Bethesda, in TESV, I would LOVE it if you guys could put in a Sload... just one little Sload... or more than one...

I just want to have concrete evidence that Thras has actually resurfaced. In the PGE, it says it was sunk, but there were rumors of it surfacing again. In the PGE 3, it says that "recent maps" have been made of the islands, so I assume it really has resurfaced. But I just want to know for sure.

I know it would seem rather odd that a Sload would be in Skyrim, but they do have airships so it's not like they couldn't get there. The Sload are one of my favorite races, I'd just like to actually see one created with modern graphics (besides N'Gasta).



I really like that idea. :goodjob:

DLC should be free, I mean it's all a part of the game I paid for, so why should I have to keep paying for stuff that should have been included when I bought my copy.

Stephen.

because people are willing to buy it no matter how absurd or overpriced it is.

I agree that is should be free. Sadly, it's not. If it was free, game companies probably wouldn't even bother making DLC. As an Elder Scrolls fan, I feel that if DLC is available, I must have it.

Saying DLC should be free is like saying Bethesda should just give away parts of the entire game for free as well. They spend time and money making the game, and they spend time and money making the DLC for the game. Some DLC like horse armor should be free, yes, but DLC like KotN and Shivering Isles can't be free and shouldn't be free as they cost Bethesda lots of money to make. Believe it or not, but most DLC is thought of after the game is released, or so late in the development process that they can't add it in. So instead of screwing over their fans and delaying the game to add it in, they release it as a DLC and make some well earned money off of it. My point is, the majority, if not all, of the DLC should not be free.

I completely agree with this.

It makes me euphoric to have more setting intensive culture.

I want to see far more monsters/creatures in TES:V
In Oblivion I believe we had 20 something different creatures. The problem was at the end of the game in particular due to the level scaling you would only see around 8-10 different creatures. I would like them to go for somewhere more around 50-70 creatures I know thats a mammoth undertaking but it'll be worth it.

• I want it to feel like a living world:
  
• I want to see herins wading in the water actually catching fish not just an animation pretending to catch fish.
  
• I want bears and seasonal hibernation.
  
• I want birds that migrate seasonally.
  
• I want animals to mate and for new young to be born and grow.

I like how they added new content in expansion packs instead of hyphenating it all into DLC that are sold separately at prices that don't make sense. If I remember correctly Bethseda said they wanted to stop making expansions and just do DLC.

The levitation proposal, from someone who isn't a particular fan of it:

1. Levitation is a blockable spell. That is, the magics of levitation can easily be disrupted by a static field.

2. Thus, there are levitation-free zones where jumping and running and climbing skills STILL MATTER.

3. Levitation's planar speed is no longer dependant on magnitude of the spell, solely on either Speed, the controlling stat for Alteration, or Alteration itself.

4. Levitation's maximum altitude and ascent speed are determined by magnitude. Thus, a low magnitude levitation spell with a long duration has one usage, but a high magnitude spell of limited duration has quite another purpose.

5. There should also be harmonizing fields. These would be similar to Telvanni towers: places where levitation spells work better, rather than not at all (but levitation needs to be active for there to be any effect!)

6. Both #2 and #6 should be widely used effects, and should occasionally be featured where the other is the more desirable effect (thieves should occasionally have to make use of levitation, whether through potion or spell to be the ultimate thief, while mages should occasionally have to rely on natural ability and non-levitation to "solve everything" mage-y).

That said, I can live without levitation quite well.

DLCs are fine, but so are expansions. For me, the best kind of DLC is something like Point Lookout, because not only does it provide another storyline, it's large enough, and built up enough, to also provide some exploration. What I'd like to get away from are the kind of DLCs taht Bioware are putting out for Dragon Age, like that Shale thing. It came included in the game I purchased, but i would have been somewhat miffed had I purchased it separately.

I only played Oblivion, but I really hated the dungeons. Everything looked samey samey. I mean I think they need vary the locations and dungeons. Also I hope they can do more with underwater this time around.

I agree with another poster who said long hard dungeons should have good loot.

http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?s=&showtopic=1066138&view=findpost&p=15507566

That was from another thread, and I would like to add another layer to it, having not just white ansd grey, but all shades, and not only that, have which you are be determined by the player and not some meter. Morrowind was good at this in the side quests, if not the main quest, and it rocked. Also, don't have questlines be by nature good evil or neutral like Oblivion. Give each quest multiple ways out.

