Well http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1036524 reached post limit quite a while ago but since we all have something that would keep us from buying a game let's discuss this one again.

But before it really starts, I know many would instantly say “if they added guns”, but you really have to think, would that COMPLETELY ruin everything under every imaginable condition? I'm not trying to advertise or spark a new discussion, just saying “think about it beforehand”.
But just for simplicity, lets say even if someone says that let's not make it a discussion, it's just an opinion after all. Still please try to REALLY think of a reason that would turn you off enough to not wanting the game.


So then, my main reasons that would make ME not buy TES5:
-If they made the Argonians even more human like or removed them completely:
They where already overly humanoid in Oblivion, making them even more human would just be BAD. Or even worse if they decided “No, we don't need them, let's not do them”.
I usually not try to stick to such reasons but being able to play as an Argonian is actually one of the main reasons why I got into TES anyway. But I guess having their favorite race in the game butchered so much would be a reason to many.

-If it was console exclusive:
Again I think this would tick off many since TES is HEAVILY centered around modding nowadays. Taking that away would be like announcing it'll be a linear side scroller with skateboards.

-Excessive DRM:
Oh hell PLEASE, stay away from all those horrible DRM methods. No online activation or install limit, this is a heavily modded game, having those would kill that

-If it was a MMO:
So far I have to say I HATE MMOs, no real time combat, you HAVE to be online to play and you pretty much can't do anything alone. But I think the danger of that is relatively little as they stated the don't want to make MMO TES games.


Reasons that would make me lean towards “won't buy” but still consider it:
-If it had no first person view:
This is an actual danger a lot of games run into nowadays, simply have no first person view at all and instead a over the shoulder camera. While not game destroying it would definitely kill a big part of the feeling.

-Too much console gaming focus:
Not using the potential it COULD have, limit the amount of setable keys and locking keys from being set at all.

-GFWL Focus:
Adding stuff purely for achievements. This was what kinda ruined treasure hunting in Tomb Raider Underworld.

-Heavily bugged:
While that would be a huge turn off it's nothing that couldn't be fixed so this goes down here.

First three would result in a no-purchase. Second three would result in me spending the next 2 to 3 years complaining audibly on the forums.

A game can't be an Elder Scrolls game without first-person.

Agree with most of these.
However I expect a TES game to be pretty buggy out of the box. TES II-IV all were. Between Beth patching and the mod community I don't see that as a big problem. Biggest single factor would be no modding. If that were the case I can't see myself buying the game.

Is modding honestly that important to the game itself? Mods are fine in my opinion and I understand they add a lot of content and freedom, but why are they essential to a game?

Yea that's why i'll likely wait a month or two... plus it's possibly cheaper by that time too
And it's likely that the first few mods are already available then, so worth waiting a little extra time i think.



You might want to ask that question in the modding section of the forums or TES Nexus .
Lemme put it like this, modding has become the backbone of TES, the games are good but mods are what makes them AWESOME.

Yes
RPGs that aren't moddable or aren't conducive to it I don't find myself playing time and time again
The difference between getting maybe 50 hours of play out of a game and 1000s of hours (like I have with MW and Oblivion) is massive

Because modding is really fun! Without modding, I don't think I would have played OB or MW for so long.

I feel like I am missing out on something amazing as a ps3 Bethesda fan.

Yep. Didn't know what I was missing when I played it on the 360. Got a pretty good rig, got OB and MW, and hot damn. Most of my mods tend to be slight game changes to lots and lots of ascetics in the form of sweet gear to improving character textures and meshes.

I tried to get a good pc, and I failed. Anyway, I still love Oblivion without mods and I have played it for over 150 hours already and still haven't done much(GOTY, PS3,no mods). After all my excitement for TES V, nothing will prevent me from buying it.

Back to the topic:

the game breakers would be the last 3 things Daniel Kay put up; that's just incredibly intolerable. And...I can't think of much else. I guess if enough "this angers me, but not a deal breaker" will sway me from purchasing it. Things like, less armor choices, less armor slots, less lore, the horrid level scaling, and pretty much what Kay put.

I second the above for the same reasoning, and would like to see it applied to the Khajiiti as well. In fact all the races seem to be fine as is, and since we have a lore intensive reasoning for the slight difference in appearance with the beast races from TES 3 - 4 the only thing I could fathom them doing is adding more races. That is assuming they were planning on even making an adjustment to our player chosen race repertoire. But I guess if they tweaked any of the races besides the beasties it would just be slightly off putting for me otherwise.

Another thing that would seriously make me lose faith in the TES series is if it eroded most of the RPG elements and turned into little more than a cut and dry action title. Even with it's open world and extensive quest lines, TES would get very very stale without it. What makes the RPG aspects of TES so neat is that it lets you make your own decisions about how your character develops, and ultimately what they turn into several hours down the gameplay trail. It's what seriously differentiates it from other open world action titles.

