while i completely agree with you, i have to say that they probably shouldnt get rid of third person, i personally dont use it, but im sure there are plenty of gamers out there that prefer third person, and id rather beth not do things to shrink their fanbase a bit. again i dont like third person, i just realize that there are people who do

I agree with the idea for multiple defense values, a rating to avoid being hit altogether (evasion), damage reduction, parry/block

also agree with agility/speed penalties tied to weight of armor (not type though)

spell effectiveness, sneaking and picking pockets are all already influenced by armor weight (not type)

I think they should dump the type(s) of armor all together (heavy, medium, light, unarmored), and simply increase the magnitude that armor WEIGHT influences other aspects of gameplay. A single skill for evasion would work nicely (no penalty for unarmored, increased penalty based on armor WEIGHT). Damage reduction should not be based at all on a skill.

For the magic system, I've always thought it was a bit stupid that you could only cast the exact spells that you have in your menu. For example, if a mage has a 100% chameleon spell, then why can't he just cast a 50% chameleon spell. It isn't as if each spell is completely different from another. Possibly Bethesda could include some sort of effect intensity-area-time-magicka modifier menu with sliders that would allow you to adjust the specifics of a spell you've learned. This would have to be limited, of course, or else we'd have guys just sticking with Flare and then turning it into a nuke at will, etc. The effect intensity would be the damage, percent reflected, points added,etc. The area would, quite obviously, be the area, and same with time. The magicka slider would allow you to control the total amount of points you could put into it (percentages would be tied to points).

On the subject of Enchanting, I say Bethesda brings back Enchanting as a skill and vastly ups the price of enchanting. It shouldn't be exclusively a Mages tool, but it should be biased towards spellcasters.

I can imagine some on-the-fly spell mechanic working in something similar to Fallout's VATS system.

What if you could premake custom spells based on the magical effects that the mage knows. The number of quick-slot spells could be determined by Intelligence. You could also introduce a spell book element or item that could provide additional quickslot spells.

So the premade skills could be used like any spell already in Oblivion, but the on-the-fly spell mechanic could impose a penalty for being rushed or being unfocused, as opposed to the precalculated and 'planned' spells.

A little rumor told me that TES V would be a more powerful Fallout engine. DON'T, make a new engine, I don't care if it takes another 2-3 years. Hell, I say use the CryEngine 3
More spell customization, please? Lol

I am gonna pig-tail on this and suggest spells have to be charged a few seconds before they reach their listed potential. Hold the spell-cast to charge, click to release. Also, the charge is what drains the magicka and not the cast itself. Finally, the ability to "save" the charged spell. For instance you charge up Spell 1, and don't cast but switch to Spell 2; which you then charge.
A charged spell may lower your upper magicka limit by 10% of the [total] spell cost.

This kind of mechanic allows a mage character to prepare for a battle in their own way, as well as add in some variable to the spells.
[edit] It would also work well with the lower limits on spells, with strong but low span spells working for fast combat and keeping a strong but low span charged as a backup.

A similar system could be added into enchanting / enchantments so each shot has to be charged, changing them from their machine gun status.

No more 100% resist/absorb/reflect anything effects, thank you. Max should be 80-90%. Same thing for invisibility and chameleon, they should hear you if you don't sneak.

About sneaking: i want to be able to go around a corner and if my sneak skill is 50, the enemies would go there and start looking for me, not know instantly where I am no matter where i go.

I think 100% chameleon should work but yes npcs being smart enough to become suspicious when they hear a noise and at least attack the last "heard" location when you're attacking them from invisibility. Even if it's just swinging randomly it'd provide some realism and if the enemy is powerful, still a challenge. I'm not against immunity to magic either. As long as you can't become immune to physical and magic. I think any resist item should come with a weakness. So maybe someone immune to magic will be very very susceptible to melee? Interesting things Bethesda can think about.

Yes well that about the chameleon, if it could be done it would be great, but I think it will be hard to program NPCs to behave like this.
Leaving physical resistance low when beeing immune to magic would be a step into the right direction too. However I don't want to see 100% resistance to magic possible with 2 things: breton+mundane ring for example.
Reflect damage: if an NPC realizes you have some heavy reflect damage stuff, they should try a different strategy instead of simply killing themselves on you. What they should do is not clear to me, I've got no idea what they could be doing instead, but this reflect damage shouldn't be able to reach 100%.
The difficulty level in Oblivion is not very well thought through, the only way to survive at hardest difficulty is to make a spell combo with weakness to magic, or 100% reflect damage and resist magic, or almost reach 100% in them.

