any.significant way.


It DID have a far better executed story arc that presented more options (even if most of them had little to no importance, and they were overly obvious with their 'THIS IS THE RIGHT CHOICE' hints) but it's world design and depth weren't as good as some make it out to be.

Everyone loves Bethesda's game interactivity (I hope my language is correct), and it is really important they must keep it and improve it even more. I think that the "Welcome home"

on top of Fallout 4 web page is the real direction of Beth's games: a more and more interactive sandbox, where the players not only play a game, they experience it. But that "sandbox" has unfortunately not much depth, in terms of... well we all know what Bethesda is still missing!

The details you mentioned didn't affect gameplay, but they added immersion. Wonder. Beauty.

Agreed. But those aren't depth. Heroes III didn't become deeper when they remastered it and made everything prettier. The Order was one of the best looking games I have ever seen, but it had about as much depth as a Televangelist's promises. Wild Hunt's frankly poor use of its beauty diminishes its depth a good deal, and it's rife with missed opportunities. It's a beautiful game (some of the characters in particular. I'm more of a redhead guy, but Yennifer... Yikes. Frankly, I think shes a perfect example of why more skin isn't always better, she looks fantastic in a dress) yes, but it's not a deep one.


And I for one would rather sacrifice beauty, for depth.


That's not to say that the two are mutually exclusive, of course. Beauty and depth can coexist in harmony. I think Wild Hunt has indeed set a benchmark for visuals, and what we should expect of them in the future (and to their credit, Bethesda did improve with Fallout 4 somewhat... Just not enough) but it certainly isn't the new 'Standard' for Open World RPGs, because of its shallow mechanics and lack of interactivity.

Witcher 3 is pretty and technically impressive...but that didn't do it for me. Now you give me Beth's interactivity, however minimal that might be for some, and the scale of the Witcher 3...I'd be pretty happy.

Look, I'm not complaining for Fallout 4 graphics, that I foud very cool. Fallout 4 lacks depth of quests, dungeons, choices and consequences, from the story point of view, while the loading screens break the immersion, and keep away from atmosphere. It's not lack of effects, it's lack of immersion.

A game with beth's interactivity and the absence of limitations of the witcher 3 (and its depth of questlines and choices ). That would extremely good for me.

Eh. Only choices the Witcher 3 usually has is whether or not you kill someone or not nine times out of ten. Only real choices you get usually happen in the context of Cirie, and the rest is...only standard. The writing is alright, which is a plus. Personally I don't think the Witcher 3 did anything truly amazing in most departments. Its a pretty and fluid game with good moments during the story, and for me that was really about it.

I'm not talking about Fallout. And I'm not talking about Immersion (which tends to be overly subjective. I, for instance, find the disconnect with Fast Travel and smaller cities to be far more immersive than forced-perspective with scaling and massive cities full of blank drones). I'm talking about the fact that Wild Hunt has very little depth outside of its main quest.


That doesn't make it a bad game. It doesn't make it a game that has nothing to offer to the discussion. But it's not a new 'Standard', nor is it the best thing since the invention if the Wheel.


Fallout 4 is an entirely different kettle of fish, and while I've enjoyed it and sunk more than double the hours into it that I have into Wild Hunt, it has some very clear issues. But comparing the two isn't really helpful, because at their core they are different types of games. And the same can be said for comparing all Bethesda games to other so called 'Open World RPGs'.

I compared TW3 with FO4 just because the latter is showing the likely direction of the next TES chapter in terms of... well a lot of things! I cannot compare Skyrim because that awesome game was limited by consoles hardware. And it came out in 2011, not in 2015. In 4 year there has been room for a lot of improvements in general, for many games. FO4 is still a good game for me, but falls very short in quests, and a damn lot of things that, pardon, I'm not going to list again. Almost everyone here in this forum is well aware of FO4 lacks, maybe even better than me! I have already dropped it, without completing the main quest. The overall gaming experience killed quickly my curiosity towards this game and makes me really worried about TES VI. Seriously.

PS: I'm aware that I've repeated the things above already a lot of times. It is useless to go on underlining them again and again, I strongly doubt any of the devs gives a damn f**k of my personal worries and wishes for TES VI, so I'm going to leave this forum for a while.

Cya, folks!

The issue there being...Fallout isn't TES. And how Fallout handles characters isn't how TES has always handled them. IF we were to go in either Fallout, or Wild Hunt's direction, it would be a very big loss to the way the franchise is handled. If we hold Wild Hunt up to be the new standard, we're basically cramming all the worst things of Fallout 4 into the new paradigm, simply because CD Projekt Red made a good game. And if we adopt that style, well... TES will be very dead. Because it's never been a heavily story and character driven series, and to drive home those elements you have to sacrifice the open ended, personalization that makes TES what it is.

