#elder-scrolls-general-chat

1 messages · Page 15 of 1

forest surge
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"In a book by Sage Svari of Fallowstone Hall, I have read that Hircine will claim the soul of any lycanthrope upon their death. That leads me to the question of who actually has 'the final say' about where the soul of a mortal goes after death, as this example would suggest that Daedric Princes have a greater say in this than Aedra have. Are there instances in which some kind of conflict between the divine forces over the soul of a mortal may occur, and if so, what would be the deciding factors in such a conflict?" – Inkwolf

Abbot Crassius Viria says, "Sage Svari's statement that Hircine 'claims' the souls of lycanthropes is poetic but misleading. It is the mortals themselves who decide the destinations of their souls by the choices they make during life. However, that said, there have been reports that Worm Cult necromancers have devised a way of hijacking the souls of mortals sacrificed in a certain Daedric ritual. This would be horrid, if true, but so far we have not received definite confirmation of it."

feral viper
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I don't agree with some things said in Loremaster's Archives anyway. The Elven Lifespan thing is a particular sticking point.

forest surge
feral viper
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Yes, and it was utter nonsense.

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200 is old. 300 is very old, and anything older is magic.

Which means at least half of known Mer have extended their lives with magic, and the majority of Elves live to what would be a Centenarian in humans.

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Centenarians making up an average of 0.01% of the population in MODERN developed countries.

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Elven healthcare would have to be orders of magnitudes better than modern medicine, for their statement to be accurate.

Which is utterly absurd.

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But like a lot of things, it's an example of writers not having any clue what they're talking about, or thinking things through.

Almost everything involving warfare is topic this commonly happens in, but just standard issues of Scale are immensely common a well.

It's kinda ironic that Warhammer 40k, the setting that deliberately tries to go over the top, is one of the few Sci-Fi settings that actually gets scale kinda right.

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They also have some of the best Vampires in fiction, but you know..

forest surge
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300 is very old

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Especially when compared to the average Human. Verandis is very old to begin with as was many Psijics.

feral viper
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If we take the Real Barenziah's 1000 year Lifespan as accurate, what we see makes a lot more sense.

It puts 300 in the rough 1/3rd range for life expectancy. Which is what we actually see in Humans for most of history. 50-60 being the average life expectancy of those who make it past childhood, for the better part of the last 4000 years.

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It would also mean that, between 400 and 1000, the 'Magic' is effectively just healthcare. Allowing Mer to push that life expectancy closer to their actual potential lifespan.

Then anything OVER 1000 would be real magical life extension. Of which we have a single example that isn't a god or undead.

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It also means we don't have disproportionate amounts of Mer pushing the extent of their lifespans to degrees that would make modern medicine envious.

forest surge
feral viper
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But when writers don't actually understand the implications of the terms they use, or actually apply the standards they set, you end up with problems like a medieval fantasy culture having elderly survival rates that would put any 1st world nation to shame.

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And if that goes on long enough, you get perceptions of concepts and words that become so deeply engrained, you can't escape them. Like Race.

forest surge
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The Psijic’s especially are among the oldest

feral viper
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I think it's more of a 'Left hand doesn't know what the right is doing' issue. And that's a chronic problem with Bethesda, but also seems to happen in ESO where in a lot of cases it's designers are also it's writers for minor quests and characters. So you constantly get characters referencing events that age them, don't reflect the 'Official' story.

forest surge
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The Psijics however seem to be among the few with the greatest amount of Life Extension, the Orc mentioned in Oblivion regarding the Necromancy Ban was a Psijic in ESO who was kicked out and has lived up to Oblivion times

feral viper
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It's a consequence of the adhoc writing approach that has been a constant blight on the franchise as a whole

forest surge
forest surge
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Granted I don’t know how the Dark Elves have it among the Telvanni

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They are really skilled that much is for sure, but a Psijic is also something else

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They just may be more related on the Magical scale when it comes to Aldmeris

feral viper
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They seem to have originally been closer, but the Telvanni drifted away from the Psijics sometime in the 1st Era.

Probably because the Psijics are a bunch of stuffy traditionalists.

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But given the absolute shambles that is Magic in the setting, we aren't even sure how magical life extension would work.

forest surge
feral viper
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Which would only reinforce the 'Pushing the line to lifespan' thing. Since the man still isn't even at the Human Limit.

forest surge
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Meanwhile Psijics and Telvanni have become the Masters of Extending ones Life to such extremes

feral viper
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Or, at least, theoretical biological limit.

forest surge
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Which already makes the case Psijics and Telvanni are the only ones with the answers

feral viper
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Fyr, on the other hand, has grossly exceeded even the limit indicated by the Real Barenziah.

If the Loremaster's figures are accurate, he's 10x the natural age of an elf.

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If the Real Barenziah is the correct one, it's only 4x. Which is still a lot.

forest surge
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You have to be lucky to have the magical potential for the Psijics or even the Telvanni, and the Telvanni as it is would backstab someone before ever sharing that knowledge

feral viper
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My issue is, if delved into, there's a lot more that needs to be dealt with first.

Magic in TES is a crude patchwork of effects and factoids that don't actually fit together in any coherent way.

It likes to pretend it's got a Hard Magic System. But in reality, it's Soft Magic at best.

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But, it's almost 1am, and ive lingered enough. Time to sleep.

forest surge
feral viper
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There are enough scraps they they could be strung together into a coherent system with minimal effort. All it would take is a clear explanation for what the relationship is between Magicka and Creatia, and what Spells are and how they function.

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But that's a larger lore discussion, rather than a more mechanical one. In terms of mechanics, Skyrim's approach is probably the best to build off of for magic. It just needs a lot more ingredients.

