Welcome to TES V Ideas and Suggestions # 142

This thread is for ideas and suggestions for TES:V and to keep all the general discussion in one series of threads.

To discuss major issues, use a separate topic, such as the levelling topic.

Other general topics on this will either be closed or moved here.

Please at least try to read the previous few threads to avoid too much repetition:


http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1023937
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1025326
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1026491
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1027877
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1028435
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1029965
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1031535
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1032326
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1034439
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1036286
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1038148
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1041304
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1044483
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1048173
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1051579
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1054161
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1056032
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1057095
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1057491
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1058753
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1059919
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1060496

Here is an idea that I take from Ultima 7. If this is going to be in Skyrim, perhaps it would add a strong dose of role-playing, and immersion, to require the player to dress for the weather. Perhaps Nords would have to dress less warmly, and Argonians more warmly, or something like this. (or just have everyone dress the same) If you do not dress well you will take cold-damage. Perhaps in order to not take cold damage one will have to wear fur lined cloaks, hats, and so on.

In addition to this, having a icy cold locale might give us the opportunity to ride on cold adapted creatures like polar bears or something more fantastic like an Elder Scrolls version of a Taun-Taun (spelling?)

I like this idea, but it would generate A LOT of complaints. I can just imagine it now, "Why does the game punish me for wearing armor that isn't warm?"

It's a nice idea for a mod though.

I agree with you. Most of my ideas are very old school and generate complaints. In Ultima 7 you would take cold damage after you went too far north in the game world. The Avatar and his allies would first say, "It's getting chilly"... then a few minutes later "It's cold"....then "I'm freezing!"... then finally they'd just go "aaargh" and after that they'd die. It was awesome. You also had to eat in those games or else starve to death. Contrary to what most think, it was actually very fun and immersive to build eating and sleeping into your quest (You had to do both or eventually you'd pass out and die).

I can't understand how Todd Howard, a man who has gone on the record as saying Ultima was his #1 biggest influence and favorite RPG game, made a game like Oblivion that is the antithesis of immersion and realism (aside from graphics). An Elder Scrolls/Ultima hybrid would be AWESOME.

Well, I'm thinking that's crossing the line a little between when it's a video game and when it's a simulation. Something like having to feed would be extremely annoying, since the day runs much faster then real life.

I can see it being annoying with having to wear other clothes than your characters chosen armor class, to avoid getting you're life drained. I wouldn't mind if it was a small concentrated area. I like the idea, maybe if you were in a cold area with no warm clothes, enemies would get a cold damage bonus to their attacks.

by the way, I don't see how Oblivion was the antithesis of immersion and realism.

That feature can be implemented well, and it can be implemented horribly. In Far Cry 2, for example, after you crossed the border of the map you would die from heatstroke instantly. It didn't even give you a warning, you could be perfectly fine one second, then another second your vision would get blurry and you'd be dead.

On the subject of Oblivion, I would really like it if magika didn't regenerate until you rested, like in Morrowind. It adds strategy to the game, making you think on your feet. I can't count the number of times in Oblivion where I would just sit still in the middle of a dungeon and wait for my magika to regenerate, or wait for 1 hour and have full magika again.

I also think Fatigue should play a bigger roll in the game. In Oblivion, I absolutely never felt any ill effects from low Fatigue. I mean yes, I wasn't able to power attack because of it, but that really isn't a big deal. Maybe low Fatigue could simulate being over-encumbered until you rested, or something like that.

fatigue should play a bigger role, not exactly like morrowind though, what made it annoying in morrowind was that you couldn't hit anything just for traveling at anything above snail speed, but if it effected something other than hitting, which I will assume it will if implemented again.

Nerfing the magicka regen would destroy a whole playing style for offensive mages relying on willpower though.

They could always just use staves. I like no regeneration in Morrowind, it makes it much harder, and more fulfilling, to play as a mage.

