Something about weapons:

First they should really do different kinds of damage, if they all do exactly the same kind of damage there really is no use to have weapon diversity at all.

Another thing is IF they bring back spears DON'T make them 2 hands only, small history update, MOST spears where used SINGLE HAND and with shields. And they where held under hand and at the back, not over hand and in the middle.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klOc9C-aPr4 may give you a few infos about how any why.

And last for now, scabbards where worn on the side of the hand you used the weapon with, so a right handed person would wear a scabbard on his RIGHT side.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94c88HfACfQ. In fact I'd recommend watching this guys videos on historical weapons usage, some good info there.

EDIT: Oh one more thing, weapons are NOT that heavy, a claymore which is among the most heavy swords weighs around 2,5kg. warhammers are SMALL weapons made for fast and hard punctual punches, not the anvil on a stick things you usually see in fantasy.

or is it muchas chicas calientes muchisimo?

Probably neither.

Great link, thank you
He really makes some good points...

I kinda wish they'd dump the whole "feather" unit of weight. It makes it difficult to compare things easily. So, there's a 30-feather claymore. Is that anywhere near 5 pounds/2.26796185 kilograms? (I don't know any other units of weight other than ounces and pounds and a couple others. Crummy U.S. education system not teaching what I should've learned years ago :brokencomputer:) I mean, sure it's a fantasy game, but wouldn't it be SO MUCH MORE realistic if it were to use real-life measurements? Because they're real, the developers know them, and that way they can make their items a reasonable weight, so we don't get conned out of encumbrance.

With the current system, there are only two things we can infer: Either items on Nirn are way too heavy; or the people of Tamriel are weak. And I KNOW it's not that latter!

The weight unite thing didn't make any sense, if a claymore with 30 units was 2,5kg that would make a watermelon with 5 units about 410 grams, not even a pound and they where as large as a soccer ball. So theoretically that melon is just a shell filled with helium... huh no wonder stuff in TES has next to no nutrient value.

They could easily fix the problem with ingredient weights by making the amount you get an actual factor, a strawberry won't give you as much as a whole pumpkin.
Plus potions themselves, i always had the thought that instead of a whole bottle they really just fill a small ampule http://www.esperanza-berlin.de/images/ampulle.jpg and are drunk down in one gulp. I think potions make a concentrated extract rather than just a juice and should after making have a really tiny weight like maybe 50 to 200 grams at max.

varied terrain.

spears.

be able to go prone.

grappling hook.

enter castles via upper windows.

climbing skill.

levelled enemies.

hand placed loot.

guards saying HALT!

a throat slit tecnique.

headshots with the bow.

return of guar's, scribs, cliffracers.. they would totally work with next gen animation ie LOTR nazgul.

tonnes more books and lore.

more lively taverns, be able to gamble, play cards etc..

horse races.

be able to take guild members out on quests. Taking a group of fighters with you to slay a cave of trolls = win.

be able to make camp fires and set up a tent.

non respawnable containers, I really want to just set up home in a small shack I find out in the wild.

small rowboats we can actually use.

Make your clothes soaking wet if you jump in water...

seasons.. winter, summer etc..

ability to change appearance midway through the game.. add scars, grow older, change hairstyle etc..

a more brooding, dreary soundtrack when its nighttime.

strong gale force winds on the top of hills.

more natural none violent wildlife. Birds, rabbits, snakes, insects etc..

more natural fast travel methods ie wagon/carriage, boat.. have an option to travel in real time.. like just chill on a boat while you sail to your destination.

a thieves hideout in each town.

a temple guild. Holy warrior FTW.

more variety of caves/dungeons.. more unique lore based locations.

... Why? You can't do anything. You cant shoot a bow, you can't swing a sword (without getting stabbed first), the only thing you-d be able to do is crawl through a very small hole. But I'm claustrophobic, so no deal.


