1. Better "Homesteads"
Existing Problems
Too many small houses that don’t impact gameplay and are not even worth the time to buy
Modular houses are not modular, just upgradable
Not enough places for companions to stay
Lack of organization in item storage
Lack of any real trophy rooms
Lack of any real libraries
Not enough real interactions in houses
No personalization of houses
No item auto-sorter
Everything is small scale
No linked storage
No item auto-seller
What Needs to Happen
Harder to own property and upgrade it, but upgrades are worthwhile and impact gameplay: it’s not as simple as “just having enough gold” but takes hours to build a humble hut and possibly weeks or months to build a fort with crops growing inside- you would obviously have to be able to hire people or let people move in, having a homestead near a mine or creating a mine could supply your blacksmith with that specific material and your blacksmith could then build arms for your guards, the possibilities would be endless
Houses are 100% modular and customizable: you can start off with a humble house and end up with a keep, you could build a ten story library, you could put stuffed animal trophies in any corner or location in your house, you could put paintings/tables/chairs/etc anywhere in the house/location after building said items, you could build bunk houses or extra houses for as many companions as you have time to build, your item storage/trophy rooms would be built to your specifications and desired size
Houses have more real interactions in them: A toilet that you can sit on, a shower/bath that you can turn on, candles that you can light/turn off, a pool that you can swim in/ lay beside, training dummies that you can train on and that give you and your people experience, woodcutters that actually have to bring wood in to burn, once again the possibilities are many, sitting in chair and lying in bed are good starts but not enough
More hirable people/ people that can move in: hire a butler that when you talk to them all items in your “need to sort” section of your inventory automatically get taken out, merchants that will sell goods that you bring back and put into the “sell chest” automatically, blacksmiths, miners, workers, and so on
Linked storage: now this should be simple, link the “blacksmith chest” to both the miners and the blacksmith so that the miners put ore into chest and blacksmith can use it, the farmer to the pantry, guards to the armory, it wouldn’t be difficult to add a single chain economy that was truly effective into the game that could be all but ignored but those who do not wish to be involved
Think bigger: some people want a single small family home with a single horse/cow and some crops-fine! That should not be the only option however, if you want to build your own guild you should be able to, you want to build your own small town you should be able to, you want to be jarl of a city you should be able to, you want to be a bandit leader in a huge fort… you get the idea- you shouldn’t be able to run into a lady in the game who left her husband and built a bandit force from the ground up and as Dragonborn go “I wish I could do that…”
Too many small houses that don’t impact gameplay and are not even worth the time to buy
Modular houses are not modular, just upgradable
Not enough places for companions to stay
Lack of organization in item storage
Lack of any real trophy rooms
Lack of any real libraries
Not enough real interactions in houses
No personalization of houses
No item auto-sorter
Everything is small scale
No linked storage
No item auto-seller
What Needs to Happen
Harder to own property and upgrade it, but upgrades are worthwhile and impact gameplay: it’s not as simple as “just having enough gold” but takes hours to build a humble hut and possibly weeks or months to build a fort with crops growing inside- you would obviously have to be able to hire people or let people move in, having a homestead near a mine or creating a mine could supply your blacksmith with that specific material and your blacksmith could then build arms for your guards, the possibilities would be endless
Houses are 100% modular and customizable: you can start off with a humble house and end up with a keep, you could build a ten story library, you could put stuffed animal trophies in any corner or location in your house, you could put paintings/tables/chairs/etc anywhere in the house/location after building said items, you could build bunk houses or extra houses for as many companions as you have time to build, your item storage/trophy rooms would be built to your specifications and desired size
Houses have more real interactions in them: A toilet that you can sit on, a shower/bath that you can turn on, candles that you can light/turn off, a pool that you can swim in/ lay beside, training dummies that you can train on and that give you and your people experience, woodcutters that actually have to bring wood in to burn, once again the possibilities are many, sitting in chair and lying in bed are good starts but not enough
More hirable people/ people that can move in: hire a butler that when you talk to them all items in your “need to sort” section of your inventory automatically get taken out, merchants that will sell goods that you bring back and put into the “sell chest” automatically, blacksmiths, miners, workers, and so on
Linked storage: now this should be simple, link the “blacksmith chest” to both the miners and the blacksmith so that the miners put ore into chest and blacksmith can use it, the farmer to the pantry, guards to the armory, it wouldn’t be difficult to add a single chain economy that was truly effective into the game that could be all but ignored but those who do not wish to be involved
Think bigger: some people want a single small family home with a single horse/cow and some crops-fine! That should not be the only option however, if you want to build your own guild you should be able to, you want to build your own small town you should be able to, you want to be jarl of a city you should be able to, you want to be a bandit leader in a huge fort… you get the idea- you shouldn’t be able to run into a lady in the game who left her husband and built a bandit force from the ground up and as Dragonborn go “I wish I could do that…”
2. Better Companions
Existing Problems
Only one companion at a time
Only two max guarding your home vs possible attacks
No real control over them
Companions can die with no real resurrection spell
AI is iffy
Can’t tell them where to live
Companions get stuck/lost
No auto toggle helmets
Don’t ignore friendly fire
What Needs to Happen
Everything in “Amazing Follower Tweaks” mod: to quote what this mod does “Multiple followers [5]. Manage outfits, spells, combat style, home assignment and level up. Make werewolves or vampires lords. Followers will ride horses, make camp, avoid traps, ignore friendly fire, auto relax, auto change into standard/city/home outfit. Auto toggle helmets.” To be able to tell your followers what to wear “at home/ in city/ adventuring” is priceless alone, let alone everything else it adds. Honestly 99% of the complaints directed at companions that I, or anyone else had was solved in this mod. 100% of this mod should be implemented in TESVI.
Better AI: AI is always an issue in most games, this game more than most needs better AI. Take a page from the Assassins Creed world, when someone gets shot or someone is found dead their “alertness” should go up and not come back down for starters! Companions shouldn’t wait until they get attacked before attacking a dragon/bear/or any other charging creature/enemy.
Real “resurrect” spell: There is a school of restoration in the game and a real resurrection spell should be put into place. If “lore” is an issue just make it time based- when someone dies you have so long before they are dead for good and only necromancy can bring them back. A simple timer could be shown clearly above a fallen comrade showing how much time before the spirit leaves the body permanently, and companions with restoration mastery should be able to auto-resurrect fallen comrades if they have the ability.
Let the community make companions, just make it easier for them to do so: Either allow for full party creation, creation of people that join you in general, or just continue to allow the community to mod followers but make the process even easier. This is one of the easiest things for those new to mod making to attempt and is typically the highest downloaded mod(s) around. Finding follower mods that suit you and your playstyle is personal and fun for players and making personal followers is a blast for mod makers, let them keep doing that. Do not waste time making 3,000+ unique followers/companions with crappy quest(s) tied to them or spending hundreds of thousands of dollars creating a unique character that Peter Dinklage can voice act that people might end up HATING anyways. Make the process easier all around, easier to add in voice acting, visuals, stances, idle poses, anything and everything to help make the process easier but also allow for extremely unique creations.
Only one companion at a time
Only two max guarding your home vs possible attacks
No real control over them
Companions can die with no real resurrection spell
AI is iffy
Can’t tell them where to live
Companions get stuck/lost
No auto toggle helmets
Don’t ignore friendly fire
What Needs to Happen
Everything in “Amazing Follower Tweaks” mod: to quote what this mod does “Multiple followers [5]. Manage outfits, spells, combat style, home assignment and level up. Make werewolves or vampires lords. Followers will ride horses, make camp, avoid traps, ignore friendly fire, auto relax, auto change into standard/city/home outfit. Auto toggle helmets.” To be able to tell your followers what to wear “at home/ in city/ adventuring” is priceless alone, let alone everything else it adds. Honestly 99% of the complaints directed at companions that I, or anyone else had was solved in this mod. 100% of this mod should be implemented in TESVI.
Better AI: AI is always an issue in most games, this game more than most needs better AI. Take a page from the Assassins Creed world, when someone gets shot or someone is found dead their “alertness” should go up and not come back down for starters! Companions shouldn’t wait until they get attacked before attacking a dragon/bear/or any other charging creature/enemy.
Real “resurrect” spell: There is a school of restoration in the game and a real resurrection spell should be put into place. If “lore” is an issue just make it time based- when someone dies you have so long before they are dead for good and only necromancy can bring them back. A simple timer could be shown clearly above a fallen comrade showing how much time before the spirit leaves the body permanently, and companions with restoration mastery should be able to auto-resurrect fallen comrades if they have the ability.
Let the community make companions, just make it easier for them to do so: Either allow for full party creation, creation of people that join you in general, or just continue to allow the community to mod followers but make the process even easier. This is one of the easiest things for those new to mod making to attempt and is typically the highest downloaded mod(s) around. Finding follower mods that suit you and your playstyle is personal and fun for players and making personal followers is a blast for mod makers, let them keep doing that. Do not waste time making 3,000+ unique followers/companions with crappy quest(s) tied to them or spending hundreds of thousands of dollars creating a unique character that Peter Dinklage can voice act that people might end up HATING anyways. Make the process easier all around, easier to add in voice acting, visuals, stances, idle poses, anything and everything to help make the process easier but also allow for extremely unique creations.
