Lol, what are you talking about? :rolleyes:

It's better to have axe and blunt skills than a single blunt skill that accomodates both.

Also, there shouldn't be major changes to the game. Changing the game too much just stops it being a TES game. TES has always had a similar skill system, If I want to be able to use any weapon with a single skill, I'll go play Fable.

Thing is, some skills have very much in common but the relationships between them are the same as, say, in between blade and mysticism which have virtually nothing in common. It's the Morrowind problem of a master in the use of axes being just as incompetent when handed a morningstar as he is trying to cast a fireball. Which is a bit wrong, no?

Blunt weapons was an acceptable compromise in the context of Oblivion's skill system. Of course, this skill system isn't very good to begin with, but this is where Daniel_Kay's suggested system would come in. Grouping skills together but not merging them is, as far as I can tell, very close to ideal, simulating how improvement in one type of action carries on to a lesser extent in other types of actions similar in some respects to the first. This allows for more skills overall, like breaking marksmanship up into throwing weapons and bows while still being linked to some extent.

On the subject of changing the game, as long as they keep it in the Action-RPG sandbox format, and it takes place in the Elder Scrolls universe, why wouldn't it be an Elder Scrolls game?

Ok, that makes sense. Still a bit hesitant. And would you mind re-formatting that...might be part of the problem. Labels to consider
Movement -- climbing - athletics - acrobatics/dodge - armor**
Casting - Most willpower stuff, not Thau-something
Knowledge - Conj, Ench, Alch, Bluff, Medical
Speech - Merc, Speech, Leader, one of the casting magics
Small arms - concealed, smaller swords, axes, and hammers
Great arms - Big stuff

[edit] ** forgot about this guy. Training in armor could be reflexive movement in the armor, not about getting hit. Armor naturally carries the de-buffs Shades pointed out, so if you wear it all the time those are always present. A higher armor skill reduces the de-buffs. Running around with it, especially with twitch movements (simulated in combat scenarios) to "get used to it" makes sense.
Armor does not need to be removed, it just needs some TLC until it can get back to its feet.


Could tie this into critical successes / Critical Bonus. A combination of Luck and [Skill Attribute] on top of the standard skill check.


Definitely a hijack.
*Farmers accent*
"Looks like wer' gonna haf' ta take this here fellow behin' the barn"
/joke

I actually have a very (VERY) long list of skills and their groupings written down, I just never posted it because it's still heavily in revision and may be expanded or contracted here and there, wouldn't mind PMing you the list though if you want.
PS: What do you mean with re-formatting, did i make the post too blocky?

I'd love to see the list.

Formatting as in simplifying and re-stating the idea not in the form of a giant paragraph.
I am a bit too used to my school texts books that something that big is a bit daunting to read, without an equation or table somewhere in there.

Ah i see, I'll try again:


Say you take a group "One handed Weapons", which among others includes the subskills Swords, small axes, clubs and hammers.
Each of the Subskills has it's own level, all levels combined and divided by the amount of subskills is the group level. It would look something like this:

Skill Group - One handed Weapons --- Group Lvl: 20 (40+20+15+5)/4

• Subskill 1: Swords --- Lvl: 40
  
• Subskill 2: Small Axes --- Lvl: 20
  
• Subskill 3: Clubs --- Lvl: 15
  
• Subskill 4: Hammers --- Lvl: 5

In this system you are most experienced with the sword, but the ones below the skill groups level profit from it as their effectiveness is up to level 20, you still lack of special abilities you'd gain when actually leveling them though. But it means you can use a hammer for example up to as well as if it was at level 20.
If you want to specialize you can keep training swords only, however should the time come when you don't have a sword and the next best thing is a club you can use it to some degree already since you can do some "techniques" with it already you acquired from sword training.

One more rendition of that idea.
Group Level / Sub-skill Level + Sub-skill Level = Effective Skill Level

So instead of a base 20 skill for everything under the group level, there is a constant relation.
Hammers (Effective) = 20/5 + 5 = 9
Clubs (Effective) = 20/15 + 15 = 16.3 = 16
Axes (Effective) = 20/20 + 20 = 21
Swords (Effective) = 20/40 + 40 = 40.5 = 40

or something of the like. Possibly weighting the Group level a bit more; so the changes are a bit more drastic to the lower leveled stuff.

