Did anyone else see the animation in the Far Harbour trailer where the man threw a fish to the side (at about 16 seconds)? Makes me really excited to imagine walking into a town and having lots of unique animations occurring such as people doing jobs (smith,fishing, cooking, building, carrying etc), sitting, resting against a wall etc.

I am still really happy with the quality of animations in Fallout 4. Although they are not amazing, nothing sticks out as bad, unlike in previous games.

I never got a fishy stick, i feel left out.

Somewhat more tangentially related to my last post on their significant hiring activity, Zenimax has trademarked and re-trademarked several things in recent weeks, including updating (not simply renewing, but totally overhauling) their trademarks for "Starfield" and "Void Engine" (previously "Void Engine Powered By idTech"). As well as a new logo that looks... kinda eh. The classes of the new IP suggest overwhelmingly that it's an MMO, and on id's hiring page (of all developers) it actually has a job that involves creating "marketing materials to appeal to MMO Gamers."

So... apparently we're going to see an MMO at B3 by id of all people, when Doom has only just come out. Weird.

The probability of it relating to BGS is nil I admit, but as they're a close-nit family I'm quite curious.

I meant within a 'core' TES game.

I've only recently taken up the task of handing them out. Clearly, whoever was on task when you signed up was a horrible, fish stick hating lout. An affront which i shall remedy.

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/509199713966248809/0F5AF3EEE1F945B23893C1B6E78DDB45573C988D/?interpolation=lanczos-none&output-format=jpeg&output-quality=95&fit=inside%7C268:268&composite-to=*,*%7C268:268&background-color=black for everyone! I was hoping to find a funny Gif for that...

Anyway...

Yeah, the quality of animations in Fallout 4 are a noticeable improvement over Bethesda's past stuff. It's still not what i would call 'Up to par' but it's definitely moving in the right direction.

Aww, thank you

Tes with 2-4 person co-op would be dope. I think it would be worth it.

At the very least, make the CS more flexible so we can have a multiplayer without inserting a dozen of https://www.reddit.com/r/TamrielOnline/ to accomplish it.

I don't want "realism." This is a fantasy game: I want fantasy.

One of two things need to happen: 1) Bethesda needs to bring underwater combat back or 2) Bethesda needs to remove underwater enemies. Taking away our ability to defend ourselves underwater is like taking away our ability to defend ourselves in a dungeon. It is bad game design.

A lot of fantasy games have a level of realism in them and yea, underwater combat makes little sense and is really not that big of a deal to bring back. Honestly, it was pretty boring in the previous games and it's one of those things I thought didn't really impact the game by removing.

Using 'Fantasy' as an excuse is just that. An excuse. And a bad one at that.

Part of what makes good fantasy so engaging is the fact that its relatable, consistent and follows an internal logic. Throwing that out the window for no reason beyond 'Fantasy' doesn't add to the world building or the immersion in that world.

We know that Tamriel has certain laws and qualities, many of which closely resemble our own. We know water has viscosity, we know moving through it is significantly different than through the air, and we know that it has various currents and disturbances that disrupt both force and direction of things in it. We've been told by in-universe sources that under water combat is both difficult and dangerous (and that some species are highly adapted to fighting in such an environment). Ignoring all of that and implementing a system, simply for the sake of having it, and explaining it away with 'Fantasy' is just sloppy game design and lazy world building.

As it stands, being unable to fight in the water, and knowing there could be enemies down there (even if they're only Slaughterfish) causes a reaction. You're always thinking about whether or not you should try to swim out to that island, or whether or not that flooded tunnel is worth it. It generates a sense of suspense and danger that simply did not exist before. NOT having underwater combat, and still having aquatic threats, offers more to game play and the world (even if it's poorly utilised) than the hack-job we had in the past ever came close to accomplishing.

If it were to return (and i want to make it clear, just like Spears, and Throwing Weapons, and Spellcrafting, i do want underwater combat to return) it needs to be done in a meaningful way that prompts more thought than just "i need to breathe".

I'd like to see Fallout4's water movement adapted and improved for the next TES. In F4, if you're in Power Armor you'll sink in water, and you'll be forced to walk along the bottom (slowly), whereas you could more easily swim out of power armor. Perhaps for TES, the weight of your armor or lack thereof can determine if you can swim (clothing or very light protection), if you'll slowly descend and have trouble staying afloat (more moderate protection), or if you'll sink like a rock (heavy protection). This would inherently add to any kind of water-based content as you'd need to consider how you'd move through water, and properly prepare for it. Though for this to work reasonably well, you shouldn't be able to swap armor at a whim.

Not being able to stab things under water makes people avoid going in the water.

