Welcome to TES V Ideas and Suggestions # 144

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
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1061859
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1062426

I'm fundamentally opposed to a completely blank map on the principle that maps always show major cities. But... that's "real maps". Maybe you'd settle for "you know where the major cities are if you buy a real map". And that would be OK. The first quest you get, for example, could be to scraqe together some money to buy an "adventurer's kit", while there is some unowned parchment at the start. (Allows the character to record maps in the meantime). The kit would include a compass and map, a few torches, a journal, and some other "useful" gear. But until you have it, your map is blank. Utterly. Until you record stuff on it. Then, once you have the map, you know where the main cities are.

Which leads to a skill you can develop (but may not be part of the normal skill system): cartography. Think about it this way: at low levels, you note places, but not during combat. as you get higher level, you can mark places from memory (effectively allowing mapping during combat), you can mark roads, paths, and other non-map features that otherwise wouldn't be there, and then terrain information at the highest levels. Mastery would allow you to map a radius around you automagically "while you rest", sort of: you could rest or map, but not both.

Wizardry 7: Crusaders of the Dark Savant, a classic RPG from around 1992, had no map, except the one you made yourself via an in-game map-kit you could find in a chest. Once you found the map kit, you would add points to your map skill upon level up and as you got better and better at map making your map would get more and more detailed. It was a cool concept. But it only showed areas you actually traversed because in Wizardry 7 you were literally from another planet and knew nothing of your surroundings. In Morrowind you were a former prisoner who hadn't been there before and so your map was blank because you didn't know anything about anywhere. Perhaps in the next Elder Scrolls game it could be similar, where if you don't buy a detailed map, or if you don't have a map kit that you gain experience using, you will be left figuratively in the dark.

I doubt they'll do this though because it'll make the game more challenging and that is anethema to many casual gamers.

On the whole map issue here's a idea back from my "navigation" post with some added details (will post the whole thing when i'm done overworking it).

-Map details:
There should be different steps of detail for the map depending on how well it's explored.
Raw map: This map just shows some topography so mainly just mountains, valleys and rivers. This is pretty much the map you have right after starting.
First view map: When you look around the map in your visual range is automatically updated (the higher your position the better). It shows more details like main roads and bigger settlements.
Sketched map: When buying maps you can update yours with them, this map has a few more details including ones that aren't initially obvious or very hard to find so it might pay off to buy maps from time to time.
Explored map: This has the most details since you explored it going as far as showing every entrance and door you discovered. This could be updated in a radius of maybe 25 meters around you since it's everything you can see more detailed.
In the dark you can still recognize things and the map update is limited to maybe 5 meters, in TOTAL darkness it's limited to touch range (about 1 meter around you).
Details like doors are added on that view distance too but they also have to be in your line of sight so doors behind a wall are not automatically added.


-Filling out your map:
When you start the game your map is pretty much empty, it could only show the very contours of the province you're in or a raw map as described above. When first getting into the outside the map is roughly filled in depending on what you can see (first view map) and the closer area around you, maybe a radius of 25 meters during a bright day and 1 meter when it's completely dark, is filled in detailed (explored map).

That way at the very start of the game you have no infos about the game world except possibly the rough topography, main roads and the location of the major towns (probably just the county capitals). When getting a first view over the landscape you get more details like settlements up to a certain size and larger roads but they not filled in with the exact name, they just get a general one like “town”, “village”, “farm” and the like. You get the exact name when visiting them.
How far the “first view” map depends on your viewpoint, hight and how obscured your view is. When looking around in a forested valley you won't get much of your map filled out but looking down on the land from a high mountain can fill in a lot (bur only if it's not overly cloudy).

What this method can do is that you, for example, can look down from a mountain filling in a lot of land on your map with general information of what you can see, however things that are behind another mountain or too small to be seen correctly won't be added. If you have a hidden village in a mountain caldera that you couldn't look into from your position you just get the impression that it's a closed off mountain top but truly there is something hidden from view, but you could possibly catch a little glimpse of it.

