1. well yes I just meant you couldnt see them the way you see them in fallout 3 which is actually good since you wont see all the targeting crap but rather the effects of your hits

2. An archer one shoting you in the knee could be a huge playability issue, maybe games are a bit too easy but fighting multiple archers would now be virtually impossible... which is actually very realistic! Maybe we're on to something?

Someone posted a link to youtube videos such as "video games and learning/choice/the uncanny valley" which were all very good, and I wanted to share something from the video games and choice.

Basically, there are choices, and problems. A problem is like a choice, but it has a right answer (ie, attack the deadra with a spoon or a sword...it is a choice, but not an even one)

A real choice is like the traditional apples/oranges debate. Neither is superior, they are too different to compare. This comes into play when you have a "good vs evil" style of character building. Kill the begger or give him food. What usually happens is that you get rewarded for doing good in some way (you can get blessings at shrines) but there is no real reward for killing the begger. The good choice is the only one that is beneficial, so it has gone from being a choice to being a problem.

Now, maybe you have a quest where you need to kill that beggar, and someone is paying you gold. Or, you have to decide between killing the beggar and doing something else that is also not so good.

The guy in the video actually cited Fallout as having a good choice system, so I'm not too worried. And what I like about Bethesda's system is that it's not quite a scale, you get points for infamy and fame. What I'd like to see is for instance, if no one sees you kill an innocent person, your Worldly Fame will still be high, but maybe your Heavenly Infamy will go up. So NPCs will still treat you like a hero, but the gods know better.

The other thing is factions. Factions are good because a choice might only be good or bad in context to a group of people. The town guards don't like you stealing corpses, but the Necromancers think it's super cool. The problem with Oblivion was that it had too few joinable factions (they don't ALL have to be...I never expect to be a city guard, though that would be cool) as well as the fact that there were no conflicts between these factions. The Dark Brotherhood was never asked to assassinate the archmage, and the mages guild was never asked to set fire to the fighters guild. They invented a new faction (which was only "joinable" as part of another faction's quests) to create a totally false "good guys vs bad guys" storyline. Kinda lame.

*Waves*
Yea, hello, that was me :icecream: (who posted the videos here, not who made them, can't take that credit )
And yes that one example with the slaves vs. safety of a little girl was actually a GREAT point and I REALLY REALLY hope they keep to something like that, not "This decision is good and this is bad".

Aaand if there's more interest in "NPC morality" I could put up a few ideas how you could do it without having to use a good and evil system.

Time scale, if you are intirested in getting away from the magic clock.

1st, 2nd, 3rd shift with a 2 or 3 break for each one.

so on 0-24:
18 would be Mid Night (2 step, 3rd shift)
3 would be Early Morn (1st step, 1st shift)
12 would be solid Noon, with Early and Late for the 4 hour spread

Or a 5 shift system
Night (covers the change in day), so with that blur aside
Night - Twilight - Morning - Noon - Evening - Night

AI/Difficulty changes
In Morrowind I would levitate up to a tree and drop arrows or fireballs at someone trying to run up the tree. In Oblivion enemies seemed somewhat smarter, but it still seemed a bit lacking. I might be wrong but the difficulty sliders in both games simply adjusted damage done and received. That is alright for making the game harder, but it doesn't make the game feel more intense.

Conversely, take Mass Effect 2 where with each new level of difficulty the NPCs; used their abilities more often, had stronger powers and used more group tactics. That made me replay the game at harder levels because the action was more intense. It would be nice if AI was customizable like graphics are. For example:

NPC intelligence- Alertness, number of powers available, frequency of special moves, effectiveness using those powers and use of environment
Group Tactics- Enemies coordinate attacks, positioning within environment according to group composition and alerting other nearby enemies.
Number of NPC's- Size of bands and population density of dungeons and caves
Damage multiplier- Adjust yours and NPC's damage

If you have a single core CPU you have to pick and choose, like a game's graphics when you have a mid/low range graphics card, while on the other hand a quad core would let you ramp um all up. This would add depth and replay value to the next TES

I would like to (through locational damage) injure or disarm an opponent to the point where they give up or beg for theyr lives. I don't always want to kill someone.

Then I could tell them to limp the hell outta here or just leave them where they are.

Speaking of time, I'd like to be able to have a small clock in the corner of the screen. Always bugged me that I had to pause the game to check the time.



I want NPC's to climb. I'm sick of being able to shoot them from a higher spot.

Also, NPC's should be able to make better use of interiors. If I'm at the top of a tower, near the door, and I'm attacking guards, they should be able to run up the tower and get to me that way.

Also, magic and arrows should be faster from NPC's, I can dodge them way too easy. I still should be able to dodge them, just not as easy as it is now.

