@xantufrog:
I thought mods allready solved all that.
Mods.
/thread
I'll quote myself from earlier:
"I know that some of these issues are fixed by mods, but I would like to keep the discussion on the vanilla games and their associated DLCs. I don't personally think people should have to essentially "fix" Bethesda's games because they're too lazy to finish it or otherwise improve upon it themselves."
Mods are irrelevant in this discussion. I also said that I'm aware of mods that fix many of these problems. But Bethesda shouldn't put off their work on the modding community. It's not the community's place to mend together pieces of a game designer's broken system.
@mastermetal777:
Then I strongly recommend not getting another Bethesda game ever again because their vanilla editions will always be shitty in both design and quality assurance.
It doesn't have to come to this, though. If Bethesda would actually look at what the community wants, a lot of these problems won't happen in the next Elder Scrolls game. I think the Dragonborn DLC in and of itself is proof that Bethesda is listening to us; they've never revisited an area before in a DLC, and it's no coincidence they chose somewhere in Morrowind. All it takes is a bit of faith. If the community doesn't have faith in Bethesda, they'll lose faith in themselves. And that, in turn, is a perfect setup for failure. The reason I made this thread was to point out just how many (major) flaws Skyrim has so that hopefully Bethesda will view this (though I'm not vain or hopeful enough to think they will) or that someone will see something on here and it'll get passed around enough for Bethesda to see it. They aren't blind or stupid; they know they've screwed up and alienated a lot of their old fans who enjoy a richer RPG experience. Now it's just a matter of waiting to see what happens next.
Combat: Gonna divide this into three categories.
Melee: Make combat a lot less floaty. And make hits and misses actually count, a miss could leave you vulnerable, if possible, allow movement to to factor into combat much more heavily. TaleWorlds already did this with mount and blade.
Ranged: Allow for body shots, shoot someone in the leg and they will move slower, shoot someone in the head and they will take heavy damage, add effective range and make arrows do less damage the further they fly. Furthermore, add some slight spread for non aimed shots, higher archery skill reduces the spread. Essentially, again, what Warband did (with the exception of leg shots).
Magic: Remove dual wielding magic, it was a stupid idea to begin with. Make magic scale with skill and gear (add a relic slot or something). Add a lot more versaility to mages, and make magic a whole lot more sandboxy. Return Mysicism and take inspiration from Guild Wars 1's mesmers.
Also in general, remove killmoves from the game. Attacks that could easily have been blocked or dodged, suddenly hit you. They were a terrible idea, and should not return.
Class System.
Either add a class system, seen in Daggerfall, Oblivion and Morrowind. Or add a backround system seen in the likes of Mount&Blade.
Guilds and Factions.
Make guilds and factions compete again with eachother, I shouldnt be able to be the guildmaster of them all. Make joining one, more than just accepting a glorified questline, joinnig a guild should mean I make new friends... and more importantly, enemies.
Levelling
Remove level scaling, lower the softcap on levelling to around 20 or 10. With a much lower powercurve, the need for level scaling will be for most of the part gone, and even low level enemies can be threatening.
World
Go for a much lower scope, big empty worlds are no fun to traverse, Morrowind had a good balance, aim for around that. Now that the resources arent as spread thin, more effort can be made to make each area worthwhile.
Crafting
In its current iteration the Crafting in Skyrim is a broken mess. Upgrading was extremely linear and just involved adding +damage to your weapon weapon of choice (and +armor for your armor of choice). The only property each weapon has is their damage and weapon type. So there is never any reason to use an iron sword instead of a dwarvern sword or whatever.
What I propose here is to add more weapon properties to each weapon, add length and speed modifiers, percentage of damage that is crushing damage. Add exotic materials that add fire damage or a weapon that drains stamina on usage. Or how about taking a page from Rune Factory 3 and 4, where you can make all sorts of weapons with crazy effects? Including the creation of a staff that allows you to use the attacks from various monsters you fight. In Rune Factory 4 I have 3 weapons using the same base model, but all of them function fundamentally different.
