Set up a system like there was in Morrowind. Interventions that could take you lots of places, a Propylon Chamber Index System, and Mage-Guild Teleportation. In addition to Silt Striders, you really don't have to walk everywhere if the 'fast travel' option is removed.

Edit: These would obviously be regional equivalents.

You can't rotate the camera all the way around the character. It stops at a side-on view.

It would be nice if they had it toggable like you could do the training part but when u got bored of it you just skipped it by toggaling it off.



I never got that. I'm generally a mage so my intel is pretty high...yet i cant pull a stupid flower up out of the ground...That just doesn't seem right...

I think you understood a bit wrong, there is a difference.
You can still go to someone and just get a tip, however you do NOT get a new level that way you just get a leveling speed bonus, you still have to go out and earn it. When you go sparring with someone you actively level as you pretty much use your speed bonus directly.

So basically from everytihng that just gives you advice like a book or getting tips from someone you just get a leveling speed bonus but you still have to do something to level up.
When you go into a ACTUAL training round you do gain extra levels becuase you directly use what you learn.

Alchemy skill affecting harvesting success doesn't make a lot of sense. How do you fail picking up an object and putting it in your bag? "Sorry pa, I tried to harvest the corn, but half the crop disintegrated when I touched it." What I think might be more interesting is skill coming in with preserving ingredients. Say there's some rare, crystalline flower that only grows in frozen environments. You have to put it in a cold-enchanted container, else the ingredient will be destroyed if you travel into warmer climates (like, say, your alchemy lab). Cauterize the removal of a minotaur horn to keep bugs from eating it. Maybe being better at safely collecting grown ingredients will make the plant bear fruit again more quickly, stuff like that. Not all of that stuff would need to be actively performed by the player, of course, but would automatically be taken into account, improving the quality and durability of your stuff based on skill instead of whether or not it's there in the first place.

In terms of harvesting, ideally I'd like to see more of a "what you see is what you get" approach. Don't tell me I just got no petals from that plant, there are five flowers on it. If it's no good, have no flowers on the plant. We already have entire plants vanishing when harvested, I can't imagine it's much of a technological stretch to have the plant still there and certain parts come and go instead. One person might pass a bare vine without looking twice, but the dedicated alchemist could recognize the leaves as belonging to a Stoneflower plant, and come back later to harvest from it. This would fit in well with locational damage, too; if one of the minotaur's horns is shattered, I can only collect one. If imps are highly flammable, I have to make sure not to kill them with fire, else there won't be anything salvageable.

It would make sense in SOME way, as you get more experienced to identify ingredients that have the right quality to even count you can get more out of it since you can sort them better. With corn it might not be a good example but take a bush of berries, as a noob you might only take the redest berries since you know "red = good" but as you get more experience you can also pick ones that have a lighter shade of red or knw you can also pick some of the green ones.

However it should NOT be tied into alchemy but into a new skill set.

yes, you can, but thats if YOU want to, YOU dont have to use the fast travel, but if others want to it shouldnt matter to you. its like "omg ur so f****ing dumb u use fast travel lol you dumb moron" besides you know beth aint getting rid of it. end of discussion. why do i even go to these forums... :shakehead:

doesnt thats seem like a lot of a hassle for picking flowers? especially for a non mage character "ok cant harvest this because the bugs will eat it and i dont have the right pouch...." thats why there ARE NO BUGS IN TES (except for elytra...but they eat people not berries, it seems...)


how about an herbalism skill like in WoW? it should be tied to something "ok im going to pick this rare plant here.... 25% chance.... cummon.... cummon... slowly now, carefully..... AARRGGHH!!! did it again!!! :brokencomputer: "

Picking flowers in oblivion was fine. and the Havest mod removed only parts of the plants when you pick them, like you would expect. There was nothing I'd like to change about that.

