You've got to go through Oblivion to get to Aetherius, and once in, you need an anti-magic, magic damping spell to get back out. Also, levetation is mysticism, and one of the spells is named winds of oblivion. And, given their history, I don't think Bethesda's bothered by reinterpreting precedence.

duplicating the mesh exactly would cause a HUGE framerate decrease since it doubles the polygons. furthermore, i don't think the meshes are at fault here: even if you make your custom collision very tight it will still float slightly. a bug with the engine, i believe.

Levitation was called Venom Spitting in Daggerfall, and it was in the school of Thaumaturgy, which is where it will return for TES V. In Morrowind it was an Alteration spell, so it's not really relevant. They didn't have a levitate spell in Oblivion.

Mysticism has been the "dump extra spells here" category, but no more. It will become the "manipulation of magic" school, starting with teleporting to the source of magic, Aetherius. Mages did it all the time in Daggerfall, so we know you can go there. It's not the biggest leap to say people who use normal teleport spells use it as a transfer station.

A little addition to my http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1094008-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-167/page__view__findpost__p__15974460 idea from a bit before.

Here's a suggestion how the zones could be done for Argonians (kinda messed up the front view but i think it will do for the idea):
http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/7547/argonianstylezones4.gif


Also I made a new "http://img686.imageshack.us/img686/2081/argonianconpertnew6.gif" of what I'd like the Argonians to look like, It's pretty much like the last one I did but with the spine less bent, the posture is a bit leaned forward and balanced with the tail.

Yes. Also bring back the 'area around caster' spell effect, which could also be used to heal your companions (which you never have in TES2, where the spell effect still existed)

Race Specific Content ^_^

I think it would be really awesome if they had specific quests, items and the sutch for certain races, something that reflects their culture and strengths. I remember in Oblivion when you choose a male dark elf and Valen Dreth taunts you about him going to 'see to' your wife when he gets out. Now surely when you got out of prison you would go back to morrowind to see your family!? (ignore that you probably don't have a family, i'm just making a point...)

You could have something like, being an argonian and going to save your family, parents, partner, kids, whatever, from slavers or some event like that, one big storyline with many small quests that results in you getting something that is very valuable to your race, such as attire, a weapon, or a trinket.

It wouldn't be like the entire province had to be created and it would be a lot smaller than something like shivering isles, you wouldn't need such a bit world space and you wouldn't need any side quests or extra dungeons that didn't involve the storyline. plus i'm sure beth have easily enough lore to pull something like this off.

It's just a shame that you can choose an orc and play them exactly the same way you could play an argonian with all the same abilities and attributes etc, i mean yeah it allows for customisation, but there should be more to your character than how they look and a strange sound they make every so oftern...

Hohooo daaamnnn!!!!! Would be awsome if I saw argonians looking like this when walking around the cities!

Oh yea another advantage of the hair/style zones idea i just remembered.

Instead of having just one zone this one can also vary depending on what you wear, so putting on a hat doesn't suddenly make you bald, it just "replaces" the hair zones it covers.
Like that you could still have some hair peek out under a the edge of a helmet or, as said when wearing a hat, it would likely only cover the topmost hair zone and the others are still there. That finally allows to have smaller items to wear on your head possible, like a bandana or a cap/beret.

I just wanted to say that your profile-view faces are amazingly well done, from an artist's perspective, before I kept on reading what you had to say. I can't ever get the nose/lips/chin area right... I've gotta study up on that.

But I think the system is a great idea.


:nod:

Most definitely, that always bugged me. I'd have a character with long hair, and then I put on a hat and *bam* no hair.

I think they did something with that in Fallout 3 though, already.

...

On the topic of bandannas and caps/berets, more types of "civilian clothing" would be great. Maybe even insular versions of clothing, like super-heavy coats you can only find in the north, that give you frost resistance and maybe protect you from environmental cold.

even tho i thot the fable games wer stupid an immature i liked that u could hav a family an jobs. id like to see that in tes v. i would also like spears an pikes brot back. an more quests were u are not by yorself. boats an pirates an sea type stuff would b cool. an like said earlier a villain that u think theres no way u can stop. an more battles with large armies. it seems like i did enjoy any of the others lol. but i did luved em juz wish this stuff woulda been there

This is just an idea I had in mind for the next installment of Elder Scrolls.

* The game should be MMO like WOW
* It should be open world just like Oblivion but a bit bigger
* The game should have a clan system where you can form your own clan and that people can join, I'll give you one example from the game; brotherhood of steel
* Game should have 1 on 1 or 2 on 2 in arena battle also there should be animals just like in gladiators
* Dragons, eagles, lions and so on should be included in the next game, that means fighting with those animals, monsters and so on and also means using them to travel to places
* tons of weapons, armors and so forth should also be included that means using the weapons, making weapons, stealing weapons and forth.
* game should cost $15-20 monthly
* Choose your own classes such as rogue, warrior, mage, dark mage, night elf so forth and so on.
* DLC should be included obviously

This is good.

