around the story/lore, exploration, combat. Combat requires some weapons, not an abundance of them.


i didn't mention enchanted to common ratio. I just said that weapons are very common in general.


A switch to a new type of weapon (iron to steel) is totally justifiable. A switch of iron to iron is not. A switch to a weapon that does x damage + 1 from your previous one, is not justified. The problem you are mentioning is easily solved by applying the bonus to all weapons of the same type with penalties of course: Not 2 weapons are identical.


Leaving the proximity of the owner while still grabbing the item is theft.

i would like to see eating a part of the game. Brings meaning to coming into a warm tavern

Obligatory or hardcoe mode?

Difficulty settings:

This has come up recently around here, since it has been mentioned that you can have a “hardcoe” mode in the next Fallout game there could be difficulty settings implemented that change how some gameplay elements work and by that change to how people want to play the game.
To expand on this a little here's an idea.

Instead of binding everything into one difficulty setting they could be split up to affect different parts of gameplay.

Here are a few settings I'd suggest:

Combat difficulty:
Changes how strategic NPCs operate, on higher settings they will likely attempt more evasive maneuvers like rolling out of the way when knocked to the ground and work better in groups like trying to flank you or drive you into a corner.
It could also change how many enemies attack you at once out of a group but this is more a side thought.

Injure system:
On lowest settings you have a very basic damage system, on middle it's locational damage similar to Fallout 3 and on high it's a highly detailed system with more possible damage locations, different injure types, broken bones etc.
On low things like bandages simply restore some health and endurance, on the higher settings they become more important to actually fix wounds.

Survival depth:
Lowest means you don't really have to care much for your character save for health, magic and endurance.
On middle you need to eat, sleep and also take some environmental details into account but they can't kill you, they just inhibit you or how well you regenerate. In this settings usually decorative animals like snakes could pose a possible harm too and some hazards like fire only hurt you when you touch it. Water could just be in two classes, clean and unclean, unclean simply means you can't drink it.
High means you actually need to eat to stay alive, lack of sleep can make you collapse and the environment can be harsh on you. Climate can harm you, small animals like bugs can pose a harm due to poisoned or bites getting inflamed, fire can hurt you due to smoke, convection and radiated heat and water can have various grades of pollution making it sometimes even dangerous to swim in it. This setting is only for the real survivalists.

They could all be set in maybe 5 steps:
Low – Mild – Middle – Strong – High

If you'd set survival depth to mild you'd for example take damage from contact with fire (low turns fire damage aside from attacks off) but it doesn't affect other fields a lot.


Now how you set those could alter the way you play the game. For those only wanting to play like the previous TES games could set Injure to Low, Survival to Low or Mild and combat depth to how far they want enemies to act.
Those wanting a more challenging game but feel annoyed by enemies can turn combat depth down but injure and survival higher.
And of course those wanting to play hard core turn all up to maximum.

The difficulty would inflict everything however, not just the player. On higher combat difficulty not just enemies will fight more strategic but also NPCs on your side or simply between each other. Higher injure depth also means enemies have damage locations that can be used. On higher survival settings NPCs will suffer the same withdraw effects from no food or sleep and environmental effects as you do.
So this is not just to make it harder for the player, the game world would also be harder on itself.


On a side note, one thing that always annoys me about “difficulty” is that it simply means “you do less damage and they do more” which is quite cheap.
I'd want difficulty to increase realistically and not artificially by just saying instead of 10 hits you now need 50 to kill this thing while it can snap you like a toothpick.

I think that even this would be far too easy for getting Daedric armour. It would be a nice way to get Dremora armour though, similar to the weapons found in Oblivion. Daedric should be immensly rare again, though.

I would like to be able to soul trap specific Deadra and bind them to my daedric armour to get armour for each daedric lord. For example, if I would soul trap a Winged Twilight, I could bound it to my armour and get some daedric armour of Azura. There would be a set for each prince, and the look of the item would change, and it wouldd be enchanted to a better standard that a player can do normally, but would only have certain effects determined by each prince.

