I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this but it's not directly related to Skyrim, Oblivion or any of the older games and is a general discussion about an RPG series (The Elder Scrolls) so it seemed the best fit

Just to clarify: This is not a "Which TES game is the best" thread. It is a thread to discuss the various features seen in any of the TES games, whether you liked them or not, how they could've been done better, why they should've left them out, what they should've had instead/as well, etc etc...

Ultimately it is a discussion about what would be the ideal Elder Scrolls Game in your opinion and how Bethesda could combine all the failures and successes of the previous games in order to create this. If you're already happy with one game, how could it be made better? (It can't be perfect )

Feel free to talk about different mods and games other than TES and how these could be implemented into the game as well.


To start:

I personally would love to see a combination of Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim (these being the only TES games I've played in depth) put into one game. The alien environment, number of factions, lack of hand-holding and so on from Morrowind, combined with the brilliant questlines and general feel (I can't explain this one but it just.... is) of Oblivion and the better combat, crafting and mechanical superiority of Skyrim.

This is just a brief description of some of the things I would like to see. I could write a 30 page essay on this and if this thread gets response I will put more stuff up. Anyway, what are you guy's thoughts?

Great thread idea! I´ve been thinking the same for a long time, actually

I pretty much agree on the combination of the last three games there, though I don´t have any comment on Skyrim since I haven´t played it. My favourite is Oblivion, I love and adore the environment and the music. The combat is good and I love that we can make our own spells however we want them basically.

Though... It would have been a good idea not to have the FG porter follow me around once I´m a part of the Guild. And it would have been an even better idea being able to delete spells in a game where you can make hundreds yourself, don´t you think, Beth?

I would also have liked if not every animal spotting me attacked me, at least after a certain level. What´s the point in fighting mudcrabs and rats when you´re at level 20 or higher?

All this, and a few things more, are what I can come up with regarding Oblivion. Other than that I´m struggling to come up with something else I would like to change. Maybe in a later post...

I like what you said so far, Vital.

My ultimate game would cover all of Tamriel. It would include various customizable modes such as Needs where you must eat, drink, and sleep, Exposure where weather has an effect on your character, and Consequences where certain deeds or accomplishments prevent access to others. These elements could be configured or disabled through a menu system like the Mod Configuration Menu mod for Skyrim.

I must emphasize customizable modes since I would always pick leaving options open over having the game limit the player. So while I might decide that being caught murdering anyone will get my character kicked out of the Mages Guild or that earning certain daedric artifacts will prevent my character from using chapels (Consequences mode), I wouldn’t want to make those choices for all players or even for myself with a future character. I can’t anticipate all of the ways I’ll want to play, so I don’t expect game developers to manage it.

Good points there, Grits

Good points indeed, Grits

I agree completely about customisable modes. This is something I am surprised is not in more games, particularly games like TES. It could include things like HUD display, needs, settings, weather exposure, other "hardcore" rules etc. That way they can please everyone from the young, "casual gamers" (a term I despise for a million reasons) to the more roleplay focused players, like most of the people on this site.

One small thing that I read is in Arena: You can only have one daedric/aedric artefact at a time. Whether this means you sell one, or leave it locked away in your house, for me this would be great. Unless I get rid of a daedric artefact, I cannot gain the quest for another. As soon as I get rid of it I can. Another thing that could be customisable.

Mirocu mentioned a big one, Spell creation. Why they abandoned this (and many of the pre-made spells) I have no idea. Why Beth? Just why??????

So much this!

While I do want freedom of choice, being able to serve just one deity at a time just makes more sense. If this is the case in Arena I definitely support it

I agree entirely. As long as you are able to ditch the deity you serve (possibly with some consequence other than losing the artefact) and/or change to serve another I think this system makes lots of sense and works well.

Some more thoughts after my first cup of coffee.

Racial bonuses and Birthsigns. I would like these to make a real difference to characters. I like to play against type, but that means there should be an actual type to start with. For example my orc mage should have a much tougher beginning than an Altmer mage as a result of their racial bonuses. However an orc born under one of the mage birthsigns might reasonably choose that path in life.

Daedric realms: yes please. I would like vampires, werewolves, and other daedric creatures to have a much harder time fitting in on Mundus. The realms of their corresponding princes should feel like a more natural home than Tamriel for daedric-focused characters. Which brings me to…

More factions. My Volkihar vampire should be randomly attacked by Boethiah cultists, for example. Regular merchants (not under Thieves Guild influence) should refuse to trade with my character if he’s wearing Thieves Guild armor. A Thane of some Skyrim hold should have to give up their title in order to earn similar status in another court, but allies of their Jarl might provide honorary status. I suppose this also ties in with Consequences. Gaining bonuses from altars should mean choosing a religion first.

Khajiit: Let’s see some more of the different forms. Let’s get to play some of them, too!

And finally (for now), ARGONIANS! Not only can they breathe underwater, they should be able to see underwater with perfect clarity as well. Their swimming animations should be crocodilian awesome, not the sad frog-like thrashing of the other races. I want to see submerged settlements with predictable current “roads” between them. Digitigrade feet, optional mid-game gender swapping, a special tail whip attack, and no mammary glands, please. Tamriel’s weirdest race has huge possibilities. I’d love to see Black Marsh as a completely alien world to an elf or human.

Having played a number of games with a LAN co-op mode where a small number (even just two or three) of players can play together, I'd like that option. Where it worked well, you had a team of players working together, instead of a single player and followers/minions, so it basically used the single-player mechanics, but permitted the supporting cast to be controlled by additional players. Instead of hiring Marcurio, for example, you'd meet another player in the Bee and Barb, and agree to go adventuring together as equals. One player hosts the game, and therefore gets the choice of location, and the game prevents PvP by making friendly hits ineffective.

That's what everyone was asking for, not the MMO we got.

Another thought is to have the "ultimate game" have borders. You can start in any province, with local game rule variations. No levitation in Cyrodiil, but it's OK in Morrowind. Everything in Skyrim is immune to frost. If you want a change of rules, restart in another province.

I've wondered about something like what you have in Assassin's Creed 2, where you (Ezio) inherit an old Villa, which has a small town inside its walls...As you do...Anyways, one of the things you can do is upgrade it all and in return, you get money every 20 mins...Which then goes to help you upgrade more/buy more stuff...

It'd be like Hearthfire, where you could "Buy" the shops for your village and then you'd do quests for the traders...And the more quests you do, the more money you get etc...

Aaaand, if you created armour for the blacksmith, you'd get a bigger return from the shop when they were sold, than if you just left him to it with his lesser skill etc...Same with the alchemy shop etc...

