This thread is for ideas and suggestions for future Elder Scrolls games, and to keep all the discussion in one series of threads.

We have a long way to go before we get another ES game. In the meantime, similar topics will be closed and referred to this one.

Note there is a separate thread specifically for http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1602936-tes-vi-location-and-setting-speculation-32/ suggestions for future games. Please keep discussion of Skyrim in the correct forums.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1604490-official-beyond-skyrim-tes-vi-84/#entry25186026

The Witcher 3 being the new standard for measuring open world rpg quality (according to the gaming journalists and the awards), TES must one up in:

- interesting women to romance

- more detailed clothes and armor

- sailing your boat

- more colorful, alive and big cities

- more complex and branched quests

- more consequences for our choices

- hair physics

Only women? How about a few interesting men, too?

Don't forget seamless transition to interiors. I [censored]in hate loading screens!

Isn't M'aiq enough?

I want to be in a relationship with someone who won't lie to me.

Since The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has the armor and weapons degradation system and Zelda: Breath of the Wind has the armor and weapons degradation system. I hope very much that Bethesda Game Studios adds it again in The Elder Scrolls VI.

i would love the return of a weapon degradation system, but with a major change..



the system, as it was presented in Oblivion, was to obvious and tedious.. as when an item broke, it was immediately unequiped and your like "ohh, time to take out my hammers"..


but I would like them to work on a system evolved from a sort of a cross between that, and the old Might and Magic games..



is the weapon repair system i propose, a weapon or piece of armor is not "automatically" unequiped upon reaching the breaking point, nor will it always be immediately noticeable.. upon reaching that point, if effectiveness (damage done in case of weapons, or defense in case of armor) drops considerably, to the point your only slightly better than using nothing at all, less true "breaking" but more of poor condition as it would still be usable although not effective and enchantments would still be enabled although weakened..

rather than having the visual tell, it would be more of a tell in feel, you would notice your not doing much damage or taking unusually high damage or an enchantment seems weaker, at which point you would "examine" the item in your inventory to see if its poor condition was the cause of the decrease in effectiveness..


this would bring in the aspect of "equipment maintenance", since you wouldn't get the immediate visual tell, you would want to keep your gear in good condition before heading out in case its condition went unnoticed mid dungeon.. instead of just repairing with hammers like in oblivion, you would need certain resources to maintain it yourself (similar to the items we use in tempering in Skyrim.. if i was maintaining some armor, leather straps could be one of them), otherwise you would have to pay a blacksmith or leatherworker (at the same time, having an NPC do the maintenance you'd get a small discount if you had applicable resources to provide them) ..



i think it would be a fun system personally.. although I am aware it may not fit everyones playstyle

I'm going to stop you there, because even though the Witcher 3 has a fantastic narrative, it's "choices" 99% of the time are meaningless. Some might lead to something different if it's apart of the MQ, but that's where it ends usually. Most of it is deciding who lives or dies, with no real impact going forward, and even then sometimes they all lead to the same conclusion. It's quests are also very, very sameish across the board in normal gameplay.


Good story, but it's frankly no better then Skyrim in this regard.

Thoughts for The Elder Scrolls VI - Better Smithing

Hey there!

Intro:

I have played The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for well over 2000 hours in the past 4 years, and I'm still continuing to play it to this day. I've "beaten" the game many times on the hardest difficulties such as Master and Legendary.

The reason I'm bringing forth this information is to hopefully make you understand that I have quite a bit of experience with this game and would love to see how other people (regardless of their gameplay time) feel about some of the design decisions Bethesda made regarding the crafting system for smithing.

First I will share my suggestions based upon my experiences of playing on the hardest difficulties, and then, would love to see your responses on whether you agree or not, as well as your suggestions on the matter, of course.

Please read everything carefully so that you may easier perceive my thoughts correctly.

The smithing (the problem):

The crafting system for smithing in Skyrim, in my opinion, is badly executed due to Bethesda making the player grind the skill and invest perks to be able to craft certain types of gear.

The reason this is, in my opinion, bad execution is that it breaks immersion and the flow of gameplay.

(by this point and forward on, you may notice that some of the points I make are closely tied to the other crafting skills - enchanting and alchemy)

I've found myself going through countless playthroughs neglecting almost every fun/interesting activity such as doing quests and exploring the world until I've worked my way up to 100 smithing (and the other crafting skills).

In my case, I'm talking about approximately 15+ hours of grinding (I don't use fast travel, only carriages), per character, consisting mainly of clearing dwemer ruins for metal, before I actually start enjoying the core of the game. This breaks the natural flow of the game.

Another point I wish to make is that it breaks immersion because the game is trying to convince me one could become a competent enough smith to craft almost every known type of armour and weapon in existence, including the supposedly rare daedric gear, by smithing ~ 500 dwemer bows and investing in the required perks.

