:thumbsup:

These exist already... the emperor's private quarters, the orrery room door (in the game as sold), the emperor's robe respectively. There are other examples of this, as well. But I am accepting of them because there is so much else to do. That I, nor any NPC, cannot kill a child will not hamper my enjoyment of a game with children in it. I'm sure there will be story arcs in which children are endangered, get sick and/or possibly die. These make great heroic quests and tragedies.



However, if Burd was non-essential he could be killed by the player at any point before the mission started breaking the mission. Or did you want there to be a contingency to replace him? And then a contingency to replace that one if he or she should die? I'm not sure what exactly you want to have happen if Burd should die. Should it be a hard failure; time to reload? I'd prefer a temporarily invincible partner AI; however, unlike Burd, one that lends the illusion of struggling throughout the fight, without falling down at all. Instead, how about if he gets hit for a massive amount of damage he requests to wait for a minute to catch his breath after the combat is concluded? After the important plot points I'd like him to no longer be essential.

Yes, believability is thrown out the window after the man who can't fall down for good rises for the umpteenth time. But at least the quest can be finished. I have no idea why he wasn't made temporarily invincible to damage for the purposes of the quest. (And I agree, I'd much rather have a "hide behind the invincible NPC" potential cheat than a rebounding-boxing-clown eyesore.) I'm sure the deaths of the remainder of the guards were by design to stress the dangers of Dagon's Oblivion. After all, if you didn't save the Imperial in the first Oblivion gate, you're the only person to ever return from a gate. A few of which, I might add, hold the potential to wipe out a city, save for a few survivors.



I have to take issue at your last two reasons for opposing the inclusion of children. Mostly because stunting believability and immersion is also what a lack of children does. It's a flip-flop opinion and you can take either side. Consider, for one small example, that in your interactions with NPCs, books, the quest plot-line, references to children abound and yet there are none around? How is that not breaking suspension of disbelief?

On the other hand, immortal NPCs, be they temporary or permanent, is a design choice that you disagree with. Fair enough.

But I disagree with that position. I prefer that there are children. If you think about it, the NPCs aren't that believable to begin with, what with some of the terrible line-reading (not always the fault of the actors, but the sheer volume of interactions still makes some seriously wooden acting), the stiff animations and the limited interaction options. You can't sell to non-merchants, you can't gamble with anyone but the elf at the arena, you can't give anyone a gift (excluding money) to increase disposition. There's no drunken bar-fights, no enlisting mercenary help, no hiring someone to smuggle things to you in jail. NPCs don't approach you randomly, they don't solicit you to sell things in the market district, they don't generally care if you run around naked - even if they might comment. With all that you can't do with NPC advlts there's no reason not to include them, is there?

Is really all that it comes down to is killing? No one dies of natural causes in the game either - and some elderly/sick characters could be on a hard-coded or semi-random timer. You don't see the utility of a child NPC at all in the game? I really don't see why immortal children don't fit. Especially, if one were able to make them scatter by pulling out a sword. That would be a fun interaction: striking fear into the hearts of children, because it certainly doesn't happen with advlts very often, no matter how tough your character is. That's not immersive either, is it? In an apples to apples comparison of atmosphere when dealing with NPCs, FO3 kicked Oblivion's butt despite other shortcomings. The reason was mostly because there were obvious young, teenaged, advlt and elderly NPCs, they all reacted more appropriately to you, the occasional person had an interesting interaction and not all of them had time for you even if you were the savior of the wasteland. I never even noticed that I couldn't kill the kids though, surprisingly enough I was having too much fun doing all of the other things.

That some people take issue with the realism of not being able to kill a child in spite of all the terrible NPC realism is patently bizarre. That it could be a deal-breaker is hilarious; I hope this isn't you. I believe it is possible to make any character in an open world ARPG "essential" (whether temporarily or permanently) and plausibly so; Bethesda simply didn't succeed at it with Oblivion.

We should stop debating this issue soon: we won't convince each other and it's going to become too distracting from the topic.