This would mean that if you were inclined to not be an adventurer as such, of if you decided to retire after a while, you'd still be able to make money...

I'd love more armour customisation...Back to the Oblivion separate items...I hate the Skyrim all in ones...

Plus, I want all my spells back...And the ability to make spells...And to enchant any item with any spell I so wish...

And, most espescially, I want all my Ease Burden spells back...

Like Grits, I would most like to see consequences for your actions return to the series. The only one Aedric/Daedric artifact that Vital pointed out sounds like an excellent idea.

I would like to extend that to only being able to be in one Guild at a time, as well as making joining a Guild something that takes both effort and aptitude. Back in Morrowind there were minimum skill values you had to possess to join and advance in Guilds, that would be a good start. I think the Guild quests ought be built in such a way that you need the appropriate skills to finish them as well. For example a Thieves Guild quest should have locks you need to pick to complete it, a Mages Guild quest should require certain spells, a Fighters Guild quest should have challenges that involve defeating opponents without using spells, and so on. If you can't hack it, then you have to leave and learn that spell, get your lockpicking skill up, and so on.

I would also like to see Guild rivalries return, at least making people from diametrically opposing Guilds such as the Fighters and Thieves Guilds dislike each other. It would probably cause too much chaos if the "official" guilds like Fighters and Mages attacked one another on sight. Though Skyrim does have members of the Assassins Guild attacking your character on sight... But Grit's suggestion of a vampire having Boeithah cultists attacking them sounds great. Or a priest of Akray having necromancers come after them.

That folds into having religions that you can choose. The thing there however is that Tamriel is presented as a polytheistic place, so a person following only one deity would seem odd to me. Following the Nine however sounds perfect though, and being able to invest most of your time with one of the Divines sounds good - not the total exclusion of the other eight - just a focus on one. Since the Daedra don't seem to play that well with one another, that might work as an only one Daedric Lord. Or perhaps only a certain number (like three if you are a 4th Age Dunmer believing in the Reclamations) of non-opposing Daedra. I also think you should be able to choose an agnostic or undecided yet religion, as well as plain old atheism (its all just some magic-using clerics faking it in order to gain power and wealth after all...)

Interacting with things like altars of your religion might give you a larger bonus than undecided people. Interacting with opposing religion's altars might cause damage or curses. Likewise with interacting with people belonging to the same or other religions. There might even be a few unique spells that can only be learned by members of the same religion, like an Arkay's Wrath spell that damages only undead.

Basically I would like to see truly unique opportunities and penalties open up in the game depending upon the choices you make for your character. So no two games are the same, and you cannot do everything with a single character. Unfortunately that latter is exactly what Bethesda wants.

SR, you make some great points on the factions.

I tend to only join one or occasionally two factions in any game anyway. I think you should be able to join certain factions but not advance high into all of them. As a battlemage I can join both the mages guild and fighters guild, but at some point (early on) I will have to choose between them. Or, maybe beth gives us more factions/ sub-factions. For example a separate sector of the mages guild for battlemages? You would need a certain spread between combat and magic skills to qualify for this but it would greatly benefit characters of that playstyle.

Also you should be able to quit factions, depending on your rank this could leave you unable to join ever again. This might be a little problematic regarding factions questlines though. Also, quitting a faction such as the dark brotherhood or Imperial Legion (if this was a faction) would have great consquences.

That brings me to my next point. Faction questlines should be much longer and involve a real rise through the ranks. What you said about having the necessary skills for a faction and certain quests is a brilliant idea, SR. I feel like you should start off with the real low jobs; killing rats and smugglers for the FG, collecting alchemical ingredients and attending lessons for the MG, getting the simplest pick-pocket and petty thievery jobs for the thieves guild etc etc. Once you've risen high enough and levelled up your skills you can slowly start a more interesting questline. This questline shouldn't really just come out of the blue though, it could be hinted to somehow throughout your rise through the lower ranks.

There is so much more to discuss, I believe, but I get the feeling that from everything people have said so far a game with more consequences for your actions is pretty popular...

While I'd love to see factions improved, I'm not really sure I'd go with everything you suggest Subrosa.

Skill requirements for advancement are something I'd like to see returned, but I don't see any reason to restrict the player to one guild. Beyond the fighters guild going after the thieves guild in Morrowind I've not seen anything to suggest that the guilds are opposed to each other, and it only happened in Morrowind because of the Cammona Tong.

I could see the thieves having you run up against locked doors and stuff, but I can't agree with requiring certain spells for advancement in the mages guild. Spells of a certain rank is one thing, you can play a mage without using all the schools of magic. I wouldn't mind seeing the highest ranks locked out in this fashion though, so to be arch-mage you need to be a master of all the schools of magic.

And I don't realy see a particular reason why the fighters guild should require you to not use spells. Battlemages serve in the Legion, so it's not like they're inferior fighters, and if you can still use potions and enchanted equipment then it's not much of a restriction. Then again, if you had a sort of trial by combat thing for advancement, it would make sense. I'd actually like to see that.

But with regards to the opening post, mostly I'd like them to head back towards a more Morrowind style game, one with attributes and the chance of failing a spell or attack.

Callidus,

I think there needs to be some restriction to guild membership. If you join an organisation like the DB or Legion then I think you would be completely bound to that one faction, the FG and MG may let you be a member of each but eventually you should have to choose.


I always imagined the legion battle-mages as a sort of heavy support. Not as far from the action as the archers but not right in the thick of the action like the infantry. In Skyrim only two legion battlemages are seen in the entire game (as far as I know) and they use destruction magic to fire at a dragon. The MG is responsible for all use of magic in Tamriel, whereas there are various legal fighter organisations/mercenary groups in Tamriel separate from the FG. A battlemage uses a lot of magic and so the MG would want some control, I'd think. As I said before, a sector in the MG specifically for battlemages would be quite good.


I agree that attributes and majors/minors should be brought back. But I think the system should be slightly altered so I don't have to select majors I will never use in order to balance my levelling. As for failing spells and attacks; spells yes, melee/ranged attacks no. I know its not realistic to pick up a sword or bow and suddenly hit the target every time, but its less realistic to swing right at something and see your sword connect without any effect, IMO.

I agree, there needs to be a restriction, but I don't think it needs to be on joining. The Dark Brotherhood and the Thieves Guild are both supposed to be clandestine organizations, so why should everyone automatically know you're a member? And since the duties of the Mages and Fighters Guilds don't overlap, it's not like they're competing, so they wouldn't have an issue with each other.

