I think that I speak for alot of people when I say that Bethesda should stop making TES so "trendy". Now they got alot of fans from oblivion, I really hope that they get back to their style. I remember when my mate first told me about Morrowind, he was like "Dude, try this game out, you can play as any character that youve seen in any rpg game before, and the game has no limits, a mage can become a master at swordfight if he want, there is no (Example): "[Thief Only] items. You can walk all over the land without any "Area Not Unlocked Yet", and join up to 8 or so guilds".

When I heard that, I coudn't wait to start my character and explore the whole game.

But when I think of Oblivion, there is really nothing that we havent seen before. I want that feeling back that made think that I havent ever playd any game like this before.

Bethesda, PLEASE come out with a bang!

I think the poison gameplay element needs expanding and refinement. For one, it really ought to be divided between poison (ingested) and venom (injected). If Bethesda wants to avoid the whole terminology issue, they could go with just "Toxin" or biotoxin.

Aside from correct terminology, poison damage should not just affect health.

I watched a few nature shows regarding the different sorts of venoms, particularly from creatures with venom that can kill humans. Some venoms are http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotoxin that block nerve impulses. This could translate into damaging attributes (like diseases) and/or damaging skills themselves. Alternately, it could affect the derived statistics (health, fatigue, magicka).

Another type of venom is a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemotoxin, which destroys blood cells and prevents blood clotting. Obviously health damage is the way to go, but I think a continuous amount of health damage proportional to damage taken would be interesting. In other words, if an envenomed/poisoned character takes damage from spells or weapons, these additional wounds would accelerate/intensify the affect of hemorrhaging. Maybe a health potion will patch your character up a bit, but it would not remove the venom, and the blood loss.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necrosis cause necrosis - perhaps these deadly venoms can result in the damage of skills or attributes (not a "drain" affect that goes away after resting, cure poison, or restore attribute/skill spell effects).

Here are more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxin#Biotoxins.

In any event, Poison/Venom/Toxin has a lot of potential to bring new elements and strategy into combat, potion making, and even ingesting ingredients. TESIV started to pick up on this with the ability to have "poison" potions that could briefly add spell effects to weapon attacks. If this aspect is brought into the new game, I would request the ability to make the poison effect last for more than a single strike against an enemy - either at full potency, or reduced potency.

They need to focus more on story and characters (characters especially) like in Bioware games (Mass Effect and Dragon Age). Mass Effect's character interaction and dialogue system would be one I would love to see in TESV, but maybe more responses then just good/evil/neutral. The character interaction and the romance was great, something that has been lacking in TES games. Plus the story with its twists/turns and its big choices.

A Great Story, Character Interaction and Depth, and the "Stranger in a Strange Land" feeling in Morrowind are all things they need to focus on in TESV.

Graphics and Gameplay are not as important, or they already have mostly down, comparitively in my opinion.

Agreed with everything mostly except gameplay since I think they still need to improve it. But yeah they definitely need to work on the story and how they present it. I was really dissapointed in the story in fallout 3 since it was short and straightforward and seemed like an afterthought. Likewise with Oblivion and even Morrowind.

Yeah, I agree they need to improve gameplay, but I don't think its first priority as much. After all, Mass Effect had not that great gameplay, but ended up being a great game (in my opinion) because of its story and characters.

But what do you mean by gameplay specifically? Its such a vague term.

I meant they don't need to make it first priority to transform it into Dark Messiah (though it might be cool).

Priorities in order should be:
1. Story
2. Characters & Character Interaction
3. Alien World
4. Gameplay

what I mean with gameplay is do things like add back skills, change the combat so its not like that system in oblivion where you hit everything even if you have a low skill, fix fast travel so it makes sense,etc....

I dont care about doing things for "immersion" (ie limited view of the screen if you're wearing a helmet). That's over excessive.

oblivions combat was good and fun...they should work on making that system fit with peoples request, and i like it this way too, were the character svcks balls at low levels...but like ive said i, i cant stand swinging away for mins not hitting anything. there has to be a medium of player skill involved in the combat. like do lots les damage, swing slower so enemies can anticipate your attacks more,these things i think would solve the complaints people have with OB's combat...and still work as well for people like me who prefer being able to atleast make contact with every blow that isnt blocked,dodged,countered...
i agree with the helmet thing!
and the fast travel, MW's system was much better, there should be a similar mode in the next game...