Also, NPC's should be able to take cover. Like you said, I could levitate and range in Morrowind. If I do that in TESV to an NPC that can't levitate, they should hide behind a rock, or a tree or something.



Exactly! Hoorah for increasing the difficulty!

As I said, I could toggle whether or not NPC's can do locational damage to me, for those who don't like it, and it shouldn't be tied to the actual difficulty, like New Vagas is apparently doing with "hardcoe mod". Ridiculous. If I want the game to be harder in ways other than NPCs hitting me harder, I should be able to.

Why stop there? Just make the whole interface customizable something along the lines of MMORPGs such as WOW



Agreed, just one thing about the climbing... have you considered "real"climbing instead of that ancient FPS style climbing when you jump like a retard from one ledge to another. If that was made a skill NPCs would possess it too and could climb after you much more realistically



Yes that would be best: things of prefrence should be customizable for the individual player, that is what makes a single player game so very special.

See post 40 on page 2 and comment on that if you want to discuss locational damage

I dont know if i ask for smt impossible but it would be great if there was war on the island (or continent) where all countries are (hammerfell, black marsh, cyrodiil....) fighting to the death and you have to choose side (if it was me i would have choosen Argonians) that you will protect and fight for and if this is impossible then let there be war between 2 countries

That honestly would be great, if the main story revolved around a war starting and happening maybe make it split the story in one you can stop the war in one you can fight in it, basically different outcomes. However idk if that would ever be possible to portray with the Bethesda AI engine, when the CPU screams of pain when theres more than 20 people fighting at the same time...

Disposition:
In order to have NPCs behave more believable their behavior towards you should not just be based on one value, how much they like you, but a few values.
Those values could be:
Hate --- Like
Despise --- Respect
Fear --- Trust

Someone can like you but that doesn't mean he respects you, somebody can fear you and hate your guts.

For a few examples, on being liked:
A shop owner might like you because you shop there often but that doesn't mean he'll trust you, as soon as you disappear in a far corner of his shop he'll still peek after you. And it doesn't mean he'll respect you, if you sit on the corner of a house, beaten up, out of luck and broke he won't really give a damn about you, you're just a dry source of cash.
If he really trusts you he will leave you looking through his shop unobserved, if he despises you he won't even let you pick up anything. If he really respects you he'll offer you a hand if you're down, if he fears you he might “have to go” suddenly when you come into his shop and “accidentally” forget to close his money box.

On being respected:
You enter the fighters guild and already made yourself a name, people know you did some great stuff, the people in the guild highly respect that. But you're the newbie and another member means the cash gets split up on one more guy so they're not likely to like you very much, given the “newbie” treatment it's even likely they'll hate you.
Depending on your background they might already have some trust or fear into you.

On being trusted:
A guy who hates your guts, has no respect or no trust into you, every time he sees you he'd want to hit you over the head with a blunt object.
But then he suddenly gets trapped in a burning building, you rush in to help out survivors. When you find him and tell him you'll lead him out of there it doesn't mean he'll like you but his “respect” in you may be a little higher that moment and he's very likely to trust you since you're his only hope.


While in the case of Hate-Like and Despise-Respect there is a “better” side, it is better to be liked and respected after all (at least in most cases), fear and trust are a double edged sword.
While Trust still is in most cases the better side fear can be useful too. As mentioned with the shop owner example, if he fears you he's more easily threatened, maybe even so much that you can raid his shop and he'll just keep quiet, if you'd do that when he Trust you you'd lose that Trust rather quickly.

People fearing you are generally more easily pushed into a situation that's negative for them like giving you things (robbing them), those who trust you are more willing to do what you say in the believe it won't harm them. And that's also there the “limit” of fearing someone can show.
You could relatively easily threaten someone into stealing something for you and take the jail sentence, but threatening them into jumping off a high cliff that would surely kill them it's likely they'll take on a fight and at least have a chance to make it out alive.
If they trust you and you tell them to steal something they may still do it if you can assure them there won't be any harm. Even further if they REALLY trust you you could get them to jump off said cliff with the right words like “there's a magic portal halfway down the cliff, you won't be harmed”, it could be true after all (seeing as this is a fantasy setting and all ) and they have no reason to distrust you.
Of course if you lied they'll lose that trust into you, probably also combined with losing respect and how much they liked you (if they survive trusting you that is).


I don't think they should be displayed in numbers though, maybe just in steps going from:
Extreme negative – Negative – Slightly negative – Neutral – Slightly positive – Positive – Extremely positive

Or instead of a hard number just have a slider that display it:

Hate_____|-------------------------------|---------------|___Like

Despise__ |------------------------|----------------------|___Respect

Fear_____|---------------------------|-------------------|___Trust

I just personally like something like that better than hard numbers.
In fact it could depend on your “skill” to correctly interpret the others emotion. If you can't interpret them well you just get a “negative – neutral – positive” display, if you're better at it you get a extended version like mentioned above and if you're really good you get the slider display.

