I don't hold out much hope for any of this to happen to be honest, opinions like mine make up a tiny minority of the gaming audience these days, which is just something I have to live with. It's also pretty unlikely because what I'm talking about here is just not Elder Scrolls. So I shouldn't even bother making these suggestions, but there are just so few genuine RPG's these days, my wishful thinking about this game is all I can really do. So here goes:

1) I hope for a game that tries to outdo Morrowind more than it tries to outdo Oblivion. I was very disappointed with Oblivion because it was so shallow. It was great looking, and I liked the less tedious run speed, but that's pretty much all I liked. I think Morrowind was better in pretty much every other way.

2) The incredible lack of variety is a major issue. The cut and paste mobs and dungeons ruin the game for me really quickly. I would always take quality over quantity, and I wish the game aimed more in that direction. Look at something like Everquest. It had countless dungeons (and zones in general) that were all so individual and had so much character. Some of the dungeons in that game were designed by absolute geniuses. Explore Lower Guk and you'll see what I mean. Such memorable enemies, loots, and layout. The same goes for overland content. Morrowind was all brown and grey, Oblivion was all green and blue. Neither is ideal. I really crave variety in these kinds of games. Again, even Everquest offered this in spades. It had vast snowy areas, deserts, forests, jungles, lava/mountainous, swamps, ancient pyramids, plains, etc... This is an 11 year old game made on a fraction of the budget that you guys have. It's time to finally up your game imo.

3) Here's where it gets really unlikely. I think it's high time you finally put the Elder Scrolls combat 'system' out of it's misery. It's just so basic, it gets on my nerves. If I want to run around a pretty world shooting stuff, there are countless FPS's that let me do that. To me, the whole point of RPG's, and what makes them different to all the FPS's out there, are the geeky stats and tactics based combat. I want to be challenged for a change, and I want to feel tension for once, rather than just running around like an invincible moron. First off, I want to have to split up enemies with magic or some kind of powder tipped arrows that you can shoot at an enemy to blind/confuse it and then you pull some of his buddies one by one. I also want this to go wrong sometimes, and all of a sudden 4 of them attack me. I then want to be able to use my brain and decide on some good ways to handle it. Put one of them to sleep, mesmerise one of them, make roots burst out the ground and grab the feet of the third one and then this all lets me kill them one by one. I want to have to balance my mana carefully. I want very mana efficient spells that do damage over time, nice and sure and steady but slow. Then have fast powerful nukes, but they drain your mana fast and they cause massive aggro. I want to have to weight up a situation and see how many enemies there are, and then decide how best to go about it. I don't want that answer to ALWAYS be strafe left and right shooting my generic Firebolt spell over and over, or making one uber spell that kills everything. I want to have long term buffs on myself, and long term debuffs to work on the enemy, that do a variety of things. Cold based debuffs and damage over time spells that work great but are resisted by frost wolves and creatures used to the cold, and fire spells resisted by fire elementals etc... Basically I want a proper RPG like I used to get in the 80's and 90's and that I never see anymore. I want to summon a pet that actually has controls. I want to send it to attack, and I sometimes want to send it to attack and then spot another few very dangerous enemies and quickly call the pet back just in time, before it gets their attention. I want the ability to have it stand it's ground while I go on ahead and explore. I want to 'paint' an area on the ground for a massive area effect spell, a fire storm, lightning storm, ice storm, whatever. Then I want to make a big wall of fire in a narrow valley so my enemies have to run through it to reach me. Lastly, I want battles that last a while and require some real decision making. Look at Magic the Gathering and even most MMORPG's. Long battles that are closely fought, and one bad decision can set you up for big trouble later in the fight. Everyone laughs at World of Warcraft for being a dumb game for kids (which it is in some ways), but look at their Druid class, and play it on a PVP server. You have to switch to lion form to become stealthed, and you have to carefully sneak towards your enemy and hope they don't spot you or run away. Then you have to get behind them and open with a backstab that stuns them. Then as they turn and start hacking you to pieces, you have to quickly turn in to bear form so that you can tank better. Then you get the upper hand, and as they panic and run away, you turn in to caster form and start shooting spells at them, or even Moonkin form. All these different forms have entirely new hotbars with whole new sets of spells to use. Now that is gameplay that provides the opportunity for tactical decisions - and yet it's faced paced too.

