@Daniel_Kay

I agree with you on magic when you say that it's so powerful and so readily available, yet it's mostly used for killing and offensive stuff, but never anything practical. Magic, over anything else in the game, is one of my biggest pet peeves; telekinesis being my biggest one.

On Conjuration, if you can summon daedric weapons and armor and creatures, why can't you summon gold coins? Or broomsticks or cabbages or hedgehogs or linens or clothes hanging pins? I mean, yeah, making every single thing in the world summonable would be ridiculous to implement in a game, but you get the point I'm making.

I've ranted about telekinesis before but I'll say it again, that telekinesis isn't portrayed realistically, not just in TES, but in movies like Push, Star Wars series, etc... If telekinesis magic were real and people studied it, we wouldn't be moving rocks to throw at one another. We'd be moving people's internal organs around. Moving someone's optic nerves out of place rendering them blind is way easier to move as far as weight instead of moving stones or wood. Of course the caster would have to have a great understanding of anatomy & physiology.

I'm thinking of magic on terms that are more in line with Merlin from Disney's "The Sword in the Stone". His magic was practical and useful, though it also had many limitations.


On realism in general, some people hate it, some people love, and some people are right in between. You're never going to please everybody. I am totally for realism in every way.

Yea it was quite inconsistent how this is supposed to work, a thought there was that it may somehow connect to a "pocket dimension" it can pull things from, if those are not there it can't get them. But still leaves many open questions.


Yea that actually is a quite good example of that.
It really seems like all they can think about doing with magic is kill each other and then they don't even do that effectively. I mean wouldn't a simple method of killing that way not be to just pull someones head one direction and his body the opposite just snapping his spine? No complex knowledge of anatomy needed for that, no overly complicated aiming, just SNAP and gone.

But yea the main beef is still why there are no practical uses. They should look at Avatar: The last Airbender, there people actually used their bending talents for much more than fighting. Firebenders used it to heat stoves and power machines or simply to warm up food, Earthbenders built gigantic city walls and even a transit system that way, Waterbenders use their powers for healing and manipulating the body etc... just so many more uses that are actually USED.
And there by far not everyone was a bender and still they used it for practical means, in TES everyone CAN potentially use magic but there are next to no practical means.

People always bash the idea of technological progression by saying "they have magic", yea... but they never use it for anything useful, you know, things machines could do.



Another point about realism and believability is Animal behaviors.
So far their only behavior is run up at the player and keep biting/clawing till one of them is dead. That's BS.

Have animals have actual behaviors, like wolfs biting into a body part and not letting go unless shaken off, injured or killed, a mountain lion would try to pounce you down on the ground. It doesn't even have to be a real animal, Slaughterfish behaved totally unbelievable as well. It would be more likely that they swim up to you, bite into you, wiggle around till they got a chunk of meat and then swam off, likely attack in groups. And hell even have "monsters" have some brain rather than just be "see - attack", I'm sure many of them just wanna be left alone and not fight to the death constantly.
And animals only hunted the player, have them hunt each other as well. Why attack the player when there's something much smaller and more manageable to get.

Also don't have them EITHER attack OR flee, have them threaten to get you away from them or only attack if cornered.

Animal behaviors really could fill an entire thread.

i no this is off topic but iv never tampered with mods, could any1 give me instructions to install/get them active in the gameworld? would b much appreciated

It might be a good idea to google and download the "Oblivion Mod Manager" Never used it myself, but from what I understand, it does most of the work for you.

About the amount of cash you carry and it's weight. If, for some reason, Bethesda doesn't go with the BEST option, gold having weight, banks, letters of credit, then at least make the system similiar to Dragon Age. Money has no weigt, but at least you dont have a million gold coins with you. Bread that costs a copper makes more sense than one that costs a gold.
http://www.webalice.it/linea.tth/img/Inventory.jpg pic of DA inventory. The guy has 52 gold coins, 84 silver and 63 copper. I consider him a rich sob.

@ Vadagar

You mean http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=22810? Shadowcrest Manor?



@ Daniel_Kay
If your "pocket dimension" theory is somewhat correct, it would still be a cheap cop-out on Bethesda's part just because they didn't want to spend the time to make every item summonable in the construction set. But I digress.