Furthermore, the gear you can make by combining smithing and the other crafting skills surpasses anything daedric princes can put together.

While I appreciate the feeling one gets when he or she creates something more powerful than a immortal, dark god can manage, it renders daedric artifacts as nothing more than cool- looking collectibles, rather than the invaluable tools they are supposed to be. Yes, some artifacts, whether they're daedric or not, can be quite useful, but my point is that you can craft better stuff once you grind your way through the crafting skills.

The conclusion:

?While it is excellent that Skyrim finally introduces craftable weapons and armour in the Elder Scrolls games, rather than just using up hammers for repairs, but due to, in my opinion, bad execution, smithing takes away more from the game than it gives back. I know Bethesda possibly couldn't have had predicted that the crafting skills in general would cause such imbalances to the game even without exploits, but that doesn't make the problems go away.

My suggestion for a better smithing experience in the future Elder Scrolls games would be if the player could unlock smithing perks via doing a variety of unique, interesting and relatively lengthy quest chains, which varied depending on the rarity of the gear in the lore, and the knowledge needed to craft it properly with the required materials.

This would completely remove having the player grind the skill while adding immersion and allowing for better appreciation and connection with the different varieties of gear and the cultures which devised them.

The End:

I know I possibly haven't adressed all the issues regarding the smithing skill and perks, but the main part is hopefully covered.

I understand that my suggestion might have flaws which I am currently unaware of, so your input on the matter is well appreciated.

I thank you all if you took the time to read everything and form a constructive opinion and attitude towards the problems presented to you from my experience with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

I truly hope that some, if not all of you, will at least slightly influence Bethesda's future game- making decisions for the better by either posting on the forums or one day becoming employees of Bethesda Game Studios.

Cheers!

It's a personal taste thing, but i feel very different about pretty much all of these. The cities lacked any real character and felt like drone hives with no real inhabitants (and ultimately felt cluttered and dead) the branching quest options were overly polarised and felt forced and unnatural, and the consequences were ultimately meaningless and didn't really impact moving forward.

Agreed... Frankly, the old system was rubbish. As i've said before, the IDEA is great, but the way it's been implemented in games is barely worth the coding, and Wild Hunt does absolutely no better.

Weapon Breaking is one the core issues with it, and even if you slow the degradation curve, you're still going to run into the problem with it. A weapon should almost never break, unless it's poorly made or you're using it improperly. The risk of breaking isn't something that's ever deterred use, and rarely (if ever) encouraged people to have backups, but only serves to make repair and automatic action whenever you're in town/in inventory. Not having a reasonable way to track durability on the fly of course contributes to this, but having a durability bar doesn't eliminate the problem. Weapons (and armour) simply should not break under normal circumstances.

Skyrim's Tempering offers a decent solution to this, however. In a more structured system, with set levels of tempering and modifiers associated with them (instead of the infinite Tempering Spiral exploit in Skyrim) you can implement meaningful degradation without the heavy handed 'breaking point'. Have each level have a durability (denoted by the material) that degrades through use, before dropping it to a lower tier. You end up with a far superior model of tool-effectiveness, and degradation becomes about maintaining your equipment in peak form rather than keeping it from falling apart.

In the last paragraph, do you mean degradation tiers like Arena and Daggerfall had? I'm not against it per se, but how do work out how many times you use a repair hammer to fix your weapon/armor to a higher tier? Example: if you are at 'slightly used' for your steel cuirass, do you use your hammer x times to get to 'almost new'? And then x more times to get to 'new'?

Or something like a combination of the numerical values of Morrowind/Oblivion and tiers like Arena/Daggerfall? Let's say 1500/1500 is mint condition. Would, say, 1250/1500 then be 'almost new' and 1000/1500 be 'slightly used'? And then all values between 1251-1500 mean the same amount of damage and likewise for 1001-1250 be the same amount of damage? I think this option could be useful.

I'm not sure if I'm making any sense or if I am misunderstanding what you are saying. But in any case, degradation indeed needs an overhaul of some sort.

While some of the perks may be neat to have quest related, such as Daedric or Dragon, I personally disagree with you on that they should all be that way. You see, the problem is only a problem IF YOU allow it to be one. You spending 15 hours on a new game "grinding" up levels of enchanting, smithing and alchemy is actually YOUR problem(well, maybe a few others as well), but not how I play the game. I will smith some, then adventure some, craft some more, and then adventure more, but I refuse to ever just sit down and craft for hours on end just to get smithing to a certain level BEFORE I start my "real game". You see this is a RPG, which means you the player decides how you wish to play, and somewhere along the way you had the idea that you REQUIRED the best gear possible to be able have fun playing ANY part of this game...and that is why you are having an issue with crafting. Crafting on Expert and below is NOT required or needed to be able to play the game, it truly helps and makes things easier, but it isn't required. I don't know about the harder levels and have heard on Legendary(or whatever it is called) that yeah, you need crafting to live...but then I don't play on those levels so... If you feel some big adventure is needed to learn a new skill in smithing, then by all means send you characters on the adventure, you don't have to have Bethsedea hold your hand with that, just roll-play that you have to do X, and then go do it.

