I for one would like to see it in a more refined form, with far less potential locations. Taking the lessons of Fallout 4s Settlements, and applying them to a single urban location, would be the best, most obvious approach, but using a more muted version to influence Faction Halls would be an interesting option as well. I don't think it should be anything to the scale of Fallout 4, but something more controlled, more refined and with a bit more narrative may be an option.

Anywho, i suspect we are about to be inundated with a new mega-post, so i'm not going to get too involved with the whole Durability or Materials thing, because i think they're rather closely related to Crafting in general, other than to reiterate that the Durability mechanics of old were terrible, and the Material-Gear scaling we have is too linear. I think a refinement of Improvement Mechanics can alleviate most of the first problem, but the second really requires a change in how we deal with both equipment, and the materials we make it out of.

I'd be disappointed if some form of workshop mode wasn't in VI. At least let us decorate our home interiors like we can with Home Plate, instead of buying prefabbed furniture from an NPC. We probably won't be able to establish settlements and build a new community - but setting up a small business like a mine, farm, mill, fishery, brewery, etc, and hiring workers and guards would be terrific. And having a sort of "build your own faction" questline where we can build up a faction HQ, recruit NPCs to join the faction, and decide the faction's goals (and the content of their radiant quests), would be a ton of fun.

The specifics aren't as important for me, Bethesda's going to come up with their own thing. I was just sort of spitballing a general idea of how they could add specific traits to each material type to help "even out" weapon progression without making everything as all-powerful as Daedric.

I'm sure at this point there is the technology available for Bethesda to re implement Radiant AI properly.

For all the problems Radiant AI had in Oblivion, the NPC AI in Fallout and Skyrim felt way to scripted and boring. Many games out there already do the same thing with NPC life cycles e.g Witcher, KOA, Fable and gothic and often better than Bethesda. However the idea behind Radiant AI where the NPC actions are unscripted and their behaviors are based on the environment and their personalities is a concept that stands out and add more life to their characters in ways neither dialogue nor quests could. While this was poorly executed in Oblivion and led to some ridiculous if not hilarious results, it is something they could've improved upon rather than completely scrap the way they did. The Radiant AI in Oblivion still outshines the succeeding games in many ways as NPCS actually went to stores to buy food when they felt hungry, hunted for food when they were in the wilds or stole food when they didn't have the money or had low responsibility, Guards punished NPCS with bounties and NPCS talked to each other about the latest news and traveled across the countries to meet family and friends. World just felt more alive and active than any of Bethesda's other games.

Even some of Oblivions AI quirks and issues could be solved with patches or minor additions for example Guards killing npcs for crimes can be solved by sending them to jail if they don't have the coin.

I remember how much fun it was in Oblivion to go to the Feed Bag and replace everything with poisoned apples and watch as NPCs fall over dead one by one. You could never do anything like that in Fallout or Skyrim.

Weapon degradation can be done well (Witcher 3) or be bad (Oblivion) it depends on the speed in which it degrades, how punishing it is, and how easy can it be repaired. Have it degrade slowly naturally with things like blocking a power attack with a sword and taking a power attack without blocking do more degradation damage to your weapon/health. Make it so they don't actually break but bottom out at 50% damage or so, and provide ways to repair it like like repair kits for armor and sharpening/weight stones for weapons or being able to pay a smith to fix it for you.

One thing I really hope they improve is magic though. After seeing the Warcraft movie and being blown away by the magic in it all I really want is to be able to play a similar mage in a TES game. I want to be able to create a bubble shield, teleport, polymorph an enemy, or create walls of electricity.

I wouldn't say the Witcher did Degradation well. Less poorly than Oblivion, definitely, but it still suffered from all the cardinal issues of the traditional Degradation system. General insignificance, too easy to repair, the insane use-dropoff at 'broken'.

Since the post i was expecting was not made, i guess i'll babble on about what i was playing with at work tonight...

So what do i think a Durability and Degradation system should do? It should not be Mandatory, but neither should it be irrelevant. It should complement other mechanics and not be a stand alone thing. And it should be something that increase the various interactions and thought processes that go into a confrontation, rather than an afterthought.

