i disagree i feel cities in those games feel more vibrant than those of ES because those cities have a lot of people and the "cities" so called in ES have like 12. Citizens in ES and those series aren't that different as they walk around and go about their day, only in ES you can talk to them. If you do talk most of the time you'll get a one liner, sometimes you can go more in depth but if it's not a quest it won't be all that special.

IMO the stances are a far better and more dynamic/robust approach to combat than anything iv'e seen in the games i have played. It allows for more strategies when fighting like in For Honor you can attack from three ways and if someone wants to block they have to match the direction making combat more in depth and difficult. They may not be the pinnacle of melee combat in games, but they are however light-years above the boring combat system we have in ES. That is just press attack until someone dies. Maybe you occasionally block.

That's kind of a strange argument because that can be said for every single game.

While I would like more cities and towns to be bigger, I absolutely do not want people who you can't interact with. Part of the appeal of TES, for me and a lot of other people, is the interactivity. It would actually make the cities and towns feel more lifeless if you had people you absolutely could not interact with at all.

I'm going to have to strongly and wholeheartedly disagree with your Arkham comment. Yes, you can't decide whether to punch or kick, but in the context of Arkham it works. And you have a wide variety of ways to attack enemies and approach a situation with melee or gadgets (or both). As disappointing as Arkham Knight was (although it was by no means a bad game), you had an even greater variety of ways to counter enemy attacks by using the environment than previously. It isn't "just pressing a button and the game decides what you do."

I'm certainly not arguing for Arkham-style combat in TES, as it wouldn't fit at all. But I digress, as we're comparing two completely different systems that won't work for the other game they are not in.

As for the balance of the types of combat, Lach does bring up a good point. You can't overpower one magic school too much that magic as a whole has such a clear upper hand on melee and archery/thief. But I still think that ckelley's ideas have some merit and can be worked with. If we can find some way to do a similar thing for other types of combat that would definitely help. Having melee weapons be able to parry would be a good start for warriors, and maybe even giving shields some more offensive capabilities through perks. At the moment, I'm not sure what to add to archer/thief types.

And that's the problem. We HAVE the ability to do more, and we've seen element of it crop up from time to time in other games, but no one is willing to take the plunge and move away from traditional models.

The Arkham games are far and above the best example of the system (Ryse probably being the worst) and does, admittedly, offer a little more than a push-button resolution, but at its core it's an overly automated system that is supposed to look flashy and exciting, but doesn't ultimately offer anything beyond that. Then again, i didn't enjoy any of the Arkham games, and think Batman in general is a pretty lame character...

And i cannot dissuade that opinion. This is a discussion that comes up rather frequently, and i'll admit, there aren't many here who think like i do. I just find those cities to be almost phobicly dead. They strike an almost chilling cord of the Uncanny Valley, highlighting the most superficial aspect of life; Numbers. Whiterun, with it's repetitive motions and conversations, and largely empty streets, feels more alive to me than every Assassin's Creed city combined.

I'm with Lach on the subject of NPCs. I hate the idea of filling cities with cardboard cut-out NPCs. That is absolutely the wrong direction for TES. I can't imagine how anybody who loves and professes to understand the Elder Scrolls series could even suggest such a thing.

Cardboard cut-out NPCs work - in a very mediocre way - in other games because the settings in other games are just backdrops for the storytelling. Bethesda's games are different. The settings in Bethesda's games are "characters" themselves. Settings in Bethesda's games are an integral part of their storytelling.

Walking through a city and past NPCs in Assassins Creed and Witcher feels to me like walking through a section of Disneyland and passing by animatronic robots. It's the opposite of immersive. It's creepy.

Players already whine about essential NPCs. Imagine the nerd rage that would result if Bethesda added *even more* essential NPCs...and, on top of that, they were more shallow than ordinary NPCs as well. These forums would be filled on day one with torches and pitchforks and outraged chants of "a mile wide and a foot deep," and accusations that Bethesda has once again "dumbed down" one of their games.

I'll third the non-cardboard NPCs. And a Fable 2-like compromise wouldn't work for me, either.