Simple, true statement. It's fine if you don't want to put anything down there worth getting, but sunken ships, submerged ruins and awesome grottoes make the world better, and they are impossible to explore in a non-terrible way without combat. Fine if you don't like the way it was implemented in previous games, but can you honestly tell me that you didn't love the crap out of diving for pearls, punching dreugh in the face and stealing all of the skeletons' fishing rods in Morrowind? Peke Utchoo was only possible because of the exploration that underwater combat made fun.

It would be easy to make weight matter more underwater, and to make sharp weapons retain their damage while blunt weapons became drastically less damaging (probably to zero, if we're being honest with how water works). The rules for magic would need to change as well. Not a tough fix, though.

First of all, good underwater exploration (and treasure hunting) would be more than enough reason to go underwater, regardless of combat. GTA V has vibrant underwater areas without needing combat; AC: Black Flag also had some nice - if very scripted - patches of underwater exploration. But sure, I could play along with modest combat involving knives or something as a last resort. I just don't buy swimming around in plate mail and swinging even just a regular sword. And I think it should be hard, if not impossible, to face down a fair amount of the more dangerous aquatic life.

Right now though, the underwater areas just aren't worth exploring because they flat out svck. It's visually uninteresting and offers no rewards, quite aside from combat.

Honestly, I would be fine with underwater exploration with a very minimal combat system. The only thing that I can really imagine making sense for underwater combat would be thrusting weapons, since a slash or a chop aren't really going to be able to do much. I think limiting combat actions while underwater to thrusting with a knife, spear or sword would be fine with me so long as the underwater areas were mostly just for exploration and the enemies were relatively few (i.e. the occasional slaughterfish or two, maybe even a dreugh now and then).

Maybe certain spells could work while underwater, too, but I can't really imagine trying to use any of the elemental spells actually working out well. Maybe basic entropy spells would work, and some of the defensive alteration or illusion spells. Do we have any in game sources that talk about casting while under water?

Honestly? Yes i can. I had far more fun in Skyrim, diving on the scattering of sunken ships, than i did in any underwater areas in either Morrowind or Oblivion. Even without any meaningful reward, the tense atmosphere of knowing how vulnerable and exposed i was under water created a far more exhilarating experience than any whackyness Morrowind did.

No, it's not a particularly tough fix. Plenty of games have already fixed it. But the point is, it's something that needs to be fixed before bringing underwater combat back.

I think, regardless of underwater content, it's an important aspect to the game. An important thing about TES is having it actually feel like a full, 3D world. Part of that is being able to go up (climbing mountains, flying), and part is going down (spelunking, diving). Having a way to fight while underwater seems like a natural thing if it becomes an expanded space for exploration, but maybe it could require some additional issues be brought up to be handled by the player. The easiest thing is probably just to bring magic into it though. Bring back Swift Swim and make it apply to ALL actions underwater (since Fortify Speed was by far more useful for just moving) and you've got the easiest solution. Now you can swing weapons quickly underwater. Throw in water breathing and you're ready for as many underwater adventures as your magicka holds out for.

or just be an Argonian.

I'm all for an expansion of underwater areas, combat, and enemies. I would absolutely love to have a few water dungeons with unique puzzles, traps, and dynamics that take advantage of water levels, currents, streams, etc. I feel like Bethesda could take a few notes from the Legend of Zelda here. It wouldn't need to be anything large in number. I'd just like to see 5 or 6 water dungeons that are well-done.


I also would love to have a water atronach with a unique ability to extend its body around through surrounding water and use the nearby water as a weapon. It could move around like an amoeba. I guess I think of it like Morpha from Ocarina of Time.


As for underwater combat, it should come back to some degree but be hard to use for most characters, barring a perk or two that grant superior underwater mobility, along with maybe an innate Argonian ability applying to this.

Ability to define the religion of our characters, and to have the Shrines to the Gods we want our character to revere.

Each race have their own religion, but in Skyrim we could only build Shrines to the 9 Imperial Divines. Why not Shrines to the Nordic Pantheon? There are quests we can complete for our characters to learn about the Nord's gods, but then we go back to our Homesteads and tap on the Shrines of the 8/9 Divines.

It always struck me a little weird that Meridia and Azura had no problem taking our characters on as their champions, while we were wearing and/or wielding the items of Molag-Bal, Boethia and Namira.

And that Molag-Bal hates Boethia and wants to subjugate her Priest, but ignores that we have worked for her and are carrying her favour.

If Daedric worship is supposed to be outlawed, why do people do it? If people could get bonus from Shrines for the Daedric Pantheon, then it becomes a temptation for players to engage in something illegal - so long as there's a risk of them getting caught and having consequences for doing so. Maybe certain Daedric sovereigns don't like talking to agents/worshipers of their enemies.

Oh, and why does Boethiah, Daedric Mistress of deceit, conspiracy, treachery and sedition, give a buff to One-Handed rather than Sneaking?

