Choices and outcomes:

OK I really have a bone to pick here.
In a game that glorifies itself with “choices”, how come we don't get any REAL choices? At least not where a choice would have not only been SIMPLE to implement but also where it would have actually felt like you did something?

Why are those my peeves? Let me give you some examples:

Example 1 - The Leyawiin Mages Guild recommendation quest:
Short summary, you have to find a replacement for the stolen medallion of the local mages guild leader which keeps her psychic powers under control, otherwise she'll go insane and has to resign from her position.
As you find it one of the mages guild members suddenly storms in and tells you he stole the original medallion because he wanted her to resign because in his opinion if the medallion is the only thing that keeps her sane she wouldn't be a good leader. I actually kinda agreed on his point there.

Now the options that could open from here on could be:
A: You tell him you'll keep everything a secret and wait till she resigned, then he can help you get the recommendation, you could do this for the pure good of the mages guild but also to blackmail him later on.

B: You snap him out of it somehow, be that with talking him out of it or fist to the face :slap: and give him a choice, you return the medallion and keep everything that happened a secret so he won't have to fear punishment OR you convince him to confess what he did but promise to stand up and defend him and his motives. Doing this could maybe move something that NEEDS to get moving.

C: You knock him out and take the medallion back. You can either tell everyone what happened so he has to face the punishment when he returns (depending also on how you presented his motives), or you simply remain quiet about it and when he comes back he just has to explain how he got the black eye. Again you could later try to convince him to clear up everything, again maybe offering your support, or you can blackmail him (or of course forget the whole thing).

D: You just kill him. :gun:

Guess how many and which of those paths you could chose from in Oblivion?
If your answer is 1 and D you're sadly correct.


This especially annoyed me because he actually had a point, I didn't agree with his method but his argument wasn't that bad.
And also doing different outcomes for this mission wouldn't have required much, a few lines of dialog and it would be done. It wouldn't have affected the game world and the story in any big way so saying “it would have forced us to rewrite everything” is out of the question. Here you where simply railroaded in something that could have very well ended better.



Example 2 – Find the lost husband:
Short summary, A old lady in Bravil asks you to find her lost husband, after asking around a bit you find him on a small island but you learn it's a trap and you're now in a manhunt. To escape you have to make your way through a dungeon and and find something, he waits outside since he'd only hinder you (hey smart NPC!).
When you make it through and return outside you see he suddenly get attacked by the organizer of the manhunt, you want to pull your weapon and aid him... only to find someone has glued your feet to the ground, yes you can't move till the guy drops dead.

To put this in a well worded and short expression... WHHHHYYYYYY? :banghead:

Storming over there and attacking the Organizer before he killed the other guy would have taken maybe 2 seconds, you could have pulled your bow and nailed him to a wall... but no, you're stuck to the ground and have to see that guy get slaughtered leaving your only option to return and tell the wife about his tragic death leaving her rubber face with something that's supposed to look sad.

Again, doing an alternate outcome where you can SAVE HIM wouldn't have required that much. Hell it would have maybe required 3 – 4 lines of dialog
-“You're save, I was so worried about you”
-“Our friend here saved my life”
-“Thank you so much for saving him, here take this #insert random reward#, we will thank you forever”
Happy End! :hugs:

And AGAIN, it wouldn't have altered the games storyline in any way, they're not even important characters later on. So why railroad it in such a way?



Well OK, on the first example you could say “he performed a crime, he HAD to be punished, that's the games morality”. OK, weak but I grant you that... BUT that makes me boil up even more with:

Example 3 – The Countess of Leyawiin:
... WHY couldn't I punish that RACIST, MURDERING, MEAN and DISGUSTING [censored] in anyway??? :flame:
She has a frigging TORTURE CHAMBER FOR ARGONIANS in the basemant of her castle, people KNOW about it, I had to got THROUGH it :swear: ... WHY CAN'T I GET HER PUNISHED?!?!?! :nuke:

... OK, calm down...

What makes it worse, for most of the game she's marked as essential, yes you can't even kill her.
Oh, you get a quest that ridicules her, what a punishment...

