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Channler
So I have an invariable amount of time a day to sit down and reflect. And today I sat down at my computer and decided to type in a few letters that haven't graced my computer in a long 2 or 3 years. Morrowind.com

We all know this just leads to the TES main site, but it reminded me, before the release/announcement of Oblivion, the fervor that which I checked those forums every day, and the absolute excitement I received when the Daedric runes came up when I visited the site.

Well I don't know why, but I feel a little bit of that excitement again. I almost feel like I'm about to jump into the goon rush that is the elder scrolls forums and jump into one of those "TESV" threads. Interesting stuff guessing the future.

Anyways so I think I'll be the first to open up with the grossly general question..

What do you hope for, for TESV?
mplantinga
I am concerned about TESV. With the looming possibility of an Elder Scrolls online, I worry that the single-player game will continue to head toward its seemingly inevitable extinction. As cliche as the player-hero scenario is, I've not yet managed to feel drawn into the MMORPG scene; it seems to expensive and the player-character too insignificant.

Online-rants aside, I do have some thoughts as to what I would like to see in TES-V:

1. Story.

A good game depends on a good story. This is not easy. I certainly won't say that Morrowind had the best game story ever, but IMO it was better than Oblivion. (In Oblivion's defense, the Dark Brotherhood quests were somewhat more imaginative than the Bethesda average). The story should be exciting to discover, and preferably, offer choices to the character that have permanent effects on the world. Turning down a quest or choosing option A over option B should have consequences, perhaps eliminating possible future quests, changing the direction of the main plot, etc. A good quest has multiple solutions with different consequences. Again, the Dark Brotherhood quests did probably the best job of this, allowing both brute force approaches and stealthy approaches (which usually gave the better reward).

2. Replayability

For a game to rank among my favorite games, it has to be a game that I want to play over and over, creating new characters just to have the experience of doing it all again. Morrowind had the advantage of some mutually-exclusive storylines that forced you to make new characters to experience all of them. Oblivion seemed to have ignored this in favor of "be anyone, do anything." Which, by the way, is not the best choice ever. It isn't reasonable for the wimpy (but powerful) mage to join the fighter's guild. He can't even swing a sword or use armor, and all of a sudden he's the head of the fighter's guild? That seems rather ridiculous to me. Better to put significant restrictions (ie skills or attributes) to ensure that the characters skills match the guild in question.

3. Unique player characters

This is something that both Morrowind and Oblivion failed at miserably. It didn't really matter what race or birthsign you picked; by level 20 you could master whatever you chose and a Breton Mage could beat an Orc in an axe fight. Basically, this meant that race/sign (and even class) could be chosen randomly, with no permanent consequences. In defense of Bethesda, it is likely reasonable that, with enough effort, and wimpy mage could become a decent swordfighter, but really, if you wanted to be a swordfighter, you should have been a Warrior, not a mage. This is one of the reasons I enjoyed Galsiah's character development mod, because the choices you made during character generation actually mattered.

4. Intelligent leveling

IMO the leveling system in Morrowind was rather dumb, and I was annoyed when they kept it in Oblivion. With the obvious interest in GCD, madd leveler, etc, I thought it was obvious that the leveling system was broken; it seems I was right, because there are a plethora of comparable mods for Oblivion. Perhaps Bethesda will learn from this and get it right with TESV. I won't hold my breath, though.

In addition to fixing the way the player character levels, something must also be done about enemy levels. In Morrowind, once you reached level 20 (approximately), you became invincible, and nothing could really challenge you. In Oblivion, everything levels with you, which means there is no point in leveling. Both of these approaches failed to deliver consistent, challenging, and rewarding gameplay. There has to be some happy medium whereby enemies remain a challenge, but there is some benefit to leveling. I don't know how to do that, but I don't make games. It's their job to figure that out.


Final thoughts (for this post, anyway)

Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed playing both Morrowind and Oblivion. But the number of hours I've spent playing Oblivion pales in comparison with how much time I've spent with Morrowind, and that's not just because I've had Morrowind longer. I really believe that Morrowind was a superior game to Oblivion, and I'm worried that TESV will continue the trend and be worse again. I don't really care about graphics or voice acting, I just want a game that's fun to play, where the game mechanics don't annoy you and where you might actually consider playing the unmodded game more than once (I personally can't play Oblivion without mods; Morrowind I might again sometime). The things I discussed above are the things I most want to see improved in TESV. I really hope that they are.
Pisces
QUOTE(mplantinga @ Nov 14 2007, 04:57 AM) *

IMO the leveling system in Morrowind was rather dumb, and I was annoyed when they kept it in Oblivion. With the obvious interest in GCD, madd leveler, etc, I thought it was obvious that the leveling system was broken; it seems I was right, because there are a plethora of comparable mods for Oblivion. Perhaps Bethesda will learn from this and get it right with TESV. I won't hold my breath, though.

In addition to fixing the way the player character levels, something must also be done about enemy levels. In Morrowind, once you reached level 20 (approximately), you became invincible, and nothing could really challenge you. In Oblivion, everything levels with you, which means there is no point in leveling. Both of these approaches failed to deliver consistent, challenging, and rewarding gameplay. There has to be some happy medium whereby enemies remain a challenge, but there is some benefit to leveling. I don't know how to do that, but I don't make games. It's their job to figure that out.


