Directly influence motions and actions of the affected body part, a hurt arm is slower and weaker, if your legs are injured you won't be able to run as fast or jump as well.
A step deeper are organ damages which can cause heavy bleedings or interfere with your stamina regeneration, some can even be lethal (a head shot on it's own is not, the arrow would still have to penetrate your skull and go deep into your brain). In fact a hit on your brain could paralyze you and cause a heavy bleeding, you could in fact still be "saved".
Bleedings should play a bigger role too, your health could pretty much be blood loss, the heavier the wound the harder and longer it bleeds. Small scratches can stop bleeding on their own fast with barely any damage, all wounds can be directly treated as well.

The main point should also be that you take a heavy hit and continue fighting, but if you took heavy damage at least make it to SAFETY again.

Another question: How do we get to recover our limbs? By a chapel healer or potions?

Bandages, splints, stitching wounds, healing herbs, potion, magic and time. Almost all injures can heal on their own but can be aided, a heavy wound bleeds less or stops bleeding sooner and is healed faster when bandaged, a splint can fix a broken bone enough that you can use the body part again, not to 100% effectiveness but so it at least works.

Of course there can also be professional healers who can restore you back to full health as well, however i wouldn't say instantly, when you get to them 2 - 3 days or even a week in game could pass depending on your injures.
But of course the survivalists could stay in the wilderness all their life and never see a healer, it won't be easy to play like that though, but it should be possible.

Works well i think

Oh and btw, bandages could be really quite abounded since they can be made out of any sufficiently sized cloth. Cutting up some old pants could give you 5 - 8 stripes of bandages.
Of course they should maybe be clean, using some old hobos underpants as bandages isn't such a good idea.

On a similiar note I had hoped braces and crutches would have been usable items in FO3

The world map answer to the issue of getting lots of detail into a very large space is fortunately quite simple. It's all about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_generation being used wisely in conjunction with conventional artistry. What does a virtual world contain? A wide array of plants, trees, rocks, detritus and animals, each inhabiting a continually evolving set of ecosystems. Sure, it sounds like a feat to manage. But it could, in theory, simply be applied to the world like a paintbrush. Perhaps the tech isn't here yet, but I think we can manage something like this:

• Modellers and texture artists create a large series of objects to be placed into the world. From flowers to fallen logs to giant boulders, everything.
  
• The game world, having already been sculpted, is broken down into many different ecosystems. You can have boreal forest, subarctic tundra, frozen wastes, etc. Intermediate steps are good too. Plus areas that might have more specific microflora, like wildflower fields and fire-charred forest. There could easily be 50 to 100 ecosystems defined, with many points of overlap.
  
• The ecosystems get painted onto the game world as a map overlay. Just like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vegetation-no-legend.PNG of the earth.
  
• All of the objects to be placed into an ecosystem are added into a list, along with their relative abundance.
  
• Finally, each ecosystem list randomly populates its painted in-game area with all the items meant to go there.

Tackling things with a fine-tuned brush could be done in two ways: (1) Manually after everything is procedurally generated, or (2) by creating 'clumps' of objects like gardens, rock formations, piled logs, etc... manually and adding these to the ecosystem lists just as you would the individual objects. Likely a combination of both.

And, voila! Oblivion-like (or better) detail, on a massive scale. Perhaps even a scale to rival Daggerfall.

This is the only part of crippled limbs I disagree with you on. A strong "cure crippled arm" (They'd have to get a better name) potion or spell should be able to heal it flly, provided that it had enough 'points.' It could also be treated indirectly, leaving the arm crippled but Restoring/fortifying strength and agility to allow almost full function with it (It would still be more prone to damage though; it would have more of an effect on your total hp if hit)
Bandages are a good idea, and they can take a while. but a splint or cast would have to be very short term; nobody wants to be stuck in a bed after every hard fight in a video game. Leave the boring parts of reality for real life.

What i want is more things to do instead of combat all the time.

One thing i think would been very cool is to be able to form ur own small village or town. Like, you can choose between X amount of places in the wilderness, and you can choose what kind of buildings that will be built there, and you have to pay for the buildings, can see the town change by each week etc.
To make it even cooler one could get the choice to build ur own castle there and become lord over the town, and there could be various random events etc. (random settlers, murderers, intruders, bandits, travelers and visitors to the village..).
And also being able to choose furniture in ur house, a sort of small 'sim' thing, being able to decorate ur house more directly. And there should be more things to do there so the houses are not just space where you put ur stuff, you could have people interacting with you there, visitors, intruders, guards, meetings, quest-related things, a wife and so on.