I think the restriction needs to be on how high you can advance in a guild, based off the character's, and player's, skills. The Fighters Guild could determine advancement through trial by combat. House rules of no magic or potions, and they provide the equipment for the fights. The Mages Guild could require you to cast various spells at various mastery levels to prove you're qualified, with the Arch-Mage needing to be a master off all the schools of magic. The Thieves Guild could have obstacle courses: traps to disarm, locks to pick or keys to steal, silent movement sections and the like, again without the use of magic/potions/enchantments, getting harder and harder as you progress through the ranks. And the Dark Brotherhood could dish out missions like in Oblivion, with a bonus for completing them in certain ways, and use the bonuses to determine if you qualify for advancement.

That way you need to be skilled to advance through the guilds, without relying on the blunt number crunching of Morrowind, and the blocks on advancement seem much more natural. Sure, with enough effort you might be able to become the master off all the guilds, but it's going to take a hell of a lot of effort to do so.



I don't see any reason why a fighter/mage type character shouldn't be able to join both the Fighters and Mages Guilds, since they clearly fall into both categories. And a seperate section for battlemages is a terrible idea in my opinion, just because it caters to one very specific type of character.



The problem with Morrowind's combat was mostly a lack of animation for misses. If you actually see the enemy dodge, or the blow slide off their armour, I don't see why missing in melee combat shouldn't make a comeback. As for balancing leveling and selection of majors, that's more of an issue with level scaling than one of attributes. And part of it goes to flaws in the gameworld design, like how in vanilla Oblivion everything pretty much stops at level 25, and beyond that enemies simply become damage sponges.

It's rather unfortunate, but the trend for the entire previous generation of RPGs has been about removing choice. Only, instead of the linear option where you can only do one thing and nothing else, instead you can just do everything from the word go. No need to specialize, no need to plan ahead, no need to exercise that brain. It's a bad trend, and I'd like to see the adult game market return to asking you to think about things.

So, what would I want to see in my ideal TES game? Well, a lot of things, but let's start on one of the most critical aspect of an RPG: the stats and abilities of your character.

1. A more complex stat system. Skyrim was over-simplified in my eyes, as it only had two stat systems. The primary attributes, which you increased by a flat 10 points every time you level up, and the skills, which improve as you use them. But the actual meat of the game was not in the stats, it was the perks you pick every time you leveled up. It was to the point where the stats of your skill didn't actually mean much because the perks far outclassed what you could do through practicing your skills alone. I'd like to see this reversed. However, perk points would be refundable, as they represent your character's skill style. If you want to change styles, you should be allowed to do so.

2. I'd also like to see the old style attributes returned, but handled differently:
>Instead of choosing three attributes to increase every time you level up, with the amounts determined by your skill usage, you'd get a flat 5 attribute points instead that you could allocate however you wanted.
>As you improve your attributes, you will gain traits, which are minor passive abilities based on the attribute. For example, as your strength improves, you would gain traits that reduce stamina drain from holding a drawn arrow, or allows you to swing two-handed weapons faster, or gives you some extra carry capacity.
>Attribute points would be hard-capped at 250, though, so you would only be able to max out about three attributes.
>These points are non-refundable, as they represent your character's base abilities.

3. The perks themselves would be less about improving your skills and more about augmenting them. Things like unlocking new attacks with weapons or being able to do something you weren't able to do before. Things like "deal 10% more damage with bows" would be moved to traits, while perks like "you can zoom in while drawing a bow" would remain perks. To help reinforce the point, each skill would have multiple paths you can take up the perk trees to represent different playstyles. Take for example archery.
> There would be two paths, the skirmisher's path and the ranger's path. Skirmisher style would emphasize quick shooting with little thought given towards where the arrow is actually going to land, so the perks would be along these lines:
a. Quick-draw: You can draw your bow 20% faster.
b. Fleet of foot: You can move faster while you are holding an arrow at knock.
c. Rapid-draw: Immediately drawing a new arrow after firing will draw your bow 50% faster.
d. Rapid-fire: Firing your arrow as soon as it is fully drawn will deal 20% more damage.
e. Skirmisher's Intuition: Firing an arrow as soon as it is fully drawn reduces aim spread by 50%.

>Then there's the ranger's path, which emphasizes taking your time and lining up your shots.
a. Eagle-eye: You can zoom in while your bow is drawn.
b. Focused eye: The longer you hold your aim, the more accurate your shot will be, to a maximum of 50% less spread.
c. Focused aim: The longer you hold your aim, the more damaging your shot will be, to a maximum of 50% greater damage.
d. Slowed pace: Zooming in will slow time.
e. Ranger's intuition: you can see the arc your arrow will fly.

Nice thread idea, and some great ideas here!


One thing I've always found TES games lacking in, is having a place to call home. I'll admit Skyrim did it better then the games before with the limited customization options and actually having a fast travel option there, but I'm always hoping Bethesda does it even better then they have so far.

I'd like to have a lot of customization options, no actually I'd like to have a giant load of options. From having a small hut or a bigger hut like you were able to have in Skyrim, to having your own settlement to rule over as Morrowind tried to implement but didn't really got right.

I'd like to be able to be able to place which room holds my storage chests, how many, up to a reasonable amount, of retainers I want and the matching number of homes around my mansion, whether I want a gate or moat or both.

The option to have all of my armor, weapons, books, ingredients, etc sorted automatically with the click of a button.

The option to either have a maximum amount of things to be placed in a store container or no limit there.

I could go on and on there, perhaps it's asking too much but I'd love to see Bethesda do this themselves rather then having to rely on mods to add parts of this.


Aside from that, it's been mentioned earlier in the thread, but factions could be done a lot better then they are now. I loved the idea of Morrowind being divided between 5 great houses, even if we only got to play with 3 of them, I loved the ideas behind the great houses, the vast differences in culture, history, approach to current affairs and whatnot. I would also love to see some more benefits to becoming head of a faction. Even as Archmagister of the Telvanni, I never really got the feeling of being something special.

I'd love the game to include the whole of Tamriel, and still being able to join great house Telvanni and travel to the Summerset Isles to learn magic from the Psijic order. That would be great :-)

I´d wait for anything like that until they´ve fixed it so rain doesn´t clip through roofs when you´re outside..

As a console gamer I cannot state just how much I agree with this. It always pisses me off over at Bethsoft when something is being discussed and someone just rolls in and says "mods'll fix it"

Even though I´m on PC I still agree with this. I´d like to have a pure vanilla game but I feel forced to use third-party programs just to get the game working the way it should have worked from the beginning!