After playing New Vegas in hardcoe mode, it was really interesting to see suddenly a real purpose and use for food and drink items.

It would be great if some version of this could be implemented in the next Elder Scrolls. Certainly some consumables are needed for potion ingredients, but it gives the food and drink items a significance in the game that really adds to the balance and fun of the game. There could be a real reason to look forward to buying food and drink items at taverns, etc.

1) Difference between armors and race/six. The same piece of gear would change a little bit from what race or what six you are. This is especially when it comes to the beast races with headgear/boots.
2) Armor customization. You can change the appearance of your armor. Like horns for headgear, and your own symbol on your shield.
3) Different body models for races. Like they did in Morrowind. It annoyed me to not see the difference between an Imperial and a Breton right away. Maybe the body models could be customizable in the character creation too.

I want this game to focus mostly on more types of animations, for example, farmers that put their harvest in a basket while they stroll over the whole field. Use of domesticated animals to sow seeds. Wood chopping on trees, making them fall, becoming an inanimate object "dead tree", that can be chopped in smaller parts. Animation for collecting of chopped wood.

Use of wagons for transportation of goods or people. Wagons driven by horses as well as NPCs in different sizes.
Boats that can be rowed or rowed with animation, and is propelled forward, a much smarter alternative to swimming.

Cleaning roads, guards should either push the corpse of the road, or if it's a dead NPC, maybe dragging it to town with help from other guards.
A drag corpse animation and a drag heavy objects animation for both player and NPCs. Hiding bodies to keep your cover.

Different and interesting magical effects, and making targeting spells controllable like in Dark Messiah, where a great fireball can hit an opponent from behind.
As it is now its pretty much a light cloud in different colors that fly, and the target shines up in some color when struck.
Levitation spell, gives access to hidden areas.

Making lock picking more exciting by changing it to real time, where you have to check over your shoulder every now and then.
Implementing mechanical traps, for thieves/hunter, as a part of security where you can disable traps by lock-picking them, or arming traps, like bear traps.
Flash bombs/smoke bombs for stealth types to escape.
Implementing a crawl animation and ability, so that you can sneak through some walls with hole in them, or just simply hide in a bush.

Implementing a bash animation, and a bash ability, on doors or containers. It damages your weapon, but if the lock is weak, or the material its made of is weak, you might get treasure.
Hand-to-hand needs attack combos and grips, other weapons could need combos too.

Adding interesting and challenging locations to get to. Where acrobats skill might be needed to jump over a hole, or athletics to run by a door that is slowly closing. Holes in walls that you need to crawl through, not based on any skill though. Places where you need to have underwater breathing, would be interesting as well. Achieved from an ingredient, spell, potion, scroll or feat(argonians).

Night-vision turns on and off automatically for khajits and people with it casted on them. Not the everything is green vision, but you just see everything lighter than it actually is.

Lastly a wider area to explore (not as important though, as long as it's a rich small area we get). In oblivion I felt like no area had any challenge except mobs. But most fun in games are mostly the things where you don't have to kill anyone. Where puzzles are involved and secret areas.

A climbing animation would be awesome and ladders or ropes. Climbing walls and mountains is probably to much to ask. Climbing ladders to get to secret areas where you otherwise would need acrobatics or levitate to reach. Climbing some vines covered wall and at some places ropes could probably be a possibility.

Making the game world a little darker and not as warm as fuzzy as oblivion would improve a lot for my experience but this is a matter of taste.
Static objects like dead trees, plenty of rock.
Adding stupid weapons, like frying pans and small forks.
Adding serious weapons, like crossbows, poler-arms, throwing weapons.
Adding shallow streams of water to the game world.
More life in the water, fish, water creatures, seaweed and junk.
Separate armor parts, left/right glove/shoulder/braces/legs.
Strong weapons and strong armor should be much much rarer.
Clothing under armor.
Cloaks with/without hoods on top of armor.
Different kinds of staffs, wands and rods.
Scroll making, enchanting.
Making conversation real time, I don't want to stare at the lipsync while I talk to npcs.

Lastly, areas that looks interesting and more kinds of creatures.
http://365sunrise.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/img_2736.jpg
Vertical mountain walls, with caves, without a door as an entrance.
http://www.yttervik.se/kvarn/index-filer/fors.jpg
Small rivers streaming down mountains.
Thick forests, and large bodies of water, so that there are a need for boats ^^
Creatures: Giant spider, scorpion, werewolf, and other wild creatures(not daedra creatures) from the lore.

