I want them to revamp the armor system (among other things, I may post those other things later). I want there to be a real weighing of options when deciding what armor to wear, instead of just "Hey look this one gives me more armor. Yaaaaay." Once you had maxed out your armor skills in Oblivion, it was just a decision between the shiny green stuff or the scary, spiky black stuff. I want a return of unarmored and possibly medium armor, with the ability to change an armors weight class (or whatever you want to call it) by modding it, if you will. For instance, you could strip heavier armor down for weight and protection loss, or reinforce lighter armor, which would add more weight and more protection.

I say this because my main character always ends up being the same character, a night elf ninja named Zephyr who is refuses to wear armor because in his heritage a warrior is neither seen nor heard. Being hit means you were detected, which is a dishonor to his family. My other character who is always recreated is Felix, a smooth talking Imperial and master of swordplay. Felix does not wear armor because he is incredibly arrogant, and refuses to acknowledge that his death is within the realm of possibility. (this character is somewhat like General Stonewall Jackson in this respect, for you history buffs out there)

Oblivion made playing these characters more difficult, since I could not spec into unarmored. I roleplay more than most, I know, but the absence of unarmored was unsettling (I later gave myself this skill through a mod).

My personal opinion on mini-games is that they should be implemented so they can't effect your effectiveness too much.

I don't generally like the Persuasion or Lockpicking mini-games for 2 reasons. If you get particularly good (or are particularly bad) at a mini-game, it will entirely effect how well you can play and therefore has nothing to do with your character's skill and only your own skill. Therefore making it more limited as to ways you can make your characters. You can't have a character that's better than you at doing something because you are holding them back.

The lockpicking mini-game also felt like that was the only "Real" way to do it and "Auto-Attempt" just seemed like a "cheater's way out".

Persuasion, imho, should be represented by dialogue options and not by any form of a mini-game. The Persuasion mini-game had nothing to do with "people-skills" and had more to do with your ability to process a mathematical problem with different levels of possible loss or gain. Bribing makes sense... except sometimes it really doesn't.

• You want to get into a castle? Bribe a guard. (Okay, makes sense)
  
• You want to get into a secret society of dangerous people? Give them money and prove yourself in no other way. (starting to make less sense)
  
• You want somebody to admit to you they just killed somebody? Give them money. (lolwut?)

So basically, for speech-craft you could learn new "tricks" by leveling up the skill to use in dialogue situations. (Just an example)

• Intimidate
  
  • Threaten to Kill
    
  • Threaten to Beat Up
    
  • Threaten to Slander
  
  
• Joke
  
  • Regular
    
  • Slapstick
    
  • Controversial
  
  
• Admire
  
  • Admire Appearance
    
  • Admire Personality
    
  • Flirt
  
  
• Boast
  
  • Praise Achievements
    
  • Praise Personality
    
  • Praise Attribute(s)

You want to convince the leader of a faction to let you lead a group in battle? Boast about your Achievements.
You want to convince an arrogant noble to let you come to a party that your assassination target is going to? Praise their Appearance.
You want to cheer up somebody who's sad about their bad luck? Tell them a normal Joke.
You want to make a person tell you what you want to know without them running to the guards for help? Threaten to Beat Them Up.

A person with a low personality skill would have less choices, and a person with a high one would have more.

---

As for things like Alchemy & Spellmaking, I'm fine with those because they don't depend on you being good at the game, just your character being good at them.

It really wrecks roleplaying in general when you're a master at lockpicking, and your character's supposed to be complete garbage at anything stealthy. But then you get up to that locked door, and it's glittering and calling your name. So you walk up to it, even though your character's skill is 10 you happen to have a few extra lockpicks on you... Sure, it's a very-hard lock, but you're a very determined little sleuth. So you break in, sometimes without thinking, because you're good even though your character isn't supposed to be. And sometimes, you really don't even know how to pretend to be bad. You think: "What kind of a moron can't do this?". And thus, character skill becomes null.

I don't believe in dice rolls, however. A middle-ground would be nice. Making a mini-game INSANELY hard at low levels, and easy as pie in harder ones would help tremendously.

They needed to give us more to do period. ( I feel strange adding a period after I say "period". )

For an open-world game, it was sort-of concerning that we couldn't really do that much to entertain ourselves besides Questing, The Arena, & Exploring. But, those things you suggested are what people consider the "Extras".

