Welcome to TES V Ideas and Suggestions # 131

This thread is for ideas and suggestions for TES:V and to keep all the general discussion in one series of threads.

To discuss major issues, use a separate topic, such as the levelling topic.

Other general topics on this will either be closed or moved here.

Please at least try to read the previous few threads to avoid too much repetition:


http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=975695
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=977724
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=978706
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=980442
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=982094
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=984030
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=986314
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=988887
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=993886
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=995978
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=998552
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1000774
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1003380
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1006476
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1009979
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1013455
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1016514
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1019615
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1020944
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1022343
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1023937
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1025326
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1026491
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1027877
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1028435
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1029965
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1031535
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1032326
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1034439
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1036286
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1038148

Why not make it so that fast travel can only be done between places connected by (good) roads. Small towns in the middle of the forest would have to be walked to. It's part of them being isolated. Fast travel should be there to replace tedious walking. Since the main cities will always be connected by roads and many quests (especially fetch quests) have to deal with going between each main city, fast travel would have a use. Yet, it would not overtake manual exploring, since there is no telling what lurks within the wilderness, no matter how many times one takes the journey.

Of course, we could always do it like Pokemon:
A wild Bandit appeared!

Peke Utchoo used Thundershock!

...
Sorry. Couldn't resist.



Yeah, the main road travel is a FT alternative that I'm comfortable with. It still represents what Morrowind-style limited travel represents: safe uninterrupted transport between major cities. And that would still allow dangerous deep-wilderness areas to retain their dangerous qualities.

I think training should be less restrictive than in Oblivion. Like maybe the 5 point limit should be per skill at each level.......

I liked being at a really high level of skills despite being at a low level generally without having to level up. Since undoubtedly the enemy leveling system will be corrected then The Nine only know what will happen to the levelling system. I like the fast travel idea on main roads but how about have them on smaller tracks too only you'll have had to walk/ride on them to unlock nearby destinations as fast travel sites.

I had a few ideas there:

When you learn something from a book or you just get tips from a trainer you don't gaina new level but you can level a bit faster for a while since you already know what you have to do.

When you actually TRAIN with someone it is actual training, not press a button and gain a level but actually "do as i instruct you" or "fight me"

Glad to see the fast travel roads are gaining ground. I presented the idea in one of my first posts here.



Nah. Unless those tracks are guarded, it shouldn't be acceptable. The idea is that the road are 100% safe (thanks to the Legion patrolling or something), so walking on them is tedious and can be skipped. Paths / tracks in the wilderness shouldn't be eligible to fast travel.

Beside, on the long run, it would turn like Fallout 3 or Oblivion. You would be able to Fast Travel very close to wherever you want to go (or even directly wherever you want to go if you already been there)

That sounds like fun now, but it'd get incredibly repetitive and not-fun the more you train with someone. Maybe do this for the first few times, but then after a while do the usual press a button, fade to black, and gain a level.

with the combination of horses, and your char. naturally moving faster, i would say just revert back to the Mw way. like someone said before the compass could be used manually to mark a rough idea where a quest plot is or something like tht anyway. And also id prefer if the old journal was back. does tht sound good or wht. i almost forgot about the wicked ass spells and scrolls and whtnot.

Toggleable quest marker. Bioware is doing it with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9TRrZSAEjc&feature=related - Bethesda can do it, too.

Fable 2 did it as well, thus further proving your point.

OK here's my take on fast travel again specially the traveling methods. For this keep in mind that the game world in mind is FAR bigger than the one in Oblivion, walking from one end to the other wouldn't take half a day but a full in game WEEK.

How you travel:
Just like in Daggerfall it could simulate your travel AND what you did on the way, if you traveled rigorously or carefully, if you kept traveling or did regular rest stops, if you took safe paths or shortcuts etc.
All those then simulate how much money or resources you used, how far you walked and also your condition in the end, it could happen that you got sick on the way and have to cure that first.

-The route you take:
Main roads: Only taking the main roads is the longest path but also the safest, you won't encounter bandits here and very rarely small creatures. Also most inns are along the main roads, however camping on main roads isn't tolerated.
Side roads: Taking side roads can be a lot faster as you can take shortcuts but it's less safe, some danger of bandits and wild animals. There are less Inns but you can camp out without risk of the guards threatening to arrest you.
Cross country: This can be the fastest method but also the most taxing and dangerous since you really go though the wild. You can only rarely stop at a inn and pretty much have to camp out to rest.

-Resting:
Inns: Most relaxing and regenerating, uses money.
Camp out: Takes more time since you have to set up camp and can be less relaxing, uses food OR requires you to hunt.
Travel on: You can also chose to travel on without rest, this however can mean you collapse on your way making you a easy target for bandits. This shouldn't be done if you're injured and have to travel for more than 2 days.

-What can happen:
First off you should NOT die or lose valuable items while fast traveling, it should not be a punishment. However you can use money, food and your equipment can be quite worn after a long trip.
Not to mention you can arrive quite exhausted and even injured. You can also catch diseases and infections on the way but again, you won't die on the way.
What CAN happen though is that the trip is too exhausting and you collapse leaving you as easy prey for anyone coming along.


Travel methods:
-Walking:
Walking is by far the slowest method of travel, as mentioned it could take a full in game week to travel from one end of the map to the other. Here you have free choice what way to take and how you want to travel.

