No, they're part of your character's adventure, so I think should be a bit more than "Day 52, spotted a new piece of paper on the message board today...". I think radiant quests should be plentiful enough and each have enough variables that you could play for a really long time before realizing you've been doing radiant quests. As it is, once people get a sniff of a quest being radiant, they'll either drop it or make it a really low priority because it's 'pointless busy work'. In my opinion, the radiant quests should be the driving force for getting your character out into the world and doing things (rather than the MQ), during which time you'll find other interesting things and places. A message board filled with impersonal "public" requests doesn't seem to me to be a good motivator for doing things.

Like, here's a list of Daggerfall's quests, the vast majority of which down the page are "radiant":
http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Quests#Dark_Brotherhood

The variety of stories behind the quests and places to receive such quests simply wouldn't work nearly as well if they were given via a board somewhere. Especially if the quests can have an effect on disposition and reputation, interacting with people would be very important to get the sense of impacting people and the community. I like interacting with the people I'm doing jobs for, not a wooden board with papers stuck on it. If I"m doing work for a guild, I like to feel like I'm part of the guild by interacting with them to get jobs. If I'm just picking next piece of paper off of a central board, I'm going to feel much less connected to the things I'm doing and the people I'm doing it for.

For radiant quests to work, they need good and meaningful variety. Good and meaningful variety necessitates more dialog (if the variety is purely in notes, I wouldn't call it that good or meaningful). It's an inevitability of the system. There are things the devs can look to do to mitigate the problem though, that don't resort to full-on speech synthesis.

Yeah, which prevents any kind of quest that needs to http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:The_Emperor%27s_Gift. Or quests that http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:A_Mix-Up. It restricts quests to generic public work with little inter-personal involvement. Interacting with the people you're working for goes a long way to helping form an emotional connection, even if it's over basic jobs. If I get jobs from a board, I'll only ever get to know the board. If I get jobs from people, though, then I'll likely start feeling something for those people (may or may not be positive depending on what happens over time).

And all of those are decent examples of how to use message boards for non-quest stuff (in a broad sense; yes they technically trigger quests, but it's not really a quest, more of just a reminder that sticks in your log..forever..). They're simply alerting you to things, but to actually do them, you have to go talk to people and do what they need. Though I can't say I'd mind being able to talk to people about those things, either. It's an alternative way to present public information, which may or may not be related to some quests, but it's not a good replacement for quest givers. Sometimes quests http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:The_Loose_Pet_Imp.

Here's a thought: have the boards mostly feature radiant quests with some non-radiant pre-built quests thrown in. Should give players some incentive to check the boards if there's at least one interesting quest guaranteed.

They add more immersion than the smith giving you her fathers sword after just meeting her


I like the f4 companion progression. Going to be interesting when roleplaying as a bad person in next tes such as necromancer. I cant even imagine if faendal had as much depth as piper

Or mixed emotions such as serana vs paladin danse

That's more or less what i'm getting at.

I agree with practically everything Huleed is saying, which makes me think i'm not explaining myself particularly well.

I don't think that an over-reliance on Bulletin Boards is the answer. I don't think we should take The Witcher approach and cram 90% of content into a single delivery system. Nor do i think they should totally replace traditional methods of issuing Radiant content.

But using them as another tool to deliver content is a good idea. They allow you to easily open up more generic jobs for a wider range of NPCs (Stardew Valley is a good example of this) with minimal extra work, they offer a way to garner interest in areas that would typically serve as social gathering places, and they offer an additional way to deliver information about points of interest and new opportunities without an over reliance on forced exposition or those thrice damned Couriers.

Like most world-building and quest-delivering tools, it's not something that can cover every angle comfortably. Over reliance on any single approach diminishes the whole. But as a tool to increase the range of quests, and how they're delivered, it's something that shouldn't be discounted.