Out of curiosity - in these cities in which you all have lived - how many times have you walked up to total strangers and struck up a conversation?

I'm not suggesting filling every town and cities with cardboard cutouts, rather just balancing it a bit more. In fact in Morrowind onwards, though less in Skyrim, they had a lot of NPC's you couldn't really interact with much more than a greeting and maybe town information - pretty much like the cardboard cutout city guards - in every town / city. I think cities should be full and bustling... pick pockets trying their luck, hawkers and buskers hocking their wares, touts and seamstresses in the shadier areas, nobs, toffs, valets, deliverymen, messengers, dockworkers, fishmongers the works... make the cities feel alive and busy around you... every interaction doesn't have to be meaningful. That would just be tedious. I would also like to remove the quest markers / X marks the spot where you will find the treasure and go back to the Daggerfell / Morrowind style. That would give you something to interact with strangers about - "Excuse me ma'am could you direct me to yon Dark Lurk Cave", "Ay traveler it's 500 paces west of here, near the great fallen tree." etc.

The smaller towns and villages I would feel more comfortable with less people and more meaningful interactions. It's just more 'realistic' (nerd rage about realism in games imminent)

Magicka

To be honest I hardly ever use magicka in the TES games. In Morrowind I used Speed, Feather, Chameleon and Levitation a lot. Other than that I'm not phased.

This completely misses the point. The Elder Scrolls is about interactivity. Interaction with the game world is the very hallmark of this series. It is the thing that sets these games apart from practically every other game. Asking that Bethesda abandon that, that they start making games the way every other company makes games, that they include less interactivity in their next game betrays, in my opinion, a fundamental lack of understanding of what the series is about, what it has always stood for and how it has always functioned.

I would venture to say that all of us would like to see more NPCs. But what some of us do not want is shallow, one-dimensional, robotic, zeros with all the life and personality of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegas_Vic No thank you. If Bethesda is to add more NPCs - and we all agree that they should - the NPCs should be interactable. They should have homes and schedules and have at least a little bit to say, when asked. That is how the Elder Scrolls does it. That is how it always should be done.

This reminds me of the annoying, clueless argument we hear from time to time that Bethesda should add bunches of buildings we can't enter, just to pad out the cities and make them feel artificially larger. That too is not "the Elder Scrolls way." Leave that cheapness for Bioware, I say. They make games with shallow, artificial backdrops for towns and cities that only appear to be towns if you don't examine them too closely. I never want that in an Elder Scrolls game and I never want shallow, non-interactable NPCs in an Elder Scrolls game either.

The mere fact that I know I can go up to an NPC in an Elder Scrolls game and talk to him makes a huge psychological difference to me. Even if I never talk to that NPC it still makes a difference, just knowing that I can if I want to. But if I know from the outset that an NPC is permanently mute, a shallow placeholder, an animatronic puppet that is just placed there to artificially pad out the game world, I lose a bit of my emotional investment in the game world.

No, that kind of thinking is just tone deaf to what the Elder Scrolls means, as far as I'm concerned. I want none of it.

Almost every NPC in Morrowind that wasn't a bandit either provided services or was involved in a quest somewhere along the line. The higher ratio of true filler NPCs in Oblivion and Skyrim irked me. With Oblivion especially, I felt like there was no point in talking to someone if they weren't a shopkeep or sitting in a Guild hall. If they don't have enough content to make at least 70% of NPCs involved in a quest of some sort, then they should probably scale back on the number of settlements, pulling the smaller hamlets and transplanting their characters to larger cities. If they don't have enough content to populate more than three cities and a few towns, that's fine; we don't really need as many settlements as in past games if the ones present are well made and chock-full of content.

Practically daily for several years, while I was using public transit. Often, it was several times a day. It was rare that I didn't have some kind of conversation with a total stranger, which only accentuated the fact that I wasn't surrounded by crowds of bodies, I was surrounded by crowds of people. From Halifax to Toronto, I've found that it's actually the stark minority that WONT talk to you.