Yea that sounds good, that way level has more impact and also higher trained weapons can potentially profit from training multiple skills in the same group.

Considering that I see wearing armor as impacting almost all mobility-dependent skills -- all spell-casting skills, all weapons skills, block, athletics, acrobatics, sneak, and possibly more -- then yes, I would put a 1-100 armor skill on par with any other single skill.

The armor system you are backing is a good one and I would be happy to see it. If, however, armor continues to be a skill in ES V, then then I would be happy to see it work the way I suggested, and additional effects from the armor itself would be gravy. The main thing is that we have good and reasonably believable cost-to-benefit tradeoffs to wearing armor. Reducing the character's effectiveness in his mobility-dependent skills while giving him damage resistance is a good way to go about it. The penalities would also help make playing unarmored characters more enjoyable. In Oblivion, I appreciate the little extra advantage in spell power I get by not wearing armor. I think it would be even better if not wearing armor offered additional advantages, such as doing a bit more damage, and attacking a little faster, and blocking a bit more effectively.

Allowing the character to carry an entire, specialized smithy in the palm of his hand is perhaps just a tad extreme. A much less extravagant repair skill, or skills, could possibly work quite well enough.

I'd also make the weight of your gear have more impact on how well you can operate, so far it really doesn't do that much.
You can wear a daedric full armor suit and wield a anvil on a stick, erm, a fantasy style warhammer, and not have much trouble with it.

Such weights should ALWAYS have an impact on you, really no matter how strong you are, they should influence you in some way. Swinging around such masses would have enormous momentum, swinging such a hammer would drag you around the room with each swing.
Also I wouldn't really make the swing TIME depend on it, so it's not slowing down a swing, what it slows down is how fast you can initiate and attack and how long you need to recover back into ready position after a swing.

Good point.

for armor repair i would rather have it that a smith has to repair it or you have to actually use a smith set up with anvil, water tank etc. these could be located in weapon shops and specialized merchants. limit field repairs to 80% or something since you can literally bang out dents with a hammer and sharpen swords with stones but the heavier damage needs to be fixed at a smithy.

i HATE oblivions warhammers..........they are stupid beyond comprehension. i even tried replacing them with the realistic ones from dungeons of ivellon mod but i got to lazy and frankly i use blades and there arent alot of warhammer users ingame anyways.

if you wear heavy armor you should be able to take a [censored] slap like your girlfriend, however you should be slow, limited running and drown in deep water. you can actually swim with light armor on and its even easier if you use a swim bladder like ancient soldiers used to use, however with 90 lbs of steel on your should drown. as for fighting and blocking.....a good suit of armor wont really effect that even if its plate. medievel knights trained by doing back flips in their armor and if you watch medievel fighting videos you can see that they move around pretty quickly..........just dont expect them to run more than a few yards at full sprint.

what i really want is companions like fallout 3 in the next TES game. imagine like a DnD game..........wizard, archer, warrior and rogue. you pick one of them and rely on your companiosn for tasks you wouldnt normally be able to do...like have the wizard cast heal or the rogue picking locks......that would be so freaking awesome.

A small side note, I kinda mentioned it before but i wanna get a little more into detail there.
If you wear heavy equipment it should NOT just make you move slow, I think one of the issues there is that it's simply easier to slow down a animation instead adapting it to the weight of your gear.
But there lies the big problem, if you're just slowed down it makes it look ridicules and you also won't be able to fight realistically.

The weight of your gear changes relatively little of how fast you are mid movement, once you swing a weapon or you start running with a great load physics takes over. As said it should count more into the initiation time and the recovery time, if you wear heavy armor you'll take a little longer to move and to stop moving, a heavy weapon will take longer to initiate the swing and later on to get it back up again, but mid run and mid swing it has little influence. There it can even be used as an advantage, a heavy weapon has a far stronger impact and if you smash into someone wearing heavy armor you're likely to plow him down.

It's all always a double edged sword, Heavy gear means better protection but lower mobility, light gear means higher mobility but less protection.
And sure heavy gear DOES influence your top speed but not by that much really, what it does is exhaust you a lot more for trying to keep up with your usual top speed.

Ctrl-V'ed from my post in another topic:

they shouldn't concentrate too much on the graphical side of the game, imo.