So... I don't know about y'all, but if the minuteman Slave-General driving quests are anything like Radiant quests, than I think they should tweak that and make it the General dishing out orders instead of being ordered.

i agree with most of these. as for the notice board hot topic. for the people who haven't checked that mod out, it's just a "quest center" like the barkeep telling you rumors, it also acts as a gathering point for NPC mercenaries whom the player can actually join on radiant quests.

i also don't mind that it's just a "quest center" handing out radiant quests. specifically because they are radiant quests.

i would be annoyed if they did this to main quests or large quest lines, but i don't mind this for radiant quests. it saves me the time from asking the barkeep for rumors or asking the jarl or steward for bounty contracts that i can't choose.

the notification board allows the players to choose which radiant quests they wanna activate. that's a cool feature for me.

edit :

-i don't think handing avenicci's sword to her father or faendal's quest as "radiant quests".. <----- those are sidequests, not radiant quests.

radiant quests are repeatable and randomly generated.

i agree, the best place to check which probable new features to add would be to look at the most endorsed mods.

as for adding a new race. a lot of people wanna preserve the status quo and it's a hot issue that somehow offends people as if you slapped them in the face, the moment someone even remotely suggests adding a new race.


i don't mind having a new race though. as long as they implement it good and seamlessly.

I think for TES IV the most important things for me to improve on are:

Remove radiant quests - I much prefer well fleshed out quests that are limited in numbers compared to the radiant quests we get to fetch things, kill something, save somebody etc. from Skyrim and FO4. It allows the game to be endless yes but it's completely uninteresting to me since the quests are meaningless at the same time.

Better quests for factions, in fact, better factions - I don't care much if the main questline is whatever, since I feel like the factions and other entities (places, people) are the things that make the world amazing. We need to have much better storylines for factions, more varieties of factions (instead of the standard thieves guild, dark brotherhood, mages guild, fighters guild, and/or variants of these). Factions should also be not so simple as "go here and sign up" to join, they should create stories on their own that provides interesting ways of joining, interesting developments within the guilds (instead of do quests and rank from noob -> master), and plot twists. I feel like one of the biggest gripes I have with Skyrim is the writing was a let down so much compared to Oblivion.

Examples of the faction issue...

Thieves guild

Oblivion - Loved how you could join by having high disposition towards beggars. Great end quest.

Skyrim - Go to a sewer and simply join

DB

Oblivion - Had to murder somebody in cold blood

Skyrim - Go speak with Aventino to join... (seriously this was the biggest disappointment when I played Skyrim for the first time ever, for the quest to pop up saying "speak with ... about joining the dark brotherhood")

Mages guild

Oblivion - Recommendation quests

Skyrim - Pass a very simple test and join the college (then rest of questline can be completed without any knowledge of magic)

Fighters guild was the only meh guild I felt in Oblivion and similarly I felt like the companions questline was extremely short and let down by the fact that it's made up of just radiant quests.

I think in terms of the world Bethesda is hands down the best and they absolutely smash it when it comes to making an amazing world, but just seeing how the Witcher 3 brought open world RPG to a whole new level wasn't its combat, or crafting, or other gimmicks, but simply it's stories, and sub stories. We have the great worlds that Bethesda create, now they just have to bring it to life with great stories and TES IV will be absolutely mind blowing I think.

TES: IV is 10 years old...

You can't stop yourself from being snotty to people for no reason, can you?

Radiant Quests have a place. They serve as a dynamic element to the game to increase the range of activities in which you can engage, and to remove the finate limits on conventional questing. Just because they are uninteresting to YOU does not mean it has no value. They need more variety, and a better grounding in the world (and ideally a fixed economy to make them more relevant...) But they arent something that should be cut out entirely.




None of these are exactly accurate... In Skyrim, you don't just go into the sewers and sign up, you get approached by a Guild Member to be a fall-guy and plant stolen property on someone else, and when you succeed you impress him enough to be sponsored into the guild. While it's execution is somewhat sloppy, i think it's basis as an introduction to a criminal organization was quite good, and the overal quest line for the Thieves Guild was superior in Skyrim. The only really fun part of Oblivions was the heist at the end.


Similarly, the Dark Brotherhood is handled far better in Skyrim. They don't run down a random murderer for the start, they run down an opportunistic killer who stole a contract from them.