Other things i want to see is first of all beards! and not just stubble, big beards. At least for the nords. And more hairstyle choices.

Also i would like to see more types of armor and weapons, not just a few things that are 'best', there should be more variety and armor choices.
And also there should be some more bonuses for not using armor at all, for spellcasters and assassins that dont want to use armor.

I would also like to see pets, changing weather(snowing which actually adds snow to the ground), and being able to have a own stable and actually place ur horse there.
And some more "sim"-aspects, as in fable, being able to marry perhaps and make certain npc's get a more personal bond to you instead of having everyone behave equally to you almost.

I would also like to see more factions and guilds then in Oblivion, more choices. Perhaps a raider-warrior guild (evil version of fighters guild), a merchant guild, guard/military guild, a evil mage guild, 2 guilds that are rivals so you have to choose one or the other etc.

I would also like to see the magic-system being changed a bit. In oblivion and morrowind it has always felt rather "stiff". Perhaps faster caster animations and more fancy graphic on the spells, and more types of spells.

Oh and more random events, one thing that would be cool was to see criminals actually being brought into jail, instead of the prisons being empty all the time.
There could be some random characters that would try to murder other random character or steal in towns from time to time and ended up being arrested so you could actually go and talk to them in jail, perhaps even break them out. That could be combined with a guild where you could work as a guard and actually capture these people and put them in jail.
The towns and world should be even more "alive". In Oblivion it was good but towns etc. often felt a bit static since it was the same people almost all the time, same things they said("mudcrabs...fierce creatures..blalbla" etc.), so more dialogues, more interacting between npc's, certain npcs should have relationships and say and do just certain things together with certain other npcs they meet or have a bond with, not behave similar to all. More unique characters and more unique personalities.

On the subject of the alternative damage model, I think generally having higher damage would be good. (Or at least individual sliders for player damage and enemy damage, so you can max both if you want - as not to compromise the appeal to the casual gamer).
It would encourage a more tactical approach to battle, catching enemies one at a time and disabling/killing them, instead of hacking on a meat bag 20 times before it drops dead, all while being shot at by 3 archers.
That would also make a stealth character actually playable.

This idea has been suggested time and time again, but I think it never hurts to repeat it, since people generally seem to agree.

This is actually one of the best ideas I've heard of around here - it would make a lot of sense and allow for versatile gaming depending on your play style. Kudos :foodndrink:

I generally agree with this.

In my opinion, all that is needed to fix these shot-for-shot, damage sponge battles is just to throw in the proper animations. Instead of your opponent getting it 20 times before death, show the animation for him dodging 5 times, the animation for him blocking/parrying 13 times, and only show him getting hit twice. The battles are, in essence, the exact same, but they feel more realistic.

Obviously, something more advanced and complex is needed for realistic fights than this animation-cover-up system, but this is better than the current system. (IMO)

I agree with this. Having an easy and fast solution is perfectly acceptable, but for a lot of people being bedridden for in-game weeks (even if you could use the wait feature to make it go by fast it would still be a bit of an inconvenience) would svck because so much could go on in that time (a quest expires, a bunch of quest necessary NPCs go splat, etc.).

Well a broken bone would not happen in EVERY fight, you are still too much stuck in the "damage sponge" thinking.
It would rather be defending and PREVENTING damage.

The problem with cripples and injuries is that it only works with lvl scaling from Oblivion. Why you ask me? Because that we all want creatures that dont take 20 hits to kill, so injuries is basicly useless if we are able to kill enemies in 5 hits (as we all want). But if monsters took 20 hits to kill (like oblivion) then it would be a good reason to cripple the enemies limbs and injure them to make the easier to kill.

But lets not hope to see that again!

Well if everyone just wanted to "simply use a sword" there wouldn't even be daggers, hand to hand, bows, or any blunt weapons. These games are supposed to be as realistic (excluding magic/mythical creatures) as possible. That is what makes them fun and beautiful overall. Oblivion brought wildlife and horses and CPUs with lives and dynamic objects which was an improvement, but it took away Morrowind's weapon and armor system making it much less realistic in that aspect. The more things that you can fit into a game that make it realistic the better.

And on the subject of dynamic objects, I hope to see small things like stools and chairs that aren't bolted to the floor.