I want perks but only under these conditions

1. You don't get them by leveling up

2. To obtain a perk you have to do some specific quests as a reward you get taught how to do it, this was featured in some Fallout quests like the Replicated man

My suggestion for the next ES game would be to include a fullscreen map window when you brought it up thats zoomable along with panning and filter functions.

Agreed, i actually have all that in the full suggestion (gonna repost it when it's overworked).
I really hope the mini map is back too, always having to go into the inventory to check it was just annoying.

I like that idea. Coupled with mutually exclusive factions/quests, then each character I make will really be different. I also like the idea of not just me having an impact on the world, but the world also changing my character.

I think the map debate is a very important one because for me personally playing an Elder Scrolls game should be partly an adventure of exploration. The uknown adds excitement. I am liking a lot of these suggestions. Anything is better than a pre-filled map with major cities and bodies of water already plotted.

Perhaps another idea could be for your PC to have an essentially blank map; basically a map that only has the immediate region you're being released to (assuming you're a prisoner or refugee or some such Elder Scrolls type thing). Using that map as a basis you could talk to people, visit a cartographer, explore etc... in order to augment your map. Entire maps of the province would be rare, expensive and not necessarily very accurate. As the game goes on your map gets more and more accurate. Shoot, building the accurate map would be practically a side-quest all it's own, one that runs for quite a while until you feel comfortable that your map won't fail you. The more quests you get (let me mark that on your map), the more money you pay cartographers, or the more you build your map skill and explore, the better your map.

Things from Fallout 3 that need to be fixed:

• Movement seems clunky.
  
• NPC and creature movement is very rigid sometimes, and they strangely vibrate while moving. Movement of NPCs and creatures looks especially unnatural when they run around a corner.
  
• The running animation starts a bit off, and ends a bit off as well, as it doesn't sinc with actually moving forward. It looks strange.
  
• NPCs tell you to "knock it off" when you bump even the slightest into an object. There should be a requirement on how much the object moves from bumping into it to trigger an NPC to say "knock it off".
  
• NPCs overall still act unnatural during conversation. There does not seem to be any emotion.
  
• NPCs cannot properly trigger things. For example, an NPC trying to run away from Rivet City cannot cross the bridge when it is not in place to enter or leave. They continually run along the edge of Rivet City waiting for the player character to activate the bridge.

The only thing i don't really like about "you have to visit cartagrophers / have to buy maps / need people to tell you" is it makes you dependant on NPCs just for filling your map. I think something like that sohuld be character driven instead of depending on other NPCs.

One thing i always say is most of the map like the interactive markers are actually in the characters head, the mini map is him "imagining" what the area around him looks like on the map.

Here's a random thought I'm neither advocating nor condemning; what about the idea of perks being integrated into advantages/disadvantages at character creation? It's the only angle that comes to mind that doesn't have the inevitable end of a character having all of them and thus ending the same as every other character, and it's equally "natural" to learning them directly from the game world. While most advantages are broader, perks would be more specific options like a small speed boost to sword swings in exchange for slower increase rate/penalty to other skills, that sort of thing. If you don't want your level 1 character to start with all of them, maybe you could crank up the minimum skill level to use them in exchange for smaller cost or something. Since you're choosing them, it's not so much an arbitrary "ability from nowhere" like in Oblivion, but instead the character you planned to build as a master swordsman (but didn't want to begin as such) developing into just that.

I'm not looking to instigate a fast travel debate, but I have to express my opinion on this:

I just got Morrowind a few days ago, and I've been exploring a bit. Before I got the game, I thought I would feel like Vvardenfell was tiny in comparison to Cyrodiil. But I was wrong. It feels much, much bigger than Cyrodiil did. The reason is because I'm forced to walk everywhere. It's a pain in the ass, for sure, but it really makes me feel as if there's an actual game world, and not just a bunch of fast travel markers seperated only by how fast I can drag my map. In Oblivion, I almost never walked from city to city, because I could just teleport there. But that meant that while I certainly knew how far it was from, say, Bruma to Anvil, I never actually experienced how far apart they were. If I couldn't fast travel in Oblivion, Cyrodiil would have felt much bigger to me than it did.