In Skyrim, when you improve an item, it stays that way indefinitely. Sharpen a blade, and it stays sharp forever. If you fit your armour, it never loosens or warps. That's somewhat nonsensical, since every blade dulls, and ever strap stretches and frays, At the same time, both Weapons and Armour need to take a significant amount of abuse (not use) to actually break, and when something does break, its rendered useless.

So, here's what i came up with... Instead of Skyrim's Improvement model, you have set Improvement-States. For instance, for weapons, you have Broken-Mangled-Warped-Normal-Honed-Keen-Legendary. Each State gives a bonus (say, for Honed, it's +15% damage) and has a Durability equal to a value determined by the material it's made out of. Iron, for instance, would be 100, so the total durability from Broken to Legendary would be 700 (though that isn't really important).You can maintain equipment in the field at it's current State, but if it drops to 0 Durability, it drops a level. So a Keen Dagger becomes a Honed Dagger.

Power Attacks and attacking Blocking Enemies cause a loss of Durability equal to the damage inflicted. So, weaker mateirals aren't going to hold up being smashed into a reinforced shield for very long. Similarly, being HIT with Power Attacks damages an Armours durability. Further modifies can be applied depending on the weapon variables (Penetration weapons, for instance, can do extra Durability damage, but that's a wider combat discussion). Some environmental or enemy effects can also play into degradation, such as acidic blood or corrosion spells.

You can maintain the current Improvement-State in the field using a Whetstone or Lasting Pliers (a multi-tool used in smithing and leatherwokring) but you can only increase it's Improvement-State at a work station of some kind. This way you can encourage maintenance without rendering the wider mechanics useless, but also don't have the issue of Improvement-States being a flat and constant upgrade.

At base, items should never degrade below their base state. That should be reserved for higher difficulty, or special circumstances. This means that, most of the time, Durability and Degradation is about maintaining a state of enhancement, not functionality.

Anyway, it's 4am, i should have been asleep hours ago...

I gotta be honest, I was expecting the announcement of TES VI right about now. Of course bethesda shouldn't rush it out before it's ready but it's their most successful series and it's been five years since the last game already. The way I see it, pre-production of the new TES should've started after Skyrim was released with a small team. I understand wanting to do some different things as a game developer but then maybe they should've let another studio make the fallout games? If it's true that there's two more AAA projects with priority before TES then I don't see it being released before fall 2018 which is already a 7 year wait, and that's an optimistic release time. It really goes against the common market wisdom to delay games from your main franchise beyond the development time you need to create a quality game. And if you're spending 7+ years on development, I don't think you're making it a priority.

As for where to go with TES, the only way forward I can see is to go more action oriented. Back in the days of morrowind the tech (both AI and physics) wasn't really there to make the combat in itself interesting so there was the compromise of chance to hit in combat. It improved in oblivion and skyrim but it's still pretty straightforward. I think games like dark souls and mount & blade show how you can have more interesting combat without losing the element of character development and the value of equipment. A big bonus for TES games is that with more action focused combat, you can lower the power range of enemies (and the PC) in the game and open up the world a bit more without moving towards an oblivion style dynamic leveling. Even in skyrim it can feel really arbitrary when the bandits you face suddenly have four times as much health as the last time you faced them two levels ago. And while the way you fight barely changes as you level up (the speed at which you swing your sword stays the same) for some reason you cleave through enemies that were HP sponges not too long ago.

What I'm hoping for is that they were just waiting for hardware that was more powerful than Xbox one and PS4 and developing the tools to make proper use of new hardware. An open world game like TES can benefit a lot from combining pure processing power combined with procedural generation during the design phase of the game. I wouldn't be surprised if the unnamed game they're working on now has a lot of aspects that they're looking to use for TES VI.

I wouldn't call 5 years of development, rushing, Mr.Howard.

I'm not so sure. Skyrim took a number of steps backward from Oblivion (schedules were heavily simplified, dynamic dialog interactions were all but cut, NPC needs seem to be gone..). There were some improvements, but it wasn't a large step forward, and Fallout 4's use of Radiant AI doesn't seem any better. And since there doesn't seem to be any other developer dumping significant money into developing this stuff, I'm not sure the Radiant AI they envisioned for Oblivion can be done yet.

It's all relative. Depending on the features they're intending to implement, yes, 5 years can be rushing it.

