I've played TES series since arena, and to start off I should say that I don't care if TES VI is streamlined even further from Skyrim, as long as it's done well and plays well as a game. I really do enjoy skyrim, it's a decent enough action game with some rpg-overlay.

It does however really make me miss proper D&D influenced CRPGs.

I was picking a "master" level lock with a brand new no-lock picking skill character and recalled how this isn't even possible in say, Morrowind, where if a lock was beyond your character's skill then it was beyond your characters skill (well, you could do better with a less primitive lockpick, but not by much). In fact, in Morrowind both a mage and a thief could open a locked container, but skyrim ditched unlocking/locking spells then threw in an easily mastered-minigame.

The minigame thing itself is rather weird. Time completely freezes. The minigame itself is semi-realistic, except for that really, really unrealistic fact. And except for that mages are hapless against locks. And that warriors can't bash containers. And with how easy it is to master the minigame, I have no idea how the character skill for even goes as high as lvl 100 as opposed to about lvl 10.

This just got me thinking some vestigial oddities in skyrim. Note, vestigial refers to a useless bodily structure left over from lesser evolved incarnations of a species. TES was at one point MUCH more pen and paper IE D&D influenced for the mechanics. With it's own spin, but there was a LOT more going on under the hood in prior games.

Take sneaking in Skyrim for example. The stealth mechanics are one of the more directly ripped things from a pen and paper based CRPG (and one of the fairly unchanged things in the last few installments). The unrealsitic nature of it was fine in an old CRPG, but now in Skyrim there are other games that have done it better.

I need to sleep, but I'm going to try to make this as comprehensible as possible:
I believe the gradual transition in the last few ES games towards " idiot-proof action hackn'slash etc" already has and may continue to create vestigial oddities that interfere with the game's experience. IE make a " idiot-proof action hackn'slash etc " that is more awkward than it needs to be. The Oblivion leveling problem comes to mind, which was old-school stats clashing with the newer streamlined auto-leveling enemies.

Now Skyrim is done rather well as a game on the whole. There's not much left to streamline, but there's not terribly much that still needs it either. I do think the combat is still clunky, and I'd be perfectly alright with TES VI ditching even more of it's roots for a something more enganging. Actually Mount and Blade + Manual Blocking comes to mind as one of the better medieval sword fights I've had in recent times. A refresh on the stealth mechanics, lock-picking, and pick-pocketing to even more engaging (...and real-time? Please?) would be welcome. In general, I think it could be made more actiony than it is to it's adantage.

Now leading up to my call to action here, thinking back on freedom in prior games, I do think Morrowind had the best mix of old-school mechanics and presentation. However, Morrowind didn't have lock bashing either (at least in vanilla, thank you modders). Actually, there's a lot of stuff you could do in an even more heavily pen and paper based CRPG that wasnt there. What I'm saying is
I miss:
-Everything being relevant to your character, not the player. IE no minigames and watching your character try for you. A lot of "X is beyond your skill".
-I miss the almight RNG being ever prevalent in all things. All hail the RNG! Tremble before it's wrath!
[IE: Please tell me you remember casting failure chance? It was in Morrowind not that long ago. Skill, fatigue, and stats combined with the RNG actually made magical battles gripping. You used a physical weapon because while magika was powerful, it was still a (very limited) gamble. I remember playing pure mage and actually planning out my plan of attack in a dungeon because I only had X much magicka in reserve and potions, and actually getting emotional swings when crucial spells failed or succeeded in succession. Ever since the 100% successful casting combined with unlimited real time regenerating magika, [i]the gambling attraction is gone.[/i] It's no different from a sword or bow now. And to balance this, it was nerfed to the point of being dissappointingly underpowered.]
TL;DR the RNG made combat more gripping than garunteed results.