They should keep to a high standard of graphical shinyness, but concentrate more on the gameplay, the lore, the unique wildlife, the quests, etc. They shouldn't push too hard to have graphical peaks. They should advance the graphics when technology allows us to advance properly. That way, graphics slowly increase, but the game will always be packed with content.

Everyone is suggesting new methods of gameplay, new game engines, and new systems. But, no matter what, there's going to be a limit to what they can fit on discs. Even with the multiple disc suggestions, I doubt a game, for consoles aswell, will require 10 discs to install 40gb. It's just not fair to those who can't afford large hard drives. (let's not get into the console/pc bashing)

When we have 40gb discs freely available at decent prices, sure. Give us a photo realistic world. But don't waste everything on graphics. Also, the game looks far better when there's uniqueness to the game. imo, Morrowind looks far better than Oblivion because it's so unique and cultural. Looking good =/= high poly-count.





Also, if possible (I'm not sure how it works), allow us to further the sliders. If I have a stupidly expensive computer, I want to be able to see everything in the game at once. I also want to be able to have it compete with TESX in twenty years time, on my "standard" computer. It also allows the game to last longer. Imagine if Morrowind's sliders had no limit? I mean, we'd have to set the limit in the ini, of course.

Completely away from the graphical topic:

Can we have some sort of weight system? It's a tiny adjustment, and it helps quite a bit. When I'm explaining something, I feel like an idiot saying something "weighs 5", and I feel like Im wrong if I say something "weighs 5 kg" because I don't know the weighing system. Just adding a simple kg at the end really helps. Even some kind of TES specific weighing system would be fine, as long as it helps.

• Make ESV less player-centric, please. I don't want the player character's importance completely diminished, but in Oblivion it felt like in-your-face player importance. For example, in dialogue, random NPCs with no importance, such as shopkeepers, would direct YOU to help out with something to begin a quest. Why would they possibly do that? They don't know you, they're a shopkeeper of no importance to a quest or game-play. I'm thinking of dialogue in the rumor category like this: "So-and-so lost some things of importance, why don't you go over and help?" I hated that in Oblivion. That kind of thing would obviously work if you're being asked by the quest-giver, but by random citizens, no...

I think classes should include what they do for money and how they get food. Every day an NPC spends having not eaten, their health and fatigue go down a bit. the classes would be:

Food Farmer: Produces and harvests his own plants, such as wheat, corn, etc.; as well as cattle pigs etc. iff there is extra food, they sell it. And if they can afford it, they will buy a luxury.

Cash Crops: Harvests and produces cash-crops, like wine or tabaco. a traveling merchant would regularly trade him his crop for money and food. And if they can afford it, they will buy a luxury.

Hunter: most NPC's hunt, and is is the default if something messes up their original script. This would involve tracking down an animal they can easily kill, and killing them. the amount of meat produced is 3x what it would be for the player. If there is extra food, they sell it. And if they can afford it, they will buy a luxury.

Merchant: has the amount if money they are willing to trade, as well as savings in the back. other NPC's go to traders regularly when they have spare cash and need something, so their cash fluctuates. at the end of every day; if the trader has made money then they put the extra in their savings. if they lost money, they replenish their supply.

Traveling merchants: Tie in the the farmers. they have no savings, as they buy in massive amounts. They go from farm stead to farmstead buying and selling food and cash-crops, as well as some luxuries. Their loop starts and ends in a major city, so that they can sell all but food with the merchants their, as well as re-stock.

Rich people: They have massive amounts of money, like millions and millions, hidden in a cell that the player cannot enter. They draw upon that cash through scripts when they go shopping, and they buy not only food, but many luxuries.

Working man: They do their job at a loss of fatigue, or (in the case of the fighter's guild or a city guard or something simialer) health. However, they get payed in cash depending on what job(s) they have, and will go buy food from a merchant, and if they can afford it, luxuries.

Beggars: They will sell information to thieves guild members, and if other NPC's have more than 5x what they are asking for, they will get charity. Every $1,000 the player gives to charity is worth 1 fame point, as an incentive to do so. They mostly have low responsibility, and if they see something lying in the street will most likely take it. They only buy food, and store all their money.

Vampires: Don't eat food. however, they will break into houses and feed on other NPC's. Before feeding, they will cast a non-hostile version of Paralyze on their target, to assure that they don't awake with fangs in their neck.

