» Sat Feb 19, 2011 9:55 am Spoiler
1. I actually think that the changing of scrolls could be useful. What I would propose is a more clear divide between magic and scrolls.
Magic would become an effect, and rather than simply creating a spell with said effect, you would instead learn to cast the effect, then charge it to the desired level. These effects would charge to higher levels faster for stonger characters. eg.
(for the purposes of (hopeful) simnplicity, all values have been reduced in this example)
A level 1 magic based character buys the "fireball" effect, and attempts to cast it in combat. He/she has the choice; cast it instentaniously for 1 point of damage, or charge it for say 10 seconds to do 10 damage, or anywhere inbetween. Similarly, the same character attempts to cast it again at a higher level, say, 20. Now it charges much faster, and to a higher damage, so instead of increasing by 1 damage per second, it would go up by 10 damage per second.
On the other hand, scrolls would provide quick acess to stronger spells, but they would be expensive/rare items. These scrolls would vary in effect and power of course. The scolls would possible have a limited number of uses, but could be used byt any type of character.
This could in theory add much more variety to magic, and for anybody that plays D&D (3.5, don't know about 4.0), it would be similar to the Sorcerer/Wizard choice; one prepares the spells they will need beforehand using forsight and intuition to guess what they will need, however, their magic is stronger (scroll user). Meanwhile the other makes on the spot decisions with slightly weaker spells, but has the benefit of adapting more easily.
I do realise that this may be fairly complicated, but I can go over it if need be.
2. While I'm not entirely sure whether or not this would be more appropriate in a different thread, I figured I may aswell include it in this post. One thing I've noticed about people's preference to the area that the next game is set in is to do with the size of the province in question. For example, many people will say "The next game should be set in X because it's one of the biggest provinces", and while they have a fair point, they mostly forget the difference between SIZE and SCALE. As explained in the Infernal City, the distances between places and the actual size of the places in question are drastically reduces in the games due to the fact that Bethesda simple can't make a game THAT big. This means that the bigger the province is, the lest realistic the distances become.
But what if they were do do something smaller? In this example, I will use Cyrodill. Just by looking at the map I got with oblivion, I can see that there are 8 relatively small "cities". In reality, these cities would barely qualify as small towns. Now, what if they were to make the area of the game smaller, more focused. For the purposes of simplicity, I'll use the area between Anvil and Skingrad. So, that's 2 cities, take those away from the origional 8 and that leaves you with 6. That 6 is the equivelent of 6 cities. So, 6/2 is 3, which means you are adding on the equivelent of 3 cities to the two which remain - effectively making them 4x the size they would be otherwise (if I got my maths right that is); and that's not taking into account the fact that the IC is bigger than the rest of the cities too, so that would bring the size up to 4.25-4.5x the size. It would also mean that te distances between these places would be increased by this much.
But what does this all achieve? To put it simply, is makes the worls technically smaller, but greatly increases the scale, making it overall more realistic. I would at this point begin to rant about how it should be set in Highrock, but I guess I can save it 'til later, onward to point 3!
3. Lots of people (me included) want the inclusion of the weapons that were taken out of Oblivion. But I have a question. Why stop there? It's only human to be greedy somethimes, so why aren't we more demanding over the variety of weapons available for use. Of course, some people have already said one or two new weapons should be included (eg. throwing axes), but there are many more fish in the see. Using D&D for inspiration once again, and delving into the weapons section of the player's handbook, there are dozens of weapons that would make interesting additions to an elder scrolls game. For one, there isn't simply "Bow" and "Crossbow". Bow wise, there's short and long bows, both of which have composite forms. Crossbows have even more variety, being split into hand, light and heavy, all with more expensive but faster repeating forms. Another interesting weapon is the Urgrosh, a dwarven weapon which is esentially a poleaxe with a spkie on the other end. Imagine, your foe charges towards you, you strike low, trip him up, raise your urgrosh high, then jab the spike deep into his chest. There's more; whips, punching daggers, armoured gauntlets, armour and shield spikes, slings, quarterstaves, javelins, pick-axes, scimitars, bastard swords and dozens more. Imagine that kind of choice in an elderscrolls game.
