I've played the Elder Scrolls ever since Daggerfall: Elder Scrolls 2. I didn't have a PC at the time of Arena's release and really couldn't be bothered as I loved Daggerfall to a fault. What I started this topic about was, the things that are missing from the subsequent releases of Morrowind and Oblivion. I really loved the fact that you could climb things in Daggerfall. That skill is sorely missed in the later releases of the series. Also, bashing open doors and chests was something I took for granted until it was left out of the rest of the series. How else is a warrior going to get a locked door or chest open? It's more realistic, too. Bash open a door and the guards come running, if you're noticed. Oblivion having no levitation possibility is also a thing that detracted from the game, in my opinion. The recall spell is another thing I really miss in the two most recent additions to the Elder Scrolls series. Now that I think of it, there might have been a recall-type spell in Morrowind - it's been a while since I played it. I seem to remember being able to instantly port to my house...

It also seems (and, it isn't surprising with the additional space required for modern graphics) that the quantity of explorable area is decreasing with every new release. Daggerfall was immense! I forget how much area it was equal to in real life, but it was thousands of miles, if I remember correctly. Morrowind was (it seemed) about a quarter of that, if not less. Oblivion halved Morrowind I would guess. Anyway, I was pleased to see they brought back some of the perks of Daggerfall in Oblivion that they had omitted from Morrowind. Having personal mounts is the one I most enjoy having back.

I had a thought when playing Morrowind of how cool it would be to have an underwater city (or cities) to explore. I had hoped to find something to that effect in Oblivion but was disappointed. Don't get me wrong - every game of the Elder Scrolls series is very worth playing. I love them all for what they are, but I really miss my climbing skill, you know? I'd love to see the trend reverse itself and find more, not less, player content to make up for the loss of area, at least.

Yes more explorable area with meaningful things to explore would be nice, but also i wouldn't want them to add more and it takes away from the game. Don't want a lot of crap basically, i would rather oblivion sized but amazing.

Teleportation in Morrowind was actually more extensive than in Daggerfall. You had Mark & Recall, Guild Mages, Almsivi Intervention, Divine Intervention, Propylons, the Master Index, and, of course, certain rings and such that teleport you to set locations.

Double the square kilometers of Great Britain. All of it forgetful, randomly-generated terrain.

Every part of Morrowind and Oblivion is hand-crafted with great care. That's why they're much smaller than Daggerfall and much more interesting.

Not quite. The size of Vvardenfell is approximately 6 square miles. The playable area of Cyrodiil is approximately 8 square miles.

Just wanted to point out that Oblivion's Cyrodil is actually larger than Morrowind's Vvardenfell, but the absence of leveled areas, linear valley pathways, detail, and varied terrain makes it seem smaller.

EDIT: Ninja'd

I most certainly agree on the limitations on the skill list. Losing out on Axe, Short Blade, and Climbing definitely svcked. I would also like to see a few die roll elements brought back to life either integrated or via skills (IE Critical Striking). I'm not saying we necessarily have to go back to click spamming in Morrowind for hit confirmation, but it isn't to say we can't boast a bit more RNG into it.

I really want dice rolls back too, but only in the form of special damage, like crits and "glances", which is when an attack hits for minor damage because it rebounded a bit instead of striking true.

I also miss absolute-leveled areas. Morrowind had them, areas where you can't go until you are leveled highly enough to put up a fight. It felt like I was exploring a far larger world than Oblivion, where I could go anywhere at any time as long as I brought a few health potions and extra arrows and repair hammers, since enemies would be the same level as me no matter where I went.

Given that Skyrim has more vertical faces, I would hope they'd bring Climbing back in some form, perhaps in the form of ropes and ladders, or rough/vine-covered cliff faces like in Shadow of the Colossus.

What angers me: They pushed daggers into the same weapons category as claymores. The logic is lost on me. The axe is pushed into the Blunt Weapons category. What? Once more, the l-word is invisible to me. I mean, if anything it is a blade weapon, what with it's bladed edge.

Not quite. In Oblivion the landscape was randomly generated and then the devs went in and added stuff to it.