Seriously, there should have been a mission to get her exposed and thrown off her throne, there should have been a way to use Wabbajack or a Illusion spell to make her an Argonian and then thrown in her own torture chamber, you could have prayed to the Night Mother to assassinate her, but no.
In the high morals of the game she gets away unpunished. Yes I did alter her in the construction set to be no longer essential and back stabbed her many many times. But that didn't really give off a good satisfaction, there should have been something and it was missing.
While in this point it would have sliiiiightly inflicted with the storyline it could have been easily fixed by having a successor to her throne.



So yes, so much on my little rant on actually being able to chose and influence.
And I mean ACTUAL choices, decisions that can make a difference but also that are not necessarily storyline altering. And even there you could find anchor points where you can make a different decision and still end up on the same or at least nearly same path.
Those 3 “items” are just a small example of where there could have been done more. I'd have a few more ideas here and there but many would have called for a drastic storyline alteration (for example, being able to follow Mankar Cameron into his portal as he opens it and try to take the Amulet of Kings back this way. Hell they could have made following him possible but not getting the Amulet, that would at least have been a interesting “attempt”).






For those that skipped over all this:

TL – DR SUMMARY:
There are quite a few quests where you should have been able to chose something or at least alter the outcome but you couldn't.
In most cases this wouldn't have demanded much and added a lot.

Missed opportunity. :meh:

I think the easiest way to present moral choices is by first creating choices that actually challenge our fundamental sense of morality. I think Mass Effect did this very well, although it is hard for a game series like TES to do this because we spend so little time with individual characters. The reason you feel bad about killing a teammate off in Mass Effect is because they have extensive background and character depth that you get interested in. I don't care about more than 99.99% of characters in a TES game because they've all got so little background. I've got nothing to sympathize with or to hate. Anyways, the choices need to be taxing because they cause so many different problems of their own and you've got to pick what you think is better for everyone, some specific people, a specific person, or yourself. I think the Fallout 3 example with kidnapping the girl to save the slaves was an excellent one. Shades of gray work well.

Another way, that should, in my opinion, accompany the first way, is to, instead of using morality bars, use faction bars as in Daggerfall (the video also mentioned this). As you do actions, some factions will come to dislike, hate, or totally despise your existence, while other factions will like you. And it doesn't have to be 1 to 1, either. An action like assassinating a beloved count may make the Dark Brotherhood greatly like you, while most other factions in the province will absolutely hate you.

This can be combined with the fame/infamy system, as well. However, before we get into that, I'd like to make some changes to the fame/infamy system. It needs another axis: Publicity/Obscurity, although this wording would need the fame/infamy words to be changed, but lets not get into that. Basically, a thief might be infamous and have tons of publicity if they stole from a count in public with all to watch. However, if they stole from him during the stealth of night then that particular thief would be very infamous, but be rather obscure. In this sense, the bar only describes you rather than applies to you, because someone speaking to you would know about the famous "Thief of Count Guybrush Threepwood" but not know that you yourself were him. The same applies to famous obscurity. "The Knight of Kvatch rode into the Oblivion gate and returned victorious. But no one saw his, or her face. They seemed to have wondered off. Very humble of them, I might add." This person would be both famous and obscure. Obscurity is nice because it allows a person to remain anonymous, but it also does not allow them much, if any, personal gain from their actions, unless they were extremely provoking (such as an assassination that incites a riot). Publicity is nice because it allows recognition and reward, but also ridicule, attack, attempts of assassination, and rebuke from the law.

Basically, we just need a different axis by witch to measure our moral actions. Currently, those actions are measured against ourselves (Karma, Paragon/Renegade, etc), when they should be measured against all others (fame/infamy, faction respect/disrespect, etc). Essentially, morals should not be measured inwards but instead outwards. I can help the dying man on the street, but the gang who just took the time of day to try and kill him probably aren't going to like me.

Personally I'd do away with the whole morality system as a whole and work on a "individual relationship" based system. They kinda has the starting point with every single NPC having a different disposition towards you, but the problem there is it only is how much they LIKE you.
There would be need for a few more factors, how much the hate or like you, how much the fear or trust you and how much they despise or respect you. Combination of those 3 (6 actually) factors can change how a NPC reacts to you.
Further the NPCs would need a "personality basis" but this wouldn't be that big of a problem really. It's just a list of factors with different values, depending on how they view your action OR get informed about them in a way they react differently.