Ideas for you to make it harder....

Only craft with supplies you found in the world, and not buy any from a store.

Don't allow crafting above certain levels before your character is above a designated level.

Don't allow Daedric or Dragon skill before you beat the main quest.

Limit yourself to one or two crafting skills, such as only enchanting and smithing, or alchemy and smithing....or even limit to one and a half, ie max level smithing, and no more than level 50 and related skills for enchanting..

Please remember, this game doesn't force you to do much, and the few things it does, can usually be modded out if you are on PC, so simply change how you play to make it more fun for yourself.

You know, I don't think I have EVER maxed alchemy in any of the characters I have ever played in Skyrim....1900 hours logged in steam...don't know how many real hours over 50+ characters...

Basically, when you are at a workstation, you can Temper or Fit a weapon or armour. This gives it it's improvement state, like Skyrim's tempering. So, by tempering a Sword, you can improve it to Keen for a bonus in damage, with a durability determined by the material the weapon is made of (so, for instance, a Glass weapon with low durability may be stronger, but wouldn't hold its edge for as long as a higher durability Dwemer weapon). When durability reaches 0, the weapon drops a tier. So Keen becomes Honed, Honed returns to a base state, and Base can drop to Dull or Worn. In order to improve it again, you'd need to go hack to a workstation and re-temper it.


You could also have some repair tools, such as hammers or whetstones to maintain the current improvement state in the field, but you wouldn't be able to actively recover damage to states without returning to a station. This makes maintinance important to staying at peak efficiency, but also doesn't over-emphasis it as mandatory for simple function (as most durability models seem to do. God forbid your silver sword should break in a fight in The Witcher. And against some enemies, you can go from 100% to bustedAF in one fight).


Keepping actual weapon breaking seperste from the base model also allows you to do some more interesting things, making certain enemies and spells more dangerous (corrosion effects running the risk of ruining your shiny armour) and giving you a negative tradeoff for certain potential actions (being able to break your weapon trying to bash open a door). You don't overburden regular interactions with an overly crippling and artificial happenstance, but you still emphasis the need to look after and be wary of your gears condition.


You could also probably get away with a much simpler model for actual durability loss, which would in turn play into a better Armour system... Instead of largely abstracting things with behind the scenes calculations, simply make Weapon Durability Loss linked to how much damage armour stops, and Armour Durability Loss linked to how much damage gets through. It would make it so weapons which are effective against a particular type of armour suffer less durability loss, and do more damage to he armour, emphasising a degree of strategic weapon choice. Passive armpits for monsters still play into the same general dynamic, and can work the same way.

The thing with drawing inspiration from the Witcher 3, as I see it: Bethesda doesn't need it. All the inspiration they need is in their own games, one-up or 100x-up those not the Witcher. Sure, there are elements (on the technological side) that make the Witcher a very good looking game, but by the time TES VI comes out, they will be dated too. What I would really like is (as suggested in the previous thread) a fleshed out sailing component, that would enhance the gameplay greatly, imo.

Copying game design or mechanics from a successful game just because it won many awards is something more appropriate for small studios. This is Two Worlds territory. They even wrote "Oblivion killer" on the backcover Gothic 3 tried too much to be the Oblivion killer too, almost killed the series. Oh, wait. Kingdoms of Amalur? Bethesda is too big for this, they need a Skyrim killer, a Morrowind killer not a Witcher killer.

At least in the compelling storytelling/character interaction department, TES can't compete, unrealistic expectations. It's about two different visions, the focused narrative tailored for a set protagonist vs the sandbox experience. Those who love the Witcher so much please stop trying to transform TES into a new Witcher, just wait for the Witcher's Two Worlds. After all the awards it won, it's bound to happen

This sounds like a great way of handling equipment degradation:)


Also sorta tangentially related, but I just saw https://youtu.be/q8DaGHL8WzM video on fantasy armours, and I hope the next TES takes it's equipment design in this direction.

Hey there!

While I agree with some of the things you say in your post, you cannot deny the fact that the games' crafting system is more on the tedious side.

In my current playthrough I have decided to set the game on adept because of the 1/1 damage ratio between the player and the enemies so the game stays well balanced early and later on, as I will not be doing any smithing, enchanting or alchemy this time.

My suggestion doesn't necessarily imply that Bethesda should hold your hand through the acquisition of the required knowledge, via quests, to forge certain types of gear.

I have played Morrowind for quite a substantial amount of time. If you did so too, you know that in TES III, the player is given an elaborate quest journal (more or less) rather than having to blindly follow quest markers.

