The Next Elder Scrolls Game, what should it have

[Rattler5150]

Keep in mind im talking about a sequel to Skyrim, NOT the Elder scrolls online MMO game.

What should skyrim's sequel have? No game has been announced, this is just my wishlist.

1. Updated engine, better graphics, more stablity

2. Better AI, the monsters and npcs should be less stupid

3. keep the modability. The mod community is HUGE with skyrim, release a dev kit within a short time of the release date.

4. Coop play, One glaring weakness of skyrim is the lack of multiplay, At least give us the ability to have a few friends join in on big quests.

5. More environments, Skyrim had 2 basic environments, temperate and snowy, give us more for the next game, Deserts, jungle, surprise us.

6. Varied body shapes, Everyone in skyrim is basically the same height and build, Children are one size, women another, men the tallest, throw in some variety, just like real life people are all sizes, make some skinny, some fat, some strong, some short some real tall.

 

[TheSapphireKnight]

In terms of setting I hope it has a shorter time skip unlike the jump between Oblivion and Skyrim. Setting it in Valenwood and Elsweyr(which together make up about the same area as skyrim) and have it be about the end of the Aldmeri dominion. Because I need another outlet destroy the thalmor. The Elder Scrolls VI: Dominion?

 

[mistahzig1]

Not every place you explore filled with VILLAINS.

'twould be nice to stick an arrow into someome and finding out it's just a family squatting in a cave I found ;oP

That would put more emphasis in stealth and character dialogues imo

 

[Wraith]

More variation in missions really, and better rewards for beating those missions.

Skyrim was like this in most cases:

"Dovahkiin, you must help stop the evil [blank] go find our ancient weapon in the draugr caves."
Reward: The Ancient Weapon-- that is just a steel sword with a weak frost enchantment on it.

"Dovahkiin, a prisoner escaped. We last heard he was hiding out in some draugr caves."
Reward: Gold.

"Dovahkiin, a magickal wizard is planning to unleash an eternal darkness upon the land. With his new power he was able to demolish our entire village. Please, go find him in these other fucking draugr caves and beat him."

Reward: Magician's Spellbook-- that levels up your destruction magick once.

There have been so many times where I've done shit for the Daedra or entire cults, league, guilds, brotherhood etc. that just left me an underwhelming reward after they talked up how amazing it was.

Multiplayer would also do well for me too.

 

[MrSir231]

I would love to see more variety when it comes to leveling up(i.e more thief type specific upgrades, warrior type, etc...). Sure, having every skill can be fun at times, but it takes away from the replay ability of the game.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

My biggest request would be more conversation options for roleplay.
Like the time I played an orc, and discovered that there were literally no conversation options for asking anyone "Where's the nearest orc village?"

When you consider how the old RPGs used to handle conversation options Skyrim was a joke. And don't give me that "Voice actors are expensive" crap. The original Fallout managed full voice acting with all it's conversation choices, including the option to randomly question anyone about anything or any object.

More consequences for your achievements. I am the Dovakiin that swallows dragons and saves the world. That means that after completing key points in the main quest the very next guard I see will give me a "Thank you for saving us" message, and then it is never mentioned by anyone ever again. Literally the next guard you pass has a high probability of slagging you off. That. Should. Not. Happen.
At least in Fable as your renown grew they had people gather round and gawk at/applaud at you.

Also more varied quests and dungeons, instead of playing follow the quest arrow. And more enemies than Bandits on surface/shallow caves, dragur in deeper caves, falmer in deepest caves.

 

[Black Reaper]

Better combat
The combat in Skyrim basically consists of clicking on stuff until it dies, and occasionally blocking, you can make it better with mods, but its still pretty bad

Better writing
The interesting npcs mod nailed this, i try out most conversation options the new npcs have because they are so well written

More customization options
While Skyrim had prettier characters than those in previous Beth games, you still had a very limited hair selection

 

[suitepee7]

offline mode, herp derp.

seriously though, better variety of spells, scaling magic, better melee combat, less overpowered sneaking, better rewards for completing quests (unique shit, not just renamed already existing items)

oh, and a big one, a decent main quest -_-

 

[THEMILKMAN]

It should definitely be in Elsweyr, Black Marsh, Valenwood or the Summerset Isles if it has to be in Tamriel at all anymore. Just no more human race lands for a while. Skyrim and Cyrodiil were painfully boring to explore (they were basically the New England region of the US) whereas the old but different and wonderous dark elf land of Morrowind is still interesting to explore to this day. At least Oblivion had the Oblivion gates and Shivering Isles to mix up the environments a bit but Skyrim had literally nothing besides snow and draugr. Without that desire to explore and see new things, Skyrim very quickly got boring as hell to me and I really hope they actually make it someplace interesting in the next game.