-Horseback:
Similar to walking but faster and you can regenerate more, though not fully since you still have to ride. Again pretty much free choice of how to travel.

-Travel service:
A bit slower than by horse and you're bound to their conditions, if they stop for the night it means you stop for the night too. However you can fully regenerate since you can treat injures and get food on the way.
However you can jump off a travel service anytime too.

-Mages guild teleporter:
By far the fastest method but limited to big mages guild halls so you can only get to certain locations. However if you can skip ? of a trip that way it's a good alternative.

Facial hair like in FO3 instead of a crappy shadow. Braided forked beards and such, especially if its going to be in Skyrim.

I like the idea of the travel services. I would love to see some kind of carriage that work similar to the taxi in GTA4. We can use them to travel between major points in the game, of course when you get in you can hit a button to fast travel, or sit through the whole ride and watch the scenery pass. Maybe tip the driver to go faster... Plus when riding all the way through, you can jump out at any point you wish. Only problem with jumping out is that it will leave if your away for more than 5 minutes.
I greatly enjoyed that in GTA 4 with the taxi, and i think it would be awesome with TES

BTW, when it comes to posts such as console bashing, Don't get mad and start arguing... hit that little report button. it didn't take more than 5 minutes for all those bad posts to get cleaned out

Regarding training: I somewhat prefer the old Betrayal at Krondor skill book system. What that did, essentially, was that each book had a chance to give you experience in a skill (first use was always 100%, which is what trainers should do), and when you hit the EXP gain roll, you got experience that was somewhat inversely related to skill level.

So assuming we apply this to TES systems, it would literally be like "Master trainer gives you ~150 skill EXP, Expert =120, Journeyman ~90, etc". Although I don't like Oblivion's floating point system so much. Straight integers would be easier for modders to create interesting replacements for the base systems (big fan of the mercantile systems for Oblivion). So rather than automatically granting a level, a Master trainer could give you 1.2 levels to something like .8 levels if we stick with the above values (and 2 levels would be possible with some skills). But that could be tweaked and altered by the difficulty slider,mods, etc. so that master trainers could give more or less of a boost.

Great idea.

Same view as Orozorn about fast travel. However I would expand on that saying, for travelling by carriage, you could only go on main roads and you would plot your mark on where about the certain road you want to go. Then you are travelled there

I want to be able to look at the front of my character when in 3rd person view! Please, enable 360 degree camera in 3rd person. This is for consoles, don't know if you can already do it on PC.

You mean like the http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Controls#Default_Controls?

I'm sure this has been brought it up before, but it bears repeating: Factions need to have interpersonal conflicts like in Morrowind, not isolated questlines with perks like in Oblivion. Most importantly, there needs to be a good counterpoint to the Imperial side. As TES5 is likely in Skyrim, it's essential that both Nordic & Imperial viewpoints are shown; you only saw a vague glimpse in Bruma (which consisted of Nords whining about Imperials and Imperials making racist commentary on Nords).

In Morrowind, you had the xenophobic, tradition oriented Dunmer with their Great Houses and Tribunal Temple, with the Imperial presence and their guilds & Imperial Cult on the flipside (plus some third parties). In Oblivion......you have flowery Imperial factions against a bunch of cookie cutter villain groups, 90% of which feel like http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CardCarryingVillain. I still cannot comprehend why Bethesda did that....... :banghead:

To that end, I strongly suggest they bring back dialog boxes. Neverwinter Nights 2, for example, though they used cutscenes like in the KOTOR games, still retained the option of Neverwinter Nights 1 dialog boxes. The requirement of fully voiced dialogue in Oblivion was one of the worst design decisions in that game, especially given their VA budget.

In Morrowind, you had the xenophobic, tradition oriented Dunmer with their Great Houses and Tribunal Temple, with the Imperial presence and their guilds & Imperial Cult on the flipside (plus some third parties).

I second that. Here's hoping that TESV has Great Houses as well (or some other similar equivalent), as it really does add an awesome dynamic that I feel was missed in Oblivion.

Have you tried Fallout 3? I actually really enjoyed the dialogue structure they used as it was a combination of the old style (lots of text + conversation benefits from skills/attributes) and the new style (voiced over helping to aid in audio depth). I agree that Oblivion went full-tilt towards audio depth at the expense of creating very shallow actual dialogue.

I like the Main Roads travel idea, but would like to add that I want Mark/Recall/Intervention added back in as well.

I don't come by this forum that much, so this is probably a repeat. I was just playing Morrowind today and it occurred to me: your alchemy skill should affect the chances of successfully harvesting a plant. Just an idea.

yeah because with oblivion there was a 5% chance of harvesting a wisp stalk cap even if your high lvl in alchemy


and about the fast travel: it should be optional

you could either fast travel, use a taxi service, or walk. no point in ruining it for people that dont want to run from prison to weynon priory to kvatch

If it were your desire to avoid running from the Imperial City to Weynon Priory to Kvatch, then you could purchase travel via caravans or other methods (Morrowind's limited fast travel system), or you could fast travel along the main roads only (alternate FT system proposed).

If you're not going to respond to the numerous critiques that have been raised regarding Oblivion's use of fast travel, then there's little point in continuing discussion.