Bethesda seems to pride themselves on building each new game from the ground up. While I appreciate that they try to make each game stand on its own, my gripe with this philosophy is that sometimes they do something mostly right in one game, and rather than tweak it to make it better, they scrap the entire system for something dramatically different.

The question that I pose to the Elder Scrolls forum in general is this: What, if anything, should Bethesda keep from previous games to make TES: V (and beyond) better than its predecessors? This can include any element from any game that Bethesda has developed, including Fallout 3.

To give an example, I'll give a few of my personal choices:

Stealth from Fallout 3
Combat mechanics from Morrowind
Combat animations from Oblivion
Leveling system from Daggerfall
Character creation from Daggerfall
Theft from Morrowind
Open gameworld/cities from Morrowind / Fallout 3
Horses from Oblivion (tweaked for improvements)
Spell and alchemy failure from Morrowind (tweaked to make it less severe)
Magicka regeneration from Oblivion
Skill options from Daggerfall
Graphics from Fallout 3
....

I can go on, but I hope everyone gets the general idea.

What I'm hoping for is a civil discussion about what Bethesda has done right, and what they should retain, or 'remodel', from previous games rather than 'rebuild'. It is okay to discuss merits and faults of any particular system or element, or how they should tweak something to make it 'perfect'. However, I really don't want to see this turn into a Game X vs. Game Y discussion. So, again, please remember that your opinion represents your personal preferences, and may not resemble the opinion of others.

I've only played Daggerfall and Oblivion, no Fallout.

Anyway, I *really* would like the Daggerfall system of being able to ask *any* NPC about *any* building/person/thing, not just the occaisional quest-related dialog.
I know it's more voice-scripting, but I'm sure they have the budget to cope -- I'd also like to see more variety of voice actors.

From Oblivion, I like the freedom to roam, to find caves and ruins, but I find that soon the level cap kicks in and it gets boring. Every cave will contain twelve goblins, six chests, three special weapons etc.
In the end, you give up and just start another file. I'd like to see rewards for making characters last to level 40,50,60 etc.

Lots more temples and guilds would be good (Daggerfall) and a larger playing world (almost as big as daggerfall would be nice, but connected like Oblivion).

I think I prefere zeni/gamesass philospy of building anew rather than a certain groups philosphy of living in the past*cough*fan-boys*cough*, it gives them an oppurtunity to take the time to make a more complling game rather than a Buggerfell/Morrowhine/Oblivicrap (sorry, still don't know the Oblivion counterpart) clone and slaping a new label on it (like sports games).
In short I think ya'll ought to give the developers some breathing room and allow them to do their work in peace.

Yes but when the game comes out and it svcks bigtime and we all don't buy it, they would say "We should have asked them what they wanted".
I'm sure the big-wigs at gamesas read these forums from time to time, and pick up on the general vibe of the community.

How are we getting in their space? they dont have to come here and feel pressured by our awesomeness its not like we're emaling them 5000 letters a day saying you should add this no add this no w8 add this too. If they feel like visiting the forums they can and if they dont then they dont have to. they have all the breathing room they could want for.

If I were a bigwig at Zeni/gamesas reading these forums I'd get the general vibe that the fans really have no clue what they want and just build a new game from scratch any how.

If i were a bigwig reading these i'd think i have to build two games morrowind 2.0 and oblivion 2.0 but hopefully they'll be able to pick through the bashing and find a good compromise

but i wouldnt really mind a game from scratch as long as it was as epic as the TES series even if it was completely different.

this

Can anyone guess why good features disappear?

Hint: People complain too much and fail to mention what they like. Then, they complain about changes made in response to complaints while complaining about losing the stuff they didn't praise.

:ahh:
OK that confused me. :confused:

I should only say what I want? Fine, I want a large, connected, reactive world where decisions are life and death and I don't have to find a bajillion mods to make the game "real".

If I worked for a big development studio like Valve, Bethesda or Bioware, I would do my best never to go near the official forums of whatever project I was working on. It seems like a game's fanbase consists of, for the most part, whiny, spoiled, entitled brats fueled entirely by nostalgia and wishful thinking who will never ever be happy with anything you do. Though, I think our little family is preferable, over at Bioware the discussion about Dragon Age 2 is terrifying in how stupid and uninformed it is ("LOL Dragon Effect!" "Hawke confirmed only to be a male warrior!" "Customization is dead!"). :rolleyes:

EDIT: @BAugustus Nice exaggeration. Literally the only non-graphics related mods I use for Oblivion are TIE, a mod to remove the quest arrow, and a mod to make it so you have to find places before you can fast travel to them.

Personally, I think that the devs should know what their fans like and dislike about their games. If we don't voice our opinions about things we like/dislike, then we can't ever hope for anything better. After all, its the squeeky wheel that gets the grease, and a closed mouth never gets fed, right? But I'm with you in thinking that the devs get far more criticism than they actually deserve. As far as those 'fan-boys' who 'live in the past', I don't think that most of 'us' want them to make a Morrowind 2, or Oblivion 2010. Its just that we'd like them to build on what they have to make it better, rather than scrap an idea alltogether and try it an entirely different way. I would argue that the 'rebuild' philosophy actually gives them less time to make a better game as they need to come up with brand new ways to accomplish the same things. IMHO, the only thing that TES needs to make any game in the series stand on its own is a different location and a different storyline. Things like game mechanics and textures simply need to be tweaked, not completely overhauled. But that's just my 2 septims.