My personal changes would be to use reagents to make spells more effective, or the use of reagents to use scrolls, but this probably doesn't belong in the game at all but should probably be modded instead. Reagents like gems and herbs.
Remove block from skills and add shield instead, as someone said here or in another thread, your block skill should be integrated in your weapons skill.
Light armor and heavy armor skill don't make any sense to me.
Armor might have some effect on your spellcasting, but can also be enchanted, so their are benefits and losses.
Eating garlic or keeping garlic around you, would keep vampires away from your camp in the woods while you sleep.
I missed lanterns in oblivion, and would like to see them again.
A hardcoe mode for us realism lovers.

This has probably been suggested before, but I'd love to see completely customizable weapons. Not like put some gems on the hilt and engrave the blade, but be able to completely design your own weapon at a blacksmith shop, wait a few days then pick it up. Same with armor. Maybe have certain rare chunks of metal that you can harvest out of mines, then take that to a blacksmith and forge it into whatever shape you want as a blade. Or rare woods that you can harvest then custom build a bow with it.

Other than that, the only other thing I desperately want is PARKOUR skill for thief characters! And a grappling hook would be a nice gadget too. A fully functional one, so you can either throw it onto a roof and climb it, or throw it across an alley and swing from it.

That sounds pretty good. I'd like to see spells cast as a collection of effects, and named spells are a training ideal to teach you those effects. Fireballs for an easy example, one you've practiced or used the example standard spell enough, you can modify how you cast it with sliders in your spell book. The higher your skill is above the ideal, the faster you can cast the ideal, so by destruction level fifty you should be able to cast the destruction level fifteen fireball like a machine gun, or make one large slow burning blast, or anything in between.

Then for each willpower spell type, they make sliders concerning how it's used. Duration, magnitude, area, range, and so on. Intelligence spells I feel should be ritual magic, taking more time and requiring items, so it would depend more on what you get to make them than the sliders.

I agree with the morrowind comment but not the oblivion. There is a slight difference to females wearing armor pieces and males. Put a female in ebony and a male and you'll see a small difference. Which is all it should be, small.

Nice suggestions! Trying to keep this post small, I abbreviated your post.




Here's another suggestion, that I may have already stated somewhere else, but can't remember(or find it)
But guilds should have requirements again. You shouldn't just be able to walk into the Mages guild with no mage skills and become Arch-Mage by doing a few favors. Morrowind style requirements combined with doing quests would be the way to go.

It has surely been said before but: I want to see my feets and lower body when looking down in FP view!

Id Tech 5 please. Gamebryo makes me sad.

I agree 100%. There has been games in the past that required everyone to eat and drink and it definitely creates a more challenging dynamic. It creates situations where you actually have to plan before you go walking off into a dungeon somewhere where you may end up stuck for days of in-game time. hardcoe mode made FO:NV an even better game for me.

When I was in grade 7 and a friend told me about this cool game called the elderscrolls and how you could do and be anything, I literally took his statement word for word. He said that I could be a merchant if I wanted to, however when Morrowind was released in 2002 or whenever, there was a bartering system, but I personally could not become a merchant, and I've always found that aspect interesting.

I'm going to use Oblivion as my example, as its current, and most people can identify with what i'm talking about.

Imagine buildings in bruma or Skingrad, similar to houses for purchase, but instead, are shops you can purchase. Each one having larger square footage, depending on the need for it and success of your business. The building sizes are comparable to features bigger homes have in Oblivion, for instance the waterfront home vs Battlehorn castle; you may be able to hire guards for one shop or you may have room for an apprentice smith, who in exchange for gold/silver/raw materials, will craft items which you can sell.

So you purchase a building, and behind the merchants desk there is a chest with everything you'd be selling in it.

Similar to Fallout New Vegas's quest where you have to wait around for customers to enter the silver rush, you'd wait for costumers to enter the cell. Radiant AI (or whats left of it) would define what a customer needs and wants. The challenge to the player is figuring out what the customer needs and then managing to supply it.

Unlike games in the past, when an NPC prompts you to purchase an item you set the price, and they slowly try to haggle it cheaper. Obviously your mercantile skill will help in order to minimize losses.

Throwing a barter system into the equation might add a little too much sophistication, as theres a lot of knick-knacks that NPC's carry around...adding virtually nothing to the transaction...the AI might even try to sell the NPC's clothes...so sticking to gold would be the intelligent route.