3. Items Need Real Purpose
Existing Problems
75% of all items are totally worthless
By mid game 100% of items are totally worthless
What Needs to Happen
Get rid of items that have no purpose: if you don’t have a purpose for it, turn it into a static item that doesn’t move and can’t be picked up or get rid of it all together. There is too much clutter in the game, by mid game your inventory looks like a pawn shop and by the end game you don’t even bother looking into it anymore. If there isn’t a real purpose for the item- ie. crafting/burning/fuel/value/etc- then it shouldn’t be in the game; more importantly the developers shouldn’t be wasting precious time/money on such dead ends.
Give items real purpose: There are a ton of ways to do this, three common ideas that help with existing items:
1. Having a hunger/thirst bar would make 50% of the items in the game all of the sudden have some sort of value, whereas putting in an extreme hunger/thirst bar would upset most people. It is simple enough to use the “timed day cycles” that already exist in the game and make the bars reasonable but accurate, ie three days without drinking anything will kill you, and three weeks without eating will kill you.
2. Simplifying and amplifying the alchemy system would also make more people use it, and would get people to use it for more than just buffing their enchanting/blacksmithing ability- this would make 25% more items in the game immediately have more value (the flowers/seeds/animal parts that are used in potions) as it stands you find about 300+ potions in every single dungeon that are all staggeringly different and their uses are extremely limited. Creating a system where using potions was easier (as it stands it is awful, having to pause go into inventory, find item, drink it) and creating a limit to the number of bottles you can carry but not to the number of alchemy ingredients you can carry would cause people to use them more (because it was easier and tied more into actual gameplay- much easier currently to just use restoration spells) but also cause them to create more potions with items they find on the run.
3. Having weapons/armor break completely and needing actual items to repair said broken gear (iron bar to repair iron armor) and being able to arm civilians/guards/armies with items. This would give value to the remaining 25% of items. If you fight a battle and recover 26 unbroken swords and 14 unbroken shields and on and on you should be able to give them to a city/army/guild of your choice or your own making and have that actually impact said guild/city/army. Winning a battle should give you the joy of “spoils of war” vs the “let them rot, no point looting any of that…” feel that the game has. Also being able to hire “looters” that will just loot a battle field for you and bring what they find back to your establishment would eliminate the hassle associated with the item sorting- think of it like an auto-sorter for “spoils of war loot” where they just give you a report with a list of items received.
More unique items: The Companions steel/shields mod is one of my all-time favorite for this reason. Gorgeous hand crafted weapons that fit the time period but also give that guild something truly unique looking and feeling to the world. If a group of people have “Skyforge Steel weapons, the most amazing steel weapons around!” why didn’t they make them unique looking? Crossbows/bows/weapons that are not just race specific (ie. something that looks ‘elvish’) but that are clan/guild/city specific. (ie, Imperial Army Crossbows)
75% of all items are totally worthless
By mid game 100% of items are totally worthless
What Needs to Happen
Get rid of items that have no purpose: if you don’t have a purpose for it, turn it into a static item that doesn’t move and can’t be picked up or get rid of it all together. There is too much clutter in the game, by mid game your inventory looks like a pawn shop and by the end game you don’t even bother looking into it anymore. If there isn’t a real purpose for the item- ie. crafting/burning/fuel/value/etc- then it shouldn’t be in the game; more importantly the developers shouldn’t be wasting precious time/money on such dead ends.
Give items real purpose: There are a ton of ways to do this, three common ideas that help with existing items:
1. Having a hunger/thirst bar would make 50% of the items in the game all of the sudden have some sort of value, whereas putting in an extreme hunger/thirst bar would upset most people. It is simple enough to use the “timed day cycles” that already exist in the game and make the bars reasonable but accurate, ie three days without drinking anything will kill you, and three weeks without eating will kill you.
2. Simplifying and amplifying the alchemy system would also make more people use it, and would get people to use it for more than just buffing their enchanting/blacksmithing ability- this would make 25% more items in the game immediately have more value (the flowers/seeds/animal parts that are used in potions) as it stands you find about 300+ potions in every single dungeon that are all staggeringly different and their uses are extremely limited. Creating a system where using potions was easier (as it stands it is awful, having to pause go into inventory, find item, drink it) and creating a limit to the number of bottles you can carry but not to the number of alchemy ingredients you can carry would cause people to use them more (because it was easier and tied more into actual gameplay- much easier currently to just use restoration spells) but also cause them to create more potions with items they find on the run.
3. Having weapons/armor break completely and needing actual items to repair said broken gear (iron bar to repair iron armor) and being able to arm civilians/guards/armies with items. This would give value to the remaining 25% of items. If you fight a battle and recover 26 unbroken swords and 14 unbroken shields and on and on you should be able to give them to a city/army/guild of your choice or your own making and have that actually impact said guild/city/army. Winning a battle should give you the joy of “spoils of war” vs the “let them rot, no point looting any of that…” feel that the game has. Also being able to hire “looters” that will just loot a battle field for you and bring what they find back to your establishment would eliminate the hassle associated with the item sorting- think of it like an auto-sorter for “spoils of war loot” where they just give you a report with a list of items received.
More unique items: The Companions steel/shields mod is one of my all-time favorite for this reason. Gorgeous hand crafted weapons that fit the time period but also give that guild something truly unique looking and feeling to the world. If a group of people have “Skyforge Steel weapons, the most amazing steel weapons around!” why didn’t they make them unique looking? Crossbows/bows/weapons that are not just race specific (ie. something that looks ‘elvish’) but that are clan/guild/city specific. (ie, Imperial Army Crossbows)
4. Variant Files
Existing Problems
One female body type
One male body type
One wooden table
One alchemy table
One elvish sword
One orcish sword…
The larger the world gets the emptier it feels
What Needs to Happen
Automatic Variant files need to be created and coded into base game: instead of having “one thing to draw upon” it should be coded that “one of the files in folder will be chosen at random and then saved to that specific creature/npc”. This will change how we view games and modding for generations to come. If you have another wooden table that you like you can install it into the “wooden table” folder and it will begin to randomly appear in the game, as any other wooden tables that you have. If you want a ripped body but also a fat body just put them both in the folder and watch as truly random events happen. You would/could walk down the street and see totally random and totally different looking people/animals. For every body type there should be an associated link to the appropriate clothing so the game know what type of clothing to equip them with. Example being CBBE body type for Skyrim would draw upon the CBBE clothing folders. If this was coded into the base game, even if the folders were empty and Bethesda only gave you “one set of leather armor” it would still make the modding process extremely streamlined and painless. Imagine being able to throw “Sexy leather armor” and “tough leather armor” and “dirty leather armor” and “leather armor with fox head” all in the same folder at the same time and watch as the game just throws out multiple versions at random. If Bethesda is going to rely so heavily on its modding community to sell their games as well as extremely large worlds this is something that should be on the top of their list, as without this implemented you will have large worlds with the same items/people over and over and over and over…
Weapons/armor are classified based on the material they are made with, not the style of craftsmanship: What does this mean? It means instead of having only one set of “elven armor” that is made with moonstone ore you can have “elven style” armor/weapons in steel/iron/glass/etc. You should look at a piece of armor and it should be only identified by its material, such as “iron armor” or “steel armor” or “moonstone armor”, on closer inspection you should be able to tell only by looking at the item if it is elvish/nordish/orcish/etc in make. You want to really be awesome then you break apart weapons into their part- such as a hilt and blade- and add variants of those as well so that you can end up with a moonstone hilt that is orcish in design with a silver blade that is elvish in design. To say that elfs prefer moonstone is totally reasonable and lore friendly, to say that elfs don’t ever use steel/iron/or any other form of metal period is not. Doing this alone (breaking things into two parts handle/blade and separating craftsmanship/material) with 12 different ores (which is what is in Skyrim) and 10 different races (which is in Skyrim) you would have 120 different possibilities just for the hilt/blade let alone a completed weapon. The textures wouldn’t change from ore to ore but the color would, and the color wouldn’t change from craftsmanship to craftsmanship the textures would. This would be easy to implement into Skyrim’s equipment as they only went with a “weight/damage ratio” that was tied into the person’s stamina.