Also morality systems often run into a bad corner. Here's a dilemma:
You murder a random person in cold blood on the streets, later it turns out that he was the head of a criminal organization. Should the game reward you with GOOD points for killing a dangerous criminal or with BAD points for a cold blood murder?
OR should it not give out any points but have the people who witnessed it be horrified and you're throw into jail, the later revelation kinda softening the blow for SOME people but it won't get you off your prison sentence and they will still think you're a monster?

I go for the "no points but CONSEQUENCES" answer.

Lastly, if nobody saw it, nobody heard it and it was without any witness it should not count into anything. NO DIVINE REVELATION OR PSYCHIC GUARDS PLEASE.

Fallout had quests where you could go off your morals almost every single time.

Hopefully the fact that Oblivion was their first game with the new engine and new gen software, they couldn't emphasise choices. I really hope they do in the next installment.

But, see, that is why what I was talking about is very similar to what you are talking about. As I said, the fame/infamy/publicity/obscurity thing is an outward measure, rather than an inward measure. It does not measure you, but what others think of you (or a persona that is you but they just don't know it). However, you are correct that individuals need individual opinions, which is why your actions would have varrying effects with each organization. In fact, why not combine the faction bar and FIPO (short for fame/infamy/publicity/obscurity) axis?

Each faction will have a FIPO axis. When you take an action, each faction gets their own change. You might become infamous with the guards when you kill the count, but the underground organizations will have you become famous. At the same time, if those in the underground are later informed by you that you did the crime, then you will become publicized with them, but not to everyone else. Also not that factions hating you can not work unless you have some form of public exposure, which means the guards can't sneer at you when you walk by unless they know you did it. If the publicity axis was maxed out, then everyone in that faction would know you committed the crime. Lets look at it like this: You steal money from a person in the sight of one guard. He now knows you did it. The axis of publicity bumps up one tiny smidge to represent one guard knowing about it. When he arrests you and takes you to the jail, a few more guards learn about the crime. If they were to suddenly drop dead, then you'd be free to go because no other guard knows about the crime. On the flip side, if you just killed the count of dukku, then every guard in the city is liable to know. Word is extremely likely to spread by civilians and guards to other cities that the count was killed by you. Publicity reaches huge levels.

The same applies for obscurity, in a bit of backwards sense.

We need a 3-d grid to determain NPC disposition.
X axis is Faction relation
Y axis is the NPC's faction relation (a Hlaalu miner cares less about politics that the Grandmaster)
Z is Personality.

Ahh I see, your system is more on the "spread" of informations.
Yea it could work that way, it may need some finer tuning here and there like how accessible a location is (some hermit who had no contact with the outside for 50 years won't know who you are even if you're a mass murdering psychopath). That way a crime committed on one side of the nation might still be unheard of on the other, and if it wasn't anything world moving it will likely die down along the way.

Having such a system overlaying for factions is a good idea, a faction itself might not accept you but that doesn't mean individual members of the guild can't like you or the other way around you're accepted by guild standards but the people there hate you.
I kinda had a thought in that direction as well, binding certain groups by a "relation value", like being members of the same family, religion, guild, organization, town etc. All this would alter how certain infos spread among them and how they react to them, but also the individual relation between persons still matter.
Killing the drunken bastard of the family might be a relief to the other family members in one way but the same time would be a "shock" to the family that one of their people was killed ending in no clear positive or negative.

Also on consequences, even unpunished murders and even never finding the body can have a effect, like people in the community it happens in becoming more paranoid and the guards more aggressive to petty crimes. That way there's no "karmic punishment" but it can make other things harder since guards will have more an eye on what happens, act stricter on smaller inflictions and people are harder to convince.

The video you provided was very eye opening for me, moral choices with no clear good or bad choice are cruicial to a realistic and believable moral system. What I think Bethesda needs to do first is to completely remake the law functionality and information flow, like already stated "NO DIVINE REVELATION OR PSYCHIC GUARDS PLEASE." all knowing guards no scratch that all knowing ANYTHING is no go the information flow should be simply centered around visual conformation of the act or some1 else seeing it and reporting it (rumor or reporting a crime), from there you can take it further like: if the NPC likes you enough he won't report the crime he saw you commit (this demands a complete remake of the personal relations issue) this ofcourse depending on the severity of the crime and how much he liked the victim.