I didn't play a Sneak character, but her blessing made no sense to me at all. If I'm biased, it's because my Orc felt dirty using a Shrine to Boethiah, so I stuck to my blessing from Stendarr instead. : P

So, inspired by both the underwater discussion and the Combat Mechanics thread, I've been thinking abbout how an Athletics skill could fit in in the next TES. While I like it in theory it's always been implemented in a very passive way and been a skill that everyone eventually becomes proficient in, rendering it sort of characterless. This is what I've come up with so far:

Revamped Athletics:

Thoughts?

because the writers forgot the Nordic pantheon was its own thing for 80% of the game.. heck, even the stormcloaks who claim to want to bring back "the old ways" are citing the worship of a god originating from the Imperial pantheon as a reason for what they are doing..


I think they didn't want to confuse some fans so they went "naah, instead of putting the focus on a new set of gods, lets just use the ones we used in Oblivion, people will know who they are!"

Daedric worship isn't actually illegal (unless they outlawed it post-oblivion crisis and i never noticed), just frowned upon depending on where one lives and which Daedra it is.. think of it sort of like Satanism IRL, no real laws forbidding it, but if you told someone it was your religion you would likely get a few stern glances from Christians


heck, a couple of the pantheons actually formally include Daedra within their http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Gods of gods

Procedurally generated terrain?


https://youtu.be/HhyyUiYQolA

My take on the whole journal issue is a bit different. I love the way the journal worked in Morrowind. You had to follow verbal directions to reach your quest (lets leave the issue of bad directions to one side for now) and I loved that. If you made the journal optional, you'd have to build the game such that you could also turn off quest markers. Essentially, for an optional journal they would need to to implement BOTH the Morrowind system for one type of player and the Skyrim system for the filthy casuals other type of player?. (<- that was a joke, everyone calm down)

Basically my point is that going to the effort of writing a bunch of journal entries for each quest that, lets face it, most people aren't likely to read, is something that BGS are unlikely to do. So the way I see it, its one or the other. I for one hope they take out fast travel, write a decent journal, and stick road signs on the junctions instead of having a quest marker you can magically zip to.

If I had my way, the system would work like Morrowind but I'd include one other feature. Your character would have a map, and a piece of charcoal so you could make notes, or marks on your map. Quest givers would ask if you wanted them to mark a location on your map, and some quest givers would know exactly where something was and some would only be able to outline a certain area. If your map gets too covered in marks and stuff there could be a cheap little spell to clear it, and if you aren't magically inclined it could be a cheap service offered by mages (along with scroll crafting, but that's another thing). either that or you could just buy a new map...

Instead of a charcoal, notes should just appear on the map as a drop-down menu, so players can see which quests are open in which city.

.....I like that idea .also make it so we can make our own custome waypoint on the map that expand into a wordpad of sorts that you can write on to leave note of things you need to remember

They already tried this with Arena and Daggerfall to generate a new world and new dungeons for each playthrough. That's how they got the games to fit on a disk at all. The problems were that the dungeons turned out incredibly complex and nonsensical, side quests also had to be randomly generated since the NPCs and dungeons weren't predefined, and big regions of the game still needed to be handcrafted for plot reasons.

For Oblivion, they tried making a predefined world that was initially made with procedural generation and touched up by hand. This made the world consistent, but still required doing a lot of work by hand and the result was divisive. The procedural dungeons had new algorithms so they wouldn't be so easy to get lost in, but this resulted in very linear dungeons without side paths. It was pretty easy to spot the more well-made handcrafted dungeons and the more detailed regions of the overworld where the devs had done some work. This approach was recycled exactly for Fallout 3.

They went mostly with the Oblivion approach for Skyrim, but they improved the algorithms, put more work into the overworld, and did more dungeons by hand. The result was generally better received.

As it stands, while procedural generation will continue to be useful for the early stages of building the game, it still doesn't seem to stand up to a handcrafted world, especially one as dense as what's in TES games. A lot of people who started with Morrowind are also still frustrated with the lack of hand-placed loot in the later games. If you generate a whole new world every time you generate a whole new character, then that completely eliminates the possibility of finding something special somewhere. You can't go to a specific dungeon to pick up a specific artifact, for instance. Skyrim's one-off out-of-the-way scenes, like the mage that accidentally immolated themself, would also either be gone entirely or stop being unique.

I didn't mean it as a replacement for the journal.

I'd prefer a notes section in your journal for this. The map idea is not supposed to just be another menu...

1. Merging armor and athletics makes no sense what-so-ever
2. We can keep the whole "armor doesn't effect encumbrance" to the respective armor skill
3. dodging, climbing, swimming and sprinting are cheap ways to make it useful
4. Melee fighting can just be it's own category and has nothing to do with athletics.
5. Athletics is still nothing but a bad fluff skill, even with the changes you listed.