Well in the shivering isles I actually think that killing certain individuels spawns a grave stone in the local graveyard, the trouble would be to get to know that they are dead, if perhaps you don't even know that that was the person you killed 20 lvls ago. Maybe when you ask where to find them, if they are dead the informant simply says, "He has passed away, if you want to pay your respects, try the local graveyard". Of course if you've just killed them, you can just summon him from the corpse.

Perfect. :goodjob:

No that will make the game feel like fairies are helping you but I don't want that I don't know about everyone else but I'd much prefer essential chars then raising them from the dead and the shivering isles system was different what happened in shivering isles was that after you did a quest involving people dieing you would see a grave with a joke about them,you wouldn't be able to resurrect.

Come on dude, not only do essential characters blow big time, it is hard to understand what you say, with you're bounty of grammatical errors.

Yep I am crap at english.

I know that the shivering isles were different, we were discussing a possible alternative to Essential NPCs, the problem with essential NPCs is that their immortality breaks immersion, making a spell that can give contact with dead people, will make sure that they wont need to be immortal, in order for you to gain their information later.

It would not be like getting helped by fairies, mainly because they aren't fairies of course, but also because you would only have to go that rout if they have gotten killed, it will function as the alternate rout, not the standard rout.

Yeah but I think there might be a better way.

You know we DO have necromancers in the TES world...I already had a spell in my personal spell effects list to do pretty much that, call a spirit for conversation. Assuming there are no more silly bans and lack of gray morality, if your character isn't any good at necromancy it would be easy enough to hire one from the mage's guild or equivalent. No need for weird things like grave-talking.

Well this is the suggestion thread, fire away

That's a good idea instead of having essential people we can just pay mages to do it but the necromancy only works for a limited amount of time(the staff of worms only resurrects for 30 seconds)so you will have to pay professionals(wizard rank and up)a lot of money if they want to stay close to what happens in other games.

Hm.

Jobs:

Give us the opportunity to undertake more than just 'go there, kill that' long-term jobs. What I'm talking about is being under the employment of perhaps a shop; a merchant caravan; an upper-class citizen or something along those lines. While this might take a long time to put in, if you're going for a lot of them, it'd add a nice extra depth and re-playability.

Shop: (Sample)

Go to the market in (insert location) collect goods, event might happen, such as:

• - Thieves take the goods you've collected.
  
• - You're ambushed on your way back.
  
• - The weather conditions are immensely difficult. You loose your map and you have to use your wits to find your way to your destination, in face of danger and perhaps some sort of timer.

Eventually, you might come to own the shop. There'd be opportunity here for:

• - Rivalries with other shops.
  
• - Meaningful interaction with employees.
  
• - Crisis, problems and book-balancing.

'Epic' Random Events:

A wide list of 'epic' random events that are very uncommon and happen largely by chance, but when they do happen, they have a wide-spread impact on the game world.

• - Extremes of weather.
  
• - Invasion of 'x' (trolls, etc.)
  
• - Plague/Illness.
  
• - Serial killer.
  
• - Fire.
  
• - Terrorism by insurgents.

With each occurrence you'd have a chance to help with each situation, opening up a small line of sub-quests and then, generally, a larger questline to resolve the situation and perhaps some game-changing 'reward'. The weather might have destroyed a section of some town and now you have the ability to take it over and build as you like from a set list; or the invasion of 'x' spurs a war with several battles you might join in with or something along those lines. A long shot.


"Vehicles":

The use of:

- Horse and cart.
- Boats, including larger ships if at all possible. (Opening up potentially a whole new gaming experience with navy-esque missions and a viking/pirate-like lifestyle.


Arena:

More and more varied arenas. The environment of the arena could play a larger part of the battle, with more exotic and more tactical-based monsters and 'bosses' taking the stage in some instances. Hack-and-slash would be available in one arena, whereas another arena might offer this newer style where you need to think about the fights and prepare yourself - knowing how to use your environment and certain attacks and defences would be more vital than before.