You do realize that night elves don't exist in TES, right? And that dragons are insanely rare, and were protected servants of the Septim Empire? Also, you can't ride an eagle, you'd kill the thing sitting on it.

Sorry Agent X, I don't think you'll find much support for an TES MMO here...

What would you all think about the character talking?

I don't think it would be such a bad idea to at least give the PC some base lines here and there, not speaking ALL lines but maybe when giving someone commands he could say "stay here" or "follow me"


Kinda on that note, it should be possible to give characters some "commands" without having to go into talk-mode, as mentioned before giving "stay" or "follow" commands. Maybe also something like "come here" or "get away", this could solve NPCs standing in your way too or to get them away from a spot they shouldn't be at.
Also taunting would be a interesting choice, provoke someone to attack you to maybe distract them from something else or to open their defense.

My list of the three worst games ever is, from worst to "best," so to speak, Too Human, which made Norse Mythology boring and used the right anolog stick for melee attacks, Star Wars Obi-Wan, which had an okay story and used the right anolog stick for melee attacks, and Legendary, which had a good premise but terrible gameplay and story. This would replace Legendary. Honestly, the only possiible way to make this worse in my opinion would be to have the console version use the right anolog stick for melee attacks.

Firstly, TES is about an individual hero changing the world because he or she as an individual is extraordinary. An MMO makes you just one of a million people grinding mindlessly as teens butcher language. Relate that to the clan system as well. As for riding Dragons, only one person in TES lore has done so. There were no survivors. Monthly cost is just bad, relate to my MMO complaint, basically play an MMO (already its own punishment) and then pay for it.

Also, no night elves in TES. Durp.

This may seem harsh, but I hyad to turn off my computer for fifteen minutes to be this nice.

Or... You know, you could play WoW. :whisper:

I was so hyped up when I thought my character was gonna talk in Dragon age origins as you got to pick a voice type...it turns out I was rather disappointed to hear that he/she would only be saying small things like "on my way."

Back to the talking aspect though. I think it could only be done if there was a versatile amount of voices. For instance, in Mass Effect, we know what commander shepard is going to sound like no matter what kind of route we choose to follow. The ability to silence a character leaves their actual personality and voice totally up to character speculation.

The Starcraft 2 galaxy editor has a small tool within the program where you can change the pitch of any sound file. Imagine if we had about 3 -10 different voice sets, and we could then change the pitch of them?

The voice options would be as versatile as having a character silent.

• Add the name of the creature in a captured soul gem. It's a very simple thing, but it will add immersion to the world. Plus, I miss it from Morrowind.

I also miss this... nothing made me happier than collecting named souls!

I think the player character with voice sounds good. I remember when I startet Dragon Age and I was disappointed that all other characters than the player had voices!

Since I played "Risen", I found that a voice for the player is actually quite sweet. I makes you feel like you actually have a conversaion with npc's, instead of base topics like "Rumors" and "Mages Guild".

My thoughts on how the next TES game could be better:


Cities, land distribution and travelling

One of my biggest complaint about Oblivion is the lack of cities and how wasted was the big majority of Cyrodiil's land. Unlike Morrowind, Oblivion took place in an entire province and the "capital" province at that. How come there is only nine cities in Cyrodiil? - and one destroyed so almost no quests and the likes - why there is not a single village or settlement? A village with a bigger Imperial population since it's the Imperial Province after all? I can understand 9 major cities, but for such an important province, most of it's space shouldn't be pure wilderness, there should have villages on the banks of the Lake Rumare and others in the mountains or forests as there should be a more complex road system and the main roads should be safe and have lots of guards patrolling. It was hard to take the scale, the importance of the province seriously when the most imposing thing about Cyrodiil is lake Rumare and its surroundings and the mountains. Also, on the map given with Redguard, there was two other important cities - thus doesn't exclude smaller ones - which were Sancre Tor (I understand this ones is ruins now) and Sutch which is only there as a fort. I know the map is from the 2E and that Sancre Tor being ruins is understandable, but I'd be surprised if the only thing remaining from Sutch - which was also featured on more recent maps when Sancre Tor was marked as ruins or important place - is a ruined fort, even more that all the big cities have probably very old castles; it's definitely a city that should have been featured.

So while this is about Cyrodiil and we can't undo anything (well we can always mod), I'd keep the same logic with Skyrim if TES V indeed takes place there. While as a province Skyrim is not as important, I'd be surprised if after all these years the Nords kept themselves to the same big cities. So a dozen of big cities and tons of small villages and settlements is a must, it's a province after all. So there should be a big web of roads to support that, but there'd be of course a lot of wilderness too, but not 95% of the whole land.