4) In addition to a new combat system, I'd like a new skill system. I hated how I was pathetic and weak, spamming my little firebolt spell which barely did any damage, and there was no real improvement no matter how much stuff I killed or how daring I was. So I face a wall for a while and I spam the wall and increase my spell skill, and now all of a sudden I have tons more mana and power and can pretty much one shot everything. It's just a bad design, it goes from being too hard to too easy suddenly, and it promotes spamming of skills and spells which just isn't fun. I don't want to run around the world constantly hopping like an escaped mental patient, just so I can improve my athletics. Come on, use some creativity with this stuff. Write an athletics quest that boosts my skill or something. As for spells, I prefer there to be a trainer or a merchant that sells spell scrolls. You have to save up money to go and buy a new spell, and add it to your spellbook. Getting a new spell should be a big deal, because it should be genuinely powerful and useful. Not just Firebolt1, Firebolt2, etc.. I should be entitled to get dozens (plural) of spells by mid to late game, again, look at WoW. It's considered a dumbed down nintendo style game by a lot of people and yet high level players have hotbars with several rows of hotkeys all filled with spells and clickable items... What did Oblivion have? That one lame little wheel with 8 slots or something? Come on.

5) Last but not least. I hate doing chores, but you make me do virtual chores for virtual people?! Oh brave adventurer! I lost my amulet in a nearby dungeon, please go and fetch it for me! Oh brave adventurer! My daughter got lost in the nearby dungeon, please go and get her for me! Oh brave adventurer, wolves are eating my cattle! Please kill 10 of them to thin their numbers! If I want this kind of thing, there are some really good MMORPG's out there which do this far better than Oblivion. I really loved the "Main Quest" in Fallout 3, but I finished it in about one weekend. Forgetting about how overly easy it was, it's the brevity of these main quests that bugs me the most. You have countless 'side quests', but such a short main quest. This is the wrong way round! The problem with these side quests is that there is just no real worthwhile reward for them in a single player game. You have to do them alone without your friends to chat to, you get lame loots, cash you don't even need, and no progression of anything meaningful in the game world. In an MMO it's far better because you have major long term investments in your characters, so grinding on a bunch of side quests gets you money and XP and materials that you will gain the benefit of years down the line. Once the main quest is finished in these single player Bethesda games, the game immediately loses it's appeal to me. It goes from being a fun RPG, to instantly feeling like a second rate MMO with no real purpose, and I have no motivation to continue. Yeah, some of the side quest dialogue is quite well written, but no moreso than your MMO competition, but they are so generic and meaningless. The Main Quest however feels completely different. While I'm working through it, I feel like I have a purpose, and a goal, and I really enjoy seeing the story progress and uncovering new locations, new characters, and new twists and turns. Obviously, main quest quests require more resources than side quests, but what I'm saying is that I would MUCH prefer you change the focus and I'm happy to miss out on side quests.
eg: If the main quest is usually 30 steps and there are 300 side quests in the game, I'm happy for the main quest to become 60 steps and there to only be 80 side quests in the game. It's still enough for 'completists' to have a reason to explore the world, but the game becomes a far bigger more epic adventure at this point.