One female body type
One male body type
One wooden table
One alchemy table
One elvish sword
One orcish sword…
The larger the world gets the emptier it feels
What Needs to Happen
Automatic Variant files need to be created and coded into base game: instead of having “one thing to draw upon” it should be coded that “one of the files in folder will be chosen at random and then saved to that specific creature/npc”. This will change how we view games and modding for generations to come. If you have another wooden table that you like you can install it into the “wooden table” folder and it will begin to randomly appear in the game, as any other wooden tables that you have. If you want a ripped body but also a fat body just put them both in the folder and watch as truly random events happen. You would/could walk down the street and see totally random and totally different looking people/animals. For every body type there should be an associated link to the appropriate clothing so the game know what type of clothing to equip them with. Example being CBBE body type for Skyrim would draw upon the CBBE clothing folders. If this was coded into the base game, even if the folders were empty and Bethesda only gave you “one set of leather armor” it would still make the modding process extremely streamlined and painless. Imagine being able to throw “Sexy leather armor” and “tough leather armor” and “dirty leather armor” and “leather armor with fox head” all in the same folder at the same time and watch as the game just throws out multiple versions at random. If Bethesda is going to rely so heavily on its modding community to sell their games as well as extremely large worlds this is something that should be on the top of their list, as without this implemented you will have large worlds with the same items/people over and over and over and over…
Weapons/armor are classified based on the material they are made with, not the style of craftsmanship: What does this mean? It means instead of having only one set of “elven armor” that is made with moonstone ore you can have “elven style” armor/weapons in steel/iron/glass/etc. You should look at a piece of armor and it should be only identified by its material, such as “iron armor” or “steel armor” or “moonstone armor”, on closer inspection you should be able to tell only by looking at the item if it is elvish/nordish/orcish/etc in make. You want to really be awesome then you break apart weapons into their part- such as a hilt and blade- and add variants of those as well so that you can end up with a moonstone hilt that is orcish in design with a silver blade that is elvish in design. To say that elfs prefer moonstone is totally reasonable and lore friendly, to say that elfs don’t ever use steel/iron/or any other form of metal period is not. Doing this alone (breaking things into two parts handle/blade and separating craftsmanship/material) with 12 different ores (which is what is in Skyrim) and 10 different races (which is in Skyrim) you would have 120 different possibilities just for the hilt/blade let alone a completed weapon. The textures wouldn’t change from ore to ore but the color would, and the color wouldn’t change from craftsmanship to craftsmanship the textures would. This would be easy to implement into Skyrim’s equipment as they only went with a “weight/damage ratio” that was tied into the person’s stamina.
5. Game Needs A Strong Direction
Existing Problems
“Wandering aimlessly and purposelessly for hours on end”
“Mile wide inch deep experience”
What Needs to Happen
Pick a direction/purpose and stick with it: this is hugely personal so I can’t say what Bethesda should do only what I would want them to do. To see where the company is headed we have to look back and see where they have been.
Those who played Morrowind (TESIII) and are being honest would say the game in comparison was:
Morrowind TES III
No sandbox elements (0)
Strong RPG elements (10)
Moderate main storyline (5)
Moderate-to-strong unique quest content (7)
No filler (0)
No crafting (0)
Weak-to-moderate combat (3)
Moderate-to-strong open world (6)
No “wandering aimlessly and purposelessly” (0)
The game was centered heavily on RPG elements with a moderate-to-strong quest system/open world.
Those who played Oblivion (TES IV) and are being honest would say the game in comparison:
Oblivion TES IV
Minimal sandbox elements (2)
Moderate-to-strong RPG elements (7)
Moderate-to-strong main storyline (8)
Moderate-to-strong unique quest content (8)
Moderate-to-weak filler content (3)
No crafting (0)
Moderate combat (6)
Moderate-to-strong open world (8)
Minimal “wandering aimlessly and purposelessly” (4)
Bethesda in their next attempt dialed back the RPG elements in favor of a game centered heavily on the stronger unique main storyline/quests with moderate-to-strong open world with more action oriented combat.
In their latest game Skyrim (TESV) what we see is this:
Skyrim (TESV)
Minimal sandbox elements (4)
Moderate RPG elements (5)
Weak-to-moderate main storyline (4)
Minimal unique quest content (2)
Strong filler content (8)
Minimal crafting (4)
Moderate-to-strong combat (8)
Massive open world (10)
Strong “wandering aimlessly and purposelessly” (8)
In their latest game we see Bethesda all dial back on everything that it had done strong in the previous two titles save for “open world” and dial up on even more features that it hadn’t done in the past. What it created was what many ended up calling “the mile wide inch deep” experience, an experience that frankly has sold millions and millions of copies (much like Cod) so imagine what they could do if they could just add depth in any one given area. The experience on a whole is centered heavily on their greatly improved action oriented combat system (the graphics helped unmeasurable in this regard), filler content, and a massive open world; an experience that people have described as “wandering aimlessly and purposelessly for hours on end”.
So if the trend continues TES VI will look like this:
TES VI
Moderate sandbox elements (5)
Moderate-to-weak RPG elements (3)
Moderate-to-weak main storyline (3)
Moderate-to-weak unique quests (3)
Strong filler content (10)
Moderate crafting (5)
Strong combat (10)
Strong open world (10)
“wandering aimlessly and purposelessly” (10)
This is alarming because if they continue down that path there might not be enough draw to bring people from Skyrim to TESVI because there just isn’t anything that innovative added- think of all the Minecraft spinoffs, TES VI would be deemed “Skyrim with mods” if all they did was just create another blank slate for modders to do all their work again. I am sure many would jump in and say “well look at CoD/Assassins Creed/etc, they have done something similar for years!” the problem with that comparison is that those types of spin offs come out yearly, not every 3-5 years and they only lasted 3-5 years before crashing. TES is not a series that can afford to crash and hope for a reboot ten years down the line (Tomb Raider) it has to do well each release. Just look at how the reception of Dragon Age: Inquisition has been - extremely mixed feelings. If Bethesda releases TES VI looking like what I described above they can and should expect a similar response from buyers. If Bethesda thinks that they have the money (possibly they will after a huge success in a Fallout 4? We can only hope…) to put out a game strong in all categories-God bless them, they will have my first born if they pull it off! Unfortunately that is most likely not going to be a real possibility, and as such they need to choose a strong direction for the franchise. I will say which one I prefer personally, but honestly any of these suggestions would succeed although people will be very mixed on the implementation of some vs others.
1. Go back to RPG roots: is there a big enough crowd for this to be successful? Just look at Divinity Original Sin and all of the kick starters that are centered around it- there is an audience here worth selling to and Bethesda has the best long standing relation to that group of people now that EAware has totally fallen (RIP Bioware..) by the wayside.
2. Go back to strong storytelling and unique quests: there is a huge new market of games centered on good story telling and they all have done well. The Walking Dead, South Park, and a slew of others have shown that games can and will sell if there is good story telling and unique quests that people will remember and talk about.
3. Destroy the sandbox world: this is personally what I would want as this is personally where I find myself having the most fun these days. Building castles, building defenses, building an economy, and then fighting to protect what I have built/earned has been some of the most gratifying gameplay I have experienced in my entire life. TES has the tools and the world to destroy a currently empty market that is craving this kind of gameplay. Being able to build your house the way you want to with walls that you like (hell, even building your house entirely out of moonstone or something) in the TES world would be amazing. This field also happens to have THE most mods around, from having to eat to survive, staying warm and not dying from hypothermia, hundreds and hundreds of unique weapons/armors to equip on yourself and your followers, to building homes/towns/even whole cities this genre has exploded- whole channels are entirely Minecraft. If Bethesda wants to see their next game explode and be even bigger, this is the only audience I see big enough to accomplish that.
4. Go multiplayer: now I don’t see a real possibility in having multiple people running around a TES world and having that work in any small degree (TESMMO being a dismal failure- THANK GOD!) but what I have in mind would be something totally different and completely innovative. “Random Online Quest Generator”- much like CoD where the replay ability was never in the game but in the online play. I believe that you could create a random online quest generator in a TES world. You are a thief? Well you get a job to steal this package on transit from city to city. You are a warrior for hire? You just got a job to protect a package on transit from city to city. A random map is generated and the warrior’s guild protects the package and the thieves try and run off with the package. Honestly how many quests are there? Steal something, protect something/someone, find some item/someone in a crypt/dungeon/cave, etc. We have all done these quests a million times, how about adding some flavor to them by making them PvP, or at least making people have to deal with people. Another example being you are told to clear a cave of trolls so you and your group of friends go in and wander into another group of people sent into the cave to find some artifact; what do you do? Kill each other and possibly both of you end up failing the quest because you don’t have enough manpower left to deal with the trolls? Agree to work together and both fulfill your own personal quests? Lie to each other and tell each other you were sent there for different reasons? You wouldn’t need a million lines of code and complicated game design, people would create their own lines of dialogue and their own solutions to problems. The replay ability and innovation of a game with this feature would blow the socks off of anything else on the market, period. How about four different groups on the same map? Stormclocks are told to hold tower beside road and guard people on road, warriors are transporting goods on said road, thieves are sent to steal goods from warriors while imperials are sent to take over the tower- and throw in a random giant showing up somewhere in the mix for good measure. It would be madness and people would die for it.
“Wandering aimlessly and purposelessly for hours on end”
“Mile wide inch deep experience”
What Needs to Happen
Pick a direction/purpose and stick with it: this is hugely personal so I can’t say what Bethesda should do only what I would want them to do. To see where the company is headed we have to look back and see where they have been.
Those who played Morrowind (TESIII) and are being honest would say the game in comparison was:
Morrowind TES III
No sandbox elements (0)
Strong RPG elements (10)
Moderate main storyline (5)
Moderate-to-strong unique quest content (7)
No filler (0)
No crafting (0)
Weak-to-moderate combat (3)
Moderate-to-strong open world (6)
No “wandering aimlessly and purposelessly” (0)
The game was centered heavily on RPG elements with a moderate-to-strong quest system/open world.