More Interactive and Lively House:


Houses so far have been lacklustre, they look great and have a lot of potential, but being in them isn't particularly enjoyable or interactive at all.

• - Interaction with neighbours and the general community.
  
• - Random uncommon events including your house: fire, break-ins, special guests.
  
• - Additions can be made to the house, not through money but through your own work - collecting certain items; helping out neighbours.
  
• - You become part of a community. With markets, meetings, murders, scares, romance, calls to arms, mobs, clubs, political organisations and elections.

Mining, Farming (as earlier suggested), Wood-Cutting

A mine is a good environment. There's the potential, if you have a job there as earlier mentioned, for it to collapse; for it to flood; for zombies to raise up from within for some peculiar reason; for the miners to be oppressed; for the miners to be slaves and end up needing to break free - and so and so forth. Mining would bring in a wage; you'd have friends in the mine; you'd be able to achieve promotions; you might be able to use the ore for useful things.

Wood-cutting is simply another way of making use of the environment, and there's opportunity to use the resource for building and so on.


[b]Meaningful Relationships:[/b]

There needs to be more meaningful relationships. Characters that you bond with; characters that you actually -care- about if they die; characters that might not play a massive part in quests but are an integral part of your own characters' life. Their would be only a handful of these across the world, and you'd be able to progress the relationship steadily - as they become more loyal to you and more important. You might end up marrying them; they might turn out to be luring you into betrayal; they might end up fighting alongside you; they might manage a business alongside you; they can go out with you to pubs and the like; they might be your thievery partner; they might be always getting into trouble; they might be younger and you'd have to raise them in your image.

The possibilities are endless.

Also Scrolls, for people who aren't magical.

Weapon and armor stand, is it just me or do you feel like displaying your weapons and armors that you don′t use other than just laying it on the tabel/shelf

Yes, but i'm pretty sure OB had these things, though it was hard to get them in the correct position.

I mean that you activate something, like Knight of the nine armor stand but you should be able to but on any kind of armor, for example a weapon-stand with place for 2 short swords, one long sword and a bow and you put them there like a container but you can see them

Edit- I remember a mod for morrowind that used NPCs to do this, a script to tell the game to skip animation for that NPC and reduce his HP to zero

On the point of essential characters...
I think Morrowinds system of warning you after you've killed someone had a great feeling behind it.
I look to a famous quote to emphasize my point:

With great power comes great responsibility.

I think that having the power to kill essential characters makes the game 100 times more epic. The ability to choose to murder and slaughter essential npc's, or quest with them and do the main quest, makes a huge difference in gameplay.
It felt actually scary walking around Divayth Fyr in Morrowind because you knew, one slip up, one pull of that right trigger, and you were a gonner. You could kill him yeah, and ruin the main quest, but that sheer feeling of being able to and knowing he'd probably kick your ass made it so much more real for me.

I saw how there were more raw materials in Morrowind and also that mining ore and glass etc. from the actual mines was lucrative. They seemed to bring more of that back in the idea of SI with the madness and amber weapons/armor. In FO3, you could collect items and use a bench and craft... so I think they will take it a step further in TESV and combine the concepts so that the armorer skill will allow players to craft all of the armor and weapons in the game. The highest quality material coupled with mastery could yield some cool custom weapons. I would like to see them steal the socket idea from Diablo II though.

With all of the threads, I am sure I am not the first to say this... but just wanted to voice it!

The situation as it is tends to be cut and dry: NPCs can kill each other. The quick and dirty solution happens to make them entirely unkillable. Anything else gives you some mystical power to kill somone no one else can. Any way you cut it, what can't be allowed is for important NPCs to be killed as a random chance, thereby breaking someone's game 100 hours in, only to have them not notice for another 150 hours.

I agree with you... the first time it happened to me, I was like "oh crap, did I just ruin the game?" After that, it was like the lives of the NPCs had value. Also, there is a guard in Leyawin and there is a point in my Elder Scrolls gameplay lifecycle where about 1000 hrs in I have done just about everything and the mods are keeping me going, so I decide to do the ol' "Province Cleanse"... you know... kill 'em all! Stupid essential characters like the guard in Leyawin ruin it... He especially ticks me off because as I am hunting down the residents, he keeps popping back up after I knock him unconscious to arrest me...