-Detailed combat mechanics. IE I'll bet a lot of you didn't know that Morrowind accounted different damage characteristic for 3 different kinds of attacks. IE rather than "Dwarven spear: 22 damage" it was "Dwarven spear: 18-22 pierce, 1-3 Chop, 1-2 Swing", and that was far from detailed compared to other CRPG simulations. TES VI can get away with having just "armor" and "weapon" skill. But I miss unarmored, light, medium, heavy, and not having perks that outright punish the player for using mixed armor . Hell, at that matter, why armor class skills at all? Why not a system that actually allows for skill in completely custom mixed sets of armor? And why does skill with a sword help me knife-fight? Hell, why not skill with individual weapons with a complex formula for how familiar I'd be with a different weapon relative to what I've trained with? Just ANYTHING, please anything more than "Steel: 13 damage Elven :18 damage; axes +1 damage blunt + 2 damage".
-Pointlessly abundant variety. For the record, polearms had a significantly different playstyle. There was no reason for them to be cut and I hate playing an agile skirmisher in skyrim with the same melee range as the other guy.
-TextTextTextTextTextText. I like to read. I hate limited voice acting. It severly limits the storytelling.
-A god-damned detailed journal. And no compass markers.

There's more, but that's just off the top of my head.

My point is: Bethesda just put out a huge successful blockbuster in TES series. Hell, they had a good release before that even with New Vegas. It's not like they can't afford to offer something on the side for the smaller segment of their fan-base. So: Why can't we have a hardcoe or even just a 'proper' older-style CRPG spinoff title as a throwback to days of old? I don't want one with the budget of Skyrim. I don't care if it's as simple as Morrowind was. I just want something that wasn't intended to also appease ADD Console-kiddies within their attention span.

Edit:
I'm not asking for old features to be re-introduced into the blockbuster TES VI. I'm asking for an entirely separate, small budget, side project. The whole point is to un-mix the genres for this.

I don't get the Lockpicking complaint... even after I find the general whereabout of the "Spot" of a Master Lock, I can't open it without breaking all my picks. Is the minigame easier on different platforms?

Also: Skyrim brought me something no other CRPG has ever done before to replicate the PnP experience - The Dynamic GM.

Which platform is your game? On PC I can certainly pick a level 100 lock at just a skill of 15.

Xbox 360. I think the gamepad makes it a lot harder.

Without breaking any picks?

I can pick them, I just always end up breaking like 5 picks.

Which is really nothing, you can buy five picks for like 30 gold, or find a million of them lying around in most NPC's that you kill in dungeons, by comparrison training even low level lockpicking costs a 130+ gold. Lockpicking is by far the most useless skill in Skyrim.

As for OP his idea's, I like most of them. I'm still undecided on whether or not I'd want more dice rolling back into the game, It makes your character levelling more important, but also makes the combat a lot less interesting to watch, leaving everything open to character skill and not to personal skill however is a lot more realistic in games like these.

On balance, I like a mix of character and player skill, but I'd rather they didn't allow you to attempt locks if your character's skill is too low and to see the return of Open spells to alteration--and for skills like lockpicking and mercantile (aka speechcraft) to be automatically "minor" skills, i.e. not contribute to leveling. If they want to maintain the pace of leveling, they could make combat skills level a little faster, but you shouldn't have to worry that picking too many locks or selling too much loot will cause you to outlevel your fighting ability.

I'd also like to see a return of skill related-skill requirements for guild advancement. I think that they did a lot for both pacing and believability in Morrowind.

I use xbox controller on PC
Also had ps3 version before it got broken.

It is so easy once you are attuned to the little noises.

Fallout 3 did that since you couldn't even attempt to pick a lock if you didn't have the right amount of skill. They should add a option of autopicking on top of that so that you don't have to bother ith the puzzle like in Oblivion and voilla you have a very RPGish skill.

I can't say I missed it that much.

Yes to almost everything here with the exception of the 18-22 bit. If there is one thing I don't miss from previous titles is Luck. You can't influence luck or get better at it so don't put it as a attribute. But for better mechanics and a better control over what your character does, howhe attacks, what tactics he uses instead of "ooh cinematic" and for bringing back the whole range of weapons and armor in a way that works there can be only one answer: yes.

There is a reason for the reduction and that is animations... good animations are hard to make. But still there is a happy medium between poor animations and too few animations while Skyrim is in the far too few animations.


Text based gaming is gone with the exception of indie games. Sad but true. However a detailed journal and a removable compas marker don't require a new game. They don't even require the large amount of effort put in making new animations. Just a bit of work


It would be easier for Beth to just integrate most of the features in their next game than build a new one. Not all of the things removed were removed for the console gamer so not concentrating too much on tiny improvements of things done well and bringing back old features and adding RPGish options to the few things that were removed would make a very good game that is liked by virtually everyone.