Frankly, the whole idea of 'Setting a standard' is kind of hogwash. All it does is encourage copy-cat-ing. It's far better to examine games for their individual strengths, and consider them individually, rather than set one up as a 'Model' for the others to follow. "Want to tell a good story? This is how you do it!" until, you know, anyone tries anything different. Having a standard implies that theres only one way to do something right, and there isn't.

I too have concerns about Bethesda's design. I think they're falling too far behind because of their determination to stay small and friendly. I think they lack context or consideration of other approaches and resources and are far too insular in their design perspective. I think that their approach to mechanics is overly simplistic and fails to exercise the potential to the systems they put into place (Perks, the Dialogue Wheel, Combat, Magic... it's a long list) and they then cut things instead of refining them.

But holding up another game, be it Dark Souls or Wild Hunt or Dragon Age or Divinity, and saying 'This! This is what you should be making!' doesn't really do anything productive. We already have an industry drowning in attempts to recreate successful games with slightly different skins in order to capitalise on that sweet sweet cash cow. It's not a behaviour that should be encouraged. And yet, that's what the whole 'Setting the standard' circlejerk does.

Hi all!

I've already given http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1460321-official-beyond-skyrim-tes-vi-23/page-6#entry22800152 for the next installment of TES and would like to extend my list.

1. Discovered quests. I consider any quest not given by an NPC a "discovered quest". A certain feel of the place, an awkwardly placed item, a conspicuously polished surface, a Dremora in someone's bed, a dark cave in someone's cellar, a sentence in a book... all of those can be a beginning of a discovered quest. What I'd like to see are more of such quests. In real life, people don't really tend to send other people on reckless adventures; instead, reckless people seek such adventures on their own. They join a group of like-minded people (a guild?) and go have reckless adventures together. Everything else they do on their own.

2. Non-combative enemies. Every NPC I encounter is skilled in combat, but in real life often the natural reaction of many is to flee, beg for mercy, or (before combat) ascertain whether the one approaching is friend or foe. There are a number of non-playable sentient species in TES and I believe one could do something to become friendly with any group of NPC's. Moreover, a group of bandits could, for example, not instinctively want to kill the approaching player, but rather incapacitate and place in a cell, force the player to behave a certain way, or the player could express a desire to join the bandits, do a couple of quests for them, then go on adventuring. Enough groups so pacified towards the player, and perhaps a new guild could be formed, say the Marauder's guild, or the bandits all join with the Thieves' guild, or an insurgence could be initiated (e.g. Falmer insurgence if it's the Falmer that the player becomes friendly with).

3.1. Realistic economy. The economy of TES is inflationary. Looking at it in a very general way there have been improvements, though they were only indirectly related to the economy. To establish a healthy economy, one would need to make a number of changes. First, the medium of exchange (currency) would have to be difficult to obtain. I suppose the game uses gold coins, so gold mines could either be dug, or replenished very slowly. Gold ore purification and coinage could be skills which can be learned. Merchants in the game currently always get a fixed amount of money every 24 hours. Instead, some fictive transactions could be generated, just to keep them in business (in order to avoid having to deal with merchants closing up shop and new shops appearing). Items that are in stock in abundance with a given merchant, the player could only sell at a significantly lower price, while items of which there is a shortage, the player could sell at a higher price. It's the law of supply and demand. Mercantile skill plays a role in this scenario to determine whether the player could sell an item to a merchant at all, and at how low/high a price. Thus, if a player has 100 iron shields to sell, a merchant may not want to buy them all, nor would he buy them at the same high price he would pay for a single iron shield. The detail of the system could be such that the transactions are real, i.e. the game could generate realistic transactions and have goods be transferred from one NPC to another, or be consumed by an NPC.

Why is this in any way important? Besides giving a certain depth to the game, it enables a variety of options for the player to earn money. Thieves could really do damage in such a world. But more than that, ...

3.2. Realistic guild economy. When the player becomes the head of the guild - as it's always the case in the series - he can manage the guild treasury. Purchase items for the guild, recruit members, send them on quests and pay them for successful completion, etc. Or the player could delegate that job to someone else. The player can thus play an active role in either strengthening the guild, or ruining it completely (and/or be overthrown), compared to the way things were up to Skyrim, where the only direction was up. Why wouldn't a guild own their own gold mines and mint their own coins?