Hi ALL cool thread

long time no see, been busy with my masters and playing FO4 and all that jazz, but now I see that skyrim is getting a face lift and we will probably get TES 6 in 2018

I also played witcher 3 .. the best action RPG in the history of mankind, and many other RPGs like Divinity, dark Messiah, and replayed thief 1, 2, 3 ...etc

hope you like this thread cause its gonna list the things i would LOVE to see in TES 6, be mindful that i wont say i want flying mounts or anime bikini armor for chicks, what i want are actually just pure game mechanics that will enhance the gaming experience 10 fold, lets start:

1- Stories, factions, and the world

lets face it when you play a game like the witcher 3 you cant help but wonder why skyrim or oblivion felt so lifeless and empty, in the witcher 3 the world is at war and you can SEE IT in the suffering of the people the horrors of war, orphans, burning villages, public hangings, it was brutal and realistic to a fault people had emotions, people were greedy, paranoid, good, bad...etc, you always felt strongly about the waring factions, and you are always torn morally as the game offers little B&W choices and just gives you grey choices and lets you decide.

spoiler..... for example in the witcher 3 their is a side quest (which ties in to the main quest) where you have to decide either to help 3 evil old witches by killing a trapped druid spirit and letting a group of innocent kids get eaten by the witches OR help the spirit and save the children but then you find out the spirit murdered half the villagers in a near by town that were serving the witches (begrudgingly) women kids men it just pasted through and killed ALSO later the witches get pissed at you and curse the woman that they enslaved (ties in with another quest) and she dies horribly in the arms of her daughter....etc etc

my point is I would LOVE to see this in the next TES 6 main quests and side quests all tied in together in ways that even you cant see until like 10 quests ahead or maybe in little things like better prices, bandit ambush ...etc etc the sky is the limit, the witcher 3 executed this PERFECTLY and I would love to see this carry on to an elder scrolls title.

FACTIONS were pathetic in skyrim (aside from the brotherhood maybe) they felt bland uninteresting, i would love it if they made it HARD for the player to join the factions.... it should be hard to advance and it should be based on the skills of the player in things the faction deem worthy, if u fail in sneaking and picking locks then you just wont be leader of the thieves guild no matter how much you pray to the nine.

factions should also have branching quest paths and choices for players to pick from, like the witcher 3 siding with the empire will make you the enemy for Radovid, helping the witches will bring on the wrath of the church of eternal fire ...etc etc

joining the dark brother hood should raise flags for at least the thieves guild who should kick you out immediately if u were with them never to come back.

the world of the witcher 3 just felt more alive, more lived in and the CITIES my god, perfection.... [censored]s, thieves, noblemen, guards cursing, merchants shouting and waving their hands, dancers, performers, priests preaching, taverns busy, drunk people waddling on the streets, birds, cats, dogs, rats, horses, knights in formation. IT WAS PERFECT the city felt alive while cities in skyrim felt dead, empty and just small as heck.

In conclusion I would love TES 6 to take the best from witcher3 and older TES titles like morrowind and daggerfall and oblivion to an extend and just make the world more believable and more lived in, give the people LIFE make the player feel like the world is NOT there to serve his needs but its their to eat him up and use him and make him EARN his rewards, Skyrim's civil war felt like a family feud and im not sure Bethesda truly understand what civil war means ... corpses on the streets, villages burn, people hang, torture, hate, dungeons full of the innocent... war is HORRIBLE yet is skyrim you never ever felt it, you kill storm cloaks you dont go to whiterun to see weeping mothers and pyres honoring the dead you dont see people wearing morning cloths, people starving, you dont see dark elves hanging from the gates and floating in the harbor as people blamed them fro the defeat..... ITS JUST ALL SO BLANDDDDDD

2-classes and skills:

Oh these need to come back, I dont want to play default man, I want to have a background story (let me write it even morrowind style) and I want to have a class plz heck you can even have a (default) class for people who want to be an average joe who never knew what he was in his past life, did i have magic talents, did i used to hunt, was a I an orphan stealing food from vendors??? plz at least give us that.

skills .. oh my well it really does not matter, perks, skills ...all these are just mechanics they are free to do as they please though the system in skyrim was good frankly and I did not mind it at all, I dont think adding acrobatics or athletics will matter in any way or form, they can even bring back basic attributes like strength agility and intelligence but really its just not that important to me its up to Bethesda to figure out the best system for the game play they make.

