Okay, so this is something I've mentioned in threads in the past, but never started a thread to actually discuss.

Before Skyrim came out, I remembered playing Oblivion and decided that it would be kinda cool if they stopped freezing time while the player was in the menu system. If you wanna read a book, or drink a potion, or what have you, you have to remember time won't freeze while you're doing so. One obvious benefit is that it can preserve the challenge of battles - no guzzling potions in the middle of a fight, right? It could also make Restoration magic somewhat valuable, since you can simply equip a healing spell with a hotkey or something similar and heal yourself quickly in the lull of a battle where it might not be practical (or plausible) to say "Hey, wait a sec" then dig around in your rucksack to find like four healing potions to drink.

Also, it might aid immersion for those whose sense of immersion is a little more easily broken. If you're on some quest that you find through a book (I can think of at least two offhand) and you wanna stop for a second in the wilderness to re-read that book you're carrying in your pack to check your progress, or if you're using one of the treasure maps and want to re-check the map, you'd better make sure you weren't in bandit country, and check to see that there isn't a bear or pack of wolves on the horizon, or you might get jumped while your nose is in the book. Apply a damage multiplier to attacks on the player if they've got their attention concentrated on reading.

Also, this would apply to all kinds of activities. Time doesn't freeze while you're mining ore, right? Do it in a mine full of bandits, and the noise can draw them out, and you can easily get jumped while you've got a crappy weapon (a pick axe) in hand and your back turned. The same applies to smithing and improving weapons and armor, and I think it works the same for enchanting and alchemy - time continues to pass as you perform these activities. So why not make pickpocketing and lockpicking work the same way? If a guard walks by periodically, you'd better be good at lockpicking to get through that master lock quickly before he walks by again and sees you obviously committing a crime. If you're trying to pick the pocket of a mark who's walking along, you'd have to use the stick to keep sneaking behind them, while trying to fiddle in their pocket without getting caught.

This would also make people think more carefully about the things they do in terms of carrying several of the same item, with varying enchantments for different purposes. It's reasonable to pause before an imminent battle to take off your ring of sneaking +20% to slip on a ring of heavy armor +30% before the fight, but stopping time to take off your robes of sneaking and boots of sneaking and gloves of sneaking and hood of sneaking to slip into a full suit of heavy armor? No, that's patently silly, and it would make it so that playing the game is rewarded, rather than playing the game system.

This could be harder on people using the console-style hotkeys - console players plus PC players like me who use a 360 controller - but everything has its downsides. And PC players have the use of eight hotkeys, making it fairly easy to be able to do some reasonable things without freezing time - swapping out their bow for a greatsword, or something similar.

I get up to pee.

I come back.

I'm dead :[

lol

Sorry, I forgot to mention something at the outset - the System menu would freeze time. That would allow you to go pee, or to save your game or adjust the settings without getting an axe to the face, but it would mean those would mean those would be basically the only things you could do. No poking around the map, no checking your quest log, no rooting through your pack, no changing what you're wearing, and so forth.

Sorry, that should have been in the first sentence.

I like the idea, I was just being a smarty farty :]

As an option in the settings, I would not mind this; but I would never choose to use it.

Why? (Or rather, why is this preferable?)

no more pauses, ok. then add a chat system and multiplayer ) then check out the awesome online bethstore, only 5.99 for 1000 bethseptims! yay

no but really the game would benefit from your idea

That's fine, I'm a known [censored] myself.

Another, related idea I've thought of is an inventory-related question. Make it so that the player can only have a limited number and type of things on his person easily accessible, and the rest goes in a sack of some sort that is slower to root through. You could have a finite number of weapons on your belt or across your back, depending upon the type. Maybe two one-handed weapons on your belt, while on your back you could carry either a shield OR a bow OR a two-handed weapon. That would allow people to plausibly switch between some weapons combinations - shield and sword to bow and then back to shield and sword, or dual-wield to shield and sword, or warhammer to bow and back - without it being possible to walk around festooned with weapons hanging off your body.

It would also help prevent the "Hey, Imma wear a bunch of sneak-enchanted clothes for sneaking, then if I get seen I'll just pop on some heavy armor before the bad guys reach me" nonsense.

Then there are possibilities in terms of adjusting the encumbrance system to track bulk as well as weight. Carrying around five full suits of heavy armor as loot just isn't feasible even for a burly warrior. Even though a lot of people could actually carry that much weight (most full plate armor wasn't all that heavy) the bulk would be completely infeasible.