That would be why I added the "not actively performed by the player" part. *I* wouldn't mind it, but I know they wouldn't add it. Special treatment would only go to special ingredients like the ice flower. Stuff like "don't smash the minotaur's horns" would be common sense. The rest is just an explanation for why higher skill would lead to higher item quality.

no, it svcked. bad. very bad. why did beth put cairn bolete and wisp stalk in the tutorial, i dont know, they were impossible to pick. what ive picked the most of was flax ambrosia lichor and some other thing... dunno what it was. i wish it was more like the sims. you go over to the tree, you see your guy picking the fruit, a window shows up saying what you got, and then the fruits dissappears from the tree. oh yeah, and you shouldnt only get 1 ingredient from a plant. you get the flax seeds, but what about the leaves and the stem? youve taken the boar meat, but what about the hide?

Its not that they were hard to pick, its that you didnt find any usable ingrediants on that plant. Which is understandable.

I think you should be able to buy carts,wagons, or chariots or something.

If you had a wagon or something you could live out of it pretty much.You wouldnt need a house.

A way to add harvesting would be some kind of auto harvest feature, for example when you want to pick berries from a bush or wheat from a field you just click and hold it and your character starts auto harvesting untill he can't find anymore nearby.

For harvesting, Bethesda should make it so you can collect more than 1 strawberry from a strawberry plant for example. They should weigh very little, but you should still need a good amount of them to make a potion.

when using your fist's you can knock out a Npc ( so to rob them )
instead of killing them

I think that the fast travel system should be an option the you eather want it or you dont.
And yes your alch lvl schould affect your harvesting. And you schould need more than just mortar and pestle. You schould go collect water and all of the engredients.

yeah seriously. i smashed a whole bag of berry medley in a mortar and pestle once and i didnt even get half a cup of juice
and yes you should be able to get more than 1 ingredient from a plant "weird all the strawberry plants only have 1 berry and i killed all the forest animals a week ago"
and i dont get why they put minotaur horns in the ingrediant section because everything in the ingrediants section you can eat... and i dont think very many people can eat raw minotaur horns... :facepalm:

i think you should be able to catch diseases not by combat but also just by standing near a sick person... and id like to be able to spread diseases too, heheh

Quest compass:
First a little explanation, a map marker is a marked position on your map and the compass just points to a highlighted marker. The others remain inactive until highlighted.

For the quest compass it could still be present similar to how it was in Oblivion but with a few changes. Instead of directly pointing you to your goal it always points to the next goal your character KNOWS about. To explain it better, think of this:
You have to find a certain person and only know the general area where he lives but neither the town, street or house. In that case the compass will point to center of the area or the capital of that area, so you roughly know where you have to search.
Then, after asking around a bit, you might know what town/village he lives in, the compass will then point to that town but again not where EXACTLY he lives. Asking around further you might learn the street or exact address which will place a marker there.
However the person still might not be there but you can gain further info, where he works (will place a marker at his workplace as well) or where he usually eats (places another marker there). That way you can narrow down where that person MIGHT be, at times where he's usually at that place the compass will point to the corresponding marker.

However there is a possibility for the marker directly showing your destination when you exactly know where something is OR if the target is in your direct line of sight.
It's hard to recognize a person on a computer screen but your character can, when a person you seek is in your line of sight and close enough he can have a marker since your character can see him now. Similar for objects you're looking for, when they are in your line of sight they can be highlighted.
That way you could also spot a NPC or target over larger distances through a telescope for example.

So basically instead of directly pointing to your goal it simply narrows it down more the more exactly you know where you have to go. If you know the area it will point to the areas center, if you know the closer area it will point more exactly to that point and if you know exactly where it WILL point exactly there, that includes directly seeing it.
And once you pinpointed a location it will set a marker there.

You could still set a marker manually and then make the compass point towards it. That way you can manually pin a location like something you want to explore later on or already know that something is there.

There might also be the possibility to have a "faded" marker, for example when following a person the faded marker will show at the last position where you saw him or where people last saw him, if too much time passes that marker might even go away.