Well, most games have a closed system where you travel the game world in a linear fashion and for some reason all the scary monsters wait for you at the end of your destination, getting progressively tougher mysteriously at the same rate as you get stronger. MW had an open system, all the monsters weren't leveled but the type of monster which would appear was based on your level, for some reason hungers are too afraid to wander the wilderness when you were level 1. But there was also areas which either weren't leveled or leveled to be impossible when you are low level, so at low level you would sort of have to choose which area you go to, eg. walking into a daedra infected cave is suicide at level 1 but you can still do this. The problem with morrowind is that it only has creatures for up to level 20, they never expected anyone to play longer than this, and the difference between a dwemer ruin and a daedric one is only a couple of levels, which most players will level about 4 levels while walking past a daedric and dwemer ruin. Its actually fairly easy to go in and change everything so the game will last longer just by increasing the levels of everything.

Oh and I quite liked the level system. I thought all the mods changing it were more a symptom of people who want to change MW/Oblivion into other favourite/childhood games, along with the mods to add the armour/clothing/weapons from those games and the mods to turn the game into those games.
mplantinga
QUOTE(Pisces @ Nov 13 2007, 03:50 PM) *

But there was also areas which either weren't leveled or leveled to be impossible when you are low level, so at low level you would sort of have to choose which area you go to, eg. walking into a daedra infected cave is suicide at level 1 but you can still do this.


This was definitely a good thing; there should be places that your character isn't ready to go. Oblivion screwed this up by making everything tied to your level, thus enabling you to become the head of everything and savior of Cyrodiil at level 2.

QUOTE(Pisces @ Nov 13 2007, 03:50 PM) *

Oh and I quite liked the level system. I thought all the mods changing it were more a symptom of people who want to change MW/Oblivion into other favourite/childhood games, along with the mods to add the armour/clothing/weapons from those games and the mods to turn the game into those games.


I always felt that, to properly deal with the leveled creatures in Morrowind using the default leveling system required too much attention to training misc. skills to gain the level-up attribute bonuses that would allow you to actually keep up with the leveled creatures. You could argue that GCD goes too far from vanilla in the changes in makes; the Madd leveler tried much harder to stay close to the original intent while simply allowing you to play without having to focus on level-up bonuses to attributes. In Oblivion, this problem was even worse; if you didn't pay attention to the level-up bonuses, you could find the leveled enemies getting harder as you leveled up, rather than easier, making leveling not useless, but harmful.

I agree about the armor/clothing/weapons mods (mostly). I usually use vanilla versions of these, and avoid the mods that add in things that feel really out of place in that game world. I'm not interested in turning the game into something else, so much as simply improving some of the annoying things (like issues with level vs leveled enemies) to keep the game fun.
Pisces
I think oblivion could have been a much better game if they just spent more time on it. It seems they spent all this time working on a brand new engine, state of the art graphics and the newest AI they didn't have time to make the actual game. In the end the brand new engine meant they couldn't include things like horse combat, crossbows, throwing weapons and the fun spells. Graphics were good though, but they were kinda dull in a lot of places. The game world was significantly smaller, ok, they claim its 50% larger, but that doesn't count when you move 100% faster and objects of interest are 150% less dense, you have less cities, less NPCs, less quests and less unique spaces (though there were some). And the new AI was chaotic, so they can't claim they fixed/removed the bugs and they only programmed in the AI's use for about 20 NPCs, and even then no where near the full potential of what they could do.

So for TES V, I hope they a) ditch the oblivion creature leveling system because no one likes it. cool.gif Use less out there technology and focus on what they can do so there is lots of game to be played rather than lots of bugs and missing features. c) Make the game dirty, ugly and realistic which was another thing which made the series different. I always want to throw up when I see final fantasy or WoW graphics, they just look so compassion and cartoony. d) extend the low level area of the game, why have chittin in MW if you can get iron or even steel immediately? and the low level, poor part of the game is damn fun. e) Make it so you can spend many many hours in 1 city or the forest without going somewhere else, maybe with minigames, or functional and interesting merchantism and hunting, it adds to the variety of a normal game and gives the possibility of themed players.
Lord Revan

Well if ypu want new races then I cpuld give Bethes... JK, I wouldn't give Beth *my* races to patent and use.

And maybe TESV can have action/adventure elements to it, like there's a part where you can't kill something "at the moment."
Or the AIs interact with each other besides talking or simply swinging blades/throwqing spells at each other.

This could be like unique animations (execution stab/decapitating blow). And another thing, where you hit something or someone should matter.
In real life any arrow going through someone's head is pretty lethal (especially if it goes all the way and out the other side).
Any arrow to the shoulder doesn't seem to affect anybody, they still swing heavy weapons or slash you as if there isn't a long piece of wood or metal in any important muscle.

And if arrows can stick to wood now, then shouldn't you be able to pin things that are back to back with a tree or something?

I'll monologue again later.... Be afraid!
Rane
QUOTE(mplantinga @ Nov 13 2007, 05:57 PM) *

1. Story.
<snip>
2. Replayability
<snip>
3. Unique player characters
<snip>
4. Intelligent leveling
<snip>


All this, plus a world that is actually worth exploring. Unique encounters/artifacts/items with fixed locations instead of having everything (or almost everything) scaled to your level/randomized. Noticeably different regions and locations, not a bunch of dungeons/ruins/whatever that all feel the same. And locations that actually change as the story progresses and keep changing (I'm looking at you, Kvatch). For a game where the exploration of the game world plays a huge role, the exploration should damn better be interesting and fun.