This part slips through the bounds of this topic towards another issue present in TES V: Skyrim, and thus, whether the game holds your hand through quests is, for the most part, currently irrelevant.

I know that the game doesn't force you to do much, but if you want to make good gear, it "convinces" you to go through a extremely tedious crafting/ skill raising process regardless of the difficulty you're playing on, rather than actually learning smithing perks via quests, books or whatever. I'm not saying you shouldn't craft a considerable amount of gear before you know how to make it properly, I'm saying the game developers could have made it a lot less tedious while equally challenging in another way other than just pure grinding.

Hopefully you'll understand my perspective on the tediousness of smithing by the end of this reply.

When you think about it, the game doesn't, theoretically, force you to use any crafting even on Legendary. You could go about killing a draugr death overlord in about 120 minutes (may be an exaggeration) by smacking it repeatedly with your non- tempered weapon whose effectiveness, at this point, more closely resembles a yardstick, rather than a ebony, or whatever war axe.

if you want to make the game "mechanically" harder, you should be able to do so by increasing the difficulty via the options instead of putting invisible limitations in front of yourself (which I am currently doing due to how the game works in some departments). In my experience, the higher you set the difficulty in the options, the more tedious the game becomes, rather than actually making it harder.

This is directly connected to smithing, as well as any other skill really, but my point about the immersion/ game flow breaking skill was hopefully sufficiently explained through this reply as well as my previous post.

Thank you for you response.

Cheers!

In many ways I agree with him, and weve talked about it on and off... Skyrim doesn't do a terrible job in most cases, particularly with its more conventioal armours (Daedric and Dragonbone obviously being very exotic) but it is something that I think needs to be considered moving forward... Particularly if developers want to push ahead on some of the theoretical limits of Rag doll physics...


I disagree with his claims about the Witcher, though... It's got fantastic historical armoire, but with the exception of the Wild Hunt, it has almost no Fantasy elements to the designs. I'd much rather sacrifice some realism for the Rule of Cool, if it meant some more interesting variety.

The only good looking armors are the explicitly fantastical Witcher School gear. The Cat, Griffon, Manticore, Bear, and Wolf school armors are literally the only armors in the game that don't make you look like a frumpy mess in layers and layers of cloth. The realism is...okay, I guess (I'm frankly not a fan), but I refuse to wear anything wear anything ugly even if it has better stats. Sadly, that's mostly what the Witcher 3's armor is comprised of, aside from maybe the Halberdier and Nilfgaard sets...except for the stupid frilly collar in the latter one.

Frankly, I think Skyrim and Morrowind did good in this department for the most part. With Daedric being the only real grating exception, I find that most armors are still pleasing to look at while not actually conforming to something bland out of Oblivion or 90% of the Witchers armor.

I agree that the Witcher has very little overtly fantastic gear, and though I kinda like that (unlike Dargor I like almost every armour set except the Witcher ones ) it's not something that really fits the TES aesthetic. The principles though, having armour that would actually function as armour regardless of whether it's made of mundane steel or something like bonemold, is what I'm mostly concerned about.

Yeah, and having a mind for function is going to be more and more important as animations become more complex. One of the elements that they are trying to play with right now is dealing with the all-too-common texture stretching you get when models move. Instead of worn objects moving naturally with the body underneath, they stretch because they're either fixed to specific points, or just a texture applied to said body, and this causes rather obvious effects which graphics developers have been trying to work around to create more natural and dynamic visuals...


Most of what I've seen regarding this is specifically clothing, but eventually the same mentality is going extend to armour. And this is going to force developers to think more about articulation and movement, and less about straight up style, which is sometbhing that real world armourers have already dealt with centuries ago. Paying attention to historical armours would save developers a lot of work.

How many radiant quest we can get from a village/settlement?

Bandits related quest:

1. group of bandits raid the town every specific times. clear them.

2. bandits robbing at the road at specific times like at night

3. bandits camps

4. deep inside the forest there is bandits fortress

5. sabotage the bandit camp/fortress

6. clear the camps/fortress so the village will be peace until some times it spawn

7. protecting merchant/caravan

8. saving kidnapped civilians at bandit camps/fortress/ harnessed by bandits

9. caught bandit send it to guard

10. buying cheap item from bandit in black market

+ an infamous Arongian is sleeping with everybody's wife in the village at night and giving them AIDS from Black Marsh.

Something like Boldy Baron would be nice!

A little childish, don't you think? Many of the TES armors make me feel a bit like http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/uncyclopedia/images/a/aa/Judgedredd.jpg. I'm not completely satisfied with them in the Witcher either though - indeed, cloth upon cloth - but I appreciate they made less of a spectacle out of them there.

talking about armor, i want realistic medieval feeling armor. unlike dragon age inquisition that give me the feels of 'what world is this???'