WHAT.

Please tell me you remember casting failure chance? It was in Morrowind not that long ago. Skill, fatigue, and stats combined with the RNG actually made magical battles gripping. You used a physical weapon because while magika was powerful, it was still a (very limited) gamble. I remember playing pure mage and actually planning out my plan of attack in a dungeon because I only had X much magicka in reserve and potions, and actually getting emotional swings when crucial spells failed or succeeded in succession. Ever since the 100% successful casting combined with unlimited real time regenerating magika, the gambling attraction is gone. It's no different from a sword or bow now. And to balance this, it was nerfed to the point of being dissappointingly underpowered.

Garunteed damage results are BORING. It's why I'd like the 18-22 back rather than just 20 as well. The "% crits" perk for swords is the 'for dummies' step-child. Screw that. Bring it back for EVERYTHING.

No no no no no. I'm asking for a game that is in the complete opposite direction of their current trends. I don't want the improved lockpicking mini-game in my retro-CRPG.

[
I remember and I agree chance of spell failure and a chance of miss or weapon doing 0 damage enhances the tension when in combat.

[

Here in lies the problem, Beth seems to operate with the premise that they have to recreate the game with every installment. Instead of improving faults and building upon the good of the previous games they throw the baby out with the bath water and start over. Hence features that were loved in the previous games have been overlooked, thought as merely gratuitous and left out and bugs glitches and other things needing fixing never were.

It's like you said about the animations, poor or lack of a proper animation detracts from the feel of the game. Take Morrowind's hit or miss combat for example, role playing a miss meant weapon struck armor, was blocked or opponent dodged effectively resulting in no damage but the animation never reflected this. Seeing your sword constantly traveling through the opponent really was distracting. Better and a few additional animations could have resolved this.

But istead of fixing and keeping thefeature, chance of failure was replace with always hit which in its own way aslo detracts from the feel of a RPG.

They only even needed one extra animation: parry. Even for armor nullifying damage, as long as console-pleebs SAW something then they wouldn't of had a problem with it.

I swear every melee fight in Skyrim, it's every character's first sword fight.

Instead, we get telekinetic weapons that cut behind shields and armor with the guaranteed damage system. It's the same damn thing as in Morrowind. Think about it. You swing, you see the swing go through the guy, except in the garunteed damage system it always makes a "hit" noise. Between the hit/miss and the guaranteed damage systems, over X time Y much DPS is done on average. In the long run they're functionally the same.

The difference that really irks me though is that the garunteed damage system you magically make the same weapon do 2x the damage with higher skill VS the hit/miss system base stats remained the same and the better swordsman hit 2x as often.

If you throw in animations for the mechanics of it the hit/miss/parry/block/dodge/deflect system is not only more realistic, and would be more interesting to watch if fully animated, but if expanded upon allows for MUCH more engaging swordplay. Imagine if M&B's sword play was done by a not-indie studio. 3 directional attacks from TES3? Screw that, lets go 9 with manual-direction blocking. Make the reaction speeds relative to character skill and stats as well as physical weapon properties given direction such that even if YOU are a skilled player swordplay is harder with a noob CHARACTER. Add an auto-option for those that like their JRPGs and BAM! GOTY core gameplay material.

Now imagine if they did this with the next Fallout. Actually, why the hell did they not do this going from FO3 -> NV? Seriously, imagine if FO3 to NV, the underlying content and mechanics were as gutted as Daggerfall to Skyrim. Sometimes I feel like they HATE their early TES fan-base exclusively.

Of course remember Morrowind. I still play it and mod it and love it to this day.

I'm just saying that the RNG shouldn't be that all mighty and should be implemented where it is realistic. When using a sword the damage is determined by how hard you hit, where you hit and how sharp the sword is. This is or should be represented in game by strength, skill and damage. Why is a damage of 18-22 more realistic than a damage of 20? The oposing side can either evade based on their agility or block based on a skill. All of this should get affected by fatigue. It doesn't need luck or dice rolls just a simple formula that would determine if the blow lands or is parryed or evaded and how much damage is done when the blow lands. The "I usually miss a mudcrab but still land good amounts of damage when I hit" is better than the "I have a plastic version of a real weapon and I bash my oponent with it" thing that happens in the newer games but it still isn't very good.

