» Wed Aug 12, 2015 11:36 am I doubt anyone in any decision-making positon will ever read this, but hope dies last.
Elder Scrolls games have always been among my favorites, but they have also always beeen plauged by some rahter poor design decisions. What follows is my musings on the various aspects of ES games (mostly focused on the last one).
UI
The most download mod on nexus is SkyUI that fixes the horible interface and that should be telling.
For the love of God, make a proper PC interface next time.
SCALING/BALANCING
This refers to the player character, enemies AND items/weapons. Honestly, you dropped the ball here. The system is both broken and unnimersive as hell.
I understand the attempt - you want to have the player feel more powerfull by simply increasing NUMBERS (which is a shallow approach), but to keep the game a challenge, you scale enemies (making the numbers increase pointless to begin with)
The best way (IMHO) to achieve challenge, immersion and progression is a more balanced approach.
For the player character - bring back physical stats; STR, DEX, WILL, CON, etc..
Make it VERY dificult to increase them over the course of the game, make them matter and make items that increase them matter.
Focus on skills/perks on level-up instead of dull HP and DMG boosts. There should be no HP boost on level-up AT ALL: HP is a relic of the old designs that is completely unnecessary. And without HP scaling, challenge remains normalized trough the game. There is less need for enemy scalining when even early bandits will still be nothing to sneeze at, while even more difficult enemies might be managable with luck and planning. Skills will give your character more tools to work with, make him more versatile and better to respond to different situations - but it won't magically make him able to go in naked and punch a bandit to death, becase he has so much HP that battleaxe to the face doesn't faze him.
ENEMY SCALING:
Mix and match approach. Using a single scaling system is bad.
So have fixed enemies in some places, have enemies that scale to your level in some and have ENCOUNTERS that scale (by changingthe type and number of enemies, not actually leveling enemies). Whatever is chosen should make sense.
So bandits might scale to a specific level and no more, while some other enemies, like warlords/knights/mercenaries might scale higher.
ITEM SCALING:
In every ES game so far it has been dull and uninspired. Materials are all the same, a liner progression of +1. There is no choice, no decision making, no varriation. Materials nad items lack..character.
Instead of the boring, flat system, materials should have differnet properties. Different pros and cons. Density, stress tolerance, cutting abiltiy, weight - this woul all result in different characteristics.
Large density/weight ores would be slower to swing, but impart more momentum, thus all weapons would have a stagger change. Light materials would make a weapon nimber, allowing for faster strikes. Materials like glass might make better cutting weapons, giving a bleeding chance on hit, but having poorer blunt stress resistance, would make worse blunt weapons.
For example:
IRON - heavy, armor give greater stagger/push ressitance, weapons impart more force, but slower swings and inferior qaulity
STEEL - all-around, balanced material
MOONSTONE - light material that makes for lighter armor and faster weapons, but less momentum applied, less stagger.
Etc...
WEPON FORGING/IMPROVING:
The Skyrim weapon improvement mechanic is also broken, the amount one can improve being too redicolous. Sklils being on a 100-point scale might be part of the problem, as it's hard to make each point meaningfull. There is no need for a 100-point scale, and weapon improvements being limited to "+X damage" is also dull. Master-crafted swords usualy have better balance in RL.
For weapon improvement I would suggest quality stages, each adding +1 to damage (or each stage adding a random improvement..could be speed, or increased blocking). There's also negatives for poorly-mantained weapons for brigands and you, as armor should have durabiltiy, mening you have to repair and maintain your armor and weapons ("rusty" might reduce protection, "poorly fitted" might slow the person down, "dull" reduces sword damage, etc..)
Learn from D&D, where a good quality steel sword can carry you for most of the the game.
EXPLORATION
To give the impression of a large world, to truly immerse the player and to make it very convenient/easy for a player are mutually conflicting goals.
In Skyim, one has ancient ruins and lost cities that hold amazing secrets a LITERAL stone-throw away from the main cities. One can see the ruins next door from the city walls. Hell, long lost cities have roads that lead directly to their front doors - doors that branch off from the main roads in the land. The lost dwarven city that holds all of their accumulated knowledge? Just take a look to the right when you're traveling down the main road. There it is.
Condensed distances means the player doesn't have to make long travels, but the inevitable downside is that the density of locations is redicolous. There is little real exploration or discovery when nothing is really hidden or hard to find.
The second problem is that everyone and their dog attacks you when you travel. Pooly equipped bandits, suicidal wolves - it's ike no one in Skyrim has a sense of self-perservation. So please, for your next game, work on the AI. Have animals behave like animals and humans like humans.
Some basic risk assesment is a must in the AI, and not attacking, fleeing or surrendering should all be options.
Adding a horse to speed up travel is kinda pointless when fighting from horeseback is very limited
and your horse can't our-run most pests, so you end up dismounting every minute to deal with the suicidal wolves/bears. I guess the idea is to have things attack you to keep the travel from getting dull, but the effects is in fact opposite - it's only more irritating to be constanly attacked.
QUESTS AND IMMERSION
The whole world revolves around the player and - if you pardon the expression - svcks his d****.
The PC is the greatest being in existane, constantly admired and complimented by everyone on his amazing skills - even when you svck.
You can become the archmage even if you know only a few basic spells, or a warrior champion even if you svck at close combat. The requirements are non-existant and PC can do too much, too fast, too easily, becoming master of all skills, champion of all gods, leader of all guilds, master alchmist, etc, etc..
Heck, I even get credited for things I didn't do (like when a dragon attacked Riften and landed smack in the middle of a dozen city guards who killed him, one getting the epic kill animation, and I get all the fame and credit despite literally doing nothing but watch)
For a world to feel immersive, it MUST NOT feel like it revoles around the player. The game should show plenty of other of competent people who get things done. ES games have the player be the prophecized chosen one and it's frankly getting old.
Some quests should have time limits (and when accepting them - refuse option should be there for every quest - you shouldn't get new quests), some should be mutually exclusive, becoming an archmage should require ACTUAL mage skill and big, scary monsters should be something you CANNOT solo. Period.
Oh, look at that intelligent, immortal, big scary dragon that everyon is afraid of. If only it was smart enough to use it's power of flight to just stay out of your sword range and fire breath you to death. If only it was smart enough to actually flee when injured...mabye I'm only runing into dragon retards?
If only killing dragons was actually challenging.
There should be more big battles where you are a cog in a machine, the cut Civil War storyline was so promising.
I can go on and on, but this is the gist of it and this is a wall of text enough already...
Respectfully yours:
Some Guy on the Internet