Inn Keeper: a specialized merchant. most will only sell beer, wine, and bread and will only buy from Traveling Merchants. Every Inn NPC pays 5 gold to them every night for sleep, even if there are more customers than beds.

Things common to all classes:

Scavenge; If somebody sees something lying around, they will most likely pick it up. If the item is owned (by the player or another NPC) then they might, depending on the object's value and their responsibility. High responsibility NPC's will pick up Player-owned objects and return them for a monetary reward.

Hunt; If they see a wild animal that they know they can easily best, they will kill it. if they see a non-fighting wild plant, they will harvest it.

Friendship; If a poor NPC has a disposition of 90+ with a Rich NPC, they will most likely get a loan. The loan will be payed of in ten months with no interest, unless the Rich NPC falls on hard times or gets a 70- Disposition towards the other one. In those cases, there will be 5% interest.

Improvement: If an Innkeeper, Food Farmer, or Traveling merchant save up 1000+ gold, they will move into the closest abandoned farmstead, and become a cash-crop Farmer. If a Cash crop farmer or Merchant saves up 10000+ gold, they will instantly get 1 million in 'savings' and become a rich person. A Begger or hunter who has saved up 500 gold will become a Food Farmer or Innkeep depending on which institution is closer (an abandoned Inn or an abandoned house)

Deprovment: If a npc don't have enough food to survive two more days, they will either join the thieves guild or church depending on their responsibility.

The wilderness would have to be full of abandoned farms, inns, and houses and dead NPC's would have to be replaced smoothly. Some NPC'S would have to have infinite money (but not obtainable by the player) in order to, for example, pay for their room at an INN. I'd like to see a Beggar sell a sword he picked up that had fallen from an NPC killed by the player in order to make some cash. And, it'd affect the Merchant's cash.

No. The NPC's should have a lot of money (around 500k-50 million depending on the NPC and security of the vault) thaqt the player can break into. These would be for really high end thieves, and would be the best thieving targets in the game. They wouldn't be easy enough to rob daily for lots of money, tough, and you would often end up in prison.

Apart from this, your list is great. As I've said before, I'd like to see three discs:

Disc 1 contains the main game, minus the other discs

Disc 2 contains extra AI

Disc 3 contains the voice files.

Disc 2 and 3 would be optional for those who can't afford hard drives for thier consoles, and would install on other computers. I would actually like for me to be able to install my PC version of the game onto my computer. I hate using my discs. I'm scared I'll loose/break them.


Also, NPC's in ruins and caves should be exceptions. They should only kill any nearby wildlife, but not go out specifically to get food. It would be rubbish to walk into a ruin, only to find everyone's off for tea. And having bandits walking around towns getting food could be messy.

Bethesda has always made games that had amazing graphics at its release, I doubt TES 5 would be any different. I agree about maintaining a balance between gameplay content and graphics, but a new game in 2011(2012?) with 2006 graphics would turn away a lot of people. That's not to say Bethesda should focus only on graphics and skip out on content, however.

Anyway, there's no direct correlation between graphics and file size, it's just a matter of optimization. Let's take two open-world games with lots of content for example:
GTA 4 had horrible graphics but took up around 15GB.
Just Cause 2 had the best graphics I've ever seen in a game, and it's not even 5GB.

Oh, and graphic quality can't be simply implemented into a few sliders that go up to infinity, it doesn't work that way. You can increase poly count and texture resolution so even a supercomputer can't run it, but anything in 20 years would still look far better due to newer technologies.

As for bandits going out and doing things, not all of them have to go out. I'm sure they'd only have a smaller raiding party to go out every once in a while. If you think about it, expanding the AI of more than just city-folk would be really cool. You can have different factions of bandits or marauders who go out on raids to attack each other and take each other's loot, and actually use the loot they take. You could have some bands of adventurers who go from city to city, tavern to tavern, and visit some dungeons in between. If you're in the same cell as they are, all loot should be fair game.

As for smaller towns getting food, they could grow their own food, and hunt animals nearby. There doesn't need to be any conflict with bandits.

I wouldn't want the bandits in caves and ruins to do this, though. I would love for there to be roaming bands of bandits and marauders around, though.

I agree with your point, but at the same time I would like to see it more player centric. I didn't like how things didn't really change when you completed quest. I loved in Gothic 3 where your actions would ultimately determine if a town revolted and the humans took over or the Orcs stayed in power. You could walk into the town and think yup I'm the reason why you don't see any Orcs here.