For example, Azura's armour may give me a restoration effect, and an Azura "Beautiful" themed set of armour, whereas Mehrunes Dagon may give me a great fire resist or a great destructive spell I can cast for free, once per day, and would have the whole "burning depths of hell" theme. Perhaps he should have one of the armours seen in Morrowind/Oblivion?

I'd like to see the standard Daedric armour look more neutral, also. When my heavy armoured paladin tries to get the best armour in the game, he looks like the spawn of satan. That shouldn't happen.

Of course, if I wanted to, I could use the soul to enchant an item however I wanted, but retain the initial loook of the armour. Here's some ideas that' I've come up with in the space of 5 minutes:

• Azura - Beautiful themed - Restoration Ability
  
• Sheogorath - Insanity theme (perhaps one side shows the dark side of insanity, and one side shows the light side?) - Random enchantment each time equipped
  
• Mehrunes Dagon - Oblivion themed armour - gives a nice destruction spell that is free to use once a day
  
• Nocturnal - Morrowind themed armour - gives a nice chameleon effect
  
• Hircine - Armour made of bones/animal skins - Would ask you what the most important aspect of a hunter is, similar to bloodmoon whenever equipped, and you'd have either a strength speed or agility bonus
  
• Hermaeus Mora - Would either depict his ugly form, or have a scholarly look - bonus to intelligence
  
• Jyggalag - Similar to his minions in SI - Perhaps a strength bonus? I'm not too sure on this one
  
• Malacath - A tribal kind of look. Would resemble somewhere between Ogres and Orcs - Endurance / Strength Bonus
  
• Mephala - A Dark Brotherhood feel - Bonuses to stealthy aspects
  
• Meridia - A very Paladin-ey feel to the armour. My paladin would wear this - Radiates a constant turn undead spell to any undead nearby
  
• Molag Bal - Absolute chaotic armour. Something similar to the stuff seen on a lot of bad guys in RPG's - Not sure of the bonus
  
• Namira - The armour should make me think of spiders - A free spell to give someone else a good disease
  
• Peryite - Clean armour, very shiny and OCD-ey - Spell reflection
  
• Sanguine - tough one. Perhaps the horns Sanguine is represented to have? - A Personality bonus
  
• Clavicus Vile - A dog/wolf themed armour - Speechcraft bonus (assuming it's useful again <_<)
  
• Vaermina - Dark armour. would irradiate darkness. Irradiates around a 70% blind bonus, that would reduce the chance of being seen.

Boethiah kind of confuses me. He's all about deciet, assasination and conspiracies, which would mean a nice assasin looking armour, but he's also shown as a warrior who enjoys battles. Would be up to Bethesda, I guess :shrug:


Anyways, as you can see, if I want to represent Daedra with armour, I shouldn't have to look like the spawn of satan, because most are seen completely differently.


Speaking of Daedra, I would quite like to see Vaermina's realm, if possible. I would be fighting with scary monsters one minute, and the next be trapped in a creepy castle. It would be hard to do, and should only be done if the devs can recreate it right. It should be played like a horror game. But I don't want to become a Daedric Prince again, imo, that was awful.

I'm not particularly happy for the idea that race attributes should be the same lvl, I always saw the differences in attributes to be associated with their race, as in there natural state of being. the different modifiers sound like a good idea though.

Same with skills, I saw the skill bonuses to merely be a measure of that race being "gifted" in that ability.

But than again, I'm overlooking the fact that you also choose you're own class, what if we take your system, and no racial skill bonuses from "just" choosing a race, but once you choose a primary skill, which your race happens to have an affinity for, you get a racial bonus?

That way your bosmer isn't starting out with 15+ marksmanship, unless you actively choose marksmanship as a primary skill.



I agree, more individual abilities. My Oblivion bosmer was disappointed that he could only control rats, the abilities should mean something.

