The Elder Scrolls V

[OuroborosChoked]

I'd like to see a return to the scope of the original games. Every sequel is smaller than the previous game. Arena was HUGE. Daggerfall, while large, was smaller than Arena. Skipping the side-story games, Morrowind, while still big, was smaller than Daggerfall. Oblivion was just TINY. I don't care if the game has to take a hit in the graphics department... just do away with those damn invisible walls. Give me the whole continent!

And give me back my levitation, dammit!

 

[XxRALxX]

This post isnt a suggestion, this is ...well...i forgot the term, read it >:0

You know, i think what would spice up Elder Scrolls is moving away from tameril, we have only known one continent, i mean i dont even think that the game developers know how big the world is


There would be new races, or possibly the same races, possibly extinct races, like the aylieds, or
un-hostile demora. And ofcoarse the other problems people have labled, but i think im mistaken, i belive this story is on a lich or watever, i remember reading on the offical forums somone said that. But i think that would be a good push off for Elder Scrolls, and who dosent mind walking around 2000 miles of game map to kill a huge dragon?!

And none of us have been to underwater palaces or fortresses, except the knights of the nine...but that dosent count.

Im just saying, they should expand the story, for....what more then 7 hours of game play, because this is suposed to be an epic story, not some a "Main Quest". I say the side quests should only be on the way to the Epic story, and offcoarse veering off is totaly do-able.

Oh, and horses are a burden....enough said, that is the only problem i have with oblivion, besides everything else, aslong as i get "epic lootinz", it over casts the stupid horse/fast travle oxymoron, for me atleast.

OH, and i think they should do somthing like Neverwinter Nights 2, make it action based but semi-turn based, i think it would add on the deep down rpg aspect, and you can take care of npcs that decide to join up with you, stupid friendly fire. >:i

THE END

yay

 

[OuroborosChoked]

This post isnt a suggestion, this is ...well...i forgot the term, read it >:0

You know, i think what would spice up Elder Scrolls is moving away from tameril, we have only known one continent, i mean i dont even think that the game developers know how big the world is


There would be new races, or possibly the same races, possibly extinct races, like the aylieds, or
un-hostile demora. And ofcoarse the other problems people have labled, but i think im mistaken, i belive this story is on a lich or watever, i remember reading on the offical forums somone said that. But i think that would be a good push off for Elder Scrolls, and who dosent mind walking around 2000 miles of game map to kill a huge dragon?!

And none of us have been to underwater palaces or fortresses, except the knights of the nine...but that dosent count.

Im just saying, they should expand the story, for....what more then 7 hours of game play, because this is suposed to be an epic story, not some a "Main Quest". I say the side quests should only be on the way to the Epic story, and offcoarse veering off is totaly do-able.

Oh, and horses are a burden....enough said, that is the only problem i have with oblivion, besides everything else, aslong as i get "epic lootinz", it over casts the stupid horse/fast travle oxymoron, for me atleast.

OH, and i think they should do somthing like Neverwinter Nights 2, make it action based but semi-turn based, i think it would add on the deep down rpg aspect, and you can take care of npcs that decide to join up with you, stupid friendly fire. >:i

THE END

yay

NO!

It's Tamriel

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i201/Vality7/TamrielMap.jpg

and that's how big it is.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

For me, Morrowind set the bar by which I judge all other RPGs. I was hoping that Bethesda would build on that success with Oblivion. I'm tempted to list every reason why Morrowind > Oblivion, but I don't think anyone has that kind of time.

I wish that TES V would take place in Cyrodil again, and do it right this time.

 

[poleboy]

The Elder Scrolls games have always had tons of issues. It's not strange, seeing as how their vision is much more ambitious than most developers'.

As for the inevitable TES V... I think Skyrim is the most likely province they will set the story in. They've already done Daggerfall, Morrowind and Cyrodiil (twice, if I'm not mistaken). There's an old spin-off game called Redguard that takes place in Hammerfall. My Tamriel lore is bit rusty, but I believe Black Marsh, Valenwood and Elswyyr are not under heavy Imperial control. A game set there would probably look a lot different due to the lack of imperial influence. They are also quite "uncivilized" compared to the other provinces with lots of jungles or desert.

Gameplay-wise, I think they are certainly learning from their mistakes. However, there are a couple of things that have failed in most of the games that I think are in dire need of a total make-over:

1) The AI is abysmal. Like really, really bad. A lot of enemies still have trouble with doors and pathfinding and NPC companions are insanely suicidal. It would be nice if the NPC's in general had other settings than "fight to the death" or "run at the sight of blood".