I never saw the Last Airbender, although the movie is coming out soon so maybe I'll go to IMAX theaters and check it out. But yeah, snapping someone's head with telekinesis would be very easy to do. Have you seen the trailer for Dark Messiah? In http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqDZS23muHI it shows the usage of telekinesis. Again, same old thing. Picking up enemies and throwing them. I know that it's much more complicated to script telekinesis to do more specific things though. I'm sure that computer game developers would have telekinesis do many more things if they knew how but what hinders the gaming world is the lack of technology to do these things we're talking about doing.

But yeah, in the TES world, there aren't that many scientists, but you would think that someone would have figured out that electricity is a good conductor and would apply it to copper. There's copper in the game and there is electricity magic. And since High Elves have been around for like, what..... 4000 years? you'd think one of them would have figured out something like that. But I certainly wouldn't want a fantasy rpg world with electricity and stuff.

I didn't like how in the book The Infernal City they made magic very NOT available. It's like the main characters didn't know where to go to find some magic potions, and instead she had to make a levitating potion. In most cities, you can pretty much find an assortment of potions and scrolls. Buying magic scrolls and potions is like buying cigarettes. lol

You're right on animals, that probably needs its own thread as TES fauna could use fixing in every way possible.

YES best house mod EVER, and has one of the saddest and most beautiful quest endings ever :'(

Not only better types of money breakdowns, but they need local scrips to support their local economy as well. So to promote local trade, they could give you two choices of rewards. The local scrip, or a smaller sum of gold, but you can spend the gold anywhere. The bank can exchange the money types for you, but they would give you less the farther away you are from it's useful area.

I was thinking about the gold and merchant issue, and have an idea.

Instead of the need for variances in gold weight or the need to implement things such as banks and so forth, how about the time honored aspect of simple barter and trade added to the game in a much better way?

For instance. You need a potion, and yet you are light on gold. The option comes up where you inform the merchant you don't have enough money, and they are trigger to ask:

"Don't have the gold? What about your sword/shield/cuirass/dagger/bow/etc.?"

That way, items can be bartered for keeping the feel of a more older feeling fantasy setting. Barter for everything, be it a ride, or a chore. Go to the clothier, and if you want those pants, either buy it, trade for it, or as what already exists in the game, work for it.
How many "step and fetch it" quests end in you getting a simple item? How many informational quests (like the lucrative Vassar-Dinadat mine location) lead to great items? Just flesh this already a facet of the game that is there in quest form, but make it so that all merchants, gondoliers, and other services can be bought with gold, trade, or your time.

If you had the ability to truly barter in the old sense of the word with all merchants, that would make the believability/realism kind of balancing in itself, as stock would change globally depending on the constant trading and bartering. There have been times when I had big ticket items in my inventory, but needed a specific potion right away. Sadly, the merchants in the town I was in were not the kind that would take the item I had to offer. So that meant traveling to one of my mod added merchants that took everything, or to Ra'viir, who takes everthing including moon sugar and skooma, but only carried about 800 or so gold daily.

Food for thought.

I think that "realistic" graphics and 'realistic" results could play together very nicely in the context of a leveling RPG. For instance, the OP stated that at a low level he pin cushioned a lion to little effect. In the game internals it was because he was unskilled and using poor quality equipment, but graphically the arrows were sinking in. What if they didn't sink in? What if the graphic effect matched the in game internals? Unskilled bowman hits a lion with poor quality arrows and damned if the arrows don't just glance off. Now graphically you are being torn apart by a nicked up lion and not a pin cushioned lion. Skilled bowman hits a lion with high quality equipment and it sinks right to the heart.

Oblivion did not have locational damage but IMHO they did a nice job in Fallout 3 where the shooter element (shotgun to face) was combined with the RPG element (actual damage based on skill/equipment) which in turn was generally reflected in the graphics (head removal on a really good shot, some blood spatter on a less than good one).