Here's my ideas, copied from what I posted in the Imperial Library, its quite lengthy. Hope you don't mind.



I want them to take advantage of their graphical capabilities, other than making things look shiny. I want them to add ambience. Imagine if Morrowind was updated graphically, and enemies like Ash Zombies, etc etc were given more interesting horror situations. Add more shadows. Add more ambience. Imagine walking through a sixth house cave, its dark, dimly lit by red candles. You see something run by from shadow to shadow. Some very low muttering, incomprehensible babble about sleeping, the waking eye... and about Dagoth Ur. It comes from an unknown direction -- all around you. And when you least expect it, you're tackled by a ash zombie, clawing madly at you, shrieking and babbling wildly. Something like the strength/agility stat would govern how fast you could shove it off of you while it cut away at your health. Dreamers would be at their shrines, praying to Dagoth Ur, eating flesh, slightly bloated with corprus. They turn to you, approaching you, speaking nonsensical cultist babble. Then attack you. Or something like... Ascended Sleepers. They could've been less direct fighters. They could've [censored] with your head, giving you slight hallucinations, obscuring your vision, or raising corpses of enemies you had just killed. Your intelligence/illusion/willpower stats would be the best combat against this. I know I'm talking a lot about Morrowind, but this is the sort of ambience and creepyness I want to see from the next game. Things should be epic, scary, visually, and audibly drawing you in. Less cliche outright gore like in Oblivion, less normal creatures like Bears, lions. Make scripted situations for caves and dungeons, things that you stumble upon but really give you a feeling that its unique. Not just the same as every other place. Even if you used the same tile set over and over, the lighting, the scripts, the subtleties would make all the difference. You don't even have to rely on minor fetch or cliche subquests this way, its just a stumble on an adventure sort of thing. Oblivion had somewhat of the right idea with the epic scene of the Dragon fighting Mehrunes Dagon, even if I wasn't quite fond of the main story.

Another thing I would prefer is compromise. Many people liked the text boxes which allowed more fleshed out dialogue and more information from generic or important npcs, and alot of people like voice acting. Why not combine these? Give voice acting to very important dialogue or npcs, and leave the rest to text boxes. Also.. give npcs personality for chrissakes. Every NPC seemed similiar or unreal and lifeless in their dialogue, especially their rumors. Give different voice actors, or a different 'tone' or 'style' of voice to more important npcs, keep the generic voice acting to more generic unimportant npcs, but for god sakes vary the racial voices. They should be seperate like in Morrowind, Dunmer with their gravelly unfriendly voice, Bosmer's with their annoying voice, and Altmer's with their stuffy voice. I'd prefer Fargoth's voice over the annoying generic prissy elf voice in oblivion any day.

Other than those... give more choices, more evil/grey quest choices, or just quests geared towards that.

Less LOTR rip-off feel in cyrodil. (I mean seriously, I actually checked the way the elven armor looks in LOTR, and then looked at the elven armor in oblivion, and it actually looked almost exactly the same.) More alien or at least different culture/feel than Cyrodil's unfantastical world. Or at least vary it, Vvardenfell had three different land types, the Telvanni was more lush with giant plants and various islands. Hlaalu was more of a mix of wasteland, river, and forest. Ald'ruhn was complete wasteland, with ash storms, rough terrain, and more dangerious creatures. All of the cities felt different, even if they were somewhat small. Stop portraying Oblivion like its a demon-infested hell dimension, when its filled with various realms of different types, architecture, terrain types, and strange physics and laws. If you're going to allow us to go to other realms of oblivion other than Mehrunes Dagon, at least attempt to make it look slightly different. Bring back the fantasy feeling, bring us into creative madness.

Combat-wise, keep it like Oblivion, but improve and refine it more. For magic, vary it with more effects. (See Midas Magic) and more visually epic. Melee wise, seperate the weapon and armor types again into Blade, Short Blade, Blunt, Axe, Spear, Staff, Marksman. Acknowledge the other game's armor/weapon types and materials, adding rare imports from other provinces. Add effects like Deadly Reflex, (Shield bashing, limb severing, critical hits, magic adding knock-back, complete incineration, or being completely frozen.)

Companions with personality, though I think they've already started incorporating that idea into their games, as they added such a feature in Fallout 3. Though it'd be better if it was more refined, more indepth character development rather than a mindless slave that will only say a few repeated lines.

