Adding ways to go underground without having to enter a wooden door into a cave would be nice, Bethesda.

Imagine how fun it would be swimming in a Hot Spring and noticing a hole in the bottom. So you swim down with your water breathing spell/potions/item/racial ability, and you find something interesting... like M'aiq.

Ok, instead of my previous ideaabout the character classes. How about if you join 1 guild you are not able to join the other. Like if you join the fighters guild you cant join the mages guild untill u leave the fighters guild, or if you join the dark brother hood you cant join teh knights of the nine, untill u leave.

Maybe you could have a choice between magic and weapons, but u cant have both, or have more of 1 and less than the other.

And not be able to Max stats for 100 each.

Maybe choose your major stats and skills at character creation and only be able to max those.

You shouldnt just have a package at the game where you have a default spells. If I pick a warrior, I dont want to be able to cast any spells at the start of the game unless I actually pay for training.

Why would the Mages' Guild object to Fighters' Guild members joining? What about those who use both combat and magic(battlemages)? No Elder Scrolls game has ever placed such restrictions on people. I understand the Dark Brotherhood/KotN restrictions, but why Mages' Guild/ Fighters' Guild?

im just using that as an example. You shouldnt be able to join oposing guilds at the same time. Especially if the rules of the guild say that you arnt allowed to do things that the other guild require you to do.

Like the fighters guild tells you not to steal or get incarcerated, but the thieves guild says you must steal but not kill, and the dark brother hood says you must kill but not steal. etc.

Fame and infamy should also play a part to wheather they recruit you or gain ranks.

You shouldn't be able to join very many non-opposing guilds either. For one, they all have their own interests. For two, you can't expect to ever be promoted if you're screwing around with some other job. There's no way in hell you're going to be a leader of a guildhall, much less be in charge of all the guilds in the province if you're ranking high in two guilds.

Multiple Discs don't work so well on 360 in an open-world set up. When would you switch discs? Would you have to do an install on the rather small hard drive? It's possible, but kind of problematic.


PC and PS3 would be fine though.

Multiple disc wouldn't work on a TES type game for the 360.

Why not? One disk could contain the entire game without voice-acting, the other disc could contain voice-acting. One could install one of the discs on a 360's hard drive and have the other in to play. Why couldn't that work? People can install games on a 360's hard drive, right?

If two factions have opposing rules or are enemies (pretty much any legal group isn't going to be very welcoming to someone known as part of an illegal one), I'd rather the game react based on whether they know you're involved. It would allow extra options for things like disguises and double lives. I was always disappointed that being part of an illegal group never really felt like it. The crummy justice systems don't help either. I don't have to make sure that no one sees me using the Dark Brotherhood secret entrance. Infamy goes up even if no one knows I did something, yet at the same time, no one really cares, either. Guards never raid spots that everyone in town knows is a Thieves guild hangout, they never care that I've robbed 50 mansions and am spending a lot of time trespassing on castle grounds lately as long as I paid my fines. Most factions barely exist outside of themselves.

It wouldn't be that big a stretch to make faction relations only reach as far as the people who should know about them, instead of being public knowledge to everyone in the world the instant I do anything. It would make different behaviors, and classes if you stick to their "accurate" personalities, different experiences. The career criminal who's recognized and chased by guards, gets into fights in public and goes to jail with a lockpick and a smile on his face. The master assassin who lives as part of the nobility by day, gabbing with rich folk and running a legitimate business before going home, putting on a mask, and slipping out through a secret passage in the basemant that leads to the sewers, slitting the target's throat and returning to business the next day with a social group that has no idea who he is. The archmage, whose power is respected by all after he saves the city from some marauding beast, completely rejected by the Thieves Guild because his face is too publicly recognized. "Real" restrictions not only make it harder to be an everyman outside your class but aid in roleplaying instead of stifling it.