And finally, you join the Mages Guild by talking to any guild head in any guild hall. The Recommendation are for entry into the Arcane University, not the Mages Guild. While I do think there is a bit of weakness with the College of Winterholds introduction, it's not nearly as clunky as Oblivions introduction sequence. At least the first few steps feel more like an institution of learning instead of whatever the Recommendation process in Oblivion was.


None of that is to say that Skyrims factions were not problematic. They tended to be overly abrupt, poorly developed, and with no clear progression process. The Mages Guild also perpetuated the problem of 'Too many catastrophes' that began with Oblivion. But whether you enjoyed them or not, Oblivions guilds had just as many, if not more underlying problems with their story telling and design as Skyrim.


I've already spoken at length about The Witcher 3, so I won't elaborate beyond: Most of its stories aren't that good, and comparing it to TES is like comparing Apples to Potatoes.

Sure, but then it's just about delivering content, and nothing about radiant quests specifically. Radiant quests would still be available through people, and hand-made quests and notices would also appear on the notice board.


Although I'm still not overly fond of relying on such message boards to get anything (such that it's the only way to get a lead on something). I think NPC interaction is too important, that talking to NPCs should be the defacto way of getting information about relevant events/jobs/etc, and any message board use would be completely optional. I miss being able to talk to NPCs about general gossip and rumors.

More like, you get approached by a guy who just straight up goes "You're a thief, right? Wanna do a little work for me? I'll let you join my buddies if you're good." There is absolutely no pretense to it at all, they approach you with the proposition regardless of the type of character you are, you don't have to show any gumption for the kind of work they do, and they'll still let you in even if you fail. More than just being sloppy, it's outright out of character for a secret underground guild of thieves, especially one that's on the verge of collapsing, to approach random people they obviously know nothing about.


By comparison, in Oblivion, you had to track the guild down yourself in one of various ways just to find the meeting point... either actually getting arrested for theft to get their attention, buttering up the beggars, or talking to the right people. Get there, and you're tasked with doing a job to get in. If you fail that job, you don't get in because you're not good enough. Though they will of course give you a second chance that's practically impossible to fail, but it still does a much better job of having you find your way in to a secret underground criminal organization instead of being propositioned in the middle of a busy market square the moment you set foot in the token "seedy city".

They don't really just run down a random murderer. They see you murder someone, and then they task you with murdering someone else of their choosing, as a show of trust (at which point you could deny it and actually kill him, or follow through with it), then get let in when you succeed and show yourself to be worth joining.



Skyrim's wasn't bad in general, since you still had to make the effort of actually murdering people to get their attention, but I can't help but feel they pushed it in your face way too much. Random innkeep somewhere in the province, "Aretino's trying to contact the dark brotherhood". Two weeks later, in Windhelm, "Don't go in there, Aretino's doing something evil." Two weeks later when you feel like checking it out, you find him alone in his house performing the black sacrament. People all over the province have known what this kid's been doing for a month, and he's been alone in his house this whole time in the middle of the city (which has also been having problems with murders), and no one's done anything to stop him?

The beginning of Skyrim's Mages Guild quest had a lot of promise. But it completely falls to pieces once you hit Sarthaal a couple quests in. With Oblivion, it felt like you were earning your place in the AU by getting the guild hall leaders to vouch for you, with quests and events that fit thematically and foreshadowed the upcoming conflict really nicely. Overall, I liked Oblivion's a lot more, with the main downside being it should've had you doing magic a lot more.

And that leads to one of the bigger problems SKyrim's guilds had. Each guild was based solely in a specific city. Companions, Whiterun. College, Winterhold. Thieves, Riften, DB, Falreath. To turn in a quest and get the next one, you were heading back to the same place over and over again, which helped make the game world feel small. In contrast, previous games had guilds in various locations. Thieves Guild had you being based in Bravil, Anvil, the IC, etc. The Mages Guild had you being based in Bruma, Chorrol, Lleyawiin, etc.

Don't bother...Lachdonins brain works on New is better...no matter how stupid.

