Agreed. You should use your head to tell if someone is a baddy or not. Not a compass marker that distracts you from the screen. In fallout you just had to look and see if they had a gun and were walking around/were raiders/slavers/any number of other bad guys that were established in the first 30 minutes of gameplay.

It did make it nice, but I don't know, I don't think it was necessary.

They don't automatically go like that when you get close to them, they do that when you're at risk of detection (which, BTW, happens less when you get better at sneak, which makes it harder to trigger without getting in their face). It's a very crummy method of determining hostility.

Ah I must've misread the OP, it seemed like he said there were enemy markers, my bad :rofl: I was just sitting here like "What? Since when?" I think that was the issue, I read the first sentence of the OP and I was too interested in asking about what the enemy markers looked like in Oblivion to read the rest of the OP and realize that he wanted them in hehe.

However, I say no to enemy markers.

As far as I know, you will not have a HUD until you initiate combat. So you'll just have to take a chance and see if you just shot a bandit or poor old granny that was off to market with a basket of apples

At least that's what I thought when reading the articles


Greetz,

Milt

I wouldn't want the game to tell me who is the enemy. It could be different for each player. The only marker I want is a RED hand icon to denote if I grab something, it would be considered stealing. As I have been burned by that before.

There's still plenty of other ways. Certainly enough that it's not necessary to have the game hold your hand and tell you who you can or can't attack. And if you get it wrong once in awhile, so what. You probably won't break anything if you accidentally kill the odd innocent. Though you might end up being visited by the Dark Brotherhood, and maybe end up with a bounty if someone sees you doing it. Getting it wrong occasionally is just one of the drawbacks of playing a stealthy character. If you're not prepared to pay the price, then maybe you should stick with an up-front fighter type.

I could always tell what peoples intentions were by where they were, and how they acted. In a shop, probably friendly. In a dungeon, probably unfriendly. Smiling and making idle discussion in my direction, probably friendly. Flailing a weapon, probably unfriendly. Not to mention the generic names bandits got.

Though I had more of an issue with this in Morrowind, because enemies had names and you encountered friendly people outside from time to time.

Oh, I also use the wait command to tell if enemies are nearby.

And I don't particularly want an enemy indicator. Keep me on my toes.

This is a legit problem. I like the idea about different colored detect life effects. Idle NPCs conversations can be another good way to do this. I also like the idea about enhanced hearing, kinda reminds me of Farcry/Crysis. In Farcry, idle NPCs were always having lengthy conversations. Some mean comments would be enough.

I want to add one thing from MGS where you can make NPCs surrender if you can successfully approach them stealthily.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61jRmqHSU9E&feature=player_detailpage#t=158s

Death being the only outcome is the culprit here.