Agreed, but there should be dangerous variations, as well. Birds would be like giant man-eating birds of prey, rabbits... might bite people, snakes would be venomous (I'd love to have one of those), and for insects, how about huge swarms? *BZZZZZZZZZZZZzzZzzZzzzzZ* :bolt:

Well for one it could be used for sneaking around AND to really get into corners that are normally unreachable. Like when you drop something and the oh so great physics decide to let it roll under a table.
But I'd really like to see some actual dungeon CRAWLING as well, squeezing through really narrow and tight passages. I don't want every dungeon to be a friggin shopping mall.
That already annoyed me about other games like "Chrome" where I had one mission inside a "mine", so i prepared with some high power short range weapons because those are more useful in narrow mine shafts, right... WRONG, that thing was as big as a airplane hangar, I actually had to restart and pack a sniper rifle.

So yea, I'd be for being able to prone, both for accessibility and for making more interesting dungeon layouts.


Well so far pretty much IS already trying to kill you so give the non "kills you on sight" wildlife a chance.
And PLEASE make wildlife more NONE AGGRESSIVE, I HATED how everything gave up whatever it was doing just to storm up to you and try to kill you. ANIMALS DON'T BEHAVE THAT WAY! And I don't care if "it's Fantasy" or "it's a RPG", make more none aggressive wildlife that just reacts to being provoked :poke: .

I don't want to see every single snake, wolf or frog is just trying to kill me, hell I'd like to see many of the "monsters" just trying to get around and simply be annoyed by the idiot adventurer poking around in their home. You're pretty much a lying, stealing, murdering bastard in those games anyway, so why draw the line at "it attacked YOU first", have the player actually be the one who attacks first :slap: .

I really like this idea. It creates a raft of possibilities for fun gameplay decisions, and makes sense the way Martut explains it; there is no drawback for using a generic costume, but you will not gain access to any areas where specific verification of identity is required.

My input is: To make yourself look like one other person specifically would be best implemented sparingly, perhaps with a potion that is difficult to obtain. This could work in conjunction with Radiant AI (or its successor) to actually make NPCs treat you as if you were that person, allowing you to pick up deliveries meant for them, access restricted areas open only to members of their factions, and hear unique dialouge. This would be a great addition to the stealth element of the game.

Would you want a whole lot of Borderlands quest board type things for the guilds etc? This would allow for a lot more quests although quests of very simplistic natures. You could go into the fighters guild and have a low reward quest from a merchant who wants 20 wolf pelts. Something like the nirnroot quest from oblivion would net you a bigger reward. This would allow the dev's to focus on better, bigger quests rather than wasting their time scripting rat removal type quests. The DB quests could work that way too. It might make the climb to guild leader a little more believable if you had complete 50 or so menial jobs before getting to the good stuff. They might even be able to generate them randomly. If you're gathering ingredients the game could ask you for anything and create a reward (gold etc) based on how far you had to travel, whether or not you had to kill something or simply find it, and so on.

ya i agree, and can u imagine the great new dungeon designs they can do if they implemented crawling, the secret ways, the sneak potential, the traps, the HORROR bliviongate:
hehe would be nice, and maybe they should put the "sticking to walls" thing from thief 3 that was great.

Yea that would be good too, could automatically happen that you press against walls in sneak mode when you walk into them, so not always when you touch a wall you suddenly stick to it but when you actually walk against it a bit. Being able to peek around corners would be good too, again like in Thief by leaning out over the side a little.

For all who are interested you could download a demo of Thief 3, http://www.gamershell.com/download_6062.shtml. It does a few nice things in terms of first person perspective, for example being able to see your whole body in first person but not having it get in the way. The only thing it doesn't do so great is headbobbing, that's a bit overdone and bouncy, but that could be fixed with more fluent animations.
It also plays nicely with shadows, and it only has hard shadows but they work better than none at all at least.

Actually a game that worked REALLY nicely in first person was GTA4, there was a mod that allowed full first person controls and the movements and also camera always felt really natural, you had full first person body visible and all animations looked nice since they where made for third person view. Plus the camera ALWAYS remained in first person perspective so you weren't suddenly forced out of it.

yep, and I for one would love to see the stealth system in thief get implemented into ES 5, would be very nice, me thinks .

:ninja: :ninja: :ninja:

Actually from what they claimed there was a member of the thief dev team with them when they made Oblivion... was he only there to fetch lunch?