That's it for now.

Cheers!

I suppose I feel like each TES game has had it's own strengths and weaknesses so far, but there still hasn't been a TES game that just blew all the others out of the water in every aspect.

Morrowind and Daggerfall had phenomenal character development, Morrowind had a phenomenal story, Morrowind had a phenomenal magic system and teleportation system, Oblivion had better stealth than Morrowind, Skyrim had better stealth than Morrowind, Daggerfall had amazing character creation, Daggerfall had amazingly difficult and complex dungeons, Skyrim's dungeons certainly weren't poorly made though the design of them made them feel less challenging than Daggerfall and less frightening in general.

After playing Daggerfall for a while, to be totally honest, I also think it had amazing music, and an amazing soundtrack. Oblivion had more advanced traps than Pre-Oblivion games, on top of this being the time the imo awful Pre-Oblivion stealth system was also improved. I do however, feel like around the time of Oblivion's arrival, the story, and the quality of the factions had started to decline- and that this continued on in Skyrim, though Skyrim's art style redeemed itself.

For such old fashioned graphics Daggerfall did very well at being scary... Although part of it was I think, that audio and sound ages much better than visuals in video games, but it was surely also how hard it was to not get lost in Daggerfall dungeons. Though I'm not 100% sure why it is... It also seems like... Daggerfall had something in it's atmosphere particularly inside dungeons that was uniquely grim and menacing.

Also around Oblivion's time AI improved a lot, then in Skyrim, the AI improved even more. One thing I hated about Oblivion were it's psychic and in my opinion, overpowered guards. I hated how it felt like in Oblivion the guards were way more powerful than in any prior TES game for the most part, and their irritating psychic powers- one thing Skyrim seemed to fix. I also think Bethesda has been having a hard time, trying to properly balance Stamina.

Morrowind's and Daggerfall's miss systems may have been immersion breaking, there are valid reasons to criticize it, but none the less, Stamina has becoming progressively less important with each TES game. It was most important in Daggerfall, less important in Morrowind, the removal of misses made it less important in Oblivion, and in Skyrim it's even less important. I feel as though the Stamina and Fatigue system so far have been ruined, and prior Bethesda games were so overtly reliant on the miss system, that so far they've never been able to make it as essential as it was in Daggerfall in recent TES games. And in defense of Oblivion and Skyrim... Everything NPCs say having to be voiced, does make it harder to make extremely complicated lore, and a highly complicated story.

Skyrim did have some good books, but in my opinion it didn't have enough, PARTICULARLY the fact I didn't have several books to read about the main story in a way that gave a sense of mystery was a big let down to me. I also liked the intro of Skyrim... For the most part, but I hated how in the main quest you almost instantly become super. The character development felt like it happened way too fast, and a plot lacking plot twists that didn't cause me the tiniest bit of confusion left me feeling bored with the main quest.

Playing a bit of Daggerfall has made me a bit less critical of Skyrim, as I feel I've seen some shared flaws with it and Skyrim, even though in some ways they're the most different TES games. One of those being, I think both games fall behind Morrowind when it comes to the magic system. Though I do think Daggerfall's magic system is still much better than Skyrim's and still better than Oblivion's in some ways. I also learned that Daggerfall also made- what I see as immersion breaking map click travel much more essential than Skyrim or Oblivion ever did.

Skyrim's User Interface also feels much better to me than Daggerfalls user interface... The map system in Daggerfall in particular really bugged me. It was mainly having to use two different buttons for the map in Daggerfall that bothered me. And that I had to click arrows just to move the map in Daggerfall.

A major complaint of mine about Oblivion and Skyrim is the lack of character development. From a lore perspective the Oblivion protagonist has plenty of character development, but that character development is ruined by a leveled world. Meanwhile in Skyrim the world is less leveled than Oblivion's, but the protagonist seems to just instantly be super, and the starting difficult also being quite low. Oblivion had the lore for good character development unlike Skyrim, but the leveled up world ruined it.

As for balancing combat... Oblivion and Morrowind lacked immersion and realism even for a fantasy game, concerning the melee combat/archery, yet Oblivion and especially Skyrim lacked character development compared to earlier TES games... And it seems so far, no TES game has been revolutionary in this regard. Between early TES games lacking player agency, and later TES games lacking challenge and character development, it seems Bethesda is having a tough time designing combat in TES games. Admittedly it never was their specialty: It all begs the question... Should Bethesda just try to get some developers who are some of the best at that kind of thing? But that's easier said than done because frankly, first person open world RPGs are extremely rare.