Though I think this would too much depend on how people like the system to work so this could possibly a option how it's displayed selectable from the menu (a lot of display options should be selectable but that's another topic).

Solid idea just a few things that bothered me, lets take a look at what you wrote

you proposed Hate-Like, Despise-Respect and Fear-Trust.
1:You cant like and dislike some1 at the same time so that is good
2:You cant despise some1 and respect them at the same time, this is also okay
3:Fear-Trust im not so sure: in psychology Fear is the opposite of Anger ( you cant be angry at some1 and fear them at the same time since expressing anger requires authority) And Trust is the opposite of Disgust which is basically like Despise so this needs to be improved somehow. You can fear and trust some1, for example: a boy gets beaten by his father making him fear him however when a stranger starts bashing on the door he trusts his father to protect him.

Second issue is they arent independant of one another
You can hate and despise some1 at the same time and you can hate and fear some1 at the same time but you cant despise and fear some1 at the same time. Fear gets respect so one emotional pair effects the other.

What I propose is emotional pairs that are independant of each other disliking and liking a person is effected by a lot of things.
So my model is:

Respect(fear or social status, can be gained or passive) - Hostility(anger, can be gained or passive)
Trust(gained) - Disgust(gained)

This is why: these are basic psychological counterparts, they cannot be in conflict You cant respect some1 and be hostile torwards him and you cant feel loathe torwards someone at the same time as trust.
Can you respect someone and trust them at the same time? Yes of course
Can you feel disgust torward some1 and be hostile to them? Yes most deffinetly
Can you have respect for some1 but loathe them at the same time? Well yes you can (having a boss)
Can you trust some1 but be angry with them? Well this one is a long shot but, wolves in packs are often hostile with one another but still trust each other in key situations; same could be said for realtions within a guild perhaps?

idk the last one is up for debate

please comment on this system as im sure it has a ton of problems to solve
Respect

I would like to see "Turn Undead" have an overhaul. Through Morrowind and Oblivion, I've never used it, it's been more of an inconvenience than anything. I don't see undead often enough to hotkey the spell, either. And even then, the majority of undead are bonelords/skeletons/zombies. I can usuallly kill them easily enough to not need it. Turn Undead should be a massivly useful spell, and be one of the spells that convince me to train conjuration. Currently I only do it for minions/equipment.

Hmm good points.
About the trust and hate i think a good example would be a army Sargent, his troops can hate him personally but they'd sure trust him when it comes to making decisions. Of course in that case respect plays a role too but it's more following someone who qualified himself rather than someone you just like or respect better, after all i can respect a teacher for his skills in teaching or a good friend because i like him but i wouldn't let them lead me into a war.
As mentioned with the fighters guild example you can respect someone AND hate him too. Maybe even better example is with a competitor or rival, they can respect you for what you did but still hate your guts, if this would be in a movie this would be the villain who has a chance to kill you cheaply but has too much respect to just off you like that (in short, he's kinda stupid ) but i guess you get what i mean.

With the example you made on Fear and Trust, i don't quite think that's right, in that specific example it would be more due to respect and family bond (a point i want to mention in another topic maybe) that he'd stick to an abusive father rather than an abusive stranger, specially because the father would be an authority which gives some initial "respect".

And on despise and fear, i think you actually CAN despise AND fear someone, this may be a bit far fetched but take Phobias for example, they can make you hate and also deeply fear something.
Imagine some kind of warlord who repeatedly pillaged and robbed the land, the people there will sure despise him but when he suddenly stands in front of them they're likely to fear him too much to act.


But otherwise yea you make a few good point, this system could use some more polishing.
All in all there really IS more need for more than "X likes me, now he'll jump on a knife for me" system it now has.


EDIT: Oh and on "disgust" you mentioned, i wouldn't necessarily use it as a disposition field but i would use it in a "personality sheet", I wrote something on that a while back but i'd like to rewrite it a bit.
EDIT 2: Hostility seems like a good field though, this could be included somewhere.

Have the companions actually go and talk to other people of their own accord. I just realized that's something I've never seen a follower npc do once, not one time, in all the rpg's I've ever played (I've played a lot). Maybe they talk to each other if you've got more than one at a time. Maybe they talk to someone when you are talking to them.

But they still act like zombies, they still mindlessly follow you around at a set distance doing things only you want them to do. It would be mind blowing to have a "companion" npc that actually acted like a real person.

What companions? None of that.