3-Combat:

ok here is were TES failed every time while games like dark messiah, witcher 3, medieval warfare had more luck... the melee and ranged combat in skyrim was to be fair BASIC , no flare no weight and no intensity it was just who slashed faster and who swung harder, while in witcher 3 you could dodge roll block parry AND counter attack not to mention the wide range of attacks both fast and strong and you position in battle (behind the target on his side in front of him ...etc) ALSO in dark messiah we see that targeting the enemies neck hand leg had different effects as well as countering and blocking AND kicking it was and still is a more interesting combat system than skyrim and the game came out way before it

I would LOVE for the next TES to have combat that has weight and impact to it, let bows be powerful but hard to wield.. let arrows be an expensive commodity (heck let us craft them) let us have body part targeting, if u aim for the arm you might disarm your enemy or if u parry u can counter attack and kill him instantly, PLZ PLZ no more of this bland boring click fest, its just boring and uninspired.

Take combat to the next level, empower the player but make him earn his victories punish players that just run into a group of enemies willy nilly and reward players that play smart, let armor actually mean something in dark messiah if u wear plate U FEEL IT u HEAR IT and when u get struck it gives that satisfying TWANG cause you are wearing metal after all.

4-stealth:

what can i say stealth in skyrim was bad at best, what stealth lacks in a TES title is 2 things:

a- LIGHT

b- SOUND

frankly thief 1 and 2 did this perfectly and to copy paste the system would be enough to bring life to this often silly and idiotic part of a TES game, sneaking past a guard if ur sneak is 100 even though he is staring u in the face in day light is just not smart game design, while in thief and even dark messiah you had to stay in the shadows and walk silently and avoid hard surfaces

I could not tell you how much fun i had in thief just listening to all the amazing sound work they did... the footsteps the guard pvssyring, the doors closing .... it was sublime and no game has ever come close to deliver this amazing feeling again, stealing gold, and valuables sneaking on roof tops, climbing ropes pick pocketing people on the streets (they had actual purses for u to cut)

I just hope TES 6 has a smart level/light/sound design that will make gamers that enjoy stealth feel sneaky and at home in the darkness and walking on carpets

5-Magic:

Just no skyrim ... just no, the idea was solid but as usual Bethesda fell short on the completion, lets look at small games like dark messiah ... you will see telekinesis that WORKS, in dark messiah u can lift an object (the more mana you had the bigger objects you can lift) hold it in the air in front of u then throw it at your enemies ... NOTHING feels more satisfying than killing a group of really tough zombies with a flying sarcophagus you just threw using you mind and just feeling that object crash and break and the zombies going splat.

OR when you hit a pool of water with lightning and just FRY the enemies to death with one hit, or freezing them to solid blocks then kick the frozen bodies off ledges to watch them shatter satisfyingly below or make frozen patches that the enemies slip on and fall and break their necks, or the shrink ray that truns them to ants that you step on.

heck even the basic spells in witcher 3 felt more interesting with alt mods like sheild bubble and gust blast and connecting runes ...etc

I would love to see POWERFUL magic in TES 6 that works i want to see fire that burns ice that actually freezes stuff and telekinesis that does not svck I want to conjure creatures ....a WIDE variety of them... with rituals and incantation from lost books i find int eh mage guild libraries i want detailed info about these creatures, there weakness power ..etc

make magic mystical and interesting I dont want arcade TES I want atmosphere and depth i want to feel like I earned those new spells I want the fire ball to rock the earth and send enemies flying and burning and screaming.. in morrowind using a powerful spell was REALLY HARD but u felt so good when it works .. it drains your power but it WORKS you feel so powerful yet u feel like you really accomplished something I want that feeling back.

