» Mon May 07, 2012 11:36 am Morrowind had a great Ui for PC users because it had everything on one page, the gridded inventory screen, the map which coloured in places you have been (spell menu was a little off) and a big thing was that you could rescale the ui if you used one window more than another or needed more space
On the xbox morrowind's Ui was a wreck
Oblivion's Ui was dumb on the pc. On the console it worked fairly well once you get used to it (and you needed to get used to it)
Skyrim's Ui was designed by an idiot. "let's make it look like apple"? Well it does look rather futuristic in this medieval fantasy realm right?
As for functionality? I Find it almost Painful to enchant lots of things, i cant see multiple menu's at a time despite the fact that i have two sides on my monitor/screen. Not to mention how poorly things are sorted. The skill trees are rather strange to navigate and.. there is simply Nothing right about it. It could be worse.. bethesda might have tried to make it handle bad. But i am not sure if they tried to make it handle good
What the next game needs is two Separate ui for consoles and pc. The mouse and anologue sticks are completely different to use.
Functionality is MORE important than looks so concentrate on functions!! And if we get a theme.. be it paper.
2: get rid of cells (loading into every building and cave, who have their interiors separate from their exteriors, every house is stuck in another dimension!! )
3: optimised engine
Other game engines handle as much as gamebryo / skyrim's slightly modified engines with less power. Which means that another game could do MORE on equal hardware. So many things in the game could have been bigger and better if not for all the crappy code.
4: Skills that depend both on player skill and character skill and are fun, balanced and worthwhile .
I mean.. morrowind's activities were all or mostly mostly based on character skill. In skyrim this is inconsistent as some things are entirely dictated by character and some entirely player (Sneak vs lockpicking) and some were entirely perk .
For instance, i think Tod or someone might just scrap lockpicking because they cannot be arsed to fix it! the Security skill would be good if say :
There were multiple types of locks,traps and pick, and if we used the twisting minigame seen in F3 /TesV then.. A master lockpicker will get a 3x softer gradient towards the "spot" and have a 3X larger "spot" and time runs at 0.5 as well as a toggleable setting called "autopick" that opens any device with a very high chance of success.
Similarly, acrobatics would be good if you could do all the things an acrobat/Traceours/Climbers can do and use it to evade and better traverse dungeons and cities. To balance it
Hand to hand (and the weapons skills) could have multiple styles and increased better. I don't see block as necessary
Up to skill 50 the damage stops increasing with skill and the increase of the blocking slows down
Up to skill 75 the speed of the weapon stops increasing and the stamina use stops decreasing with skill
The critical damage and chance always increases as does the weapon's blocking capabilities and chance to hit dodging enemies
If the attributes were to be brought back.. then combat could become much more interesting especialy if animations were made to show strength differences (xivilai with four arms bringing four battle axes down on wood elf swordsman? or the player in enchanted gear using a claymore to drive a shield bearing man sideways?)
Then perks for this are either unlocked automaticaly or are taught by trainers
- and so the rpg "character skill" side of things is improved.. now for the player
Attacking can also parry
The hand to hand skill can be used when holding a weapon.. kicking, kneeing, blocking etc.
You aim where you look and blocking at the right time is better than just holding block.
With amazing hand to hand skills (both character and player, probably skill 75 without agility changes) you can catch blades and arrows if you block at the right time. At lower skill you can grab arms and shafts, and with a high level of magic skill catch destruction spells and throw them back)
Sprint button is also for sidestepping or stepping back, jumping does a dive (sometimes with a roll at high acrobatics) and crouching does a roll.
More weapons and a better control scheme
5: Better npcs and story
- Work on character animation
- add subtle "changers" for npc's that change their soundfiles so that npc's can share audiofiles yet sound different.
- Don't do the same stupid plot destroyer seen in oblivion and to an extreme extent skyrim - where if an npc does not have a trustworthy voice then you know he/she is evil (Every single "bad" character in skyrim, nobody fooled me) Stop with the stereotypes
- Simpler greetings would be much more effective than long ones. I can hear "hi" from many npcs and not be bothered by it. I can't hear the female smith in whiterun's dialogue without being bothered by it.
- more complex, reasonable and well thought out storylines and important characters. While parthanax was very interesting, vivec seemed more majestic. Whilst dagoth ur had a reason to use the heart, create the blight and do acts of evil i found alduin to be a spoiled brat dragon with stranger bones and no decent reasons to be a [censored]. Similarly i liked morrowind's guilds in that you were just someone with talent and loathed skyrim's "you are the chosen one for every faction and the epic storyline is so stupid that it could be summed up in two quests"
Everything in italics is my own opinion and would be disputable.
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