Now, I don't know this for a fact or not, but I'm assuming Bethesda assumed we (as a community) would deal with creating those "Extras". But that leaves the problem for the console gamers who can't experience the Player-Created-Content.

But anyway, I like your ideas and hope Bethesda creates them (or things like them).

I agree. I felt like you should only pick the skill if you are bad at the minigame. I would often pass up the security skill on stealth characters simply because I'm good at the minigame, before remembering that I RP excessively and changing my skills to align accordingly.

I am currently playing through Fallout New Vegas, and the way they did lockpicking is more than a bit annoying. There is no reason someone with a skill of 49 shouldn't be able to attempt an average lock, it should just be slightly harder for them than a person with a skill of 50.

Been mentioned for sure but I would like to see some Falmer (Ice Elves) for sure. They've always been a mystery to me (and the world of Tamriel as well).

/\
I agree, but not in the form of ruined castles. I've had enough of that from Oblivion/Morrowind/Redguard. Give us the lore by showing us what is left of the Falmer, and glacier crawl.

I don't think the Falmer have ruins to begin with, that is what makes them particularly mysterious. However if you were to discover the last bastion of Falmer living under a glacier or such that's be quite a shock (a nice one at that).

amen lol

but yea personally graphics don't matter to me im going back and playing daggerfall just because i like the elder scrolls so much, i wouldn't even mind if TESV has the same graphics level as oblivion, but i want the game itself to be worth it, inventive world, crazy creatures, and the like, and long as the gameplay is improved in the next elder scrolls i will gladly trow my money in bethesda's way, and that kid complaining about the graphics, i hope one day some person ties him to a chair and forces him to play through daggerfall and successfully beat every quest and do everything before he can go free, so that he might learn just how unimportant graphics are when it comes to these things. (this is all my opinion anyway)

I've been a fan of the compass and map markers for a really long time. I always thought it was great and couldn't understand why people didn't like it. But I've recently been playing Arena and I've completely changed my mind. I want a system just like that one. When you needed to find something, you would first be given a general direction. As you got closer, you could ask more people and they would be a little more specific until you got close enough and then someone would just mark it on your map. And you could also make your own notes on the map which I want back as well, though that would be difficult on the console but who cares. Just plug in a keyboard. Then to take it even further, if you are looking for a specific dungeon not in a city, you could ask around town and someone could finally point you to a scout or someone whose been there that can mark the location on the map. I feel so much more immersed this way and more like I'm in Tamriel, not playing elder scrolls.

I just ask for a single thing
Just look at the mods!!
There are modders making better graphics than bestheda!
Contract these guys!!

It looks like bestheda is blind! (no offence)

The Lord of the Rings is high fantasy and it has Midge Water, the dead pools, etc... just because something is 'high fantasy' ( I hate that term) doesn't mean it's bereft of grime.

Aaaaaaaaaaaameeeeeeeeeen. Now if you will turn to 1 Samuel, Chapter 2 verse.....

That about he compass thing was interesting and it should be given a though, but what bothers me the most is that no matter who you talk to, you know their name. That's just total bull. Ex: when you are told to search for somebody, you get a quest marker in nearby area as lordharrison said. Then as you start asking around the town they can tell you where to look and how the person looks like. This however if they like you enough. The NPC you then confront could denie he is the person you are looking for without you knowing it. However you wouldn't get stuck or anything, just keep asking around or follow him and confront him with evidence, in this case only if he has done something against the law for example. Also when you meant random NPCs, you can name them before you have learned their real name, making it possible to find the person you earlier met by seeing your inputted name instead or [stranger], I myself could name a fisher man "fishy from (insert city name)". Once you become friend with him his real name would be seen instead.

Pleace by all means improve that idea or say if you think it is total rubbishness, thank you.

Arena kind of has that going on too. Not to that extent, but you have to ask NPC's who there are before you know anything about them, unless they are the King or Queen, which is something you would obviously know. Which is nice, it makes me feel like I'm equivalent to every one, not some super omnicient being.

What I really want is for everything to actually have value. I want to go through a long DIFFICULT and puzzling dungeon to be well rewarded at the end. I don't want already mapped maps to an extent. Some places like the main places (Towns, cities, some forest, and some dungeons) should be mapped, but when you discover them it maps them on your map. But not everything, I want to feel a sense of discovery, when I discover an unknown dungeon or abandoned city. Absolutely NO quick travel. Optional quest markers. Cities should be more interactive. Customizable armor and weapons. Brand new voice actors, and a high variety of them (Not the same ones for the same race).