 

[aozgolo]

Well Stability is a huge thing, especially for modders. Even after spending hours upon hours learning the best way to mod the game, and using just about every stability hack known, I still get random crash-to-desktop errors.

Dragon Shouts added a whole new layer to the gameplay element, I think it would be difficult to create a new TES game without some similar mechanic. It doesn't have to be Dragon Shouts exactly but the benefits of having a secondary spell system like that made the game tons of fun.

Expand the game world to beyond Tamriel. I'm not saying we actually need to visit Akavir or anything but encountering some of it's inhabitants would be nice. Akavir ruled Tamriel for several centuries, so I find it strange you never find any holdouts of Akaviri peoples still in the Empire.

Play as a Lich... we've seen them do a lot of cool things with both Vampires and Werewolves, but Liches would be an awesome addition. Have the ability to build a phylactery and become undead (with all the benefits and drawbacks that entails)

More Factions... Morrowind had 14 Factions you could join and rise up in ranks, and most of them had much much longer quest lines. Oblivion and Skyrim had 4 factions basically (there were a few smaller quest chains technically tied to factions but without any substantial reward for completion).

More interactivity with the world. It's a shame in Skyrim that despite joining the Bard's College and finding lutes, flutes, and drums everywhere that you can't perform music in inns (without a mod). How about grabbing a broom and smacking a troll with it? Why not a spell equivalent of the Rock-It Launcher from Fallout 3 where I can take plates, burnt up books, and buckets and launch them as projectiles at enemies? I just want to see the items in the game have more purpose and give greater depth to immersion.

Make Marriage more meaningful. You did it Bethesda, you let the romance option cat out of the bag, too bad it really is lame. You don't ever feel really attached to your spouse, there's little benefit to it at all, either from a practical or storytelling emotional point of view. It's about as interesting as chopping firewood for a few measly gold pieces. If you're gonna have it at all, at least put some more effort into it.

 

[GamerAddict7796]

4. Coop play, One glaring weakness of skyrim is the lack of multiplay, At least give us the ability to have a few friends join in on big quests.

Nononononononononononononononononononononononononono!!!

Bethesda games are one of the last bastions of single-player focused triple-AAA games out there! Watch http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/6718-Only-The-Lonely to put my opinion into better words. There are games that exist to play with a few friends (Team Fortress 2, COD, HALO etc. ) and games that exist to immerse you in a world (Skyrim, Fallout etc.)

OT: Set it in the home of the Khajiit (not even going to try and remember how it's spelt) for some awesome desert Elder Scrolls with some interesting dungeons buried under the sand.

Better quests. See Oblivion for how to do quests that don't involve me going into another Darugr cave for the 8 millionth time this week. Oblivion had awesome quests like going into the haunted ship in Anvil, sneaking back into prison to kill a mouthy elf and the best being the Whodunnit quest!

 

[Someone Depressing]

I believe a large part of TES's atmosphere is the whole "lone wanderer in the big world" angle. It gives me a sense of responsibility. I didn't look at Lydia awkwardly for a few seconds before making a decision, nor did I really take note of the NPCs' moral alignments.

Even with companions, the world is still large and hauntingly beautiful at times.

Honestly, while there is a very good mod for Skyrim multiplayer, I play the games for different reasons. Well, Skyrim. The first two sucked, Morrowind was ok, Oblivion was trippin' on its uncanny valley, but Skyrim gets its atmosphere spot-on.

 

[bliebblob]

Make it harder to join multiple guilds and factions. Not impossible, just put up some kind of resistance so I can't become leader of every single one in 3 in-game weeks. Long story short, I like making a completely different character every now and then in elder scrolls. And it's fun to discover a whole new side of the game when I do. And to feel like I'm truly playing a whole different ball game with this character. Factions are a big part of that, but not if they're just amusement park rides any character can go on. Even if they're good rides.

Also, spell crafting.

 

[TristanBelmont]

4. Coop play, One glaring weakness of skyrim is the lack of multiplay, At least give us the ability to have a few friends join in on big quests.

