"The only time it is possible to over elaborate is when talking to a complete idiot."

I am not saying the devs could not do it, but putting so much effort into one aspect of the game would have to come at a serious cost.

I understand the complexity - even mentioned it in my post. Does anyone really know how far along TES V is in its development?
My first console game was 'combat' on the atari 2600. Not too long ago Baulder's Gate was on the 'bleeding edge' of CRPG's. Who knows what will become available in just the next year or two.

It's not easy, certainly, but the early videos and information about Radiant AI suggests that they were trying to do it. It didn't work out, but my hope is that instead of abandoning the idea they've been continuing to work on the system in the years since Oblivion. One of the benefits of such advanced AI is that it pays back some of those costs itself; you might have less time to, say, add more scripted quests, but NPC's with malleable problems of their own can spontaneously have things for you to do. Instead of the extra effort of giving one quest several outcomes I can simply do what I want and the world acts accordingly.

I agree with most of your post - I would dearly love to see some of those features in the next game, but I strongly disagree with one point.

I don't want it to be impossible for my character, who started out reading books, learning spells and generally nerding around to become a good mage to later try to master fighting skills and such as well. Real life indeed doesn't come with training wheels, but real life also isn't limited to classes - a concept I thoroughly despise.

You shouldn't be limited to one path because of the choices you made in the past -- you should be able to develop all of your aspects as you go along. Of course it will be almost just as hard for an advanced mage to become a master swordsman as it was for a rookie fighters guild member, and will take just as much time and focus -- but he should have the option.

I (too) didn't like how you could become a master of everything in Oblivion in no time at all -- but with enough time and effort, you should be able to master several skills - even vastly different ones. You can do anything if you put your mind to it.

I hope I didn't misinterpret your words in any way. And please don't see this as an attack -- I just disagree, that's all.


edit: spacing

I was just thinking about a bit of a crowd system. In this system, whenever something interesting happens, people react accordingly. For example, if you brutally murder someone on the streets, people will crowd/run. The system would be very situational, like if you and some guy get in a fight, people will watch, but if you only use your fists and make a fool out of him, the crowd will cheer for you. This would also work for guards too, if the guards i the area are jerks, the people will cheer or you and vice-versa. Also, if you're infamous in the area, people will run or try to stop you.

Let's think about the consequences of that...

"By Azura, by Azura, by Azura! It's the Grand Champion! I can't believe it's you! Standing here! Next to me!"

100 annoying bosmeri gather around the PC and gnaw your ears out with their adoring cries. :nope:



... But a good idea, nonetheless

...not at all, I welcome these types of discussions. I understand your point as well.

With gaming, unlike real life, we do have the ability to save and to hit the reset button. So, I'd like to see some 'finality' and permanent consequences in the decisions we make for our characters. Decisions that open up specific and unique paths but may close the possibilities of others in turn. I can envision TES V (or maybe VI?), a couple years AFTER its release, where gamers are *STILL* trying to see all there is to see in the gaming world! This would have the effect of creating a much greater ownership (a personal signature of sorts) for your specific character that you could be even more proud of.
"Wow, really??? The ogre I heard about during my pilgrimage to the shrine outside the town of Reedcrest wasn't really undead? He was just super intelligent (for an ogre) and learned some basic cold touch spells and used charcoal to color his skin!?! That awesome! I bet that Ogreskin Shield you got kicks ass! Check this out - do you have the Deadly Sight Spectacles? Sorry, to get them you would have had to spend time as a pious monk and make a pilgrimage to all the wayshrines helping other pilgrims along the way. At night, they let you discern the undead from the living. Great for vampire hunting! But also, if you go to this one merchant and threaten to reveal his true nature to the town he grudgingly lets you buy from his 'special' stock of items. That's where I got this really cool staff of...(you get the gist).

Remember, nothing is stopping you from having 10 different characters each with 100+ saves from different points in his career.

...anywho, we'll just have to agree to disagree


Edit - SS

Agree. But I still don't think this should apply too much to your character's stats. Even old dogs can learn new tricks.

The game world, what quests you can take, which people will like you or hate you, what rewards you get, etc -- this should be different for every player based on what they've done in their past. This is what is needed to make a sandbox game a truly excellent sandbox game. You're in a world that's supposed to resemble the real world therefore society should work and react as in the real world.



and I agree wholeheartedly to this

Bethesda should take the Daggerfall approach to getting the writing done for the next TES game. Meaning, just hire a whole mess of writers; that's how Daggerfall's writing got done if I'm not mistaken. Somehow it worked very nicely there.

Money has weight. You only have a certain amount of space (you can't carry more than 2 sets of armour). You have to eat. You have to sleep. Your sword actually snaps when it breaks. If you repair things it weakens them (hitting it with a hammer makes it easier to snap). 1st person only. Skooma makes you stumble around and lurch then pass out - same for wine and beer.

