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?

[Winter Wolf]

It flattens out because an Altmer with maximum strength is exactly as strong as an Orc with maximum strength, which is exactly why I've said, more than once, that the races should have different maximums.

I like this idea and will certainly love to see it incorporated into future design. However, it still doesn't address the problem that happens with skill as it raises.

The game as it currently stands is a spreadsheet of values where you gain by everything that you do. The problem of that is that the level cap of Beth/Obsidian games has increased dramatically in recent years. Look at where it has gone- from 30 to 50 and now to 100+ with Legendary Skyrim.

Now what that means is that to reach that cap you will need to lift all skills to even get close to reaching a high level. And this is the key- what will happen if Bethesda decides to only unlock items (enemies or equipment) at a very high level, say 50, or 80 or even 90th level. And what if half the quests in the game have a level cap?

On Oblivion we were lucky that everything unlocked by around level 25, but what would have if Beth had designed it that everything unlocked at level 40?

My way of thinking is that a Warrior class should only receive a skill increase if he used the skill that was connected to his class. He should not receive an increase for using lockpick, or backstab or destruction magic, things that don't belong to his class. I would never advocate a rule that said, only a certain class can do a certain thing. Sure use that magic spell or backstab, but it means nothing to the level progression of the warrior.

And then all the equipment, bonuses, perks, quests, whatever, could be tailored to suit each respective class. Without having character classes Beth has no idea what we are going to do and so cannot design a game that has any proper merit or level design progression. By the time we reach anywhere near the level cap every character is uniform and boringly the same. The problem is far worse than just saying, make each race unique and have different attributes.

Read this post: my characters. Every one of those is a role. Every one of those is a rich and detailed character with strengths and weaknesses and virtues and faults and things they're good at and things they're not good at. All of them are roles. None of them are classes.

That is certainly an impressive list. But I fail to see how having classes would ruin that list? Character classes would be connected to skill and character leveling, not to things like personality traits.

Again, I could not possibly care less what has or has not "always been the rules."

The reason you say that is because you don't care for character classes. I get that. But a game that had character classes in it would certainly have to care about the implementation. Sorry, but I thought we were discussing 'the ultimate TES game'? Perhaps not.

What I don't want - what I resent with every fiber of my being - is someone else decreeing that I am not to be allowed to do that at all.

What are you getting so worked up about? I understand your passion for RPG but not why you think that I am forcing anything on you? If I was saying 'you', it would mean, 'you, the player,' not you, gpstr.'

Anyway, I was responding to a quote from SubRosa in my last post, Hence, the quote tag. SubRosa and I have discussed Fallout many times and the whole post flowed from there. Why would I mention 300 hours of Fallout to you?

This post has been edited by Winter Wolf: Apr 8 2015, 12:12 PM

[gpstr]

That is certainly an impressive list. But I fail to see how having classes would ruin that list?

As but one example - Dawn the Breton. She uses magic and a claymore - mostly destruction and illusion magic for ranged attacks and crowd control, and a claymore up close. She has no need for the sort of limitations you insist on since she's already limited by the fact that she's splitting her time and energy between divergent skills. She'll never be as skillful with a sword as Jibran, for instance, who's never done anything but swing a sword, and she'll never be as skillful with magic as Tim, for instance, who never did anything but cast spells. The limits you believe necessary already exist solely as a function of the fact that time is finite and time spent doing one thing is time not spent doing another. And, more to the point, in your demand that some sort of unnecessary restriction be placed on characters, it's quite likely, just because this is "the way it's always been," that you would decree that she, as a "mage," can't use a claymore AT ALL. She'd be arbitrarily required to use a dagger, as if there's some sort of law of Nirnian physics that causes weapons bigger than that to literally leap from the hands of "mages." So she couldn't even exist.

What are you getting so worked up about? I understand your passion for RPG but not why you think that I am forcing anything on you? If I was saying 'you', it would mean, 'you, the player,' not you, gpstr.'

Um... what?

If you say the former, you necessarily mean the latter. That's exactly the problem. If you say that "you, the player" must be compelled to do this and prevented from doing that, then you're not only saying that I must be so restricted, but that every single solitary person who might ever play the game must be so restricted. That's exactly the thing to which I object.

Immersion doesn’t come from attributes or racial specials or any of the other bells and whistles that constitute game mechanics.