Exactly, that's my point.
You don't get a initial SKILL just from choosing your race, but they can have different modifiers for them.
You're not born knowing how to pick a lock, but if you have very skilled fingers and a feeling for fine things (those you can be born with) you can more easily learn how to do that, meaning you'd learn that faster than someone born with those senses "lower".
Same with the attributes, you're not necessarily born extremely muscular or super fast, those CAN be genetically introduced from birth (there are very muscular babies born sometimes), but if you never use your muscles they will be weaker than when you did. However you can have the genetic bases to build muscles faster than others meaning if you start training them you will build them up faster.

With a Bosmer for example, you don't start out with 15+ bow skills but you can build that skill a lot higher than other races could in the same time giving you a advantage there, you still have to learn them though.

With the "choose your past" system mentioned before, if you choose "trained marksmanship" as a occurrence in your past for example (it shouldn't be that specific though, a choice always include multiple fields) for one race you'd maybe get +1 skill point in marksman for choosing that, as a woodelf you get +3 (though this example is VERY generic so don't put it on the gold scale, it's just to explain how the base systems should function).

But you can still take focus on other attributes and skills, while you have a "harder" time to learn those you can still do it.


I'd personally kick the whole "primary-secondary-minor" skill system and just have skills you have trained and ones you have NOT trained, the leveling would have to be rebalanced for this to work but that's my preference. I'd personally give the whole leveling a COMPLETE overhaul anyway and introduce a fluent leveling system without steps, pauses or number crunching, just play and "go with the flow" so to say.

I just started RPing for the first time ever, as a (former) moth Priest in Oblivion. I remebered halfway through making him about prison, and I decided that, after working for so long with such intelligent blind people (I had yet to see an Elder Scroll myself) I came up with... Heretical theories about Talos and was tossed in jail.

Daniel I think you just overcomplicate the things that dont have to be complicated, the general idea is great but... poisonous bugs, dangerous water? I understand the need and want for a realistic game but if you never stop you end up with a simulation, which can be fun but rarely is for the general public, you also don't even consider how much work this makes for the programmers having to seperate each and every difficulty setting.

I think having general difficulty is more than enough, simply dividing it to Beginner, Normal and hardcoe is quite enough. I cant see why some1 would want retarded enemy AI but at the same time have to aviod poisonous bugs.

I absolutely agree on one thing tho, NO MORE ARTIFICIAL DIFFICULTIES

Personally I'd go for the realistic approach anyway, and yes that includes poisonous bugs and hazardous water (if you wonder, I'd also greatly overwork how poisons and diseases work because so far in the game they are just a annoying stat punishment with a instant heal).

But most people already cringe at the idea of having to eat. "OH NO, I don't want to have to carry food around with me, then I'll have less room for the 60 sword, 10 hammers and 3451 ingredients and those 40 slices of ham i carry... wait..."

Like I said I agree with you, I just think you overdo it a bit, I cant really imagine how hazardous water and poisonous bugs could inrich the gameplay.
I dont think eating food should even be a difficulty setting i think it should be necessary at any difficulty, again this might not be appealing to the general public because lets keep in mind the object of Bethesda is to sell after all.

So please in further discussions consider how the general public would react to this change and how much of a risk/work it would cause for the game designers...

I would like to see guild capes in the game. The reason for this is that when i joined the fighters guild every one was just wearing random armour, if i was outside of the guild quarters i wouldn't know who is in the fighters guild (it would help if the fighters guild would wear a red cape with the fighters guild sign on it.) This also goes for other guilds like thiefs guild, maybee they could have a dark cape with a hood on it...? Mages guild is not so bad, you can usually tell whose in the mages guild, especially in the arcane university (green robe= apprentice etc..)

Maybee the capes can give you a social status in the game... (The NPC would treat you different if you wear a cape for a known faction)

Location Damage/Death:

In regards to location damage, I've always found it immersion breaking, when the enemy has 10hp left, and you hit them with 29 damage, but on the foot, and then they die.

I propose a system where getting an enemy health to zero means he's neutralized, but not necessarily dead. This way if I do a sneak attack to the thigh of some thug, and the damage is high enough to reduce his hp to zero, then he crumbles to the floor in agony, holding his leg trying to stop the bleeding, screaming in pain. Now one can perhaps make a finishing move to kill him, or leave him alone, he wont become a threat again, unless maybe helped by his people.