Keep those two for a hardcoe mode. The rest are nice ideas

Thought about this during while looking at the hardcoe mode thread but wouldn't it be awesome if it wasn't just gold all the time? Game like Dungeons and Dragons have varying currency, and even World of Warcraft does as well. A piece of gold is very hard earned and adds to the value of reward when you loot it. Take for instance the first dungeon you crawl through it has like 20 pieces of gold laying around it, wouldn't it be better and more realistic to have maybe 30 pieces of copper, and maybe a piece of silver instead of all that gold right away? It would also make it all the sweeter the first time you buy that 5000 gold piece shack. You can really look back and be proud of all the gold you collected from dungeons and such. You could even have something like platinum and then it would be based on gems you find...which oblivion did just not so well esp when I could pick a lock at first level and sell a diamond to a fence for like 50 gold a pop haha.

Bad idea, IMO. It's a roleplaying game, not a simulator. People, including me, like to be able to watch their character from 3rd person perspective. Doesn't mean you have to -- there's nothing forcing you to ever use anything but 1st person.

the rest are good ideas

Well so far the 3rd person modes in Oblivion and FO3 have been a joke, they were awful. 1st person is the only way to play.

I love to explore in 3rd person. I take my character's appearane seriously. To the point where I avoid better equipment for what looks better. I'd rather wear a Steel cuirass with nice clothes than Daedric, as I think it looks better.

I like that armour that Hircine gives you as a reward. I'm realy keen on cool looking unique items. Most of the uniques in Oblivion were ugly as hell. Accept for that armour. The mace of Molag Bal was big and heavy and looked green, and that big hammer was the same. Katanas like the goldsomething are two handed swords so I thought it was odd that theyre used with 1 hand in Oblivion.

And I would like a proper weapons and armour rack. Not sumthing you have to balance your sword on and hope that it just jump off when you walk past. I'm thinking of a weapon rack with an inventory, like you put the weapon in the inventory and it dispalys it properly and cant fall off.

I wouldn't take away 3rd person, however what I'd remove is FORCED 3rd person view.
No "popping out of first person" to see you mount a horse, site down or just FALL DOWN. Keep it first person for those, going third just ruins the mood and looks silly, specially because the animations really aren't that great.

Similarly please scrap the "zoom in on face" stuff, and I don't just mean in how Oblivion did it, I mean completely. Keep the eyes in the characters head.

I said 1st person because this was originally my ideas for hardcoe but decided most would be good general ideas. I agree some only are suitable for hardcoe.

How about, for the love of those who still spend $1000+ on good gaming computers...

Give us an extra page or two in the options menu for UI, HUD, polygon, water, view distance, and other visual enhancments. This shouldn't be much of an issue to accomplish. Just produce the game FOR THE COMPUTER, adjust the selections down to what the consoles can handle, now remove those selections from the options for the console systems.

Cuts slowly bleed until they heal and only heal when medication has been used. They scar. Bones break and slow you down/weaken you.

My suggestions are the followings :

1. Like in Morrowind, it would be great to have a wide variety of light source (light (the magic thing...it was present in Oblivion), torches (also present in Oblivion), candles, lanterns, bug lamps, and all kinds of candles and lanterns).

2. Like in Morrowind, we could use A LOT of weapons like (type of weapons that are not in Oblivion) : crossbows, darts/ throwing knives/ ninja stars, spears.

3. In Morrowind, the Levitate spell was fun, but if it not in TES V it's not a problem.

4. As you did with the PS3 version of TES IV (making better graphics/skins), you could do the same with the next game and in addition to it take the time to program it for the PS3 (ok, I know it takes more time then with the Xbox360, but if you don't, the PS3 version will have more alias than the 360 version....like with all the multiconsole games). And we can't denie the fact that the PS3 has supperior graphic capability, compare to the Xbox 360 (thanks to BluRay).

5. In Morrowind, the Nord had an immunity to frost (well resist 100%... that's immune), and in Oblivion he had good resistance to it, but not immunity. So for TES V, because it will be in Skyrim, could you bring it back to immune.

6. Like me, everyone alse are dreaming to just have a command box on the console versions. The console could in the menu / options, as the cheat option. The interface could be as so : (when selecting the cheat option, it would quit quit the menu screen) There would be cursor directed by left directional pad and a keyboard directed by the right one. The cursor would be used to type the letters and click on items and characters, in the player's view. The keypad would be a normal one, but one exeption... it would have an up / down button, to select previously typed codes. And the entered codes and effects would be diplayed the same way it is in Oblivion.

Something about our character costumisation is that it would be great if there was only one mage who could change the apparance. That way, if we get sick our character or if we noticed a messed feature of our character, we could just go see the mage, pay him a good amount of gold and modifie our appearance.

Would NPCs change their appearance also or just you?

Just us.