Oh come on, then people wanting no regen can take the atronach birth sign.

no regen means that a specific mage play style cannot be used, I would rather have variation of play styles, than simply forcing people to play a specific way.

I don't find that it makes is much harder, it simply means playing it like one had picked the atronach birth sign, and one is gonna play that way anyway, one might as well pick the atronach birth sign.

We'll just have to agree to disagree. I am not annoyed by eating and sleeping requirements because several of the first RPG games I played either required it or gave very strong reasons for wanting to do so. I also played table top D&D and to some extent the DM usually required sleep and eating or else he'd start to nerf our rolls due to exhaustion. That and our magic users would run out of juice. I think it's a function of not necessarily my age, but rather what I first started playing. Many of today's younger folks who have never had to have their characters eat or sleep find the concept of having to do so very annoying.

well the concept is not without interest, and you're right that it's possibly something which have to do with ones point of reference.

But what if I want to use a different birth sign? I usually use it anyway, but if I'm not playing a full-on mage, and choose a different birth sign, I'd prefer to have no magika regen. Besides, I use staves much much more than I use offensive magic on my mage characters. :shrug:

I'm definitely in favor of magicka regen still being around, just making it slower. This ties in with the fact that I also want potions to be less common and easily-obtained. If magic can be restored by resting, I don't see why it can't be refilled by just taking it easy, much like fatigue. Just not at Oblivion's rate that removed almost any risk of running out of energy.

Needing food depends on a lot of side factors, not the least of which is the time scale. I'm no stranger to the furthest extremes of this stuff; I've played my share of roguelikes, which seem to often have hummingbird characters who need 50,000 calories a day or they starve to death instantly. The next game's time scale aso depends on its size scale...I really hope, if the overworld is the same general size as Oblivion's, that they don't try to pass it off as a country again. Really, a country, with about five cities the size of a small park and which I can see the entirety of from atop a "mountain." I imagine the time scale was faster here so that you couldn't jog across the "country" overnight...and also because it didn't mean anything. Go ahead and stand in one spot for three months, nobody cares. Any kind of food requirement alone would demand a much slower passage of time...but, it would also demand a larger game world too, I think. It's hard to feel stranded or ill-prepared when the nearest town is a 30 second run or one fast-travel-click away (another thing; food would have to be well integrated with travel, no one wants to travel around and keep starving to death mid-trip).

My own personal food-view requires another thing suggested in the past, a stamina bar in addition to the fatigue bar. Fatigue would be the same, dropping and rising relatively quickly, and hindering general performance as it falls. The stamina bar would slow deplete over time, sped up by things like heavy activity, poison, blood loss, extreme temperatures, etcetera. The lower the stamina bar, the more slowly fatigue recovers. Stamina could be recovered by sleeping or with food, often both, as it would be a simple matter to add a check box to the rest screen letting you auto-eat something in your inventory upon resting. That alone would pretty much remove all annoyance for people who think it would be too burdensome...most people already rest for general healing far more often than they'd need to for stamina requirements. However, you'd still need to be well stocked on food for long trips, along with other supplies for harsh areas, much like needing equipment for a dungeon plunge. Add in things like spoilage, or item loss due to various environmental exposure, and you have a tactical addition without it being a constant thorn. Again, a lot of it depends on other factors; Oblivion's quests sent you back and forth all over the country because there was free teleportation. If it's not so easy, make most quests more local. The only characters who would die from hunger issues would be the ones who are, put simply, dumb. Sorry, but if you go to fight a boss with no healing items whatsoever, you deserve what you get. I wouldn't have any sympathy for people whining because they want the game to consist of nothing more than pressing the win button.

It might have something to do with me wanting the staves to work differently than they do now, I want staves to be a way to amplify/tune/channel spells you already know and can do by hand.

I also use the regen as a method to build a mage which relies on using repeatedly small spells. No regen would make an offensive mage highly reliable on the weapon, meaning it would make a less focus on character skill and more on the weapon itself. It would also make enemy mages less challenging, since you can simply wait them out, and dodge spells.