Well... actually, to some notable degree, for me, it does.

It's not a coincidence that I've played so many unusual characters - Altmer barbarians, Orc mages, Orc thieves, Breton tanks... I like playing against the grain, and specifically because I like the challenge of working out how to get this Orc to be a powerful mage in spite of the fact that he's less well-equipped to be a powerful mage than the Bretons and Altmer around him. I love the fact that my Altmer barbarian started out fragile and weak - that meant that he had to REALLY want to be a barbarian and had to REALLY work at it to succeed, while a Nord or an Orc could've just effortlessly cruised to the same end. His shortcomings, and his struggles to overcome them, are a huge part of his story and of his personality.

It's a basic rule of storytelling - the way you create an interesting story is to create a character, give him a goal, then put an obstacle in his way. The drama of the story comes from the things that need to be done in order to overcome the obstacle. With no obstacles, it's just a boringly straight path.

Now personally, I have no idea why anyone prefers complete blank slate characters. To me, that just means that there's no reason to even care about picking a race. With racial differences, I get to choose whether I want to play a mage from a race that's predisposed to magic and thus has an advantage and will become extremely powerful or a mage from a race that's not predisposed to magic and thus has to work that much harder to succeed. Without those differences, I get to choose whether my mage is yellow or green. That's it. The former pair of choices goes some considerable way toward defining the character and laying a foundation for his story. The latter pair of choices is ultimately meaningless trivia - there might as well just be one race and a skin tint slider.

I should note at this point that I think a whole lot of the problem (broadly - I make no claims about you personally) isn't really about the game at all - it's that the distinction is made in the context of "race," which triggers a basic gut-level reaction in people. I don't think it actually has anything at all to do with how the concept of racial differences affects the game, but is primarily just a fundamental discomfort with the notion that there might even be any notable differences between "races." And I can't help but wonder if this controversy would even exist if they were referred to as different species instead.

In any case, whether it makes sense to me or not, it's undeniable that that's how some people prefer that "race" define nothing more notable than skin color and ear pointiness. So that means that my ultimate RPG (I can't even say ultimate TES game, because that's so thoroughly inconceivable - Beth WILL NOT make any game even vaguely like that) includes attributes and includes racial/character presets that can be toggled/adjusted to the player's preferences, so those who want diversity and advantages and disadvantages can have them and those who want a broad sea of undifferentiated blank slates can have them. I'm not wholly comfortable with that, just because it would seem to invite balance problems to have to build a world around some potentially relatively broad range of choices there, but that's the best I can do. I think that sort of thing is vital - that fully-fleshed characters can't be defined solely by their skills - that, just like real people, they also have to have talents. Just like real people, they have to have things that they're innately talented or not talented at - things that they'll be able to do easily if they choose, and other things that they'll find difficult to do if they choose. If they have the exact same aptitude for everything as everyone else, then much of the pleasure I find in roleplaying is gone, just like that. That others don't share that pleasure is just something that needs to be worked around - I'm willing to accommodate that.

I am curious though, how do you decide majors/minors if you have no idea what your character will become? Do you just take anything and then fix the character as you go with console command and mods? I have never had to do that as I theme everything around the character, majors, leveling, quests, equipment, you name it.

For the most part, I use a standard set of general purpose majors that are simply ones that increase slowly enough that I get to spend as much time as possible with the character before s/he becomes overpowered and boring - things like Mercantile and Restoration are ideal, since pretty much everyone uses them, but they increase very slowly.

I have to have some basic idea of what the character's going to do to survive, because some majors, and more significantly, their specialization, are going to depend on that. But it's not necessary to know much - I just need an idea of what type of melee weapons they'll use if any, what type of armor they'll wear if any and what type of spells they'll cast if any. It's only necessary to set things up so that they don't level too quickly but they aren't crippled either - basically, that just requires making sure that their important skills are either non-spec majors or spec minors. Beyond that, it generally works out - some struggle more than others to gain the skills they need, but that just becomes part of their story. And if all else fails - if a build just isn't working out - I use the console to retcon it. I just change their majors around as necessary, then edit their skills and attributes to match. That's pretty rare though - I've done it enough times now that I've got a pretty good feel for assigning majors and specialization so that the character can do anything within a fairly broad range and at least not be crippled and not level up so fast that they're uber after too few hours, and that's pretty much all I require as far as that goes.