For weapon crafting...

Break up the sword or bow models into many parts/sections...

Here are the Parts... ( Hilts, frames, strings, actual blades)

Now here's where it gets interesting. BETHESDA LOOK... Place each of "categories" under Iron, Steel, Dwarven, Glass, Ebony, Elven, Daedric etc Classes. EX. A bow with a Daedric handle, Glass frame, and Elven string. And for each piece, make more than one model. In MW Daedric had many types of helms, why not make different looking hilts or blades then making all of them the same. Like maybe 4 different types of hilts under Daedric category to add variety.

To base these items on rarity, make these pieces obtainable through either simply finding them, or getting the required ore from caves to forge them, under which forge can become a new skill. And make them rare to find like Morrowind. Maybe one very difficult cave under a volcano would have daedric ore where it's guarded by dragons or something so you cant run down there at lvl 1.

These pieces would all contribute to overall effectiveness, like mods in F:NW. EX. Daedric focuses on raw power and damage, while glass focuses on speed and dps. When these two are combined, you get a bow with good balance and power over just having a full daedric bow that would deliver raw power.

Yeah that would be cool but it would take some time that sounds like a mod in the works.

• Alchemy should require empty bottles to create potions. It's one more step towards a more balanced alchemy. When you drink a potion, you should be able to reuse the bottles.

• PLEASE make ESV more class-centric. I mean that you should either be ineffective or completely ineffective at skills that aren't in your class. For example, why should a pure warrior be able to cast beginning spells? Not everyone in Tamriel knows how to cast spells. If you wanted to cast spells as a pure warrior, you would have to get manually trained by someone in that school of magic. Another example is alchemy. One who does not have alchemy in their class should not be able to create potions. Basically, I just hate how in Oblivion you can do everything at a basic level when you only have seven skills for your class. This was actually more alleviated in Fallout 3 where you did not even have the option to pick certain locks or hack certain computers because your skill was too low.

I would like to delete spells from my spell list. I could in Morrowind, but not Oblivion. What gives? I mean really, I can't delete a spell. I have to constantly search through an ever growing list of spells. I like spells. I like to delete old or useless spells. I can't say it any clearer. Let me delete spells. (Obviously, I am talking about XBOX 360 version, not sure if PS3 suffers from same problem, and the PC version basically allows almost anything)

1. Good horses or no horses.
2. Deleting spells.
3. Levitation. I barely knew ye.
4. Fortify Jump. I was Jordan for 200 hours.
5. Less cookie-cutter dungeons. Every fort, cave, ruin, etc. just looks the same after a while.
6. If I want to, I should be able to kill everyone. E v e r y o n e. Like in Morrowind, remember?
7. More varied books. Oblivion's books were pretty bad. Everyone in Oblivion pretty much read the same books. Many books in Oblivion were in Morrowind.
8. Various religions.
9. Towns not separate from the game world. So now you can bring back levitation and fortify jump.
10. Fast travel out of dungeons, or quick escape-only routes.
11. Not as many leveled enemies. At some point, eventually, I would like to be all powerful.
12. Rats that aren't more than half the size of my character.
13. Do not, Do not, Do not, Do not bring back.... cliff racers. Ever.
14. Effect Interaction. I use an ice spell to freeze a character. They are frozen in ice. I use a fire spell to unthaw them. I use an electricity spell to shock them in the pool of water they are standing in. Cool, no?
15. Last one for today: When I slice someone 10 times with a glass sword (a little ironic, you would think it would shatter immediately) or a daedric sword, or any sword for that matter, when I slice someone 10 times, I expect a limb or a head to come off. You don't have to go as far as Afro-Samurai (although I could dig that), but realisticly, I expect a severed body part to hit the ground. Same thing with an axe or mace. I should see your face get destroyed, eyes should be popping out, maybe a broken cranium, etc. etc. Perhaps some sort of killing blow type system, where the final death strike does major disfigurement or physical, depictable, recognizable, harm to the enemy.

1) Why is no horses a better alternative than bad horses?
6) But it might be problematic if quest critical characters were killed by other NPC's (RAI) or by monsters while you look for 'em.
8) Daedric worship, Mythic Dawn, Nine Divines, Hackdirt... not enough for you?
10)
12) Why?
13) I think the designers pretty much got that message, lol, lesson learned
14) Cool, like Bioshock
15) Increased lethality? Would NPC's be able to sever your character's limbs as well? If not, prepare for the fanatical 'more immersion' crew