Oh, well. I guess a perfect game would be boring anyway...

As a console player, I completely agree with Callidus. Bethesda relies too heavily on the modding community and often hides behind it. Bethesda can make an average game and knows that the console players will cope and the PC community will just fix it with mods. Mods should be used to add to the game and change it, not fix problems with the game and improve it to the standard it should be at.

Maybe you're right, 'rocu. A perfect game probably would become boring. However I'd like to see the TES games made to a higher standard, better suited to it's 'true' fan base.

*applauds*

That said, post-Skyrim I no longer consider myself part of the TES fanbase. Bethesda simply aren't taking the games in a direction that interests me. I'll stick to Oblivion, and Morrowind if I ever get around to firing it up again

again


I have no opinion of my own...

What I'd really like to see brought back to TES, what I think is needed, is weapons. One handed/two handed is about the dumbest possible way to split the weapons up, and there just isn't enough diversity in the weapons anymore.

They need to get over their obsession with long swords, and spread the high wuality gear around some. Far too many of the "best" weapons were longswords in Oblivion; Goldbrand, Umbra The Ebony Blade, The Honorblade of Chorrol, Dawnfang/Duskfang, and there were probably others. And compare that to the number of axes of a similar quality:... Oh wait, there weren't any And Morrowind wasn't much different.

Staves need to go back to being staves, not magic based guns. Some of Morrowind's staves were fantastic, while Oblivion were generally just... meh.

But the biggest change I think needs to happen is the reintroduction of on-use enchantments. Maybe limit them to rings and amulets, but it would be nice for a fighter to be able to open a locked door without needing to use a lockpick, or for a mage in Skyrim, from what I've heard.

I still enjoyed Skyrim, despite many of the changes annoying me. In fact, I spawned one of my favourite TES characters ever and plan to go back and play through the other games with him once he is (mostly) done with Skyrim. I believe their were mods that brought back attributes, classes and such from the previous instalments in the series but being on console I never used any of these. It was just my imagination that kept the game an RPG and not another open-world action adventure game except in first-person.

I always imagined my classes before I made a character, and tried to stick to them. Only levelled up after I had slept, only joined factions that it would make sense to join for that character and his/her circumstances and dragged out these questlines myself, often by pretending other quests/misc. jobs were related to the faction. In general I used my imagination to make the game fit my own needs, almost like mods within my head.


This worked fine for me and I was still able to enjoy the game greatly, but I often ask myself; "If I buy a game, produced by one of the most renowned developer's in the gaming industry, for $90 to play on a machine that cost me $600, should I really have to use my own imagination to such an extent, just to get the full enjoyment out of the game?"

The answer is no. I can imagine its a similar situation with mods. They are wonderful and should be used to greatly increase the enjoyment gained from the game, but not as a means to improve the game to the level it should already be at.

C'mon Bethesda... Please

I want reins on horses (like Oblivion didn't have). Oh, and the ability to take their tack off and put it on so the poor animals don't have to sleep under saddle. And working saddlebags of course - after all, a horse should be able to carry as much as. . . well, a horse.

Saddles and saddlebags that are more than animations are definite must have! It's so annoying because the horses in Skyrim actually have saddlebags on their backs, but you can't actually interact with them.

Facepalm Bethesda!!!!

Oh, horses! I would also like mounts and animal followers to have simple commands. Follow or stay, fight or flee, home marker and go home. A follower command for Use This Horse would make me very happy.

Me too! No longer would my characters have to feel guilty for either leaving their horse behind for their follower or letting their follower tag along a mile behind them as they ride their trusty steed.

The perfect TES game? That isn't Morrowind?

Well, let's see...

I would like better hair styles. I know this is a minor issue, but what does Bethesda have against bangs? I would also like to be able to change hairstyles. If I'm going adventuring, then a pony tail is fine but if I'm dressed up, I'd like a nicer style.

I would like to see somewhere that doesn't look so.... Europe/North America. I get why Skyrim looked like that, but as I recall, Cyrodiil was described as jungle. I did not see any jungles. Besides, there are so many Western styled games. There's so much more to draw inspiration from! Or create! That was one thing I loved about Morrowind. It was so new.

As for housing, I liked being able to buy them and customize certain rooms. To expand on that, there could be a "decorating mode" that pops up as an option when you enter the home or you can click on a specific piece of furniture. In the decorating mode, you can rearrange the furniture, get rid of things, or put in new items. There could be an option for the display cases so you don't knock things out of them accidentally -_-

Keeping with the Hearthfire theme, if you buy a plot of land, I think that should be fully customized as well. If I have space for (and can afford) a house with ten bedrooms, then that's what I want. The building of the house can have a "build mode" option where you place the foundation on your land. It can show the borders and once you pick it, you're stuck with it. Then you do the normal building like in Hearthfire. Then any additions to the home has to fit properly or you can add a story. Maybe you can eventually have fencing or another house, like the strongholds in Morrowind.

The seasons should change somewhat. Instead of rain at random, a rainy season. And people would likely be indoors during the rainy season. Maybe inns would be booked. Bandit caves would have them all inside. Same with snow or wind or extreme heat.

Holidays too. We have a calendar system, so why not? And some could be more culture-specific. So maybe the Dark Elves are celebrating something while everyone else just goes along with their daily lives.

If children are going to stay, I'd like to see children of other races, not just human kids. And I would be very happy to see an interracial family every so often.

If marriage is going to be an option, then I would like the marriage pool to open up. There were no Khajiit or Bosmers! And literally no one in the Thieves Guild? I would also like it to mean something. It just seemed so...blah in Skyrim. Maybe your marriage has certain effects based on who you marry. If you marry a beggar or someone with high status, it affects how people treat you. And your spouse has certain standards. How will the react if they find out you're a part of the Thieves Guild? Or the Fighters Guild? If you never have any money? If you're a warrior or not?

If you have pets of any kind, I agree with the tell them to wait function. I felt so bad when my pet scrib got killed

Animals should run away from certain fights. People should too. In Skyrim, they say they give up but they just keep going. It's like, they just saw me kill a dragon and now they want to fight me? For real?

I liked in Morrowind how certain factions didn't like each other and others were close knit.

That's everything I can think of for now

My ultimate TES game would look something like this:


Foremost it would be called TES VI: Alinor and it would be set in the Summerset Isles/Alinor for two reasons. First would be the foreign and interesting landscapes and architecture alluded to by Jacki above. Second would be for the purposes of the story. At this time the Thalmor rule Alinor. No matter what race you choose you start the game out as just another slave brought into Alinor to do the manual labor (I do not see the Thalmor doing such menial tasks themselves). This allows us to uphold the Bethesda tradition of beginning every TES game as a prisoner of some sort.