And lastly, a general point. I am tired of these mass produced half hearted games. I know that's just the way the industry is these days, but it doesn't need to be like that. I would much rather wait extra year, and pay an extra $20 on top of the usual price, to have an epic adventure. I'm by no means rich or patient, but it's just SO MUCH more preferable than to get yet another 'meh' game which is pretty mediocre and only after years worth of modding and DLC does it become a good game, and yet still one that is inferior to some decade old game or more that I have backed up somewhere. People appreciate quality, and word of mouth in these days of the internet is nuts. If you build it, they will come. Build a truly epic game and you'll sell an unbelievable number of copies. Look at GT5, it's going to sell like crazy, and it's because they took forever with it. They took pride in making the absolute best game they could, and exactly what they wanted. They didn't cut corners, and the audience is smart enough to appreciate this.

And lastly (for reals now), in case you are tempted to write off my combat musings as the rantings of an old hardcoe dork who is out of touch with the reality of modern gamers who want a simpler experience, please watch this, it only takes 6 minutes:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2454-Easy-Games

Whether you take on board my wishes or not, I wish you the best of luck.

I agree with you, Skyrim needs to outdo Morrowind. For sure needs more skills, more than morrowind makes a better experiance and more replay value.

Yeah Morrowind was pretty cool. I have quite lofty expectations for games, but it's only because they used to be achieved a long time ago. In fact, they used to get blown away sometimes. I remember picking up the original System Shock in the early 90's when every other FPS was just about running around fragging monsters with your brain switched off, and this game had about 100 times more depth. It's no surprise that 16 years later I can still remember it clear as day. It was incredible, scary, clever, had real story, really challenging, etc. There was a time when games really did push the boundaries. Recently it seems to me they have only focused on pushing the boundaries on graphics, and it's reached the point now where they can't really push any further or nobody will be able to play it. So I guess it's a perfect opportunity for a company just like Bethesda, to use an old graphics engine (but still great looking), and put all the bulk of their budget in to making great gameplay and lots of great content.

I can dream

How was that three hopes? lol Sorry. Anyway, I do actually agree with you (for the most part). I really hope that using the old engine will allow them to fill the world with the depth that Morrowind had. To this day, I am still blown away by the amount of content and the quality of that content. The multitude of factions (with skill reqs); the awesome misc quests; the hidden gems; the off-the-path dungeons, caves, and camps... all of this made it so much more fully realized than Oblivion. I am sure I will love Skyrim regardless of whether it meets my hopes (the same way I love Oblvion), but it would be such a wonderful kick back to the die-hard fans to return to the depth of previous games.

yeh Oblivion needs to focus on lore and a good system and leave the graphics for the Modders

I agree with the TC on many points (although I preferred Oblivion on the whole over Morrowind). More skills is good (I won't use most of them, but its good to have the options). More variation in dungeon environments and more variations to missions etc etc. However I have to disagree on his ideas over combat. There's no rule that says combat in RPGs should be gimped. I'm sorry but that's just narrow minded, his other ideas are great and broaden the experience but his ideas on combat are about reducing the options. Just like the game is open about how you choose your skills and abilities, it should be equally as open with how you engage in combat.

One of the reasons why I never played Morrowind after the first playthrough (despite finding many of its ideas intriguing) was the very stilted combat system. In my mind (then) I honestly felt devs were taking shortcuts with RPGs through limited stat based combat. I appreciate stat based combat in strategy games especially major war games that have navy, space navy and infantry units, there's many layers of defense and offense to consider and the logistics just favor the slower turn based style. Also with space navy combat especially, something like turn based is actually a fairly accurate portrayal of how space combat between armadas would look like, what with all their defensive countermeasures and the options for offensive deployment (lasers, missiles, fighters etc).

However, when you're talking about a single individual (not even a group like other rpgs) it's far better to (instead of gimping the character) increase the ways you can interact with you enemies and vice versa. For example instead of guards just spawning endlessly when they engage you, devs could give them options for subduing the PC, for instance grabbing you from behind and pinning you down, a bit like what the prefects in the game Bully were able to do.

In this way, enganging multiple human NPCs becomes a daunting task especially with respect to guards who can now neutralize you in combat and thereby arrest you through force, rather than your character giving up because of infinite respawns.

