A simple plot, be brief and creative.

Man bites dog.

My plot is based more on the Daedric. It starts out with a kind of dispute among the Daedric over the plans of oblivion, so to settle this they each decide to build an ultimate warrior, which is where the player comes in and makes a character but also to choose the a Daedric god they wish to fight for. As the game progress the player must take out each of the opposing warriors of the other Daedric gods/goddesses which would be like bosses. I like this idea because it has elbow room for changes in the story and the thought of choosing which a Dadric god or goddess to fight for sounds epic. It opens up a lot of different directions and options for the player as well, several main stories that intertwine.

I think we have a winner

No main quest per say people have problems that you can interfere with( sometimes its best to leave things be instead of getting involved) some factions have open positions that can be aquired after. dont try to join opposing factions that has negative effects on fame and your health....but at the end of the day with or without your intervention on peoples lives the world keeps spinning and your just another mouth breather.

Everything's on fire.

No, wait, that's pretty much Skyrim's Tamriel.

Bigger fire, then.

As opposed to Arena's Tamriel, where practically everything is literally on fire because of Divine Right? Or Daggerfall's Tamriel, where the Empire can't even maintain order in one of its longest held provinces? Or Morrowind, where the Empire is forced to recall agents from the field because even Cyrodiil is in an uproar? Or Oblivion, where Hell literally invades?


Fact it, Tamriel is always on fire, all the time.

Honestly, Arena through Oblivion is a single, out of control blaze that just got progressively worse leading up to Skyrim.

As I said, BIGGER FIRE.

Something less than apocalyptic for a change would be nice.

sandbox style

I'm more partial to the "ordinary guy becomes hero"-story than the "long prophesiced hero returns"-story, so probably more like Oblivion's story, or Daggerfall's, than Morrowind or Skyrim.

"In your face I behold the Sun's Companion. Akatosh's divine glory may yet banish the coming darkness."

Sounds pretty 'Prophesied Hero Retuns' to me.

Frankly, I find the 'Ordinary Guy becomes a Hero' story to sorely castrate the threat, and takes away and sense of urgency or suspense. It basically becomes a 'Literally anyone can do this if they really wanted to' rather than 'If I fail, everyone dies'.

I also don't understand this type of mentality... It's not like you're forced to engage in any of these stories. If you don't want an apocalyptic storyline, don't do it. It's as simple as that. It's like complaining about Fast Travel being an option. There is a legitimate complaint to be found in the fact that sometimes elements of gameplay seem designed to ASSUME you engage in certain stories, or utilise certain features, but even that isn't grounds to want those removed.

Skyrim showed us we can have both.

To which end...

The Hist have gone silent, and you have to uncover why, and what a threat to the Collective means for the world.

While the Hist are inactive, the Dominion incites increased aggression amongst the An-Xileel, trying to turn them towards open war against the weakened Empire, and through political wrangling, tribal alliances and good old-fashioned violence you have to try and avert a war before it happens.

"My dreams grant me no opinions of success." He just knows you're involved in the coming events, not that you're destined to save the world. Which makes sense, since you're not the hero that saves the world, Martin is. He also doesn't know whether Martin can save the world or not, just that he (by extension of the covenant with Akatosh) is the best option of keeping the barrier up. The key word in that quoted statement is "may". Akatosh (through Martin) may save them from Oblivion, not will.

I feel the opposite, that the "only you can be the hero to save us" castrates the threat. No one except the hero can do anything, so what's the point in people worrying? If they're going to die, there's nothing they could've done to stop it. And for the hero, having the whole world put on their shoulders doesn't add to the urgency or suspense, it just lends incredulity. The "ordinary person saves the day" story works better for me, because it is an ordinary person... they're not a preconceived savior, they're not infallible, so who can say what's going to happen? That's where the urgency and suspense comes from, not knowing if something will work, and having to be ready to act if a plan doesn't work out.


Though for that to work too, it kinda needs to have the stakes lowered. When the options are "you win or its game over", that doesn't create suspense in the story. It may create suspense in the gameplay -- since most people won't want the annoyance of having to redo the last 5, 10, or however many minutes since their last save -- but for the story, there's no suspense for failing because the story has no failure case, just a threat of something that can't happen. There needs to be a threat of something that can realistically come to pass if you want the player to be held in suspense that it may come to pass.


And also you kinda are forced to engage in these stories. In Morrowind, you're released with the explicit understanding that you follow Caius' orders, and while he tells you to go off and get experience, he also tells you to come back. From a role-playing perspective, most characters will be pushed along the MQ without doing some mental gymnastics for why they're not doing what Caius tells them. Oblivion is pretty obvious. In Skyrim, while you're given the option to split off and be free after Helgen, before the full threat posed by the dragons is known, there's a bunch of nearly unavoidable scripted events designed to push you into the MQ regardless (unless your character never sets foot near Whiterun, or talks to certain people in Riverwood, anyway). While you don't have to in theory, I've not yet seen a Bethesda RPG that gives you an option to indefinitely delay the MQ from a story and role-play perspective.

