Welcome to TES V Ideas and Suggestions # 178

This thread is for ideas and suggestions for TES:V and to keep all the general discussion in one series of threads.

To discuss major issues, use a separate topic, such as the levelling topic.

Other general topics on this will either be closed or moved here.

Please at least try to read the previous few threads to avoid too much repetition: Note, there has been a lot of off topic and unnecessary discussion in past topics, please ensure that any posts you make in this thread are suitable to the subject being discussed. The moderators will be keeping a close eye on the content.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1085256-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-thread-%23160/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1086102-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-thread-%23161/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1087658-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-thread-no-162/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1089003-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-163/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1090035-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-164/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1090714-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-165/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1092018-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-166/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1094008-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-167/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1096483-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-168/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1099525-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-169/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1102208-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-170/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1104003-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-171/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1105916-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-172/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1107672-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-173/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1109526-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-174/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1111409-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-175/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1112090-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-176/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1112872-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-177/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1113694-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-178/

It's probably been suggested a thousand time before but I'm going to say it anyway..

Clothing under armor

and/or

Robes over armor

I miss this from Morrowind. Also the amount of outfit spots should be increased to at least what Morrowind was.

A hardcoe option/set of options that are completely removed from the difficulty slider

Ability to have melee and ranged weapons equipped on the character model at the same time (think Mount and Blade)

Much, much more sophisticated apparel system, including cloaks, armour and clothes that can be worn together, toggles for different items (shirt sleeves rolled up, hood up/down, shirt tucked in etc)

Many more voice actors. They don’t have to be big names.

Less expansive but more user friendly character aesthetic creation

If a return to Morrowind’s skills is made, then some should be grouped together. Training in long blade should also increase your short blade to a lesser extent, for instance. Training with any 2H weapon should increase your proficiency with other 2H weapons, but the specific weapon type that you are using (axe, mace, staff) levels the fastest.

NO SCALING. Scaling in Oblivion took away all sense of character progression.

Morrowind’s fast travel systems – they were far more immersive and, frankly, interesting.

Combat system that focuses more on player skill than character skill. I preferred Oblivion’s combat system to Morrowind’s (let me finish!) just because it was more fun. I’m all for integrating character skill into it – lower skill with a weapon = sloppier and slower attacks with that weapon type – but I am of the opinion that when you hit an enemy, they should be hit. When you or an enemy manually blocks, then the attack is blocked and not just mitigated. The most fluid combat system I can think of would be one in which your attack direction is based on where on your enemy’s body you are aiming – attacks at the stomach would be a stab, attacks aimed to the enemy’s right arm would come in from our left and hit their right, and vice versa for attacks aimed at the right side. Attacks aimed to the head would be a downward sweep, and attacks aimed at the legs would be low sweeps. You get the idea. On top of this, the more skilled with your equipped weapon type you are, the more your attacks avoid the enemy’s shield. This is a very dynamic combat system and I doubt it can be done satisfactorily on the current generation of consoles, but it’s my ideal system.

The most important thing for me, however, is more first person animations. In fact, third person can be scrapped altogether to make more development time for first person stuff (of course leaving in vanity mode and your character model in the inventory screen). Games like Bioshock, Far Cry 2, Mirror’s Edge, Penumbra and Amnesia the Dark Descent really benefit from their focus on first person. For me, it makes the game a lot more immersive looking through my character’s eyes.
However, what really works in those games is the physics on your character’s body. Amnesia especially is a good example – it simply feels really good when you turn around. You can tell that your character is turning their head, then their neck, and their waist and finally their feet the more you turn. This connection to your character’s body is crucial to immersing you in the game (something central to Amnesia’s appeal). In past TES games we were a floating camera. I want to be looking through my character’s eyes, and I want to be aware of their entire body (maybe not their entire body). It sounds like a simple thing but it adds a ridiculous amount to the experience.

Another interesting design choice would be to put a very large load screen at the start of any play session (say, twenty minutes) which could at the very least cache most of the world map, making for very, very fast load times all throughout the session. Of course this would be inconvenient for some people so maybe there could be an option to skip this and instead play with something more akin to Morrowind’s or Oblivion’s load screens for that single play session? This option could be presented to the player at the start menu every time. I’m no expert though, so this might be completely unfeasible with current technology.

It would be nice to be able to arrange books properly. I would like to see a system similar to Morrowind's "Book rotate" mod. I don't see why not.

I would also like to see better joypad support. It was quite bad in both Morrowind and Oblivion. I'd have to use third party software. Oblivion's joypad support was awful. It was literally impossible to map most buttons. It was bugged to hell.

It would be nice to have a simple option to toggle between the console interface, and the PC interface. I don't see the trouble, since both would have to be created anyway. It can be quite slow to have to resort to using my anologue stick to move the mouse.

A lot of people like to use joypads to play the game, yet prefer PC, for obvious reasons.

Maybe a special bookshelf storage option so a bookshelf works like a chest, but the books appear in the places you choose.

You would have to be able to change the positions of books dynamically though. It would be a pain to have to remove half of your bookshelf just to add the next volume in a series.

