Well a big problem is that in TES NPCs really didn't do much, they just stood around.
You never saw anyone go fishing, do smithing work or such, you had a few sporadic things like raking the carpet but that's it.

You should really see them actually do something, not just work but also something like "party", go to the bar to have a drink with friends and actually stagger home drunk. Or around festivities preparing stuff like hanging up decorations, sing and dance, play instruments.

I played S.T.A.L.K.E.R. a while back an seeing the stalkers gather around a fireplace, tell stories and some playing guitar added loads to the games atmosphere, it made them really seem alive, even though thanks to speaking russian and not understanding a word kinda creepy but still much more alive than most cardboard cutouts you see usually.

NPCs don't even have to be hand crafted to be unique and interesting, again look at Dwarf Fortress where all NPCs are randomly generated and yet each single one has his own quirks and personality. The game even manages to write little stories about them. Their moods can shift, they can become depressive, happy, suicidal, homicidal, angry, euphoric, anything really from combining them together from a pool of possible moods based on a character sheet.


I'm trying to rewrite the system i linked before into a overhauled version and add some more info and possibly more systems (I left out something about "fulfilling needs" i started but didn't finish) so i may post something more detailed on this later on.

I'ts currently possible to "scale" a character up or down in overall size. The proportions are still unchanged, so all NPCs looked the same, except "closer" or "further" in appearance. What's really needed is a limited selection of 3 or 4 different "body types", which could then be scaled to the appropriate size. You want a tall, thin Altmer, so you pick a thin body type and boost the overall size. You want a somewhat large, yet heavyset Imperial, so you choose a "full" body style and again boost the overall size just a little. For a muscular Bosmer, go with a medium or "muscled" build and reduce the overall size significantly. Each race would have a range for overall size, so you'd still see some Orcs larger than other Orcs, but even the smallest Orc would still tower over a "large" Bosmer.

Granted, getting the clothing to work with the different styles would be "interesting", but that's what tailors and armorers are for, right? Your character may not be able to wear everything right "off the rack", but could have it professionally refitted (replaced with the appropriate body type equivalent) for a fraction of the cost, or even gain the skills to do so.

Having the beast races "different" as they were in MW, instead of using standard human bodies with funny heads and tails, would present more of a challenge, although most of the "pieces" are still the same, just pivoted a bit differently. Again, having clothing and armor "converted" to the beast equivalent, at the character's convenience while in town, should sidestep the fitting issues.

I like those. will be watching. :laugh:

(especially like his views on moral choices)

The system I had in a mind for conversation would switch the flavorless wikipedia-style or limiting "pick one of 3-5 lines" style with something that more resembles actual conversation. As it is NPC's don't exist for much more than having the player walk up to complete strangers and ask about "rumors." Personally, I have never seen anyone do that, ever. All RPG protagonists are creepy weirdos apparently.

I'll start off with a (very) basic http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v200/Rhekarid/speech2.jpg so I can describe with points. Try not to be too blown away by my artistic talent. On your right you have a list of keywords, but you don't simply click one and get the robot response. The +, ?, ! above the list are for how you're talking. The first is Expression, which would give you a list of greetings, farewells, and basic wow/that svcks reactions to things the NPC says. Instead of a cheesy game show wheel this is where much of your speech skills would be invested for changing the NPC's opinion of you. An effective, or terrible, first impression would have a large impact on this. Higher skills would allow for more options and improve general bonus/penalty ratios, but it would be up to the player to make the right choices based on the person they're talking to. They might eavesdrop on conversation to overhear what greetings are appropriate in the local culture, or ask about someone and learn that they dislike constantly happy people, and tone down the sunshine without jumping into insult territory. Skillful use of expressions would keep a conversation going longer and put you on an NPC's friendly side.