As long as realism and believability don't get in the way of fun, then let TES5 have it. For instance, it is not fun seeing your lvl 100 warrior/tank being decapitated by a lvl 1 bandit with a butterknife and it is certainly not fun to suddenly collapse during a battle because you haven't slept recently.
Unfortuneately game designers think is that for something to be realistic and believable, it needs to in only one colour (brown), have what tv tropes calls 'ludicrous gibs' and whenever you have a papercut, there should be enough blood coming like a water-fountain out to fill a swimming pool. I'm sure none of this is realistic as when you look out the window, I'm sure not everything is in shades of brown and that the human body can gib like that or create that much blood at that high pressure. If they add some realism and believability to TES5, hopefully it is not that kind.

thanks will have a look

From another thread:


There's realism and believability for you: things that should be there are not cut out even if they might be considered inappropriate by a few people. Like children in TES 3 and 4. They're cut out, while any believable 'world' needs to have them.

That you get decapitated would neither be believable nor realistic, unless that bandit really had a few hours to slice away at you neck.
That you CAN get killed by a "lower level" opponent (Though I HATE the level based thinking) when he gets a good shot at you, he could manage to sneak up on you and slit your throat which would would be hardly survivable at any level.
The difference would simply be that you're more trained at a higher level, your character can evade hits better thus it simply becomes harder to hit his weak points and he will be physically a bit more able to take hits, but he won't be able to take a dozen sword strikes to the chest and just be a little annoyed, be that time he'd be a little dead.


This is why mechanics like need for sleep should be balanced out well.
I did talk about BAD implementation of survival systems before, like "you're hungry, eat something now or die in 5 seconds" which is not believable, not realist and not fun. Food consumption however having a large buffer zone in which nothing happens, than gradual skill/attribute decreases and only when you're really starved out (like 3 days without food) your maximum health starts to decrease (note, NOT your health tickers away, your maximum health capability lowers) plus regularly eating boosting your automatic regeneration effects meaning you regenerate faster is not only believable and "easy" but also has a rewarding effect.
As for sleeping, you should be able to go at least a full day without sleep and noting no drawbacks, after that time you'd only have slight skill decreases (loss of concentration) and your stamina will drain faster. In combat you could get adrenalin rushes that can hold you up too. You'd probably only collapse after going a full 3 - 4 days in game without sleep, and as I asked before who honestly spent that long in game without once resting or sleeping deliberately to heal or wait for something?

BTW: Here travel services could come into play again. When you're marching on foot you'll be tired out unless you planned rest stops which will make your trip longer and either cost money or resources. On horseback you can at least rest your legs a bit but it's still not that relaxing.
When using a travel service you can rest on the way, like sleep in a carriage.
That way you could have Oblivions style "from anywhere, to anywhere" fast travel, but it will be exhausting, AND Morrowinds style travel services "from location, to location" but they will be far easier on your character. So if you plan to go to a battle somewhere far away better use a travel service OR spend a good rest at your target destination (which depending on the location might not be easy).

And to repeat, almost any game mechanics shouldn't be judged completely by themselves, either. World and time scale are also very relevant. People talk about "having to eat every five minutes", but should keep in mind that anyone wanting an implementation of realism is probably going to want a better time scale too. It takes less than an hour in real life for an entire day to pass in the game, and I wouldn't want a survival mechanic set to that scale either.

Good point, timescale also plays a huge role in NPC actions, if a NPC spends a total workday of 5 minutes it's hardly realistic, plus it makes finding them by "usual places" too hard. If they spend several hours at a workplace it would be easier to find them by just looking at the time and then heading there, most likely place they'll be at.

I'd really want a in game day to last at least 6 real time hours but the bigger the time scale is the better. After all for a late night sneak mission where you have "between 2 and 4 am" for example you should have 2 hours, not 10 minutes, after all playing Thief and really making my way through a level slowly can take several hours, even for a place that isn't much bigger than for example a castle in Oblivion.
And if the game world is big enough then having a real time scale shouldn't be a huge problem.

PS: That always annoyed me in GTA4, someone calls me, says "meet me in the next hour" and the you only have 5 minutes to travel from one end of the map to the other. If it says "next hour" I should have AN HOUR.