Those who played Oblivion (TES IV) and are being honest would say the game in comparison:
Oblivion TES IV
Minimal sandbox elements (2)
Moderate-to-strong RPG elements (7)
Moderate-to-strong main storyline (8)
Moderate-to-strong unique quest content (8)
Moderate-to-weak filler content (3)
No crafting (0)
Moderate combat (6)
Moderate-to-strong open world (8)
Minimal “wandering aimlessly and purposelessly” (4)
Bethesda in their next attempt dialed back the RPG elements in favor of a game centered heavily on the stronger unique main storyline/quests with moderate-to-strong open world with more action oriented combat.
In their latest game Skyrim (TESV) what we see is this:
Skyrim (TESV)
Minimal sandbox elements (4)
Moderate RPG elements (5)
Weak-to-moderate main storyline (4)
Minimal unique quest content (2)
Strong filler content (8)
Minimal crafting (4)
Moderate-to-strong combat (8)
Massive open world (10)
Strong “wandering aimlessly and purposelessly” (8)
In their latest game we see Bethesda all dial back on everything that it had done strong in the previous two titles save for “open world” and dial up on even more features that it hadn’t done in the past. What it created was what many ended up calling “the mile wide inch deep” experience, an experience that frankly has sold millions and millions of copies (much like Cod) so imagine what they could do if they could just add depth in any one given area. The experience on a whole is centered heavily on their greatly improved action oriented combat system (the graphics helped unmeasurable in this regard), filler content, and a massive open world; an experience that people have described as “wandering aimlessly and purposelessly for hours on end”.
So if the trend continues TES VI will look like this:
TES VI
Moderate sandbox elements (5)
Moderate-to-weak RPG elements (3)
Moderate-to-weak main storyline (3)
Moderate-to-weak unique quests (3)
Strong filler content (10)
Moderate crafting (5)
Strong combat (10)
Strong open world (10)
“wandering aimlessly and purposelessly” (10)
This is alarming because if they continue down that path there might not be enough draw to bring people from Skyrim to TESVI because there just isn’t anything that innovative added- think of all the Minecraft spinoffs, TES VI would be deemed “Skyrim with mods” if all they did was just create another blank slate for modders to do all their work again. I am sure many would jump in and say “well look at CoD/Assassins Creed/etc, they have done something similar for years!” the problem with that comparison is that those types of spin offs come out yearly, not every 3-5 years and they only lasted 3-5 years before crashing. TES is not a series that can afford to crash and hope for a reboot ten years down the line (Tomb Raider) it has to do well each release. Just look at how the reception of Dragon Age: Inquisition has been - extremely mixed feelings. If Bethesda releases TES VI looking like what I described above they can and should expect a similar response from buyers. If Bethesda thinks that they have the money (possibly they will after a huge success in a Fallout 4? We can only hope…) to put out a game strong in all categories-God bless them, they will have my first born if they pull it off! Unfortunately that is most likely not going to be a real possibility, and as such they need to choose a strong direction for the franchise. I will say which one I prefer personally, but honestly any of these suggestions would succeed although people will be very mixed on the implementation of some vs others.
1. Go back to RPG roots: is there a big enough crowd for this to be successful? Just look at Divinity Original Sin and all of the kick starters that are centered around it- there is an audience here worth selling to and Bethesda has the best long standing relation to that group of people now that EAware has totally fallen (RIP Bioware..) by the wayside.
2. Go back to strong storytelling and unique quests: there is a huge new market of games centered on good story telling and they all have done well. The Walking Dead, South Park, and a slew of others have shown that games can and will sell if there is good story telling and unique quests that people will remember and talk about.
3. Destroy the sandbox world: this is personally what I would want as this is personally where I find myself having the most fun these days. Building castles, building defenses, building an economy, and then fighting to protect what I have built/earned has been some of the most gratifying gameplay I have experienced in my entire life. TES has the tools and the world to destroy a currently empty market that is craving this kind of gameplay. Being able to build your house the way you want to with walls that you like (hell, even building your house entirely out of moonstone or something) in the TES world would be amazing. This field also happens to have THE most mods around, from having to eat to survive, staying warm and not dying from hypothermia, hundreds and hundreds of unique weapons/armors to equip on yourself and your followers, to building homes/towns/even whole cities this genre has exploded- whole channels are entirely Minecraft. If Bethesda wants to see their next game explode and be even bigger, this is the only audience I see big enough to accomplish that.
4. Go multiplayer: now I don’t see a real possibility in having multiple people running around a TES world and having that work in any small degree (TESMMO being a dismal failure- THANK GOD!) but what I have in mind would be something totally different and completely innovative. “Random Online Quest Generator”- much like CoD where the replay ability was never in the game but in the online play. I believe that you could create a random online quest generator in a TES world. You are a thief? Well you get a job to steal this package on transit from city to city. You are a warrior for hire? You just got a job to protect a package on transit from city to city. A random map is generated and the warrior’s guild protects the package and the thieves try and run off with the package. Honestly how many quests are there? Steal something, protect something/someone, find some item/someone in a crypt/dungeon/cave, etc. We have all done these quests a million times, how about adding some flavor to them by making them PvP, or at least making people have to deal with people. Another example being you are told to clear a cave of trolls so you and your group of friends go in and wander into another group of people sent into the cave to find some artifact; what do you do? Kill each other and possibly both of you end up failing the quest because you don’t have enough manpower left to deal with the trolls? Agree to work together and both fulfill your own personal quests? Lie to each other and tell each other you were sent there for different reasons? You wouldn’t need a million lines of code and complicated game design, people would create their own lines of dialogue and their own solutions to problems. The replay ability and innovation of a game with this feature would blow the socks off of anything else on the market, period. How about four different groups on the same map? Stormclocks are told to hold tower beside road and guard people on road, warriors are transporting goods on said road, thieves are sent to steal goods from warriors while imperials are sent to take over the tower- and throw in a random giant showing up somewhere in the mix for good measure. It would be madness and people would die for it.
6. Combat Overhaul Needed
Existing Problems
Combat with melee and magic is madness
The only thing that requires any finesse is sniping in stealth
The only thing that rewards talent is sniping...
Sniping with/without stealth is effective 100% of game
Slow motion death kill cam only works for sniping
Too many hit-point sponges
Combat is too forgiving
Main character drops it is game over
Lack of combat animations
Lack of body targeting (legs, arms, head, etc)
Equipment usage for classes makes no sense
Lack of any sort of combat class direction
What Needs to Happen
When casting a spell your character cannot move: why is this important, because having people running around in circles shooting lightning from their fingertips while jumping and strafing from side to side is not lore friendly and also madness. This would also mean that a mage’s counter in the thief/archer would make sense, as the mage would be a stationary target and an easy mark. This is non-negotiable if you want to have online/coop play as it would just turn into a CoD jumping spamming stupid fest.
Combined two handed spells need to be more powerful: There needs to be more AoE and/or chain spells that deal massive amounts of damage, possibly even class specific spell effects such as “enemies with heavy armor on take 500% more damage”. This would give mages a place in the game again, being the counter to the warrior. Oblivion had some decent spells and a spell maker, Skyrim was underwhelming and untamed, just spam and jump spam and jump.
Running jump+ prone needs to added+ remove the sneak roll+ add more mounts: Some would say a “roll” needs to be added but once again, that just adds madness to the combat and also is a lore killer as no one rolls on the ground, period. Mobility has always been an issue in TES games, Skyrim added a sprint which was priceless but more help to mobility needs to be added. Trainable and mountable horses but also much harder and rarer mounts such as sabers and bears would also be awesome if they spent the time on them. Prone would be a major boost to ones sneaking, but also allow you to speak in brush if it ever went PvP to any degree. Prone with a crossbow would still be able to fire as well, making crossbows slower to reload but also now having some utility so it would become more of an even trade off.
Implementing penalty to shots and reload speed: if you are strafing should you still be able to fire an arrow/bolt off? Sure… Should it even be REMOTELY accurate? Hell no… Should you be able to reload while walking/strafing- sure, once again, but it shouldn’t be just as fast as if you were standing still… There needs to an extreme penalty to shot when moving/strafing, minor penalty to shot while standing, no penalty if crouching and a bonus to shot if prone. You should also have a 2x-5x increased timer on reloading if you are moving/strafing. Reasons will be obvious to those with brains.
Headshots to those without helmet and with brains should be instant death: can’t begin to describe how lame it is to see someone/something walk around the corner with an arrow sticking out of his head, let alone saying “is anyone there?” Arrows to the head should mean something, they also shouldn’t be easy to pull off but the game shouldn’t be so forgiving when they are pulled off.
Shields should provide 100% damage reduction from arrows/bolts: if you are facing someone shooting arrows at you and you pull up your shield you shouldn’t take “partial damage” you should take zero damage. Warriors counter thief/archer for this reason.