Yeah, fat chance of this ever happening, eh?
Olen
[quotee) Make it so you can spend many many hours in 1 city or the forest without going somewhere else, maybe with minigames,[/quote]

I'd disagree with this. How many times have you hear the oblivion lockpicking refered to as the annoying lockpicking minigame. I thought one of the best bits about morrowind was the immersion it gave by avoiding all minigames and cut scenes (with the exception of starting and winning). I'd agree the leveling system needs an overhaul.

I'd like a darker story line too, oblivion was a bit too happy good vs. evil for my liking, another great part of morrowind was that its story was a bit darker. Who really killed Nevar? etc. And the sixth house was a bit odd whereas the mythic dawn were just deluded.


Saying that morrowinds combat system was awful and a similar improvment to that that was seen in oblivion would be awsome, and more weapon skills with more pronounced advantages/disadvantages. It doesn't really matter what weapon you use so the premade classes with both blade and blunt (and more in morrowind) were a waste of a major pick seing as you would focus on one normally. But if some weapons were good against others or against certain races or creatures it would be worth having more than one....

And bigger with more random quests and little caves for a couple of minutes entertainment. Vanila morrowind has 2675 named NPCs whereas oblivion has 855 (http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tamriel:Demographics) thats quite a difference and lost oblivion the sense of depth morrowind has.

Thats what made morrowind better was the sense of depth. There were side conflicts which were largely undealt with in the main stories, there were loads of towns (most of which were just a little smaller than the 'cities' of oblivion).

So in short make it big, put lots of unrealated side stuff in to give it depth and make it have strong dark storylines. And fiddle with the actual balance of the game too. One thing they did get right in oblivion was the perks as you went up in skill, I liked them.
Rane
QUOTE(Olen @ Nov 14 2007, 11:45 PM) *

I'd disagree with this. How many times have you hear the oblivion lockpicking refered to as the annoying lockpicking minigame. I thought one of the best bits about morrowind was the immersion it gave by avoiding all minigames and cut scenes (with the exception of starting and winning).


I don't think he meant that kind of minigame (at least I hope he didn't). Some kind of card/dice/whatever game that you could play with a selected few NPCs wouldn't we all that bad. Just a little something extra to do, mayhap as a way to gather up some gold if needed or just to test one's luck. A big no to another lockpicking minigame.
Pisces
I didn't mind the lockpicking game actually, and you could auto do it if I recall, or just cast a spell. Didn't like the speechcraft game 1 bit, too easy and basic. But year, I was meaning minigames like Rane mentioned, kinda like the ones in fable (coin golf was great). But there is really no difference between the change of combat from MW to OB and the change of lock picking between the games, both go from a stat based system to a stat skill mix, aside from the box popping up and the game pausing.
Olen
Ok right I see what you mean. Yea they could be fun. The speechcraft game is so easy that the only use of the skill is to raise where you max out. The lockpicking game just breaks the flow of the game (which is more my objection though it was also annoying). It also doesn't work if you get any lag while doing it (my box doesn't like running oblivion one bit).

The difference with minigames like coin golf (which was quite fun) is that you can ignore them if you want so they never get the chance to bother you. I don't think the stat skill mix is any bad thing, so long as it doesn't render the stat pointless, but it is a very fine balance. I found the memory game in fable unbalanced things a bit, it was so easy that it provided as much money as you could ever need.

But it would be cool to be able to go to the pub and play cards or darts...


On an unrelated note what about needing to eat/sleep? I always find that I only slept to level up and never used food other than to train alchemy. Some sort of meter like the fatigue one that went down slowly but once it got quite low would start to affect your performance or something along those lines perhaps? I'm not sure if realism like that would just get annoying though.
Channler
QUOTE(Olen @ Nov 15 2007, 10:04 AM) *

Ok right I see what you mean. Yea they could be fun. The speechcraft game is so easy that the only use of the skill is to raise where you max out. The lockpicking game just breaks the flow of the game (which is more my objection though it was also annoying). It also doesn't work if you get any lag while doing it (my box doesn't like running oblivion one bit).

The difference with minigames like coin golf (which was quite fun) is that you can ignore them if you want so they never get the chance to bother you. I don't think the stat skill mix is any bad thing, so long as it doesn't render the stat pointless, but it is a very fine balance. I found the memory game in fable unbalanced things a bit, it was so easy that it provided as much money as you could ever need.

But it would be cool to be able to go to the pub and play cards or darts...


On an unrelated note what about needing to eat/sleep? I always find that I only slept to level up and never used food other than to train alchemy. Some sort of meter like the fatigue one that went down slowly but once it got quite low would start to affect your performance or something along those lines perhaps? I'm not sure if realism like that would just get annoying though.


Remember though.. You don't need to play the lock-picking mini game. Theres the auto button tongue.gif. If your like me you just by every single lock pick you can find and try to pick every lock possible.

My biggest problems in the game were..

Creature leveling and the emptiness of the world and fast travel.

First point. Its already been mentioned but I do agree that its ridiculous that monsters/creatures/guards are scaled to your level. To me it made the game no fun in the long run. Where in Morrowind I actually felt like a bad boat, in Oblivion I just kinda looked like one because of my armor.

Second point. Again this has already been hit upon but I feel that the world felt empty.. almost bland if you were. The locales changed a bit, but not by much. I sorta got a temperate coniferous forest idea around Chyd.. whatever.. its called and a highlands feel around the collovian highlands.. (duh) But that was about it. The locations need to be more expanded. I can go to North Carolina and see several different types of climates and geographical features, but its still a humid subtropical zone. The caves/ruins/forts felt more random and less relevant to the world then anything in morrowind. I mean, why are there so many abondoned legion forts in the main province of Cyrodil?! You'd think at least one would be operational. It just felt like the world was empty.. Not sure how to fix that.. more villages? I liked the little village of Hackdirt.. it was awesome, not even sure why. Now if they would of made the village a little important place for sidequests that would of been even better.