Basically the game screams for a completely new individual and group relations model

Neither am I saying that. I was using an example to highlight the fact that, as someone pointed out earlier, the Jack of All Trades 'class' also means SPECIALIST in none. The whole point of the argument being that we avoid the situation where at higher levels one character is pretty much interchangeable with another as all are good at virtually everything. To me, at least, that isn't 'roleplaying'....

No, if anything YOU are impying that TES has been doing it wrong, from Arena - Morrowind. sure, some to less of an extent than others, but it was always at least a challenge to do everything. Oblivion was the only one where it was easy to be good at everything.

Perhaps I am missing the point, but I don't see why this is being debated. Among the many things Rhekarid has said (paraphrased):
Just make levelling up much slower. Even major and minor skills would level quite a bit slower, while misc skills would level drastically slower. If they did it right, by the time you've finished all the quests and explored every character perhaps 1/2 - 3/4 (or maybe all of them, if you strategized hard enough) skills would be mastered. But that's pouring hundreds of hours into one character. Most people wouldn't play that much with one character anyway, and if you don't want to master your misc skills.. Then don't.
For magic, you could need to be level 25 in the particular school of magic before you can even cast spells. That way you still have the potential to be a mage but you would need to pour the time and money into finding books and training.

Maybe I oversimplified the issue, but I don't even see the issue because if I don't want to be a JOAT character, I simply choose not to train and practice skills that I don't want.
EDIT: Factions: bring back skill requirements for joining and getting promoted, but make them much more drastic so you really have to specialize in a particular skillset, and no other, to advance in the guild.

No, not really. Increasing all skills to 100 in Morrowind is very easy. In Daggerfall, it wasn't as easy as it is in Morrowind and Oblivion, but it is still possible. In Arena, your class determines every item you use and whether you can use spells or not. So, since Daggerfall, anyone can be a jack of all trades, and, in Morrowind and Oblivion, it is easy. There is no more challenge in becoming a master of everything in Morrowind than there is in Oblivion and Morrowind's easiness isn't comparable to Arena's or Daggerfall's. Morrowind is an easy game.

About skill-level caps:

No one knows better than you what is right for your character. You expect others to respect your judgement concerning your character. Yet some of us, though we mean well, do not extend that same courtesy to others. We expect others to limit their characters as we dictate.

The best thing for Bethesda to do with level caps would be to give players the freedom to set their own skill caps, both in quantity and in level.

Such great videos. Really enjoyed that. Thanks for sharing. Every Beth dev should view that.


No, not really. Don't put words in my mouth, and don't speak for me. That's not what I said, nor what I think.
Thanks. :goodjob:

On the subject of large monsters, I think that they should have them in 2 or 3 remote places throughout the map and maybe in the main story line they could have one. But if they do, it should probably not be a dragon, it if is, than it should be an original one (not a generic dragon). I like the idea of oceanic quests, but I think a pirates guild is too much, because I do not think they should just add something as large as that.

A dragon could work. Cyrus fought a dragon, a dragon drove the Dwarves out of Fang Lair, dragonlings are in Daggerfall, and what is the Wyrm of Elengynn I've read about? As long as Bethesda shows us some of the docile, shape-shifting dragons, having one as an enemy wouldn't be too bad.

Listen up all of you who are arguing over the leveing system very simply put we make a hybrid. The leveling system is simply a choice you make when you start you character:
1:Classic Oblivion system with classes, major skills and minor (only slightly modified so it is hard to be very good at several things and extremely hard to be master of everything: we can discuss the details this is just an idea)
2:New zeroed out system (very simply put all skills start at an equal value and they all progress at the same rate so basically there are no major or minor skills; player can be master of everything)

One more thing about the leveing PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Bethesda if you happen to be reading this DO NOT MAKE ENEMIES LEVEL WITH YOU, it makes leveling obsolete, please create area based level system (i know the point is the player can go anywhere at the very start of the game but if we look at it that way the game has no excitement leveing and that special feeling when traveling to new dangerous lands bliviongate:

On the subject of leveling, here's another relatively “radical” thought.

Leveling without levels.

How should this work?
Simple, the game does as it already does and counts every little step you take. Instead of slowly adding them up and saying “DING, enough steps gathered, one level up” it counts every tiny improvement. You can kinda imagine it as every little step is a level on it's own, that way you fluently get better instead of in jumps.