However, your status as a slave is only a cover. You are, in actuality, a Blade sent by the Elder Council to help destabilize the Aldmeri Dominion through any means necessary. To do this you end up in alliance with a resurgent splinter group of Altmer calling themselves The Beautiful. From there the main quest would involve political intrigue, espionage, and assassination all for the purpose of bringing the Dominion to its knees. At some point you become the most hunted man/woman in Alinor with guards and other officials ordered to kill you on sight. There would also be a love interest involved for those into that kind of thing.

Factions involved:

- The Mages Guild, of course. They are in an eons long battle against their rivals in the Psijic order. Only one of the two would be joinable in any one playthrough... and there would be a prerequisite of magical skill necessary for membership. Sorry warriors and thieves, mages only need apply.

- The Fighter’s Guild would be there for mercenaries looking to make some extra coin. Skill with weapons is encouraged though not necessarily required. For those belonging to one of the Dominion’s pilot races (Altmer, Bosmer, or Khajiit) there would be a small assortment of knightly orders joinable, each with their own story and conflict. For membership in one of these weapon skill is a prerequisite.

- The Alinor Thieves Guild would be in the most direct conflict with the Thalmor Hierarchy. One could choose to ply one’s nefarious trade (prerequisite skill required) or, if Altmer, one could choose to join the enemy (if only to destroy them from within).

- The Alinor Dark Brotherhood is at war with itself. Following Greywyn’s teachings a splinter group of vampires within the order have founded a new chapter of the Crimson Scars. Only one faction can claim Alinor as territory. Will you be the one to tilt the balance of power? Note: one must first have the necessary skills to be approached by the DB, then one must be a member of the DB before contracting porphyric hemophilia in order to join the Scars.

Add to this the usual side quests and random dungeons in the wild and I'm good to go.

There's one and only one thing that I really want to see Beth do with TES - I want to see them revive the spin-off "Elder Scrolls Adventures" series and put Todd in charge of that, then put somebody who actually understands and appreciates roleplaying in charge of the main TES games. (Or, conversely, just complete the transition of the main series games to linear action/adventure and create a new roleplaying spin-off series - either way)

If they don't do that, then there's no point in even speculating about anything else.

Good point.

I'm assuming, from the way you phrased that, that your preference is for the roleplaying alternative. If you take that to its logical conclusion you should have no questlines at all, perhaps just an objective, such as overthrow of the Thalmor as in Destri's proposal, but without a pre-defined path to get there.

So how could a game do that? Maybe it tracks your successes in the various guild scenarios (mage/Psijic, Thieves, Fighters, Assassins, whatever) by their affect on the stability of the central authority. You could take over forts for the rebel causes, assassinate incumbent officials, steal stuff, take over sources of magical power, or whatever it takes to weaken them. If you want to play a Jack-of-all-trades, they wouldn't all have to be part of a single questline, but you'd have to do joining quests and you'd only get quests suited to your skills, so progress could be slower.

To avoid the potential chaos of the game having to account for the consequences of all your possible actions, you'd reconcile the situation at various levels by having other unseen actors perform the other tasks for the current step. E.g. If your character steals the Staff of Excessive Magical Power, then the High Wizard is assassinated by someone else, and Fort Wurble falls to the rebel armies under another's leadership.

Side quests get you followers, equipment, spells, whatever you need to advance your skills, much as they do now.

That kind of game, though, won't appeal to those who want to become leader/arch-mage/king of everything. But there are probably a lot of folks who just want to be acknowledged as a Hero of the overall campaign, much as happened at the end of the Oblivion MQ. It also has the problem of coming to an overall end, when your side wins, which is why they've always had the separate questlines to give you more to do after the MQ. I'm not sure what fills that gap.

Here are two significant facts about Todd Howard:

When he first applied to Beth (which he did on a whim, because he used to go past their office on the way to university - he didn't even play video games at the time, much less have a particular desire to develop them), they turned him down. He didn't give up. He kept coming back until they finally relented and hired him.

When he was first put in charge of a game, he put out Redguard - a wholly linear action/adventure game with a fixed main character, and a game that was such a bomb that it almost bankrupted the company.

Now remember - Todd doesn't give up.

RPGs are a niche market. There just aren't enough fans of complex RPGs to establish and maintain the sort of franchise Beth unsurprisingly wants TES to be. So the real hell of it is that Todd was right, all those years ago - he was just trying to sell an action/adventure game to a fanbase that was then exclusively serious RPG players. So what he had to do - what the company had to do - and what they HAVE DONE - is to slowly transition away from that fanbase. That's exactly why each and every game since Daggerfall has contained less roleplaying complexity than the previous game(s). They float this nonsense about how each game is its own thing, but that's obviously not the explanation, if for no other reason than that no company invests millions of dollars into a whim. The games are what they are because that's what they've been designed to be, from the very first development meeting. And the trend has been consistent with every single game - every one, with no exceptions, has less roleplaying complexity and more simple linear storylines than the previous one(s). That's not just a random happenstance - it's a deliberate design decision on which millions of dollars rests. And from a pure profit standpoint, it's obviously the correct decision. Even the people who see what's happened to the series and hate what's happened to the series are more likely than not to buy the new game anyway, so Beth gets their money anyway, so their opinions count for exactly nothing. And for every one who decides that s/he's had it and isn't going to even bother, there are dozens of new fans who are eager for the chance to pump 20-some hours into a cool looking game with some neat features that they don't really understand but that's okay because it's set up so that they can't lose anyway and then they get to post their list of achievements on their Facebook.

It doesn't matter what RPG fans might want - RPG fans are to Bethesda as decaf-drinkers are to Starbucks. Sure it pays to at least make an attempt to satisfy them, but only as much as is necessary to not drive them away entirely. The bulk of their efforts have to be spent satisfying their MUCH larger "20-some hours of cool looking game with achievements I can post on Facebook" fanbase, because THAT'S where the money is.

The ONLY way that RPG fans are going to get another great game out of Beth is if they do a spin-off RPG series - a sort of specialty series, done knowing that it's not going to sell 20,000,000 copies. The next main series game, just like every single game since Daggerfall, will be LESS of an RPG than the previous games. That's absolutely guaranteed. Todd doesn't give up.

I play really for the 'sandbox' element. I would actually prefer there to be no significant questline to foul up the sandbox with obnoxious things that take significant effort to ignore (Oblivion Gates, Dragons, Civil Wars). I am a little tired of the mental gymnastics that TES requires to overlook those things they want so hard to drag you into. I don't mind small side quests though.