Lastly I think the fast travel idea was stupid.. It made it retarded for horses to really exist in the game, and it made the concept of exploring kind of foreign. Sure sometimes I didn't like running back and forth to places in morrowind, but I was never too far from a Stilt rider so that it really wasnt that large of a problem.

I'll write would I'd like to see in TESV later tongue.gif
Steve
Yea, I would like to see more small villages. The world did seem kind of empty of life. An occasional few animals but sometimes, you could travel with no life around you.

I would also like to see a quest where you can control a town or village. I mean, maybe that'd be kind of weird and maybe wouldn't fit but, they could make it fit somehow?
Agent Griff
The few animals that you did manage to see almost always had a manic death-wish and charged you on sight. Except the deer, everything in Oblivion has this odd berserker-like behaviour, from the smallest rat to the biggest Ogre. I would appreciate it if the animals in the next TES game were more realistic, and didn't make 'outdoor' characters who roamed a lot in the wild seem like they had a death wish.
Jamie Charlton
I'd like there to be a lot more depth in where you can live. like if you wanted to you could just go and live in a cave and buy a bedroll and a few other things to put in there while you're at it. and proper relationships with people because all you do is tell them a few jokes and they're eating out of the palm of your hand, and they never actually try to talk to you, they speak when they're spoken to. and an even bigger map (if that's possible to actually do considering how big it is already), because i find there's very little to do. and maybe if you met some guy on the road, you could trade with him. also, the idea of having to eat and sleep is good, because it's so unrealistic and it would be much better if your character was more life like, and say if he was going on a hike up the mountain, he would have to bring food with him. it would be cool too if you could freeze to death from the cold, cos when you go up into say, the Jeralls, you won't die even if you go up topless.
Steve
I actually barely eat. I think there should be something where it helps to eat. Maybe you lose health the longer you are from eating?
Jessel
I throw in my two cents to this.

-Being able to break things around you, break into places by axing the door down etc.

-I hated the fact that I was always as strong as everything else, I would have loved to be way stronger and way weaker than others.

-I just hit a man in the head with a sword...he's still coming at me.

-MORE ARMOR AND WEAPON SETS. Let's face it, this game can be easily played through and you can level up and get all the stuff if you know what to do. It would be nice for some of us hardcore players (the only players this game has? haha) if after 200 hours we were still finding new things, although I do understand that they have tried to give us new things with Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine.

Gaius Maximus
In another forum, I was responding to the issue of Speechcraft and mercantile being useless in game, and I think it would be quite nice if these things got included into TES V (highly unlikely).

QUOTE
There should be an economy. This would make living as a merchant much more profitable than a dungeon looter, most likely. It could be somewhat like this - in Anvil, say, silk is cheaper than anywhere else, because there's more of it comming, from other provinces and such. However, in Cheydinhal there's a need for silk. So, if you bouth silk at Anvil and sold it off at Cheydinhal for a higher price - you've got profit. Plus, there should be the options to buy exotic materials through the means of caravans - like, there would be caravans going from Cheydinhal to Morrowind every three months. You could add your own goods to trade, and either order them to be bartered into other stuff which cannot be found in Cyrodiil, or sold. Obviously, you could buy things also.

Eventually, it could maybe be possible to build a ship for yourself, and tax the other merchants who wanted to deliver goods with it, also deliver your own goods (of course, you'd have to pay taxes yourself, as well as payig the crew and the captain, too). Eventually, it could all turn into a large, well-oiled trading empire that brought hundreds of thousands of Septims, also making you a very famous person!

On the other hand, smuggling could be an option too. It would be really risky, though maybe more profitable. Also, whereas honest trading would make you famous, smuggling would probably obviously make you infamous.

Also, maybe it would be possible to open up an inn, which would require both speechcraft (to attract customers and workers) and mercantile (obviously to do business).

Also, to make speechcraft skill better, maybe there should be the option to get into the court of one of the cities, and make your way up to becoming a diplomat, or maybe a herald of the Count of that city. You would be sent with messages, also with secret tasks such as to bribe people in the court of a rival city, which would require high speechcraft.
Steve
I actually tried making a merchant character!
I thought that if you got to 100 mercantile you could buy stock in a store and every week you could get some of their profit. I was mistaken...

Hours of stealing for nothing...

I would like to see more quests where you could kind of make your own quest? You know, like in the Dark Brotherhood, you give the names of people to murder, I would kind of like to do that more often but, a little more in deapth!
I would love to be Arch Mage and command Battlemage legions to go attack a city! That would be great!
canis216
QUOTE(Agent Griff @ Nov 19 2007, 12:02 PM) *

The few animals that you did manage to see almost always had a manic death-wish and charged you on sight. Except the deer, everything in Oblivion has this odd berserker-like behaviour, from the smallest rat to the biggest Ogre. I would appreciate it if the animals in the next TES game were more realistic, and didn't make 'outdoor' characters who roamed a lot in the wild seem like they had a death wish.