I think this sums up most of my feelings in regards to the games being too over-simplified for my personal taste. If TES gets any simpler they may actually have a 'Win Button.'

I find that most people who want rapid magika regen, unfettered fast-travel, jarringly obvious level-scaling, unlimited potions, quest compass arrows, and basically nothing at all that might slow them down from their hell-bent intent of power-gaming the quests, don't even like real role-playing games. Where not everything is flowers and sunshine, and heaven forbid you actually have to delay gratification once in a while. I don't know if they realize it or not but when they describe their perfect Elder Scrolls, it's not even an RPG anymore but rather 1st person Diablo. There is already a game like that, it's called Two Worlds... and trust me, one Two Worlds is enough for this world of ours. I don't mind that game, but no need for another.

I thought that it was a little alarming that you couldn't read any books in Fallout 3. I certainly hope you can still read books in TES:V.

However, one thing I liked in Fallout 3 was that when you held a weapon, you looked relaxed while holding it, unless you aimed it. I would prefer if, when the character is holding a weapon, that if the character is not in combat, he has a relaxed stance. But when he/she's in combat, they would enter a combat stance. That's just a minor thing though, I wouldn't care if it's not added.

Definitely. If they remove readable books in TES: V, that would be yet another example of dumbing down the game.

Ironically, I feel that is a over simplification of the situation. I will always think that difficulty should depend on the difficulty bar/setting. I also don't agree that complexity = challenge/difficulty. Something can be very simple yet extremely difficult, and something can be highly complex, yet piss easy.

Take morrowind for example, I'm at a lvl now where everything is practically a cake walk, yet I still enjoy it because of it's complexity.

I also feel that saying "If TES gets any simpler they may actually have a 'Win Button" is an underappreciation of how complex The Elder Scrolls games actually are. But that is just my humble opinion of course.

EDIT:

It would be nice if we could get the background system from Daggerfall back. And Climbing!

This is actually in response to the latest post in the speculation thread, the topic being that the Developers had a larger presence on the board until they were flamed by modders after the release of Oblivion.

Although I'm sure it's been mentioned before, my suggestion is this: Bethesda needs to actively recruit employees from the forums. There are far too many insanely talented modders who are intimately familiar with the software and the lore of TES to ignore. Some of them might be attached to their day jobs, but others I'm sure would jump at the chance.

Barring that, simply look at the mods that people are putting out and playing. Some of the most popular mods are clothing/hair mods, and while personally I don't want that kind of content to distract from quests/weapons, having a little more diversity in that area makes a more immersive game.

Mods that add factions, or at least questlines like Necromancers, or some kind of Paladins, basic stuff, as long as it is not cliche, and not represented as being as institutional as things like the Fighters/Mages guilds. Oblivion was severely lacking in the number of factions.

I mean, really, anything that has to be consistently modded in to the games by the community, barring things that are simply a matter of time such as new landmasses. The players are taking care of the executive decisions, doing Bethesda's work for them.

Definitely this. Many of the modders are programers and IT people who mod on the side. Some of the work they do is vastly superior and more imaginative than the actual employees at gamesas. If you don't believe me then start hanging around the mod forum and mod your Oblivion.

I completely understand from a programatical/mechanics standpoint that Oblivion is complex. From a simple players standpoint it's far less so. Less armor, less weapons, arrows to keep you from ever missing your quest objective, instant teleporation throughout the realm, one hour to fully recover from a complete maiming, world you can run through in 15 minutes dragging a ragtag troupe of chasing bears, wolves, and minataurs behind you like a bizzare parade, caves that contain nothing of value, ruins that contain nothing of value, locked basemants that contain nothing of value, entire houses containing nothing of value, shops that you can steal everything of value out of (ha, thought I was going to say EVERYTHING was valueless eh?) but then the proprieter acts as though nothing is wrong or strange (so much for radiant AI), this is a very brief example of why I think Oblivion from a players standpoint is being made simpler.