And as a corrolary to the idea of activities not freezing time, that of course should include the inventory menu, and equipping worn items should take varying amounts of time according to what you're doing. Slipping a ring on your finger or an amulet around your neck or a hat on your head would take a mere instant. Pulling on a pair of shoes or boots with buckles would take a good bit more, and of course buckling yourself into a suit of armor (both light and heavy) would certainly not be something you could do quickly. I think that even though in the real world it could take ten minutes (or more!) to put on a full suit of armor, depending on type, that twenty or thirty seconds or so in-game would get the point across, without being long enough to tick people off.

Well, partyly to add a tactical aspect to things when you're in dangerous territory - make sure you're in a reasonably safe place before you pull out that treasure map in the wilderness - but also to aid immersion for some people. Some folks have that sense of immersion broken by things like freezing time in the middle of a battle to draw a backup weapon when they get disarmed, and that sort of thing.

Also, I certainly think having it as an option is probably wise, and as I say, none of this would include the System Menu. Everybody has to be able to save their game in peace, and go pee without fearing for their character's life.

lol

I don't think there's anything feasible about the idea of true multiplayer Skyrim. Maybe cooperative, I suppose, but I don't think the combat system is sufficiently complex enough yet for it to be an interesting PvP-type game.

And if they ever let you do something as silly as buy in-game money, I'll know it's the End Times. Actually, they might as well go ahead, because I've almost never bought anything in-game except things that can't be found, and can only be purchased, like houses and their furnishings.

I'm trying to think of examples of games that have the feature of 'no freezing time in urgent situations (besides the emergency pause button), and the only one I managed to think of was the original Ratchet and Clank. That was one of the reasons why the first one was more challenging than the rest of the games in the series, which did let you freeze time when picking a different weapon on the fly.

While I like the idea for time to still pass while in non-urgent situations (like sitting down and reading a nice book), I think of one of the earliest examples why freezing time to stop and think is a good thing: The Legend of Zelda. Say you're about to die and you have no fairies or pots to smash for hearts, but you do have a red potion. You can drink it in time if time freezes for you to select it, but chances are you would be dead before you could select it otherwise.

However, along with that Fallout 'hardcoe' mode I heard about, this sort of thing would fit right in for those who want to be challenged. Just don't forget the emergency pause button. We are gamers very keen at ignoring our bodily needs for the sake of the games we love, but when you gotta go... You know :{D~

There is a game called Drakon: The Ancient Gates, which for a non-elder scrolls game is really good open world RPG and has Dragons. It has a system like the one you describe. Want to use a potion in the middle of a battle? Fine, but you better have it hotkeyed or be quick about hunting through your inventory for it because battle doesn't stop just because you are in your inventory. Found the potion? Good, but now there is an animation while you are drinking it and you cannot cast spells or block or attack until you drunk the svcker (although you can run around and try to avoid attacks).

Yeah, the ESC key goes directly to the System Menu, I think, which would be a pausing menu. I don't think there should be any attempt to prevent the player pausing the game to think, I just don't think they should be able to take actions within the game while time is frozen. It becomes a limited sort of "Freeze Time" spell, allowing you to do things like stop time to swap armor, drink potions, reread maps or books, eat food, etc.

As far as drinking potions in combat goes, I think the idea is bad. It's plausible to have one on your belt for emergencies, but being able to simply guzzle as many as it takes to get your red bar filled is just silly. Better that they balance fights so that they're always possible to win without healing potions, although remaining challenging.

Yeah, that sounds smart. Actions have consequences: drinking a potion takes time, and there are times you don't have much time and certainly can't manage to stop and take a drink.

A bit harsh, but I might enjoy something like this.

I mostly wish time didn't stop while you were reading.

Hmm. Actually, it occurs to me I've only really tested this while reading a book directly from the inventory. The *inventory* stops time, I know, but activities like alchemy, smithing, and speaking do not. So maybe time doesn't stop if you drop the book and read it that way?

Other than that, I really wish lockpicking was realtime. I keep thinking back to the Thief 1 & 2 games, where lockpicking was a very simple system (you had 2 picks, & just had to go back & forth between them for a few seconds to open the door) - but what made it fun was that sense of danger that a guard could come back on his patrol route before you were done.

Of course, making lockpicking happen in real time, you'd want the minigame to get out of your face so you could look around for guards....

Yah the potion fiending really is one of the biggest things that really outta be a time-sink, but on the other hand then specifically the health & mana restoration potions lose a tramendous amount of value if they occupied the same sort of in-game time needs as say flipping over to a healing spell itself. Because they don't occupy any sort of in-game time to manifest I exploit that and I really shouldn't be able to Ideally this will be something the modding community can take care of as part of a more 'hardcoe' mode of game play where instant +health restore potions and such just don't exist and potions are more of a preperational thing where you employ them prior to the event they're going to be used in.