2) Magic is still very easily exploitable. If they simply changed the system so that your spells only give skill points when they actually hit of affect something that would make a big difference. Of course, you could still max them out by casting on yourself, but then it would at least be limited to non-combat spells.

3) More money sinks or more economic balance. The houses in Oblivion was a nice addition, but there could be more. Why not let the player buy an entire town or some titles or some ridiculously expensive art objects or something... it wouldn't take much effort to add a few more static objects or extra titles to the game and it would give players more motivation to play the game after the main storylines were completed.

4) Don't dumb it down. Console players are not idiots. Some of the changes from TES III to IV were excellent, others were unecessary simplification. Fast travel is a nice idea, but I think they overdid it a bit. Somewhere in between Morrowind and Oblivion would be nice, though I am personally more a fan of the way Morrowind did it. I think they cut out the right skills though. Three armor skills are too much and enchantment was completely broken. The way enchantments work in Oblivion is much better I think. Although axes are not blunt, they way they are used are basically the same. However, why no spears? I also think the magic schools need some more work. They claim they redid the entire magic school system, but I don't see it. Destruction is still basically the only school you need, because 99% of the quests end in a fight to the death at some point, and Destruction is the only school that permanently removes health. All the other schools are reduced to utility, such as healing, grabbing something out of reach and invisibility. The only school that has even a slight offensive use is Conjuration.

6) Spend more time on voice acting. The actors were fine, but the AI fucks up a lot and the conversations between NPC's is too often nonsensical. There are also some glaring mistakes, such as the beggars who only use beggar-voice for some dialog and nobleman-voice for other. I can't believe how that got past a single playtester.

 

[DarkHyth]

poleboy, your avatar is the greatest thing ever. And perfectly fitting for this topic. Die Fargoth!

 

[Squarewave]

A lot of people seem to be looking at morrowind with rose colored glasses and/or jumping on the oblivion sucks bandwagon. Completely ignoring the downsides of morrowind and upsides of oblivion

A major complaint people bring up with oblivion is that its too easy, while ignoring that once you go to level 10 or so in morrowind you could kill almost anything with ease, and by level 13 you could have enough money to buy your way to the level cap by using the trainers with no limits on how much you could train all it took was a little gold to cap a skill in a few min. Around level 30 nothing could stop you, or was even remotely a challenge without even the need for enchanted items. With self made enchanted items you could make yourself immortal at even very low levels

Oblivion's combat system was much much better; morrowinds system was an old school type ware hitting attack the game would factor your skill and fatigue to tell if you would hit, blocking was based entirely on skill and chance. oblivion ware you always hit your target but skill effected damage and what moves you could do. Shields are active allowing you to keep the shield up on an enemy that is wildly attacking

AI was much much better; It wasn't perfect but having npcs go thew the motions of a normal life, added much to the game. NPCs would get up in the morning eat breakfast go to work, after work they would go somewhere to relax and eat, then going home to read a book before going to sleep. Part of the reason for the quest markers is that some npcs would travel all over the map, some even explore caves and ruins. The AI did bug out at times but was vastly better then having them stand still 24/7 like a majority of games

Yea there was lots of things in morrowind I wish they added to oblivion, mostly skills. I just have a hard time seeing why some people jump on the oblivion hate bandwagon

 

[vede]

Wait, I read that Morrowind's combat was not repetitive?

Oh, really? Strange, seeing how the two combat systems were almost identical, except Oblivion had special attacks based on your skills...

Heh, I didn't say Morrowind's combat wasn't repetitive, just it seemed more so than Oblivion. Yeh, Oblivion had the 4 direction-and-hold-attack "special attacks" but really, compared to the not-hold quick slash attack, they were the only ones worth using as they did far more damage and depleted fatigue less than it would if you did the same amount of damage with multiple weak slashes. Also, you needed to obtain high proficiency in Swords to be able to use the "sideways" and "backwards" special attacks. In Morrowind, there were 3 types of attack from the start: Chop, Slash, and Thrust, and each could be held as long as desired. So really, Oblivion has little more than Morrowind in terms of variability in attacks, especially early game.

Still, Morrowind combat may get repetitive, but it just felt to reach that point slower than Oblivion

Oblivion also had "Special Attacks" that were based on your skill with the weapon. You could perform a side-power attack with a mace and if you were good with a mace you might have a chance to stun your enemy, or disarm him, or something like that.