Well, most of the games features, from dialogue to landscaping to the compass, are about delivering content. It's about offering more diverse types of content, and more diverse ways of accessing it. Self discovery, Interaction, Eavesdropping, Bulletin, they're all ways of delivering content, but an over-emphasis on any individual one comes with its own problems.


Boards alone allow for an expanded random-quest system and Point-Of-Interest notifications with minimal extra work, because you dont need explanatory dialogue. Combining them with rumours, personal requests and broader interaction requires a little more work than any individual approach, but doing so creates a more diverse information-delivery system that minimises repetitive elements, increases the range of NPCs reasonably involved in information and quest generation, and helps simulate a little bit of a wider social community that doesn't seem centered on the PC.


It shouldn't be used to REPLACE rumours, gossip, Interaction and self descovery, but rather to complement it.

No, my brain works on critical evaluation, instead of gut reaction or total misinformation. EVERYTHING has some form of value, it's a question of determining what that value is, and whether or not its use outweights it's deficiencies.




Don't misunderstand, I generally agree. My point wasn't to say that Skyrims factions were better, because they weren't. They had their own host of problems, from catastrophic pacing, to a near total lack of subtlety, to generally uninteresting characters. Not to mention the forcefulness of its attempt to deliver 'Hooks' to get your interest.


It was more about selling the Skyrim factions short while overglorifying the Oblivion ones. Both are deeply flawed messes that do as much wrong as they do right. I think the Joining of the Thieves Guild in Oblivion was definatrly better, but saying that you just waltz into the sewer to join in Skyrim is simply not correct.


Frankly, NONE of the TES games have done particularly well with Factions. They've all had strong points and weak points, but the end results are always left lacking.

I find it mildly amusing that seeming as of late, degrading weapon conditions seems to be a thing again. The Witcher was one thing, but the Legend of Zelda? Colored me surprised.

The important thing for me is just how you repair items. Repair hammers were pretty lame. It looks like Breath of the Wind doesn't have a repair mechanic, and you just replace broken items with new versions. Really wouldn't work for Elder Scrolls, but as long as equipment repair feels "right" I won't whine about it. Would certainly add another good layer to crafting and material qualities.

But what really got me about the new Legend of Zelda, though. I'm going to eat my words for this, but that climbing looked so natural. It's not just some obvious "see that patch of vines on an even surface? you can climb it" like in any other adventure game, you can climb almost anything and it looks right. The biggest obstacle Elder Scrolls has that Zelda doesn't is actor AI - even if NPCs can't climb (you could probably add a new type of navmesh for scalable walls, but then they've still got to program how the AI handles combat, or chasing the player, etc), they'd need to figure out how to reach the player character or target them while they're climbing.

I've played all of 5 minutes of Zelda in my life. Zelda 2, i think... Anyway, i can't really say much about it, because i've barely been exposed to it, but the new one looks rather Survival oriented, rather than the traditional Action-Adventure route... so degradation is more of a standard element.

Degradation is a great idea, in principle, but everyone seems to be sticking with the same old implementation. Use Weapon, Break Weapon, Repair Weapon. It was just as bad in Wild Hunt as it was in Oblivion... Its something i'd like to see, but it needs to be handled differently.

i play dark souls, so stuff like weapon degradation just seemed natural for me. there's also mods like loot and degradation, so i'm already kinda used to weapon degradation in skyrim.

i've also played with mods like frostfall and iNeeds, so survival stuff isn't new to me either.

i've also played with mods like bleed them dry, battle fatigue, and crippled limbs, so stuff like crippled limbs, bleeding, and fatigue isn't new to me either.

if only i could find a good parkour mod for skyrim, things would be more immersive, but the closest thing i found is better jumping which adds a double jump and a sprint jump, which isn't exactly what i'm looking for. :/

Random spur-of-the-moment thoughts on degradation:

- Only power attacks degrade weapons. Armor only degrades from power attacks. And of course degradation spells.

- Effectiveness doesn't constantly scale down with durability, maybe lowered effectiveness at 25% or lower durability.

- Broken items are unusable, but take up no carry weight in our inventory. A la broken power armor in Fallout.