You're a prisoner. The Aldmeri Dominion want to remove humanity from possibility and end the world. You're going to stop them. Or at least have a hand in stopping them. And it'd involve space battles between moth-shaped ships and bird-shaped ships. And somewhere in the mix is an elf grinder device that turns elves into glitter.

That's how all the prophecies work though. Victory is never guaranteed, it's just the Hero is the only one with a shot. As Paul would say, they are the fulcrum upon which the wheel turns. The Nerevarine is the only one who MAY stop Dagoth Ur. The Hero of Kavatch is the only one who MAY see the Son to his destiny. The Last Dragonborn is the only one who MAY stop Alduin from devouring the world.

The only reason there's a certainty of success is because of metagaming. We, the player, know (or at least suspect... it's extremely likely, but not a given) that we win, because we know how the stories play out. We EXPECT success, because we don't expect Bethesda to make a story where we fail. That doesn't mean that the Prophecies set up that success from the get-go.

People worry about things they have no control over all the time. They do crazy things like sacrifice living beings, pray to non existent gods, and drink toxic mercury to try and stave off their own mortality. Just because you CAN'T do anything, doesn't mean you don't TRY. It just means that your attempts are doomed to failure.

There's a difference when a prophecy says something will happen, and when a prophecy doesn't. With the Nerevarine Prophecy, it explicitly says the Nerevarine will take down the false gods and destroy Dagoth Ur (maybe if it introduced enough doubt about the prophecies actually coming true, but it never does). With Uriel's vision/dream, there's nothing like this. He just says you're involved in what's about to happen, but may not win.

More than that, the repercussions for failure don't generally allow the game to continue. Which was pretty much my point. When it comes to the story and quest design, if you want the player to have a true sense of urgency and suspense with what they're doing, failure has to be a valid outcome. When failure means Dagoth Ur breaks out of Red Mountain with a new god machine and spreads corprus all over the world, or daedra overrun and destroy the world, or a dragon eats the world, how can you fear that outcome since the game can't continue with that? Short of a dead-man-walking scenario, it can't (and a dead-man-walking ending would be kind of lack-luster, since you'd not experience the true consequences of your failure).

Fair enough. In re'reading the Nerevarine Prophecies, both of them, it's pretty cut and dry.

The 'There has to be a chance of failure' argument always ignores the fact that you can DIE. This isn't Dark Souls, where death has no consequence beyond losing some souls and resetting you to the last camp fire you passed. Death IS failure. That it can be mitigated by frequent saves (something that Bethesda seems to be playing with a bit, given the new Survival mode in Fallout 4) is irrelevant. When you die, you fail, and the world ends. Again, the only way that there is certainty, or a lack of consequence, is through meta-gaming. To the Character, death is very real, and failure means the end of everyone.

But if success is a matter of effort and will, rather than something literally only one person can do, any individuals death is less of a failure. Who cares if Hero#47 dies, we've got an entire legion of other wannabes to throw at the problem.

Anything that does not involve being a prophesied god-like hero of Tamriel - I know prophecy has been involved in every TES title but it feels so overused now.


Well, more because Skyrim abused it to oblivion and back. Daggerfall had a good main story and I liked in Oblivion how you were not the main hero, Martin was.

Look guys just come up with a simple plot, not quests or the repercussions of failure in the game. Just a simple background story that starts it all off.

Ex.

The Daedric gods aren't getting along.

Each make a their own warrior to fight for them.

You choose which Daedric god to fight for.

BAM!!! A simple plot, your turn.

I agree. I shouldn't have to become the "hero" or the "chosen one" in every Elder Scrolls game. Another thing that bugs me is that I have to be the leader of every faction that I complete. Why cant I appoint a faction leader instead?


As far as choosing a plot, would this be what we would like for TES VI? If thats the case, I have already given this a lot of thought.


- I think a good opening to the game would be you as a prisoner being forced (by thalmor soldiers) to walk with other prisoners to a dungeon/prison area. During the opening cinematic, you are seeing everything from the point of view of your character. Other prisoners are talking to each other about how they got into their predicament, thalmor soldiers crack whips on some of them, telling them to shut up and keep walking (whips and spears will be added as weapons that you can use in the game).