Well, we should probably stray from talking about the matter in the specific, and instead talk about it more in the abstract. Discussing child-killing is against forum rules, which is why I've been trying to stick the the NPC side of things while admonishing that children must be immortal if they are included.


That's very true. However, these kind of things are fairly... foreign to TES, at least the vision of TES spawned by Redguard and Morrowind. Daggerfall did have some of that element with houses that were for filler purposes only, but not a lot. They do not need to be encouraged, either. Nothing should be off-limits to you simply because the game mechanics or developers will it to be so.

The actual lack of an Emperor's quarters is a huge oversight on the part of the developers. Not having access to the entirety of White-Gold Tower in terms of what is already there is because of certain scripting decisions on behalf of the final Thieves Guild questline. However, workarounds were (and always are) possible and preferable. In the Thieves Guild example, scripts could have been written up that didn't rely excessively on the interior data, meaning the player could enter and exit the specified interior cells without setting off scripts for the quest in question. Or, if that wasn't possible (big if), an exact replica of those interior cells could have been set apart to be used and referenced in the Thieves Guild quest, allowing the player to still mess around in the real interior cells without screwing up potential future quest data.

The Orrery, it is suspected, was intended to make it into the vanilla game, and it was cut and later packaged into DLC due to time constraints. So it was not the intention of the developers in this case to create a door to nowhere.

The robes are just another example of an awkward design concept that I still have yet to understand; not being able to loot things to the fullest. If the player wishes to loot the robe from the Emperor's body, they should be able to do so. It would be even more interesting if the robe had been scripted to cause a massive negative reaction while wearing it, a la the Ordinators attacking you for wearing Ordinator armor in Morrowind. Rather like me killing off hordes of Dremora, only to be allowed to loot their weapon and shield, not their armor. Same thing for killing off Legion Palace Guards. Very damaging to immersion. It makes absolutely no sense to not allow the armor to be looted. Any objection that could be brought up regarding it can be worked around. Unbalances the economy? Then adjust prices to factor it in. Too good of armor for the player to be using? Then make it's wearer tough and durable; if I see some nice shiny armor, I decide killing for that shiny armor is acceptable, and I do manage to successfully kill, then that armor should be my duly earned reward.

So while, yes, these limitations did exist in Oblivion, they need to be culled.


Well, for one, they need to stop designing quests that hard-nosedly require a specific NPC to be alive for them. Side-quests that involve people specifically are understandable, as is the consequence that if you knock someone off, the quest cannot be started or go on. But for major quests, or even quests that are not central to the people they flag essential, it's a flawed design. Working around Burd's death is easy. If he were to die before the gate quest, then he would be replaced with a generic Bruma soldier, who would have appropriate dialogue to spur the men, perhaps honor their fallen captain, and pledge to charge into the gate with you. Problem solved. Burd no longer essential. Similarly, if Burd should be alive when starting the quest, but Burd should die during the quest, then Burd is dead. Why should that completely stifle any outcome? If Burd dies, you close the gate yourself, report his death to the men outside, and continue on your merry way down the quest-path.

In Morrowind, no NPC was immortal, and the only NPCs that were essential were the barest minimum that were needed to complete the MQ. If you killed one of them unaware (as the game didn't point them out for you), a dialogue box would appear telling you that you had doomed yourself and the MQ, and that it was your choice to continue in that doomed world or reload a save. The great thing was, even if you chose to continue in your "doomed" world, there was still a backpath, an avenue by which, even through killing someone (or multiple someones) insanely important to the story's continuity, you could still work your way through the MQ in a logical fashion. It was hard to stumble upon, but the fact remained that the Morrowind MQ could be done without any real essential NPCs at all.

The point is, a well-designed and fleshed out quest doesn't need to rely on NPCs for the quest to be finished, unless the NPCs in question are the absolute core of the quest. And then, you just have to live with the consequences of a quest that can't be completed if you kill them (think side-quests). The vast majority of quests do not have NPCs as their direct object, especially regarding factions or MQ. And even if they may involve NPCs in the pursuit of the direct object, the NPCs themselves are not central to the pursuit of the direct object. Your primary goal in the Bruma Gate quest is to close the gate. Teaching the guards how to accomplish it is a secondary notion. If none of them survive to be taught, then that's harsh life. The game and the world still continue.