Also to be critical of my favorites again: At least Skyrim forces you to choose Health, Magicka or Stamina, no more can you just max out all attributes unlike prior TES games- which IMO was good... The only problem is, just how useless Stamina is in Skyrim. Stamina isn't useless quite, but unless Stamina was at least as important as it was in Morrowind or Daggerfall, it seems to me like a character with more points in Health or Magicka will always be more powerful in combat. In defense of Skyrim, even if I think it is overtly streamlined what type of proper RPG, allows you to max out every single attribute just via leveling? It's been enough to make me consider a Morrowind mod, that makes it where you can't max out every single attribute via leveling anymore, and have to specialize more.

I almost suspect that, when Skyrim was being made, some things were rushed, and how Stamina functioned was one of those things. Probably the thought at the time was "Magicka is for mages, Stamina is for thieves and Warriors, and Health is for everyone". I also think the magic system got rushed in Skyrim. Beloved Morrowind because of development time though, had features removed from the main quest due to it being rushed as well. The reanimation spells, and improved AI made Skyrim's conjuration better than prior TES games... Other than the relatively few summons anyhow, but something Mages in Skyrim also severely lacked was... Well anything that enhances mobility.

The thing that worries me the most is, like others have said... In some ways Oblivion seemed like it tried to combine Morrowind's mechanics with Skyrim's mechanics- something in between both games, but something went awry in it's design. And every TES game at least to me so far, seems just merely different, rather than an all out improvement from the TES game before. Also while Skyrim almost certainly has the best stealth system for a TES game... It's still a TES game stealth system... Though to be fair very few games have a very good stealth system- unless there's something I'm missing here.

I want Stamina to become more important again, I want a magic system much better than Skyrim's, and hopefully more complex than Oblivion's too, I want a main quest with hard to comprehend lore with lots of readable content for people with reading addictions like myself, I also don't want to have to dual wield spells just to maximize spell potential again. There's a Skyrim mod that lets you use a staff in one hand to maximize the power of a spell in the other hand, for people that hate being forced into the new dual wielding magic system in Skyrim as well.

I also miss seeing a constant effect enchantment, and being impressed by it, I miss constant effect enchantments being a milestone in character development, and being awed when I saw such things. Yet such has become the norm. Although Skyrim in an expansion at least provides a script that gives you spells only while having something equipped.

One of my biggest complaints about Skyrim is, it feels like a phenomenal game, IF you want to play it only once as a Warrior, who perhaps just uses a little magic on the side... But the stealth system is still subpar compared to the best stealth games out there... And I find it hard to have fun playing Skyrim as anything other than a Warrior, because it either feels non-immersive to me, or poorly designed.

Playing as a Stealth character feels way too easy to me, and playing as a mage character, I have no immersion at all. Strictly playing as an Archer or a Warrior the mechanics are pretty good for that, and feel immersive for such strict archetypes, but for other playstyles it feels like the game came short. Two handed works out nice, one handed and shield works out nice, dual wielding weapons works out nice, archery is working amazing compared to prior TES games... And summoning flame atronachs is a nice supplement for a warrior+conjurer or battle conjurer type character, but otherwise, the other playstyles feel extremely "flat" in comparison.

I feel like Skyrim has great melee combat, and great archery, but the other playstyles fall short, due to stealth being too easy, and magic being too boring and limited. Morrowind and Oblivion to a lesser extent felt great for Mage characters... But in Skyrim it's like the game itself hates Mages. I feel like between Skyrim and Morrowind, melee combat, AI, stealth, and archery took 100 steps forward, and magic took 100 steps backwards.

How come when archery and melee combat improved so much, magic went so badly backwards? That's what worries me the most. As for stealth to be fair, I think stealth in TES games has always been awful, and that it is very hard to fix. Imo Morrowind and Daggerfall also had terrible stealth, and the archery, and melee combat felt a lot less immersive, but for some reason, when these things were significantly improved, the magic went backwards, and stealth still remained problematic.

Perhaps if they kept Skyrim's melee, and archery system- kept the stealth system but made it less overpowered, did something so managing Stamina was a part of the challenge again, and brought back a lot of the magic features from Morrowind, then perhaps they could make a TES game with better mechanics? A TES game that wasn't just different, but also actually seemed mostly better than other TES games?