The ? is to ask about a selected keyword. You could ask about most anything here, and once you select one, a list of options appears in the left screen for either specific questions or general info, which would be added to as the character themself becomes more aware of the subject, starting with basic "what is ____", and eventually getting where is, how to fight, who's in, etcetera. You would still always be able to ask about basic info. The left screen, aside from showing the dialogue going on, is also where the player would get direct responses to things the NPC said, usually in answer to a question or other lines that might be too specific for the system. You could answer with those lines OR change the subject, but doing so could easily annoy the NPC. As long as the character has somehow come in contact with the concept you would probably have a keyword, or be able to type it in for specific "Ask About" option like you see in the original Fallout. There would also be a button to open the full keyword list (the black square in the picture), from which you could find and click one, or drag them between the full list and the dialogue options to reduce clutter by keeping only your most commonly used or currently urgent words in the list. The full keyword list would allow you to ask about more specific things by having lists of NPC names you know, or item/creature types, without clogging common dialogue with options.

The ! option generally gives the same list, but is an alternate tone that lets you be the one telling the NPC about something. Probably as a section of the journal, I'd like to see a "database" option in the game, as has been popping up lately, though preferably without much of it being voice-acted like in Mass Effect, which seems like a relatively pointless use of space and effort. It would resemble the full keyword list, but would instead show the general compiled information your character has on a subject. Bringing up a subject in ! form (obviously the game would not call it this, just a basic example) would, like asking about it, give you a list of specifics on the left, but this time it's you telling the NPC about it, with the list depending on what you know. Aside from disposition, this could also affect NPC behavior; telling an adventurer about an untouched ruin, or a guard that you discovered an NPC is doing something illegal, and watching things unfold. It could also potentially create rumors, telling someone something bad about a person, having it spread through town, and coming back later to see that guy being shunned. Plus, it would allow the player to be asked questions from time to time and decide what info they feel like divulging, if they have any.

Above those options are Bribe, Threaten, and Praise. Instead of direct attempts to modify disposition, these would be tones you could select/deselect in order to influence what you're saying. In normal tone, you might ask someone what they know about the Dark Brotherhood. With Threaten active, you "ask" them while shaking them and yelling, or use Bribe to pass some coins while telling them to keep quiet to others about a particular subject, instead of having a blanket effect over all opinion and responses (though of course, someone you threaten constantly is still not going to like you as a whole). They could also be paired with expressions, such as Praise + positive expressions to fill the conversation with jokes that make the person like you.

Instead of one disposition meter, there would be both Opinion and Influence. Opinion is how much they like you in general, while Influence is how much power you have over them. Someone who hates you might still be quick to do whatever you say out of fear, while a stoic and loyal guard won't budge despite how good you are at social manipulation. That last option, the arrow, is the Request option. This gives you a list of direct commands (go here, do this, follow me, eat that squirrel). Whether they do it would be a factor of mostly Influence, against how much the command conflicts with their own wishes. A lot of variety here could be created by combining an "If/Then" command system (recently seen in Dragon Age, but in other games too) with the keyword list, allowing options like "Go To *select known location* at Time." The average person has no reason to do anything you ask, especially if it's unreasonable, but a clever player could use even subtle ones to their benefit. Say that talking to someone reduces an NPC's range of awareness; a group of thieves could make a plan together where one with high speech skills goes to talk to a guard at a specific time, distracting him while the others sneak by. Imagine formulating the plan, setting it with one guy where Command 1 is to unlock a door at a certain time, and then Command 2 starts with "If 1 = done, then Use Item Birdcall." You wait in the bushes for the sound, and know that if you don't hear it, it's time to rethink the plan on the spot. The Request tab would also allow meaner characters things like slaves, giving commands to people you've forced influence over. You could raid a village with your skeleton warriors and kidnap the people to toil in the gem mine beneath your lair.

As for the NPC's themselves, randomization is much better than it used to be. It would be entirely possible to generate NPC's with as much as or more personality than the hand-made ones in Morrowind and Oblivion. Using the above dialogue system, you could generate a person with pre-set opinions toward various factions and subjects, and how easily they're affected by different dialogue options. Someone who hates the Fighter's Guild might get angry if you bring them up, especially positively, but might like you more if you also talk about how much they svck. An NPC might know something secret, like a worker who helped build a castle knowing about its secret passages, but will only tell with high Opinion and Influence Using speech skills effectively on people would require an actual effort to get to know them and react accordingly, instead of spinning the wheel for popularity and then never speaking to them again. As well, you might talk to another NPC, use the Ask tab, and select a name from the keyword list. If they know that person, they might tell you about them, which would basically be revealing some of the factors they were generated with. You could learn that someone is relatively timid and start the conversation with them using a threatening tone, gaining yourself more influence with that one-time first impression than you would have gotten with a normal approach. If you fumble into conversation, you might permanently ruin relations with that individual. As with any other skill, getting high ranges of opinion and influence should be much slower and much harder than it currently is; an incompetent locksmith can't just poke at the royal vault over and over until it opens, and a poor speaker shouldn't be able to recycle the same efforts over and over and "stack" opinion gains until this complete stranger loves you more than anything.