And as an Anthropologist, I've also learned that the degree of social separation that exists today isn't historically accurate. Interpersonal interaction and engagement seems to have been very much the norm in a historical context, where socialization and conversation were your primary means of entertainment, information and transaction. It was especially important in urban settings, as subsistence goods were brought in from numerous outside sources, and you HAD to talk to people to find out what was available, where, and how good it was.


The 'Dont talk to strangers' notion is extremely new, born out of media sensationalism and heavily driven by the Communist Scare of the mid 20th century. Somewhat propheticly, Orson Wells predicted that anti-social slope, but everyone focuses on 1984s depiction of government control, rather than its lack of social interaction...


But I digress, the actual lack if realism is only a side issue... The lack of interaction is the core problem with those larger populations. TES games aren't designed around set characters and identities, and have shown a tendency to go out of their way to let you do things how you want. This includes interacting with NPCs. While the expression of this mentality has varied, the core of it is that you can talk to everyone. Everyone has something to say. How much, well, that's been hit or miss... But the point is you CAN talk to anyone you want. You can like or dislike whoever you want. Your CHARACTER can like or dislike anyone you want. And because those characters are persistent, because those characters have friends and family and enemies, you can become part of their relationships and, in return, form relationships in the world.


For me, the game and its world are far better served with every NPC being Interactive, Persistent, and having Purpose. And these things are far more important than sheer numbers.


Thats not to say you can't push the numbers with these considerations in mind, and I've been playing with ideas to that effect... But it's a secondary concern. The people in the world should be as close to that as possible; People, even if it means sacrificing numbers to do so.


That actually causes a whole host of issues that are, IMO, best not dealt with. It requires clarity of direction, is complicated by moving objectives, doesn't work well within Radiant design, and ultimately requires NPCs to have an almost omniscient sense of awareness.


The current model IS absolute rubbish, and needs to be improved, but some sort of marker-and-tracking system is necessary to maintain a degree of ease-of-use, flexibility, and guidance. The key elements that are needed, however, is that is not be always-on, and that it not be considered an essential element (IE the game isn't entirely built without directions and requires markers for all navigation).

bullox, double post...

I didnt really like how they did talking in skyrim i didnt particularly hate it and i understand that by making generic npc's like "farmer" or "hunter" "non talkable" that it would make the actuall conversational npc's stand out more and fallout 4 did this more so (or about the same?) But i hope we can come to a middle ground of oblivion and skyrim /fallout4 when it comes to starting conversations with anybody.....oh and put me in for no witcher/fable npc's and cities.

I agree. On the subject of Daggerfall, there was a rather particular response NPCs would have when asking about where some place is, and they agreed to tell you: "Let me mark it on your map". I have a map, just show me where it is and I'll find my own way there.

In many ways, Daggerfall had the same issues that Skyrim does with quest targets that can vary in location, as it's extremely difficult to give proper directions from any given Quest Giver Location to any possible Quest Target Location. Even in text, Daggerfall's directions were largely limited to "its east of here" or "it's to the north", which especially in a larger city, is completely useless as there's dozens if not hundreds of buildings in that direction.

Daggerfall also had the benefit of NPCs always being where you're told (barring bugs in the dialog or journal that referenced the wrong name), because all interior NPCs you could talk to were completely stationary if not also spawned specifically for the quest. Unlike Oblivion and Skyrim, where NPCs can move around from building to building and even travel to different cities on specific days of the month, you can't just say where they are and expect the player to find them when they manage to get over there.

While I do agree that pointing to the specific chest an ancient long lost artifact is in is a bit much, it is part of a larger system where such detail is sometimes required. It can certainly be improved, but it would take more work to do that as you have to determine how exact a marker should be given what's needed for gameplay (stationary vs wandering vs traveling targets), the importance of the quest (a radiant quest? a one-off side quest? a major quest line? failable or must succeed to continue?), and what your character should know (only shown the dungeon it's in? the specific room, perhaps? or maybe you were told exactly where to find it?), which then has to be tested to make sure it's enough for players to find it.

Hitting the combat subject I happen to personally think the stances is the best way to update TES combat, It brings in a deeper combat system while not going to far and making it a battle sim like Chivalry or For Honor. The stances allow you to change up how you fight, can provide different benefits and multipliers, and also those cool combat animations.