When I'm playing Skyrim I find melee warrior characters, as well as stealthless archers the funnest to play, but it's not because I inherently like playing such characters, it's because stealth feels like godmode to me, and mages just feel quite simply unfun to me... I don't know if it's just personal taste on my part or whatever, but to me it feels like these two playstyles in Skyrim, stealthless melee, and stealthless archer are the most well made, and most immersive ways to play a game with Skyrim's mechanics, and that the other playstyles are broken in comparison.

Also I liked Skyrim's intro, Skyrim has my second favorite intro of the series- at least when you just start out as a mundane prisoner, but it's the total lack of character development during or right after the intro that bothers me about Skyrim and it's story... The no mysteries left and instantly special thing thrown right in.

Agreed, what is vital for one genre, or game series even, can be less important, or even sometimes non important to another game. Like for example, FPS games tend to be less story driven than RPGs, this doesn't mean an FPS without a good or compelling story will likely be a bad game, it just often comes with the genre. Granted I know SOME FPS games are story driven with a compelling and complex plot, but it's as far as I know not the norm.

Just like an FPS without a great storyline isn't inherently broken, or just like a fish that's bad at moving on land isn't broken, an FPS with a poor story or a fish that can't swim on land isn't broken or failed. They're not broken things themselves, it's rather people see the typical weaknesses of these things, and deem them "broken" when they weren't broken to begin with. There's probably more great FPS games with bad stories, than great RPGs with bad stories, simply because RPGs are more story driven on average.

What I'm getting at is similar but different to the common "Don't fix what isn't broken", but I have a slightly altered version of that saying. "Just because a game series has a weakness that needs to be fixed, doesn't mean you should entirely change everything about it to copy every mechanic in another game".

Elder Scrolls games do need fixing clearly, they are broken in some ways, and imitating features in other games is almost certainly part of the cure for that, but trying to make TES 6 like the Witcher but with TES lore... Would probably just make the series MORE BROKEN, because what works perfect for Witcher may not be so great in a TES game.

I think people forgot that the very lifeblood of one video game, can be absolutely toxic to another video game to the point of potentially ruining a series if it imitates another game too strongly.

Oddly enough, I'm very reluctant to use this word, especially seeing as how I'm a Morrowind fan that doesn't want to sound hypocritical- and I really dislike the way a lot of people use the word "nostalgia" here often... The word "Nostalgia" gets abused here just as often as the word "Casual", same type of disrespectful attitude albeit from two opposite sides of the same fanbase... But anyways that disclaimer aside when I see people asking Bethesda to make TES 6 be "Just like the Witcher", or people claiming a NONE ELDER SCROLLS game they liked should be what TES 6 is based upon that does strike me as nostalgia. Just a different type of nostalgia where they're asking TES 6 to be a carbon copy of a non-Bethesda game.

There's also a big level of difference between bringing a Golden Saint to Skyrim a feature from other TES games- which would be bringing back an old feature in a sense, and say, bringing a Lightsaber to Skyrim- a feature from non-TES games that breaks immersion... One tries to copy a feature from another fictional universe that ruins immersion, unlike just bringing back Golden Saints. Meanwhile, manual blocking on the other hand possibly inspired by non-TES games wasn't a bad idea, because it doesn't damage immersion or damage the series unlike the lightsaber example.

(If someone likes to mod lightsabers into their own personal Skyrim playthroughs I won't judge that, their game, though just as an example, of like the vanilla versions of future TES games).

Some things that are the very lifeblood of the Witcher... Might also potentially ruin the TES series. Even if it's not enough of a copy to result in a lawsuit. To be totally honest I never played Witcher, or hardly at all, and maybe there's some mechanics, or even quite a few inside of Witcher that could improve the TES series- but a full blown imitation of everything in it just to me sounds like a disaster waiting to happen, but fortunately I really doubt Bethesda would do that.

Yes I do think Bethesda imitated some mechanics from other games, and that it wasn't a bad thing. Manual blocking possible inspiration: Legend Of Zelda- just a guess it was the first game I ever played with manual blocking. But even if it was inspired by Legend Of Zelda, they didn't do a full blown copy of Zelda's mechanics, it was just one feature that was a good idea. I think mainly at this point, what Bethesda most needs help with, is their AI programming, and a reboot to the magic and stamina system.

And I'm dead serious when I say this: Like for example maybe it even be a good idea for them to say imitate the NPC command systems of other games, to make Conjuration stop being such a weak skill. When I play TES 6, I want to be able to choose to play a Necromancer, and that feeling every bit as immersive, and well designed as a Warrior or Archer in Skyrim. Playing a Necromancer would be potentially fascinating, yet the AI of every TES game as of yet, seems to severely punish such a thing.