I wasn't suggesting removing the difficulty slider (not sure where that came from), or that we shouldn't have options, nor was I really specifically talking to any one person or about any one option. The point was that I'd seen lots of these suggestions pile up, "add blank and make it optional," and it's not that easy. For one thing, it affects how deeply it can be involved in the game. Say the Fighters Guild were optional, for some weird reason. You could turn it off, and the buildings, members, and any mentions of it would vanish. If that faction were superficial, it wouldn't be so hard. If they were tied into politics, competed with other groups, actively controlled monster populations, and so on, you'd either have to expend a lot of effort modifying the game to run without them, or ignore that and have it result in an ugly mess that affects far more than the Fighters Guild option. Or, just put little effort into the faction so it doesn't change anything.

While that's obviously an unrealistic example, the same point applies to other game features. If you have an in-depth hunger/thirst/fatigue system, it can greatly influence the difficulty of certain areas, how hard it is to travel, whether NPC's will go somewhere, how much inventory space you need. TES tends to have pretty generous inventory capacity, but what if that became more realistic alongside those food needs, along with faster, deadlier combat? Switching off thirst can have some considerable side effects if instead of ten water bottles you're carrying ten health potions. Plus you're still having to design the game to work with both options, alongside the direct amount of effort just to create the option. I'm all for making options for things that really are easy to conveniently switch on/off, but for other things, I'd rather they took the one approach and focus on doing that well. When "make it optional" starts to pile up too many options, it ends up asking for a great deal of effort to be spent on watered-down, half-assed "features" that aren't much fun for anybody.

although i like your ideas i think it would either require a massive amount of dialogues or many things would be repeated. Again we stumble upon a wall: content = (base interactions) ^ choices. I did come across some time ago a game dev presentation talking about just that and how to overcome it through dynamically generated "content". He also presented http://www.interactivestory.net/ where you could influence the outcome of a dinner through natural language (which btw I think is the -distant- future of games).

It would take some effort, yes, but I don't think it's impossible. I've seen a lot of people wanting more dialogue than Oblivion had, which it wouldn't surprise me to see, and a fair amount of it would be "spread out": a paragraph of info on a subject broken into smaller pieces that you have to work at, which is still about the same amount of total dialogue.

While we can't expect them to go back to Morrowind levels of voice acting (spoken greetings/reactions, text for everything else), I think it might be feasible to use it more selectively. Keeping full voice acting for story/major quests/other scripted events, and using a more broken up form for the rest of dialogue, mostly conveying greetings, expressions, reactions, etc. ("I didn't know that," "you think so," "I've heard about that," "sorry, I don't know about that," I'm done talking to you"). Speech wouldn't be silent, but wouldn't have to burn through legions of text either. I don't think the people who can't stand words would be too invested in advanced speechcraft anyway.

I'd actually like to see togglable warnings whenever I steal.
There's been a few instances where I've picked up an item, and not realised that it's owned, and been hated for it. It actually ruined Oblivion for me for a good few days. I was doing Skingrad's mages guild quest, I had the guy following me, and I accidentally stole something from him. He then didn't have to option to stop following me, so he had to keep following me. Because I had now been kicked out of the guild, for stealing a common shirt, no less, I had to redeem myself. This meant that I had to go pick a bunch of hard to find flowers. I was also a vampire, and was taking sun damage at the time, I hadn't eaten for a while. Whenever I tried to eat, the guy gollowing me would tell the guards, or wake the person up, or something. It made me not feed. I had to go and search around for these flowers while taking sun damage. I can tell you, when I don't have a clue where they are, apart from some vague map (at the time that's all there was I believe), that's bloody difficult. My searches would always go on through the night, and by day, I'd have half of my flowers, and would have to reload, because I had forgot to hide away for the day.