What I'd really like to see is them make combat more fluid. I bring up the TW3 and I'm going to do it again. Whether you like the Zelda-ish lock on style combat or not one thing it does extremely well is give the player plenty of choices while in combat. You can attack, block, parry, dodge, roll, cast spells, use potions, or throw bombs very fluidly while in combat. The amount of choice the game allows you to have is amazing to me and what makes it super enjoyable.

One thing I find very annoying with Skyrim's new combat system is not being able to block while you're dual wielding or being a being a spell sword. The solution to dual-wielding is easy enough just switch attack to one button and defense to the other, spell swords is a bit harder to figure out. I like how Skyrim made magic more active but making it so you can't block while having a spell in your hand is also a problem. With the removal of shouts we can move RB to casting spells like in Oblivion. Now whether you're using a 2-Handed, Sword and Board, or 1-Handed build you'd be able to use it for spells, but certain spells would require an open hand to cast spells. So for example if you're using a 1-Handed spell blade build you'd equip flames to RB, the spell would still appear in your left hand but LT would now block/parry.

Doing this allows spell sword type characters to still cast spells while also being allowed to block/parry and be defensive. Give 1-handed some perks that allow it to parry better and spell swords are now a much stronger build choice.

As far as the city population goes I see merit to both points arguements. The TES "cities" are just way too small and unpopulated to feel like cities at all, at the same time filling it with hundreds of trash npc's is too extreme for a TES game with how interactive they are. I think a good solution would be to go for a middle ground where they make custom "trash" npc's that have names and families and even homes but don't really talk to you besides passing greeting. That way instead of Fisher who just stands at the dock all day you get Daniel Clements who has a small shack by the water. Maybe he even has a wife and a child. Obviously there wouldn't be enough to make it feel Witcher 3 or Assassins Creed big but it would help a bunch compared to what Skyrim and the other games were.

I like that since it gives you a consequence for dual-wielding. With dual-wielding, you forgo active blocking to focus on doing more damage faster, with your primary defense being your ability to not get hit.

Except with Skyrim, you can dual-wield spells as well. You can't just have one button for magic when there's up to 3 things to cast (left-hand, right-hand, or both hands).

I'd prefer something closer to Daggerfall. Where you have a bunch of NPCs, and you can talk to them all about a number of things, such as local establishments, regional establishments, and various rumors, and each has multiple potential responses, both positive and negative given your reputation.

Okay then why are you still able to block with 2 handed weapons? It's the same thing where you are forgoing defense for offense. With two swords in your hand you should at least be able to parry an attack. Also when I said you can cast spells with RB I never meant that it would also replace it with the new more active system, for spell casters it would just allow a third spell to be always active.


Didn't really play dagger fall but that seems like it be a lot harder to do with voice acting and not very necessary.

Because they're slow, so you don't really have the same capability to move in and out of range quickly for attacking.

I've advocated for a kind of active parrying, by attacking an opponents attack. No extra button needed.

I'd prefer staying with something closer to Skyrim, where each hand can have different spells. This, along with dual-wield weapons, creates an elegant system where one button does one arm action and another does the other arm action, and you can place what you want in each arm that has an associated action (including nothing, for unarmed actions). I'm still a bit bummed that dual-shielding wasn't a thing.

Except skyrim has no combat movement system to actually let you dodge attacks. And an active parry in system would just result in a lot of accidental parrying while hack and slashing.


I also said to keep the spell casting the same as it was in skyrim but add a third spell button instead of the shout button. The only thing I'd change to magic combat is to make spells automatically dual cast if you're not actively using the other hand.


And "elegant" is the last way i would describe the separate attacking hands, clunky and gimmicky would be some of the first.

I don't think you should, for the record. Blocking should be a Shield only option.

But... Combat and NPC interaction are two very lengthy topics, and trying to discuss both at the same time makes as much sense as the giggly ditz's they have on the bridge of the SDF1 in Macross...

