I'm looking at ways to change the structure of elder scrolls games in exciting but not blasphemous ways, and I think I found one. Instead of mere character classes being made and some Battlemage or Rogue being dropped into the same place regardless of his class, I'd like to see a system of character occupations, whereby player's strengths and station in life would be determined in some capacity by their vocation. Lets take a blacksmith as an example. If a player chooses his character to be a blacksmith, they can choose things such as their experience as a blacksmith, how wealthy their background, and how successful their shop is. From there, the game starts off its main quest with them either being taught their vocation (if they chose to be an apprentice) or by teaching their vocation to a new apprentice (if they are already experienced). With blacksmithing as our example, and the player character in question an apprentice, the shop is visited by some character with a part in the story, and the visitor has 3 rusty iron weapons he would like repaired. After being given all three, the player is walked through the steps of repairing a dagger, an axe, and a bow by his master. This would be a minigame like Oblivion's Lockpicking game, and would be the basis of the armor repair ability. Not long after you set to work repairing it, however, some sort of enemy barges in and attacks the story character. He needs your help fighting back at some point, and so you must take up one of the three weapons to defend him. If you succeed in defending him, you are rewarded with the weapon you chose, and then the character gives you a message to go somewhere to start the main quest. This is where you may choose specialization information beyond your initial occupation choice.

Other such occupations could include a Witchhunter, who must slay an evil mage and is given initial spells, a soldier, who goes through a day of training before being taken into battle, an alchemist, who would be taught to mix potions (Through another minigame like the armorer minigame, perhaps having to grind ingredients and put them to boil in an alembic or something), or perhaps a thief, stealing some valuable dagger. In any case, the player's occupation could be changable as they wish later in the game, with the option to take on up to 3 at once, and each offering its' own questline. In practice, this would be essentially identical to the class system, but now classes would actually do more than just select some skill bonuses and give you some aesthetic meaningless backstory. Imagine starting as an experienced enchanter whose shop is in a rough spot, teaching a young apprentice to use a charged soulgem on an item to enchant it with the fire effect, only to have your apprentice discover that he is the offspring of some evil mage who wants to come to come and kill his son.

Also, the option could be available for an "Unemployed" or "Adventurer" generic occupation, whereby a completely custom class may be chosen and an occupation would not be pre-selected. The game would start here with a more "One-size-fits-all" story start. Also, the player can choose to start as a prisoner, which would be a throwback to the starts of all the other elder scrolls games, wherein players start in some kind of prison or dungeon.


Oh, and just to clear this up, I wouldn't want this in the next game, I'd prefer it in the game after next, when there would be plenty of time to implement it. After all, there's bound to be loads of work that'd have to be done to make all those questlines start.

There is anhttp://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1118847-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-182/, please use it.