I know there's a few precautions I could have taken, but the point is, it all could have been prevented with a small warning.

The warning would show up whenever you try to steal something or pickpocket something, and wouldn't come back again until you changed cells (to stop it being annoying for safe thieves)

Random thought: what if the cursor changed color? I.e., you move it over something, and it turns red to indicate that messing with the object is going to anger someone. It could come in shades to represent severity, from very light for if it'll just annoy someone, like touching their belongings, to dark red for "don't touch the nobleman's crown, stupid." It would be fairly unintrusive but easy to see.

Although I think ideally I'd rather they just make things a bit less clumsy and insane when it comes to dealing with owned objects.

I was thinking it would be really cool though if Bethesda tried to individually flesh out npc's as much as possible while allowing them to do random stuff like you say. I'd say the problem with randomness is that it's usually just a superficial thing and doesn't have deeper consequences in the plot.
If Bethesda really fleshes out npc's, then maybe there'd be an excuse for the game to feature less random killing. Maybe even killing bandits could be considered murder, and bandits would be well-known individuals all with their own unique personalities. This way, the game could make killing more rare (and maybe combat too), focusing more on npc/world interaction.

Another thing I think would be really cool is if magical creatures were made far rarer, more intelligent, and more powerful. You shouldn't have to kill every single magical creature you find; I'd say liches are intelligent enough to attempt to trick you into making disadvantageous deals with them, increasing their power (for instance, maybe they'd trick you into sacrificing 10% of your magicka for them until you find a way of breaking the "deal"). This could go both ways though; maybe you could trick the lich into casting spells for you. This system, while making conjuration more interesting, could also allow a sophisticated system for allowing characters to make deals with daedric princes, which in turn could make the game far more interesting.

Oh just on a little note, with "randomly generated NPCs" I did NOT mean like in GTA for example where NPCs are spawned when you come close and disappear when you move away.
I did mean that they're originally GENERATED but then remain as solid NPCs that don't disappear when you leave the area. Even after being randomly generated they could still be hand tweaked, the randomizing process would simply make it easier to generate a large amount of NPCs in a short time and then, if necessary, give them a few tweaks.

With the randomness system and the previously mentioned personality sheet they can also change their personality slightly since it's not all set in stone and can adapt. In case something bad happens they can actually act differently, also if it randomly generated a NPC in a situation where he wouldn't really fit in, he can actually become a more angry or depressive personality, OR tr to change his conditions (move to another house, try to fight the poverty in his surroundings etc.).


However there could STILL be fully random and disappearing NPCs, like travelers on roads, those may as well just be tourists who are just around for a week and then went on to another area. You could easily have 25% or so of NPCs in the game world be fully random and disappearing again after their "job" is done.
It shouldn't however be in the GTA way that they disappear when they go out of eye shot. When a random is created it should stick around for some time and follow paths or wants. After you've seen one he could stick around for a set amount of time like 2 in game weeks, when you have NOT re-met that NPC (been in the same cell as him) he disappears from the game world. If you meet him again the timer is reset.
From that point on it could actually happen that a NPC can become a permanent resident in the game world, like if he stuck around for more than 3 in game months, which means you met him at least every 2 weeks over those 3 months, he can become "permanent", maybe live in a tent or at a hotel or maybe buy a empty house.
If a NPC said he's just here for a limited amount of time he will disappear with just a very small chance of becoming a permanent NPC. In that case, if you haven't seen them in that time, they will simply be gone. If you stuck around them they may travel to the nearest harbor or to the border to leave the country again, in case of ships it could simply generate a ship with more random NPCs waiting for their trip out of the country. That would even give you the opportunity to play pirate, sneak on that ship as it takes off and rob the people on board. Then just make your getaway back to the land.


Lastly, NPCs could have a "family" assigned to them, so for example if the owner of a house dies it can spawn a relative who inheres it. Additionally houses and shops can be resold to a new owner, so if a shop owner dies the shop could be closed down for a while, maybe be officially for sale so you could even buy it, and after a while there's a new owner.
Houses of dead NPCs should officially be up for sale but they can be given to family members in case they want to keep them, you could also go to them and try to buy the house off them. Otherwise this would keep the world populated. The NPCs buying a house might also be kinda based on the old owner, this means there can be a fully random NPC OR one that is kinda a altered copy, in case of a family member being the heir this may be a valid option, of course it can also mean just similar personality but different looks or the other way around.
There can even be some factors, like if a lot of people in one quarter of a town have been murdered the house prices go down and the houses are rarer to be bought since that's a "dangerous area".


