I never had the pleasure to play Daggerfall, although I've spent maybe 30 mins watching youtube videos of gameplay, and if it were easier to get working I would be very tempted to play. I did download Arena, but I got killed in the opening dungeon and gave up.

Anyways, I was just wondering what veteran players would want from either of these older games to be placed into the next installment. I for one would want werewolves, not as an expansion as they were for Morrowind, but just a random monster and ability as they were in Daggerfall.

Failure. I would like to be able to fail again. I want to be able to fail and not necessarily want to reload my save to make it right.

I want to be able to foul up a quest and suffer the consequences. This is one of the most important aspects of Daggerfall for me, that sometimes you just screw up and have to live with it. The thing is, though, is that with quest failure you must also have additional quest generation--that is, even if you fail, there must always be more opportunities, more quests. This is evident in Morrowind: you could fail quests, but since there were only so many quests available that if you messed up too many you would never be able to get the highest rank in the guild. This means that players never want to live with their consequences; if they failed a quest, the will reload the game to make it right. Not so in Daggerfall, for most players anyhow, as there was certainly a price for failure, but it never cut you out of part of the game.

Oblivion takes the opposite approach, having idiot-proof quests that you cannot fail. As such, they are shallow. The legal system is also a no-consequences gig--paying your fine immediately makes you a model citizen again. This was not the case in Daggerfall either, as your legal reputation could haunt you for a long time, with the city guard continuing to treat you with suspicion.

aside from random quests & trials, there's not too much i'd care for from arena or daggerfall, though random quests only really work if the land is large enough so the quests and locations aren't repetitious. even in daggerfall, it wasn't unheard of to get the same quest in the same dungeon a few times. ("what?! another rogue mage in the same damn location?")

i did like the lasting legal repercussions of daggerfall, which i think infamy in oblivion was suppose to represent, but didn't have the same consequences. i did like how oblivion featured a jailbreak, though. trials were ok at best in daggerfall, and should be improved upon, though some areas could still have the guards as the law rather than court.

while i'd like to see gold have weight again, i'd rather not have banks.

from arena, i would like to see the return of lively towns, the streets filled with performers, prosttutes, beggers, and such.

Spot on, the gold-weight mod I added to Morrowind was the best thing I ever did for that game. I enjoy having to plan ahead for journeys, what route to take, what supplies I'll need; having to manage the amount of gold I think I'll need was fun, especially since MW's bartering system meant that it was often more practical to carry gems and pearls rather than gold, as their weight/value ratio was more favorable.

i wouldn't mind bashing down doors either. they should let you bash open locked chests too.

Allowing the player to role-play his mistakes is linked to repeatable quests in Daggerfall which are all procedural quests which are in turn linked to the huge size of the land and how procedural generated things are allocated to quest instances. It's a bit complicated and that's why Bethesda never made repeatable quests and thus failure friendly quests that provide recover paths the way Daggerfall did instead of babysitting players in Oblivion.

However that's not completely the case with Morrowind. If you want to raise rank with the mages guild and fail Balmora's quest you can still try in other towns even if Balmora's mages guild won't offer you quests anymore. That's a kind of fail safe system with optional paths but not exactly like the one in Daggerfall with repeatable quests.

Repeatable quests are cool and with more complexity and better quest activation conditions it could work to create simple dynamic stories, to complement the major quests.

I would love to see something akin to the character creation of Daggerfall, one of the most in-depth I have ever seen...Oblivion's was rather lacking in comparison. More skills/abilities please.

I also want to feel like just another person in the world trying to make my way, not automatically treated as the savior of humanity. Daggerfall really imparted the feeling that to most people you were just another guy. I loved that.

Bring back the political factions and political subplots and behind the scenes dealings that can actually change the course of your game depending on what choices you make.

Make the King of Worms back into an ancient lich/vampire ancient controlling bad ass instead of a pansy.

Randomized quests are fantastic. Make it a challenge to level up in guilds, and make some of the guilds be at odds with each other. Also make having certain skill sets a requirement to join/advance.

Bigger towns.

*EDIT*
No more leveled enemies! If I am a level 1 character then a lich should be able to wipe the floor with me. It is much more satisfying for me to come back to an area that kicked my ass earlier in the game and destroy them, then having every zone/mob automatically adjusted to my level.

i'd rather not see more skills, but rather the skills more fully developed and immersive. like for instance, having the skill acrobatics govern climbing. however, i'd love to see the background generation return.

Failure, lasting legal repercussions, and gold that has weight!? - Not gonna go over well with the ADD crowd. But I 100% agree. Hopefully being able to bash doors would pacify those other kids, which I also think should be brought back.

Banks and letters of credit - Don't know how I feel about them (historically they existed but were fairly rare) but contracts and so forth would be good for buying larger houses and SHIPS like Daggerfall had)

Randomly generated quests - I thoroughly believe this can be done very well by simply establishing a simple script with parameters. Could allow you to serve every guild indefinitely, and would give a real sense of character. If you have an Assassin, you would play DB quests much much more than MG quests, not just switch over when one runs out.

Character Creation - I would love a more in depth char creation. As much as I love Morrowind, it's too easy to make a guy who can swing a sword well enough to solve all his problems, but harder to make a guy who can complete quests using speech craft. I hate that I'm still a novice by the time I'm a grand master of some guild, unless I grind specific skills...although the skill caps for rank gain did prevent that before Oblivion.