I am interested in this point of view, could you expand a bit and give examples of what you mean? I have little to no idea what you're trying to say here.

Personally I don't mind the evil meter, it gives a gague as to your previous actions. I also like the page on the menu that lists all the things you've done, I'd like it to list pretty much everything that is possible to do in the game so that I can look back and think to myself something to the effect of 'maybe I could go and kill a few more guards' or 'I'm on the straight and narrow, it's been five months and I haven't killed a single innocent'.

Another thing that bugged me about Morrowind and Oblivion is that when you cure yourself of lycanthropy or vampirism you can't go back. I want to be able to cure myself and then get bitten again so that I don't have to stay a vampire the whole time if I want to experience being a human and then get back to being a vampire later.

Stephen.

Some of the caves and dungeons in Oblivion told little stories of their own about the former, or current inhabitants, I would really like to see more of this.

Well, the DLC can't all be free, but nothing gives me a warm fuzzy feeling faster than having a Game Developing company reward me for having bought their game and supported them. I bought ALL the DLC for Oblivion even though I knew that the horse armor dlc was pretty much useless. Throwing a bone now and then to the fans is a good thing.

In TesV I'd like to see:

Expanded dungeons that make a bit more sense with regards to layout. Possibly with mini stories or rewards/tomes that flesh out the plot which aren't needed to complete the game.

More varied terrain features. As others have mentioned Morrowind really shined in this area.

Ability to turn the handholding compass feature off. (If it's there in Oblivion I never noticed it)

Not every character should be able to become a master of every skill, and belonging to certain factions should exempt you from being able to join other factions.

Really re-tweak the leveling system. It's the feature about Oblivion that I can't stand.

I had more but I can't find the list I made. Also, I read about 3 of these suggestion threads...there's no way I can read all 147 other ones though. Sorry.

As far as I know, there is no way anyone can read the last 147 threads, it seems to cut off about 40 threads back, I tried reading the 139th post on thread 98 as someone made the comment that they strongly disagree with it...

Stephen.

The problem of “Good and Evil”:

A big problem when trying to make a “good and evil” system is, what do you define as evil and what as good.
Imagine this scenario, you murder a random person on the street in cold blood, you never met that person and he never did anything to you. But it later turns out that person was the leader of a criminal organization that planned several murders, robberies and is responsible for severe damage.
Should the game count that murder as good or as evil?

You simply can't tell for sure, the only thing you CAN say however is that if people observed the murder they will look at you with different eyes now and in the eyes of the law you DID commit a murder no matter who the person was. Even if you knew that person to be what he really is it wouldn't pull your head out of the sling that easily, people might sympathize with you but in the eyes of the law you're still just a murderer.


That's why instead of a good and evil system there needs to be more of a “social judgment” and a “law judgment”.

Social judgment is what people think of you, with the murder example above, when you murdered somebody everyone hated for good reasons (not just being an outcast but a real bastard) but had no way to deal with some people will consider you a “hero of the people” so to say. However what you did was still a crime in the eyes of the law and you likely get arrested.
Here the NPCs connection to what happened and their own personality play the biggest role how they will react. Someone who's very emotional or has a close connection to the murdered person is likely to react more than someone unaffected.

Law judgment comes into play when you violated the code of law, here some things that could be called socially unacceptable can happen. For example someone who's actually “innocent” or maybe a well loved member of a town somehow got into attacking you and you kill him in self defense, may it be accidental, because you had to or you DID aim to kill him once he attacked you. Here the people who liked him, his family and people who witnessed it will treat you differently, however in the eyes of the law what you did was fully justified and the worst you may get is one day in prison for questioning.
Here the personalities play a more minor role, they still play into it but it's a hard written code of law that dictates it. There might be some who still manage to get you imprisoned even if you where actually innocent, like when you already built up a bad reputation.

However, while largely separate factors both can interact, if people like or don't like you they can give false testimony to either help or get you into trouble. This largely depends on their personality though, someone who's very lawful won't lie even if he hates your guts.


A third instance playing into this is “Religious judgment”, sometimes what a belief dictates can be far different from what the law says. It's more like a communal social judgment as it also dictates what people think of you much more than the law. The big difference is which comes first, the law or religion and it can even differ from location to location.
In a highly religious society it could be possible that you kill someone but don't get arrested because he was considered a heretic or of a “bad belief” there, hell some people might even compliment or reward you. However trying that at a town in another region where the law comes first it doesn't matter, even if members of said religions are present or even a majority. What can happen though is that they try to cover such things up.