As far as stats, I definitely don't want reduced caps. Individual level gains should be more significant, and overall progress much slower. 100 in a skill is maximum human(oid) capability. When have you ever heard of someone who was so good at something they're not only the best in the world, they're the best who ever lived or ever will? Someone with 100 acrobatics would make your average olympic gymnast look like a zombie on roller skates. I should not reach 100 in two weeks of practice. I should start doing it as a pasttime with the *expectation* of reaching 100 eventually as if ultimate supermastery were an inevitability once you start practicing. Even as a major skill, it should be slow and difficult to attain mastery. As a minor skill, I have to go out of my way and devote myself to it. With a miscellaneous skill, I should have to train and practice considerably just to haul myself out of the range of total incompetence. If someone wants to play for hundreds of hours mastering every skill and clearing every corner of the map to become lord of the land, don't take that option away from them, but that sort of effort should be exactly what it takes for a "perfect" character. When I did similar in Morrowind or Oblivion, once I reached 100 in a weapon skill I just switched to a new one until that was maxed out too. It should not be that easy, and someone with even 50 in a combat skill should be absolutely dominant over someone with 20, not "exactly the same with a bit more damage."

Aside from more significant and slower-raising skills, something else I suggested in the past is to make increasing a skill require both experience and training. This makes sense from a realism standpoint (you need to practice a skill to fully understand what you're taught about it, and need training to know what and how to improve through application), and also helps for gameplay balance. If you need both you can't casually or "accidentally" master a skill just by using it as a support ability. A mage might train up a blade skill for self-defense up to 25, but devote themselves to magic and make no effort to become a great swordsman. Even though they regularly use the skill, it won't just continue to increase on its own to heroic levels as they swing at large numbers of low-level targets. Vice-versa, it would also prevent people from just wandering up to a trainer and buying themselves a near-instant jump in skill. With all of the above characters would be very separately defined by their chosen skills and behaviors (i.e., their class) without having to put any hard, invisible limitations on them.

This would be a great idea in my opinion. The main disc could contain TONS of content and way more dialogue than Morrowind, and would be completely playable without a hard-drive. Install the other discs, and you can get optional voice-acting.

This also makes it great for modders who can't get voice actors. If your mod doesn't have voice-acting, just suggest that people turn off their voices. Then there isn't that immersion-breaking silence.

There definitely needs to be incentives for exploration. First of all, "high level" ruins (daedric, elven, dwarven) should be rare. Finding one of those in the forest should be like finding Ankgor Wat, or King Tuts tomb. But there should be also be smaller dungeons. Secluded, sometimes abandoned villages. Old mines. Bandit caves that have a specific purpose (smuggling, slaving) Lonesome glens where deer frolic. Ancient battlefields haunted by the slain. Sometimes there should be a quest to find them, or a quest once you find them. Maybe there's no quest, just a story that you won't ever be told.

I think fast travel (especially if its the point and click type) should be restricted to destinations that are cities or large villages. Unique geography...I want hundred foot ravines. A lake the size of an inland sea. A plateau above a plain.

Animals and plants unique to certain areas, and cost for their ingredients to reflect that. If I hunt bears in the south, their pelt should be worth more in the north where there aren't any.

Same goes for arms and armor. I want orcish to be available wherever there's a large population of orcs, and have it be scarce in other places.

I want different peoples to accept different forms of currency. Maybe I can buy weapons from kahjit with moon sugar.

A lot of these ideas could be accomplished with something I brought up in a topic recently; a dynamic creation system. (I improperly labeled it "randomization". Though it is random, that isn't the intent.)

With dynamic creation, very little time and data is spent hand-placing objects into the world. Home decorations (plates, spoons, fruit, books, etc. Not furniture), items for sale, additional filler NPCs, landscape, and much more would be created on-the-spot whenever the player enters the area. It would all be based on simple political and climate maps, similarly to how Height Maps dynamically generate terrain instead of saving individual terrain models.

This would even give way to a dynamic market and political system.

Two comments:

First, rather than an overly complex damage and resistance system for armor (although what was described is probably "fairly accurate"), how about "Damage threshold" (DT_ and "damage resistance" (DR) both be used. Supposedly, New Vegas will do this. It's worth trying out there and we can reserve judgment, but...