Perhaps wolves should hunt deer instead of humans... maybe certain wildlife should only be hostile if you get too close--and should avoid allowing you to get so close. It always pains me to kill a wolf in Oblivion (see my avatar), but I'm often left no choice in the matter, even though I try to avoid and sneak around them. I could see goblins and ogres and trolls being aggressive and hostile, and I could see other wildlife as hostile if encountered in caves (their homes, which they'd try to defend). Something approximating normal, evolutionarily sensible behavior. An ogre might reasonably think it could beat down that adventurer. A mud crab... couldn't beat up the weakest beggar.
Lord Revan
How about more "exotic" weapons: chain-whips, culturized swords, and crossbows. Every type of blade had the same basic animation, a claymore should be restricted to attacks that you don't have to fight against gravity as much (chops and such).

Maybe "sneak attacks" should have "stealth kills" at higher mastery levels. Knife kills to the throat or strangle with a chain-whip or unarmed (yeah, this is more assassin stuff, but whatever). Wall jumps would also be nice for more acrobatic and athletic types.
And a more memorable and varied soundtrack could help (different tunes for battle and different locales). "Unmovable objects" can be justified in some cases, but every single crate and barrel in the game is non-flammable and immune to damage (restating another point here).

Shouldn't lethal frost spells cause an opponent to shatter? A fire spell create one of those "charred remains" we've all seen at one point in time? As I've said animals should have unique behavior (wolves have to stop in order to attack or bite you; what the crap?) Most four-legged mammalian predators jump on prey to knock it down and then maul it to death, that's awkward to put in a game, but that's the reality right there.

And large cities should have more residents, unless well over 50% of the adult (the only) population is single and not a part of a large family. The only families in Oblivion are the Draconis and..... what the woman's name is that wrote the (slightly biased) guides to the cities in Cyrodiil.

Anyway, I'll leave it at that for now. I wonder if anyone from Beth ever checks out Chorrol, we are on their fan site listing after all.
canis216
Alessia Ottus wrote the guides. God I hated her. I'm not one for wanton NPC murder, but she had to die.

Ahem. Did I just say that? What I meant to say was that I agree. And I suppose I'll say that more variety in the late-game encounters would (and I know everybody complains about this) would be nice. It gets boring, finding glass armor on every bandit you kill. It makes it hard to engender some level of remorse in the PC, too. I end up thinking, "They've been praying on a lot of travelers" instead of, "Man, this poor soul was just trying to survive." It's a small thing, but I think it's important.
Steve
Hey, all this discussion about the future has got me wondering.
Have they started making a fifth elder scrolls game?
Lord Revan

No, they're working on the next Fallout, and then they'll start on ES V.
Agent Griff
The glass armour or daedric armour that can be found on bandits late in the game is related with the poorly designed game levelling system. It's supposed to give even high level players a chalenge but all it manages in the end is to give the players and easy and accesable source of cash. If in need of some quick drakes, just go on a trip to another city and you're bound to get jumped by at least 3 or 4 well equiped and well armed bandits. In one of my games, I usually stripped bandits bare of their equipment after killing them and left it lying on the roads. Since I was always over-encumbered when I tried to collect their armour the first time, I usually left their armour and weapons lying next to their bodies. Since items don't dissapear, I always have a reliable source of easy money whenever I'm making my way to a certain city. Add a charm spell to make the merchant give me a better price and you can make a fortune.

One mod that alters this levelling system is Oscuro's mod, which reallyt makes the game more playable and enjoyable, correcting some other mistakes the devs made, like merchants who never run out of money and a non-existant economy in Cyrodiil.

I really liked the economy idea. In a game like Oblivion, you should be able to become whatever you want, not just an adventurer or weird guild member. Being a merchant should really be an alternative to being a warrior. Anyone who's played Mount and Blade knows what I'm talking about since the system you mentioned is the same one as in Mount and Blade (minus the ships and inns part).
jack cloudy
I haven't played Oblivion (yet), but a place to rant is a place to rant so here I go.

I'd like to see more options of non-lethality. In Morrowind, it was kill or be killed. (or run away, but that is not the kind of non-lethality I'm looking for.) Even Hand to Hand couldn't be used to actually finish a fight while letting your enemy live. Sure, you could knock people out, but they were back on their feet and swinging their stuff in five seconds. Only beating them to dead could stop them. Oblivion made a step in the right direction with the yielding, but it is still not enough for me. Basically, when you yield, you say: ,,Ok, I give up, now stop beating on me!"

What I'm looking for is basically this. Being able to finish a fight without killing anyone, without running away and without surrendering. And I'm not talking about some rare scripted instance in a quest where some character surrenders at x% health. I'm talking about regular gameplay here. Disarming causing the opponent to surrender. (unless said opponent is the brave/foolish/stubborn type or simply doesn't need a weapon anyway. In that case, go ahead and keep fighting.)

Maybe a 'stun meter' that activates during combat, fills up when you get hit and slowly lowers if you're not being hit, lowering faster when not doing anything and standing still. If the stun meter maxes out, the victim is knocked out (give or take, for two minutes?) If you keep up a constant barrage with a less than lethal weapon, like fists, you can max out the stun meter before the opponent's health is depleted, resulting in a knockout rather than a kill.

And for the mages, Stun spells. Thieves, a sort of chloroform or what have you that triggers during a melee sneak attack. (won't work on Atronachs or skeletons. Sorry, but I don't see a floating pile of rocks being gassed.)

If the player is knocked out, I'd rather see some options. Now, you're just dead. But what if you got defeated by a bandit or the Legion? They'd rather strip you of your stuff and leave you for dead, or strip you of your stuff and haul you to jail. Getting them too mad will have them continue waling on you, ala Morrowind's death warrant.