It's also very true that what is immersion-breaking and what isn't is very much a matter of opinion and which side of the coin you fall on. What NPCs can do is very limited, and what can be portrayed is very limited. I've geared a lot of suggestions towards trying to give life to NPCs via more dialogue, random encounters, and just general tighter AI, but at the end of the day there's a lot be desired of what a video game can portray of people, especially when it's ambitiously attempting to portray 800+ people. However, there are also a whole host of things that can be and are exhibited via the game regarding NPCs. One of those things happens to be the realities of getting damaged and how that damage affects them by injuring and eventually killing those NPCs. And to have a whole subsection of NPCs that are essentially-flagged for whatever reason who are outside of those very tangible rules is breaking to immersion. It may be presented in the form of "just killing," but it strikes more at the heart of the mission statement and philosophy of TES. Open world, do whatever you can conceive.

If TES:V ships with essentially-flagged NPCs, I will still undoubtedly buy it, and I will still undoubtedly enjoy it. It's not too big an issue for that. But it is something I would prefer not make a comeback.

On that point they could have had an easy explanation, the armors are simply "merged" with the Dremora and can't just be taken off. Plus, as they die it could mean that they are transported back to Oblivion (they could actually vanish and only leave their non attatched gear behind), meaning you can't just cut them off a dead Dremora.

To actualy get Daedric armor would mean to either find peices that ARE already there OR you can only do it with certain skills / under certain conditions, for example the Dremora needs to be still "alive" while trying to remove it.
That would make getting the armor a task rather than finding it that easily.


However i still say there should be no non lootable stuff and no permanently locked doors. I remember there only was one locked door in Morrowind you couldn't open and there was a good reason, it lead to a caved in ruin so there probably was just mud and rubble behind that door anyway.

You make only good points in how to workaround essentials. I also like the steps they took with Fallout 3 in shifting quests on the contingency of death to other NPCs and I'll bet they are going to keep that in mind.

Still, what I find to be a problem with essentials is scheduling that allows them to be killed. For example: what should be done in the case of the Khajiit who works as the maid for the Countess in that one thieves guild quest. The maid who can die on her way to Chorrol and thus you can't get information from her. Mind you, the information is not that important. You could steal the ring without it, but you might have to do a lot of saving and reloading to keep from being caught. But, having to reload multiple times breaks the immersion as well.

Should there be a sister you can find who might have the information? Another butler with the information that doesn't leave the castle grounds of whom the maid is fond? I always thought there was a lack of sources in thieves guild special jobs. It never really seemed like you pieced together a heist, just collected a single piece of information and then did the job. If there were more people involved with giving you information for these jobs, this really wouldn't matter as much. NPC x tells you the Countess' schedule; NPC y shows you a hidden passage; NPC z tells you when the guards change shifts; NPC n tells you she'll look the other way for 100 gold; the letter you stole tells you the guards shift change; the diary of the maid tells you the Countess' schedule; an old hidden building plan in an architect's home tells you of a hidden passage; etc.

(Although, in reality the death of someone on the road shouldn't happen as easily as it does in Oblivion. This is probably a different can of worms entirely: the level scaling is ridiculous - especially on the roads. There should never be a road covered with Minotaurs, Brown Bears and Minotaur Lords unless it leads to a city that has had all of its supplies cut off, is starving, and is tasking you with the mission of saving their supply lines by killing all the creatures on the road. Even if an NPC says the best way to get to said city is to walk on water... it's still ridiculous that that city is thriving. Meanwhile, in the depths of a mountain range at level 30 I find a fearsome Imp...)