OH P.S. .... enchanting .. svcked in skyrim.. it was BADDDDDDD, in morrowind enchanting was so good that you can actually PROGRESS in combat via enchanting alone, making damage spells on items, healing or scrolls with powerful one shot spells you really really felt like an enchanter you had to prepare empty scrolls, gems, good items to enchant an just get lost in a world of magic .. should i enchant this glove with fire balls spell .. how many shots can i fire how much charge and power can it handle....etc it was HEAVEN

I wish we can have that back it was truly amazing.

well hope i did not bore you to death thanks for reading and stay safe

Considering that Oblivion features hundreds of NPCs all eating, sleeping, travelling and just going about their daily routines without scripting, as well as performing myriad quest-related tasks without scripting (such as the guards escorting the Emperor in the opening tutorial), and considering that the vast bulk of NPC behavior runs without a hitch, I would hardly call Radiant AI poorly implemented.

when it comes to faction recruitment, how about :

*to be given invitation to join thieves guild :

-steal/pickpocket a X amount of item value.

-get caught stealing/pickpocketing and escape successfully from guards

-escaping from jail

-do quests that involves stealing stuff

*to be given invitation to dark brotherhood :

-kill a unique NPC without getting detected.

*to join fighter's guild / companions :

-defeat someone in a brawl

-defeat X amount of monsters/bandits using physical attacks

*to join mage's guild :

-defeat X amount of monsters/bandits using magic attacks

-------

^getting an invitation just means the guild has recognized that your skills makes you qualified for the recruitment tests.

then once you got the invitation, you can now start the actual recruitment quests.

then when you pass the tests, you can finally join.

--------------

this solves the issue about the thieves guild trying to recruit you, despite not having stolen any single septim, or mages guild trying to recruit you even though you can only cast that one spell you bought five seconds ago, etc.. since you first need to demonstrate a certain level of proficiency on certain tasks before getting an invitation.

this ffs this

I actually like everything you suggest about degradation with the exception of allowing weapon effectiveness to go below base. You should be able to improve your sword above 100 by either being a good smith or paying a good to do so and be rewarded with extra damage for taking good care of your weapon, at the same time I feel you should be punished a little for not doing so. Then again I guess using a weapon at base damage when it could be doing more is in a way punishment without punishment if it makes sense.

I agree with pretty much everything you said. I don't feel classes are necessary besides giving you a more unique start for example starting as a mage and starting with a little better magic type attributes and maybe a couple more spells, although I feel like if you want to you should be still be able to drop magic and start playing as a warrior or do a hybrid build if you want but I kinda feel like you feel that way too.

And as for sneak I agree it's really bad but I give them some slack as stealth is hard to do in a game as it's more about level/world design than actual stealth mechanics. Making a game with good stealth requires things like creating alternate paths/routes for you to take, enemy plays a huge rule with creating ai that intentionally allows themselves to be taking advantage of while looking natural and dynamic and then things you mentioned like lighting and sound design. Even most stealth based games don't have good stealth so expecting that from a game like TES is sort of a bit much but at the same time valid criticism

Most of what you mentioned involves you being invited into the guild which I really don't agree with for the most part, besides for the DB and Thieves Guild (although MAJORLY different from how it's done in Skyrim) I think it should work like Oblivion where you go to them and ask to join and you're allowed in but only at the most basic and have to prove yourself in order to rank up like how the mages guild made you go around and get recommendations or the fighters guild made you do [censored]e jobs (feel like pointing out they were custom [censored]e jobs that were actually kinda interesting and not radiant bs) until you proved yourself then you got more important work. I also feel like they should do some kind of skill/attribute test where you have to actually be good at that guild aligned paradigm to rank up so you don't get the situation where a two-handed, heavy armor wearing orc warrior who can't cast a spell above novice level somehow becomes an archmage.

^i said the player would be invited to take a recruitment test (quests for recruitment) once they have sufficiently demonstrated their proficiency in the related tasks.

players do not join automatically.

so in case that the player did not know or have never been where the faction base is located, the invitation points them to the right direction where they can get into contact with the recruiters of a faction. it also serves as to whether the recruiter deems them proficient enough in the necessary skills to even be eligible to take the recruitment test.

otherwise, recruiters will probably tell the player stuff like : "we don't recruit milk-drinkers, come back when you can actually call yourself a fighter"... stuff like that.

edit :

yea, i agree with the example you gave about the novice mage orc becoming an archmage. i also think that advancement in certain factions should require relevant skill level checks.

I like W3. Fantastic game. But you can't compare it with the TES games, totally different animals. The Witcher games are extremely story driven with a specific character that you play. TES games have you choose from a wide selection of different races.