Enchanting and alchemy are well done though overall. But the smithing skill was so half baked. Overall, more effort needs to be put into the itemization, because right now, the itemization in Skyrim is not all that great. Though compared to other modern RPGs, it isnt that bad either.
I like a lot of these ideas. The kind of combat system in particular could be well implemented, I think. One thing, though, is that enchanting utterly breaks the economy in Skyrim, and it's really, REALLY easy to level up. I'm not an alchemist myself, but I've heard it's also quite broken. The ranged idea is absolutely brilliant, especially with the spread bit. Apparently, my character is amazing with a bow with Archery at level 20. I didn't even think of that. As an aside, I honestly have no idea why Skyrim didn't implement the broken limb system from Fallout 3 and New Vegas. It seemed like such a trivial, commonsense idea that there's no real reason for it not to be there. As for the class system, absolutely. Either give us the choice or let us opt out of it. Either way, we can play the way we want. Level scaling is most definitely a pain. I feel like even wolves should be a serious threat until about level 10. The exotic materials are most definitely a good idea. To be honest, I'd also love to see a return of enchantment making and spellmaking. For the world, to be honest, I feel like almost all Elder Scrolls games are about the same size in terms of the map (I know they aren't, as confirmed by Bethesda, but it just feels that way to me when I play them). I just wish Skyrim and in some cases Oblivion didn't have what felt like a bunch of bland, repeated areas. I love New Vegas to death, but I'm reminded of all those sacked caravan locations all over again.
I agree about spellcasting. Although there were some mechanical improvements to it over earlier Bethesda games, it feels quite limited and uninspiring. Morrowind had much more diversity. It would be cool to see elemental combination in future editions, where dual-wielding spells leads to a unique combination outcome and not just two independent spells being cast or a "sum of effects"
Yes. Either do away with dual casting or make it much more difficult and rewarding. The "sum of effects" thing is honestly underwhelming, and I'd also like to see a return of some of the insane things you could do with magic in Morrowind make a comeback. It would've been amazing to see a dual-casted fireball spell cause an absolutely massive fiery explosion with a huge AoE, or a dual-casted ice spike spell allowing the player to essentially throw some sort of huge ice lance.
@ninetailzz: Woo, this is a big list. Let's go in order. I'll try to keep things brief. And also, I like Skyrim as well, and I agree things need to improve for the next Elder Scrolls that will inevitably arrive:
- Combat - I do agree that the combat needed a lot of work. Perhaps accessibility was such a big priority that the combat was simplified to that extreme, but as most action RPG players will know, the point of having a combat system is for it to feel satisfying regardless of your character build. For any sort of melee play, I would recommend a more refined version of Dishonored's sword play system, with the blocking and parrying abilities, and adding unique animations and skill trees for each type of weapon. They're not all the same. Controlling an axe versus a sword is completely different. For spells, there does need to be more variety to each spell instead of just being the same type of projectile with a color swap. How to do this will require a lot of imagination, but maybe having ice abilities reflect upon defense, so building ice soldiers or walls with that would be cool. Fire is a very offense-based spell, so add to it some sort of mass flares or meteor-like attacks. Just something to ponder.
- Class systems - I'm not opposed to removing class systems, honestly. It gives players incentive to experiment with wild builds to see what they love best. At the same time, I realize that many players like roleplaying with set class builds and working to improve upon those instead. Here's what I propose. At the end of the character customization screen, the game would give you two options: custom class (in which you either play the game with base everything or have a few stat points to plug into whatever you wanna build), or use a pre-made class (which is pretty self-explanatory). These would both allow for player customization for those who like making things from scratch, and satisfy those who use templates in order to role-play.