Also, to everyone who is saying that Morrowind is better than Oblivion in every way, how?

It seems that hating Oblivion is the big thing, but no one seems to have any reasons. They just do it. What is it that makes Morrowind the savior and messiah of RPGs and makes Oblivion the equivalent of a pile of elephant shit? Am I the only one in the world who is not a complete idiot and thinks that Oblivion was better?

 

[Yx0que]

I only played Oblivion and it could use some improvements.
* The fast travel system doesn't need to go, it just need to make sense. Use magic or portals or some kind of flying creature.
* Guards authority should be limited to their city. Or they shouldn't know everything. But sometimes they come storming in when nobody could see you. This doesn't make sense.
* Deeper combat system.
* And I don't want to be able to join every guild. You can become Arch-Mage without ever casting a spell,once again: try to make sense with this.
* If you're going to have stealth make it a valid option. I find that once you reach a certain level stealth is useless because it doesn't do enough damage.
* Better voice acting

And some said: don't dumb it down because it's on a console. I wholehearthly agree with this. Console gamers aren't completely retarded.

 

[DarkHyth]

Wait, I read that Morrowind's combat was not repetitive?

Oh, really? Strange, seeing how the two combat systems were almost identical, except Oblivion had special attacks based on your skills...

Heh, I didn't say Morrowind's combat wasn't repetitive, just it seemed more so than Oblivion. Yeh, Oblivion had the 4 direction-and-hold-attack "special attacks" but really, compared to the not-hold quick slash attack, they were the only ones worth using as they did far more damage and depleted fatigue less than it would if you did the same amount of damage with multiple weak slashes. Also, you needed to obtain high proficiency in Swords to be able to use the "sideways" and "backwards" special attacks. In Morrowind, there were 3 types of attack from the start: Chop, Slash, and Thrust, and each could be held as long as desired. So really, Oblivion has little more than Morrowind in terms of variability in attacks, especially early game.

Still, Morrowind combat may get repetitive, but it just felt to reach that point slower than Oblivion

Oblivion also had "Special Attacks" that were based on your skill with the weapon. You could perform a side-power attack with a mace and if you were good with a mace you might have a chance to stun your enemy, or disarm him, or something like that.

Yeah, that's what I meant by the direction-and-hold-attack "special attacks"... the power attacks. I'd forgotten their name. My point was basically that you needed to be a high skill level to get these attacks, and they make regular non-power attacks obsolete.

Also regarding Morrowind > Oblivion discussion, firstly Morrowind is a far better roleplayable environment than Oblivion. And TES series are RPGs. You should be able to roleplay as whatever you wish within the games limits. Morrowind's roleplay limits are far more extensive than Oblivion. Your skills are more important.

Secondly, the environment is much more detailed and fun to explore. It was mapped out personally, and as a result there are a lot more interesting places and things to see.

Squarewave mentioned difficulty... there are plenty of mods to up the dificulty in Morrowind if you want them, along with things to make the NPCs do things, like in Oblivion. Thats nothing special.

They took a lot out of Morrowind... some fun skills (Levitate, Mark/Recall), spears and staves, the decent magic system, the enchanting system and so on. In short, Oblivion is just a step forward in looks, but a step back in gameplay and replayability. After the 1st Oblivion gate, you're not going to see anything new in the others.

Someone mentioned earlier (I forget who) that Oblivion was built for the consoles. And they are right. Its toned down for the consoles, and as a result it lacks the intricacy and immersion of Morrowind. (something Yahtzee mentioned, immersion)

 

[KraitRazer]

It seems that hating Oblivion is the big thing, but no one seems to have any reasons. They just do it. What is it that makes Morrowind the savior and messiah of RPGs and makes Oblivion the equivalent of a pile of elephant shit? Am I the only one in the world who is not a complete idiot and thinks that Oblivion was better?

I totally agree that Oblivion was better. It is probably the game I have spent longest on in my entire life and I even bought Morrowind when I cut down on my Oblivion addiction. I found that I played it for about 10 hours and went straight off it. I have completed Oblivion several times now and created the perfect character for combat, magic and stealth. I completed all but about 3 of the side quests and 2 daedric quests.(Mainly because for one of them you needed low intelligence but I had 100.)I still go back to the game sometimes because the dark brotherhood is such a good quest in it. The best one would have to be when you go into the house with the people who are convinced there is gold in the house but they are there so you can pick them off one by one. I loved convincing them that I wasn't the murderer and watching them pick each other off. In Morrowind I did prefer the quick travel system but even though the directions to the quests were more realistic and interesting sometimes they were hard to follow.