I like this theory! You should post it in TESV speculation ^_^

Holidays: One week a year when people in a town have a different schedule, dress up, decorate the town, etc... in honor of some local lore.

Every Divine, Saint, Daedra prince and local ruler should have a special day. Some are celebrated in the open, others in secret.

They can open up quest lines that are otherwise not available for more dynamic roleplaying.
For example: Worshippers of Sanguine hold a yearly festival to attract people from town each year, supposedly to make them less superstitious about daedra, but a Zealous priest is worried the festival leads more people into Daedra worship...

LONG POST AHEAD, BRING SOME PATIENCE


Clothing and Armor layering:
Being able to layer clothing and armors again would be nice so I had a thought how this system could work and also a few thoughts on the enchantments problem.

Also don't be too scared by the length of this post, most of it is a list I try to explain the idea a bit with but not hard feelings if you just skip over that part, you should read it though to understand it a bit better.

First off the body should be split up into more slots than just head, body, arms and legs, have a few sub zones. The main idea is that different articles of clothing have different sizes that can fit over each other or even be switched around.
A eye patch would take up the "eye" slots of course, but you could for example still wear a pair of glasses over them as they are "bigger" than the eye patch.
You could also wear a cloth or veil on your head and have a hat or helmet on that. The only conflict that would come is when you wear things that occupy the same size and same slot.
Some objects would have a variable size so they can be worn over other items as well. How they are layered depends on the order you put them on.

Like this you could layer objects as they fit, simply apply them to the right slot and give them a size:
Eye patch - Slot "Eyes" - Size 1 (means it will occupy the Eyes slot at level 1)
Glasses - Slot "Eyes" - Size 2 (Will occupy Eyes slot at level 2, over eye patch)
Goggles - Slot "Eyes" - Size 3 - 5 (Eyes slot at level 3 up to level 5, worn over glasses)

Cloth mask - Slot "Nose/Mouth" - Size 1
Gas/Breath mask - Slot "Nose/Mouth" - Size 2

Some objects would take more than one slot though, for example a full face mask or helmet face plate would cover your whole face meaning the eyes and Nose/Mouth slot. A full face mask or face plate would take up level 2 so you couldn't wear glasses and a breath mask.


This may go a bit off topic but with that system you could also layer clothing and armor, for example wear a undershirt (level 1), a suit of chain mail (Variable level 2 - 3) a pullover (Variable level 2 - 3) a hard suit of armor (Size dependent between level 2 - 4 [some armor suits are bigger, some are smaller]) and a robe over that (Variable level 3 - 5).
Some items that are very large would always be worn on the outermost layer like shoulder pads, boots or some hats/crowns/helmets, they'd always get a "level OUTERMOST". Other things like bandages for example would always be "level INNERMOST" since they are always worn directly on skin and under all clothes. Like that you could wear a crown or a hat on top of a helmet for example if the helmet is "small" enough and doesn't take the outermost slot. Though to eliminate that from some, like a very large or jagged "Sauron" like helmets could say "level 2 - OUTERMOST" which means nothing can be worn over it. Smaller helmets would simply take a inner slot meaning they could still be hidden under a cloak or head scarf.

This layering method would allow for a lot of variable character designs and also to give your character optimal balance between protection and mobility.


Enchantment stacking:
On the problem with enchanted items I'd suggest the fix is simply the items you wear closest to your body have the strongest effect, the ones furthest out have a reduced effect. So layering several items with the same enchantment doesn't fully stack the effects, the one with direct body contact has 100% efficiency, the one over that only 50%, the one over that only 25% and so on, it always halves the efficiency so it's never quite gone but severely reduced.
Plus wearing a lot of stuff WILL slow you down and WILL make you less agile so that has to be taken into account as well.
On rings and amulets I really think you should be able to wear more than one too, with amulets you could simply say that each takes up one size slot. Which basically means as long as nothing else covers your neck you could fill any slot with a amulet, but as soon as you for example wear a shirt with a high collar that slot is taken and you can only wear one amulet less.
With rings the efficiency could depend on which finger you wear which ring OR the rings don't fully stack but combine their efficiency. So again wearing a ring on each finger won't stack 100% bust simply mix the effects and divides them up. That way you can get a lot of minor effects or few strong effects, would be a good trade in my eyes.