Not necessarily. If combat is about preventing damage, presumably the same thing would apply to enemies, especially more intelligent ones who are likely the ones wearing armor and dodging/parrying and such in the first place. If you can't get in a solid hit to kill them outright, you may be able to cripple a limb and damage their guard enough to finish the job.

No not really, see below


Exactly, the difference between two total noobs and two experts fighting is the noob fight will be over quickly as one is bound to make a mistake that leaves his cover open and get hit hard enough to be out of combat. The pro fight will take long as both are trained in dodging and blocking the enemy rather than take hit, there a actual hit will likely mean it's over, though even when heavily injured they can still sneak in a hit.

And i see a VERY common error here, ending a fight is equated to "the enemy is dead", that is NOT the case with a crippling and injure system. The fight is over when your opponent is no longer ABLE to fight which is a FAR bigger range than just dead. If you hammered a dagger deep in his chest and he can only wheeze for air he won't be able to fight you anymore, which of course leaves it OPEN to finish him then.
But just stabbing your opponents feet won't kill them. But if they are so beaten up they can't move anymore you can easily walk over and slit his throat.

This is why i say STOP thinking in hits or hitpoints, you see it only makes discussing such things harder.
There is no "hitting him in this body part will chop off more hitpoints that this body part", it simply means "that body part is injured and will inhibit his movements".

But with this type of combat, Endurance, Protection and Damage doesn't play a role, and I think removing stat points is like making it a less of a rpg.

this would be epic, then you could go into hiring the gaurds, paying them customizing their armor and emblems etc, then you could take them into fights with you. though i think you will need to have some that won't die e.g. the captains etc

Uhm it plays a lot MORE of a role.

Endurance:
The more powered out you are the more likely you are to do mistakes leaving your cover open

Protection:
Armored body parts are less likely to get injured, duh

Damage:
Damage needs to be done differently than right now, not by "points" given to a weapon but by it's stats like weight, type of weapon (front heavy, center heavy, bladed, blunt...) and how fast you swing it.

Skills:
The more skilled you are the better you can defend, evade, parry and of course hit better, fighting more experienced means you tire out way less, you can hit weak points easier, you can get past an opponents defense...


You know what, a big problem is you probably have "oblivion did it like THIS" in your head. Toss that out, don't think in "Oblivion did that", this isn't Oblivion it's a NEW game, new rules, new systems.

A great question for these threads in general is "What works well enough in other games, that would work in TES?"

The Elderscrolls is among the most wide open of any game archetype there is. You could sit here forever thinking of specific things to do for it. But you'll always have limited time and money. So a better idea is too look at other games, what they do well and how they do them, and wonder if that is worth adding to The Elderscrolls Experience in exchange for dropping some other potential idea.

Based on recent games I've played I'd say:

Dodging as in Assassins Creed 2. Press a button and a direction, and you hop that way, and hopefully out of harm for a moment. Simple, effective, and a way to differentiate high endurance/armor damage sponges from high agility types.

Mounts and Fast Travel in Red Dead: I found myself actually caring more about my horse than my life in Red Dead, partially because death didn't mean much, but also because my horse was useful. It was way faster than walking, it was better than almost all the other horses, and I needed to use it a lot.

Combined with it's relative ease of use, when some [censored] threw me off and tried to steal my horse I happily spent 10 minutes hunting her down and killing her.

As for fast travel. Go into inventory, set camp (you can now save) and then fast travel. It felt right somehow, not nearly as video-gamey as Oblivion or Fallout 3.

"Magic" attacks in Bioshock/Dark Messiah: Shoot lightning at water, and it electrocutes everyone in it. Shoot ice on the ground, and an enemy who runs over it slips and falls. Magic that's something other than a that shoots damage fx at things, that you have to think about slightly more to get it's full effect.

In my opinion with TES V they should add certain spell effects related to the 3 main trees of magic (Frost, Fire, and Shock)

All frost spells slow the target's movement speed and reduce their attack speed as well.

All fire spells could burn the victim for a certain percentage of the original damage over time.

All shock spells could could continue to electrocute the victim every now and then, not necessarily for damage but to perhaps paralyze the target for brief amounts of time (like 2 seconds at a time).

As far as scaling damage to the attacks it should take 5 solid strikes to down an opponent. Add 5 for Ogres and the like and another 5-10 for epic creatures.
Also not every blow will be a solid hit, especially at low levels and with quality armors.

[] Dodge can be included in this in a way that does not require excessive animations in which case the NPC dodge skill competes with PC weapon skill for glancing blows.