 

[DarkHyth]

I totally agree that Oblivion was better. It is probably the game I have spent longest on in my entire life and I even bought Morrowind when I cut down on my Oblivion addiction. I found that I played it for about 10 hours and went straight off it.

This is the problem. You played Oblivion first. Morrowind and Oblivion are rather different games to play. And as a result, people who played and enjoyed Morrowind find Oblivion to be lacking.

 

[Yx0que]

Someone mentioned earlier (I forget who) that Oblivion was built for the consoles. And they are right. Its toned down for the consoles, and as a result it lacks the intricacy and immersion of Morrowind. (something Yahtzee mentioned, immersion)

But they shouldn't tone it down because it's on a console. Console gamers like immersion just like pc-gamers, same goes for difficulty.

 

[DarkHyth]

Someone mentioned earlier (I forget who) that Oblivion was built for the consoles. And they are right. Its toned down for the consoles, and as a result it lacks the intricacy and immersion of Morrowind. (something Yahtzee mentioned, immersion)

But they shouldn't tone it down because it's on a console. Console gamers like immersion just like pc-gamers, same goes for difficulty.

It's not a matter of them being less into immersion, it's a matter of the consoles not being up to the job of providing it, modern PCs are capable of far more than consoles. And then developers get lazy and don't make the PC version better, they just port to it.

 

[BardSeed]

Immersion is what made Morrowind better.

Edit: Sorry I typed this before refreshing the page to check if anyone else had stated this. Turns out there were an extra 5 or so posts.

 

[Copter400]

Haven't we got a thread like this?

 

[SimuLord]

For starters, they should have the Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul team working on the leveled lists and quests. Get Kobu (of KCAS fame) working on the level-up/skill advancement system, since Oblivion was borderline unplayable (at the very least you had to be extremely willing to forgive its flaws) in vanilla.

If they must have a fully voice-acted world, they'll need oh, about six or seven dozen voice actors before they're even on the start of the path to avoiding immersion killing. Wes Johnson can stay. So can the dude who voiced the male Redguards. But they're just the start of a voice acting team, not the end-all, be-all of one.

I'm not a fan of procedural generation in an overworld so I'm perfectly OK with a hand-drawn map set in just one province of Tamriel, and considering that Bruma and Solstheim (from Morrowind's Bloodmoon expansion) were the best-looking environments in their respective games, setting a game in Skyrim (and perhaps some borderlands outside the province) would make the game much prettier.

And one other thing---the system requirements don't have to be Crysis-esque. Graphics on the highest resolutions are already astounding, so feel free to recycle the Gamebryo engine from TES4 and just pretty up the textures and do some framerate optimization.

As for the "magic compass", there are no shortage of mods to address that issue. PC gaming FTW.

 

[tiredinnuendo]

It seems that hating Oblivion is the big thing, but no one seems to have any reasons. They just do it. What is it that makes Morrowind the savior and messiah of RPGs and makes Oblivion the equivalent of a pile of elephant shit? Am I the only one in the world who is not a complete idiot and thinks that Oblivion was better?

I guess I could make a joke about how your statement of "not a complete idiot" is contradicted by "thinks that Oblivion was better", or I could point out that your requested reasons have already been pointed to right here in this very thread, but if you don't want to go looking for them...

1) Console-tarded. Oblivion was built from the ground up to be a console game, and was later ported to the PC. Considering that Oblivion is a member of a series known for being very open in its choices, the oversimplification did nothing for it. There were far less skills, there were far less weapons, there were far less spells (and less spell mechanics), there were far less items, there were far less unique locations, there were less guilds and factions with less consequences for joining them, there were far less ways for your character to be altered by his experiences, and I could go on, but I think you get the point. There was far, far less. Add onto this the fact that the PC interface was clearly built for someone who sits 15 feet away from their screen.

2) Procedurally generated level design. Most of the Elder Scrolls games have had every inch of the game world built by hand. This lead to some really cool moments, like my aforementioned "quest directions" and neat stuff like the boat sitting inside a cave. It gave you a world where you never knew what was going to be inside the next rock with a door in it. Oblivion's entire world was built by a computer. Every interior was designed by randomly assembling the same pieces in a slightly different order. The spawn points, the treasure locations, everything was identical. Don't even get me started on how bland being outdoors was.

