I don't want future Elder Scrolls games to be randomly-generated. There is much more detail in hand-placed games, like Morrowind and Oblivion, then there is in randomly-generated games, like Arena and Daggerfall.

I could see Bethesda doing randomly generated quests for guilds after you complete the main quest lines or something, but I highly doubt them returning to what we saw in Daggerfall. That does not mean though, that they cannot create a fairly large world for TES V. I know Morrowind and Oblivion are not small games in terms of landmass, but they are compared to Daggerfall and Arena. Personally, I want to see a bigger world in the next game, but nowhere as large as the first two games were.

ryt its over give people an option to be random at the begining or use the the standard hand placed 1 and as said before key points will be static so lore will be fine and that pleases everyone u dont have to have radom generation nor do u have to have the standard 1 so r we going to continue this post for the sake of it or are we going to agree that u should have a choice

That means they basically mean they have to do twice the work for a single game, so it won't happen. Both creating a (good) land generator and/or a (good) handcrafted world takes a lot of time, doing the same thing for the same game is far too much work.

If you don't understand: I don't mean that a game has to be fully generated or fully handcrafted. Of course you can make a game that uses both generated and handcrafted/detailed by hand terrain, but if you can choose between generated and non-generated they DO have to kind off create two whole games.

Oh thanks a lot! Also I come in Dara GraBols house ( my permanent residence in Morrowind) and find there some dude who bought it and all my things are away? Nice idea.

Random terrain is also something that is rather a problem in many ways. Some border areas maybe? But I think that some random quests would be great, especially triggered. It was really frustrating in both Morrowind and Oblivion that as soon as you are a boss of any guild you have ABSOLUTELY nothing to do for your guild. Gave you a feeling that you have destroyed it instead of becoming a leader.
And I absolutely agree that the world changing, depending on my actions is much more fun as any "random generated" enviroment. Till now there is no game which really mastered this task. I don't mean things like x wins y loose or x lives y dies, I mean that it changes slowly, beginning with small things.
THAT can be really great.

Well, I'd like some randomness in addition to handcrafted quests and loot. Baldur's Gate 2 did some loot randomization (and level scaling! but done right) really well, so that it was inobtrusive, but there would be enough differences to freshen things up a bit.

As to random quests - both MW and Obl suffered from the same syndrome - I'd discover a sizeable town/settlement and... there'd be little to do there. 1 or 2 location-based quests at best, mostly nothing. Random quests with some kind of faction reputation or some other counter running in the background and eventually unlocking some consequences would help there.

For instance - let's say an NPC not involved in any hancrafted quests and owning a house with a cellar could have a chance to give a random "vermin in a cellar" quest. And let's imagine some variation there, like:

1. 50% - some kind of vermin indeed. Kill, get payed.
2. 20% - a stronger monster. Kill or run, demand more money from the quest-giver if Persuasion permits.
3. 15% - robbers looking to mug the PC. Kill/capture and give up to the guards for a small fee and a bonus to reputation with them. Then blackmail the quest-giver for restitution/forgive him (bonus rep with the criminal underworld)/give him up to the guards (bonus with guards, hit for the underworld).
4. 15% - find a beggar. Can give him up to the guards, with small chance that he'll turn out to be a wanted criminal with a price on his head. Give him up to the charitable institution of the Cult, with a small chance that he eventually becomes an acolyte and heals you for free.

By the time you'd go through all the permutations and get tired of it, a couple of settlements will be livened up. Come up with 5 or so other templates with similar variation and you'd be all set.
Also, folks randomly fleeing from the guards, with opportunity to help either them or the guards would be great.

Normal people and guards mostly vanishing from the streets at night and robbers/vermin coming out to play, like in DF, would be great, too. Provided that they don't kill actual citizens, that is.

Generally, they should look at the GTA series for inspiration on various random activities/missions. Isn't it funny, BTW, that there are more non-violent random suff to do in a series about murder, than in so called "go anyhwere, do anything" TES? Where "anything" actually only means stealing, murdering and gathering ingredients?

Give me some non-violent/law abiding stuff to do too. Like, say, various games and competitions (like in GTA), or random sick/hurt people to heal and cure. After I have healed a certain number, there could be an "epidemy" event unlocked in the next settlement, where I'd have to track down and cure sick people before they infect others. If I succeed, there should be a nice reward and reputation bonus from the Cult. Then, maybe a harder mission along those lines after a certain period of time. If I fail, Cult members appear and deal with it. I'd have to heal a certain number of sick folks again to unlock it again.
Horse races! Etc.