That's why I think TESV shouldn't have fast travel. Though it's just my opinion, of course.

:nod:
This is what I and others have been trying to communicate to the proponents of Oblivion-style fast travel for a very long time. Glad to see you are enjoying the overall experience and feeling.
The ability to turn off distance on a wide scale has serious repercussions for the game world.

i think thats a good idea that you can add things to the map depending on your sight range an extra thing could be that different races should get different advantages from this like khajits and wood elves should get extra sight range khajits are supposed to have better eyes than other races and wood elves grow up being able to use bows so they have to be able to see far

On the topic of maps, what if it let you manually fill out the map yourself? The map would start off completely blank, and you'd be able to add a permanent marker whenever you pleased. If you found a town, instead of the marker instantly appearing on your map, you could put one there yourself, wherever you want, and call it whatever you want. If you found an unmarked cave, you could put your own mark on the map for it.

I don't know how hard that would be to implement though. :shrug:

In Arena and Daggerfall, you could write on your local maps, and they brought that back in Tribunal. It'd be a little red box that, when highlighted over, would show whatever notes you had made. And if you switched to your world map and hovered over the square where notes were made, it would show them all. But the world map itself wouldn't give any visual indication of where the local map notes were.

If they could change that to allow the world and local maps to hold notes, I would be one happy panda. The one definition-less marker that the player can set pales in comparison.

There actually is a relatively easy method this could be done and way modded into Oblivion, when you place a marker on your map it simply drops a invisible object in the game world the marker is associated to thus showing up on your map at the coresponding location.

I was severely dissapointed by the lack of mudcrab themed gear, quests and events in Oblivion

I think the idea of perks as quest rewards could be really well implemented. On the map subject - it really depends on what type of world you're in. I like the idea of the auto map, and I would love to see the old 'make your own map notes' return from previous games. I think you should be able to buy map segements to augment your map so that when you arrive in a town or city, people can suggest certain places to visit and those locations would appear on your map. FO3 did this to some extent and it worked well. FO3 had a number of other changes that I really liked. The biggest one was the fact that locations appeared as only that: Locations. You couldn't tell from a distance that the unknown location was a dungeon or whatever. In Oblivion I found myself avoiding undiscovered locations because the game would tell me what they were from afar. Also, since so much of Oblivion was random and pointless I didn't feel any need to go to places. In all, Fallout makes me hopeful for TES5

:thumbsup: Good thinking.

A little suggestion, whoever made the concept drawings back for Morrowind, especially for the elves, THEY'RE AWESOME.
BETH... you have those drawings... why don't you try to stick to them, they're GREAT and actualyl make the races look unique.

Personally i wouldn't mind if they go more stylish than realistic.

In addition, you should start out with 3 pre-chosen perks, as a part of describing the background of your character.

But then again, they could simply allow the return of a redone advantages/disadvantages system for beginning the game, then you collect perks as you go along. Advantages/disadvantages describe one's character's background and special individual quirks (such as building muscle mass quickly, but maybe also find it difficult to learn), while perks describe their skills and how things learn throughout their quests.

The ability to actually write things on parchment. Things such as recipes for potions, notes on quests and directions to certain places would be very useful. Also, I want to be able to drop septims again.

• Make alternate routes for quests, and especially the main quest. For example, I thought up an idea for the mainquest of Oblivion that would have really added something. It was: instead of giving the Amulet of Kings to Jauffre, you decide to sell it to the highest bidder. Perhaps some sort of thief warlord. That would bring up all sorts of amazing complications.