I would like a list of ways being stealthy can be improved. Feel free to add things to the list but I might not add it if it's too opinionated. My first point is a bit subjective so tell me if I should remove it.

1. Enemies can stand still for too long (imo)
2. You can push an enemy whilst invisible or using chameleon and your enemy doesn't notice anything, when he should wave his sword about or cast a detect life spell.
3. If you fire an arrow and go behind cover the target knows exactly where you are, when he should only know what direction the arrow came from.
4. You should be able to disguise yourself with a factions clothing.
5. Enemies should notice your shadow.
6. Enemies should sneak.
7. Weight of equipment should effect sneaking ability.
8. Enemies should be alerted more realisticly (by missed attacks, dead bodies)
9. You should be able to knock out enemies(maybe with sneak attacks with blunt weapons and punches).
10. You should be able to drag bodies.
11. Killling all guards that witnessed a crime should lower your bounty.
12. Being seen in sneak mode should make friendly NPCs suspicious.
13. Enemies shouldn't know where you are when you've moved out of sight and they don't know where you are they should behave more realisticly.
14. Magic using enemies should use spells to find you when you are in darkeness or invisible.

BGS, has allured that shadows are important. If shadows effect your ability to stay hidden, that will be the biggest improvement.

I'm adding that to the list :thumbsup:

NPC like rogues and vampires must sneak also and try to strike from behind for critical damage, some beasts like felines must not charging all time they must sneak before strike hide in grass for example, spiders can crawl at celling in darkness of dungeons.
Stealth Wars
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36493
Reneers NPC Sneak Mod
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=27732
Haldars Mods Pack
http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36399

Weight of all equipment must have impact on stealth not only weight of boots, there is must be penalty for heavy load, thats strange thats boots have impact on sneak while full-plate armor and clangs of hundreds items in inventory not.
SneakClang
http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=31675
SDR - Sneaking Detection Recalibrated
http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37385
Sneak Penalties
http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35792

Enchance NPC behavior for better reaction on sneaking characters, no more psychic links and amnesia
they must have alert state thats triggered by suspicious noise, found of dead body, missed sneak strike, sneaking around characters.
Duke Patricks Fresh Kills Now Alert The NPCs
http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=18065
Duke Patricks - Near Miss Magic And Arrows Alert The Target
http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16150
Reneers Guard Overhaul
http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=5977
Phitts Phighting Phixes
http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=32651

I'd like the ability to knock people out, say if you play a thief, you prolly dont want a death bounty on you for stealing some stuff.. so this would be useful...

Also, dragging bodies, as in, you press a button and then you're dragging instead of doing it OB style

This is my biggest problem with OB, but it seemed to be a lot better in FO3.

+1.

In towns/cities there should be places to hide bodies that people won't find unless they're actively searching for a thief/assassin already. Something like Hitman or MGS where there are certain things like dumpsters or closets you can hide bodies in for a while. Would be cool to move into a house that way too, slaughter the residents then put them in the closet or under the bed... Just so we can make a witty remark to an NPC about everyone having skeletons in their closet.

Thanks for giving me things to add to the list.

Things should be pitch 100% dark without a REAL light source.

NPCs should not "know where you are" not just for arrow attacks, but in general... they should have to be able to see you or hear you continuously even after combat has started, but they should have smarter AI so that if they lose sight of you they can still "guess" where you were and attack the air or defend in that direction or run and find a fortified positoin, but their guess accuracy degrades with time spent out of sight/hearing of you. In Oblivion, you can mod the game for them to be able to lose you in the dark, but then they just go limp in place or run around randomly instead of intelligently behave as though there is a foe hidden in the shadows... either they knew exactly where you were or no idea at all, not immersive one bit. This would be pretty much the best improvement of all beyond graphics from Oblivion to Skyrim bar none in my book if they fixed this.

NPCs should use Night Eye and Detect Life to find you if they have the means (and should be given the means based on chance, race, abilities, etc). If you have 100% Chameleon, by no means should you now be "a god"... enemies should react to you similarly to if you are in the dark, and use Detect Life and guess where the hits came from to retaliate... not just flee... *sigh*

I dislike point 11, primarily because it deals with the crime/justice system, which isn't really the subject of the thread. In my opinion that feature needs a pretty major overhaul, and discussing it would divert attention away from the core stealth problems that we had with Oblivion.

The rest is great, however.

In all honesty, I think that most of these have been taken into account, in the split-second clip from the gameplay trailer, the player seems to be wearing the Dark-Brotherhood attire, hinting to us that they will still in play. The character also appears to be making good use of the shadows, sneaking up on his prey before "silencing" his victim with a beautiful cut to the throat. Another thing that not many people have picked up on (To my knowlage) is the camera angles, notice how in the trailer the character is in 3rd-person mode, yet the camera is slightly to the right, implying that the camera-pan will have a full 360 degrees this time around. Great work Bethesta, RPG of the year in my opinion.

LMAO. 2 minute trailer and it's the RPG of the year.

I like the idea of being able to knock someone out. The blunt weapon or fist to the head is a good idea...how about a sleeper hold or a magic spell ? :shrug:

making it like the thief games

the end

its got all the things u mentioned an then some :toughninja:

I don't understand the meaning of this. You mean that they should react after the first sneak attack or that they shouldn't be able to be there still without sitting?

Yes, but, This should be limited in some way.

In theory is a good idea, but it's pretty common to disable shadows to gain performance. If I can't see my own shadow, enemies shouldn't do either.

I suppose you mean removing all the bounty gained by the guard seing you. I think guards should have a bounty log, that would be transfered eventually to your bounty, if you didn't pay and the guards survive enough to notify this.


Sneaking animation should be way less obvious.