[Winter Wolf]

As but one example - Dawn the Breton. She uses magic and a claymore - mostly destruction and illusion magic for ranged attacks and crowd control, and a claymore up close. She has no need for the sort of limitations you insist on since she's already limited by the fact that she's splitting her time and energy between divergent skills. She'll never be as skillful with a sword as Jibran, for instance, who's never done anything but swing a sword, and she'll never be as skillful with magic as Tim, for instance, who never did anything but cast spells. The limits you believe necessary already exist solely as a function of the fact that time is finite and time spent doing one thing is time not spent doing another. And, more to the point, in your demand that some sort of unnecessary restriction be placed on characters, it's quite likely, just because this is "the way it's always been," that you would decree that she, as a "mage," can't use a claymore AT ALL. She'd be arbitrarily required to use a dagger, as if there's some sort of law of Nirnian physics that causes weapons bigger than that to literally leap from the hands of "mages." So she couldn't even exist.

The one mistake I have made is that I came on this forum and started preaching 'character classes,' without defining what I actually mean by that. Somewhere everything got mixed up in the discussion about role play and the direction that the game should take.

My idea of classes is very similar to the way that Acadian demonstrated in the example above. Buffy takes certain skills out to 100 and others out to a lower value, and that is exactly what I would promote. Those values determine one class from another and is a way to prevent every character from becoming bland and uniform after you have either reached (or come close) to the level cap.

The system could look like this as an example-
Four specialist builds that take 5 skills out to 110 max. (fighter, magic-user, rogue and archer)
Then as many multi-class builds as the player can imagine that have 7 skills that have a 80 max.

All other skills not chosen would only be able to reach 25 (Apprentice level) and have to stop. Currently in Oblivion we can still level all minors, in fact, every skill out to 100. This is something I hate with just as much passion as you hate character classes.

The main difference between my design and the mod that Acadian uses is that I strongly maintain that a specialist character should always advance further than a jack-of-all-trades character, thus the skill level caps that I would use. Of course, Buffy is in many ways more extreme (and fun) in the example of character classes. She has her non-using skills sitting at only 15.

Dungeon and Dragons did have the rule that restricted use of many things, ie Clerics cannot use edged weapons, only thieves had back stab, magic-users could only use a dagger etc, and the reason for those rules was so that each player had a different character around the table. It would have been ridiculous to have 6 identical builds playing the same game at the same time.

Elder Scrolls is strictly a single player game so I see no reason to promote such rules. I would prefer to have the player have to tag 'blade' as a skill if they want to have it reach a high level. 110 for a specialist build, 80 for a multi-class character and only 25 if they have not chosen to tag it.

Other than that the player can player the game anyway that he desires.

I have to have some basic idea of what the character's going to do to survive, because some majors, and more significantly, their specialization, are going to depend on that. But it's not necessary to know much - I just need an idea of what type of melee weapons they'll use if any, what type of armor they'll wear if any and what type of spells they'll cast if any. It's only necessary to set things up so that they don't level too quickly but they aren't crippled either - basically, that just requires making sure that their important skills are either non-spec majors or spec minors. Beyond that, it generally works out - some struggle more than others to gain the skills they need, but that just becomes part of their story. And if all else fails - if a build just isn't working out - I use the console to retcon it. I just change their majors around as necessary, then edit their skills and attributes to match. That's pretty rare though - I've done it enough times now that I've got a pretty good feel for assigning majors and specialization so that the character can do anything within a fairly broad range and at least not be crippled and not level up so fast that they're uber after too few hours, and that's pretty much all I require as far as that goes.

Thanks for going to time to explain the way that you build the character. I did think it might be something along those lines.

Race is more about viewpoint based on shared cultural experience than it is about pointy ears and yellow or green skin. That viewpoint doesn’t waver, even when everyone starts with the same attributes.

Destri- I really like that you have pointed this out and it is something that does slip under the radar in the real world that we live in. At least by hopeless people like me who rarely get to see the world from another point of view. I do agree with the way that you see the starting game, as every race can have strong or weak, fat or skinny, fast or slow individuals, and it makes little sense to determine a set group of values to those individuals at the beginning.

This is partly the reason I will always see the end of a Beth as more important as the start. Oh how I hate having every skill hit 100 and a level cap approaching god-like status!

This post has been edited by Winter Wolf: Apr 11 2015, 02:00 AM