EDIT: Oh yea small edit.
NPCs can also be generated based on the ares they're generated in. Like in a pretty "Dunmer dominated" neighborhood it's more likely the game will spawn a Dunmer as a new house resident. It's still bound to a random process but kinda bound to environment AND also to type of NPC, a tourist wouldn't care if he was spawned in such an area and could be any race, six, look or attitude.

Dear Mr.Derp:
The cursor turns into a red hand if the item will be counted as being stolen goods in Oblivion.

Have you ever played Oblivion? The cursor changes red if you place it over an item that doesn't belong to you. If you take that item and its owner sees you, expect a reaction.

Hehe. I'm guessing you've seen http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1930495 video?

LOL! that's awesome, and true!

What? I was in a cave full of undead. I assumed nothing was owned, I just grabbed the shirt without looking.

Anyways, the point remains that a simple warning would have saved me all the trouble. I mean, I could easily take it off if I'm a thief. (although I would only get it once each time I change cell)

You need to look to see the warning(a red cursor).

Off work and able to take the time to review and reply. WOOOOOO!

As a fore-thought, my opinions are taken with an attempt at balancing multiple objectives:

1. Does this create a better feel than we had previously? If not, I'll say so. (I think I haven't said this outside of some H2H suggestions)
2. Is this suggestion possible? Most posters here are quite good about avoiding the crap I've heard elsewhere (such as "I want no limits at all" that I've heard... as if game programmers sit down and go "hey! Today I'll make it so that you can't snowboard down Dive Rock on Dagon's back!") I don't think I've had to apply this concept more than once so far
3. Does this suggestion have the efficiency necessary to create a large and populated shard of Tamriel in a reasonable timeframe while improving the overall quality of the product? (This rule I use quite a bit, but I seldom mind. It usually just means someone is dreaming big.)
4. Will the suggestion allow for improvements to other areas of the game besides that on which it touches? (We can't have everything totally revamped, even if I want that system revamped, too. If push comes to shove, I'd rather see NO big changes and ALL the little things than one monster system overhaul that leaves the rest of the game in Oblivion)
5. All we have to agree on is "It's better to make a game that's mostly enjoyable to myself and HeavyMetalArchmage than to make a game only one or the other can enjoy at all". (This is simply "include, don't exclude". Because the more people buying TES games, the bigger the budget we can try to blow in our imaginations next time)

As I see it, Daniel's ideas are an effort to make the NPCs more realistic, more than fix the basic interaction issue. That's fine because a natural consequence of better NPCs would be a push for better interaction. I'm a bit dubious that we're ready to look at NPCs quite that complex. Tuning a two or three dimensional NPC to act as intended is already a non-trivial chore. The additional layers of personality provide diminishing returns, and I think as a sheer effort<->result compromise, a system with only the two or three most important facets of NPC personality would give the majority of the possible benefits without the skyrocketing complexity. That said, we're obviously missing some needed dimensions when our characters interact with "Chaotic-Coward" characters and "Lawful-Mildly Violent" guards, so if nothing else, Daniel provides a good starting point for WHAT dimensions we need most in characters. I just don't see it as pragmatic from a design standpoint to include his NPC concept wholesale. Well, not while we have hand-crafted NPCs and a game that aims to offer the same possibilities to every player. If we were doing all NPCs are random, it would be more doable, since the NPC would simply be who they were...