I agree that spells should fail when affected by fatigue but a novice shouldn't be able to cast advanced spells and someone who is good should always cast the spell in ideal circumstances (at full fatigue for example). That you could in the exact same conditions fail one spell out of two isn't that great. There are other things that can balance spells so that they are both usefull and not overpowered. Also the while I do hate the lockpicking minigame limiting the locks by skills and offering a choice to skip it is a far more realistic demand to make than asking the devs for a new game.

Also why do you feel that the devs hate the fans of the older TES games? I think most of them like long term fans

It is a stand-in for highly detailed simulation, IE taking into account a slight breeze and exact properties of metal.

In an "old school" spin off title, IE what I'd like to be made, it's perfectly acceptable.

In my fantasy TES:VI with fully animated hit/miss/parry/block/dodge/deflect, and yes higher detail formulas as you describe, it's not really necessary.

Magic though always needs an RNG element to justify it's existence in the game if a physical weapon counterpart with no RNG exists.

Such as...? Mind you we have real-time regenerating unlimited magika that's nerfed to where it's pointless. What was the direction the devs should have gone in then?

The equivalent in the Oblivion/Skyrim system is that you can't cast it AT ALL. And it wasn't that difficult to get 100% cast chance spells even at low skills. They were just weaker spells for a less experienced caster.

Removing of the realtime regenerating magicka or at least upping the magic cost would be a start and making the casting of lots of mildly powerful spells restricted via mana cost to expert level. Battle mages would have to choose to either cast a few powerful spells but then run out of mana or cast weak continous spells. Or use magic shields in the hope that the enemy uses up his magica. Or use runes, illusion or levitation to catch someone by surprise. Or conjure diffrent creatures depending on what sort of enemy you face. Mages can be great characters with fun combat if spellmaking and a decent number of spells is put back. Also while in Morrowind you had to use low level spells to succed in Skyrim and Oblivion the game makes you use low level spells. Hand holding? A bit but the effect is the same (or would be without that stupid magicka regen)

What? Have you even tried playing a mage in Skyrim? There's never enough magic available even with Regenerating Magicka, and the spells are too weak to justify most mana costs.

There is a fear that we will never stop playing the older games and as a result stop buying new games. Personnaly don't think it is well founded but I'm sure it exists.

The problem with magica is that all spells are underpowered. The mana cost is too high only without perks but there are only a few useful spells unless you take every perk there is to make them work. The master level spells are nerfed by their own animations even though they are useful as effects and there are quite a few redundant spells and the spells system seems to be act poorly against ranged oponents. But magic regen isn't the answer. Spellmaking and more spells for balance is.


Also the fear that old time fans won't buy the sequel is absurd. We do want improvements of what we already like because no game is perfect and new settings are usually cool and offer as much fun as exploring the old one for the 10th time. So I do think most oldtimers bought Skyrim.

Actually, the 18-22 points of damage (usually more like 2-8 or 5-22) in MW was totally dependent on how much time you spent to draw the weapon back fully before releasing the attack button. If you "spammed" the button, you never got above the minimum number; if you waited for the full "recharge" time of that particular weapon, you got the maximum; if you waited for at least part of the time, you got something in between the extremes. It was never "random".

Daggerfall had around 4 different melee attacks, and each was a tradeoff between difficulty and damage. Against a small and agile creature, you used the "lighter" attacks to give yourself better odds to hit, at the expense of damage. Against a well-armored "tank" opponent, you resorted to the "heavier" attacks, since they were less able to dodge and more capable of absorbing light damage.

Morrowind retained 3 of the 4 attacks, but sadly never made any distinction as to difficulty. Even though each weapon had an independent damage range for each attack style, there was never any reason to use any but the "best" for that weapon. I just set the "Use Best Attack" option and ignored them. The system had the potential to be a great blend of character skill and player skill, but the lack of differentiation in attack difficulty and the lack of decent miss, dodge, and parry animations made it rather simplistic and silly looking. Instead of fixing the problem, Bethesda scrapped the whole thing and went with an equally flawed "always hit" system with damage nerfing based on skill, while otherwise making character skill pointless for anything other than triggering the next "perk".

I agree with the OP wholeheartedly. Pen-and-paper RPGs are the best. I've currently been playing Realms of Arkania, a relatively obscure DOS game, but it's making me wish more RPGs strove towards utilizing advances in technology to better realize the endless scope of things one can do and account for in tabletop games instead of diverting those resources to petty animations and vapid dialog acting.