- By listening to the conversations, you learn that you were among some random people that wandered into a restricted area. The Thalmor rounded you and the others up, and took you all captive and were now forcing you all to walk to an undisclosed location. You also learn that the Thalmor have taken over most of the territories in south western tamriel (Valenwood & Elsweyr to be specific) which is where the game takes place, two different provinces in one game, (twice the map size of Skyrim).


- Eventually everyone is ordered to stop, right outside of a horrific looking prison near the Valenwood/Elsweyr border. The thalmor begin torturing some prisoners right in front of you to let you know they mean business, they go down the line and question the others, if they get an answer they dont like, they will either torture or kill the prisoner, when they get to you, that is where you get to choose what race you are and what your character looks like.


- The thalmor ask you questions such as: why you wandered into their compound (where you were initially captured), you can choose between tons of different possible answers or choose to refuse to answer. They also ask you if you are a heretic (if you worship Talos), and who's side you are on: the Thalmor, the Empire, or anyone else. If you answer their questions to their liking, you will wind up with the option to be pardoned, set free and possibly even to work for them, which will start you on a faction questline to become a thalmor soldier fighting against the resistance. If you decide not to join them, or answer their questions in a manner they dont like, they will start to torture you, but there will be ways that you can escape and set other prisoners free. You help the other prisoners fight their way out, some of them join a resistance faction to try and take down the Thalmor and want you to join with them, you have the options to start that faction questline or not.


- The game as I stated before would take place in Valenwood AND Elsweyr. Two provinces with two different cultures, like two games in one. It would be at least twice the map size we had in Skyrim, there would be twice as many quests, and factions to be a part of. The Mages Guild, Thieves Guild, Fighters Guild and Darkbrotherhood would of course be in the game, but the guilds would have two different chapters, the Valenwood Fighters guild for instance, would be totally different from the Elsweyr fighters guild, and so on. The Vigilant of Stendarr would be a playable faction, so would the Blades, etc, and tons of unique faction groups would be in the game as well. Some would cancel out others though, for example, if you join a vampire faction, you would not be able to join the Dawnguard/Vampire Hunter faction because they are enemies, etc.

- One of the DLC's would be the Imperial City which would be in the central part of Cyrodiil of course, the DLC would start with a ship that would take your character from the city of Senchal in Elsweyr, through the Topal bay and Nibany river that leads to the central island in Cyrodiil where you get to the Imperial City. One of the faction questlines there would obviously be the ARENA which would be much more impressive and amazing than it was in TES IV, you could still bet on the Arena matches, but there would be much more variety, instead of just yellow team member vs blue team member, you could watch multiple warriors fight each other, and have obstacles, chariots, fire pits, and beasts that get thrown in as well. If you decide to become a combatant, you could have your follower join with you if you want, to have 2 on 2 matches. There would be way more possibilities, and the questline would be more challenging. If you become grand champion you dont just get minotaurs to fight. You could also have challengers that want to fight you.

There's a difference between the player failing and the character failing. The only consequence to dying is annoyance to the player if they had forgotten to save the game recently, rather than suffering any consequence in the character's story.

Death merely results in you the player reloading, unless you're playing ironman. And once you reload, that death is erased from the character's on-going story. If you took any save game and imagined that it contained a replay of all in-game events that lead up to the save game being made, there would be 0 deaths of the character (pedantry of certain scripted quest events not withstanding). Once you die, that version of the character is over, and reloading starts a different version of an earlier version of the character where they never died. The character never suffers failure from dying, because the character is reset back to an earlier time where that death never happened.

Compared with Daggerfall, where you could take a save game and see the character's reputation with various factions and regions hit high points and low points from succeeding and failing to do what they were tasked with doing, adding to the character's story. Failed to save a dragon for the Temple of Akatosh? Oh well, your character lives with it, and suffers the loss of reputation with the temple as your worthiness is called to question. Comparatively, take a save game from the later games, and you'll see the character succeed in (almost) everything they set out to do. They'll always have saved Martin, or have the chance of saving Martin, from Kvatch. Because Martin can't die, and there's no deaths of the player character in the save game.

This issue of consequence would be easily fixed with the plot of being a Daedric gods ultimate warrior. What can be done is you have to bargain with the daedric god to give you a so many revives or lives to use. To get these revives you have to do quests to find "artifacts" for your daedric god who can offer you powers, equipment or lives for the artifacts, but once you trade the artifacts that it. If you use up all your lives then you have to offer some of your special powers or equipment to bring you back to life. The saving system should also be taken out so it can't be spammed, just start where you left off.

I'm not a fan of having the character literally respawn after death. That's the kind of thing I expect from an MMO, or a deathmatch FPS, rather than an immersive RPG. Not to mention, the daedric angle limits character options as they'd have to be a worshiper of one of the daedric lords, which not all characters will be.