It's already been mentioned, but if there was no modding tools or compatibility with TES 5, I can't imagine too many people would receive it well...

Maybe if the game wasn't open ended.

If the game became PC exclusive.

Guns.

Loss of races.

Loss of magic.

mmo

mmo

There isn't one single thing, by itself, that could happen that would make me not get it. Hell, even if it was an MMO, I'd probably get it. I think I might lean more towards not getting it if there was a subscription fee for the MMO.

Other than that, these happening would make me very angry, and only if nearly all of them happened would I not get it.

-Making the game world excruciatingly linear like Dragon Age: Origins. The best part about Bethesda's games is the open world they take place in.

-Forcing you to play in third person only. I could deal with this, but I wouldn't like it.

-No modding. I would be extremely disappointed in Bethesda if they didn't release a construction set for TESV, though I'd probably still by the game.

-No console commands. I don't normally cheat, but there are often times where I find the need for togglecollision or toggleai, and I'd really hate to not have them.

Thats all I can think of at the moment. :shrug:

If there was no dark brotherhood (it was the best/funnest questline by far).
If it was PC exclusive.

I wouldn't want to see Elder Scrolls as an MMO, not that I have anything against MMOs, it's just that I like to play my RPGs slowly with my own personal bad habits and idiosyncrasies.
The whole DRM issue doesn't bother me too much, although I can see how poorly implemented DRM could prove to be very annoying. A slightly off-topic anecdote: I discovered by pure accident that Fallout 3's DRM doesn't work at all on my VISTA-ridden computer. For some reason the game doesn't seem to care what (if anything) is in the DVD drive :shrug:

What would put me off a TES game? More streamlining... I would hate to see fewer skills, fewer armor types, one-slot clothing a la Fallout 3.

I still think that Bethseda is the best out there at the moment for creating RPGs by a long shot, so I hope they stick to their own tried and tested formulas rather than try to emulate games such as Dragon Age, which in my opinion for all its strengths doesn't even come close to being as good on a number of levels.

[edit]
Those of you saying you wouldn't buy if it were exclusively a PC game - there's no need to. There's not the slightest chance that would ever happen. The only time games were PC exclusive was back in Ye Olde Days when PCs simply were the only potential gaming platforms - apart from a pencil & paper - and there was no XBox, Wii or Playstation. It's more likely that Bethesda would give a game away for free than they would release it exclusively for PC.

I'll say guns. I highly doubt they would add firearms in the next Elder Scrolls. Some use of Cannonry or Ballistic siege guns and the like is acceptable, but full use of guns for standard front-line fighters seems pointless. With the existence of magic, guns are more or less pointless, and Tamrielic engineering would most likely evolve away from guns. The Reason I say cannonry is acceptable, is their intended use as siege weaponry. Throwing that much physics at a wall will make it crumble eventually, but a castle wall could withstand lightning or fire without much issue. People on the other hand, cannot.

No First person mode would definitely be a killer, but this also falls into that "If it happens, someone had a brain hemorrhage during development" because as stated by Todd at one point, Third person perspective doesn't immerse the player in their role of their character like first person does. I hope more they take some new directions with the first person mode, sort of like Mirror's edge, though without all the svck. As an RPG, you (hopefully) Don't have to really rely so much on perfect absolute clarity like you would in a FPS, so some immersive aesthetic to first person mode (Body awareness, ect) could help. But must be handled delicately. The best example of First-Person melee combat is Condemned 1 and 2, that's what I want to see. But camera and floating hands still works.

Less or "more" races. Now, I'm not going to be a lorefreak over this, but seriously when you get to a certain point, you just don't need more. Look at WoW, that is just too much, you have elf, super elf, emo elf, flying elf, sparkly elf, human, bigger human, smaller human, smaller pignosed human, undead, undead with a top hat, undead with 3 fingers instead of 5. Seriously, we don't need more for TES, we also don't need less. While I know there's "more" than we've seen (IE Sload) if you can imagine a sload as a playable race on par with any other race in combat, kudos for having a mind more open than 7-11.

"Console Catering". This is a touchy subject. I'll be honest. I'd rather have a brilliant nigh-perfect PC version, and an enjoyable, but obviously inferior (to the PC version) port[See: Morrowind, Dragon Age], than a "Good" and Equal PC and Console game [See: Oblivion, Modern Warfare2]. And trust me when I say I'm pretty much a console jockey. The option of buying a better PC is still out there when this fiscal catastrophe passes, the ability to just [censored] out a better version of a game that SHOULD and COULD have been better at release is much less achievable.

"Stripped RPG elements" Oblivion stripped enough, and then stripped 5 more things. I agree Morrowind had some redundancy in skills. But I'd rather have the option to use that redundant skill, than cut it, and then 3 more. At the end of the day, The Elder Scrolls game shine because of the choices you can make, from character creation to faction joining. The game is worse off (99.999999% of the time) for every option cut.

