The Ultimate TES game, What would you like to see Bethesda do? Options

[Vital]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this but it's not directly related to Skyrim, Oblivion or any of the older games and is a general discussion about an RPG series (The Elder Scrolls) so it seemed the best fit

Just to clarify: This is not a "Which TES game is the best" thread. It is a thread to discuss the various features seen in any of the TES games, whether you liked them or not, how they could've been done better, why they should've left them out, what they should've had instead/as well, etc etc...

Ultimately it is a discussion about what would be the ideal Elder Scrolls Game in your opinion and how Bethesda could combine all the failures and successes of the previous games in order to create this. If you're already happy with one game, how could it be made better? (It can't be perfect )

Feel free to talk about different mods and games other than TES and how these could be implemented into the game as well.


To start:

I personally would love to see a combination of Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim (these being the only TES games I've played in depth) put into one game. The alien environment, number of factions, lack of hand-holding and so on from Morrowind, combined with the brilliant questlines and general feel (I can't explain this one but it just.... is) of Oblivion and the better combat, crafting and mechanical superiority of Skyrim.

This is just a brief description of some of the things I would like to see. I could write a 30 page essay on this and if this thread gets response I will put more stuff up. Anyway, what are you guy's thoughts?

[gpstr]

Skyrim has sold over 20 million copies.

It would've been impossible to sell that many copies of the game if it catered to roleplayers specifically. We just aren't that big a market. And it really is just that simple.

We're sort of the "first wives club" for Bethesda. We're the only reason that they managed to hang around long enough and get established enough to continue to make games. But we're not sufficient to serve their desires now - they got what they wanted out of us and now it's time to move on. They've continued to include some roleplaying elements and they undoubtedly will continue to do so, but I fully expect the roleplaying to continue to diminish, and really for good cause, from their point of view. It's an unnecessary and expensive complication. Every alternative that's included in a game is something that needs to be coded and tested and debugged and tested some more, and an ever-growing number of their fans don't want those complications anyway - to them, they're just sources of confusion and frustration.

Todd made that explicit in the run-up to Skyrim. He repeatedly made statements about things that were being removed (attributes, for instance) because they were unnecessary and confusing. Their stated goal was to make it so that it was impossible to make a "bad" character. That, to me, just demonstrates that either they don't understand roleplaying or they're catering to players who don't understand roleplaying or both. Probably both. Roleplayers know that there's no such thing as a "bad" character - NOT because there aren't characters who are more difficult to play than others, but because difficult characters add spice - they aren't "bad" - they're just a challenge. But to other gamers, if they aren't effortlessly uber, they're "bad." And those are the players to whom Beth is catering. And again, much though it galls me, they're right to do so. You can't argue against 20 million sales.

The only hope we have for a TES game with more rather than less roleplaying elements is a spin-off series. That's the only way that they could tailor a game to roleplayers AND continue to pay their bills. We can't keep them afloat by ourselves.

I'm not terribly hopeful though. It'd be nice, to be sure, but bluntly - very bluntly, just to make the point - I really don't think they give a [censored]. They've made it pretty clear over the years - even going so far as to include a recurring character in the games just to express it overtly - that they have absolutely no respect for what we might desire. We're just demanding idiots, and all we deserve from them is M'aiq's scorn and ridicule. And again - 20 million sales. Viewed from that perspective, they're right.

Sorry to be such a downer, but this is something I've given a lot of thought to, and it's unsurprisingly pretty much impossible to really address the subject on the Beth forums.

And now that all of that's out of my system, I'm going to go spend some time with Ughoth the Orc mage. He just came back from Fisherman's Rock with Mazoga and is parked outside the Leyawiin castle gates.