What was meant was probably NPCs in escort missions which could really use some more brain power, I'll just say "huzzah", i bet a lot of people know what i mean.

You should at least have more possibilities to command them, at least tell them "wait here" and "follow me".
It would also be helpful if you could shout to them, would be helpful to guide them through certain areas.

I think the best base commands would be:
-Follow me - The follow you
-Wait here - They wait at their current position
-Go there - They go to a position you look at and then wait there (can be a area you "clicked")
-Run away - They try to get some distance, in case a fight breaks out

More commands would of course be good like "stick close" when you have to make it through a tight area.

If companions are implemented, having them talk to everyone you walk past would be annoying, more than anything. I like my mindless copmanions.

No companions. An escort mission is just that, not social hour. If companions are an option, I'm sure Bethesda had the good sense, to waste no time on the finer mechanics of "companionship," like they are definitely not wasting time on jobs and mounts...

Well here's an idea that's kinda "extreme" so to say. I suggested something like that some time ago and it would probably hit a huge wall of "HELL NO" with the people loving the games lore but:

What if a lot in the Tamrielen lore was a lie?

Now this may be odd but here's the though.
What if the things about how the world works in that universe was a lie?
What if the Daedra being "divine" so to say where a lie, truly they're more something like "advanced aliens" like in the Cthulhu myths?
What if the "nine divines" where basically a lie and they are similarly just something like "advanced aliens"?


This thought kinda popped into my mind since in Oblivion there where some NPCs who started to doubt the nine divines due to the crisis going on and they not really doing anything. Sure in the end you had the "avatar of akatosh" but this could have been something different too, Martin did break the amulet, maybe this is what did it.
Sure there also are the shrines in the temples but they could have been made using a advanced magic.


I know this idea won't be very popular, specially for the lore true people, but thinking about this it could open a lot of interesting paths.
It doesn't have to be a outright "lie" but that what people believed actually weren't true or interpreted wrong, or the world is suddenly going a different direction like the "gods" losing their grasp.


EDIT:
A small example where this kinda applied was the "Legacy of Kain" series, it kinda set up a mythology and introduced a "god" who was built up as one and then pretty much toppled the whole thing showing that a lot of it was actually a lie. But this was what you could see as you can only see it through the eyes of the characters IN the game, not a outside observer who knows more than possible.
When it toppled it wasn't like the developers said "no we just change it", it was like "oh DAMN, and I fell for it".

I read recently that Fallout - New Vegas will have a hardcoe mode, where if you break bones or suffer serious damage you have to go to a main town to get yourself seen to by a doctor; medipacs heal you slowly, not instantly. You have to drink water and eat food to keep your strength up and objects that you carry have increased weight so you can't carry a whole armoury with you. I really like the idea of this! A mode for people who want that little bit more difficulty and a bit more depth, would be great to see this implemented into the new TES as an optional extra for the player.

I'd be all for a very extended and deeper injure system but I know a lot of people don't like that thought so a option for a "hardcoe" mode would be interesting.
Maybe in different levels too like "low - No damage locations, middle - some locations, full - extended damage system and effects".

Personally I'd go quite deep with locational damage really.

This kinda continues my last post on the money system.
Morrowind's money was fine, you used it, you bought stuff, and you paid to travel places. oblivions however, you bought a few weapons at a low level and you bought houses. After that you were technically done with money for the rest of the game, maybe a bribe somewhere or for a quest but you didn't need money as much as in morrowind.
I would like to see them do much better with this. I want to have to find the right shopkeeper and get a lot of money to get the best sword too, not just from an easy quest. the best sword should be over 1000000 gold and you would have to find the right shopkeeper witch will be really hard and should take a lot of time and effort to get. And I would also like to see fishing, mining, chopping trees, farming, etc. just to make some easier ways to make money and add more fun.

Integrated Lists of items. So that when a modder adds items to the game, they can easily be integrated into the world and work with other mods without conflict. In addition, certain items may have properties that allow them to be crafted for different purposes. Examples:

A piece of armor requires 20 "steel" and 6 "leather". Different types of metal can count for more than others. Iron needs a lot of work done to it to make it applicable, so it counts as 0.5 "metal". Steel counts as 1, Mithril counts as 1.5, etc. But while Iron, Steel, and Mithril can be used to make anything that requires "steel", only Mithril could be used for "mithril", but just about any metal could be used for "metal".
Different animals' leather counts for different amounts, too.

In addition, a mod adds Adamantium to the game, and it counts for 5 "metal", 2.5 "steel", and 1.5 "mithril".

Another mod adds a craftable piece of armor which requires 10 "metal". Adamantium (from a completely different mod) counts as 5 metal, so 2 units of Adamantium could be used.


Same thing for alchemy. Or clothing. Or anything else!