Rogue Warrior and Wet. If either of those games are mentioned without at a wrought-iron fence patrolled by exploding lions between them and The Elder Scrolls game(s), the taint overpowers all that is good, and brings doom upon all the world.

I would probably buy it regardless as long it comes out on pc, if not I may getting me a console for the first time in 30 years

drm would be a downer,shivering isles kind are to live with,but I see drm as an evil,bad thing anyway.

don?t belive it goes exclusive to any platform, they loose money and customers that way,don?t belive in mmo either.

if they publish with an intrusive drm that some other companies do,then I have to consider a purchase,but that is the only thing that could put me off to an extent that I don?t buy the thing.

-MMO Subscriptions get a lot of flak, and I will never understand why. Subscribing MMO's usually cost significantly less than "Free" MMO's that deal with microtransactions. sure, some people may not buy all the best items in those free MMOs (And some people DO buy items in the subscription MMOs) but the point is, they really aren't free. And servers are incredibly expensive to run. If an MMO of The Elder Scrolls came out that was to MMOs what they have been to SPRPGS, I would gladly shell out 10-20$(USD) a month. Honestly it winds up saving money, cause I would just buy stupid things like dinner for my girlfriend, bah!

-I agree that what Makes The Elder Scrolls games great is plopping you into a vast open world, but Dragon Age isn't linear. It's just deep. Dragon age is like the tank of water that is 10 feet deep but only 3 feet wide. The Elder scrolls games are like the tank of water that is 10 feet wide but only a foot deep. They wind up having the same "Volume" but it's just different. Dragon Age (And all Bioware games really) Are story-driven, and thus they have a progression to an End, The Elder Scrolls are Player-Driven, and only have a progression to where the player goes. I know people that still don't know Morrowind has a Main quest.

-Modding wouldn't kill it for me, but it's an important par, I doubt anyone has to worry about losing a toolset for the next TES title. Even without a toolset, modding will continue, but the set allows a much more "Plug and play" style of modding. And anyone with some software aptitude and a little bit of time can actually make some Developer-par quests.

-It's possible to play a "free" MMO without spending a dime, if you're willing to not get all the features of course. But paying a subscription fee just isn't my style. I don't want to pay $20 a month for a game that I could potentially play for months at a time. Subscription based MMOs are nothing more than pretty looking money pits, in my opinion.

-You misunderstood me. I've played Dragon Age, and I liked it. I don't mean that the story is linear, which it isn't. But the world is very, very linear. In Dragon Age, every single worldspace is in it's own cell, cut off from the rest of the world, and the only way to get from one to the other is to essentially fast travel, where you watch your party cross miles upon miles of terrain on a map that you never get to see. In TES, you actually get to see the miles and miles of terrain in between worldspaces that games like Dragon Age never show you. That's what I mean, and that's why I'll always prefer open world games.

let's see:
An MMO would be a no show, and a lack of modding would be a big hit to my desire to buy, but barring that, so long as it isn't "The Elder Scrolls 5: Rogue Warrior" I'll probably buy it.

The only way I would completely skip over the game is if it were an MMORPG.

These following would give me pause, however, and probably harm the game experience for me.

1. Quest Arrows - And no, it's not good enough just to be toggleable; unless that is, the writers and programmers have put a great deal of effort into fleshing out the quests with real clues and directions that are discoverable by the player character. Otherwise, like in Oblivion, where the dialogue fell woefully short, the only clue IS the quest arrow. The arrow should be a crutch for the player, not a crutch for the dev team.

2. Unfettered fast travel which is not intrinstic to game world. I understand it's optional but similar to the quest arrow it's become a crutch for both the player, and the developers. Why be creative when you can have a panacea for all travel issues. One game I've played recently had an interesting fast travel method, one that was completely optional, but one that was part of the games lore and very helpful. In this game you were given a 'teleport activator' by a mage who has been studying the ruins around the world. As you walk around and explore you find these ancient teleport pads and they become active for you because you have the teleport activator. There are a lot of these pads all over the world from the lost civilization that was there a thousand years before. The cool thing is you have to discover them first, then you can go back to them from any other teleporter. You also must discover any town or city no matter how big AND find the teleporter within that city if you want to fast travel back to it. Between foot travel, your horse and the teleporters you don't feel constricted but you still have to explore a lot on your own. There are huge areas of wilderness that have very few teleporters. I'm not saying TES should use this idea exactly, but surely there is a better way of fast travel than the Oblivion method which completely breaks immersion.

3. No construction set. This would be terrible. I don't mod, but the reason I still play Oblivion almost four years after it came out is because of mods.

I would not buy the game if...

It was turned into some sci fi star trek rip off.