The six mile part is right but I could've sworn that the playable part of Cyrodiil was actually about 16sq miles, with Fallout 3 being about 15sq miles.

http://unrealitymag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/large-video-game-worlds2.jpg Can it be trusted?

I don't know how accurate the chart as a whole is, but yes, it really was that big.

Better anolysis on that can be found in this thread; basically, 127,000 sq km: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1089535-finally-some-real-numbers-on-daggerfall/

Everything about Daggerfall is Huge. It cities is huge, its dungeon is huge, even the price tag of houses and ship are in the 100,000s. It empty on the wilderness, otherwise.

Also, op, ya forgot to mention the character creation menu and how it is replace with Birthsigns.

i read at the somewhere that it took some game review place 2 weeks in real time to walk from one end of the world to another.

EDIT: sorry Qawsed. didnt read the link in your post.

The Oblivion Construction Set tells us that each exterior cell is 4096 units by 4096 units or 192 feet by 192 feet or 58.5 meters by 58.5 meters. Going into the Construction Set I count approximately 86 cells from Topal Bay south of Leyawiin up to the invisible border north of Cloud Ruler Temple. 192 x 86 = 16,512 feet. 5,280 feet = 1 mile and 3 miles = 15,840. So, north to south, Cyrodiil is approximately three miles long.

At this point I haven't counted cells east to west but, looking at the map, Cyrodiil appears to be slightly wider than it is tall - and it also narrows as it extends west. When I get around to counting cells east to west (it's a really tedious job) it's possible that I might discover that Cyrodiil is as large as 9 square miles, but until then my guess is that it is 8.

Come to think of it that's probably what I missed the most about Daggerfall. The Custom Class generator was REALLY in depth. Right down to what you had difficulties fighting, immunities, and what time your magicka restored faster. If they could bring that in essence back to the next TES game, I don't think I'd stop playing it ever.

I did really like it, but I felt that it could be easily manipulated for an uber character. If it was more balanced, for instance, certain powers or weaknesses would give points instead of each of the powers/weaknesses being equivalent. For instance, inability to use magic would be a big loss, so it would give you 5 more points for use. And something powerful such as 3x intelligence would take away 5 points. Then, something weak such as a phobia of water animals would just give you 1 or 2 points. another thing, how cool would it be if there was aquaphobia or claustrophobia? Your guy would get less max health or fatigue if in water or a confined space.

I would love the levitate back... and the "frost immunity" for the Nords back! (Yes, I play as the Nords). Oblivion had A LOT of weapons that could have been added, like : throwig stars, crossbows, spears/halebards, throwing knives,...
They merge all of theire games items (weapons armors,...) and put them it Skyrim... If they don't put nordic weapons/armors, I don't know what am gona do...

The weapon list of Morrowind (short swords, long swords, broad swords, claymores, wakizashis, katanas, daggers, tantos, sabers, clubs, battle axes, maces, warhammers, war axes, halberds, spears, shortbows, longbows, crossbows, throwing knives and throwing stars)

The weapon list of Oblivion (Only short swords, long swords, claymores, daggers, clubs, battle axes, maces, warhammers, war axes and bows are typically available, although a few katanas also exist.)

Arena has flails., which could be awesome with a physic engine!


Also, Skyrim should include a vast vareity of light sources, like in Morrowind.




I don't want the "hit or miss" thing form Morrowind (I'm thinking : we cant just FAIL an sword attack! But we can fail a spell (that's good)), and I would like that the bow (and hopefully crossbow) attacks could be an badly prescise and random directory throw, and at higher levels it'S more prescise.

"Failing" an attack should mean that it displays an animation where the opponent dodges, parries, or blocks that attack, or that it glances off without doing significant damage. I like the idea of having skills determine whether you succeed or fail, but Morrowind's combat system was annoying in how it presented it: your weapon would just pass harmlessly through the opponent. Seriously though, I'd prefer a game where most failures caused a "less than optimal result", instead of absolute failure every time.

Judging by the current trend, TES V will have one armor skill, one weapon skill, and one magic skill, none of which will really have much impact on the game because it will depend largely on player dexterity and reflexes for everything. You won't need to worry about the lack of weapon and armor types, since the only weapon and the only armor in the game will scale with you. Instead of gaining levels, you'll hunt for "power ups" in the dungeons, which will give you temporary stat boosts while making the dungeon inhabitants less powerful for that time interval. The game will be fully voice acted, although there will only be one other character to interact with, simplifying the required dialog by a lot.