I'm sure someone had written something similar before, but instead of sifting through the +2000 pages in this topic I will just write this down. This is a strangely honest statement, I know.

For me a good game is an immersive game - one that keeps you up all night pondering whether that dusty old riddle you found on that carved up corpse in some flooded cave will lead you to a dragons treasure trove, a stash of copper coins or a trap. An immersive game is not just filled to the brim with fluff it also isn't there 24/7 to hold your hand through every quest, like most RPGs out there. Look at Demon's Souls - the two things that saved it from slipping into the pile crappy RPGs released over the years is that it was friggin hard and that it was entirely up to the player to observe the enemies and environment and figure out how to progress further.

I loved the brief few days of TES 4 when i wasn't aware of the existence of the omnipotent map marker. I had to use my own brain, eyes, ears, gut feelings to figure out where I could go, what I could do and how I could do it. All the widgets like the crosshair, (dare I say it) the quest log, the mapmarker, and the equally powerfull map that alerts you to the presence of caves/ruins make it extremely hard to really dive into the game and feel like it is you who is burning zombies and beheading dragons.

Here is a list of what I think would seriously benefit the "immersiveness" of TES 5:

- Get rid of (or provide the option to do so) the map marker that, in a godlike fashion, follows your targets around the world and knows where to go before you've even read the quest. An editable map, where one could make his/her own notes and markers would be awesome.
- Make the quests more flexible without openly laying down all the options in front of the player - let them feel like they've accomplished something more than just gaining/annihilating a bunch of 1s and 0s on their computers.
- Keep the Fallout 3 feature when NPCs takes into account how many times you've spoken them and what you told them. Loved it.
- Make the world sounds more...alive, I guess. Nothing killed the mood for me more than walking into an inn at 10:00pm to find that everyone was quietly sipping their ale in an orderly fashion like someone had just died. Dancing? Music? Cursing? Laughter? Fights? All will add to the atmosphere of the game.
- Killing NPCs should be a bit more consequential and realistic. It is, afterall what players do most of the time they aren't running around exploring. In TES 4 you kill a guard in a tower and the second you come out everyone in the game knows you did it. Run away, kill you pursuers or whip out your chameleon set and you are home free. You can go back to that same tower, talk to those same guard who were about to massacre you just a few minutes ago and they will greet you with smiles on their faces. What about shrouding your face during the murder, hiding the bodies, keeping a low profile for a few weeks, months until the manhunt settles down? Instead the world tries to punish you for killing NPCs by fining you or lowering your stats after sitting two minutes in prison - not very effective.
- Realistic combat. There really isn't a strict limit to how far one can actually recreate real combat - hearing the opponents footsteps, their battle cries, running out of breath after a grueling battle, seeing your opponent scurry off to a dark corner of a cave to heal up, bleeding from multiple lacerations and having your attacks and overall senses weaken as you lose health/mana. These are all splendid but the existence of body parts would probably be the next best thing to having your computer cut you every time your character takes damage. In TES 4 I just hated seeing my arrows stuck in an NPCs eyes and neck and still having them take as much damage as from a strong punch to the torso.

That about sums it up for me. I could go into further detail but that would just dilute the main point I made.

I liked that quest liked in TES4 to help that family kill off the goblins so that they could build thier farm. It started off they were just li9ving in a tent by a bridge, then after you got rid of the goblin problem they packed up and set up camp on thier land, after a few weeks game time I came back and theyd built a house, then a few months after that they had built thiewr whole farm. I liked how the developement progressed in game. It would be neat if there was more of that kind of developement in TESV. Like errecting buildings and settlements.

There should be fast travel, but only to major cities. And when you start the game you'd accually don't know any of the places in the world, so you'd have to walk all the way from imperial city to anvil to be able to fast travel there.

