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

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

Note there is a separate thread specifically for http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1605442-tes-vi-location-and-setting-speculation-33/ suggestions for future games. Please keep discussion of Skyrim in the correct forums.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1605002-official-beyond-skyrim-tes-vi-85/

@ Lachdonin

I agree that some procedural generation could be useful, such as with some parts of the forests of Valenwood. Not too much though, as I'd much rather have as much hand-crafting as possible.

There is also a big difference between procedurally generating some bits of a province (or in Daggerfall's case, an entire province) and 18 QUINTILLION planets like there is supposed to be in No Man's Sky. I think Bethesda is more than capable of handling a bit of procedural generation here and there, and then touching up the results with details. It would give them more time to focus on other aspects of the game, and I think there would be far less nonsensical results from procedural generation like earlier in the series (like Rockpark in Black Marsh in Arena, where an Equipment Store was BLOCKING THE PALACE GATES) with much more comparatively primitive technology.

There's also the "impossible dungeons" in Daggerfall. I think they're relatively rare, but I did find one, though. I don't recall the name of the dungeon, however.

Story time: on one of my first dungeon romps, I went to rescue this lady's lover being held by the Thieves' Guild for ransom in a dungeon (the name escapes me). After about 4 or 5 hours, I said "Screw it!" and used the cheat in the v2.13 of Daggerfall, and teleported around the dungeon. I found him stuck in a wall in a gigantic room I already looked in! Wasn't an impossible dungeon, but it was sure frustrating. Don't get me wrong though: there were definitely instances of fun dungeon diving.

I think there is room for a few procedurally generated dungeons. Doesn't have to be nearly as long as Daggerfall dungeons, but just a few that can be a bit longer than usual. Of course, I still want as much hand-crafting as possible, but I think it could be done well if used a little bit for dungeons as well.

Well that one dungeon I found had some corridors that you start in and one room you have to enter in order to explore the rest of the dungeon. Unfortunately, the one entry point into the room from the corridors is a secret door that can only be unlocked by using a lever inside that very room. There are probably ways to work around that through glitching or something, but there didn't seem to be a normal way to enter the room.

I only saw that happen once, though, out of many different dungeons I've seen. There's actually a lot of interesting kinds of rooms, corridors, chambers, and even mechanics in Daggerfall's dungeons, though. They have moveable bridges, teleports (in different forms like sometimes the bricked-in doorways act as teleporters, and there's other objects that sometimes teleport you to other parts of the dungeon), traps, secret doors, I think there are trap doors, and they also did elevators, which to my knowledge didn't really show up again in an actual moveable state until they did Fallout 4.

I think it would be interesting to see dungeons that are a bit less linear than what is typically in Skyrim, as well as interesting elements like moveable platforms and bridges as well as bringing in elevators like they did for Fallout 4.

Agreed, but that's not really what i was getting at.

No Man's Sky's use of procedural generation was believed to deliver on that lofy ideal that you could assemble diverse and interesting environments using nothing but procedural generation, and a relatively small number of principle assets. And it, frankly, did worse than some other games that rely on Procedural Generation (hell, at least 7 Days to Die has randomised geology, rather than every Iron Oxide node looking the same). Yes, filling out a massive universe is a different thing than making a single TES province, but the basic premise behind them is the same. Even with an extensive list of potential assets, No Man's Sky shows that Procedural Generation cannot create the same kind of diversity as hand-placement. We know it's technically possible, because, hey, Evolution is a thing, but the work required and the actual generation isn't there yet.

Again, i'm not saying that Procedural Generation isn't useful. As i said last thread, Bethesda really needs to reconsider their use of it (or lack there of, with Skyrim and Fallout 4) because their world spaces NEED to grow, or they need to redefine the types of games they make. But even if they use Procedural Generation, the need to go back over things and put in hand-crafted details limits the size of what they can work with. Too much area, and your hand-crafted details are going to simply get lost in the scope of things. It doesn't matter if you scatter a thousand unique, hand crafted details through an area the size of Daggerfall, most of that effort is going to be wasted because no one will ever find them. If you use standard Procedural Generation approaches, it means scattering 1000 instances of the same 3 camps across the map. Which, frankly, gets really notable, really fast.

That's because nature has the benefit of a 'Procedural Generated' model that no computer system can even come close to. But you CAN mimic it's effects through hand-crafting, far easier than you can through the use of a Procedural Generation mechanic. A prime example of this dynamic is with AI. The AI used in games isn't even intelligence, it's just a complex formula of If-A-Than-B scenarios that trick you into thinking the the entities in the game are moving with a degree of autonomy, when they're really just reacting to pre-set parameters. It's much easier to simulate nature, than it is to recreate it.

And that's not even touching on the NPC problem.