I'm really hoping that the devs take a serious look at their past games and ask "why were they popular?", before completing TES V. My suspicion is that DF and MW were the games that the devs WANTED to make, while OB was more of the kind of game which Marketing told them would sell. If you make a game that YOU'd like to play, chances are pretty high that somebody else is going to like it too, and the result is usually at least a "cult classic", if not a blockbuster hit. DF was absolutely enormous in comparison to either of them, but the vast majority of it was just random "filler" between the actual relevant locations; that's not a viable answer for a modern game in my opinion.

BTW - in terms of "playable" area, the published numbers are misleading. With Levitation, ALL of Morrowind was playable, while there were lots of inaccessible areas in OB, such as mountainsides, building roofs, and other obstructions that eventually weren't obstructions at all in MW. For that same reason, one needs to define the "playable area" of OB, but the "playable volume" of MW, where certain places such as Telvanni towns and a lot of ruins had things going on at multiple levels, and you needed levitation or some rather impressive jumping skills to get to much of it. OB's area was somewhat larger, but MW "felt" a lot bigger and had FAR more to do.

That takes control away from the player when they want to dodge/parry/block. That was the most annoying part of Morrowind's combat, that everything was randomly calculated for you.. whether you hit or missed, whether you blocked or not. Oblivion had the right idea that, instead of missing/hitting or blocking/being hit, you always hit when your weapon touched the enemy and you always blocked when their weapon hit your shield, just that your skills depended on how well you hit or how well you blocked. The enemy doing an animation doesn't change the fact that you should have connected with the opponent but the RNG decided that you didn't.

If anything, I'd say Oblivion didn't go far enough. The reflect spell effect still worked on the fail-or-success method, and it's the only place where a level 1 rat with a 1% spell reflect ability can take out a level 20 100+ HP character if said character happens to hit it with a 100+ damage spell with an unlucky RNG result. Such fail-or-success randomization needs to go. There is nothing more frustrating in a game than if you, the player, can use the same character, fight the same opponent, do the same exact battle sequence, and win or lose depending on how favorable the random numbers were.

And that is just what some of us like to. Make dodge/parry/block character skills instead of player skills. In OB a mage can dodge as good as a fighter.

The problem is...if the dev look back and see 'which was popular' oblivion comes out on top....

As someone who loves RPGs, but not DnD, I found Daggerfall's character creation a nightmare to try and play with....Morrowind's also was a bit hard at first, but it's pre-made classes worked well enoguh until you figured out the custom class. Oblivion took out many skills for the sake of 'balance' (morrowind had attributes with many more skills on them thne other attributes), but it ended up being one of the biggest mistake they could make.

Oblivion combat is one the few things i liked about it over morrowind....quite frankly morrowind's was boring and illogical....oblivion's was much much better....I mean in morrowind if you didnt have blunt you couldnt use a mace....at least in oblivion you can still use it, just not effectively.


Oblivion hit big, bethesda took off and now should go back to proper RPGs (like how they did fallout 3). The biggest hurdle is voiced dialogue (which must be included now) which will still limit how much dialogue can be put into the game.

I agree. So much npc background and other topics dissappeared in OB. But they just cannot leave it unvoiced these days. It would be a massive step back for many players.

Hey guys i was looking at the threads... and I was thinking... with so many fantastic ideas and suggestions i have seen in this forum, if there is enough power, Bethesda has the opportunity to make a REALLY COOL game.

i know one thing thats missing from the entire series. little people....im not just talking about kids. im talking about the small races of the fantasy genre. tamriel has beast races, elven races, but no small ones...like halfling/hobbit, or gnomes. and all the dwarves are extinct. so not only are there no children. but there are no little people. u cant even adjust your height in char-gen.

What about Bosmer? They're "little people". In my opinion, we don't need another generic Tolkien-esque/D&D-ish world with the "usual" inhabitants. TES has Argonians, Dwemer (extinct), and Kajiit instead, and that's a refreshing change from "halflings" and Dwarves.