Why is Bethesda spending hours upon hours of creating food items, plates, pots, pans, beds, bedrolls etc etc, but not spending half a devs brain half a day making it usefull???

I could imagine a simple option in the Options Menu :

[x] Total Realism


Then a player would actually get tired (loosing concentration, focus and energy) resulting in lower mana, slower moves, faster stamina drain and not regaining 100% of stamina.
Solution : sleep in as good a bed as possible. A bedroll outside would only give 50% rest (meaning less time before getting tired again), while better beds (or moving in a cave or house) would increase it.
A new skill (Ranger) would increase rest from outside sleeping.

The player would also get thirsty and hungry resulting in less stamina and no health regain, and when VERY thirsty/hungry : starting to loose health and power for carrying.
Solution : Eat and drink.

The visuals could be a small mark on top of the already existing stamina/health bars, indicating how hungry/tired the player is.

VERY simple, yet soooo much more immersive/realistic.

It wouldnt take very long time to make. It wouldnt be very difficult to make. It wouldnt be "forced" upon the player as it would be as simple to turn on/off like Subtitles.

Sure, you might say, a modder will create this very soon, but I just prefer Bethesda (who already made such a great work putting the frames in place for it) "finished" the job.

Hell, if it was a DLC I would buy it, and I usually detest DLCs

Support half of it. The other half is crap (no offense). It is a video game.

They had something like this in Fallout: New Vegas. Plus, eating food or drinking water there meant getting irradiated, and it was hard to find a place to sleep out in the wastes without making some friends.

In some real ways, Bethesda un-learned how to do some of the improvements to the series, and took a step backwards in making Skyrim. The followers have no backstory and marriage is a total joke.

EDIT: I should point out, they did it in New Vegas because so many people liked the mods that let you do it in Oblivion and Fallout 3

New Vegas had hunger/thirst/sleep built into it, but it was mostly just an annoyance for modders (like me) that then took it a hundred steps further. Check out the description of the More Complex Needs mod linked in my signature.

http://penny-arcade.smugmug.com/photos/i-PPTPkRk/0/L/i-PPTPkRk-XL.jpg

It really wouldn't make much sense to even be an optional thing, unless you changed the timescale to 1:1.

Why, exactly, was it an annoyance? Would it actually get in the way of anything you were trying to mod? Or was it just annoying for not going as far as you wanted it to?

It's tedium that would not create gameplay in the slightest with the game in its current state.
ADVENTURER THOU ART HUNGRAH NOW PRESS BUTTAN TO NOT DIE
No skill, no thinking, no planning. Especially with how much stuff Elder Scrolls games let you carry.
Systems like this work in games like STALKER because the player can barely carry more than a gun and some bullets making the choice between defending yourself or dying from malnutrition a real strategic quandary.
In TES games and Skyrim especially I can carry 700lbs of venison and run up a 45 degree angle like it ain't no thing.

This game is full of creatures that aren't real and you want to talk about realism?

I quite like the idea of a hardcoe mode like in New Vegas, but make it OPTIONAL!!!

@ Wraith Magus -

The developer kit works with stuff on sort of a high level - some things (like quest events) are coded as scripts that you can go in and edit, other things are hard coded, compiled code that you can't even read. The New Vegas hardcoe mode was hard coded, meaning that if you wanted to tweak it or add features you had to find a way to hack your way around it. hardcoe mode was also bundled with other features like weighted ammo and stimpak cooldowns, so you couldn't expect your users to just turn it off entirely in favor of your mod. On the plus side though it meant that some useful stuff that you couldn't really produce by modding was also built in, like the hunger/thirst/sleep readouts, so long as you could figure out a way to make it compatible (though I still ended up creating my own heads up display readout, since I was adding a ton of extra stats, like protein, nutrient, and alcohol levels - the mod accurately calculates things like blood alcohol content).


@Swish Lizard -

lol. I have a strict 10:1 rule - if it's worth more that 10 times what it weighs, its looted.

i think food should have better bonuses and buffs that lasted a few hours, i mean horker loaf should do more then heal 10hp.

I agree with op it would be nice to at least be given the option to figure out if I like it or not.

That. Its video game, if you made it too much realistic its become frustrating and its not a game.

HA! I can do that in REAL life...except it's more like 7 pounds of venison, walking, on a 10 degree incline...and it svcks

But for many people that like to role play, it is about realism to a point because the more 'realism' *hunger ect.* the more the player feels immersed.. *in my opinion anyway*

That's funny because New Vegas had the exact same thing and nobody complained.

Realism, hardcoe mode whatever...yes please add this in a patch. And bring back weapon armor degradation/repair skill. I wtf'ed when I realized there was no longer a repair skill. This dumbing down and consoling, and playing to the hack n slash power up crowd is getting ridiculous.

Thank you. So tired of this. You want realism, go outside.

Haha. People complain about EVERYTHING.

Nothing is stopping people from roleplaying. If your character doesn't eat for 5-6 game days. Start a new game, cuz you're dead.

This is probably most idiotic reply to these kind of threads. >_>
If it's just a purely optional mode which would make a lot of people happy, so why do you have to be such a jerk and complain about it?
People should learn to stop being dikes about things they don't like.

OT:
I think that a HC mode would be awesome and there is no good reason not to make one.
It is something a lot of people would enjoy and would be a great improvement for the game.
For now, I think it would be great if they return equipment degradation and add need for eating/drinking/sleeping.
I also like the idea of Ranger skill.
In case you have that skill, you will be able to rest properly while sleeping outside and in wild, but poorly rest in case you sleep on a bed, and vice versa in case you don't have that skill.

I'm all for a "hardcoe mode" option. I'm not sure if I would have used it if it was there, but it would have been nice for those that really want it. New Vegas, however, was not developed by the same people that made Skyrim and Fallout 3. So using it as an example of why Skyrim should have it doesn't really make sense.

Just RP it then! Just make sure your character eats and sleeps once a day. That is what I am doing

Playing a mage, my ratio was 20:1...