So, since NPCs and interaction were the primary focus of previous discussion, i'll keep on that topic...

Returning to the Daggerfall model, in full, isn't really viable, at least in a full Voice-Acted system. It would require too much work and eat up so many lines that you'd have very little resources left to use for actual quests... That said, it is possible to cover some basics, and allow for some randomisation, without breaking the bank. Again, the emphasis should be on Interactivity, Permanence, and Purpose. They must be interactive, they must 'Go' somewhere (IE no despawning when you just wander out of range) and they can't just stand around and take up space (as so many of the 'NPCs' in Assassin's Creed do).

The first step would be to divide things into Primary and Secondary NPCs.

The Primary NPCs, of course, are the ones that have the more extensive development, are more quest-related, and have more explorable identities. They are more extensively affected by disposition, and are the ones that you are ultimately going to spend the most time engaging with.

The Secondary NPCs are, of course, the core of this discussion. They're the backdrop that adds numbers, but they still need to have some degree of development. As a sometimes-DM, I've done my fair share of making these kinds of characters, there are some guidelines that need to be fulfilled when designing filler NPCs. They need a name ('Farmer' isn't good enough), they need a place to live, they need to have some kind of knowledge of the area, and they need a job.

If you're building somewhat randomised NPCs in a Voice Acted situation, you're not likely to be able to have them actually SAY their names. However, we get floating names above peoples heads most of the time anyway, so that's not too much of an issue. But they should 'recognise' what they do for a living, and where they live. As my brother's Barbarian would say "What do, where live?". This is somewhat easily resolved by having set 'Job' types, such as Fisherman, Miner, Farmer, Noble (Which would probably be replaced with something like "Oh, work, what a quaint idea") and so on that is recognised in a line of dialogue. Housing can then be divided by city sections. Rather than an NPC identifying their home as "I live at 1420 Quarry Street" it can be as simple as "I live in the Lower Ward". The ability to acknowledge relationships and house-mates would be awesome here, but not necessary. So, for the ability to recognise the 'Self' you would require 2 lines of Dialogue, one for what they do, one for where they live.

Then comes the trickier part. They need to have some knowledge of their surroundings. I generally divide this up into 2 parts; Locations and People. Even the lowliest dock worker in 1860 London knows that the Prime Minister and Queen are SOMEWHERE in the city, and are largely in charge. An NPC being able to say "Well, the Jarl live up in Dragonsreach" creates a sense that they are aware of the important figures in the city. They shouldn't be able to list off everyone in town, just the prominent figures and where you may find them. Similarly, they should recognise major landmarks either in, or around the city. Knowing where Jorrvaskr and Dragonsreach are, for instance. All said and done, this can be as little as 2 lines of dialogue, but i don't think should ramble more than 5.

And, of course, they need a goodbye.


So, to create a generic Secondary NPC, you can tick all the necessary boxes with between 5 and 10 lines of dialogue. Spread a few variations over several voice actors, and you can reasonably create a diverse spread of identities for comparatively little work (one work-up i've done could turn about 16000 lines of Dialogue from 20 actors -for reference, that's about as many as both PC's had in Fallout 4, EACH- into more than a million potential NPCs. Shallow, yes, but leagues better than a cardboard cutout. Placing those NPCs, and building the cities around their presence, also opens some doors for modding, making it easier to integrate fully-fleshed out NPCs, made by Modders, into the world. Just replace one of the random-gen NPCs with a custom one.

And this is where utilising Radiant AI can really shine. Because you're combining fully designed dialogue responses, you can avoid the weird, directionless combinations of Oblivion (though i think the Voice Acting in Oblivion was probably plagued more by lack of directing than poor assembly, the more i look at it...). The fact that you're using Radiant Behaviour to set up the behaviour of less important NPCs also means you can take some more liberties. As long as they go to work and go home, you can add more variety to their other behaviours, since you don't really have to worry about them not being where needed for quest tracking or scheduling.

I think Lach sums up the NPC's pretty well.

C'mon you can realistically block with a sword so i believe you should be able to do so in game. Unless you mean you can only block with a shield, but parry with swords and other weapons, depending on how it is implemented i'm all for.