Tangents aside, much like you, I prefer to have my options complete (or at least more complete) and find it somewhat jarring when I can do x with one object but not another. On the flip side, even if there is one building that can be burned to the ground in TES:V I won't be too upset that I can't burn them all to the ground. I'll just take it in stride as a limitation to preserve the overall utility of the system and cull the needless hours of code, dialogue and NPC AI contingencies from something that would be more of a novelty than anything else, ESRB be damned. I miss the naked primal dancers of Daggerfall's Dibella that lent the impression of a non-puritanical whitewashing of Nirn's history (think of Inanna and Herodotus' dubious view of her cult), unlike Oblivion's starkly asixual (save for Necrophilia - what!?), yet contrastingly primal, world. I don't really care either way if they come back - which they won't. They are a set dressing that isn't that important (but would help in differentiating which bloody cookie-cutter chapel I was visiting), unlike children, which are a set dressing that I consider to be obvious when it isn't there. It's like creating an earth-like world without bodies of water.

What I'm getting at, I suppose, is that I'd rather play a game that was going in the right direction than wait forever for a game that might never come out. So, including essentials while reducing them, creating workarounds with contingency NPCs and designing quests with multiple outcomes depending on the survival of the NPC involved are all steps on the way toward this game. These all appeared in Fallout 3 (well, mostly: apples and oranges when it comes to reduced essentials) and I would be surprised if they dropped these sorts of innovations from TES:V.

If you play on the PC (I haven't since 2007 or so and occasionally I miss mods - but surprisingly I still play the game), there's always a way to keep NPC's from being essential. However, if the game wasn't designed with unlocking essential NPCs in mind, using these sorts of workarounds would be more like breaking your game than working around an issue that you take with the design.

im personally surprised at the matter of fact that there are no wild berries (maybe there are but i havent found them)

i would personally like it better that if you are a novice of alchemy you would only know the effects of SOME ingredients, such as berries that restore fatigue, etc, but if you see a nirnroot, youd have no idea what it would do. you could either eat it to find out what it does (risky), or you could ask someone who might know what it does.

and get rid of the cutting effect of swords, the only way they should cut through heavy armor is if you are a master of blade. and also, no more 40 pound longswords, all longswords and shortswords should weigh anywhere from 1.5 to 3 pounds.

i want cooking, too, i dont like eating raw boar meat. perhaps if you find some salt and some nuts, you could roast them to make salted nuts. or you could harvest wheat, take it to a mill, turn it into flour, add some water to make it into a square, then cook it with some salt to make some crackers... at least i think thats how you make crackers. or, as much as it svcks to admit, using argonian blood to create brews, such as the argonian bloodwine

Strawberries and blackberries can be found on their respective bushes or at merchants who sell food items in Oblivion.



They actually weighed 40 feathers, and yeah, 40 is ridiculous when leading experts agree the heaviest swords weigh between 3.5 and 4.5lbs and your average blade weighed between 2.5 and 3.5. However, I'll bet using the feather system of encumbrance (which I'll guess is a mixture of weight, rarity and awkwardness to carry) was done to reduce over-looting items and becoming insanely rich far too early in the game. Encumbrance is, in a world where everything can be looted (and will be, by some players), the mediator of balance in the economy. A balanced economy isn't necessary to keep the play fair between players (as it would if it were multiplayer), but to keep players from saying, "this economy is stupid-easy, what's the point in even having money."

Still, there were worse gameplay-breaking issues with weight in the game: shoes weighed more(!) or an equal weight to some of the light armor footwear. There was no benefit to wear shoes for a stealth character, whose footwear would affect his/her sneak skill until reaching the mastery perk. The only benefit came for magic users who wanted 100% spell effectiveness.

i wish there were more drinks than beers ales and wines. these may have been popular in the middle ages but not many people could risk giving up even a few coins to visit the tavern. so there should be water etc, because i like to roleplay, and my guy doesnt drink beer but he does need to drink

Beer was the most common drink in medieval Europe among every social class because the purity of "potable" water was usually suspect and was purified in the brewing process of beer. People didn't need to go to the tavern to drink beer, it could be made at home. It wasn't necessarily the same as the beer we have today in terms of alcohol content or the way it was socially viewed.

Well water was mostly for washing up, boiling for foods, making beer and what have you.

I suspect the level of aquifer water-cleansing technology in Cyrodiil is on par with Medieval Europe.

Edit: also, in Medieval Europe beer was incredibly cheap... any working man could afford to drink a lot of it.

