So after reading the thread about fast travel..... need I say more..... I came to start thinking about other areas in the game that could do with a little spice.

My issue is when I am dungeon crawling for 2 hours and then finally come across this super rare item, how the hell would I know what its stats were the moment I pick it up.

Granted there are some items that would have obivious stats (long sword, plate armour, etc...) but should I not have to go see a blacksmith or a antiquties dealer to get more information - until I do so the weapon just uses its standard stats until I am able to discover what the 'hidden' stats are. The game could even go as far as ultra rare items can only be 'unlocked' by discovering an old book or speaking to an old hermit...

I dunno... just a thought

Doesn't make sense. A weapon won't start having magical properties just because you discover them. Just like a gun won't start shooting bullets the moment you know it's a gun. It's over-complicating things in my opinion.

On a different yet related note. Light Armor at Master level shouldn't provide close to the same protection as heavy armor. I don't care how much mastery you have, a paper thin Elven Armor shouldn't even compare to a full set of Ebony Amor. They should keep the difference at 50% more for Heavy Armor.

I like the idea, but rather than using placeholder/generic stats, it could just be hidden, and maybe as you use it, you find out what it does.(I'm thinking of the Legend of Drizzt series when he finds Icingdeath and accidentally kills Ertu)

Because its a video game and the stats of items are a game mechanic for the user.

ahh forgotten realms... bring back memories.... Aegis Fang

True, but you can not just know what something does by looking at it - unless u have been educated about it.

You can only truely harness an items full potential once you have learned to master it - certain runes mean certain things, and when combined they could mean something compeltely different.

Playing the game with this type of lore would be fun and would create quests out of certain rare items that are found.

Scrolls of Identify, anyone?

But no, it's too much of a hassle to work in those details I think. It would get really old really fast.

It is a good way of limiting a players power at the early stages of the game, while giving you other purposes to explore the world for information and lore...

Isn't that what TES is all about?

If by ''hidden'' stats you meant the weapons actually had hidden capabilities that needed unlocking, I'd be all for it. If you meant talking to a stupid blacksmith would suddenly cause the sword you've had for 10 years start shooting flames, I'm against it. It'd be good to have legendary weapons with latent potential that need a quest or special requirements to active.

Fable III did something really similar(but not properly) by requiring you to do several things to unlock the special abilities of legendary weapons. ''Kill 150 Undead enemies to unlock BoneSmasher(+10 damage against Undead creatures).

You are bang on with "stats you meant the weapons actually had hidden capabilities that needed unlocking". Maybe a blacksmith knows about the weapon, but in most cases your caught trying to find the information from different sources

Except some of the weapon quests in Fable 3 required buying extra content or playing multiplayer, so basically in order to get 100% completion you needed to fork out extra money or persuade some of your friends to buy the game to play on co-op, that to me sounds like total BS. It''s insulting when game companies do day one DLC, it says to me that content was removed from the game to be sold seperately, it's a really bad marketing scheme that should just go and die in a fire.

Well, for the blacksmith part, it would make sense for him to tell you what you need to do in order unlock the ability of the weapon/armor. He could also just take your item for a while and forge something on it in order to make it stronger by unlocking its secret abilities. I don't think it'd make sense that you've been using a sword for long, then you go see the blacksmith, he tells you it does ice damage, your sword starts glowing and proceeds to deal ice damage.

Yeah I know and some bonuses were just overly specific. ''Kill 250 balverines during daytime to unlock Wolfsbane that deals +10 damage to Balverines during nighttime...''. Seriously Lionhead? Others were plain dumb. ''Make 10 friends to unlock the hidden bonus.'' *Facepalm*

They mentioned weapon stats/enchantements not showing up in the weapons description untill you used it. (in one of the mags, they said it was because when you find a magic weapon you wouldn't know what enchantments were on it till you used it). But I don't think there will be an unlocking its true power type of thing.

games like diablo are trying to get away from the idea of "identification" why should skyrim implement it????

ALTHOUGH it could be used for unique and legendary equipment involving a quest or something ... THAT would be great

Yeah, something like discovering the forgotten shrine in which the weapon was made to restore it to its original state and make it stronger/deadlier. That'd be great.

I see what your getting at and having a quest tied to 'unlocking' a very ancient weapon sounds good but there has to be a balance between realism and gameplay. Gameplay always trumps realism in the end.

I don't see how you couldn't see the normal stats of a weapon. It's a sharp sword made out of a strong material, you could guess how much damage it could do...

As for magical weapons, there might be a point, but if you see a weapon that's on fire, you don't need to think very hard what it does...

Also, haven't they said something like this already? That for some weapons their magical powers are not always known, and you have to figure it out yourself by looking at it in the 3D view?

Mmm... yes and no.

Yes - you shouldn't be able to tell what a weapon's stats are as soon as you pick it up. Arguably, you shouldn't be able to tell what they are at all. But I don't think you should necessarily NOT be able to tell at least something about it until someone or something else tells you and you certainly should be able to get full use out of the item before you know what it can do.

If I was doing it, what you'd be able to discover looking at a weapon would be that it was... something - flimsy, dull, average, sharp, heavy, brittle, balanced, keen-edged, beautiful... what-have-you. The game would give you at least that much feedback. And if I was designing it, that would depend on both the character's smithing skill and the character's skill with that type of weapon to some degree - the higher the smithing skill and/or the more skilled the character is with the weapon, the better the character's ability to recognize differences in quality in weapons merely by examining them. Then maybe do a similar thing with enchantments - the character might recognize merely that it's enchanted, or that it's weakly or strongly enchanted, or that it seems cold or hot or that it emits static or what-have-you. And again, tie that into a skill - enchanting skill. The higher the enchanting skill, the more the character could recognize about the existence and nature of an enchantment just by examining the weapon.

But in either event, the weapon should work to its full potential (modified by the skill of the character) right from the start, and that should be a part of the process of discovering how powerful the weapon is and what it does. A character with high skill with the weapon is going to learn quite a bit about it in a short amount of use, while a character with low skill still won't have a clear idea of just how powerful it is. A character with high enchanting skill will tend to recognize the effect of an enchantment quickly (presuming it's not one that's obvious right from the start, like fire) and will have a much easier time of seeing just how powerful it is.

And so on......

I would also have a high level weapon or smithing "perk" that would allow characters to recognize the quality of a particular weapon of that type immediately, as well as a similar high level enchanting "perk" for enchantments, though I still probably wouldn't include the actual numbers, just because I don't think I'd ever include them. I'd use a range of adjectives to describe various qualities, so one might be "heavy, clumsy and dull" and another might be "light, balanced and razor sharp" And I would also have master smiths and master enchanters here and there in the game world who could provide the same information, at a price.

having to identify magical items, either by just using a scroll of id or trekking to the closest item identifier npc, was always a pain and annoying to me. Glad they didn't have it in Skyrim