As far as the viral spread of reputation goes, it's a bit fake, but the means are already there to accomplish it, sort of: factions. Most people are thinking "Mage's Guild" and "Dark Brotherhood" right now, which isn't what I meant. Oblivion has factions that are nothing more than "shared ownership of a house" or "faction to make sure I hate you". These are excellent ideas for accomplishing two purposes. First, if Samuel Bantien thinks you're a swell guy, his wife probably has heard of you, and will habitually either agree or disagree with him. Now, my guess is Rochelle is more likely to fall in the "generally agrees" category based on meeting her in-game, but at the same time, if she doesn't like you, her opinion carries some weight. Other relationships in-game may not be so equitable or as strong (or even flow in the same direction!). Of course, this means "social groups" need sub-factions, and modifications of disposition can clock at a reasonable time after an interaction (my favored is the first midnight more than six hours from an interaction). Speechcraft interactions should result in weak changes, while quest/crime disposition modifiers should be stronger. (of course, we here again need to consider the possibility of an inverse relationship, where making the lady of the house happy by rescuing her pet kitty might annoy her husband). Most of these can be handled by a priority scheme, or by selecting which factions clock for a particular character (through script, of course). It accomplishes a similar feel without having to track NPC involvement (which would eat CPU and means dispositions in a city you left 3 real-time days prior might not change, despite 2.5 months of Tamriel time passing)

Rhekarid's example... is that the Morrowind interface trying to make a comeback?
The unfortunate consequence is a very mouse-y interface, which wouldn't play nice with the funding (consoles spend more $ than PC gamers...). Seeing a database like Morrowind had would be nice... if they remember to include ALL places and Enemies, and remember to record the EXACT WORDS when you are given directions. You have no idea how annoying it is to get quest directions, get outside the city, and realize you can't remember whether you needed to head northwest of town and take the east trail, or whether it was "North along the trail, then when the road forks to the west, head off the trail East.". So you flip to the journal, and find you can record that a character told you off, but don't record road directions...

Aside from those issues, it includes some of the functionality needed for proper immersion (especially if one wishes for no quest arrows...). Probably the best part is that a few generic "I have no idea" or "I don't want to talk about it" lines can be used to cover anything Bethesda doesn't want a character to answer about, and they can pool some responses. Say, for instance, you ask a hunter about "deer", and he has a response. He gives it. But he's a hunter without a bear response. He can have a "Sorry, Trade secret" reply, and a "What? and take away all the fun?" reply, etc.

That said, I'm not sure that telling NPCs anything is particularly vital at this stage. Sure, some people would play games to manipulate a populace, but by the same token, the tangible results are minimal compared to the effort. You could script quests around the idea, but... doesn't this kind of system beg for actually hearing people gossiping about it? and NPCs needing to "understand" gossip? and understand "hot" gossip vs. old gossip?

In the end, I think this has to be a multi-front and on-going operation. If the wheel was replaced with actual jokes, taunts, boasts, and flattery I could learn in-game (I don't want to have it all to begin with), that would satisfy part of the interaction flavor for me (namely, the terrible speechcraft of Oblivion, which was meant to improve upon the equally awful Morrowind system). I'd feel like there's at least a better reason than "no sense of humor" that makes a noblewoman hate my jokes. In fact, it leads to the idea that there is a joke she'd like... and I WILL FIND IT!

On the other hand, being able to frame questions and get replies on "non-critical" topics lends itself to a different kind of immersion: I *can* ask Mach-Na where I might find "The Black Arrow, vol. II", and she might be able to say "I heard (a/an class) bought a copy in (city), but (he/she) was just passing through". That gives me some hints, and the blanks can be filled in with sub-clips. Crude dynamic speech creation, perhaps, but effective enough if recorded and edited correctly (as long as the base pass sounds OK, the rest would be individual words, which would be easy enough to give a listen test...). Of course, this leads to the vast majority of NPC replies being "I don't know", or similar.

On yet another front, we could combine FO3-style full line questions with Daggerfallian speech patterns, although they actually mattered in Daggerfall, and maybe shouldn't now (I personally intend them as an RP device, rather than gameplay, and they don't need voicing...) That satisfies a tiny bit of interaction.

Last, we have the "give the NPCs more personality front", which is the hardest because it shows the (in my opinion) most tension between efficient development and maximum variety. Obviously, Daniel has some complex ideas that are designed to give NPCs more flavor, and there isn't much doubt making NPCs that complex would allow for some dynamic behavior, but... Taking each of his angles alone, none give much of a boost to individual characters. It's the kind of window dressing that we'll eventually want, but that won't fix the immediate boring NPCs. (Although maybe it's simply that all of the memorable characters are memorable because they had more time spent on them...?) I don't know what to say here because I'm not sure whether it's behavior, unique conversation, or what that makes a character likable...