A rather small suggestion, but:

• Bring back the click sound from Morrowind whenever you click on buttons and such in the menu. It's a wonderful form of nostalgia.

Why the heck not? Tamriel is loosely based on Medieval, but Tamriel is NOT Medieval like in our reality. Its a bit strange that there is no drinkable water ingame. I would doubt that it is just booze that is available as a drink. It would be great to have water as a drink and as an ingredient for Alchemy. I would also agree along the line Knight of the Thorn there should be more drink that is not alcoholic. Milk from cattle or goat might also be taken into consideration.


Just recently install Morrowind and boy does that sound good.

Dual one hand weapon weild

Bestiary of slain creatures

What is the legal age to be killed on a fantasy game? lol!

I didn't say there shouldn't be water. I just explained why it probably wasn't included. It probably wasn't included for the same reasons that defecating wasn't included: it would make no palpable difference for gameplay. It's easy enough to simply imagine that those types of activities are happening. But, if we're going to have milk as well as the already existing beef, I'd like to actually see the cattle in the region we're exploring this time; there's no refrigeration that we know of in Tamriel, so imported milk would definitely make you sick. I'll stick to the fresh stuff, thanks. Otherwise, guild mages could have a great enterprise in the need to cast frost enchantments to preserve it.

The other reason they probably didn't include water is because no one would charge you for it. This isn't the like the West in the 1980's when water started costing you a buck every time you asked for it. Tamriel really has no lack of water. It falls out of the sky regularly. If they included it as a beverage then why would you not be able to draw it at a well? Or at a river? Or a rain barrel? It kind of opens up a the same can of worms to include it as a purchasable item from a game designing standpoint. From a role-playing standpoint (to echo Knight of the Thorn) if I had to pay for water in a fantasy role-playing game I'd think the developer's were either idiots or fabricating some massive satirical joke about our current economy; an economy where free tap water, when bottled, costs us more than the price of gas, which ironically we actually complain about the price of.

On the other hand, if you could draw water from a well or a river or a bucket at the tavern in a form that you could take with you on your travels and it had some sort of gameplay benefit (such as restoring fatigue). Sure, why not. But it would be even better if it had a chance of giving you a disease, for the same reasons I already posted.


Anyway, two really easy things to add to the game would be these two books based on wortcraft (i.e. the primary effect of any ingredient that affects the player when eaten):

1.) The Apothecary's Manuscript of Herbalism - A list of alchemy ingredients that can be eaten to restore various attributes (i.e. to restore weakened strength, find blank, blank or blank). Include a couple of restorative potion recipes at the end, including poisons of damage fatigue (sleeping potions) and fortify personality (love potions).

2.) Every Woodsman's Guide to Wortcraft - Some of the restorative ingredients (with less emphasis on the non-physical such as intelligence, wisdom and personality) along with some of the other beneficial effects such as resist disease and poison. Perhaps add a couple of weak poison recipes in the end (like Honditar, the High Elf Woodsman of Chorrol, recommends).

These don't have to be exhaustive books, but it would be nice to have an incredibly rare alchemy recipe manual as well that might be found in some arcane library or what have you. I think they would definitely add to the flavor of alchemy - one of the best features being wortcraft. We don't all want to make potions all the time and carry all the ingredients, it would be really helpful to have an in-game reference to carry around with you.

Those "explanation" is nothing but bull in relation to our Medieval time, not in the time of Tamriel, which both are very different when it comes to their own reality and how they deal with it. And from what ya say, if things get spoiled, like milk, then stuff like bread, meat, and heck load of fruits and vegetables will get rotten as well, and they should be taken out of content, base on ya saying. And who say anything about imported milk? The milk can be obtain locally by the npc in the said region where any cattle exist.


Right, and everything else is also free for picking out from the orchards, loots, caves, boxes and free water is not allow because its everywhere. If they add water, they should at least get some limited way of getting water, either by well or by merchant. It would be too much to figure out how to obtain water in lakes and river. I would doubt that water will very expensive to buy anyways.