I agree that climbing from Daggerfall was awesome and needs to make a comeback.

I'd like to see more interesting things put underwater. Underwater caves, sunken chests, etc. There were a few sunken chests in Oblivion, but they didn't contain anything worthwhile, and besides the chests, there was no point in looking underwater. Point Lookout was a step in the right direction with all of it's sunken ships, but I want to see an underwater world with locations as varied as locations on the land are.

I'd also like to see more islands. If it's set in Skyrim, or any province with a coastline, I'd love to see islands. Large islands, small islands, even islands a few feet wide. It would make it more worthwhile to explore the coast. I was so disappointed when playing Oblivion when I saw that there were no islands in the Topal Sea, and that they didn't add Stirk to the game.



I think it should, if implemented, have degrees of complexity depending on how high your skill is. For example, at Novice you can only climb things like rocks, at Journeyman you can climb brick walls, and at Expert you can climb smooth surfaces like the sides of a house and walls.

Less armor and less weapons is a valid point, and one I hope they will correct in the next game. I still find Oblivion pretty complex on a player stand point, compared to modern games outside the TES series.



this is less of an issue for me, I agree that the quest arrow was overdone, I would have simply given you the option to set a marker. But I don't agree that fast travel is instant teleportation, that is viewing the game outside of its timeline, outside of the universe. By that standard, morrowinds striders would also be instant teleporters.

On this issue though, I wouldn't mind if say, fast travel was limited to mounts, or main roads. I would very much also like the option to view the trip, the way you can in GTAIV for http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmQt_YKnKoM.

Imagine viewing the landscape as you drive by in a carriage, or on the back of whatever creature that functions as a traveling device.

Limiting fast travel in this way will also give reason to put in mark 'n' recall again, as well as the intervention spells, although the prisons will need to be upgraded so that you can't just recall out of there. I would also like if mages or special enemies could actually follow you through a recall/intervention "gate".



I don't exactly see a problem with this, other than I would like them to interact with each other as well.



I don't particularly recognize those situations, I've found plenty of stuff that was valuable. And the part with the thieving, was that different from the other games?



Oblivion is definitely simpler in the sense of content variation. However I think it has gotten a lot of things that the previous games didn't have, stuff like actually being in the prisons, and being able to break out (don't know if this was introduced in morrowind actually, correct me if I'm wrong). The physics engine, radiant AI, companions, reintroducing of mounts, Alchemy poisons! etc.

I'll give you that more content was lost then gained, but I feel that Oblivion is generally being underrated on purpose, ignoring what it introduced for the sake of argument (not that you are doing this), and I don't find that it is as terrible as it time and time again is being portrayed as.



oh god this reminds me of something, remember the telvanni towers only being accessible via levitation? I want a complete submerged environment only accessible to argonians! or people with water breathing!

... the emphasis here should be on "some", very strongly. As much as I love modding and the modder ccommunity here, let's face it, 90% of the mods consist of boobs and crap.

I posted this in the last thread, but it was at the end:

I believe there should be more than one weapon slot for a character so that a character could have a sword at one side, a dagger on the other side, throwing knives around their waste on a belt, and their bow on their back instead of only being able to have one weapon equipped at a time. Those weapons are just examples, but I believe there should be several weapons slots so someone doesn't have to have their sword on one side, but can have a sword on the other side or on their back instead, and so several weapons can be on the player character at once, making them look cooler and more prepared for battle. In order to choose which weapon slot should be the dominant one at any time(the one that has the weapon that you are currently using), one could go their inventory menu and click on which slot they want to be the dominant one at the moment, or one could put each weapon slot on their hotkey and be able to switch in battle to a weapon from another weapon slot. This way, weapons that are hotkeyed don't have to just appear out of nowhere in battle. Instead, using the hotkey to make another weapon slot dominant would result in the player character sheathing their current weapon and unsheathing the weapon in the newly selected weapon slot. People have talked about more clothing slots, and I agree, but I also want more weapon slots.