Buffy's at her happiest simply exploring on horseback and clearing random dungeons just for thrills.

I know there are quite a few of us here and on the BethSoft forums that prefer the open world stuff to the quest stuff. You'd think that the devs would listen to those of us who play their games for years (not hours) and scoff at the concept of 'beating the game' - or even ever 'finishing' it.

I'm only interested in medieval fantasy single player RPGs that allow me to play my mystic archer. I'm not delighted with what TES offers, but it currently seems to be perhaps the 'best' choice. I do long for a more open world and less quest driven game in that genre. I would readily abandon TES should a competitor provide that.

Now, that all said, I am grateful for BethSoft's decision to provide players access to their CS / CK so that the games can be modified to bring them a little more in line with the desired vision of each player.

Yeah, there has certainly been a step backwards with each game when it comes to character building. I could not believe just how plain and boring Skyrim was. There was really no point in choosing one race or gender over another. Fire resistance in Oblivion helps, and frost resistance in Skyrim, but otherwise that is about it.

If Todd is heading back towards a linear one character game design, it does make sense why we are losing so many choices.

I guess we are still lucky that they support mods and allow us to fix all those annoying things.

Skyrim has sold over 20 million copies.

It would've been impossible to sell that many copies of the game if it catered to roleplayers specifically. We just aren't that big a market. And it really is just that simple.

We're sort of the "first wives club" for Bethesda. We're the only reason that they managed to hang around long enough and get established enough to continue to make games. But we're not sufficient to serve their desires now - they got what they wanted out of us and now it's time to move on. They've continued to include some roleplaying elements and they undoubtedly will continue to do so, but I fully expect the roleplaying to continue to diminish, and really for good cause, from their point of view. It's an unnecessary and expensive complication. Every alternative that's included in a game is something that needs to be coded and tested and debugged and tested some more, and an ever-growing number of their fans don't want those complications anyway - to them, they're just sources of confusion and frustration.

Todd made that explicit in the run-up to Skyrim. He repeatedly made statements about things that were being removed (attributes, for instance) because they were unnecessary and confusing. Their stated goal was to make it so that it was impossible to make a "bad" character. That, to me, just demonstrates that either they don't understand roleplaying or they're catering to players who don't understand roleplaying or both. Probably both. Roleplayers know that there's no such thing as a "bad" character - NOT because there aren't characters who are more difficult to play than others, but because difficult characters add spice - they aren't "bad" - they're just a challenge. But to other gamers, if they aren't effortlessly uber, they're "bad." And those are the players to whom Beth is catering. And again, much though it galls me, they're right to do so. You can't argue against 20 million sales.

The only hope we have for a TES game with more rather than less roleplaying elements is a spin-off series. That's the only way that they could tailor a game to roleplayers AND continue to pay their bills. We can't keep them afloat by ourselves.

I'm not terribly hopeful though. It'd be nice, to be sure, but bluntly - very bluntly, just to make the point - I really don't think they give a [censored]. They've made it pretty clear over the years - even going so far as to include a recurring character in the games just to express it overtly - that they have absolutely no respect for what we might desire. We're just demanding idiots, and all we deserve from them is M'aiq's scorn and ridicule. And again - 20 million sales. Viewed from that perspective, they're right.

Sorry to be such a downer, but this is something I've given a lot of thought to, and it's unsurprisingly pretty much impossible to really address the subject on the Beth forums.

And now that all of that's out of my system, I'm going to go spend some time with Ughoth the Orc mage. He just came back from Fisherman's Rock with Mazoga and is parked outside the Leyawiin castle gates.

I agree with everything you said gpstr. I even recall Todd saying that they wanted to make Skyrim less "spreadsheety". Statistics like attributes and skills confuse people who don't want to put any effort into a game. I expect that the next TES game will not even have Magicka or Stamina. Instead all spells and special attacks will have cool-down periods between how often you can use them, like Mass Effect and other console games. Health might stick around to determine how many times the player can be hit before dying. But they might find a way to simplify that as well.

OTOH, there is hope for the gaming industry. The recent successes of games like Wasteland 2 and Pillars of Eternity give me a really good feeling. Wasteland 2 was an excellent RPG done in the old school style. It was like playing Fallout 1 and Terror From The Deep all over again. I have not tried Pillars yet, but everyone says that it too is a throwback to the good old days of Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights, and it gets insanely good rankings on sites like Metacritic. It is on my "to buy" list of games, once it is has been out a while and there has been time for wikis to be made, and patches to be done.

Thanks to Kickstarter, the developers of both games were able to create them without the interference of a big corporate publisher like EA or Bethesda. That allowed them to make the games they wanted, rather than the what the money was forcing them to - which is to say a game like Skyrim. When you turn loose people like Chris Avellone and Michael Stackpole that way, good things are going to happen. I think that this is the future of gaming, along with indie developers like Cd Projeckt and Talewords, and DRM-free distributors like Gog.com.

People are starting to realize that you don't need a huge amount of money to make a good game. Because a good game is not about hiring Patrick Stewart or Kevin Spacey to do the voice acting, or having photo-realistic graphics. You just need vision and talent, and you will do well, even in what I agree is a niche market like us RPG'ers. Pillars raised over a million dollars in the first day of their Kickstarter campaign. They made the game with only 4 million dollars, and it certainly looks like its sales will be enough to fund Obsidian's next project.

I agree - indies are the future of gaming, at least from our niche market perspective.

This industry, very quickly, became like the movie industry. It puts out the same sort of product, and for the same reason - failure is too expensive. Because of the staggering amounts of money they put into projects and because their hope for profit is all wrapped up in one specific product, it pays to do what they can to ensure that that product will appeal to the widest possible range of potential consumers. That leads to making a product that's superficially glossy and appealing, but underneath that superficial gloss, has been pounded into relatively formless mush. It can't be truly challenging and complex and unique because that carries too much risk of alienating potential consumers. It has to be as vanilla as possible.

Like with the movie industry though, the fact that that's what the major studios do opens up a market for smaller companies who can and do take risks - who can and do make products that are almost certainly only going to appeal to a niche market. They don't have enormous headquarters filled with overpaid executives and bloated staffs and they're not interested in shelling out all the necessary money for the marquee stars, so they don't have the expenses of the major studios, and they aren't run by boards of directors whose only measure of success is profit margin, so they don't have the stifling caution of the major studios. They can and will make truly creative products, never expecting nor needing them to appeal to anything beyond a niche audience.