Then there is travelling, this was problematic in Oblivion. I know there is some sort of "if you don't like fast-travelling then don't use it" logic, but that's beside the point. TES games have always been about immersion and living in there with your character. How can you be immersed when to get from cities to cities you have no choice but go by foot or with your horse. Don't tell me the Imperial province don't offer carriage services to the normal citizens or mage guild teleportation or boats services along the Niben. So if you decide to go role-play for real, you'll realize you're using the very same roads all the time to go to the same cities since there are only 8 of them, and that the road system is pretty basic. Even if the land is beautiful, you get tired relatively fast of going from the Imperial City to Bravil dozens of times and then doing the same thing with Leyawin, even more that both routes share the same road for some time. Then you're stuck with fast travelling which is not even a travel system, so it cuts the immersion of arriving by boat or inside the mages guild, and it was always one of the interesting of arriving for the first time in a city in Morrowind, you could arrive by road, by silt riders or inside the mages guild and it felt different and more exciting. So then, a real travel system, better distributed and more cities would highly benefit TES V, making it more alive.


Quests, guilds, dialogues and artifacts

Other problems. While the quests in Oblivion were in general better and more engaged, they suffered from not making you go in the deep wilderness or keeping your hand without any toggle-off choices. The quests always happening in cities or near cities is another thing that made the lack of cities and travel system tedious, they made you go to the very same places and made going off in the wilderness an adventurer and explorer thing, its only interest being the Daedric quests, the landscape and visiting ruins and caves, it was the vast majority of the province. So usually, you played Oblivion in the same small area, ignoring the rest for the most part, keeping it uninteresting for the majority of the time. Like I said earlier, there should be less wilderness, and while some of it should be for the adventurer/explorer, a lot more of it should be a destination of some quest or artifact hunting; that would make the world more alive compared to Oblivion when nothing happened in the most of it. So that would mean more quests too, because taking out quests from the big cities would mean them feeling less alive, the island of Vvardenfel being very alive and dynamic was a big quality of Morrowind. One last thing about quests; NPC dialogue. Bring back all those dialogue choices and different topics, yet again, making the place more alive, rather than having most NPCs telling you the same few things, they should point you to some obscure freelance quest too, like the one the battlemage in Seyda Neen would point you to find some ring artifact. Be it toning down the voice acting or having hundreds of more lines, I don't care, as long as there is more dialogue options.

There should be more guilds, and definitely some guilds that you can't - and shouldn't - sign in when you are in another one. Though maybe with some complex quest system or rank system, you could really change things within the guild, rules, whatever so you could manipulate it to your advantage - both "good or evil" - and maybe make conflicts with other guilds and do some more manipulation and such. In Morrowind the disposition of the characters changed depending in which guilds you worked in and as it should be brought back - so there's not just fame and infamy, how could someone in your own guild hate you that much only because you have a lot of infamy? - there should be inter and intra guild relationships, there should be some complex "guild system". The game shouldn't encourage or reward completists (if only collectors), the game should encourage or reward those who want to make a character that reflects the most what they want to do with him. There shouldn't be "I want to do all the quests", you should able to discard quests (so you don't have a list of undone quest you don't plan on doing, which almost tells you that you should do them, when you should do what you want) as an assassin shouldn't work for the mages of the fighters guild, the thief guild even. So if you choose to work only for one guild, there should be plenty of other things to do beside the main quest, and there should definitely be a lot more quests for each guild.

Also, we shouldn't be holding your hand like in Oblivion, or at least have a toggle on/off option. Even then, if you did just that for Oblivion, you'd realize some indications are missing. There are tons of places located in the middle of nowhere where they just tell you it's north of Cheydinal along those mountains. HOW do you get there, even if you put it on my map you should tell me if there is an easy way to get there, roads anything. And everyone shouldn't know exactly where on your map a certain place is located, they should tell you directions and you'd maybe even need to ask around how to reach some place, in a city near it for example. That was also another thing that made Morrowind great, you felt like being in there, asking your way around, being told how to reach somewhere, no compass telling you exactly where to go.

I also briefly talked about artifacts, another thing missing in Oblivion were those. Well they were present, but they were exclusively Daedric ones and related to the main quest. There should be tons of them, which wouldn't necessarily be related to quests. Another thing that made Morrowind great was going across the land finding all the artifacts you could and using them which could be good for your character, they were also most of the time related to some lore, giving a richer background to the game.