Timescale is a critical part of realism and believability. I found the 30:1 ratio in MW and OB to be completely unbelievable, where an entire day would go by in a hour of playing time, and a quick sidestep into a shop to pick up some supplies would turn into an all-afternoon time-sink. In both games, I quickly added a utility mod to alter the timescale to 8:1. That way, a game day slips by in about 3 hours of playing time (a typical session for me). The game timescale is still drastically accelerated over that of the real world, but it isn't as blatant. With a "Necessities" mod, which I add to every game, you don't need to stuff your face every 20 minutes (that quickly gets annoying); once in about an hour and a half is plenty to maintain the illusion without becoming a chore.

While I agree that I would prefer a smaller ratio from real/game time, there is the issue of map size. In order to make distances believable, the time has to be shorter. I would love for it to take two weeks to cross the map by foot. However, if the time scale was closer to real life, the map would have to be miles and miles larger...not that I mind that. It's certainly been done before, and it would help spread out content that many found to be too crowded.

That's why I "compromise" on a timescale somewhere between the game default and realtime. Anywhere in the 6:1 to 10:1 range feels "long enough" (in my opinion) while keeping it so you can't cross the entire map on foot during a casual afternoon stroll. At 8:1, Vvardenfell still feels dauntingly large to explore, yet the character could probably traverse it in a full 24 hour day of non-stop travel. Of course, in Morrowind, between intervening terrain like mountains, lava pools, swamps, rivers, and a semi-active volcano and surrounding magical fence, plus a few random encounters, that's not likely to happen. In Oblivion, the roads lead directly across the middle of the map, and you start out in the center, so reaching the limits of the map in a province that was supposed to be hundreds or thousands of miles across seemed far too rapid, regardless of timescale.

One of the ways to offset the disparity between the timescale and the map size could be to adjust the running/walking speed so that your PC moves at a more believable speed. Both Morrowind and Oblivion had rather poor mechanics in that regard. In Morrowind, your character runs in 'slow-motion' at low levels, but runs in 'fast-forward' at higher levels. In Oblivion, your character starts out at a decent speed, but then also runs impossibly fast later on in the game (faster than most horses even!). I thought Fallout 3 had the most believable running speed, but there was no way to increase your running speed or athletics, so it was a constant rate throughout. What I think would work better is if your character's running speed starts out similar to FO3's, but increases at barely noticible increments. This way, by the time you reach 100 in speed and athletics, you will be able to run at a maximum of 1.5 to 2 times faster than your starting rate. They could, perhaps, also include a system for sprinting, but at a much higher cost to fatigue. Personally, I think they also need to factor inclines into the movement mechanics, as it is extremely difficult to run up a mountain while being encumbered (or at all), not to mention that walking or running up a hill is very tiring, and should also have an influence on your character's fatigue.

Implementing some of those things, plus making the map bigger, would do a lot to make the relation between time, distance and speed more believable, IMO.

Just a thought.

wouldn't be awesome if there is NO LEVELING or levels in the old sense...

think about it, u can "advance" in skills and learn spells, BUT, like in more "realistic" games you can still die if u get an arrow into ur heart... think about it for a minute imagine how useful heavy armor would become, and instead of it taking away a percentage of damage it will protect you from weapons (not completely it still has limits), and facing a mage would really make u use those resistance potions (which now instead of numeric values they just give you resistance to a certain element/magic attack an let u NOT get one shooted by mages)

imagine how amazing stealth would be when u can back stab that bandit and drag his corpse into a dark corner.

I don't know I just think its time to get out of the ancient D&D mentality, since we have the technology now that can mimic a much more engaging world.

I think it would be interesting that instead of a 10 in blade skill or 50 in Armour, u just get better at using blades and u can make more accurate hits and use better moves and swing faster with more balance, and in Armour you just learn to make better weapons and armor and learn how to fix stuff better.

IMO, a completely realistic game would not be fun. A game that did not have a sense of realism wouldn't be fun either. I'd say a game should contain realism, but on it's own terms.
In terms of using my enemies as arrow pin-cushions in Oblivion, that neither fun or realistic. Hacking away for hours on a single creature isn't realistic or fun either.

I don't care if the lockpicking in TES is realistic or not, it just has to be fun and it has to make sense.

= Believability which is a part of realism.

I would also add that, in an RPG, it should be based off character skills rather than player skills.