And this leads into rivaling beliefs, some things might be OK in one area but are considered a crime in other.


The code of law could actually come in 2 parts, the “imperial code of law” which is the same everywhere and all guards have to follow it and the “regional code of law” that can differ between regions. Walking around naked in the streets of one town might just be considered an annoyance or even as nothing bad (Tribal Argonian village for example) while in another it gets you a painful fine or a few days in prison.


On Good end Evil though, what should happen if you commit a murder and nobody ever found out about it? Should there still be some kinda of karma system or divine judgment that says “you're a bad person” and make people suddenly look at you different?
I'd say in game you should be able to commit murders as much as you want, as long as nobody notices it you're fine. The only drawback would be that you potentially kill people that COULD become useful for you later on and, when more and more people vanish without explanation, people get more suspicious and nervous which can make some things harder (or easier, depends).

It's all about how well you can cover your traces, do it well and you're OK. Become sloppy and you might have agents on your trail watching your moves. Get caught and prepare for a looong prison sentence or execution.
But still, where there's no witness there's no trial.

In the end, as long as the characters personality is dependent on the player, only the player should judge if a decision was good or bad. Everything else is not karma but consequence of actions.

As always, very nice, I'd love to see a system similar to this, it'd add a lot of personality to the gameworld and the different groups of people. It'd be great if the people only upheld the systems that they adhered to as well - so characters who were of friendly with certain factions, or otherwise reknowned for controvertial deeds could end up getting attacked randomly by the guards, and possibly some of the more agressive civilians, if they went into the wrong place.

Well, the crossbows in Morrowind were butt ugly. Crossbows (called by various names throughout the world) are pretty old. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_crossbows, the Greeks were using them in the 5th century B.C. So, yeah, it isn't unreasonable to expect denizens on Nirn to also develop such a device, considering that the crossbow appears in cultures all over our world.

I don't know if I'd use any morality "system" at all, really. Make faction relations more complex, and make them actually mean something, and that should more or less cover everything. Murder that really hated person, and "Bruma commoners" or whatever might like you more because he was a scourge to them, but it still goes in your criminal record. If people's opinions can be tied to multiple factions, it would allow for just about any reaction. A group of people might be more tolerant in general toward necromancers, but individuals from that group who are also worshippers of Arkay, not so much. As it is now poor faction relations don't mean much more than a less-friendly greeting, but if it could degenerate into things like yelling in the street, thrown rocks, being refused business, etc, it could allow for real consequences. If you do things that are considered "evil" by people, you'll see the results of it. If I badly anger a specific god with covert acts, average people may not have anything relevant to say to me, but I might wind up targeted by that church or burst into flames when I step into their holy ground. I don't need the game telling me how many generic "evil points" I've gathered, or to have virtually everyone in the world somehow have a universal reaction for what I've done.

That's what i wanted to get to, instad of there being something like a universal "people like me/don't like me" value it depends on how people see you and what they know about you.
I really wanna see as little divine involvement as possible really, if there really where gods watching everything that world wouldn't need any judges or laws.

Yeah, I'd rather it be mostly limited to when you do something to directly invoke a deity's wrath/favor. If you make a zombie out in the wilderness, nobody cares. If you march into some shrine to Meridia and stab the high priest and turn his corpse into an undead, you're asking for trouble. Something I'd considered in the past is that it's part of how the game decides luck (since being able to manually increase it makes no sense).

• Don't waste dialogue and voice-acting by making another topic that repeats what the NPC just told you. For example, an NPC gives you a quest with directions. After speaking about this, you can speak to the NPC again about, "What am I supposed to do?" The NPC will repeat the same thing that was already explained, but not with the same exact piece of dialogue. I could notice this in Fallout 3. Don't do it again.
  
• Make ESV class-centric. For example, if you chose no skills in magic, you should not be able to cast any spells. You'll have to train/increase intelligence to learn spells and gain magicka for it.
  
• Deadlier diseases.
  
• Require bottles for creating potions, the more ingredients in your potion- the more potent it is. Potions with only one or two ingredients won't be very potent and not as valued. Doing all this, combined with a more challenging world will cause the player character not to use alchemy just to sell potions, but to use alchemy to actually USE the potions you make.

I did a bit of research last night to understand the 12 alignment system that a lot of WRPGs use and this sounds a lot similiar to that system thats already in place.