Attacks with weapons against those without weapon drawn/not blocking and are at best lightly armored should be instant death/mortally wounded: if someone isn’t even blocking/has their weapon drawn and they are lightly armored or don’t have any armor on at all they should be killed or be mortally wounded on the spot. A mortal wound will cause you to “bleed out” having you take damage each turn until you finally die or by restoration magic/ potion you stop the bleeding. If I was doing the math I would say that a dagger attack vs no armor would be death and vs light armor it would cause bleeding (similar to mortal wound save that bleeding can and will stop on its own without the help of restoration/potions) while a one handed attack vs no armor would cause death and vs lightly armored it would be mortal wound, and finally if it was a two handed attack against either it would cause death. Having weapons drawn and being somewhat on guard should be a big deal, and keeping enemies off guard should have higher pay offs. At the very least the skill shouldn’t read “4x damage” or whatever it says, at the very least add a skill that gives the ability to just take someone down period in this condition.
Main character dropping shouldn’t cause game over: now I know that this is an old thing, from as old as BG and BGII but it is a terrible, TERRIBLE game mechanic. Why? It favors a gameplay of “hiding” and “wait for someone/something else to kill it for me” and doesn’t reward high risk fun payoff gameplay. Companions and NPC’s can’t die, they will just crawl around on the ground until they stand back up, but Dragonborn can drop at a moment’s notice, and that is that! There needs to be some middle ground here, where the main character can die but your team can resurrect him within a certain time limit (as I discussed with the resurrection spell) so it still is can be nail biting and you still can have game overs but it doesn’t penalize you for trying high risk operations.
Alertness meter: one of the things Assassins Creed did right, when a body is found alertness goes up, weapons are drawn, enemies are harder to kill, and this does not magically go back down in fifteen seconds. People should have multiple levels such as relaxed-normal-weary-alert and it should affect combat.
Targeting and cripple effects: one of the things Fallout 3 did to an amazing degree, if you hit someone in the leg they couldn’t run, hit them in the arm couldn’t swing, etc. Where your sword/arrow hits should have an impact and reward you for smart fighting. Hitting a giant in the leg or luring it into a bear trap so that he can’t run after you anymore would reward thinkers and allow people to take on tougher enemies with their brains.
Remove the level equals enemy: we have to move away from this, no better time than now. You should be able to run into creatures that you cannot currently kill and have to make tough calls. When every enemy you run into will always be around your level you feel like you never have gotten any better. Being able to take down enemies that killed you in the past or slaughter creatures that gave you pause at one point in time is one of the more gratifying aspects of games with RPG elements; level equals enemy level destroys this.
More status and environmental effects: buildings falling down on people and killing them, barrels full of oil/poison/water (thank you Divinity), being “wet/warm/etc” and having that impact the fights. It is always gratifying when you can look to your environment and turn it against the enemy; rewarding smart game play always makes for a fun experience that people will talk about.
Auto/Help targeting: thinking more along the lines of spells and locking onto someone in melee combat. If you friend is wounded across the field it should be easier to throw a healing spell his way. If you are doing a power attack at an enemy you shouldn’t end up flying past them more than 50% of the time. What you don’t want is “auto aim” but it should be easy to implement a “lock on” system as well as a “friendly spell thrower” that allows you to easily filter through your allies in the area.
Area target for bows/crossbows: no more should we have an X in the middle of the screen and that is just “where the arrow flies”. It should be a circle, even for the best archers/shooters in the world it is a circle, the circle just gets smaller. If you have a zero in bows you shouldn’t just be able to “pick up a bow and put the arrow right on the X”, this is bull crap. As you get better with the bow/crossbow you should see your circle get smaller, if you are moving/strafing the circle should get even larger, if you are crouching the circle gets smaller. This isn’t really negotiable, this is a lore and emersion killer.
Class/race/magic/weapon specific items: now honestly the group of people wanting to go back to the “classes” of Morrowind is a lot smaller than they would like to think themselves, but those wanting uniqueness as well as things to make sense, well we are a much, much, much larger group. The extreme stats system of Morrowind wasn’t perfect but the complete and absolute lack of anything that made any sense in Skyrim wasn’t any better. For no reason you just get +10 mana/stamina/or health? You can have someone totally specked for magic wearing dragonbone armor and helms? Saying it was “dumbed down” is not even an understatement, it is a flat out lie; what has happened is that it was gutted entirely and replaced with “push this button for more health” for the dumbest of the dumb that can even call themselves humans. Can we please have some sort of commonsense middle ground option? Do we have to choose classes, no… But can we at least agree that if you equip heavy armor you can’t/shouldn’t be allowed to dual wield complicated spells? That you shouldn’t be able to sneak PERIOD if you are wearing heavy armor? That there are helms that only would fit an argonians head? You can have things make 100% sense and be fun without locking people down strict “classes”, just look at Divinity Original Sin! You should be able to choose your own path but also have restrictions that make sense.
No more “magic staffs that cast spells” but magic amplifying staffs: why can someone who has no idea about magic pick up a staff, flip it back and forth like a broom and all of the sudden magic spells fly out of it? Staffs should be catalysts that make your own magic stronger and more powerful; think of the dual casting spells, a staff should allow one to dual cast immediately and/or slow down the casting speed.
Primary+Secondary weapon swaps: now this might put me under fire but I really think this game could use some simplification, especially, ESPECIALLY in the itemization department; there are too many damn items and too many damn “pause game to pull out this weapon for this reason or get this potion” bull crap. The game should go to a primary/secondary weapon with button swap (I assume tab for pc users) that could be as simple as “ranged/melee”. Based off of what you choose for one options for the other would be limited, like this:
Melee
Dual Daggers: can use bow, crossbow, illusion/alteration, conjuration
Weapon and Shield: can use restoration, war skill
Dagger and Weapon: can use bow, crossbow, destruction
Dual Weapons: can use war skill, bow
Two Handed Weapons: can use war skill
Magic Staffs (magic amplifiers): can use illusion/alteration, conjuration, restoration, destruction
Ranged
Bow: can use dual daggers, dagger and weapon, dual weapons
Crossbow: can use dual daggers, dagger and weapon
Illusion/Alteration: can use dual daggers, magic staffs
Conjuration: can use magic staffs, dual daggers
Restoration: can use weapon and shield, magic staffs
Destruction: dagger and weapon, magic staffs
War Skill: dual weapons, weapon and shield, two handed weapon
The concept would be what you wield as one limits what you can use in the other, based on lore, carrying capacity, and so on. This would add a lot of focus to a currently wide open and completely hollow experience while still allowing adaptation, variation, as well as open up the world for balance issues that would arise if PvP/Coop ever was installed.
Combat with melee and magic is madness
The only thing that requires any finesse is sniping in stealth
The only thing that rewards talent is sniping...
Sniping with/without stealth is effective 100% of game
Slow motion death kill cam only works for sniping
Too many hit-point sponges
Combat is too forgiving
Main character drops it is game over
Lack of combat animations
Lack of body targeting (legs, arms, head, etc)
Equipment usage for classes makes no sense
Lack of any sort of combat class direction
What Needs to Happen
When casting a spell your character cannot move: why is this important, because having people running around in circles shooting lightning from their fingertips while jumping and strafing from side to side is not lore friendly and also madness. This would also mean that a mage’s counter in the thief/archer would make sense, as the mage would be a stationary target and an easy mark. This is non-negotiable if you want to have online/coop play as it would just turn into a CoD jumping spamming stupid fest.
Combined two handed spells need to be more powerful: There needs to be more AoE and/or chain spells that deal massive amounts of damage, possibly even class specific spell effects such as “enemies with heavy armor on take 500% more damage”. This would give mages a place in the game again, being the counter to the warrior. Oblivion had some decent spells and a spell maker, Skyrim was underwhelming and untamed, just spam and jump spam and jump.
Running jump+ prone needs to added+ remove the sneak roll+ add more mounts: Some would say a “roll” needs to be added but once again, that just adds madness to the combat and also is a lore killer as no one rolls on the ground, period. Mobility has always been an issue in TES games, Skyrim added a sprint which was priceless but more help to mobility needs to be added. Trainable and mountable horses but also much harder and rarer mounts such as sabers and bears would also be awesome if they spent the time on them. Prone would be a major boost to ones sneaking, but also allow you to speak in brush if it ever went PvP to any degree. Prone with a crossbow would still be able to fire as well, making crossbows slower to reload but also now having some utility so it would become more of an even trade off.
Implementing penalty to shots and reload speed: if you are strafing should you still be able to fire an arrow/bolt off? Sure… Should it even be REMOTELY accurate? Hell no… Should you be able to reload while walking/strafing- sure, once again, but it shouldn’t be just as fast as if you were standing still… There needs to an extreme penalty to shot when moving/strafing, minor penalty to shot while standing, no penalty if crouching and a bonus to shot if prone. You should also have a 2x-5x increased timer on reloading if you are moving/strafing. Reasons will be obvious to those with brains.
Headshots to those without helmet and with brains should be instant death: can’t begin to describe how lame it is to see someone/something walk around the corner with an arrow sticking out of his head, let alone saying “is anyone there?” Arrows to the head should mean something, they also shouldn’t be easy to pull off but the game shouldn’t be so forgiving when they are pulled off.