Clothing protection:
Clothing itself should actually offer some protection value, it IS after all a form of protection. Those protections can vary depending on the material, you wouldn't be able to touch something hot bare hands or with a silk glove, but with a leather glove you could actually pick up a hot coal. But the same time with a metal glove you can't as it would heat up too fast.
Chainmail armor could actually have a cooling down effect (it transmits heat out form the body very well) while thick coats are insulating and keep you warm.


Clothing and armor layers: (Long list)
This here is just a list of how the layers and sized could be distributed, it's nothing complete and doesn't account for all pieces of clothing and equipment but could give a small insight into what I mean.


Size legend:
Fixed size (level #)
Variable size (level # - #)
Fully variable (Any)
Fully variable, large (Any/# [number of sizes required])
Fixed several sizes (level # → #)
Always innermost or outermost layer (Innermost) (Outermost)
Fixed size and very large (level # → Outermost)

Layers and examples:
Innermost – Bandages
Level 1 – Undershirt
Level 2 – Shirt
Level 3 – Chainmail suit
Level 4 – Wide plate armor
Level 5 – Robe
Outermost – Shoulder plates


Examples:
Undershirt:
Slots: Chest, Stomach, Upper back, Lower back
Size, 1 - 2

Shirt:
Slots; Chest, Stomach, Upper back, Lower back, Shoulders, Upper arms, Lower arms
Size; 1 – 3

Chain mail:
Slots; Chest, Stomach, Upper back, Lower back, Shoulders
Size; 2 – 3

Thin plate cuirass:
Slots; Chest, Stomach, Upper back, Lower back
Size; 4

Robe:
Slots; Chest, Stomach, Upper back, Lower back, Shoulders, Upper arms, Lower arms
Size; 3 – 5

Belt:
Slots; Stomach / Over shoulder; chest, shoulder
Size; Any

Gear Belt:
Slots; Stomach / Over shoulder; chest, shoulder
Size; Any/2

Small shoulder plates:
Slots; Shoulders
Size; 3, 3 → 4

Large Shoulder plates:
Slots; Shoulders (Upper arms for some)
Size; Outermost

Thick plate cuirass:
Slots; Chest, Stomach, Upper back, Lower back
Size; 2 –> 3 –> 4 –> 5 –> Outermost


Hat:
Slots; Top head
Size; Outermost

Heabdand/Bandana:
Slots; Forehead, Back head
Size; Any

Eyepatch:
Slots; Eyes (L, R)
Size; 1

Eye mask:
Slots; Eyes
Size; Any

Glasses (framed):
Slots; Eyes / Forehead / Neck
Size; 2

Goggles/Glasses on a band:
Slots; Eyes / Forehead / Neck
Size; Any/3

Cloth mask:
Slots; Nose/Mouth
Size; Any

Gas mask:
Slots; Nose/Mouth
Size; 2 → 4

Face mask:
Slots; Eyes, Mouth/Nose, Forehead
Size; 2

Veil:
Slots; Eyes; Mouth/Nose
Size; Any

Head cloth:
Slots; Forehead, top head, back head
Size; 1

Small helmet:
Slots; Forehead, top head, back head, ears
Size; 3

Large helmet:
Slots; Forehead, top head, back head, ears
Size; 3 → 5 → Outermost

Deerstalker:
Slots; Forehead, top head, back head, ears
Size; 2 → 4

Crown:
Slots; Top head
Size; Outermost

Scarf:
Slots; Neck
Size; Any

Amulet;
Slots; Neck
Size; Any

Cloth gloves;
slots; Hands, Fingers
Size; 1

Mittens;
Slots; Hands, Fingers
Size; 3 / 3 – 4

Thick/Armored gloves
Slots; Hands, Fingers / Wrist
Size; Outermost

Small rings:
Slots; Fingers
Size 2

Large rings:
Slots; Fingers
Size 2 –> 3, 4 / 3 –> 4, 5

Underpants:
Slots; Hips / Hips, Upper legs/ Hips, Upper legs, knees, lower legs
Size; 1 – 2