This will open up some great tactics, disadvantages.

Want to get guards away from a gate? Shoot the knee of the guard standing on the other side of the courtyard, his creaming will alert the guards to come an help him.

Need to take someone out without killing them? Simply avoid fatal body parts, and avoid power attack which could possible do a decapitation of the limb.

I'm not really fond of the idea of having to eat all the time, I would only agree to having it in the game, if not eating, didn't mean you became weaker, but if you did eat, it would make you stronger, or more whatever seems appropriate.

There is something very important I want to point out in your post which is the sneak attack, so far sneak attacks have been escorted with a mere damage multiplier while I think sneak attack should be treated as completely unique attacks. The thing with sneak attacks is the victim is unaware of it coming so basically this allows you to do anything you want to him. Realistically looking, you do as much damage slashing a guy in sneak mode as in combat but for the sake of gameplay lets ignore that for now. What I want to see when I say a sneak attack is a rogue dressed in black grabbing a guard from the back and slashing his throat killing him instantly.

It's just that RP a spy/thief/rogue isnt very much like being one, sneak attacks only multiply your damage, rather I would make sneak attacks only executable with daggers and bow. I mean where in the real world can you imagine a spy sneaking around with a claymore doing sneak attacks, I dont have any real or solid suggestions at the moment all im saying is the sneak attack needs a major overhaul

Heres a thread where this can be debated http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1091652-basic-needs-poll/

Maybee like Team fortress 2's spy class with the insta kill backstab? (but obviously better...)

I see where your coming from, don't forget hand-to-hand, sneak attack should be possible with that too.

Like a choke hold or a non-lethal takedown? I would love that. It would finally give hand to hand some value within the game, compared to oblivion where it was just put in there so you can have an option to first fight

Yeah, something like that, neck breaking etc. since you mentioned choke hold, I would love for hand to hand to perform some grabs of some kind.

I actually suggested a grab function a while ago, I found it really attractive how Ubisoft used this in Assassins creed, especially the 2nd one where you can basically grab an opponent and throw him off a roof or punch him while holding him or cut his neck while holding him from the back, if there was a similar combat system to the one of AC2 NOT SAME SIMILAR, I point this out because i KNOW I ll get called out for saying that... anyways a grab function for fighting - weapons and hand to hand - and for climbing as well

I don't think a grab function would work entirely for throwing people off roofs or whatever with TES's combat system. I doubt that will change. What I would like to see, though, is a "kick" feature, ala Might and Magic (The newest one). It works fine in first person, and I can use it to knock people off roofs. I could also use to to bash down a door (non subtle alternative to lockpicking), knock over bits of scenery to use to my advantage, again, ala Might and Magic, and I could use it to simply make an NPC stumble if there's no drop.

It could make combat far too easy though. I would like it if NPC's would kick me off roofs also. It should be determined by agility and strength. Agilty should highly influence my ability to hit and block with a kick, and strength should determine how far I kick. Perhaps endurance could determine my ability to withstand it, and I would move less the higher my endurance.


Another suggestion;

I'd love for Morrowind's hit sound to come back. It was so satisfying to hear the huge hits I'm doing.

Me:


In Dark Messiah I pretty much just kicked everyone down some cliff, and that wasn't least bit appealing after the first time. No creature flies like that when you kick them with a basic front-kick. And they do nothing to prevent it. Meh.
Actually each melee strike/kick is lethal in FEAR which I mentioned, but it's actually damn dangerous to go that near any enemy! So that's not overpowered, as in Messiah.
In Daggerfall you could kick in doors. And noses. Kicking needs to be in but in a meaningful way.

Roadhouse !

Like I said, I knew I would get quoted on that so again. I am not suggesting a system like the one in Assassins creed I am merely suggesting that it is a very believable and fairly complex system with lots of options for a number of combat situations and that games with sword fighting would do well to learn from this system this includes TES series