Shields should provide 100% damage reduction from arrows/bolts: if you are facing someone shooting arrows at you and you pull up your shield you shouldn’t take “partial damage” you should take zero damage. Warriors counter thief/archer for this reason.
Attacks with weapons against those without weapon drawn/not blocking and are at best lightly armored should be instant death/mortally wounded: if someone isn’t even blocking/has their weapon drawn and they are lightly armored or don’t have any armor on at all they should be killed or be mortally wounded on the spot. A mortal wound will cause you to “bleed out” having you take damage each turn until you finally die or by restoration magic/ potion you stop the bleeding. If I was doing the math I would say that a dagger attack vs no armor would be death and vs light armor it would cause bleeding (similar to mortal wound save that bleeding can and will stop on its own without the help of restoration/potions) while a one handed attack vs no armor would cause death and vs lightly armored it would be mortal wound, and finally if it was a two handed attack against either it would cause death. Having weapons drawn and being somewhat on guard should be a big deal, and keeping enemies off guard should have higher pay offs. At the very least the skill shouldn’t read “4x damage” or whatever it says, at the very least add a skill that gives the ability to just take someone down period in this condition.
Main character dropping shouldn’t cause game over: now I know that this is an old thing, from as old as BG and BGII but it is a terrible, TERRIBLE game mechanic. Why? It favors a gameplay of “hiding” and “wait for someone/something else to kill it for me” and doesn’t reward high risk fun payoff gameplay. Companions and NPC’s can’t die, they will just crawl around on the ground until they stand back up, but Dragonborn can drop at a moment’s notice, and that is that! There needs to be some middle ground here, where the main character can die but your team can resurrect him within a certain time limit (as I discussed with the resurrection spell) so it still is can be nail biting and you still can have game overs but it doesn’t penalize you for trying high risk operations.
Alertness meter: one of the things Assassins Creed did right, when a body is found alertness goes up, weapons are drawn, enemies are harder to kill, and this does not magically go back down in fifteen seconds. People should have multiple levels such as relaxed-normal-weary-alert and it should affect combat.
Targeting and cripple effects: one of the things Fallout 3 did to an amazing degree, if you hit someone in the leg they couldn’t run, hit them in the arm couldn’t swing, etc. Where your sword/arrow hits should have an impact and reward you for smart fighting. Hitting a giant in the leg or luring it into a bear trap so that he can’t run after you anymore would reward thinkers and allow people to take on tougher enemies with their brains.
Remove the level equals enemy: we have to move away from this, no better time than now. You should be able to run into creatures that you cannot currently kill and have to make tough calls. When every enemy you run into will always be around your level you feel like you never have gotten any better. Being able to take down enemies that killed you in the past or slaughter creatures that gave you pause at one point in time is one of the more gratifying aspects of games with RPG elements; level equals enemy level destroys this.
More status and environmental effects: buildings falling down on people and killing them, barrels full of oil/poison/water (thank you Divinity), being “wet/warm/etc” and having that impact the fights. It is always gratifying when you can look to your environment and turn it against the enemy; rewarding smart game play always makes for a fun experience that people will talk about.
Auto/Help targeting: thinking more along the lines of spells and locking onto someone in melee combat. If you friend is wounded across the field it should be easier to throw a healing spell his way. If you are doing a power attack at an enemy you shouldn’t end up flying past them more than 50% of the time. What you don’t want is “auto aim” but it should be easy to implement a “lock on” system as well as a “friendly spell thrower” that allows you to easily filter through your allies in the area.
Area target for bows/crossbows: no more should we have an X in the middle of the screen and that is just “where the arrow flies”. It should be a circle, even for the best archers/shooters in the world it is a circle, the circle just gets smaller. If you have a zero in bows you shouldn’t just be able to “pick up a bow and put the arrow right on the X”, this is bull crap. As you get better with the bow/crossbow you should see your circle get smaller, if you are moving/strafing the circle should get even larger, if you are crouching the circle gets smaller. This isn’t really negotiable, this is a lore and emersion killer.
Class/race/magic/weapon specific items: now honestly the group of people wanting to go back to the “classes” of Morrowind is a lot smaller than they would like to think themselves, but those wanting uniqueness as well as things to make sense, well we are a much, much, much larger group. The extreme stats system of Morrowind wasn’t perfect but the complete and absolute lack of anything that made any sense in Skyrim wasn’t any better. For no reason you just get +10 mana/stamina/or health? You can have someone totally specked for magic wearing dragonbone armor and helms? Saying it was “dumbed down” is not even an understatement, it is a flat out lie; what has happened is that it was gutted entirely and replaced with “push this button for more health” for the dumbest of the dumb that can even call themselves humans. Can we please have some sort of commonsense middle ground option? Do we have to choose classes, no… But can we at least agree that if you equip heavy armor you can’t/shouldn’t be allowed to dual wield complicated spells? That you shouldn’t be able to sneak PERIOD if you are wearing heavy armor? That there are helms that only would fit an argonians head? You can have things make 100% sense and be fun without locking people down strict “classes”, just look at Divinity Original Sin! You should be able to choose your own path but also have restrictions that make sense.
No more “magic staffs that cast spells” but magic amplifying staffs: why can someone who has no idea about magic pick up a staff, flip it back and forth like a broom and all of the sudden magic spells fly out of it? Staffs should be catalysts that make your own magic stronger and more powerful; think of the dual casting spells, a staff should allow one to dual cast immediately and/or slow down the casting speed.
Primary+Secondary weapon swaps: now this might put me under fire but I really think this game could use some simplification, especially, ESPECIALLY in the itemization department; there are too many damn items and too many damn “pause game to pull out this weapon for this reason or get this potion” bull crap. The game should go to a primary/secondary weapon with button swap (I assume tab for pc users) that could be as simple as “ranged/melee”. Based off of what you choose for one options for the other would be limited, like this:
Melee
Dual Daggers: can use bow, crossbow, illusion/alteration, conjuration
Weapon and Shield: can use restoration, war skill
Dagger and Weapon: can use bow, crossbow, destruction
Dual Weapons: can use war skill, bow
Two Handed Weapons: can use war skill
Magic Staffs (magic amplifiers): can use illusion/alteration, conjuration, restoration, destruction
Ranged
Bow: can use dual daggers, dagger and weapon, dual weapons
Crossbow: can use dual daggers, dagger and weapon
Illusion/Alteration: can use dual daggers, magic staffs
Conjuration: can use magic staffs, dual daggers
Restoration: can use weapon and shield, magic staffs
Destruction: dagger and weapon, magic staffs
War Skill: dual weapons, weapon and shield, two handed weapon
The concept would be what you wield as one limits what you can use in the other, based on lore, carrying capacity, and so on. This would add a lot of focus to a currently wide open and completely hollow experience while still allowing adaptation, variation, as well as open up the world for balance issues that would arise if PvP/Coop ever was installed.
7. Better Saves
Existing Problems
One mass of saves
No individual character save files
Terrible auto-saves
What Needs to Happen
Each champion/character gets his own save folder with his own individual saves: it is actually ironic that one of the greatest selling games of all time didn’t have this feature; a feature that, let’s be honest, there is no excuse for not having in the game. You want to start a new game? BE CAREFUL! You might end up saving over another character as every save file is jammed together in the same folder and the save files are… so clearly labeled- “save number 363”… This is awful and we have had enough of it, fix this crap for Fallout 4 as well as TES 6, this is unacceptable.
Better auto-saves, period: really doesn’t matter how, every 3 minutes period, after killing something, all of the above? In a game that you spend hours “wandering aimlessly and purposelessly” and then die in a random act of stupidity and then finding out you haven’t “entered or exited a building or opened your menu” in ages, this leaves you asking yourself “what the hell am I doing…?”
One mass of saves
No individual character save files
Terrible auto-saves
What Needs to Happen
Each champion/character gets his own save folder with his own individual saves: it is actually ironic that one of the greatest selling games of all time didn’t have this feature; a feature that, let’s be honest, there is no excuse for not having in the game. You want to start a new game? BE CAREFUL! You might end up saving over another character as every save file is jammed together in the same folder and the save files are… so clearly labeled- “save number 363”… This is awful and we have had enough of it, fix this crap for Fallout 4 as well as TES 6, this is unacceptable.
Better auto-saves, period: really doesn’t matter how, every 3 minutes period, after killing something, all of the above? In a game that you spend hours “wandering aimlessly and purposelessly” and then die in a random act of stupidity and then finding out you haven’t “entered or exited a building or opened your menu” in ages, this leaves you asking yourself “what the hell am I doing…?”
8. Minions, Bosses, Mutants, and Variation
Existing Problems
Only one type/size/level for most creatures
Not a lot of variation in creatures
Only small scale battles
No real “epic boss fights”
Very little npc vs npc
What Needs to Happen
Add at least four levels for each creature put into the game: what this means for example is not just having “a wolf” but having a “wolf pup” and a “wolf” and a “wolf pack leader” into the groups you are facing. Occasionally you can run into a “wolf mutant”. Something that isn’t normal, something larger than most things ever its type. This should give you the feeling of being able to take down some enemies with ease while others need more attention, it would also give more purpose for AoE and chain spells vs weaker enemies. These are cheap fixes that really shouldn’t need explaining.