Music:

Music has been discussed a few times now, but there's something I'd wanna know.
Would you mind more "modern" music and instruments?

I wouldn't mind that, it's NOT the kind of instruments, the music itself has to fit AND it has to get the right mood around and having more modern tunes and instruments doesn't hurt there.
I can hear it already, "It wouldn't fit the time the game is set in", well TES is heavily anachronistic so this isn't really a big point. And many other fantasy games use more modern music too and it works.

All in all it's really completely fine as long as the music is:
1: Fitting the moods
2: Has the necessary effect (driving, scary, serene...)

I do like this. The wells dotted around the towns annoy me at the moment as I can not draw water from them. It would be nice to have a refreshing, if potentially harmful, drink of water every now and again.

TES will probably be the hardest game to work on since it has so many in depth things about it... the fact that it needs to be structured, while at the same time freedom of choice oriented, makes it somewhat hard to fully grasp onto how these quests will go.

Sometimes you can have a quest start with or without your consent, and then, if you wanted to not finish it at that exact moment, but maybe go on to another one... although I now remember that sometimes certain quests will interlope with one another and so you must be careful with how you do them, so that right there is another thing to work out!

Other than that, to make a game too free form isn't a good idea, as even the adventurere needs to have some meaning to his position... while at the same time having so many choices to make you don't know where to start! While that in itself is quite exciting, it's also a pain in the neck as you want to be guided to something important, while still maintaning that sense of freedom.....

It's all very troublesome, but I feel they can greet this challange like they have other times with other games, with other problems!!!

This.
I'm just keeping it simple, man. Activate the window (maybe pick a lock, make a noise), enter the cell.

I both agree and disagree. I agree that the score has to fit the mood that the game wants to portray, but I don't think that a "rockin' guitar solo" would ever fit into the elder scrolls. When I hear people say "modern" music, I think of the stuff I hear on VH1 or MTV (when they actually play music; it's around 2a.m.). I believe that you are skewing the term "modern" with contemporary (one of the different time period classifications of that falls under the genre of classical; others are romantic, baroque, and classical; contemporary is from about the early 1900's forward). I would enjoy hearing the Bethesda sound team incorporate some obscure instruments into their pieces in a new, quirky, and original way, but at the same time, I don't want them to have a drumset, guitar, and bass playing a cover of nine-inch-nails while I'm fighting a vampire. Some people might, but that's why those of us playing on the PC can customize our music folders, and I don't think Bethesda should make that consession to the few on Xbox that desire it while sacrificing the mood. There are few reasons that I would not buy The Elder Scrolls V, but the score is one of them. I can take changing out a few songs, but if I have to switch entire folders with things from my own classical music library for the game to feel like a mideival role-playing game with depth and tone, or I have to change it because the pieces are so dull that I can't stand it (again), I will not get the game.

Of course i don't mean "rockin guitar solo", think about it, where would that fit the mood?

But what i DO mean is, for example, also include non "classic" instruments and aslo faster music. Generally it's because that cliche fantasy music gets so BOING and repetetive i can't hear it anymore.

PS: Great, i always wanted to make it into a signature but i was hoping to not do it via a hillarious typo

Am I mistakin or Soule uses some sinthesis instruments to emulate the classic violins/piano/flute etc. I'm not aware of a real orchestra to play the Oblivion score.

Yea he did but he emulated classic instruments with them.

What i mean is some "electronic music" that doesn't sound medival, look at games like FarCry, Oddworld or Sacred for reference. Of course it still has to fit the mood but i wouldnt say "this shouldn't be in, it's too modern".

Also, "medival style" music would be fine as long as it's not cliche fantasy music. Compare Gothic 1 and 2 with gothic 3 and you will see (or rather hear) quite a difference.

I'm unsure about classical or modern music for the next game, but I'm hoping for some light-and-heavy-percussion tribal themes with a select use of eerie wind instruments. That'll make scouring those chilly crags of Hrothgar all the more fun.

Yes I noticed in Gothic 3 there are some classic and electric guitar especially in rebel camps. And in Nordmar landscape there are some electronic sounds that didn't hurt the atmosphere at all.