- Quest Lines and Choice Recognition - this should be a given, but Skyrim's storylines just weren't that interesting. Oh sure, the lore behind the world is fascinating, and the return of the dragons had enormous potential, especially in the midst of a bloody civil war. But the presentation, along with the actual progression, just didn't seem like it mattered in the grand scheme of things. Now, I know how to write a story, but I've never written one for a game, so I can't propose anything that would be even remotely better than what we were given. However, given that this is a massive sandbox RPG, at least let players feel like their actions mean something aside from criminal activities forcing people to hunt you down (the only part that actually feels legit). If you do something heroic, let NPCs give you discounts in stores, or have guards look the other way without a bribe (this can be done by becoming a noble in any of the holds, I know, but maybe have it be more meaningful if you decided to end the war). Also, give the NPCs some life. Every single Elder Scrolls game has a problem with having interesting characters falling flat because of either average performances or wonky animations. Please put more resources into voice acting and animation work, Bethesda. It would be very appreciated.
- Dungeon Design - Now, I can see why it's annoying, but if I may play Devil's advocate here, there's little within Skyrim's environment that could suggest having more unique dungeon designs. The best ones were Blackreach and the Falmer caves, but those were maintained up north to the mountains in Dwarven ruins. Everything else was either a tomb to bury family or some sort of cave. It makes sense in the context of the world, which is why I'm not as annoyed with it, although it does feel repetitive after a while. Maybe there needs to be a land in the Elder Scrolls universe that has a wider range of landscapes to explore. I'm sure with the advances in tech, this can happen, but for now, I say take what you can get, and pray for more intuitive dungeon designs.
These are my personal big issues with Skyrim. The item and crafting system was well-done I believe (needs more variety and balance though), and the leveling needs to be more balanced as well (removing level scaling kind of hurt this game a little). Let's continue discussing this. Maybe go point by point? I'd love to help improve an otherwise well-made game series.
The combat should feel rewarding, definitely, but my mind goes back to when I felt like an absolute boss when I was able to hit a bandit four times in a row without getting shanked in Morrowind. I think leveling up in itself should feel like a major reward. Combat is an absolutely integral part of the experience of TES, and gradually getting better at it would be immensely satisfying. Morrowind's combat was most definitely not accessible, and I don't think many people, if anyone, would advocate bringing it back. Instead, as you said, parrying and blocking as well as dodging should become an important part of melee combat. As your character levels up (and I would actually say the levels need to go a bit slower since you could level up in Skyrim insanely quickly for the most part), he/she becomes a bit faster, a bit better at parrying a sword at the last moment, etc. Overall, combat should feel engaging. And I 100% agree that axes and swords and whatnot should have unique skills. And ice being used for defense and building temporary walls is an awesome idea. Seriously.
As for the class system, absolutely. I think you should be able to opt out of it and get a decent character with all-round skills (i.e. all skills around 15-20) or be able to choose a class or make a custom one (i.e. some skills are about 30-40, but as a price, all "non-major"/"minor" skills are at a really low level, maybe around 5-10, just like in Morrowind and Oblivion). I feel like it would balance out quite well and have universal appeal.
THANK YOU. Yes, the people in Skyrim barely reacted to anything the PC did at all. It's just so dull. I could be the Legate of the Legion and still have guards treat me like a regular citizen. And the guards are the ones that react to everything! As for wonky animations, Morrowind was the king of kings of those XD. Regardless of that, I think Morrowind did an overall outstanding job of character development for major characters, particularly Vivec and Dagoth Ur. And that sleazeball whose wife I had to buy. I wanted to roast him by the time that was over.
Maybe it's true that dungeon design is limited by the lore of Skyrim in that regard. I think they probably could've done a better job in their design, but I concede this point. It's probably mostly the fetch quests that make me despise them to the degree I do.
Lastly, I think level scaling should either apply to very few creatures or be taken out altogether, actually. Bandit leaders shouldn't be people I could take on at level one, and I shouldn't be able to delve into dangerous Dwemer ruins at level three and hope to come out alive. And Alduin should put the smackdown on even the Ebony Warrior.
Thanks to all you guys who commented! I've been insanely busy recently, but I'm glad I decided to post this. I'm equally glad that we don't have any rudeness on here so far. Ad hominem and the like drive me nuts.
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