Once again, this doesn't mean that Procedural Generation isn't useful. It is, and good use of it could save TES from being relegated to a sort of micro-open-world category that it's quickly falling into. But the fact that it still requires touching up limits the total size it's going to be able to offer.

I believe this has been mentioned before, but the Alik'r desert could benefit immensely from procedural generation. It would be a region where it would make sense that everything seems repetitive and boring. And frankly, the said area needs to be huge to make it seem menacing and worth its reputation.


Moreover, if the desert was mostly procedurally generated it would make the handcrafted parts even more interesting. They would serve as a reward for those willing to spend time exploring the dreary region.

I don't honestly see the problem with TES being smaller than games like Witcher or No Man's Sky. Everyone keeps yelling "MORE MORE MORE" and I really just want something about the same size as Skyrim. I just want them to hone their craft and focus on improving the games from a mechanical standpoint and work on their writing and npc interactions. Part of the reason I always liked Bethesda's RPG's was that they never really seemed to pay much mind to what the rest of the gaming industry was doing. It always felt like they were just doing their own thing and not really trying too hard to carve out a place for themselves in the AAA gaming scene.

I don't want the games to be bigger than they are now. I want them to be better. Just because enormous open-worlds are all the rage right now doesn't mean Bethesda has to focus on making their worlds bigger in some sort of adolescent ****-measuring contest with other games for lack of a better metaphor. Maybe that would be the best thing for them to do right now from a marketing standpoint but I'm almost certain it would lead to an overall drop in quality that would hurt the series in the long run.

With all that in mind, I think the way they used proc-gen to generate terrain in Oblivion was on the right track (even if I didn't like the overall aesthetic of it). It saves them some time and they still go in and hand-place a lot of things to keep it unique and interesting. Making it too big though and the hand-placed things will get lost in the procedurally generated sea, like Lachdonin said.

It depends on how much bigger, and where. I think cities could be a bit bigger and more dense than what they did in Skyrim, and some biomes like the Rift's forest and the frozen marshland probably could have been bigger as well (otherwise, a lot of the environments did feel pretty big), but they probably don't need to expand the size tenfold or something unless they're doing a two-province game that'll secretly be in development by the end of this year and take them until about mid-2020's to finish it (that would probably be more like twice the size of Skyrim if that's what they're doing, but they're probably sticking to just one province like they've done in the past).

In my opinion, cities and towns could do with having more shops and services like in Oblivion and Morrowind (at least some jewelers should probably have shops rather than just market stalls, for example), and have a better proportion between townsfolk who are related to each other and ones who aren't. For instance, they probably went a bit overboard with the families in Whiterun (of course a few extra-but-still-interesting NPCs could have helped offset that a little, I'm not saying that the rival clans of Whiterun was a bad idea at all), but in the past they didn't even do children, and even then, Skyrim only has human children with almost no variations whatsoever (like how every child in Skyrim has brown eyes, or how all the Redguard children are pale, and how they all wear the same clothes but in different colors).

Another thing is better verticality, and with more consideration to thief and assassin type player characters in regards to thieving and assassinations. It doesn't make sense to treat cities and towns as "raw quest hubs and refreshment centers" when you've also got to consider crime-based gameplay as well, which is why I think cities need improvement in some areas.

Speaking of the cities, Skyrim still did not fully rectify the problem of generic towns and villages that had been present in Oblivion. People do praise the five unique cities they did, but then everything else just uses the "farmhouse kit" regardless of whether or not that makes sense (Dawnstar and Winterhold come to mind), and all the taverns outside the five major cities in the base game use the exact same tavern exterior and layout, with different NPCs populating them, slightly different clutter, and an occasional basemant being some of the few things making each location unique.

It might make sense for them to do regional architectural styles using tile kits with both reusable structures and setpiece structures similar to how they do dungeons, just with a bigger proportion of setpieces versus reusable pieces than with typical dungeon kits. There could still be something like the "farmhouse kit," it just wouldn't be the ONLY style of buildings you ever get to see for the smaller towns and villages. Basically similar to Morrowind, but the big cities would still be visually distinct like in Skyrim because of unique buildings or interesting natural landmarks, for instance.

In terms of size, i believe double or triple the size of Skyrims world map would be perfect, the five or so major cities would also increase in size by 2 or 3 times. and have a couple of medium sized towns. Apart from that, i would keep all other settlements the same size and keep the same amount of locations.

My reasoning for this is that the increased size will get rid of the theme park feel, yet not become too big that it becomes tedious. The increase in city size will make them feel more like proper cities, and leaving villages the same size will increase this effect. The number of discoverable locations in Skyrim is perfect i believe, so i wouldn't bother trying to add any more, just have them spread out a bit more on the bigger map.