Beth actually once was such a company, and that company made Arena and Daggerfall. They aren't that sort of company any more though, and that's just the way it is.

The next TES game will only have one bar, which will represent Health, Magicka, and Stamina. It will also have one of the ideas glargg thought of awhile back: a Beat All Quests button, for people who are too lazy to even fast-travel.

It has been years since I considered ES a role play game. Can I play a pirate and raid ships off the coast of Anvil? Or perhaps a guard that uses corruption to work my way up the Imperial ladder? Or join the fishing guild the works off the northern coast of Skyrim? Or join the Talon Merc or Enclave?

Of course not. These things are beyond the scope of a current Beth game. Instead we must approach the games as nothing more than a really fun exploring game that allows use to open up inventories and collect cool items and store them back at home, slowing raising our character level and (hopefully) becoming more powerful. These days that is all we can really hope for in Beth games.

It is the character design at the start of each ES game that is the most worrying trend of all. Beast race, Human, Mer, there is no difference now, just like Caucasian, African-American, Asia, etc mean nothing in the Fallout series. That is something I am really worried about. Skyrim has set a very bad trend.

And remember that Dungeon and Dragons never allowed us to run around in Heavy Armor as a mage and do the crazy things that ES allows. The do-everything-you-want attitude that Todd preaches is in fact the ruin of the game. The whole rule book for role play has been thrown out the window in this new era of fantasy games.

Perhaps it is mass market appeal as gpstr suggests.

That, along with the elimination of attributes, is the biggest reason that I decided long ago that I simply was not going to give Beth any of my money in exchange for that product. They deliberately designed Skyrim so that the only differences between starting characters were purely cosmetic, and that makes the sort of roleplaying I do flatly impossible. I have exactly zero interest in deciding what my character is going to become, then metagaming all the appropriate box ticks when the perk fairy comes so that my character ends up being that thing. That's sterile and phony and it's exactly the opposite of the way I play. I want to create a character who ALREADY possesses specific qualities, then just take him or her out into the world and see what happens, and Beth completely destroyed the ability to do that, and did it explicitly - as stated repeatedly by Todd and Pete - so that it would be impossible for players to make "bad" characters. Which just demonstrates, all by itself, how little they AND their intended customers know about roleplaying. Roleplayers know that there's no such thing as a "bad" character.

Well... I have to say that I couldn't care less what D&D allows or doesn't allow, but aside from that, yes, mostly. It's not just "do-everything-you-want" since "do-everything-you-want" is actually a good quality in an RPG. The ever-growing problem with TES games is "do-everything-you-want-with-no-difficulties-and-no-consequences." That's the problem, since it makes choices ultimately meaningless. All it comes down to is whether you want gray skin or pink skin or yellow skin or fur, or whether you want round ears or pointed ears, or whether you want to be tall or short. Beyond that, the choices are utterly meaningless, since the character is just going to be whatever results from the boxes you tick when the perk fairy visits.

I'm 100% certain it is. Skyrim was deliberately designed to provide an expressway to Uber City for the benefit of all those players who aren't interested in taking the scenic route and just seeing where they might end up. That's the trend the games have followed since Daggerfall, and that trend isn't going to stop now.

-------

And to drag this back on topic:

So - my ultimate TES game?

That'd be a spin-off title, so it could be made by a relatively small and unconstrained team of creative talents without the necessary restrictions of having to turn a profit on a triple-A title.

It'd be a fully 3d game world.

It'd have a fairly wide range of attributes that would depend on a number of starting options - race, gender and age, at least. It would have an even wider range of skills, which would also be affected by starting options, and could be further customized by the player at character creation.

The upshot of all of that would be that the player could create virtually any starting character, but within the constraints of the choices made, so that, for instance, the Orc most inclined to be a mage still would be at a "disadvantage" to the Altmer most inclined to be a mage, while the Altmer most inclined to be a warrior would still be at a "disadvantage" to the Orc most inclined to be a warrior. And those inclinations would carry throughout the game, so not only would different races, genders, ages, whatever be at an advantage or disadvantage starting out, but would have higher or lower maximums for those attributes or skills. No Altmer, no matter who it is, should EVER be as strong as the strongest Orc. Period.

Then it would provide an open and unscaled world with reasonable hints on where it was safe to go and where low level characters are sure to die and just let the characters loose in that world, to sort things out for themselves. It would have a wide array of factions and long and involved faction quest lines (for those so inclined), and with meaningful and significant relationships between the various factions and it would have scads of side quests. It would likely not have a main quest at all.

And there's undoubtedly a lot more, but that's the gist of it.

And Beth is NOT going to make that game, or anything even vaguely resembling it. But I predict that somebody else will.

After sitting down and reading through the last several posts, I have to agree with all the valid points made here.

One thing I hated about both Oblivion and, yes especially, Skyrim, is that one is forced into the MQ. It starts whether we are ready or not. You start Oblivion with Emperor Uriel already dead (well, as good as) and you start Skyrim with Helgen in ruins (or as good as). You need to load up Arthmoor's excellent alternative start mods to have Kvatch before it's ruined, and to have a sky free of dragons, for as long as you want.

I would prefer to see the "MQ" actually be relegated to the same status as the "side quests." Yes, the MQ would give us the primary reason for buying or playing the game, but it should not start until we are ready to start it.

A TES VI game that would be linear and "Failure is not an option" in style would be the basic game. Then the DLC's would be the ones to give it the RPG flavors. If I brought TES VI alone, it would be just the MQ - mainly just to "beat" the game. Then I would purchase the DLC's to 1. change the trigger for the MQ to be determined by the player, and 2. to provide roleplaying possibilities for those of us who love to role-play and deal with challenges and opportunities presented by different races and, yes, even different genders and ages. A teen Bosmer will have a different skill set than an aged Imperial, for example. What about an adult Nord in the prime of her life versus a wise old Jarl?

A game that combines both Destri's storyline and gpstr's suggestions would be totally awesome! I would def get that game (and this is a player who doesn't hang out at Game Stop or even play anything other than TES IV and V, except maybe the occasional *gasp* casual game).

Why is that? All games that aim to be fantasy role-play had their origin in table top RPG's. Most of the head of the game designing departments are in there mid to late 40's and all would have grown up in that Tolkien and D&D world. We would have none of the ideas like race, attributes, leveling or character class without it, and it it is crazy for Beth to throw game role-play out of the window just because it is a single player game where they want you to do everything.

I am reading 'Magician' at the moment, a book that came out in 1982 and I am staggered at the amount of ideas tha Elder Scrolls stole from it. The game world we see today is built on the past, whether we like it or not.