1. I actually think that the changing of scrolls could be useful. What I would propose is a more clear divide between magic and scrolls.
Magic would become an effect, and rather than simply creating a spell with said effect, you would instead learn to cast the effect, then charge it to the desired level. These effects would charge to higher levels faster for stonger characters. eg.
(for the purposes of (hopeful) simnplicity, all values have been reduced in this example)
A level 1 magic based character buys the "fireball" effect, and attempts to cast it in combat. He/she has the choice; cast it instentaniously for 1 point of damage, or charge it for say 10 seconds to do 10 damage, or anywhere inbetween. Similarly, the same character attempts to cast it again at a higher level, say, 20. Now it charges much faster, and to a higher damage, so instead of increasing by 1 damage per second, it would go up by 10 damage per second.
On the other hand, scrolls would provide quick acess to stronger spells, but they would be expensive/rare items. These scrolls would vary in effect and power of course. The scolls would possible have a limited number of uses, but could be used byt any type of character.
This could in theory add much more variety to magic, and for anybody that plays D&D (3.5, don't know about 4.0), it would be similar to the Sorcerer/Wizard choice; one prepares the spells they will need beforehand using forsight and intuition to guess what they will need, however, their magic is stronger (scroll user). Meanwhile the other makes on the spot decisions with slightly weaker spells, but has the benefit of adapting more easily.
I do realise that this may be fairly complicated, but I can go over it if need be.
2. While I'm not entirely sure whether or not this would be more appropriate in a different thread, I figured I may aswell include it in this post. One thing I've noticed about people's preference to the area that the next game is set in is to do with the size of the province in question. For example, many people will say "The next game should be set in X because it's one of the biggest provinces", and while they have a fair point, they mostly forget the difference between SIZE and SCALE. As explained in the Infernal City, the distances between places and the actual size of the places in question are drastically reduces in the games due to the fact that Bethesda simple can't make a game THAT big. This means that the bigger the province is, the lest realistic the distances become.
But what if they were do do something smaller? In this example, I will use Cyrodill. Just by looking at the map I got with oblivion, I can see that there are 8 relatively small "cities". In reality, these cities would barely qualify as small towns. Now, what if they were to make the area of the game smaller, more focused. For the purposes of simplicity, I'll use the area between Anvil and Skingrad. So, that's 2 cities, take those away from the origional 8 and that leaves you with 6. That 6 is the equivelent of 6 cities. So, 6/2 is 3, which means you are adding on the equivelent of 3 cities to the two which remain - effectively making them 4x the size they would be otherwise (if I got my maths right that is); and that's not taking into account the fact that the IC is bigger than the rest of the cities too, so that would bring the size up to 4.25-4.5x the size. It would also mean that te distances between these places would be increased by this much.
But what does this all achieve? To put it simply, is makes the worls technically smaller, but greatly increases the scale, making it overall more realistic. I would at this point begin to rant about how it should be set in Highrock, but I guess I can save it 'til later, onward to point 3!
3. Lots of people (me included) want the inclusion of the weapons that were taken out of Oblivion. But I have a question. Why stop there? It's only human to be greedy somethimes, so why aren't we more demanding over the variety of weapons available for use. Of course, some people have already said one or two new weapons should be included (eg. throwing axes), but there are many more fish in the see. Using D&D for inspiration once again, and delving into the weapons section of the player's handbook, there are dozens of weapons that would make interesting additions to an elder scrolls game. For one, there isn't simply "Bow" and "Crossbow". Bow wise, there's short and long bows, both of which have composite forms. Crossbows have even more variety, being split into hand, light and heavy, all with more expensive but faster repeating forms. Another interesting weapon is the Urgrosh, a dwarven weapon which is esentially a poleaxe with a spkie on the other end. Imagine, your foe charges towards you, you strike low, trip him up, raise your urgrosh high, then jab the spike deep into his chest. There's more; whips, punching daggers, armoured gauntlets, armour and shield spikes, slings, quarterstaves, javelins, pick-axes, scimitars, bastard swords and dozens more. Imagine that kind of choice in an elderscrolls game.
I have a few more ideas, but there's no point adding them in at this point if nobody really likes any of these suggestions.
Anyway, thoughts/ideas/comments?