The perks to knocking out? Not much, other than making pacifism an actual option without instantly locking out most of the combat. Of course, it would be even more awesome if ropes were added to the game for tying up knocked out opponents with. Hey, when I joined the Legion in Morrowind, I was hoping to beat up some criminals and then haul them to court, alive. Now I just ended up having to kill each and everyone.
And while we're on the subject of ropes, I'm going to be unreasonable. Grappling hooks, for those who can't levitate or jump like kangaroos.

Finally, on the subject of the court, either death penalties on everything or NPCs placed under arrest as well. Seriously, I break the law and I get to pay a fine or spend time in jail. I kill someone, or three someones, jailtime. NPC picks a flower in someone else's garden? OH NOES, EXECUTE HIM!!!! Seriously, that just doesn't make sense at all. Where is equality?


Oh, one real last finally. Intimidation. No matter what you're wielding no one gets intimidated. Ok, I noticed like a 5 points disposition decrease in Morrowind with my sword out. That's pathetically low, considering the scale goes to 100. I guess the same thing is there in Oblivion as well. But I would absolutely love it if I strode into a camp of some simple farmers, coated in full Daedric and wielding a flaming Claymore of the same stuff, and all those farmers crapped their pants and ran away to hide. Hey, you're trying to look like a badass for a reason here, not just so you can admire yourself in the mirror.

This is probably where fame infamy should come into play as well.
High fame (multiplied by the knightly armours like silver): Simple bandits and other crooks avoid you like the plague. Only real big bads, like the higher ranking Dark Brotherhood, will challenge you. (In their own way, with poison and stealth)
High infamy (multiplied by the bad armours like Daedrid.): Good people will run away, the Legion will crap its pants and require extensive persuasion from a commander to attack you even if you're outnumbered. Heck, what if some priests tried to cleanse you off evil with a prayer and a shower of holy water? Awesome!!!!!



OK, and that ends this rant. Looking back up, I see that I've fallen into further regions of things that are cool but add little. Still, one can only dream. wink.gif
Olen
I'd agree with all of that and grappels aren't unreasonable. In fact that whole system needs reworked - why when I jump do I have to get my feet onto something to land on it? You should be able to grap things and pull yourself up. And most of the walls look fairly climbable so you could get up things like that (with a risk of falling depending on the wall and your skill (ok that might be difficult but its possible)).

And windows - why pick a really hard lock when you could just pan in the window next to it? Not subtle but not everyone wants to be. Obviously some windiws might have bars but upper story ones might not - you might even be able to pick their locks...

And the final things that bugs me - why can't you crawl though narow gaps. Always standing upright just doesn't make sense.

Anyway thats todays things I'd like to see in the next TES.
jack cloudy
Funny enough, climbing was a part of Daggerfall. I used it once to escape from a skeleton that was whooping my behind in the starter dungeon. Unlike Morrowind and Oblivion, Bethesda had no problems whatsoever with dumping monsters on you a level one can't defeat head-on. I ran into an Orc or two as well and the thieves could kill me in 2-3 hits. And I was using a 100% warrior dude in full armour! That was pretty cool, cause you actually felt weak at first.

Anyway, climbing was there in Daggerfall, but got dumped in Morrowind. I assume it's because of Levitation becoming more prominent and it being harder to do with the more rugged polygonal surfaces. Daggerfall had a collection of smooth panes, rocks were just a texture or a sprite.

But yeah, the return of climbing would be awesome and really help the stealth portion of the game, together with window entries. (Or chimney entreys. Hey, I wanna roleplay Santa!)

There are situations though where I feel that grabbing a ledge should not be allowed.
1: If you're heavily encumbered, like more than 50% of your max. Consider this a case of 'I can climb, but I'm simply too heavy at the moment'
2: When there's a shield strapped to your arm.
3: When you've got a weapon out. Both 2 and 3 mean you can't effectively use one or even both hands.
Agent Griff
It would be great if Bethesda could add small little touches which, if done with taste, enhance the roleplaying aspect of the games, an aspect which I feel has been somewhat ignored with Oblivion. I mean, in Morrowind you had much more options through which to affirm yourself in the land. I personally chose the path of the noble in a Great House. It felt good seeing my character's name on an official document bearing the seal of Duke Dren which stated that I was a noble and tasked to defend the land if need arose.

In Oblivion there weren't even documents that bore your character's name. They could have done that in the same way they made documents with the player's name in Morrowind.

A cool thing that would add to the RPing would be, imo, vampire hunters or werewolf slayers which actively set out and stalk the player, following him subtly in cities and attacking him at unawares when he is in the wilderness. The greater your power, the greater your fame grows among the local creature slayers. Like that guy from the book in Oblivion which hunted vampires all around Tamriel.
Lord Revan

You mean the guy who was in fact a vampire?
Agent Griff
No, I'm not talking about an actual NPC. I'm talking about a character from a book which you can actually find in that guy's house. It's called Immortal Blood if I'm not mistaken.
Lord Revan

Yes, and the hunter in Immortal Blood is a vampire. There was no miscommunication. You can find it at the bandit camp in Vilverin or whatever the first Aylied ruin you can go to is after exiting the sewers.
Anyway, you answered my question, so thanks anyway.
canis216
QUOTE(Lord Revan @ Jan 9 2008, 05:44 PM) *

Yes, and the hunter in Immortal Blood is a vampire. There was no miscommunication. You can find it at the bandit camp in Vilverin or whatever the first Aylied ruin you can go to is after exiting the sewers.
Anyway, you answered my question, so thanks anyway.