On the Poly count I'd suggest they implement auto-tessellating, but not just to scale model details up but also to scale details down.

Also I had a little thought on how LOD transitions could be done, not by replacing but by "merging" the models. When you get into a transition zone between a low and a high detail model it doesn't just remove the low detail model and replaces it with the high detail one it transitions between them, slowly making the high detail model more visible until it is 100% visible, then making the low detail model disappear, again not instantly but blending it out. I think that way the models could be transitioned smoother and without pop ups.
Also they DEFINITELY need to make more low detail models when you're further away. It was almost painful how ruins in Oblivion just popped into view out of thin air, best (or worst) example is the one next to the Waterfront district which is invisible from the island but pops up when you get close to it.

Also there should be auto scaling for textures, ones on models halfway across the map don't need to be high rez, hell some smaller spots would do with a 32x32 texture or even just a monochrome color, at that distance you won't really note that many surface features.


EDIT: For the PC the transition method could be a selectable option in the menus, pop up transition for ones with lower power and blend transition for those with more power, that way it wouldn't stress less state of the art machines that much.

I hope they do. Throwing knives, darts, shuriken, crossbows, and spears were awesome in Morrowind. I also hope they bring back different kinds of staffs too, not just those twisted sticks from Oblivion.

I agree with that. There are different kinds of player-centric-ism, and that's a cool example of a good kind of it.

Eyes forward, buddy.

It isn't. http://www.wulflund.com/images_items/european-mace-with-wooden-handle-replica_2.jpg, http://www.theknightshop.co.uk/catalog/images/600642.jpg, and http://www.realmcollections.com/images/pl/Other_Weapons_German_War_Hammer_M600366_1753.jpg are of a similar enough type and use that knowing how to use one directly translates into knowledge of using another. http://www.aceros-de-hispania.com/image/battle-ready-sword/188twohand-war-axe.JPG are used in a different style, so they get a different skill. The name Maul is appropriate for this skill in the batter or lacerate definition.

TES hasn't always had the same skill system. Arena didn't even have skills, Daggerfall had 37 skills, Oblivion had 21.

I also see armor affecting all those things, so it's not as if I'm against you in this. Though, most everything you would learn about wearing a suit of armor, you would learn in the first hour of wearing it. Things get a little better as you wear it for a week, but I can't see a person being a master of armor from this.

The best thing you have working in favor of an armor skill is a few lines from Vegetus in De Rei Militari where he said that Roman soldiers trained in armor that was twice the weight of their combat armor so that when they got into battle, they were able to fight faster, harder, and longer. What that means is that there is a feeling of relief and energy for a fight when everything feels lighter, which doesn't say much for someone who trains in heavy armor and fights in the same armor. And what did the legions do? Eventually they stopped wearing armor at all because they decided it was too heavy.

If you can find some good source on armor instruction, how to wear it, how to fight with it, I'll take a look. A thing you could look into is the http://www.thearma.org/manuals.htm section and see if you can dig up anything. This writing about http://www.thearma.org/essays/Saxo.htm has some to say about armor.

With armor, I think they need to split it by reasonable repair method. Obviously applying a hammer to a glass sword makes it break more. How would they even make the shape of a glass sword from the volcanic spill? An insane forge it what it would take to repair anything glass or ebony, so I'd completely discount the player's ability to fix that equipment.

The average smith couldn't deal with Dwarven armor because they don't know the composition well enough to make effective repairs. Have you ever seen a bad weld on a building? It never ends well. You'd need a specialist to work with Dwarven.

The average blacksmith should only be working with Iron, Steel, and Chainmail. You'd need a Cordwainer for Fur and Leather types of armor, a Silversmith for silver armor and weapons (There have been silversmiths before in TES games, this is lore consistent), a specialist for Mithril and perhaps Orcish, and I don't know how that little Morrowind dev thought it was a good idea to have Ebony be volcanic glass obsidian (now called god's blood or something trivial), but assuming it can be repaired whatsoever, it would take a specialist.

Battle armor shouldn't be more than say, 60 pounds, but for fantasy reasons I could see letting it get up to 75. Either way, like you said, it isn't such a burden in battle. The main burden is when you aren't in battle.

That would be good.

I'd also like to say that knocking someone down should pretty much mean that you win. A hit or two when he's on the ground needs to kill him.