Please. Please. Bring back factions, instead of being an insignificant little pawn that is dragged around the main quest. Allow the player to be someone again, and be involved with politics with an indepth, complex storyline regarding the factions. Give them culture, personality, and flaws. (*sigh.* I miss Redoran.) Also, if you're going to give npcs the ability to speak to each other about rumors, make sure they make sense, and are relative to what's going on recently, or give you some sort of clue or idea of something that might interest you. Not "HI. I heard someone is strange/has dogs/is a drunkard/is skilled with archery." "...I've heard the same." ... ... "GOOD BYE."

(Maybe adding more later)

The character svcked at lower weapon skill levels in Oblivion?I didnt have that problem, nor did I have the problem of spending a lot of time trying to hit stuff in Morrowind. They should add animations to show animals dodging/parrying your attacks so people who hated morrowinds combat system will complain less about there "weapons going through enemies and not hitting them".

I highly suggest the dev team watch the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Earth_%28TV_series%29 television series for inspiration. How can you go beyond reality into fantasy if you aren't familiar with reality? In other words, how can you create a believable fantasy environment if you lack an understanding of the environments present here on earth?

It is an amazing series. I've seen things I've not viewed in any other nature show, in any casual nature article, in any game, in any class room. Not just the animals, but the landscape itself, the climate. The most dramatic, the most exotic, the most extreme, the most alien parts of this planet. What better springboard for the imagination?

I just got through watching Planet Earth: Extremes "From Summit to Abyss" that I recorded last Sunday on the Discovery Channel. It has some footage I'd already seen in the Planet Earth series, but also new footage, and new narration (by Mike Rowe), and I stayed in rapt attention for the full 2 hours (minus commercial breaks) at the breathtaking footage. Some of the things I see are more fantastical than what I've seen in fantasy games.

I'm not sure what the dev team uses for creative brainstorming, but, seeing as how you can't take a casual tour of 16,000 feet below the ocean, or wander the Gobi Desert, I would suggest sitting back and taking a vicarious trip around the globe to places more exciting and beautiful than imagined.

This isn't an advertisemant, I'm just enthusing - I love learning and seeing all the amazing places and creatures on this planet. For such a long time, all you see is your own back yard, or some generic picture-book scene of a jungle or a mountain or grassland. But then you see that no two mountain ranges are the same, grasslands on one side of the globe are profoundly different from lands on the other side, and jungles are amazingly complex and varied. It makes me want to explore a place like that for real -- or in a video game!

ADD randomley generated wilderness and small/towns and villages but hand make the key cities and areas there in to give the game that massive feel daggerfall had (not as big as daggerfall dont want my pc to explode)

No thank you. I prefer Morrowind's hand-placed detail. If I want randomly generated crap, I will play DF or Oblivion.

*bangs on drum again*

I'll say it again, because I think it is a really good idea: give creatures AI packages and factions just like the NPCs. Sleeping, hunting, feeding, patrolling, foraging for the schedules, with predators in their own species' faction so that they will attack other predators and attack prey creatures. Aggression levels should translate into how likely a hostile predator will be to give an NPC, other predator, or player character a warning to back off before attacking.

That's one thing in games that is very deficient: the creature behavior. It feels like creatures' sole existences are to stand around and wait to see me, and then suicidally launch an attack on my character.

That sounds like a good idea. And it's true, creatures just stay in a specific area and circle around until they see you. Some creatures just stand still until you come by. Giving them their own AI schedule would be great, and add to the realism. A player could avoid a respawning area of creatures by traveling at night if he/she knows that they will be sleeping at that time.

Daggerfall was quite massive, but generic. I agree that hand-placed detail is better than randomly-generated detail. However, Oblivion wasn't randomly generated. What do you mean by that?

I noticed someone on here mentioned dreams. I think they should try coming up with different ones. The vampire dreams in Oblivion were the same as the ones in Morrowind, no? And instead of a block of text, show me. Give me a cut scene with the right ambiance. That would make it more terrifying.

Another idea I had was if they continue with the custom armor, I'd like to see other characters wearing it. Not half the population, of course and I completely understand why they don't do it now, but I feel like it would be a bit more realistic. I mean if the armor was that good, then other people will want some. Like I said, I understand why its not included and its not a huge must have.

