First, let me say that I am a huge Elder Scrolls fan. From the day I saw my friend playing Daggerfall, I was hooked. I have been pouring hundreds of hours into playing and modding the world of Elder Scrolls. I have two specific design elements I wanted to discuss, and what better community of people than Elder Scrolls fans based on my two points of topic. The first plays with the idea of homesteading and broader ideas of immersion techniques through gameplay.

Creating a central control point that "grows" with the character throughout the game - think tower defense mixed with the ability to tell a story. So superfluous game mechanics like getting married would actually add to your heroes story. Think of it this way. Most of the time we spend our gaming experience traversing through the world. Making our way through content spots on an open map. This gave us an unprecedented level of possibilities for dynamic content (the walking along the road and stumbling into content that builds the world. Which was so excellent in Skyrim for me.

Games and mods have done this in different iterations. I would like to find out through this post, some opinions on how we could expand the idea of content moving around a central point maybe earned by the hero. We saw mods doing this in Fallout, Skyrim, and even upcoming games like Fortnite.

What I am more interested in is how it could be used in an immersive way in a game world like the elder scrolls, but not just for rinse repeat defending from bandits, but in story telling. Providing food for your family by having to hunt in the wild. Trading with other settlers. Maybe a thief has been in the area and another npc approaches your homestead for help, creating a choice of gameplay options that is common for an Elder Scrolls fan. All the while you can customize and grow your central location as a way of progressing by rewarding players with the ability to customize their world.

So a few more ideas on storytelling around a central homestead: quests that trigger based on time cycles in game. Summer might trigger entertainers to come through who have their own quests and paths through the world. You might meet bandits traveling to the main city who have jobs available. They invite you to tag along and pay you for the job. Depending on how you are evolving your character.

I am curious what others think in terms of this concept.

So many people love the ability to have a home in Skyrim. I love it as it is a place to showcase items I chose to keep as I wandered the world. To me, a sense of possession is so important to immersing a player into the world. The Elder Scrolls does this the best to me. Name one fantasy movie from the 80's that was even close to as good as the First Conan movie. You can't do it!

Anyway, a sense of possession is a nice segway for me into my final topic. I know that most find it superfluous and unimportant, but I think it could define customization in rpgs. I have noticed that rpgs have slowly reduced the number of item slots you normally see in a game. Design wise, I think game designers found that most people don't want to manage a large amount of inventory items and item slots. This is an assumption as I am not 100% sure why every game company has the exact same or close to same number of item slots and specific set of items. Chest, head, gloves, leg(or boot), shoulder, belt

Skyrim gave us the ring and necklace, and with some mods you could outfit with all sorts of bells and whistles. The best part was seeing meaningful items created and some created as "flare" to customize and personalize another item. For example, some items like bandoleers and pouches would add to how much weight a player could carry. Is it perfectly balanced, maybe not but the idea is solid.

Why do players like customization? Every game company puts it into their games. Shooters, car-racing, whatever. You can customize it. This concept belongs to the RPGs, and it is because it takes you to a new level of immersion. When you are limited in what you can touch and how you can interact with the world, the immersion factor goes down. If I can take this armor A that all my friends that are playing it have, and I can customize that armor just a little bit. I can add a belt of knives, I can place a medallion on it. Whatever the "flare" is doesn't matter. The idea is most important for me. Take character customization for players of modern RPGs to the next level. And not by having vambraces slot and a ton of extra items necessarily. Instead, you take the gear and allow for customization.

Character customization can then feel more personal, and further connects the players to the environment and the world. Why do most games just pop swords out when you switch between weapons. Say you have a primary and a secondary weapon. Only one is sheathed on character, and when switched it pops out of thin air. Why do FPS makers put so much time into creating so many animations for reloading when they could simply have the ammo counter change? It's immersion factor. If your character has a sword and a knife. He should have a sword and a knife. I know you wouldnt be able to show everying in inventory to scale. It doesn't have to be that accurate. Everyone can suspend disbelief, but the idea is to help them reduce the amount of suspension they have to do.

Furthermore, I know most think that it's not that important. What is important is gameplay and story. And they are right. However, these are some things that can change from game to game. Most rpgs just had your character hold the weapon all the time, and sheathing and unsheathing...that was not a thing. Resources became available and they were able to create animations for this, and the design standard changed. I am saying change it again. Customization for avatars in RPG's should change to give the player the deepest level of customization than any genre. Counterstrike player customization is deeper than most rpg's and its a first person shooter for gods sake .

I have written enough probably. Thanks for reading if you did.

I like some of the stuff you talk about. Like the quests for homestead and season quests getting triggered, like in the summer entertainers come out.

One of the gameplay features that I like about The Elder Scrolls video games that are immersive to me that Bethesda Game Studios removed from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is no regenerative health. Makes combat fighting NPC's much more funner to play and challenging.

I think what annoys me about body slots in Skyrim is the missed potential. We have approximately 20 slots unused by the vanilla game. Modders use them, as you say, but I think it would have been great if the vanilla game had put this potential to some use.

One of the things I detested about Oblivion in the beginning was the way it reduced our appearance options. Many of us had loved dressing our characters in unique ways in Morrowind: one pauldron, no pauldrons, clothing under armor, one glove, mismatched boots...the list of customization options in Morrowind was vast and inspiring.

I think I've become numb to the removal of options by now. Lack of choice is something I have come to expect from modern RPGs. It doesn't make me irate anymore, the way it did when Oblivion came out.