Assuming the damage formula would be approximately: damage = (potential damage - DT)*(DR/100)

Imagine finding a suit of Dwemer armor next to a suit of Glass armor. Which do you use? Well... the Glass has a huge DR and a nice DT, but a low durability. The Dwemer has a lesser DR, but a higher DT, and more DUR. Tough choice. Maybe I know I'll be in a mudcrab gauntlet: I choose based on DT. blocking 40% of the damage or 85% doesn't matter as much as eliminating a huge amount of basic damage. Drop me in the center of 6 angry Dremora Valkynaz, and DUR and DR factor in to my preference more now. DR because they'll overwhelm DT anyway, and DUR because this situation is a threat to my armor. In this case, I may choose to wear, for example, glass greaves, boots, and gauntlets, while my helm and cuirass are Dwemer on the basis that those two parts of my body will take the worst beating, and therefore place the Glass armor at risk.

Second, time for a little math on VA. 128 kbps stereo mp3 files average 1 MB/min. For vocals, you ccould safely cut back to 64 kbps mp3 (maybe even 32). just using those figures and a quick mental calculation (it's not an exact figure, but rather an average) allows four different voice actors to each record 1024 minutes of audio and combined they will take up 1 GB, of which a single DVD allows 8.5. How much audio is 1024 minutes? About 10x what Three Dog has in Fallout 3, assuming each of his speech files is 15 seconds. As most are shorter, well... let's just say that his entire multi-pathed telecast and live conversation for the whole game... is less than 30 MB, and he talks way more than anyone else in the whole game. 30 MB times 30 NPCs still hasn't reached 12.5% of a standard dual layer DVD. Can we please stop thinking more voices will take up the whole disc, since it mathematically will not?

Even if we use multiple discs, that doesn't mean that we don't want to save disc space. More space = more content. Saving space on voice acting, where possible, is always the way to go.

Voice acting isn't the only thing that they could save disc space on.

But I don't see why this topic is so controversial. If the game's even 10% developed, they probably already have decided. It won't make things any different if we argue about it here, so the topic really should just be forgotten so we can focus on things they'd still be able to change, or add in DLC/Expansion Packs.

It's a big part of the game, though, and it wouldn't hurt your gameplay without it. Lots of us actually prefer not to have it, and that's why we'd like to not lose tons of space bacause of it.


I'm no pro, but don't they add all the data into the disc(s) after they've finished the game? If the game is actually around 90% complete, and they've kept a big secret, they could still see this suggestion, and think, hmm, that's actually not a bad idea.

but for some of us no voice acting would destroy the game. without it it's just so... depressing
granted i loved that morrowind had much more text and you could talk to NPCs about a lot more, then oblivion stopped that and instead there was less to talk about but it was all voiced

is there any compromise? through advancing technology you'd hope both would be possible in TES:V, though i know nothing about game design or what this "advancing technology" would be

The compromise is the spare, installable discs. The whole main game has to be on one disc, but Oblivion's voice files took up about half the entire disc. Take most of the voices off and you have a TON more game to play. Then on the additional discs, there would be ESP files that add the voiced dialogue to the game. The main disc could still have about the same amount of sound as Morrowind had, which is still fairly nice on its own.

If they've already spent the money on it, made the quests, set up the hours and hours and hours of sessions, told the voice actors their character's situation, signed contracts with the voice actors, and done lipsynching.
I'm highly doubting they'll just waste all that spent money.
Not saying it's impossible, nothing is. But it's improbable.


Oblivion's voice acting was bad, I'm not gonna lie. But it got better in Bethesda's games afterward. I think it was their first time trying it, so it was bound to be a little awkward, now that they have experience it should be better. They've listened to our complaints, and M'aiq will more likely than not give us an earful about voice acting because it's been discussed so much.