I kind of agree with this. I wish they went back to the Oblivon way where it was one button spell casting. The two hands is a cool concept but when it comes to spell casting it kind of takes some variability away in playstyle. Or in the very least makes it a lot more tedious. For example you can't really be a battlemage with a mace in one hand and a shield in the other unless you want to suffer going in the fav menu to cast a spell the reequip your shield constantly. Being able to dual cast spells was alright considering all it did was increase the spells power. I don't know maybe it's just me but i'd rather prefer to go back to one button spell casting, i like it more mechanically and visually.

Hey they did something similar with FO4 where you didn't have to equip explosives any more to throw them, they made it one button.

Side Note: Does anyone know how I change my display name? I would really like to change it.

PM Gstaff or another admin here on the forums. Or, alternatively, PM a moderator and they will contact an admin for you.

Ok I can get behind this. I was not advocating just filling the streets with masses of non-entities, if you recall I mentioned they should all have functions, be doing things. Adding a bit of background, a home, a family etc. would be great. Then creating "sphere's of knowledge" that they can dip into - ie. rumors, gossip, information is good. The Radiant AI could then add dynamic quests to various secondary NPC's.

Next I would like to see them expand on the effect your actions have on the game world and how your reputation affects relationships. "Oh you're the guy who saved our town, great here's a discount on XYZ".

Thinking about it more I think the nameless backdrop NPC may be useful. If you're playing in a game with named "trash" npcs one of the huge problems is going to be not knowing who's actually worth talking too. You could probably get around this by custom name borders and icons but it would still be annoying seeing all these named npcs and not knowing who actually has work for you. If you walk up to "Farmer" you know he's not going to have a quest for you but may be able to tell you some general information like where you can find an inn, but if you walk up to Preston Whethers (Farmer) you may try talking to him looking for a quest or something only to realize he's a "trash" npc. you could get around this again with name plates or things like WoW quest icons and stuff but thats another issue. Also realistically not everyone in a city is going to tell you their name or even want to talk to you so some anonymity and loss of interaction would be realistic even though the elder scrolls is about interaction. Also as a side point there reallt should be three layers of npcs; Primary which are all the main quest or important quest ones who are the most developed like Delphine and Esbern or Farkas and Vilkas, npcs ou're supposed to connect with and are important to stories. Secondary should be all the side quest npcs who you can interact with and maybe learn a bit of backstory about. Third would be "trash" npcs who are there to fill up the world and do things like tell you where the inn is.

I think the main point to grab from this though is that TES worlds/cities are really small and underwhelming and need to be focused on.

I'd really enjoy bandits reacting that way, in Oblivion I remember you could demand they pay you so you wont kill them but in Skyrim I don't think I've ever encountered that, they just always attack you until they get "downed". Why did they even put that feature in the game? Every time you win a fight, the enemy falls to their knees and begs for their life, but then gets back up and starts attacking you instead of running away...

I forgot about that! Thank you for reminding me, that makes me feel so much better knowing it shouldn't be an issue any more.

You think there's any chance they might switch or add Euphoria to the mix? I just love the way the NPCs react to getting hit with a car or shot in GTA or RDR, it looks so smooth and natural compared to the clunky awkward animations in Skyrim when an NPC gets knocked down by a Fus Ro Dah or giant and tries to get back up.

That's got less to do with the Engine, and more to do with the fact that, frankly, Bethesda's animations have always been poor.

Yeah, that's what i mean. Blocking is stopping a strike cold, and while, yes, you CAN do it with a weapon, it's really hard on the weapon and not particularly effective. That's why shields were so common until heavier plate armours became more feasible. They distribute and absorb the impact and make it far more reasonable to try and stop an attack. Using a weapon should be more about deflecting it, not trying to halt and over-head swing of a greataxe with a Dagger.

I absolutely despised the way it was done in Oblivion. It made it so there was no trade off what so ever between Magic and Weapons. You could use all of it, at once, with no penalty or consequence. We need a better way to cycle through spells, but Oblivions Magic and Combat system was one of the worst in gaming.