Each dungeon should have a unique item and a boss. Even if the boss is just a stronger version of another enemy I would be happy. As for the unique item, an enchanted sword or a special artifact would be nice.

In oblivion all the dungeons were pretty much the same and I couldn't be bothered to look through every one I found. If I knew they contained rare items I would be more willing to explore them.

Wouldn't it be better if you never knew what you'd find in a dungeon? I found a buried fort in Oblivion just last week or so. No idea why it is buried, or why the soldiers went all undead on me, but there it was. Artifact? nope. Special item? nope. But it was a "woah!" moment for me. Of course, the real problem is that this is my THIRD character to get this far in the game. I found that cave every time. Never went in because nothing screamed "go here" and random chance favors Ayleid ruins or places I can smite Conjurers/Necromancers. I'm glad I did, but in-game books could have told the tragic story of an entire fort buried alive, and speculation that it might exist under Smoky Hole Cavern. THEN I'd have rushed there. Just because I'm a svcker like that.

That way, when you find something REALLY unique in a cavern, you feel proud, and when you don't, you still feel like you saw something special (Think Sideways Cave. Never been there? GO. NOW!)

I want races to be advantages against each other.

The Orc race is by nature stronger than the other races, but in the games both an Orc and a Bosmer can achieve the same level of strength (100). This needs to change, because the orc will always have greater potential for strength, the Orc shouldn't just start with more strength, it should also be able to achieve more strength, like 150 for example.

Same with skills! Let my Bosmer be a more deadly with a bow than any other races could dream of.

make it matter more, what race you choose.

why would I be cautious of it in an undead cave, though?

Anyway, it's not the point.

Something that should be done is that NPCs can EVALUATE a situation, why does someone get mad at ma for picking up the flower pot i accidentally dropped of his table?

They could sort it by value and maybe also emotional attachment (this could be assigned), if the object has a low value or emotional binding they won't mind if you pick it up, if it has higher value they'll just say "hey please put that down". If it has VERY high value they'll say "HEY, don't touch that", above that they could really become angry when you touch it.
Generally if you tease them they can become more angry, like when they say "please put that down" and you don't they get harsher in their tone, if you follow it when they tell you it has no problem.

This could prevent them calling the guards from just touching something and prevent "accidental stealing".


They could also take into account if we pick something up and don't mind the PC holding it but become angry when you try to move away too far or disappear behind a corner where they can't see you, that way you could put something lie a dropped item back on a table without getting in trouble for just wanting to help.

Well, something I, personally, would like to see is a more survival-type aspect added into the game. Maybe set it in a more hostile place, Like Blackmarsh and the like.

How about NPC's actually have to find a guard to report a crime. So if you steal somthing from an NPC's home and they catch you they have to run to a guard in order to report you. That way you could kill them before they leave the house and you won't get a bounty.

Also, the legal system should be changed:

• If you commit a crime in one town and travel to another town they won't know that you are wanted.
  
• If you commit a serious crime (like murder) it will take a few in game days for the news to reach other towns.
  
• If you get caught stealing a few plates and then hide in the forest after a while your bounty will go down.
  
• If you kill loads of NPC's guards will be dispatched into forests to hunt you down.

The amount of followers you can have following you should be set to 10 and you can have an unlimited number of NPC's waiting.

You should be able to recruit all (or most) NPC's to follow you and help you. For example, if you were an evil charecter you could convince people that what you are doing is good and have them join you. You could then take over a ruin and post them outside to guard it from guards that may come to hunt you down.

If you don't talk to the NPC's guarding or following you they may decide to leave you.

If you commit a crime all your followers will get the same bounty as you. Then if you send an NPC back to town and the guards catch them the NPC may give away you and your other followers location.

Guilds:
You will not be able to join some guilds if you are a member of other guilds. For example, if you have joined the theives guild you won't be able to join the fighters guild.

You should be able to become a guard and have NPC's come and report crimes to you, you will then get payed for solving the crimes and catching criminals. If you catch criminals that are very dangerous they may escape from jail and hunt you down.

Apart from the two I commented on, those are all solid ideas