This sounds great in theory, but in practice, the "realistic" part, taken to this extreme, would mostly remove the RP part of aRPG




This is something I always felt lacking in TES4... I get to create cool spells, things behave in an interesting way with havok physics, great. Yet the environment receives no effect from any of this.. :/ Hopefully they will be using PhysX for TES5 (cloth/fluids anyone?) I want to cast a fireball on a bandit's tent while their sleeping to see it flying unhinged from the ground in flames, leaving them mostly unharmed but extremely startled (just and example). I want to come back after I've become more powerful and cast a powerfull spell on a group of enemies that will not only damage them, but leave a crater. I want to come back a month later (in-game time) to find that crater's still there, and I also want guards to be sensitive to the destruction of public property, as well as people being mad that I left a hole in their wall with my arrows / tore down a pillar that caused half of their house to collapse.
Elder Scrolls games are so great because of a number of reasons, but the most common denominator is immersion. The ability to believe in the world, due to it's richness. Extensive lore, developed AI, realistic flora, etc, all just add to how much we can believe in the world we play in. Physics is where it's at next (the tech is becoming very accessible, and widespread.)

1. Vastly improved, or non-existent level-scaling. If the developers insist upon it then let's make it super-subtle. No more scenarios of being attacked by elven armor wearing ruffians who a few days before in the exact same spot were wearing leather or iron armor.

2. The implication from the above would mean a world that has areas which are more dangerous than others. I've written this idea down before but I feel it bears repeating. Perhaps population centers influence the danger level around them. The more powerful and highly populated the city, the wider it's influence it has into the wilds surrounding it. Big cities have more militia guarding the roads perhaps, more outposts nearby to keep the monsters at bay, etc... If you travel outside the cities sphere of influence, however, the danger level of your enemies gets higher and higher the farther away you travel into the wilds.

3. Less or no level scaled content. Let's have far more static content like in Morrowind. In Oblivion you could go spelunking into the deepest crevice of the earth, and battle hoards of monsters only to find a random assortment of chunk locked in chests. In a more static game the devs could hand place items in tough to reach spots as a reward for exploration.

4. Better, more immersive means of finding quest location. Leaning on the crutch of the quest arrow and map marker has allowed the writers to atrophy. It would be far more entertaining to ask questions of various NPC's to patch together the location of a quest location than just have it magically appear. Sure, maybe ultimately you want it marked on your map. I don't mind map markers but I want to have to actually work for it a little bit.

Enable disable functions for walkpaths and terraintextures!

This. especially the highlighted part. I want crazy bars.

My main hope for TES V is that it will feel culturally diverse and rich to me, the way Morrowind did. I loved Oblivion, and I suppose the culture of Cyrodiil is just naturally more like stereotypical medieval high fantasy, but it just felt too familiar to me. In Morrowind, I could really feel the cultural differences between different regions because of the influence of the different Great Houses. I could feel the ever-present influence of the Temple everywhere. Legion forts were distinctly different from native settlements. Settlements themselves felt different if you traveled from, say, a coastal or swamp area, to an inland location like Balmora. And the people and places all felt like they were impoverished to a degree, even among those who felt they were wealthy. The land had an overwhelming vibe of being oppressed, harsh, and ancient.

Oblivion, by contrast, felt like a typical high fantasy game set in a medieval world of ancient Earth. It was beautiful, and probably appropriate to Cyrodiil (lore inconsistencies notwithstanding; I don't want to get into that debate in this topic lol,) but I just didn't feel like I was in as diverse or culturally distinct a land as I did in Morrowind. And maybe that was intentional. But I hope TES V, wherever it's set, brings back some of that variety, atmosphere, and personality that I loved about Morrowind. Not in terms of specifics, because that wouldn't make sense. But in terms of variety, distinctness, and unfamiliarity. I want to be transported to a world radically different from my own, and one that shows lots of different faces from area to area.

in oblivion i sort of got sick of combat starting the same way ive only noticed 2 in oblivion,
first player initiated- either beginning combat via diolouge or the player simply going up to an enemy and beginning combat by sneaking or attacking an enemy that wouldn't otherwise attack you
second sighted by enemy- this one is part of the majority of combat, beginning by simply getting noticed by and enemy that has reason to attack you

those are the only two i can think of but what about putting another type in TESV, what if there were scenarios where enemies might try and sneak up on the player or and enemy, like say an inconspicuous plant that will only attack if the player gets in range, i don't know about everyone else but i think it'd be awesome not having a warning of dramatic music every time an enemy is going to attack my, i want the crap scared out of me when some sneaky bandit jumps out of the bushes.