3) Level scaling. To combat the droves of people who complained about how easy Morrowind became at high levels, Bethesda decided to show off their extreme lack of innovation via level scaling. Now the world levels with you. BUT WAIT! Don't take this to mean that every creature in the world is always your level. What this actually means is that only about 4 creatures appear in any given level range. What this means in practical terms is that (combined with my last point) when you're looking at a ruin you've never explored before, you already know the exact layout, spawn points, enemies you'll find, and all the loot that will be in any of the boxes. Remember the Vivec vaults, containing untold riches and vaunted treasures? No more! All the "loot" not in boxes is salt shakers and broken swords. So basically, there's absolutely no reason to explore.

4) Oversimplification. I'm good at FPS's, so at level 1 I'm able to complete the arena. I can manage to hold the mouse in my hand, so I can pick any lock in the world even with a lockpicking skill of one. I can manage to count, and therefore can persuade any random total stranger that I'm their new best friend. Actually, to return to that point about being level one, it's actually easier to finish the main quest at level one than it is at level 20.

5) Class limitations. You can be a mage, or a fighter, or a theif. Or a mage-theif. Or a fighter-mage. Or a fighter-theif. Or the incredibly common fightermagetheif. That's it.

6) "Radiant" AI. I'm not even going to say anything about this, but yeah, Bethesda can't build AI for shit. They never could. Trying to put more of their bad AI in was a bad decision.

So there's some reasons. I can give more if you really like.

- J

EDIT:

As for the "magic compass", there are no shortage of mods to address that issue. PC gaming FTW.

The fact that the gaming community saw that Oblivion was terrible and fixed it does not excuse it from being terrible. Don't get me wrong, I had the PC version too, and modded the hell out of it just to make it decent, but that doesn't excuse Bethesda for their terrible, and at times just plain lazy, design work.

 

[Limos]

I just want Bethesda to take a hint form the momdding community and add some of the crazy shit you see in mods. Like Deadly Reflex Combat moves. Or better yet find the guy who made the Oblivion script extender and HIRE him to work on the game. Most of the really advanced mods need Oblivion script extender to work.

I think the most important change would be to update the animations. Especially the run and jump cycles. The jump in every elder scrolls game has totally sucked. If possible make it so third person combat actually works.

 

[poleboy]

Like I have already stated, I think that Oblivion is in some ways a better game than Morrowind. Oblivion is nicer too look at (not really surprising), more user-friendly and not hostile towards players not familiar with the series. It generally tries to make your experience with the game as smooth as possible and avoids putting you in a situation that you cannot escape from.
I think this is what annoys people who played Morrowind. There was tons of ways you could break Morrowind. It gave you a lot more freedom of choice than Oblivion. You could kill a major NPC and the main storyline would be closed for you. Or kill one of the faction heads of a guild and effectively kick yourself out of the guild for good. You could even kill Vivec - and trap his soul in a gem if you were feeling particularly malicious.
I'm not one of those people who enjoy murdering an entire city, even if it is just in a video game. I never did any of those things, at least not without reloading my game. I like that Oblivion has an "immortal" tag for some NPC's, although I think they got a bit zealous with it. However, I also liked the fact that I knew the other people in the world (in Morrowind) could die. By placing more restrictions on how the game can be played (killing NPC's is not the only one), you are constantly reminded that it's just a game. And that goes completely against what I thought was Bethesda's vision for TES series.

That was about immersion, and so is this. Morrowind was loaded with dialgoue. You had a library of topics that expanded as you played, most of which you could toss at any NPC during dialogue in the game. Some NPC's had little to say, others a lot. Most had something.
Your typical Oblivion NPC has exactly three. Background, city x and rumors. Some have a few extra quest-related topics, a few major NPC's has up to ten and guild members have varying amounts, depending on whether you are a member or not and what you're doing for them. While this works pretty well for the more fleshed-out NPC's, the "man on the street" becomes an annoying cardboard cut-out. If you've spoken to him once, you will never do it again, because you KNOW he has nothing new to say. This was made worse by the fact that every city has a very limited amount of rumors.
I know that they spoiled us by adding full voice-acting for even the lowliest NPC and I love that but frankly, a lot of them feel very hollow without you even needing to look behind the surface.