Pants:
Slots; Hips / Hips, Upper legs/ Hips, Upper legs, knees, lower legs
Size; 1 – 3

Socks:
Slots; Feet, ankles
Size; 1 – 3

Shoes:
Slots; Feet, ankles
Size; Outermost

Boots:
Slots; Feet, ankles, upper legs
Size; Outermost


Bandages:
Slots; Any
Size; Innermost

Splint:
Slots; Upper arms, lower arms, upper legs, lower legs, hands, fingers, feet
Size; 1 - 2

Cask:
Slots; Upper arms, elbows, lower arms, upper legs, knee, lower legs, wrist, hands, fingers, feet, neck (Any?)
Size; 1 → 3


Slots:
Small note, the slots could also double as main locational damage zones which in turn also contain simulated “sub zones” like bones, veins and vital organs.

Head:
-Eyes
-Mouth/Nose
-Top head
-Forehead
-Back head
-Ears
-Neck

Body:
-Chest (L, R)
-Stomach
-Upper back
-Lower Back
-Shoulders (L, R)
-Crotch/Hips

Arms (L, R):
-Shoulders
-Upper arms
-Elbows
-Lower arms
-Wrist
-Hand
-Fingers

Legs (L, R):
-Upper Legs (Thigh)
-Knees
-Lower Legs (Crus)
-Ankle
-Feet

Tail

Wall of text... :bonk:

Nice criticism... :facepalm:

No problem. Any time.

A few friends and I have been discussing and we wanted to be able to travel between the different countries in TES (Morrowind, Tamriel, etc.) and be able to buy passage to whichever provence you want to and do that whenever you wanted to as long as you had enough money. Maybe even allow you to buy a large piece of land and develop it into a city like what ubisoft did in assassins creed 2. we also discussed how cool it would be to be able to make your character so that it is a hybrid between werewolf and vampire or so that it can become that. However in becoming the hybrid you doom yourself to a very hard level of playing the game. An Exp Based leveling system would be great too because in TES IV your very confined as to how high of a level you can get once you max out your major stats you hit a wall of impass and you cant level anymore.

i just had a nerdgasm I love long lists

if they implement half of it into ES5 I would be a happy camper, although I feel they won't make it with such detail, but hopefully they will add a few extra slots for us to use.

I agree, I totally want layered armor again (although I think you should be able to choose whether you want robes under or over your plate armor. Usually plate armor is way cooler looking than a robe). However, I have a few issues with some of the things you posted. I do not want to see gas masks in goggles in Oblivion. It really wouldn't fit at all. I also don't understand how they could make underwear an armor slot while still avoiding nudity... That may cause some problems.

Add: Also, I am a little iffy on the glasses. I don't think it would fit very well, either. I mean I don't think glasses have been in any previous game (although I am questioning myself about that. Part of me thinks that there may have been glasses in previous games).

With the system I suggested you could wear a robe under armor as long as the armor is big enough, a robe has variable size (in my suggestion with a minimum of level 3) so you could wear one that's a bigger level (4 or 5) over it.


sigh :shakehead: , I knew i should have elaborated on that, I only took those in AS EXAMPLES, PLUS there WHERE helmets with at least goggles and something that very much looks like a gas mask in Morrowind (Boiled netch leather helmet, ashland explorer gear so quite justified to have those).

Not to rant much but I generally don't like the whole "it wouldn't fit" vibe, just because it hasn't been done from the very first moment on doesn't mean it couldn't come. It doesn't mean everyone suddenly runs around with glasses or gas masks, it just means those things HAVE been built over time (Though I know TES like most other fantasy is victim to enforced medieval stasis). And no this does NOT include guns!

I like the list Daniel_Kay.

I had a feeling they were just examples, but you can never be too sure . Anyways, yeah, I guess they sort of looked like goggles, but they somehow made it work. I just don't want to see steampunk goggles.