Add at least four types for each creature put into the game: what this means is having a “tundra spider” a “cave spider” a “frozen spider” and a “forest spider” that all look and possibly act slightly different. Once again this is a cheap fix that really shouldn’t need explaining but that would greatly help the experience not feel so flat but deep.
Add more creatures into the game: easy to ask for but might be harder to actually put in, regardless it is something that needs to happen. There are some mods that do this somewhat well adding in creatures from previous games that really help the feel of the game. Bethesda needs to spend less time on worthless items and more time on real content.
More random/planned groups fighting groups: random patrols mod attempts to do this and does so to a decent level. What we want is to feel like the world is alive, not dead, give us spiders fighting giants and dragons fighting the companions, whatever; just give us more random slaughter or the chance to save people from it.
Boss fights: this would be nice… Real ones thank you very much, not standing around shooting arrows at stationary dragon until dead.
Unique creature statistics that create unique stuffing’s: instead of just getting a random “elk horns” from an elk that turns into the same “stuffed elk” that you can place in your house, we want a “6 point buck that weighed … and was … tall”. You want to show off a giant you killed by stuffing it and putting it in your trophy room it should tell you exactly what the creature was statistically. You should see a difference in game between a ten foot giant and a sixteen foot giant, and you should also see a difference when you stuff them and place them in your house. We want to experience fighting “the largest giant I have ever seen!” and living to tell about it, and then showing him off in our trophy room!
Only one type/size/level for most creatures
Not a lot of variation in creatures
Only small scale battles
No real “epic boss fights”
Very little npc vs npc
What Needs to Happen
Add at least four levels for each creature put into the game: what this means for example is not just having “a wolf” but having a “wolf pup” and a “wolf” and a “wolf pack leader” into the groups you are facing. Occasionally you can run into a “wolf mutant”. Something that isn’t normal, something larger than most things ever its type. This should give you the feeling of being able to take down some enemies with ease while others need more attention, it would also give more purpose for AoE and chain spells vs weaker enemies. These are cheap fixes that really shouldn’t need explaining.
Add at least four types for each creature put into the game: what this means is having a “tundra spider” a “cave spider” a “frozen spider” and a “forest spider” that all look and possibly act slightly different. Once again this is a cheap fix that really shouldn’t need explaining but that would greatly help the experience not feel so flat but deep.
Add more creatures into the game: easy to ask for but might be harder to actually put in, regardless it is something that needs to happen. There are some mods that do this somewhat well adding in creatures from previous games that really help the feel of the game. Bethesda needs to spend less time on worthless items and more time on real content.
More random/planned groups fighting groups: random patrols mod attempts to do this and does so to a decent level. What we want is to feel like the world is alive, not dead, give us spiders fighting giants and dragons fighting the companions, whatever; just give us more random slaughter or the chance to save people from it.
Boss fights: this would be nice… Real ones thank you very much, not standing around shooting arrows at stationary dragon until dead.
Unique creature statistics that create unique stuffing’s: instead of just getting a random “elk horns” from an elk that turns into the same “stuffed elk” that you can place in your house, we want a “6 point buck that weighed … and was … tall”. You want to show off a giant you killed by stuffing it and putting it in your trophy room it should tell you exactly what the creature was statistically. You should see a difference in game between a ten foot giant and a sixteen foot giant, and you should also see a difference when you stuff them and place them in your house. We want to experience fighting “the largest giant I have ever seen!” and living to tell about it, and then showing him off in our trophy room!
9. Better Occult
Existing Problems
Very small occult world
Vampires/werewolves/dawnguard/etc have very little impact on the world
One quest per Daedra, zero of them memorable, zero of them hard to find
No real hidden treasures that you have to dig to find
No real underground groups that are hard to find/join
Vampire Lord/Werewolf transformation is rather a lame duck that doesn’t fit the world
Vampire/werewolf perks underwhelming and weaknesses overpowering
What Needs to Happen
Make a decision regarding Daedra and their artifacts: Bethesda either needs to make these quests hard/impossible to find and hard/impossible to complete with rewards from the Daedra being some of the greatest items in the game or they need to not put Daedra quests in the game, PERIOD. This is a lore KILLER and immersion KILLER when Daedra quests you can just “accidently stumble upon”, like the occult isn’t actually the occult it is an everyday occurrence, and then these GODS give you their “greatest weapons!” and you take one look at them and toss them in your bag and forget about them or HANG THEM ON YOUR WALL! GARBAGE! Are they Gods of the occult or are they butlers? Make up your mind Bethesda for TESVI, this shouldn’t happen again!
Amp up the occult: there needs to be more vampire dens, werewolf lairs, Stendarr worshipers, cannibals, and more. They should be harder to find riddled in secrets and special ways on entry that you wouldn’t just accidently figure out, ie walking around a specific shrine three time when the sun is hitting it. People should feel gratified the deeper they explore, and feel like they are discovering some deep, dark, underbelly; they shouldn’t feel like “oh boy, here is another generic dwemer ruin with felmer…” over and over and over again. If you are going to make things occult don’t half-ass it, if you want to have the sunlight burn/damage stamina regen then you somehow need to make it so that you can hide from the sun in the many, MANY shadows that are in the game.
Secrets, riddles, and hidden treasures: basically we had zero of that in Skyrim. Sure they had their random “hidden treasure maps” that could have had promise had they not led to single chests with random garbage loot in them- you spent an hour trying to find the stupid thing only to realize that killing twenty random bandits would have given you the same loot and more xp, that is a fail. Basically this entire field needs some much needed love and attention.
Vampires/werewolf’s and any similar dark or occult class should have pros that overshadow their cons with the major damage being to reputation: why do people go into the occult in worlds like TES? They do it for power, the pros tied into power should FAR outweigh the cons in this regard. Having Stamina not regen at all in sunlight, or having you burn to death in the sunlight, without anyway to counter its affects and having zero actual benefits of being a vampire save for the ridiculous “vamPIIIIIIREEEEE LORD!” transformation is a fail. The biggest con of the occult always has been and always will be “the damage to reputation”, meaning certain groups will attack you on sight, certain guilds will kick you out or never allow you to join, etc etc. What Bethesda did is eliminate those hard decisions of “not belonging somewhere or having someone… yuck… not like you!” and instead just made the cons of occult not worth the hassle so they didn’t become OP. You transformed into the vamp lord enough times to get the achievements, cured yourself, and never looked back. Very weak.
Very small occult world
Vampires/werewolves/dawnguard/etc have very little impact on the world
One quest per Daedra, zero of them memorable, zero of them hard to find
No real hidden treasures that you have to dig to find
No real underground groups that are hard to find/join
Vampire Lord/Werewolf transformation is rather a lame duck that doesn’t fit the world
Vampire/werewolf perks underwhelming and weaknesses overpowering
What Needs to Happen
Make a decision regarding Daedra and their artifacts: Bethesda either needs to make these quests hard/impossible to find and hard/impossible to complete with rewards from the Daedra being some of the greatest items in the game or they need to not put Daedra quests in the game, PERIOD. This is a lore KILLER and immersion KILLER when Daedra quests you can just “accidently stumble upon”, like the occult isn’t actually the occult it is an everyday occurrence, and then these GODS give you their “greatest weapons!” and you take one look at them and toss them in your bag and forget about them or HANG THEM ON YOUR WALL! GARBAGE! Are they Gods of the occult or are they butlers? Make up your mind Bethesda for TESVI, this shouldn’t happen again!
Amp up the occult: there needs to be more vampire dens, werewolf lairs, Stendarr worshipers, cannibals, and more. They should be harder to find riddled in secrets and special ways on entry that you wouldn’t just accidently figure out, ie walking around a specific shrine three time when the sun is hitting it. People should feel gratified the deeper they explore, and feel like they are discovering some deep, dark, underbelly; they shouldn’t feel like “oh boy, here is another generic dwemer ruin with felmer…” over and over and over again. If you are going to make things occult don’t half-ass it, if you want to have the sunlight burn/damage stamina regen then you somehow need to make it so that you can hide from the sun in the many, MANY shadows that are in the game.
Secrets, riddles, and hidden treasures: basically we had zero of that in Skyrim. Sure they had their random “hidden treasure maps” that could have had promise had they not led to single chests with random garbage loot in them- you spent an hour trying to find the stupid thing only to realize that killing twenty random bandits would have given you the same loot and more xp, that is a fail. Basically this entire field needs some much needed love and attention.
Vampires/werewolf’s and any similar dark or occult class should have pros that overshadow their cons with the major damage being to reputation: why do people go into the occult in worlds like TES? They do it for power, the pros tied into power should FAR outweigh the cons in this regard. Having Stamina not regen at all in sunlight, or having you burn to death in the sunlight, without anyway to counter its affects and having zero actual benefits of being a vampire save for the ridiculous “vamPIIIIIIREEEEE LORD!” transformation is a fail. The biggest con of the occult always has been and always will be “the damage to reputation”, meaning certain groups will attack you on sight, certain guilds will kick you out or never allow you to join, etc etc. What Bethesda did is eliminate those hard decisions of “not belonging somewhere or having someone… yuck… not like you!” and instead just made the cons of occult not worth the hassle so they didn’t become OP. You transformed into the vamp lord enough times to get the achievements, cured yourself, and never looked back. Very weak.