I was thinking you'd assign the book to a slot, so you'd just leave the slot empty if you didn't have the book yet. This system would work for armor display as well.

But without knowing how many books are in a series you wouldn't know how many slots to leave. And then you would have to manually shift all of your books down one slot to accommodate an unexpected extra volume :shrug:

I guess they could say in the book how many are in the series.

True. Or, when you put a book on your shelf the game automatically reserves the appropriate number of slots on that shelf either side of the book for the remaining volumes. That might make OCD sufferers compulsively find all of the books in the game just to fill their shelf up though... I know I would.

Maybe this Idea is already been posted but I'm not going to check all the 179 threads. My idea is that you dont see a player marker on the world map. That makes the game more challanging, now you just can see where you are and walk just out of the forest but if you dont have a idea where you are you really are lost. There also should be for exemple ''A small waterfall'' or ''A broken tree'' at the map so you can orientate where you are. And sorry for my bad english... I'm just 14 so I'm still learning. ^^

That would be far too frustrating for the normal game, but perhaps it could be a hardcoe option?

And I keep seeing you mention your English - it's actually very good so don't worry. I'm assuming you're not from an English speaking country?

Haha, I'm sorry I wont mention it again. And no, I'm not from an English speaking country. ( I'm from the Netherlands ) Ah, thanks for the compliment btw! :rolleyes:

Well I've certainly seen native English speakers with worse grammar than you so I wouldn't concern yourself over it :thumbsup:

Considering that the alternative is just an ugly mess of horizontal books all over the place, would you really want to nix the whole system just because you have to manually rearrange books now and then?

God yes. The number of wasted hours trying to set up my bookcase in Cheydinhal... :facepalm:

OR you could simply design the system so you can put books wherever you want on the shelf, and the ones that are already on the shelf shift automatically to accommodate when one is added or removed.

That's what I tried to say with my first post on the subject but I don't think I worded it very well...

I think that dropping an item out of your inventory should simply not respond to the physics like knocking an item off a table does.

books- if bethesda snuck in a bhkConvexTransformShape before the bhkBoxShape... this seems to stabilize the havok behavior some what... so they won't react to each other without actually touching each other, as it is they probably react to each other at a close proximity rather than actual contact.

also the changing the Solver Deactivation to medium might be worth it too. i guess if they use a whole big library full of books, and someone goes ballistic knocking everything over it might lag on the physics calculation in comparison. :shrug:


anyway... yeah.

did i mention I would like separate map slots in the texture set for specular maps?

Oh ya. They can't possible miss this. There has been an outcry from Oblivion D-Day +1 through today.

Reading through most of the ideas in the past 178 Threads I have noticed that the majority are "nice to haves". The real "must haves" in my opinion are:

1. overhauled combat system (mount & blade in 3D, 7.1 Digital Surround Sound, on Speed with a side order of steroids) http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1113609-a-whole-new-combat-style-would-this-be-possible/page__p__16339990&#entry16339990
2. companion NPC's and creatures (pets), mounts, mounted combat, beasts of burden http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?app=forums&module=forums§ion=findpost&pid=16340357
3. overhauled armor system http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1111409-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-175/page__st__120__p__16305297&#entry16305297
4. discoverable main quest and quests given based on faction reputation
5. overhauled stealth, sneak and guard/watchman system

The rest I don't really mind so much...

Get rid of the list system in the inventories. It may be bearable on the PC, but on the console it's downright awful. Especially since you don't have a fast scroll button like you did in morrowing.

Actually that was awful on PC too and was one of the first things to be modded.
Beth, seriously :facepalm:

Daniel_Kay's signature made me think about the Good/Evil mechanics of TES. While some people completely despise the thought of everything having a moral tag, there is undoubtedly millions of people who have their thoughts about what is, and isn't, evil. What you might do, you may think is a righteous thing, but peasants and nobles alike will hate you for what you did. Almost all of them. No matter what way you rationalize it, people, even in TES, will think you've done wrong, and will hold it against you. At least, that's why I think it should stay, just drastically overhauled. I was thinking more of a "popularity" stat, representing what your average citizens think of you. Since there are two sides to this coin, there shall be two stats as well. Your "Good" stat represents how much "good" people like you, ranging from 100 (they'll welcome you into their homes), and -100 (they'll attack you on sight, if their fight stat is high enough). You have your "Bad" stat, representing how much "bad" people like you, ranging from 100 (they'll kill for you) and -100 (they'll all try to kill you). Since there are many more "good guys," your bad stat will raise and lower much more quickly than your "good" stat, as well as have better benefits, just not as many.

Really, it's only a "Quality (bad) vs. Quantity (good)," though still resulting in equally powerful characters. Good guys will have to work harder, though. It ain't easy being... *searches Thesaurus* ...exemplary. :spotted owl:

Actually something I'd suggest is individual morality, basically every single character has a morality system he follows and what he declares as good and evil. While this may overlap with many there are differences depending on culture, relations and opinions. A NPC may be OK with you killing person X but person Y is taboo.