EDIT: And since Daggerfall is downloadable on the pc, it would be great to add to Xbox Live, for those of us with crappy, ancient pcs with low, low memory

What would be cool in the next elder scrolls game would be to use somthing called Image metrics wich is an nextgen way to do facial animation
heres a link to show you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwAV2fXoy6E

the facial animation in oblivion was great when it came out but now the way characters stand so rigged and how there face has maybe 3 or 4 facial expressions feels really outdated
the whole way the character is animated feels outdated also. All here probebly know how you jump and the whole body squats in the air until you reach the ground. compair that to
uncharted 2 or assassins creed 2 and you just wish the animation would just be a bit more realistic
/Hainz

yeah i hated getting attacked by a lion when i was standing next to a deer

That would be so cool! You get the "resting" text, and the screen goes black, and then you wake up in the same room, but it is actually a new cell and the lighting goes all crazy and you get evil creatures trying to kill you or just jabbering gibberish... that would be so awesome if you got to experience your dreams! But, I can see how it might be difficult... what if you had to fight? Should you really have your skills improve in a dream? How do you make sure you don't lose or gain objects you drop/pick up during the dream sequence? One way around that might be FMV sequences... or, you know, videos done in 1st person, and you don't have any control over it, you just have to watch. That could be cool, too, if there were enough of them for variety.

Ok id like a few things..

Randomly generated critter dens and bandit camps that go away and pop up in different spots.

Mob gen being more random so I dont always know where something will be or how many are behind that door.

Partial and totaly random dungeons so I dont always know where everything is .. by this I mean its set at start of a new game sp if I play a new character my dungeons are at least somewhat different. That closet is now a bathroom that store room is now a guard room full of angry guards.


More outdoors and more dangerous outdoors encounters far from town.

FAR better summons.

I read that 25% of players are under 18, 50% are 18-49 and 25% are 50 or older. Average player being 31. I'm 28 myself, and I was almost 18 when I started playing TES series from TES2.

So can I kindly ask to consider making mature games for mature people, since your fans are over 18? No hand holding, no embarassing 'sixual content' aimed for teenagers, no good-evil struggle we see in fairy tales or bed time stories, but lots of challenge, ugly world in all it's realisticness, and morally HARD decision to make. 31 year olds usually go to work, and they have money to pay for games. I think most people here would be willing to pay 50-100? for a huge TES5, that has taken in consideration many of the ideas here, and is practically unplayable for minors. CRPG that salutes PnP games, and where replayability and challenge comes before pretty graphics and some nice new one-time features.


How can you stand next to a deer in the first place?

Make the world revolve around you less. In Ob, you were the only one who ever did quests, the only one who ever went into dungeons, the only one who actually went outside the city when there were supposed to be four very active guilds operating. You were the only one who ever used sneak, or stole, or bought things from shops, or used half of the spells available. Let's have a bit more of a functioning world, please (and yes, I know that there are exceptions such as City-swimmer but these are few and far between).

EDIT: And make it so that there are other strong people in the world besides yourself. There are supposed to be all these powerful warriors and mages, such as Vilena Donton and Traven, but you never see them do a thing. And in general the Ob way to make a boss fight was just to give the guy a load of health and a load of annoying enchantments. Sure, they could be hard to beat, but you never got the sense that the guy himself was strong - the worst enemy was always his buffs.

And add unique or interesting spells that can only be learnt after a certain mastery level has been achieved. In Ob, no matter what level in destruction you were you could only cast the same old fire, frost and shock spells. One might do 10 damage and the other 100, but there was no visible difference other than the change in the enemy's health bar.

How can you stand next to a deer in the first place?
[/quote]

it ran into a rock and got stuck.And the mountin lion decided to attack the level 46 full deadric warrior weilding goldbrand over a retarded stuck deer
at least that cat wasent a pussey cat

Yeah, definately make important or influenced dream playable. Imagine if instead of all the vague text we were given about Dagoth Ur's dreams, we actually played and experienced them. The ambience, the dreamyness, the nightmare and change in scenery as it goes from nice, almost pleasant, to dark, and terrifying when Dagoth Ur really does approach with malice. You have to run. Or possibly lose your sanity. This is actually an idea a friend and I planned to make a mod for to add to the original game what we think should've been in the first place, in a attempt to expand the feeling, confusion, and dread Dagoth Ur put in your mind. Expect it in the future.

That's a good idea. If I wipe out the bandits in a camp, the campsite should disappear. It doesn't make sense to have a permanent little site that bandits always come to - it makes everything so static and predictable.