No, the hunter wasn't a vampire--the guy who was teaching the hunter about vampires was the vampire. The book, in fact, never indicates in anyway that he himself ever hunted vampires, just that he knew a lot about them.


Lord Revan

Oh, yeah...... I've been blowing hot air (kind of) for that last few posts. I haven't read the book in awhile, not unless my character just started out (TES V also needs a replay feature, so that way if you want to relive the main quest with your character being uber-awesome).

Unless you save at all the cool parts beforehand, you're hosed when you beat the MQ.
Agent Griff
To be honest, I think Beth could take some hints from the more popular mods out there like Oscuro's or Francesco's mods. The first thing that has to go is the current levelling system used for both NPCs and creatures since it's way too annoying and unrealistic. After a point the player character is supposed to be the most uber in the land so goblins or bandits shouldn't be giving him too much trouble. The daedric-wearing bandits are also stupid and unrealistic. These men are supposed to be cutthroats and outlaws living the way they do because they have no other choice. If they were to simply sell their high quality armour they could live off the winings for the rest of their lives.

Secondly, Oblivion is too stale and bland when it comes to atmosphere in towns. Especially taverns. I mean, entering an Oblivion tavern reminds me of a modern day library. I can almost see a "Keep your voice down" sign hanging over the bar. Besides the random conversation about mudcrabs between two NPCs there isn't much noise. Oblivion could take an example from the Witcher in these areas. Add drunkards, singing bands and rowdy people ready to get in a brawl with you. The ability to actually get drunk is also quite important if you really want to have a proper tavern-going character. Being able to play tavern games like dice or cards would also add to the atmosphere considerably. The cities should also be more realistic and lived-in. I mean the cities are too clean when they should be dirtier and less happy. Adding a few generic NPCs simply for making the cities seem more believable seems like a good goal if you ask me. Also, another thing which I found extremely interesting in The Witcher was the fact that cities actually got dangerous at night. Fanatics started walking the streets and attacking nonhumans at random. If they saw me get near they would also attack me. Adding something of the like in the more shadier parts of cities in Oblivion would be great, I say. It would generally give you a feeling of dread to walk the streets at night in the more dangerous parts of town like the slums. Of course, being part of a guild like the Thieves Guild could make you well-known enough that minor thugs leave you alone but being part of a guild should also create new enemies. Thus, members of a street gang which challenge the Thieves Guild could begin attacking you on sight just for being a member.

I'm sure you all have thoughts which could help the game so spew them out without any fear. On the internet, no one can hear you scream afterall. tongue.gif
Gaius Maximus
A good suggestion there about towns getting dangerous at night. That could be carried further up in Bravil - due to a certain statue there, I suppose there would be things happening associated with one particular assassin brotherhood. Plus, that place just looks like all the inhabbitants would be doing is mugging each other. Whenever I RP a character in Bravil, he carries around at least a shortsword, for safety purposes.

Also, in addition to the whole dangerous towns thing, perhaps you could be a mugger yourself. What I mean is a creepy guy with a wooden stick with a nail in it and some torn up clothes. For example, if there were no guards in sight, you could have the 'gold or life!' option of conversation, or something like that. Depending on how you looked, how was the person armed, how many gold did it carry and the time this was said, the person would either take it as a joke, ignore you, get unnerved enough to walk away fast, start running, start fighting back or give up the money.

Example - if it was nighttime, you looked like a prisoner that had just broken out of jail, the person had nothing more but a rusty iron dagger, had been carrying some two hundreds (let's say he was lucky gambling that night), and there was no guard nor any other person in sight, the person would just give away the money in fear of his/her life, and would probably be scared enough to keep shut for some time, until finally alerting the guards, by which time you could be far far away already.
canis216
I'd like to see TES do something about voice-acted dialogue. Maybe the worst thing in Oblivion. For a NPC to fully explain something (like in Morrowind) would require much more voice-acting than was present in Oblivion. Instead, they used a frickin' quest compass. So, I say they go back to more text-based dialogue (which they won't do, because that would look like they were retreating from "next-gen" or they do voice-acted dialogue right. Anything in-between runs into the "uncanny valley" problem and infuriates off a legion of gamers.
Olen
I'd agree there. They could do with the people speaking a bit more quickly too.

And working out a better fast travel system would be nice.

canis216
QUOTE(Olen @ Jan 11 2008, 02:26 PM) *

(snippage)
And working out a better fast travel system would be nice.


How about carriages? You could even have a small chance of bandits attacking one--that would add an element of risk. (In Morrowind, nobody attacks a silt strider because they're really tall. See, I even have the retcon worked out!)
Agent Griff
It would be cool if they implemented a system similar to Morrowind's for the next release. I didn't really like the fast travel but I suppose it had its uses. Still, it kind of broke the game's atmosphere, making it seem more like sending an email than actually traveling somewhere. I mean, you click on a point on the map and then Poof! You're already there.

Having a system of carriages available at every major city and at some of the smaller outlying villages would really be useful. Also, ships providing transport to coastal towns would also be nice. I mean, we see a ship in motion on the Niben in Oblivion's intro movie. To give an example in Cyrodiil's case, you could have had ships going back and forth between Leyawiin, Bravil and the Imperial City itself, since they were all cities with access to water and transportation.