I also had a thought on finding objects again, once you picked up a quest object and then KNOW it is one (once you get the mission to get it) it WILL show a marker on your map even after you dropped or sold it.
Now while many will say "that's quest guiding again" hear me out. First of it does NOT set a marker until you found the object itself, it will only do so afterwards. What this does is add a safeguard so you can't accidentally give away or lose a quest item. When you look for it again the marker will remain at it's last know position, if you dropped it somewhere look near that place, if you sold it the trader will be shown.
What this is for is mostly one thing, prevent a lot of frustration. In Morrowind it happened a lot that you just out of curiosity cleared a dungeon, found a seemingly normal item and either sold it or dropped it while cleaning out your inventory. And later found out it was a important quest item and is now lost forever.
This is what the system can at least to a big part prevent, you CAN find the lost item again since you REMEMBER it.
Oh and if you dropped it in a place where you can never get it again like a lava flow, that REALLY is your own fault then .
It could still be added that a quest item can't be destroyed (dismantled, molten, broken down...), while that would be a pretty strong hint that this is a important object it's still more subtle than a bland text message telling you it is a quest item.


Also as for markers you should be able to place various different ones on your map manually, think of "google Earth" for example. Being able to chose different looking ones would be good too and really FREELY place them and maybe add a little note to it.



A few more thoughts on customizable HUD:
I already mentioned that aside being able to freely place and resize HUD elements and also that you should be able to change the look of some HUD elements. I wanted to get a bit more detailed on the last one and also add that some elements could be combined.

For example, the health bar, it could be a simple bar, number, both combined, a little 3D image of your character showing his condition, a medical image like in Deus Ex or maybe even a pulse scale. Or the map could either be square or a circle map.
About combining, you could have the map and compass separate for example or dock them together to have the compass needle move around your map (similar to GTAs map). You could even dock a clock around it to have the time, that way you'd have 3 tools (map, compass and clock) in one HUD option.

As mentioned all HUD elements should also be possible to simply turn off so they don't show during regular gameplay. In fact it would be ideal if you could fully play without any HUD at all.
Health and fatigue for example can be displayed by your character panting, vision effects, movements etc.

you should be able to turn the quest compass off, it gets annoying sometimes

and also you should be able to abandon quests because the oblivion questline was a [censored] pain in the [censored] @$$ (i put in the censors myself because i was bored )

You could do that multiple ways:
1: Set a "unimportant" marker as a target, for example one of your houses
2: Possibility to switch it off completely so you just have markers but no pointer
3: Possible to turn of markers on your map too (the compass would have nothing to point to


Also a small thought, many complained that the compass noticed objects around you on a too great distance, how about it could only notice them if they are in your field of view and your vision, that way the compass would represent what your character THINKS.

i dont get why you can see - what spell your going to use, your health, magicka, fatigue, a compass, your weapon and if your going to level up in - first person. are you seeing those little icons? "uh oh little tiny monster - hey, whered it go?" *monster hides underneath health bar that you can see for some reason so you go and see an eye doctor who says youve been playing too much tes and that the health bar has been burned into your eyes so you drop to your knees and yell whyyyyyyyy and go home and tell your wife whats happened and you go throw your tes games out the window gouge your eyes out and lay on your death bed* :confused:

Well it's mostly because you can't feel what your character feels and therefor have no indication of your status other than the "bars". Most of the other stuff is simply convinience.

I say there should be an option to turn off HUD elements as you wish, however you should not be forced to have none at all.

Indeed:

In both Gothic 2 and 3 non-lethal combat was an important part of the game, and it made the world more immersive and realistic.
In Mount&Blade, knocking people down with clubs or ramming them with a horse was a way to 1. Capture NPCs needed in quests. If they died quest failed. 2. Take alive prisoners for slave markets 3. Take alive prisoners to give them a chance to join your war band.