:rofl:

I thought that was already the case with locations, excluding main quest locations. Isn't it?

The only mods I feel are basic needs in Morrowind are the cliffracer extinction mod, Linora's leveling mod, a multiple mark mod, a regenerating magic mod, and an Oblivion spellcasting mod.

Assuming I had a decent PC, my mods for Oblivion would be a mod to have unique items not be stuck at a certain level range and a mod to change the leveling system the same way the Morrowind mod I use does.

I'm also completely fine with the vanilla versions of both games, but downloading those mods fixed what I felt were the few problems Morrowind and Oblivion had. I'm not a very picky person when it comes to game mechanics, so I don't want to change much.

However, Bethesda, PLEASE GET RID OF THE MORROWIND/OBLIVION LEVELING SYSTEM AND OBLIVION'S UNIQUE ITEM SCALING, OR AT LEAST ALLOW THE UNIQUE ITEMS TO GROW IN LEVEL WITH US AFTER WE OBTAIN THEM!

I would like Daggerfall's leveling system back(or something else to get rid of efficient leveling) and the mentioned changes to the item scaling system, please. Other than that, Bethesda, do whatever you want. I like surprises and new gameplay features.

I like leveling based off the use of skills. It's unique.

The mod I use extends it to all areas (cities, etc.) My first action on getting out of the sewers is always to visit the Market district so I have a hub to return to from my travels

TIE really is one of the best gameplay enhancers around. If you get Oblivion (I'd be surprised if your computer couldn't run it at all, it's pretty scalable in terms of graphics), I wouldn't recommend playing without it. You can read about it for yourself http://www.dreamingthepyramid.net/TNR-TIE.html Though, it does make the game much, MUCH harder. I wouldn't recommend starting on the main quest until you're the Grandmaster of something Unless you enjoy getting clobbered by Daedroth and Markynaz at level one bliviongate:

I already play the game very slowly. My current character is level 32, and I've never gone far into the main quest or any of the faction questlines with any character, before. I've only ever completed the Shivering Isles and KotN questlines, as well as various misc. quests and I've explored quite a bit.

The computer I use can't handle Oblivion, or at least it can't handle it well/as good as my PS3. I refuse to give up my shiny graphics, but further discussion of that is probably best left for the PM system.

Cookie goes to Seti for getting to the heart of the matter. :cookie: (Or maybe you prefer ice cream? :icecream: )

Anyway, the main thing I was hoping to extract from this topic was which elements/mechanics/etc. from previous Bethesda games DID YOU LIKE ? What kinds of things would you want to see 'remodeled' for a return in TES: V? Or, if you prefer the 'rebuild' philosophy, how/why does that make for a better ES game?

Fine I exaggerated, but I still use:

+ Let there be Darkness (to make caves actually dark)
+ Second to First Person (so it feels like "I" am in the game)
+ Better Birthsigns
+ Dark Phinix

If I could get Deadly Reflex to run, I'd use that too. You also say about non-graphics mods.....so I take it you use "pretty-fy" mods. There are a few things that needed polishing, like Birthsigns that felt useless, despite so much effort placed upon them, with those Stone things and all the waffle the Emporer goes on about. Torches were absolutely useless, because caves and ruins were filled with bright daylight and the interface was big, clunky and didn't feel any of the end-of-the-world darkness in it, like a bright, cheery reminder as the Daedra Siege Engine rolled into Bruma as you swapped weapons.

Maybe I'm hung up on a few small details, but that's just my opinion.

What do you mean by this?

That's not really an issue.

Generally the people who are one here complaining are because there's nothing they liked about the most recent products.

The people who liked the game are gonna be playing it instead of on here commenting.

Listening solely to the people who complain without keeping the good stuff is a bad marketing issue, I think. I mean the people who complained about Morrowind complained about silly stuff, like cumbersome combat and hard to find quest targets.

So, they pretty much designed Oblivion to be a game for people who hated Morrowind (or more realistically, were too daft to figure it out), which is why it improved the stuff we don't care about and got rid of the stuff we do care about.

Now they've got two drastically different games, designed for two drastically different types of people.

I think this time around, they should go off of their common sense first and foremost

I wanna see my own legs.

Indeed. I never figured out why if a lol game like Halo could get it done why an excellent game like TES couldn't.

I want to see PhysX applied to cloth, like in Mafia II. And then capes.

Priorities?

Oy! Again with the capes! Capes have never been apart of the TES series, ever. And in truth I don't see the need for them as they are completely useless except to make you look like a real dork and they hinder your movement and caught up on stuff.

And unless they make it to where timing is a real issue for quests I can't really see the need for different modes of travel. Why bother shelling out x amount of Septims for a Horse ride to get to (insert location) here that much faster when the next part of the quests waits for you don't matter how long you take?

Something I would like to see return though is the quest marker from FO3. It was helpful enough to point out generally where you need to be, without the blatant hand-holding of Oblivion's quest markers. However I also agree that it needs an option to be turned off.

Never ever?

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