I can't really see much of a compromise though. I mean, you can't have semi-voice acting, like an actor saying 3 words of a sentence and the rest of it being text without somebody somewhere complaining. The whole "only important characters should be voice-acted" has some flaws as well... It's much harder to roleplay when the NPCs aren't vocal. In Fallout 3 they had a semi-compromise. They had a bunch of voice actors voice out the main characters, and the very very minor characters (meaning the townspeople) were all named "Megaton Settler" or "Tenpenny Tower Resident" and all prettymuch said the same things. But it made you apathetic, if not hateful of those random townspeople who would only say "They've only selling water to residents.". It was like auto-rumors for everybody who passed by you.

I think maybe a semi-solution is if every single character wasn't voice acted by an individual person. It's understandable where some of the townspeople would be unimportant for voice acting so they could have 4-6 people per-race voice out the dialogue choices that everybody has, for each race. That way, we can keep all of the townspeople, still be able to talk to them, and it'd take up less space than voicing out every single person... although that's pretty-much what they did in Fallout 3, except you couldn't talk to "Random Residents".

There was a discussion earlier about it. The comprimise was putting the voice files on a seperate disc. I don't see any downside to it.


What? So, because they've already payed the voice actors they can't put the files onto a seperate disc?

It's a simple write onto a disc thing, and I'm pretty sure that's done at the very end anyways.

Ohhh, I didn't see the part about writing it onto a disc, I thought you meant just getting rid of it. I was like "After all that time...?"

I don't think they'd necessarily make a separate disc for it unless they were going to fill up that other disc with new things as well. I've had to install 4 discs for a game before, so 2 discs doesn't sound that large of an amount of data anyway.

This is incredibly inaccurate. If you make a new quest you have to script it, create the character models, design the areas it takes place in, play through it again and again to test it, balance it against the rest of the game, etcetera. They do not simply appear with a couple hours of effort once you have the space for them. As was mentioned before, a single double-layer DVD can hold twice the space that Oblivion takes up. Using two discs, and three times the space as Oblivion, certainly didn't stop Mass Effect 2 from being a massive hit. The thing that prevents us from getting more content is the effort it takes to make content. I don't know why you put such emphasis on disk space. If that were the case, virtually every game with quests wouldn't have the half-finished content for a handful of quests that were never finalized either partially implemented (Uderfrykte Matron) or on the disk but inactive, taking up space doing nothing.

M'aiq should say something about banwidth, or archival space

"My trouser, the new bandwidth from everyone pulling their own way. My trousers are falling down. M'aiq says let go of my pants"

"The lore that pre-cedes the scroll of this time. It is so great. This world cannot contain it. It must be returned to where it came from."

That's a pretty grim, pessimistic view, even for me.

A good enough number of fans on this forum seem to be willing to sacrifice voice-acting for more quests, so it's worth making it known to the developers. That's the main reason for this thread: making what we want known to the developers.

I highly doubt "it's too late, we already spent the money" is going to be a decent excuse, since we've been complaining about the voice-acting, and the low quality of the voice acting, and that all the sacrifices they made for the low-quality voice-acting wasn't worth it since Oblivion first came out.

This is thread #163, Thread #130 was September of last year. Meaning, on average we have 8 months per 30 threads. If you divide 163 by 30, and then multiply that by 8, that's about 43.5 months that we've had to ask for things. Isn't 43.5 months of reading people's suggestions a little late to suddenly make a change to your plans?

That's all I'm saying. I'm being a little realistic about this. For almost 3 and 1/2 years people have been suggesting things to Bethesda about this game, and yet they made their copyright for Skyrim in... 2008? Was it?

They already knew where their main quest was going, where the game was going to take place, and probably some parts of the system they were going to need to improve, which, if memory serves me correctly, they did for a good portion of a year.
I doubt very much will change from what they have planned now, two years after they knew what direction they were heading in. Especially if an announcement is due by sometime this summer.

And still, people complain about voice acting without looking at the games Bethesda's developed since then. Fallout 3 voice acting wasn't bad at all, but people dwell on Oblivion's like it's in permanent marker that "all of the Imperial Males WILL be voiced by Wes Johnson."

There were also many more dialogue options, unique voices voiced by the same actors (even though the game had like... 52), and there was much more content in Fallout 3.

Bethesda's already done a lot, and gone far with voice acting since Oblivion.