And acrobatics governing climbing skill - one of those simple ideas that would please everybody, keep the system streamlined and make gameplay more fun, as long as you take the 12 hours to develop the animations for it.

as for streamlining skills, i understand how TES is trying to keep skills aligned with the prime aspects (the warrior, the mage, the thief). i do like how the skills condensed from daggerfall to oblivion in theory, but the execution was lacking in some instances.

for example, sneak is a great mix of the old skills of pickpocket, stealth, and backstabbing. makes great sense as being unseen, and doing such unnoticed is possibly the most important aspect of each of these subskills. the only thing i would change is having weapons that are reliant on stealth do greater damage and effect for those that invest in sneak (like daggers & clubs/blackjacks).

i even agree with blade and blunt, though i'd change the name "blunt" to "weighted", since those weapons rely on heft over finesse, and blunt is an admittingly poor description for axes. the execution for this change was poor because there's virtually no distinction in using one or the other. if blades proved more effective against soft targets, and weighted against hardened targets, you'd have something much more immersive, and a reason for fighters to train in both styles for versatility and greater effectiveness in combat. spears and fighting staves should have their own skill "polearm" which would prove effective against mounted enemies and larger enemies. little details like this would do much for the skills themselves and immersion.

the language skills in daggerfall i would like to see return in some function, though not as skills per se, but perhaps as abilities that one can start with, or later acquire academically. then the reactions and such can be determined on speechcraft & personality. this should even apply to dwemer, daedric, aldmeric, etc., which the game lets the player decipher.

This would be awesome. I'd love to see more than one actual language.

The 'parts' from Arena and Daggerfall I would like to be included in the development of TES V are Julian LeFay and Ted Peterson, the Elder Scrolls fathers, as project leaders. That's really them who made Daggerfall (and Arena) what it was and why it is still so great compared to its sequels.

If we're allowed to pick people, I also want http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZ97I2p4_YY back.

The music was incredible considering the nature of video game soundtracks then. Did he happen to do the music for the trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_MY0ihuJZc? When I first heard that I thought it was so brilliant.

Yeah, there are so many things, but this is something I really miss. The first few pages of the Daggerfall manual really spell out the design philosophy that made TES II what it was--mainly, to create a world where you could do anything you want, and the world would react. They even encouraged the player not to reload saved games--the fun was getting into bad situations and realizing you always had an out. They didn't quite get there with Daggerfall, but they were well on their way to creating a really interactive world. That philosophy seems to have gone by the wayside in favor of "freedom" which is not the same thing as realistic consequences and a more interactive world.

I'd love to see Peterson and LeFey back, and a host of other things, but realistically I don't think we'll see any of the stuff that made Daggerfall great back for TES V. Realistically, we might see a few more consequences and random encounters (in the fashion of Fallout 3) and maybe, Akatosh willing, a more complicated character creation system, but I think that original spirit of the Elder Scrolls is sadly a relic of the gaming past. I still hope to be proven wrong, though.


Love that music as well. It's actually from a composition called "American Suite" by Eastern European composer Antonin Dvorak. One of my favorites, though I doubt he's available to score ES V. As far as the actual Daggerfall music goes, yes please, let's have some more of that. A few midi notes from Eric Heberling did more to craft the ES world than an entire symphony from Jeremy Soule. I played Morrowind for about a week before swapping out all the music for mp3 versions of Daggerfall's soundtrack. When I got Oblivion, I did that before I even started playing.

Musically, I think we're stuck with Jeremy Soule, but maybe there's a shot at getting back more location specific music? That always made a huge difference for me. Plus it makes it easier for me to sub in the Heberling music at the appropriate areas.

I actually enjoyed Oblivion's music far more than Morrowind's. But Daggerfall's is still much more interesting. I throw in my own music either way, though.

i've always played with the music off, especially in towns.

I want the shop music back.

flrrd...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM8EaL1Zm6w Ahhh such a good song.
Every music shop should play Daggerfall's shop song on their radio instead of the new popular hits.

Guards need to say "HALT!" more.

I recall a Morrowind mod released in the early days of modding that made the Imperial Guards shout the "HALT!" from Daggerfall when pursuing you.

(Oh and what about Arena's "Stop thief!" ?
(( It's also funny that you can hear this sound in the room with the painting in Castle Wayrest..... or was it in Orsinium? I don't remember..)

You can? I find it funny how Daggerfall has so many miscellaneous touches like that - triggered audio, but they are so rare. It's like Daedra summoning, an extraordinary and specific occurence in an otherwise randomized and generic world. I wish there were more like that.

Of course, I'm pretty sure Castle Wayrest just uses that moaning kid to alert the guards of intruders...

I really believe it's in Orsinium dungeon. When you get in the room with the letter... it almost sounds like as if your left foot triggers "Stop!" and your right foot triggers "Thief!"
So you walk in the room and it does : "Stop Thief! Stop Thief! Stop Thief! Stop Thief! Stop Thief! Stop Thief! Stop Thief! "
I had some fun walking back and forth trying to stop before one of the words were heard.. yay..

That Wayrest kid must have been magically created. How come an 8 year old boy can lift an iron longsword like he does? And moan... evil is amidst.

Heh, I do like that http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y217/Jormungandr83/Contest/howling_wayrest_kid.jpg.

I love that screenshot.

I can even hear the moaning.