10. Evolving World
Existing Problems
You kill someone, pay some gold, walk away, and nothing changes
You side with the Imperials or Stormclocks and the only thing that changes are the guard’s faces
You murder someone’s brother and can hold conversations with them the following day
You get married and someone moves into your house, they then can make you food
You buy a cow for your house that can stand there real nice like
You empty a cave out of bandits and next week it is full of bandits again
You become thane of a city and help out the city and its people to the point of getting kids to stop bulling each other and they don’t know who you are and the guards will still mock you.
Regardless of the choices you make the world is 99% the same as when you started
Day and night cycles but no real rain, snow, or other odd weather cycles
What Needs to Happen
Bring the world to life: give us night day cycles but also give us mist over the lake in the morning, rain, snow, foot prints in the snow, the world has to be alive and evolving and the player should have to adapt in that changing world. (A snow storm should kick up and you should have to find shelter or you will freeze to death.)
Crime/morality needs to be fixed: this could almost get its own point by itself, basically the crime and morality of the world needs to add immersion and not just be a “pay gold to fix all your problems”. You murder someone in cold blood in the middle of town that everyone loved, regardless of if you went to jail or paid your fine, people should hate you for the rest of the game; as you walk down the street people should yell out “murderer!” On the flip side, if you kill someone in town who was terrorizing people and people hated him, people shouldn’t report you on the spot or attack you on the spot- I am thinking of the head lady at the adoption house in Riften with the kids yelling and thanking you for killing her. I believe that the faction alignment that Fallout; New Vegas had was a massive step in the right direction. People complained about stupid quests like “helping a little boy being bullied by a girl” but I honestly believe that they wouldn’t have complained had said quests actually impacted the game play and tied into the crime/morality system. If you had a fear-to-love meter and people in each city/guild had their own individually marked meters with how you have treated that city/guild people wouldn’t have care about the quest content if solving the quest in a certain way game them +1 to feared or +1 to loved. Divinity Original Sin went a little bit overboard on all their personality/morality but they are going down the correct path. If you could take the best from Divinity Original Sin and Fallout New Vegas you would have something special on your hands.
Huge world decisions have huge world changes: if you want to add huge all-affecting decisions in the game such as a massive civil war, you need to have massive changes. For example if you side with the Imperials and lay siege to Windhelm most of the city should be in ruins, but it isn’t. If you side with the Stormclocks Skyrim’s money/laws/the way they treat non-nords should change, but it doesn’t.
Decide what to do with marriage: look, Bethesda needs to make a decision about this one way or the other, whatever they decide I am personally fine with. They need to decide to allow “married life” or eliminate the option all together. If you can’t “have children” with your spouse, what honestly is the point? This is clearly an attempt to steal something from Fable II but fail ultimately in its application because they wanted to stay as “T for teen” as possible on an “M for mature” game. They need to give us a complete feeling of being married in a TES world or just remove it altogether.
Evolving spawn zones: instead of having zones (ie. caves) that will spawn the same generic “bandit groups” every X number of weeks the world needs to have evolving spawn zones. Bandits should be able to come in and take over a cave that had bears in it, bears should take over a cave with dead bodies everywhere, a necromancer should be able to move into a cave full of dead bodies that you left behind after killing all the bandits, bottom line is that having the same things in the same places every time is regardless of random events or regardless of what you did/killed in those places is another immersion killer. You should personally be able to move into a cave and turn it into a vampire lair of your own making, you should personally be able to send troops to occupy a strategic fort that you captured from bandits and turn it into your own personal fortress, etc.
Decide what needs to be done with farming: basically we have the option to appear like we are farming, possibly for alchemy ingredients as currently there is no need for food, but that is all it is, an appearance. Your cow really doesn’t do anything, chickens the same, it is all just for show and only in places that have already been assigned as “farm zones”. This is just another feature that feels 25% done. If you want to continue down this route than do a good job on it- make food/water crucial for your families/town/city/guilds survival, allow you to make farms and work the ground ANYWHERE in the world, allow you to find a place on the river and decide for YOURSELF that THIS IS the perfect spot for a family/guild/town/city and allow you to build it from the ground up(even allowing you to make a cave/den yourself), allow cows to be butchered/reproduce/be farmed and actually have that impact the game by giving leather to your blacksmith for working, the possibilities are endless in this world. Once again this is a feature in Skyrim that was added but never felt even half finished. If Bethesda doesn’t decide to trash some things and greatly improve others people might treat TESVI like they do all the Minecraft spinoffs- “this is just Skyrim with mods, nothing new here…”
You kill someone, pay some gold, walk away, and nothing changes
You side with the Imperials or Stormclocks and the only thing that changes are the guard’s faces
You murder someone’s brother and can hold conversations with them the following day
You get married and someone moves into your house, they then can make you food
You buy a cow for your house that can stand there real nice like
You empty a cave out of bandits and next week it is full of bandits again
You become thane of a city and help out the city and its people to the point of getting kids to stop bulling each other and they don’t know who you are and the guards will still mock you.
Regardless of the choices you make the world is 99% the same as when you started
Day and night cycles but no real rain, snow, or other odd weather cycles
What Needs to Happen
Bring the world to life: give us night day cycles but also give us mist over the lake in the morning, rain, snow, foot prints in the snow, the world has to be alive and evolving and the player should have to adapt in that changing world. (A snow storm should kick up and you should have to find shelter or you will freeze to death.)
Crime/morality needs to be fixed: this could almost get its own point by itself, basically the crime and morality of the world needs to add immersion and not just be a “pay gold to fix all your problems”. You murder someone in cold blood in the middle of town that everyone loved, regardless of if you went to jail or paid your fine, people should hate you for the rest of the game; as you walk down the street people should yell out “murderer!” On the flip side, if you kill someone in town who was terrorizing people and people hated him, people shouldn’t report you on the spot or attack you on the spot- I am thinking of the head lady at the adoption house in Riften with the kids yelling and thanking you for killing her. I believe that the faction alignment that Fallout; New Vegas had was a massive step in the right direction. People complained about stupid quests like “helping a little boy being bullied by a girl” but I honestly believe that they wouldn’t have complained had said quests actually impacted the game play and tied into the crime/morality system. If you had a fear-to-love meter and people in each city/guild had their own individually marked meters with how you have treated that city/guild people wouldn’t have care about the quest content if solving the quest in a certain way game them +1 to feared or +1 to loved. Divinity Original Sin went a little bit overboard on all their personality/morality but they are going down the correct path. If you could take the best from Divinity Original Sin and Fallout New Vegas you would have something special on your hands.
Huge world decisions have huge world changes: if you want to add huge all-affecting decisions in the game such as a massive civil war, you need to have massive changes. For example if you side with the Imperials and lay siege to Windhelm most of the city should be in ruins, but it isn’t. If you side with the Stormclocks Skyrim’s money/laws/the way they treat non-nords should change, but it doesn’t.
Decide what to do with marriage: look, Bethesda needs to make a decision about this one way or the other, whatever they decide I am personally fine with. They need to decide to allow “married life” or eliminate the option all together. If you can’t “have children” with your spouse, what honestly is the point? This is clearly an attempt to steal something from Fable II but fail ultimately in its application because they wanted to stay as “T for teen” as possible on an “M for mature” game. They need to give us a complete feeling of being married in a TES world or just remove it altogether.
Evolving spawn zones: instead of having zones (ie. caves) that will spawn the same generic “bandit groups” every X number of weeks the world needs to have evolving spawn zones. Bandits should be able to come in and take over a cave that had bears in it, bears should take over a cave with dead bodies everywhere, a necromancer should be able to move into a cave full of dead bodies that you left behind after killing all the bandits, bottom line is that having the same things in the same places every time is regardless of random events or regardless of what you did/killed in those places is another immersion killer. You should personally be able to move into a cave and turn it into a vampire lair of your own making, you should personally be able to send troops to occupy a strategic fort that you captured from bandits and turn it into your own personal fortress, etc.
Decide what needs to be done with farming: basically we have the option to appear like we are farming, possibly for alchemy ingredients as currently there is no need for food, but that is all it is, an appearance. Your cow really doesn’t do anything, chickens the same, it is all just for show and only in places that have already been assigned as “farm zones”. This is just another feature that feels 25% done. If you want to continue down this route than do a good job on it- make food/water crucial for your families/town/city/guilds survival, allow you to make farms and work the ground ANYWHERE in the world, allow you to find a place on the river and decide for YOURSELF that THIS IS the perfect spot for a family/guild/town/city and allow you to build it from the ground up(even allowing you to make a cave/den yourself), allow cows to be butchered/reproduce/be farmed and actually have that impact the game by giving leather to your blacksmith for working, the possibilities are endless in this world. Once again this is a feature in Skyrim that was added but never felt even half finished. If Bethesda doesn’t decide to trash some things and greatly improve others people might treat TESVI like they do all the Minecraft spinoffs- “this is just Skyrim with mods, nothing new here…”
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