That was more long winded than I intended but after playing Assassins Creed Brotherhood reading your comment on combat made me feel like the TC was looking at this point very narrow mindedly.

The future for games is more options a strictly turn based system restricts options. I want to be able to do all the things the TC suggested in real time, and without my accuracy being dictated by factors outside of my direct skills with a controller. Stats will always matter in an rpg but they shouldn't govern things like accuracy or the number of attacks I can deliver, what they should continue to do is make the combat more natural and intuitive, increasing our options but at the same time adding to the challenge as the enemy npcs will also have more of those options.

Phew...

Those were some good suggestion, but seriously, you should work on your counting skill.

Being able to count up to 3 is a bit lacking, IMHO.

I just hope the beast folk actually look like beast folk instead of the ol' copy pasta lizard/tiger heads on human bodies.

I am hoping for a lot of other things, but strangely this is my main one.

I'm always on the side of a fellow Morrowind sympathizer. What Morrowind had was a strange sense of guilt attached to it. I remember the first time I looked through the baskets and urns in the office after landing at Seyda Neen, the anxiety sneaking around the manors of Ald'Ruhn, and the pride upon finding an amazing piece of equipment. The permanency of all that you do in the game, especially with character deaths, is what really hit it for me.

Here's to hoping that Skyrim brings emotions to the series.

I play Argonian and I'd rather have boots and helms than unique bodies for the 'beast races'. Yeah, I said it! XD

My wish list would be:
1) Oblivion lack many of the skills that Morrowind had. Bring them back! But instead of just have bug list of them on a page, they should be group by what they are. E.g, you go on to the skill page and they are headings for each groups of skills. (E.g Melee weapons; ranged weapons; Magic; Armour etc) and if you were to click on Melee weapons, a list would appear and it would should all the skills relating to melee weapons in which you can advance and learn in (e.g long blade, short blade, axe, spear, mace, knifes and daggers). You could have many different skills and they would be easier to find. There should be new skills (along with both form Oblivion and Morrowind), such as building, in which you can build you own house; a skill in which you can make you own clothes and armour; forging so you can make you own weapons; woodcrafting where you can cut down tree and make boats and household item; throwing, be able to throw items such as knives, daggers to swords and axes; a group of spells in which you can change yours or someone else's appearance.

2) New weapons and old weapons. Bring back the crossbow and throwing weapons. Have weapons that have history, such as a sword that belonged to a king whole killed a mighty dragon.

3) Make it like real-life. Be able to marry and have a family, have NPC grow up and die (although you somehow get blessed with immortality), prices for item vary on where they came from and what states they are in.

4)This is basically a misc list. Have people attack town and cities, have villages dotted through the landscape and have each with their own history. Have each dungeon different, and have new factions in which you can join but by joining one you can't join another e.g plus and negatives about join a faction. Have quests in which you have to be a certain race, gender, fame. Have different season. Have mounted combat. Don't have level scaling. Have places such as a mountain nobody has climbed, a cave no one has came pout from. Give NPC a background and history. Have references to events of past games, and of different places. Have all the cities open cities and have each town different. (E.g some have cities walls, some have no guards and a high crime rates, some have either curfews, or are really religious etc). You should be able to give money to cities to help them improve. Take away non killable characters (it seems pointless to protect somebody when they can't actually die). Have factions fighting other factions at random point etc. NPC go to prison, and commit crimes. Have details cities with dungeons, different shops etc and have them all different.

5) New and improved spells!

I have a few more ideas, but I can't think of any at the moment

I agree with you on every point except for the combat. They should leave it first of third person. It has been first person ever since the first game came out!

You have some good ideas, but i dont agree woth the combat one at all. Ill admit combat needs alot of work, but making it a turnbased combat system would be even worse

I agree, if skyrim is more like morrowind than oblivion I'll be a happy man.