They are both immersive but in different ways. W3 immerses you in a well driven story while TES games immerse you in an open world where you do what ever you want. Don't believe me, walk into a house in a Witcher game and try to pick up a plate.

TEs games and Fallouts 3 and 4 are very much alive, it's just not in your face like the Witcher games.

I love the Witcher games, but calling Oblivion and Skyrim lifeless is just incorrect.

In regards to Radiant AI, it's problems were really two fold.


First. It's interaction wad horrible. The need to piece together bits of dialogue to try and simulate conversations was, IMO, an absolute disaster, and didn't simulate a sort of conversational interaction. It was like watching two andrioids in a 40s sci-fi pretend to be human. This was partly due to the poor voice acting in general, the repetition of voice actors, but also the way the system tried to assemble dialogue from isolated partitions. Skyrim did better in the delivery, but didn't even come close enough to the volume to make for a better overal execution.


The second issue was that it was a consumptive system, with no replenishment mechanic. People didn't restock their food, so everything eventually decayed into anarchy. This was compounded by the fact there was virtually no way to recognise suspicious behaviour (leading to absurd things like the Poisoned Apple) and there were far too few interactions to round out NPC activity. It was basically eat (anything nearby) wander around, have stilted robotic conversations, and sleep.


We are probably at the point where addressing these issues is something that can be done, but its going to require a significant amount of work.




Dropping below base efficiency would be something linked to higher difficulty settings, or rare situations. Corrosion Sells, acidic enemies, penetration weapons, trying to jam traps with your weapon... Stuff like that. The type of thing that you can identify before hand, rather than it being something that just happens.




I'm largely with CKelley on this... I don't like the idea of a standard Invitation Model. These aren't omniscient, exclusive or clandestine fraternities for the most part. They are regulatory bodies, institutions of learning, or for-profit collections of like-minded individuals.


The Mages Guild and Fighters Guild, in particular, are far more diverse institutions than we've really gotten in the past. The Fighters Guild isn't just a bunch of meat-heads who like hitting things, and the Mages Guild wasn't a strictly academic and cloistered bunch of Mages in their ivory tower.


Factions as a whole need to be handled more as elements within the world, rather than identity-factories that are just there to reward and perpetuate archetypes. And admission into them should reflect their identity, not be an overly mechanical process that caters to those archetypes.

I do really want more emergent gameplay in VI, and Radiant AI is great for that sort of off-script shenanigans, but what we were shown before Oblivion's pre-release looked more frustrating than engaging - the end result of early radiant AI was either everybody getting killed, or completely screwing over the player character. There are workarounds for that, like having consumables respawn after NPCs use them, or just setting consumables placed in the world to not get consumed when NPCs activate them. And having NPCs break out into non-lethal fistfights, like Skyrim's tavern brawls, instead of armed deatchmatches over a sweet roll. More traveling characters and groups to make inter-faction squabbles occur more frequently in the world will be a big help to making it feel more "alive", too.

And there need to be nonviolent applications, too. Radiant AI shouldn't just be about having NPCs sandboxing around and doing semi-unpredictable stuff, it should encourage creativity for how the player interacts with the world too. Poisoned apples are one thing, but there needs to be a lot more than that, and more than just creative ways of killing people.

Yeah, there are a lot of things that can be done with Radiant AI to improve it. Better reactions to minimise the likelyhood of the entropy of the old system. Some sort of simulated economy to help replenish goods in the world. More structured behavior assignment to make it seem more like characters do work, instead of just wandering around aimlessly. A way to account for and adjust to relationships (or even generate them dynamically as it runs).


In a very simplistic sense, the Sims already does everything one would want Radiant AI to handle, including recognitionof, and interaction with new environmental elements. Characters have goals, behaviours, routines, develop friendships and rivalries naturally, go to work, eat, sleep, take leisure time etc.


There's just one major hitch. Dialogue. The Sims has always bypassed the dialogue issues with such a system by ignoring it entirely. People speak gibberish. You don't have to worry about two NPCs talking when they speak like rejects from Charlie Brown. And you can't just resort to text dialogue either, or you'd be forced to choose between NPCs just waving their arms at each other, or speech bubbles.