Collector's quests - there need to be many more of them. With randomized placement. Have me gather and dechiffer some tablets that maybe will allow access to something interesting. Let me make trophies of all beasts killed and once I have one of each possible creature... something. Etc, etc.

Give me a house/stronghold where it would be convenient to display all loot, trophies and books. Etc.

I guess you missed the point. Because I am not talking about randomly generating content each time you play or start a new game. I am talking about Bethesda generating random content, so they have this BIG world. That because OBVIOUSLY Bethesda staff cant manually recreate a world the size of Great Britain.

But software CAN do that. And then the Bethesda team can MANUALLY enhance what needs to be enhanced (like quest related houses, dungeons, forts, etc). Their software can create BIG cities based on easily drawn urban planning, and then their staff can FINE TUNE specifics in the city. Their software can create all the terrain automatically (based on a heightmap of the province) and the staff can fine-tune a few places.




well, I agree. Simply because I never asked for ruins and towns to change place, or even stuff inside them.

eh... did you kill the owner of the house to make it your own house? As far as I understand, what he suggested is that houses have an assigned owner. If the owner is killed, eventually a randomly generated NPC will buy the house and move in. If the house already has an owner (another NPC or you!) nobody will buy it.



and small hand place world does not equals better imho. In fact, if its a small world which actually represents a HUGE world, than it equals BAD and unrealistic and detracts from the immersiveness.


what other RPGs do? They are handcrafted and do have huge worlds, and they are realistic. But they are not sandbox games. You cant go everywhere.

Any city in Dragon Age looks larger than ANY city in Oblivion. But it just happens that you can only visit SMALL PARTS of the city. You visit a marketplace. An area of mansions, etc. But the whole map of the city is much larger. Everywhere you travel inside it, you are fast travelling to distant areas inside the same city.



In a game like Oblivion, you CANT resort to such cheats. And making it SMALL, makes it VERY unrealistic. Its NOT immersive, as a sandbox game requires, to have the capital of a continent sized empire, to be something like 500 meters in diameter or less, with like 500 people (or less).

Its not realistic to have unexplored dungeons, ruined forts and ayleid ruins just some 20 meters from the walls of the biggest and most busy city in the world.



but then, can Bethesda developers manually create a realistic sized world? Of course, not. Thats where PROCEDURAL generated content comes in.

Bethesda ALREADY used it for the tress in Oblivion if I am not mistaken. And WHERE THEY WANTED, they carefully arranged the trees to produce the effect they wanted. I think they should go one step further: do the same with cities and NPCs and many dungeons, forts and ruins.



Ah, so everything should be manually placed, because procedural dungeons/forts/ruins in Daggerfall look all the same. As far as I am concerned, ruins, forts and dungeons in Oblivion DO mostly look the same. I guess some procedural content might have created more inspired content than the manually created one!

That would be in fact BETTER because it would leave space for developes to CONCENTRATE on the IMPORTANT dungeons/ruins/forts. Like quest related/lore related, etc.

let me just describe kinda how I imagine the developers creating a city:

1 - they draw the walls or outer perimeter of the city. Developers give major caractheristics to the city (% of what type of race, architectural style, general wealth, etc)

2 - they draw the main avenues (should be a simple process like in Sim City). The computer automatically "place" those avenues over the area terrain

3 - the computer recognizes the several "blocks" created when dividing the city with avenues. Each block can be given caractheristics. For example... 90% argonian; median height in floors of the buildings 2; narrow/mazelike streets; poor. The other block is mainly imperial. Planned streets. In average, 4 floors houses, each with average 300 sq meters of area. Wealthy. Etc, etc. Blocks not assigned any caractheristic, the computer at Bethesda (or at your house, when making a mod) takes over.

4 - computer generates streets (based on chosen caractheristics of the "neighborhood". Developers can modify the streets or create their own, OF COURSE.

5 - computer generates houses based on caractheristics of neighborhood. When generating houses from blocks, furniture, belongings are automatically generated too. Inside of a house automatically matches outside (meaning... two windows facing the front of the house outside translate as two windows inside)

6 - oh, but the developers want 12 houses in the city to be more "specific". Well, no problem! They can delete whole houses and replace with their own!

7 - computer generates NPCs for all the houses (based on specifics of neighborhoods), sets their schedule, etc.

Really, I played several other 3D FPS RPG games back in the day of Daggerfall... like Ultima Underworld or Menzoberranzan. Those were HAND CREATED. And they still dont have near the detail of Morrowind and Oblivion.

Guess why? TECHNOLOGY! You cant compare the details in a 1gb game from 2006-2007 to games that could fit in a few floppy disks!