Although I'd be happy if it were like oblivion too,

although what would make me really happy is If Werewolves are in tes V, because well, they kinda have to be. And if Bethesda are really cool they'll also add wereboars and werebears! Because along with werewolves they're supposed to inhabit skyrim heavily and it is very lore correct. So hopefully they go towards daggerfall that way and have multiple options for becoming a were creature

I'm hoping that Ted Peterson and MK helped write Skyrim. The game would be a lot better with those two veteran devs.

Exactly. Nowdays it seems only to be about best graphics, most hype, and most DLC which they can use to earn even more cash from the players.. Sometimes even to absurd lengths like with Fable 3.

1) I really, really wish they'd go with the colours of Morrowind (ashen, calm, burned colours of the autumn) rather than the candybox-colours of oblivion. I'm guessing what the Skyrim already brings is winter in some degree, so that would probably cover it Less shiny, more ragged is good.

2) I don't know how they created the depth of feelings in Morrowind world that was lacking in oblivion (oblivion did feel more shallow or "plastic" despite the more realistic people), so more morrowindish it should be in that general feeling-of-the-game-sector. I do not know what they should improve to achieve this? Maybe the ingame music could be much less intense, less-orchestrated and more plain (just a violin or a disappearing flute?) when you are walking in the northern moors all by yourself?

3) rugged northern ponies instead of mighty horses

Yeah I also wish it was more like Morrowind.

I also wish for more persistant world, like Morrowind was.

Also seamless world is something I was sure they would make for Obilivion and was somewhat dissapointed. What I mean with seamless is that "indoor" and "outdoors" would be in the same space, it feels wrong somehow that you can't look outside from windows for example.

More non epic stuff to do, simple thing that are not required, like baking bread, Arx Fatalis did that years ago, mix water & flour, throw that dough by a fire and you get bread, simple thing that had huge impact on me regards getting imersed.

Different Dungeon Music please I hated how every Cave, Mine, Alyeid Ruin had the same Music.

I like how the Skill System was in Oblivion but maybe make it easier to use such as cutting the amount you need for a +5 in a partiuclar catagory in half if its a Major Skill.

1. Good writing (story, dialogues and memorable characters)
2. Jeremy Soule
3. Balanced RPG system and no level-scaling
4. Better combat system
5. Improved character animations and AI
6. High resolution textures for PC
7. Realistic weather
8. And, of course, huge and believable open world with tons of quests, characters etc etc

Yea I agree with everything you said!
I still liked Oblivion very much, but yea, the leveling and skills and magic system was really bad :/
As well as tactics which were mostly the same...

So yea, I hope these hopes would not be hopes

Regarding the weather - good shout!

The weather in Morrowind was really good for immersion - raining, thunderstorms. It just needs expansion to include other elements such as snowing, lightning, etc.

This.

In Morrowind there was so much more of that simple stuff, I felt. Little things that made no difference to the overall plot but went so far for immersion and RPing.

Thanks for the replies!

I'm glad to see lots of agreement, I wasn't expecting that to be honest. That's really promising and says a lot about the players of ES games. I don't think I described my combat ideas very well though. I'll try to clear it up.

p.s. Sorry about the "three hopes" thing, I added more at the last minute and it didn't let me edit the thread title.

Heh, I actually meant the absolute exact opposite of what you said. Not sure how I gave such a wrong impression.

Like I said with some MMORPG's, you end up with multiple hotbars filled with spells. If one hotbar has about 10 slots on it, then 5 hotbars is 50 spells available to you at any one time. Often several of these would be buffs only, and some would be perhaps related to travel, etc. so they are not all for in-battle combat. But still, it leaves you with masses of tactical options when making decisions in combat, and that's what I hoped to explain with my post. Not reducing the options, but broadening them. It's also not essential that you have all of them available at once. In EverQuest, you had dozens and dozens of spells, although you could only use 8 of them at any one time. If you wanted to use another spell, you had to sit down and memorise another spell which was a dangerous thing to do in the middle of a battle. But the advantage of having just 8 (from a design point of view) meant that you had to actually carefully plan what spells you were going to use for your next battle, and this was an important skill, and something that doesn't exist in games like WoW where you have access to all your entire character's selection of skills and spells at once. I like both ways though, they both have advantages, and either way I prefer it to Oblivion. Not only that, but I think the combat should last longer too, so that there is more need to actually use multiple spells in one battle. For example, if you come up against a big bad Hill Giant, it would be a good idea to start the fight by using some kind of Enfeeblement spell so that he doesn't just beat you to a pulp right away. But if you come up against an evil Wizard for example, there would be no use for Enfeeblement because he probably wont make any physical attacks at all. Instead, it would be worth using Counterspells and some kind of Anti Magic Aura or whatever.