- Can repair an item at the same workbench used to upgrade it, using some of the base components used to craft it. Probably a perk to reduce the material cost for repair. Armorers can repair all items.

And since I'm here, I've been thinking about how they could handle equipment progression in a semi-nonlinear way. It'll probably be easy enough to give armor enough different variables to give players more options than just Daedric or Glass/Dragonscale at the end of the game, but with weapons you've got to spread those variables across the different weapon types, materials, and craftable upgrades for each weapon. They'll figure something out, but giving each weapon at least one unique "thing" that they do well ought to help provide options for people not just looking for a raw damage bump. We don't know what kind of materials will appear/reappear in VI, so just some examples to help explain what I'm thinking about.

Steel: Still just early-game stuff, but extremely versatile. Armor can be crafted to serve nearly any purpose, heavy or light. Weapons and armor can be fortified with silver to boost effectiveness against undead/werewolves, or other materials for boosts like stronger enchantments, better durability, etc. With the right crafting perks, can be upgraded to advanced to compete with higher-tier armors like Orcish, similar to Skyrim's Steel Plate Armor.

Dwarven: pretty heavy, enchantments aren't as powerful, but damage/armor rating is solid, and it never breaks. (or, it has the highest durability of all materials and almost never breaks >.> )

Elven: good enchantment strength, and weapon enchantments last longer before running out of charges.

That, or attacking heavily armored opponents/trying to block an opponents power attack with a weapon.

But yeah, I'm in agreement with the item maintaining its optimum damage until a certain point, ala New Vegas.

I've never really been against the idea of Durability and Degredation, simply it's execution. The over-emphasis on 'Breaking' has always annoyed me, partially because it doesn't really do anything beyond generate an automated repair cycle. This was compounded by the fact that Repair could happen anywhere, and repair tools had finite uses.

Part of the issue is... Degradation doesn't work the same way for everything, so every system starts as conceptually awkward to begin with. Weapons aren't prone to breaking and becoming useless, unless poorly made, and few suits of armour really survive single encounters intact. Meanwhile, good craftsman tools can last several lifetimes of hard use.

One of the better ideas i've seen (from Jackal, maybe... Its been awhile, i can't exactly remember the source) is having Skyrim-eqsue improvements degrade over use. A Weapon or Armour wouldn't drop below it's base state (normally) but you'd still have to put some maintenance into it to keep it in peak form. There's some interesting variations that can be applied to the idea, from improvement limitations to Corrode spells, but it's a better start than the normal system.

Overall, though, the issue is that if you degrade too fast (Oblivion) it becomes tedious, if you degrade too slow it becomes ignorable. If you make repairs too limited, it only encourages carrying a bunch of replacement gear, where if you make it too easy it defeats the entire point of the system.

I've yet to play a game that makes Durability and Degradation a worthwhile mechanic. At best, it's a throw-away annoyance, at worst it's an automated maintenance loop. It doesn't add an increased sense of difficulty, it doesn't serve a character-development purpose, it rarely makes any sort of sense, and it doesn't offer any real diversity in game-play approaches. And those are issues that need to be addressed, otherwise it's a pointless addition for it's own sake.

Here are my ideas for weapon degradation:

• Few weapons should ever actually break. Maybe if a wooden bow is drawn and is hit with a power attack it will snap.


• A blade will lose its edge. How many times in movies and tv do you see a guy sharpening his sword as his army sits around the campfire? It would make sense that a warrior who uses a sword (or axe to lesser extent) needs to spend some time keep the blade sharp. In the game, this would require using a grindstone; however, it shouldn't require materials. If the blade is neglected, there should be a damage penalty.


• Speaking of damage penalties, certain blades are more effective dull than others. I'm not an expert so please correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that a greatsword would do more damage dull than a katana.


• Hammers and maces should require little to zero maintenance. (Will the blunt object become more blunt with use?)


• For armor: heavy armor could be dented by a blunt object and most light armor could be cut with a blade. In general, armor should be durable but would require materials to repair.

Lmao, something just occured to me. Would you guys want to see settlements in TES VI as well? I wouldn't, unless its just fortifying forts for different factions.