I don't mind character death. I don't mind it as a mechanic to punish player failures, or even to limit what can happen to the character (like if they fell off the side of a tall cliff with no way to safely land; that's not something a character would survive if it was high enough, so not having it in the character's story due to reloading it wouldn't be a problem). My issue comes when death is the defacto way to portray any failure in the game. There's far far more interesting things that can happen with a character failing to do certain things, consequences that don't result in the character dying and that the character has to live with, depending on what they failed at. Perhaps even situations where the player purposely makes a character fail (so the character fails when the player succeeds).

Who said anything about worship? The character would be a warrior of some sort who would have a better chance of survival by bargaining with a Daedric Prince, accessing better options as you do more for that Daedric prince and the option of bestowed powers but only if you vow to them which is an option.

And of course there are other ways to fail, you can see these examples in games like dragon age where you can loose a companion or quest option due to dialog choice which impact how the story unfolds, similarities can be seen in the elder scroll games. An interesting predicament could be if your s**t gets stolen by a thief, or if a friend / follower gets kidnapped and possibly killed if you don't save them in time. Death doesn't have to be the only consequence, injuries can be included too like in the fallout games.

Like I said the Daedric and warrior relationship is an option to fix such problem, where the player does a quest and their performance can be judged and rated by the daedric prince.

A religious uprising of the Devotees of Satakal, masterminded by a cabal of powerful sword-singers and minor nobility in league with the Thalmor, all for the purpose of destabilizing Hammerfell in preparation for an invasion by the Aldmeri Dominion. Unbeknownst to the Thalmor, the cabal makes preparations to summon a powerful ethereal being of Yokudan origin known as Sep, the Serpent, in order to wipe-away the creations of man and mer and return Nirn to the simplicity of the Dawn, with the Devotees of Satakal promising that only the faithful will be spared the Time of Ending and will find safe passage to the Far Shores. The player character begins as a prisoner of the Satakals, escaping one of their tomb-like strongholds and in the process recovering an encrypted letter, detailing the location of a Memory Stone. After being rescued from certain death by Oloman privateers, they set off to recover the fabled artifact and succeed, only to be targeted by the Satakals.

The player character is instructed to take the Memory Stone to the Order of Diagna, as they are the only group that can keep if from the Satakals. They do so and are offered a chance to prove themselves a worthy member of the Order by participating in the Proving of Shinji, an annual reenactment of the Siege of Orsinium held in the Sentinel Arena, with the initiates playing the Orcs. Holding their own in the reenactment, they clash with a jealous Ansei playing the part of Gaiden Shinji, forming a unsubstantial Shehai to protect themselves from the jealous sword-singer. Just then, the Arena is attacked by the Satakals, blocking off the exits and storming the Arena pit. The player character, along with surviving participants save the King of Sentinel and escort him back to the Samaruik, fighting off Satakals along the way. With the Sentinel Arena in flames, the King of Sentinel declares that it is time to put the Devotees of Satakals down like the rabid dogs they are.

After returning to Ska'vyn and officially joining the Order of Diagna, they begin their training in the Way of the Sword, honing their almost natural skill, a result of their exposure to the Memory Stone. They are soon sent off to Tigonus, to investigate the Satakals' presence in the region and the Grandee of Lainlyn's efforts in suppressing the cult. They soon discover that the Grandee has been in league with the Satakals this whole time and has been extorting the neighbouring settlements to finance the Satakals' endeavors. After being captured and imprisoned, they escape with the aid of a resistance movement known as the True Horn and escape, formulating a plan to lure the Grandee's army - the Host of the Horn, out of Lainlyn. Their plan succeeds and the True Horn and their allies storm Lainlyn, the player character defeating the Grandee in a one-on-one Shehai duel. Yet victory is short lived for they also discover the existence of a rogue element within the Order of Diagna.

Soon after their return to Ska'vyn, the traitors make their move. The Host of the Horn, reinforced by Alik'r mercenaries and trained Goblin-Ken, provided by the Thalmor, besiege the Alik'r town from all sides while a traitorous high-ranking Ansei and his supporters confront the rest of the Order of Diagna in the Halls of the Virtues of War. The Host of the Horn is barely held back until reinforcements from Sentinel arrive while the battle of the sword-singers destroys the Halls of the Virtues of War, the player character losing a hand to the traitorous Ansei before making his escape. Honored as a hero, the player character is declared HoonDing by some of the more zealous members of the Order of Diagna. They are told to venture into the Dragontail Mountains, to convene with the spirit of Diagna, which they do, learning the secrets of the Walkabout in the process. Upon their return, they are given a Dwarven prosthetic arm of ebony and vow to lead the Order against the Satakals.