In other words, I want there to be lots more spells available to us, compared to Oblivion, and I would like for battles to be set up that we need to be careful about what we use. There could still perhaps be "trash mobs" like wolves which you can kill quickly and easily, but what I hope for is lots of longer, deeper battles. That's why I mentioned MTG, because a single battle in that game could last as long as an hour. Not that I think an action RPG should be any way near that long... lol, but I think killing an enemy should take more like 1-2 minutes rather than 10-20 seconds, and throughout the whole battle you should be making tough decisions that can affect the outcome.



Well games like EQ and World of Warcraft have the exact same camera view as Oblivion - first person and third person. So I'm not talking about changing that at all, I think that's the best view for these kind of games (something Bioware has only just realised.) All I'm talking about is specifically the mechanics of combat itself, the number of spells, the mana costs of the spells, the duration and spell casting time, the number of spells you can memorise at once, and number of hit points the enemies have. The way it is now is very "hack 'n slash" which is ok.... but it's just not really my kind of thing. I would much prefer bigger, longer, and more complex battles. It can't get too complex or it might alienate some people, but still, I think it could go FAR more in a complex direction before it started scaring people off. As the movie I linked to suggests, I think the average gamer could cope with really quite advanced combat, just as long as they are eased in to it, and they understand what they are doing.


I didn't think it should be turn based either. The only turn based thing I mentioned was MTG and that's only as an example of the complexity, not of how it should play. I think it should play in real time, like WoW and like Oblivion already plays. The interesting thing about MTG though, is that although there are some great spells in the game, the best players use them in super intelligent combinations. That game just has FAR too much stuff for a game like this to ever try to copy though, but there are some things that could be learned from it, particularly the freedom and creativity of their spells. It's not all nukes, DoT's, heals and buffs, but often strange spells that are only useful in specific situations but can be massively powerful. The Overrun spell for example, makes all your creatures (pets) very powerful. If you only had one pet, it would be pretty useless, and while you blow all your mana on that spell, your opponent could just block it and beat you. But if you had lots of little creatures, that one spell could win you the game right away.

The best attempt at this I've seen, was an MMORPG called Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. The designer of that game was a big MTG fan and he tried to introduce elements in to the game, and he succeeded if only a little bit. It's still fast paced, real time combat, (not turn based), but he managed to get some great stuff in there. For example, you will be fighting an Orc Shaman, and the Orc will start casting a big healing spell. You would then 'identify' this spell, and it would trigger various options for you to do. One of them would be to Counterspell, to stop the Orc from casting. But alternatively, you might be able to instead take the Orc's healing spell and use it on yourself (or your pet), or you alternatively you could do a pre-emptive strike and do a big bunch of damage to the Orc. You only had a few seconds to make this decision, but it was a pretty important decision. Picking the wrong choice could actually lose you the battle (in theory), so it made you think, made you pay attention and read the situation and make good decisions. It encouraged you to think about how you played the game and to really strive to get better at it.

Admittedly that game had a huge budget so they were bound to do some cool stuff, but still, there is limited scope to MMORPG's combat. They are limited by bandwidth and latency because you are playing over the internet with thousands of other people on your server. In a single player RPG, there is none of these limitations, so really, the combat in these single player RPG's should blow our minds.