I do agree with the mass market problem. I would love to play characters that are built around a character class and are forced to have multiple characters to experience the whole game element. And they would have unique quests with real meaning, not just the jack-of-all trades experience that gaming is today.

I will say that I like TES better than D&D when it comes to 'classes'.

In TES, all options are open. Buffy is extremely focused and specialized, but her skillset is simply not possible in D&D. Her focus is stealthy bow +magic. In my mind, those skills require quite a bit of dedicated focus and her 'price' is that she has no ability with armor or melee, and even her magic is poor at classic slinging fire/ice/lightning. I've had a gut full of games with 'classes' that say if you touch magic, then a bow or sneaking is off limits and that if you pick up a bow, you must back it up with light armor and a sword. Ugh.

I want all the skill options to be available and am perfectly happy setting and building my own class limitations rather than having them dictated by game developers.

Heh, I just want TES to get the obtrusive quests outta my face.

@haute ecole rider - I just have to say that I DETEST Arthmoor's Alternative Start. I used it on one character with whom I had no intention of playing the MQ and ended up essentially forced into it when the old guy showed up and forced a note onto him, then turned the guilt screws on him to get him to go to the prison. With the way that Arthmoor handled that whole process, it was literally impossible to entirely avoid the MQ and essentially impossible for any reasonably decent character to even turn it down. That mod actually puts even MORE pressure on the character to do the MQ than the vanilla game does. I think it's a terrible mod and I wish I'd never used it - it ruined that character.

That out of my system - I like the idea of a linear "main quest" main game and roleplaying DLC. It's sort of a shame to consider having to buy additional content just to get an RPG, but at this point, that might be the only option (other than an indie game). As I've noted, there's just no way that mainstream publishers are going to put out a complex and nuanced game - they have to be guaranteed a profit, and the only thing that's guaranteed to be profitable at that level is failure is not an option vanilla with a coating of flash and dazzle.

@Winter Wolf - D&D is just one approach to roleplaying. I certainly don't want to see something as innately creative as roleplaying constrained to the standards that were set by one form of it, no matter what that one form might be. By its very nature, roleplaying is virtually unlimited. I see nothing to be gained by imposing traditionalist limitations on it - by, for instance, barring "mages" from using "armor" because that's what D&D did. The only things I care about as far as anything like that goes are variety, balance and internal logic. I couldn't care less what the specifics are, just so long as the reality that's being created is internally consistent and amenable to a variety of effective characters.

@Acadian - I agree wholeheartedly. I have no problem at all with some manner of limitations - with the sorts of things you've done with Buffy - because those make sense to me. By their nature, characters who specialize, and particularly characters who specialize in difficult fields, should have limited abilities in other fields if for no other reason than just because they don't have the time and energy left over to dedicate enough effort to those other fields to get good at them too. But the idea that there's some sort of force that somehow entirely prevents a character from one "class" from even being able to handle a weapon or item that's somehow designated for some other "class" just makes no sense at all to me.

I guess the problem that I see is that I can play an archer character with illusion support or an Illusionist mage with a back up bow and in ES they are exactly the same. That is madness! There is no advantage or penalty for playing either way and we end up with the exact same character. And the difference between a jack-of-all-trades character and a mystic archer is a lot smaller than you might think. It really just comes down to how many hours I choose to play like Buffy over the whole length of the time I play the character.

The correct way to role play is through character classes and not through self-limiting means that the game system provides. Education and profession should always be the determining factor in deciding who our character is, whether fantasy, real world or sci-fi.

It is a shame that Beth sees character classes, attributes, magic schools and specialization as too much work to put into the game. Look how horrible they designed the intro of Oblivion. In fact it was so bad they still had to put a custom class option in the game! And in most cases we had to use it just to fix the broken leveling system...

And what did they do about character classes in Skyrim? Oh yes, they took it out.

How is that an improvement?

No wonder we feel that Skyrim is 100 miles wide and one inch deep.

Good luck with Elder Scrolls VI and your 'freedom' gameplay.

Long before my days of computer gaming, I played pen and paper RPGs, Dungeons and Dragons included. That was back when it came in two flavors, Basic and Advanced. TBH, I think it is one of the poorest RPGs ever made. It was just the most well known RPG, and so I think it acted like a gateway drug for many gamers like myself, who moved on to better games, like Shadowrun, or the Champions/Fuzion/Hero system, Call of Cthulhu, or Marvel Superheros. The 3rd edition ruleset of D&D is a big improvement over how it was in the past. But it still lags far behind the other games out there, especially with magicians.

One of the things I always disliked about D&D was the class system. Because real people don't always fall into narrow little boxes, especially ones made by someone else. Even with multi/dual classing it could be difficult to shoehorn a character idea into what classes a game provides. Knights of the Old Republic was like that. Why couldn't a play a Jedi who was good with a lightsaber and at using computers? Nope, only a Jedi Consular can fix machines. I have always found games that allow you to define your character how you want - by picking your attributes, skills, and so forth - were much better. Because it is my character after all. Why should some guy sitting in an office dictate to me what she can or cannot do?

However, some games that have classes allow people to create their own, which I never had a problem with. Because you could define your character however you wanted. Shadowrun was like that with its templates. Basically it was a set of stats, skills, gear, and so forth you started with. When you created a character you could use a ready made template like a Street Samurai (who was all into combat skills, physical attributes, and cyberware), or you could make your own template using the rules they provided for how to assign skill points, attributes, and so on. Once you started playing the templates no longer mattered, as you could invest your experience points in raising any skill or attribute you wanted. But just as gpstr noted, you could not raise everything with the limited points you had. You had to pick and choose what your character's strong suits would be. That kind of game I love. Like the Fallout games, where you choose your attribute points, and then pick 3 tag skills. Then you take whatever perks and raise whatever skills you want every time you level up.

One of Skyrim's biggest weaknesses is not the lack of classes. It is the lack of ways it offers to define your character at the start of the game. The lack of attributes is far more glaring here. But even working within the game as it is, they could have allowed you to give your starting character extra points to either Health, Stamina, or Magicka. They could have given the option to start with one or more Perks. They could have allowed you to have a 5 or 10 point bonus to half a dozen skills. They could have allowed you to start with a Standing Stone Power, or choose from a list of Novice spells. All of these things would have gone a huge way to defining a unique character at the start of the game. Coincidentally, these are all of the things I do when I create a character for Skyrim, using the console and my own modded starting room. None of my characters in Skyrim ever start the game alike.