Not really.
It'd be entirely too easy for Bethesda to make it so random people can't kill NPC's. Out of the 8 years I've played Morrowind, 0 NPC's that had to do with any quest were killed by anyone other than me.
And making it so random people can't kill essential NPC's, but you can, wouldn't diminish gameplay whatsoever IMO.
And yes EXACTLY SyltStryder, you took the words out of my mouth. NPC's lives had value. So true.

Hmm, double post is double. :hubbahubba:

they can also make it a toggle thing, essential NPC's can/can′t die then both parties would be happy

With the radiant AI it was possible for NPC's to get killed by animals on their schedules, but I would rather have the conjure spirit thing, and then they just guard their essentials better, instead of making them immortal.

Well, what made it into the final game, as I understand it, wasn't actually their highly-touted Radiant AI system, just an admittedly deep scheduling system. I think the immortal NPCs, however, may very well have been a holdover from that system.

@Betrayer of Humanity-- of course NPCs didn't kill each other in Morrowind, because the AI system was far more primitive and they didn't do anything except sort of wander around aimlessly, if they moved at all.

There are numerous ways to address essential NPC's. Here are some of them.

-Necromancy, to get information even if they die.
-More open quests. This is something I want them to do regardless of essential NPC's, for roleplay and replay reasons. A quest should progress because of an event, not a conversation. If I need information from someone who died, maybe they have notes, or a colleague, or books in their house on the subject. If I need to kill someone and make it look like an accident, the chandelier shouldn't be the only option. Put choking powder in his food, put a tripwire near a cliff road you know he takes. The world should be full of things and people telling me about them, not potential things that only happen when a specific person tells me about them.
-Passive, not aggressive. Make the important NPC's stay out of it when fighting goes on. It makes no sense for everyone in town to leap into a melee anyway, when there are guards around every corner whose job it is. Even more so for nobles or merchants or other people with guards specifically protecting that individual.
-Circumstantial invincibility. It's been suggested to make essential NPC's only able to be harmed by the PC. Alternatively, make it so that other NPC's don't recognize them as a valid target. Or make them immune to area effect.
-Biff the Understudy. In the Baldur's Gate games, if a required NPC was dead or otherwise unavailable, someone named Biff the Understudy appeared and spoke their lines for them, then vanished. This exact system wouldn't work for TES of course, but it would be a simple matter to mark an NPC as "replaceable." If they die, an acquaintance, apprentice, family member, colleague, etc., might linger about in the area they were in to offer similar information.
-Better AI. You should not be attacked by every other beetle in the wilderness, major roads should be better patrolled, shopkeepers shouldn't fly into a rage because you touched an apple. Various basic improvements to AI that I'd like to see regardless would make the world much less dangerous for important NPC's.
-Nonlethal combat, another thing I want regardless. Not all bandits are murder-on-sight. Some might be threaten-and-rob on sight, then leave you alone. Some might whack you in the back of the head, rummage through your pockets, and flee. Town guards should be capable of subduing or knocking criminals unconscious and hauling them off to jail instead of approaching every crime with the http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs30/f/2008/159/4/9/49022fddbbb5214f815f1c90d083f7d2.jpg. Bar fights should involve fists and falling down, not mass murder.
-Grin and bear it. Killing everyone is far too easy and harmless in the game as it is. There should be consequences, and not taking every possible precaution to keep me from being (gasp) inconvenienced by my heinous actions should be one of them. With the open quest design already mentioned, then in most cases I would not be losing game content, simply the normal way of getting to it, and there's much less reason for anyone to be "essential." If I fly to the moon and murder the King of Popes, I really have no reason to complain that I might have spoiled a quest. This is particularly the case if combined with other options to keep the world from "accidentally" killing important NPC's. I see no reason for invincible NPC's if I'm the only real reason for them to be dead. It's my action and my responsibility.