So I had a lot of fun playing my assassin character in Oblivion, but there was obviously much to be desired, and improvements to be made, the big one that pops out were the 'psychic' guards. Nothing was more annoying than being a somewhat low level assassin character, and having to tone down the difficulty so you could one shot someone, or else guards would be waiting for you outside the residence.

Just wondering if any 'official' comments have been made on the issues of stealth, crimes, and guards, or even just how you think it will turn out.

That is definitely something thatneeds to change, I think the biggest thing has to be hit detection on parts of the body. I'm sorry but if I shoot you in the head with my bow you aren't going to scoff and tell me how badly you're going to kill me....

Unless you got a crappy bow/arrow, or the guy has a good skull.

Point blank bullets will sometimes skip under the scalp and out the other side.

Yea, I'm hoping they incorporate the hit detection from fallout 3 / new vegas. Not VATS ofcourse, but being able to cripple the enemy and make them limp by hitting their legs, making them drop their weapons with enough damage to arms / hands, and ofcourse the deathblow to the head

There's already been a few threads on locational damage but yes that would be a good idea. I wanna be able to say "I'm an assassin, fear me or end up dead with your throat slit open." not "I'm an assassin, fear me or end up living with no face and/or throat". And the psychic guards did bother me too. One time I accidentally stole a paint brush and I didn't feel like scrolling through my inventory to drop it so a few minutes later I go up to talk to a guard and BOOM! I'm in jail.

That was insanely annoying. I remember I had to go back to a previous save that was like, 5 hours ago from where I was because even though the victim was sleeping, somehow the guards knew everytime she was murdered... ridiculous. Damn you auto-save! :L

One of the biggest improvements Bethesda could do would be to fix the 'psychic' guards.

Yes, someone who agrees, the NO Omniscient guards, is one thing I have posted on every "What do you want in Skyrim", it would make the game so much better.

And I would say make guards better, or at least have certain unique powerful guards who are actually a challenge, because at level 4 I had a bounty of at least 20 000, because the guards were so easy to kill.

One thing that burnt me was the classic bandit running at you who catches an arrow in the eye....IN THE EYE and he laughs at me....

COME ON! lol, I often found myself turning down the difficulty just to have a more realistic experience when playing an archer character, that and it took SO long to level it seemed pointless. I could shoot some creatures well over 50 times and it's still coming at me, talk about discouraging. Oblivion was the game that caused me to fall in love with RPG games and Bethesda games in general but given that it's 4 years later there is now more to be desired.

Faster archery levelling, more deadly shots and to even it out a bit, don't make it laser accurate, if your skill is low have a spread pattern that gets steadily smaller as your skill increases. So if you're a talented assassin and you put serious time into developing your skills you should be capable of a 1 shot eye kill =)

Deadly archery is fine - so long as NPCs have the same level of deadliness towards you.

I'd hate to be able to stand their taking shots like a pin cushion, whilst waiting to get off my one deadly kill shot - a real immersion killer.

I like this idea. Not noticing a hidden enemy archer that's in a room... He should be able to spot you (possibly). If he does and he gets off a sneak shot on ya', you should have to pay for not being more cautious. That seems reasonable to me.

But then again, the stealth factor of the game in Oblivion was pretty untenable. It needs a major overhaul, and we need to see what that looks like when it's done before we can evaluate how well any other aspects of the stealth play are going to work.

I wrote this in another thread:

Stealth in general needed some work in the last game. One of the major handicaps to archery, among other skills, in Oblivion was that any action taken while in stealth mode would result in someone instantly seeing you, even if they had no idea what was going on.

As a Master Marksman one of the perks is that you can paralyze someone with a shot from a bow. I would also use paralyze poisons on the arrows. I recall shooting a target and every single time, despite that they had their back to me, I had been totally hidden, and they were now paralyzed, they would suddenly know exactly where I was.

More importantly perhaps, so would every other creature within a 50' radius.

Something resembling the Dukes of Hazard would then take place, where I would take off like a bat out of Hell down the length of the cave or hall, giving as much ground as I could, taking corners quickly, and generally trying to shake my pursuit.

Even if I was several rooms away from the pursuers and had taken several turns - thus they had no direct line of sight on me at all, they'd still know where I was and continue to close in on me. Conjurers would get near me and although I was still hidden, they'd know exactly which room I was in. They'd then summon a monster and despite that I could normally hide from that monster easily, it would - upon spawning in the room with us, know exactly where I was an immediately attack.

This made the concept of "stealth" pretty preposterous.

If they simply improved the stealth system in the game and actually played through with it this time in testing, making it serviceable, it would not only be a significant fix to stealth play in general but would also have a major impact on swords (which get a 6X strike if someone is hidden) and archery (which gains a 3x strike if hidden).

An improvement in stealth would go a long way to improving at least two other skills as well.




Stealth in general in Oblivion needed a lot of work. Without correcting those fundamental issues with stealth, any other improvements become rather moot.

Stop! You violated the law!

I'm guessing the Skyrim justice system will be similar to Oblivion's. Look at my avatar, and you will see.

I dont think anythying has been told but in the offical trailer the assasin assassinated someone from behind with a dagger. He/she just grabbed the guy and sliced his throat open

I saw that and I was like, "Whoa... This bodes well."

The question is... If someone saw it, would the assassin be able to run away? If the assassin got enough distance and was out of the line of sight, would the other allies of the victim that are nearby still be able to hunt him down?

If the answer is no, then we've got a good thing going I think. If not... "Meh. It's just more of the same as last game. Possible, but not practical."

Im still praying for bigger prisons full of life. IM tired of being the only one in town the guards actually care about arresting.

Nothing at all has been said about the crime system I'm pretty sure. Hopefully we'll get a look at it at E3.

I posted a few ideas in this thread regarding NPC awareness, and somewhat specifically, crimes.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1169397-morality-and-recognition/

My last post on the second page delves the most into crimes I believe. It's a bit lengthy so I won't copy/paste it here.

Yeah, that was one of the things I didnt like abut Fallout, once I got to Level 30, Raiders could just shoot me thousands of times and only lake down a bar of health....

i bet the memorable thing with skyrims guards will be booming voices

This. A dev needs to read this! ^

Skyrim guards are such hardened badasses that they don't even run to you. They just teleport right by you, lop your head off, and go on their way. You don't even have to commit a crime, just think about it, and their psychic powers will detect the criminal scum lurking in your mind.

Well thats a wonderful fact about bullets, but we are talking about arrows, which are not bullets