A similar system can be applied to your characters level, instead of leveling your character when you took a certain amount of steps just level up sliiiightly with every step.
TES is done on a computer anyway, leveling in steps actually isn't necessary. For a quick info, leveling WAS necessary back in Pen & Paper days since you couldn't possibly calculate new with every point of experience you got.
For a computer however that is no problem, in fact it already does that in a way, taking the next step to making every little improvement count isn't that big really.


On the JOAT “issue” I had a thought too, instead of reaching “master” when you reach level 100 in a skill you'd have to push past 100. And doing so demands dedication since leveling past that point is both slower AND the level can drop down towards 100 again if not used over some time.
What would make it more interesting to stay on one skill is that if you really dedicate yourself to it you level those specific skills a bit faster, it could calculate that by how many “level ups” you got in a certain amount of time, if your rate there is higher it allows you to level that one faster. That means if you dedicated yourself to it pushing past 100 is easier to do than if you flip-flopped between different skills.

This system would allow you to be GOOD in all skills, which is not really a big problem and is realistic to achieve, but it would only allow you to be a true master in those few you really put your heart and blood into.


Doing those wouldn't take that much trailing off the already present system I think, as mentioned quite a bit already is along those lines.
This way you also would not need to differ between major and minor skills, the ones you USE are the ones you're good at like the system is actually supposed to work.

A level-less leveling system? I like it feels smooth and realistic just one question what about the enemies?

EDIT: Also would skills be smooth transition too? If not how will you apply stage bonuses ( gained now at 25,50,75,100)

About your skills/master dilema what function would skills over 100 provide then, I don't think its a very good idea to make them level EVEN slower since the player would likely find himself finishin the game 99% with the exclusion of mastering a skill, the idea is good but i think it needs some work.

I think the Morrowind Leveling system was pretty damn nice. I see nothing wrong with it, and no reason to change it, therefore I don't want it changed.
Leveled enemies leveling WITH you is a bad idea. I like morrowinds system, again. Certain regions that have higher level critters regardless of level is good, and dungeons that scale with level, and don't respawn, is good too.
This is what I think:
Regions, areas outside, etc, should have pre determined leveled monsters. Certain areas shouldn't be hugely acessible until higher level.
Dungeons, caves, etc, should have leveled monsters to your level, based on a factor of 5. If your say..level 22, the monsters in the cave will be level 25. If your level 37, they should be level 40, etc. I think that makes it more challenging than everything being level 22 when your level 22. That's no fun.

I agree, but people complained that Morrowind got boring at higher levels, so Bethesda used level-scaling(but went a little too far with it).

Well, I definitely wasn't one of the ones who complained about that. :P I hate OB's enemy scaling system. It's soooo boring. MWs>OBs IMO.

Oblivion actually gets MUCH harder with higher levels and I don't want the game to be too easy when Im a super high level so my suggestion is to have a level cap and make some areas/creatures 2 or 3 levels above that.
Using areas insures that the player isnt forced to play agains superior opponents while at the same time still giving the player a challenege even at high levels: if he wants it
Also high level areas = awesome loot, just to make sure the player is a little bit motivated

That is why Bethesda used so much level-scaling in Oblivion. It keeps the game challenging. However, for most enemies, there is a level cap. Goblins, xivilai, and bandits/marauders, and some unique NPCs are the only exceptions I know of. Also bandits/marauders, despite level-scaling, are easy to kill at high levels and xivilai are no longer a problem after the completion of the main quest. Bethesda didn't have the wrong idea with some level-scaling, but they could have implemented it better, such as with level caps for all enemies instead of just most of them. My biggest problem with level-scaling is items-scaling, though. I don't mind daedric and other materials not showing up until higher levels as much as I mind artifacts and unique items being scaled to one's level when they obtain it, and being permanently stuck at that level. Luckily, Daedric artifacts didn't do that, but many others did.

To the bonuses, simple answer, I wouldn't do them
I always felt like they where artificial and didn't really fit too well.

MASTERING a skill isn't necessary but it could give you a few advantages like combat with certain weapons being less exhausting or being able to really conjure super powerful magic.
Granted it is hard to balance this, basically skill mastery allows truly awesome capabilities, like the difference between someone who can run fast and a Olympics sprinter.

The basic thought is with level 100 in all skills you're GOOD at them which is reasonable but truly mastering one requires dedication with appropriate payoff.