Alas, the devs chose the easy way out and used instantaneous fast travel, forsaking the atmosphere and feel that carriages could have provided in favour of a quicker method of travel. Let's hope that for the next release they will pay more attention to what made Morrowind so great and appreciated and what made Oblivion to be detested by some fans. To be honest, we can't blame them since they did pretty much what the fans asked. Some of the simpletons wanted a quest compass that would remove all the difficulty from exploration quests, they got. Some fans wanted a leveling system so the game would be ever-challenging, they got that as well. If I were in the situation of the devs I'd be really confused right now.
canis216
Well a compass wouldn't be so bad... you know, for when you really get lost. But as Oblivion quest info was given, you almost didn't have a bloody choice as to use it or not, because no one described how to get somewhere--the designers just got lazy (or just couldn't create enough voice-acted dialogue) with providing directions. Thus, immersion is killed. A compass (with those damn arrows) is fine as a backup. It should not be created as a player's primary means of getting around.

Edit: Now I use one of those immersive interface mods that gets rid of the compass. Hallelujah!
Gaius Maximus
I don't really know if TES universe has those, but what I'd like to see would be a real compass, as an item. It could be used for looking around. Of course, nothing too useful, but adds to the realism and would decrease the need to look at the map, as you could follow directions like 'north-east of Odai river' or something like that easier.
The Metal Mallet
I was thinking that they could simply combine voice acting with the reading implement they used in Morrowind. For example, you speak with your quest giver, they give you the details about the situation, then, instead of them giving you spoken detailed directions, they simply mention that they'll give you an "outline" that tells you the directions. Personally I'd find it annoying to listen to someone blab on about how to get somewhere. Reading it seems much more realistic.
Steve
That carriage and ship idea is really good!
I hope in the next game the map is bigger too! I would love to have a game with two provinces instead of like one!

Also, it would be cool if like you could travel to other continents as well! That would be awesome. And in the next game, I hope you can join the Imperial Army or something. That would be cool and would add some good quests for fighter type people. Being a count would be great but, if I couldn't get that. Being a Lord or something would be cool. Though, I wonder how you could fit it into the game?
Olen
A downpowered compass would be best. Outside with a map and real compass you can do exactly the same thing but when the compass points to the one box you're meant to find in a room its silly. Have it point to the town or part of the city but leave you alone from there would be best.

And bring back guild guides - yes it was like email but it was so limited that it was conveniant.

A degree of leveling is required (morrowind did this very well with different regions being differently nasty) but starting out with some of the leveling mods is awful (I just ran into a minator on the road at level one using francescos...). Having different types of ruins at different difficulties was inspired too though a degree less predictability would be nice.

Bigger map and more guilds go without saying. How many factions did morrowind have?

What do people think of mark/recall and the intervantion spells? And levitation? Is it better without them?
The Metal Mallet
I found the mythicism school of magic only useful for mark/recall and the intervention spells, and soultrap too. In Oblivion that school seems almost worthless now when it's missing 2 of the three main spells that go with that school.

Mark and recall were so handy, I often had my non magical characters learn them just because I found it to be useful for hording loot and whatnot.
jack cloudy
I'd rather have Morrowind's fast travel plus teleportation spells as well. Cause it was more limited.

Levitation, it was nice, but I'd rather have real climbing. (even better if there's a grapling hook.) Cause face it, why did Morrowind have levitation? Cause your character couldn't climb. Of course heavily armoured warriors will prefer to levitate but hey, they're warriors. If they wanted to get to the high places, they should have left all that metal at home.

I think there is some real potential for dungeon design if climbing is reimplemented. Say, the player wants to get up to a balcony or something. So he'll first get onto a table, then throw the grapling hook to a brazier (torch holder.) Using the rope, the player climbs up and stops at an alcove he passes on the way which is just large enough to stand in. The player then releases the grappling hook and throws it across the room to the balcony. Climb (or swing, that would be fun) the rope and presto. If you were forced to levitate everywhere instead, players would just slap on a levitation spell of sufficient magnitude and rise up to the balcony directly. That kind of takes all the fun out of it.

Oh, and rugs hanging on the wall should be easier to climb than a smooth marble wall.
canis216
I would totally dig climbing. I'm a bit of a climber in RL, (and Al is a wall-climber!) so I totally would love it. I would climb stuff just for the sake of climbing.

(Actually, while playing Oblivion I think about climbing a lot, because they have all these mountain and hill sides that are impossible to ascend that would be easy for me personally to scramble up.)
Gaius Maximus
Climbing would totally rock. Especially if there was grapling hooks, or pickaxes. I would totally make an alpinist character and attempt to scale the Dive Rock...

Oh, I almost forget to mention one thing that I always wanted to see - character height.

How comes my Redguard can't be 5'5 feet tall? How comes my Orc can't be 7 feet tall? I'd like to see an option to alter a character's height. There could be the average height (say, we have... I dunno, 5'7 feet for Redguards) which you could edit by, say... 4 inches. This way, my Redguard could be 6'1 feet tall, or 5'4 feet tall.
Olen
Ok another question: where would people like to see it set?

Personally I think a bit more than a decade after Oblivion set in morrowind and black marsh would be awsome. Morrwind is just such a cool region with so many political strains and dunmer. And Argonians are just cool and it would be nice to see a great big forest (which by the time it comes out should be quite feasible). But then my favourite races by a long way are dunmer and argonians.

It would be nice if the vanilla game had a couple of major save the world quests too, a bit like oblivion with NOTN. But with some contact between them.

Just my thoughts though.
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