» Fri May 27, 2011 5:23 pm I think that's mainly because of the bad level-listing. It was great in TES2, trying to find a full set of silver armor, for example, and never succeeding! In TES4 everything is handed out to you. If not by chests, then the enemies wear/wield them. But to me, hand placed items are a nuicanse, because I like to play TES games through more than once. I hated replaying TES3 since I knew exactly what was where and how to get it.
How *I* would solve the case? Mostly random loot, then 100 or so unique items randomly placed in 1000 or so hand placed locations. With each game, their location would make sense, and be hard to find, but you could never know for sure what you find. And returning to a location in another game only gives you a 10% chance to find anything.
How *I* would solve the case? Mostly random loot, then 100 or so unique items randomly placed in 1000 or so hand placed locations. With each game, their location would make sense, and be hard to find, but you could never know for sure what you find. And returning to a location in another game only gives you a 10% chance to find anything.
I could live with that. I just want to have that spark of wanting to explore; not knowing what I'd find. In TES4 I knew that every single dungeon would have standard levelled loot neatly packed away in easy to find chests. And I can't bring myself to explore caves when I already know it will get me 5 Septims and a fork; with the chance of finding an artifact (like the handplaced ones in Morrowind) was zero percent.
So yes, as long as the legendary artifacts (and not 5-10-15-20 levelled versions) can be found; it will make dungeon crawling interesting again. In TES4 I had mods active that gave a much wider variety of loot, with the added chance of chests containing something special.
I was just so very dissapointed that everything was levelled and Ebony/Glass/Daedric Armor was suddenly common gear for bandits (!) to see at level 20+. I mean, what's the point of trying to purchase the best gear when 3 levels later every common thief in the wilderness is wearing what you so painstakingly scrounged together?
So make these things rare and valuable again and you will have a much more interesting game in my opinion. Morrowind had approximately 2 full suits of Daedric Armor that could be found/collected/stolen (with the odd extra pair of greaves of chestpiece). Rare artifacts were often found in very remote regions or protected by above-average creatures (try fighting an Ancestor Ghost with a rusty iron sword *hehe*). That would really give me a sense of accomplishment when finally finding that last piece of Daedric Armor or that special sword of legends which I read about in an ancient scroll!
It's a singleplayer game, so to me there is no need to have everything perfectly balanced by level. And bandits wearing a full set of Ebony Armor just won't do. Instead they should be capped at a maximum level -wearing the same filthy leathers they had at level 1- and run in terror when "the Bloodskal; Champion of the Frozen Wastes, descendant of Mjolnir Thunderhammer and slayer of Djorgalf the Devourer of Worlds" comes along.
Which brings me to another point. The part where every creature/npc is suicidal. Sure, bandits attacking a peasant or poorly geared adventurer is one thing; but attacking the Imperial Champion who is known to singlehandedly destroy over 30 Daedra at once without breaking a sweat? Uhm... :shrug:
So instead of blindly charging forth, I'd suggest to give NPC's an actual 'common sense AI'. This could be easily hooked into their level by a simple calculation. The difference of characterlevel>npclevel multiplied by the 'total gearscore value' could make for a nice standard. This way the 'slayer of Djorgalf' could even dress up in poor clothing to lure unsuspecting bandits; causing an entirely new way of combat - deception.
Greetz,
Milt
EDIT: http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1060496