Morrowind's directional combat system was very impressive, but I think the biggest drawback was how little your characterr had to actually maneuver in order to actually change the attacks. Quite literally, holding the strafe key for 0.2 seconds would be enough for you to execute a swing - I think one of my issues with combat in TES is how weapons are still "overlaid" onto the screen and don't have an actual spatial presence in the game world. You shouldn't be able to swing a sword fully if you're standing 1 foot in front of somebody - in theory, they'd obstruct it and you wouldn't have time to gather full momentum for the attack. Mount & Blade has full body awareness wherein the weapon models can actually visibly interact with the level geometry (i.e. a quarterstaff can go between fenceposts, and you'd see it on the other side). Taking that one step further, with actual physics-based limitations on the extent to which you can use your weapons, would be quite interesting.

What I miss most about Daggerfall and Morrowind is, as you've stated, the randomness to it. Nothing was more exciting than meticulously planning your course of action through a dungeon, and all the potential things that could go wrong - having your weapon shatter in your hand, or a spell fail. Potions were meaningful things which had to be rationed carefully, and if you were a combat-oriented character you possessed minimal magic aptitude. Instead, you'd have a bunch of scrolls and you were never quite certain when was the right moment to utilize them.

Skyrim's an entertaining game, but my character will always dispatch Draugr with the exact same number of hits, in the same amount of time. The entire experience is so polished, and yet that makes the game incredibly formulaic and predictable.

I personally liked being able to create weaker, less reliable spells for characters who were only partially experienced in magic. In Skyrim, everything is full potency for your character and everybody else in the world - casting costs and the magnitude of your spell are arbitrarily increased by picking perks (wait, why aren't these simply improved by you levelling up in the skill?).

Morrowind's combat system wasn't that bad. It was more of a question of balance and attack charge time. If you faced a lightly armored oponent you would want to stab him quickly before he does the same to you. To someone dressed in heavy armor you want to do more damage than that armor can absorb. Morrowind wasn't balanced enough to deliver this but the basics were there. Also I'm not missing the RNG but I do like the MW system. It's just that the amount of blow damage and speed of the blows should be determined by attributes and skills and not weapon stats.

The answer to this thread is Kingdoms of Amalur I believe, not TES.

The objective reason is that TES is going the way it is going and it really doesn't seem like they would ditch their style just to make the game more "clean" in terms of its content coming only from the genre the current game is aiming at.

My subjective reason is that I basically loved MW and everything about it (sometimes I even miss Cliffracers) and would love the next TES game to be more complex, regardless of it looking like a Frankenstein's monster.

Agreed, the MW combat system actually wasn't "bad" (even though it didn't look good), but it could have been so much better. Same can be said for OB's combat (but it did look better). The RNG by itself, as it was used, wasn't that great, but using it as a smaller variable element to both hit chance and damage, plus a combination of the weapon's stats, choice of attacks, and the character's skills might have been the ultimate.

Using the DIFFERENCE in skills between the combattants to determine to-hit odds would have been far better than MW's "absolute" numbers. If you're attacking a slow and awkward Mudcrab, and your skills are at least "fair", you really shouldn't miss very often, if at all. If you're attacking a more nimble rat, using similar skills, missing a few times should be no surprise. Instead, without figuring in the defender's skills, if your skills were low you could repeatedly miss a stationary and totally defenseless target. Having the choice of tradeoffs between accuracy and damage, as in DF, would have answered about 75% of the complaints about "always missing". Taking "missing" out of melee combat completely in OB felt like a case of taking the "game" out of the game.

I appreciate what Morrowind's combat COULD have been, but it wasn't. Sadly, Bethesda decided to re-invent the wheel instead of fixing the problem with the axle.

Morrowind's combat is unbalanced yes. What I'm saying is that it isn't that bad except from an artistic point of view. It's not as stupid as the level scaling in Oblivion. It isn't even broken. It is just an unpolished feature. Also a combination between Daggerfalls's, Morrowind's and Oblivion's system where the enemy's block/ dodge skills would count quite a lot would work best and be far more balanced than anything encountered so far in TES giving the player a good amount of control over the character and still keeping combat skill based.