I will chop off my legs and beat myself bloody before this happens. Not every game on the market needs multiplayer, and even still you're getting it in the form of Elder Scrolls Online. If you want a good co-op RPG series I can recommend Monster Hunter.
Back on topic, I think getting to explore outside the continent of Tamriel would be pretty cool.
Having marriage mean a little bit more would also be nice; I'm one of those crazy people who forms attachments to fictional characters really easily so if you could shamelessly pander to us a bit, that'd be great....

 

[Vrach]

Hunger, thirst, sleep, and exposure.

And zombies. Call it OblivionZ! Kidding and not hating btw

I agree, always like to see features like this, I loved Hardcore mode in F:NV, despite it not being hardcore (doesn't even really need to be, the mechanics are still fun). Would also be good to have weather impact (I imagine that's what you meant by exposure?) and have it be more direct than the usual "if you sit in a blizzard for 6 hours, you'll start losing health".

I remember playing Morrowind: Blood Moon ages ago on an old computer... Now, Morrowind itself played perfectly on that PC. And so did Blood Moon... with the tiny exception of snow storms. Whenever a snow storm would happen, I'd get a ton of lag and the game would become near-unplayable. Near enough however, that I was still able to haul ass to the nearest building/cave where the weather had no effect.

At first, this was annoying of course. After a while though, I realised I was in this game where a snow storm would actually force me to find the nearest shelter as fast as I could and wait out the storm. Of course, in Morrowind, this was a simple matter of pressing the sleep button, setting it to 8-12 hours and then moving on, but sleeping in TES games does still have a degree of danger to it, in that you can get attacked in your sleep (not killed, but still, you can't just jump into any enclosed space, press a button and be done with it).

I'd love to see this made into a gameplay mechanic, except of course, with lag replaced by a gameplay need for shelter. You have a ton of reasons to get out of bad weather situations, so it's not very hard to think of a few and it's not any more work than any item on F:NV's Hardcore mode.

What I'd love to see more than anything in a TES game however, is the return of exploration. By which I mean, people explaining to you where stuff they want done is and not just marking it on your map and letting you do the whole GPS thing. Sadly I know better than to hope for it, it's a lot of work and no one's willing to put it in since the market is used to the whole straightforward "go there, do that, get back". I just found it a lot of fun in Morrowind, it was one of my favourite features of it as it was exploration at its best.

 

[RedDeadFred]

4. Coop play, One glaring weakness of skyrim is the lack of multiplay, At least give us the ability to have a few friends join in on big quests.

I will chop off my legs and beat myself bloody before this happens. Not every game on the market needs multiplayer, and even still you're getting it in the form of Elder Scrolls Online. If you want a good co-op RPG series I can recommend Monster Hunter.
Back on topic, I think getting to explore outside the continent of Tamriel would be pretty cool.

Fully agree, ES does not need multiplayer. I would much rather them focus on making an even better single-player experience than put in any kind of multiplayer.
As far as going somewhere other than Tamriel, I think that would be awesome. Maybe the Akaviri invade again and the game takes place partly in one of Tamriel's coastal provinces. Then the second part of the game could be striking back and going over to Akavir. Heck, it could even take place somewhere entirely new but I agree that this would be awesome.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

When you consider how the old RPGs used to handle conversation options Skyrim was a joke. And don't give me that "Voice actors are expensive" crap. The original Fallout managed full voice acting with all it's conversation choices, including the option to randomly question anyone about anything or any object.

...huh? There were only like 20 or so characters in the original Fallout that were voice acted. Everyone else was just text-based.

Anywho...

1. More interesting story. I know this is pretty subjective, but honestly, the Skyrim story just didn't do anything for me at all. I've tried playing the game like four or five times now, and only once did I continue the main quest past killing the first dragon (and even then, I stopped the story immediately after visiting High Hrothgar). It's just not engaging to me at all.

2. Better power scaling. Without modding spell scaling into the game, playing as a caster feels absurdly weak compared to melee and stealth builds.

3. Better UI. The basic Skyrim UI is complete garbage.

4. Save game sorting. Allow us to rename the save files without having to use console commands, and sort save files by character (similar to, say, Mass Effect).

5. Give us an option to hide helm. Especially if the helms are going to be as ridiculously fugly as the ones in Skyrim.

 

[Gitty101]

Two main things come to mind.

A better and/or reworked combat system. Combat in all the TES games so far has been a complete snore-fest. An implementation which takes some actual skill would be a plus for me.

Characters and decision-making that're worth a damn. Despite all the stuff usually going on, TES games have always felt so sterile, like nothing you do or any relationships with any character matters in the slightest.