Drinking a potion that's +health regen prior to that encounter with the big bad dragon? Cool.
Getting fire-breathed and on the needle of life left you can pause, dig around the inventory, drink one (or worse multiple) heal potions, unpause and survive the encounter? Lame.

Part of the problem, with TES games historically, is there's way too many spells and potions. A kotkey system could be helpful - you could have, say, 5 or six items hotkeyed, and maybe 5 or 6 spells you can quickly switch through.

But, it's hard to know ahead of time which spells or potions to prepare - will you need a cure poison? A Cure disease? Restore Stamina? Cure paralysis? Restore magicka? Resist Frost? A poison perhaps (there's about a dozen different types of poison)? Chameleon? Detect Invisibility?

in some diablo-like games where there's only two potions (restore health, restore magicka), the hotkey system works because you only have 2 or maybe 3 possible options for potions. When you have dozens of types of potions, a hotkey system becomes extremely restrictive.

Edit: I'd be more supportive of an idea where you can only drink one potion (or more generally, take one "action" per pause - you can change a weapon, or a piece of armor, or drink a potion), then you have to unpause, and your "queued" action takes place over the course of a second or two, then you can pause again if needed to choose another action. I could also see having like a 1-second delay on the pause hotkey (Tab on PC, at least "traditionally" in TES games), in which the enemy might land a blow or do something else before you can pause to take your action.

Well, I get the thing about finite hotkeys, but frankly you only need some potions and spells in combat. In Oblivion I'd hotkey things like repair hammers for convenience's sake, but really it makes more sense to save hotkeys for things you need in combat. Hotkeying (a single) healing potion to use quickly is one thing. After that, you've got seven hotkeys left for weapons and spells, which ought to be sufficient for your in-combat, emergency needs. Other spells, just go through the menu to access them.

Now again, this might be a bit tough for people using console controllers, admittedly. For PC people, my suggestion would be to fix it so that people using a USB 360 controller still have access to using the eight keyboard hotkeys. I don't know what to do for the 360 and PS3 crowd, except maybe to fix it so they can use the eight-way D-pad as hotkeys, even though this would admittedly make it so you couldn't use the favorites menu that way.

Before release, I started a thread asking what people thought, not of non-pausing menus, but animations for drinking potions, reading scrolls, and even using soul gems. Only a second long or whatever. Got right royally ripped apart by posts saying 'why did I want to make everything so difficult?' Not popular.

I totally wanted to see a 'treasure chest opening' animation. Every time I'd open one I'd go 'da-na-na-naaaaahhh!!!'

But sadly, your royal apart-rippers are the majority who would think that would take away from the 'fast flow' of gameplay we've gotten used to in these big games.

Yeah, that's a part of it - people that want to be able to rush things. While I am quite glad that I can fast-forward through dialogue I've already heard - wasn't it one of those Metal Gear games that had loooooong cutscenes you couldn't skip through? - I don't see any value in making the game oriented toward button-mashers. I don't know how anybody would support zero-time activities...except the very same people that cry about the absence of attributes because they don't have an easy way to game the system. These are the same people that want zero-weight arrows, and probably want zero-weight potions.

I never change armour in the middle of fights (rings and amulets are free to be changed though) as a self imposed challenge. I would like to spend in-game time reading books though, since I refuse to use the "wait" function.

Yeah, I had to break myself of the habit of switching back and forth between sneak boots and fightin' boots. They don't just slip on, you know. I sometimes do allow myself to change gauntlets for archery, but that might be a bit silly as well.

I do like this idea. I must admit after watching the E3 demo I really wasn't a fan of them making dialogue real time. But after playing for a while, going back to F3 or Oblivion, it just seems so weird. Having people walk past you, or getting attacked in dialogue is so much more immersive.

However, I'd find things like combat a lot more difficult if the inventory didn't freeze time. So I'm not really sure how they'd do it without making combat annoying.

Some people want a game in which they are never forced to retreat or back down from a threat.
This is essentially the casual gamer: They want to win, but most critically, it must be convenient.
There are more casual gamers pushing convenience than any other demographic, expect more "dumbing down", as some call it, in the future.

Keep in mind that every company that exists has only one main goal: Make Money. Everything else is secondary.
Even Bethesda's CK is profitable, it just makes them far more awesome than other companies.

I agree with this to some extent, although I think it's probably more what people have gotten used to. Anything they used to be able to do - even if it's as stupid as being able to freeze time to chug ten healing potions in the middle of battle - they get angry if a game comes out that doesn't let them do it.

Skyrim and RPGs in general depend upon believability, and having these sorts of limitations is crucial to believability.