Classes, skills and levelling

I don't have much to say about classes, only that I support the big guide some guy did in the previous thread where he said there should be a real bard class for example. Though they should at least bring back all the classes and weapons/armors they took out of Morrowind. No spear? It was even a bonus for Argonians so that's definitely an important element as it also played differently. Bring back throwing stars, knives and the likes, if only for more realism as more armor pieces. And more some of the skills they took out; unarmored, axes and short/long blades? I mean there is a different between a long and a short blade, someone who trains a lot with big blades isn't necessarily good with knives, the latter being heavier and working differently. Same with blunts and axes, an axe doesn't work like a mace, so they should be seen as different. Then there is unarmored - and medium armor, but I don't have much to say about this one except that it should be back - why you shouldn't train your body to be more resistant while not being armored is beyond me. What about the monk? A class that prefers using hand to hand and not being encumbered by armor? I mean, what do you think martial artists do? They train their body to be resistant to strong blows, some people would be knocked out by the blows they have to suffer while they can take a lot of them. If TES series is about making [b]your[b/] character than such important skill should be back. Also bring back levitation and slowfall and the others, they were all very important to the gameplay, they should be able to help the mages with weak acrobatic skills like open helps those with low security skills. Those with low skills in both security and alteration should be able to break locks at the cost of making noise and the proprietors changing their lock for a better and stronger one or two.

Then probably Oblivion's second biggest problem; level scaling. First of all, it's against building your character, making him stronger so you are able to face better enemies and do some things you were not able as well as felling a better sense of accomplishment out of that. Now, you have to try to keep up with the enemies which is frustrating not intuitive and of course not realistic at all. Roads become dangerous and some random NPC may be killed by a minotaur on the main road. Then if you don't get up by several point in your main weapon - or magic - skill each level, the enemies quickly overpower you. And unless you go train a lot - because training not only makes you better but the enemies too, so it can be hard to take on all the gap - the game becomes unrealistically increasingly harder up to a certain point where you max your stats. Again, for the sake of better character building and more realism, certain types of enemies should be present at certain types of places, for some reason no minotaur should appear on the main roads, but stay where they usually should be, thus also bringing back an exciting part of Morrowind, the dangerous and challenging places.


That's all I can think of right now, will probably add some more and maybe make a real suggestion post with not only bring back from Morrowind elements - not that I didn't suggest anything that is not related to Morrowind.

Something that may sound like a strange suggestion and due to the auto censor can't really be put in concrete examples is "cursing".

I mentioned this a few times in the past already, something that is a important part to the atmosphere is how people talk. And I always found it kinda off putting when people I fought with sounded like the villain from a 80s kids cartoon rather than someone who's about to ram a long blade of steel through my ribs. Spitting out a full taunt line in the middle of combat just sounds strange.

So my suggestion is give them actual curse words, hell some made up ones would be good too as long as they still sounded like cursing. But hey you already at BEST get a T rating, and after Oblivion a M rating is much more likely so don't try to make cursing kid friendly. When I kick someone down a flight of stairs I want to hear him yell something like "YOU BASTARD" or something of that magnitude.
Now this doesn't mean the game has to constantly Cluster-F-Bomb everywhere, but I really just want to see (or rather hear) someone who really is a mean bastard to also sound like it.

In that magnitude it could really depend on the type of character, a bandit or a drunk hobo on the street using dirty insults or a noble maybe using more "stings" rather than insult. Also this would help to make some characters sound more psychotic by having taunts that really sound... disturbing. That could even further underline their character.

Good idea there. There should also be some enemies, maybe if you fight some random citizen, who are like "please stop! I will give you whatever you want". Some of them should be afraid when they sense their end is near, try to flee and you could even stop fights after they give you all their gold. You should be able to ask for the money or life of NPCs along the road, they answer depending on their skill and/or rich. Some rich knight could still fight you because you're a useless piece of person, but some rich person (I wouldn't say noble because they'd have guards with them) who isn't really strong should give you the money. A weak and poor NPC should try to flee, but if you accidentally threatened someone from the fighters guild for example, they should try to beat you. A guard catching you threatening people should throw you in prison. Threatening a lot of people should make you a wanted criminal, if some people were alive to tell the guards that.

I would much rather the PC didn't talk. The way I see it, the player character is supposed to be you, and to give it a voice would detract from your own imagination in the same way giving us a standard name or appearance would.



Couldn't agree more. There were a few villages dotted around the game, but not nearly enough. In reality I would expect small settlements such as these to outnumber cities vastly, and this should be reflected in the game. Nine or ten large cities may be enough, but they really should be much bigger than the ones we saw on Oblivion, and on top of those ten there should be a further twenty or so towns on the main roads between the cities, with lots of small villages clustered around the towns and cities with a few on the important routes of trade and travel.

And I'm also firmly in the "remove fast travel" camp. It makes the world seem so much smaller and makes the wilderness areas totally redundant, which is a huge shame.