Unless the Dialogue issue can be solved, there's a rather significant roadblock in progressing Radiant AI.

Well it seems they don't really care much about AI NPCS killing each other either considering that if you drop items in Skyrim, npcs will often kill each other over it. I don't understand why they didn't just make them stop once the npc is on the ground.

In Zelda the weapons do break.

Yes, but the new Zelda is being designed more as a Survival game, than an Action-Adventure or RPG. Just because items break in one game, or one genre, doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea in all games and all genres.

I've never encountered that. Not to say it doesn't happen, but I've never seen it.

The Radiant AI system isn't really the problem there though, it's more an issue with the basic AI and enemy recognition.

I don't think they need to go full-out Sims with the Radiant AI... they need AI that serves their goals and is open enough for off-script stuff, but they don't necessarily need to make a completely autonomous sort of thing like with the Sims. And one of the main draws of the Sims is how things can go off the rails and get ridiculous. I want interesting and sometimes hilarious behaviors out of the NPCs, but I'm not sure I want them to act like Sims. I feel like too much of that would take away from the world they're trying to build.

Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I feel like you can circumvent the dialogue problem by just having concise, repeatable bits of dialogue that relay the basic information that we need to perpetuate the idea of a "living" world, and that is really variable based on how closely we can be expected to scrutinize the world itself. Not to harp on my favorite example over and over, but I thought the original Fable did an excellent job of portraying a quasi-believable world, at least in passing. The people of the world were aware of your deeds, as you were making waves in the world so to speak, but in addition you had interactions between the NPCs of each small town. Going to school, visiting the tavern, visiting local shops, carrying goods from the docks, and so on. There wasn't much ambient dialogue, but then there didn't necessarily need to be. The game had a few scripted events where your presence was reacted to, but otherwise, the game assumed you would be busy with your quests and heroics and not bothering the children in the local classroom for example. I think that is what you have to ask yourself. How reactive does the world need to be?

I think having lines of reactionary dialogue for every NPC for major in-game events is vital, I think we should also have lines of dialogue for regionally significant events, and then having general lines that recognize you as you grow in fame is also crucial. Beyond that, you have scripted events for quests, specific dialogue for each individual (the speech you get when you are first introduced to a character mainly), general vendor dialogue, and then general small talk. Once we have every character established, the only lines of dialogue they would need would be for radiant quests and small talk that occurs between NPCs if you pass them in general circumstances. I feel like that is pretty manageable, if kept within reason. They don't need to have new and specific lines every night but could get by with a handful of lines that are recycled small talk.

On a different topic, with the announcement of Skyrim Special Edition, I was looking through Skyrim mods, seeing what I would like to get access to when Skyrim is re-launched in October. I came across https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOMMFLLo59s mod. It encapsulates some features I have wanted in ES games since I played Oblivion and I was wondering what people would think of making it baseline in future ES games? I was disappointed when we didn't have visible weapons in Fallout 4, but later on I realized that, on the whole, it wasn't as big of a deal as I thought it would be (given how many different guns I use anyway). I would hate to see this go away in ES however, as the association with your weapon in a fantasy universe is much stronger than with a gun in the universe of FO4. Or at least that's how I feel.

Ideally? Sims level. But, achieving that without the quirky wackiness is another thing altogether, and I for one don't expect it anytime soon.


At the same time, just 'Going through the motions' isn't an option either. At least not for me. As ie aid before, Wild Hunt did this with its cities, and while they felt populated, they didn't feel alive. It was like the difference between being in a Mall at noon hour, and being outside a Call Center at shift change. One has lots of people and lots of movement, but little engagement and interaction. The lack of ability to interact isn't really a viable option in an open world, open ended experience. Not being able to talk to people because someone else decided they weren't important kinda defeats the point of being able to define your own experience, doesn't it?


But managing interactivity and volume isn't an easy thing. Fallout 4s generic NPCs are better, but still fall short of the mark. Meanwhile, Oblivions attempt to increase interaction came out alien and artificial. I think Skyrim tried to have more natural and realistic interactions, but fell well short if the goal. Maybe the extra 32,000 line of dialogue from the PCs in Fallout 4 could have been better used in trying to bridge the gap, but we won't know until they try.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP4TFHGQgRo

Occurs so much in Riften.