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Though, it could probably use some better organisation. Especially if Spellcrafting makes a return.

feral viper
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Delivery, Behaviour, Effect. Three components that ultimately combine to create a spell.

Even if you only have 5 options for each, that's more than 100 potential spells. All behaving distinctly.

pale walrus
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Maybe there needs to be a 'hierarchy' in magic. In other words, perhaps there are basic spells (low level healing, simple creation of a flame, etc) that people can learn. To progress beyond that might take special effort and training which becomes increasingly difficult, eventually filtering out people who don't have the talent or 'strength' to reach the highest levels where spells can be combined or given 'custom' properties. An intelligently designed magic system could become a very involved 'mini game' that has the potential of being tons of fun, part of that deriving from the 'investment' of time and effort a player puts into a particular magic-using PC.

feral viper
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Conceptually, I'd divide Spells, and for lack of a better term, Sorcery.

Spells are easy to use, imprinted knowledge that is designed and calibrated to behave in a particular way. It's Consumer Magic, designed for regular people to easily access and engage with.

Sorcery is the big stuff. It's the stuff REAL magical scholars get up to. At its most shallow, it includes MAKING spells, but it requires study, knowledge and careful experimentation. And most of all, strong will.

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The player, in general, isn't going to dig much into Sorcery in adventuring. But they can sometimes interact with it through more practiced mages they are helping.

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This sort of division had both mechanical, and lore benefits.

Lore wise, it allows you to explain differences in Spells from game to game as well as the decline in certain services line Spellcrafting and certain magics. Levitation CAN largely be banned, by simply banning the sale of spells. Those who know the spells, can't teach it to others because they don't actually know how it works.

Mechanically, it also allows you to play up bigger magical effects without raising too many question, and a the same time maintain the characters engagement with spellcasting.

frozen notch
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I hope they didn’t forget

feral viper
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I don't get anniversaries, personally.

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They're like Birthdays, but even less important.

pale walrus
feral viper
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Hah, maybe.

eager remnant
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It's the opposite with me. I'm the one who keeps track of birthdays, anniversaries and holidays. My wife doesn't care about any of that.

feral viper
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I stopped keeping track of any of that when I hit 19. And that was simply because it is the arbitrary age assigned to legal autonomy and the ability to purchase restricted goods in my country. After that, it's all pretty meaningless.

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Especially when it comes to products, like... Just make good stuff. Don't worry about anniversaries, or try to capitalise on the impulse purchasing money milking nonsense.

Release a good product, when it's ready, and people will buy it.

pale walrus
nimble pond
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Yea I lost count after my 427th year

wide garnet
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What I want to know is what actually started 30 years ago?

feral viper
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TES. March 24 will mark the 30th anniversary of the launch of Arena, the first game in the franchise.

wide garnet
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Thank you.

feral viper
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No worries. I give the mods enough headache just by existing. I should at least try to be useful sometimes, right?

glass marlin
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Hmm...I wonder if ES6 will take place in the 5th era or continue into the 4th era. Thinking because I was thinking of Aringer's intro sentence to you.
"So...a Dragonborn appears, at this moment...in the turning of the age."

feral viper
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I hope we don't have another Age already.

glass marlin
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Yeah I agree.

pale walrus
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The era designations seem awfully arbitrary. If the 4th era is to end, it should terminate in an event which brings long-lasting peace to the continent. I can't imagine that ES6 will usher in such a thing.

feral viper
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The era designations ARE arbitrary.

forest surge
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The whole idea of the end of an Era feels like a Major thing, so I don’t see a need to even have a 5th Era atm.

wide garnet
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Just make sure you’ve got some things nailed down because, as Kieran (||and his twin brother, Voryn, in my Dragon Age: The Lost Scrolls fanfiction||) once said, “(People) fear the next Age if it comes too soon.

pale walrus
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Just a thought: if BGS can't come up with great stories on their own, they could 'borrow' some. For example: I'm watching on YT "The Magnificent Seven", from 1960. This is GREAT!!! That could serve as a basis for an ES6 long questline. Or they could go to the original source material, "The Seven Samurai." I've seen that - it's different, but lots of fun too.

tardy tiger
pale walrus
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So the eras are defined by politics. Ick.

forest surge
pale walrus
# forest surge I mean… what else?

I can understand eras being bounded by extreme events. The Red Year or the Oblivion Crisis make sense. The Planemeld, the end of dragon rule in Skyrim, the Warp in the West....these are all reasonable choices. But the rise and fall of dynasties? Not so much.

forest surge
feral viper
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As for stories... Just taking from elsewhere doesn't work either. As a prime example using the Magnificent Seven (which I personally hate, but you know... Cowboys) and Seven Samurai... Rebel Moon.

It's the same premise, same story, but is absolutely terrible.

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So execution problems are often far more impactful than having a good premise.

Skyrim is another good example of this directly. None of its stories are bad. They're just terribly executed, with rapid fire pacing and poor character development.

pale walrus
# feral viper Everything is defined by politics. Politics is the single most powerful force in...

It's just that there are events which transcend things like the end of one dynasty and the beginning of the next - things that 'ripple' across multiple peoples and societies/states/cultures. Think about the germanic tribes finally overrunning the western Roman frontiers, the explosion of the Bedu from the Arabian peninsula bringing Islam from the Indus to Andalus, the discovery of the Western Hemisphere and things like that. Sure - pinning such things to a particular political event is convenient, but doesn't necessarily capture the change in all its dimensions. Maybe I'm overthinking this, and without a doubt this entire train of thought reflects my own biases - after all, picking out the start or end of the septim dynasty as transitions between eras irritates me because empire builders are, in my eyes, meddlers and miscreants who just create massive problems for many people because of their ambition and drive. I do see your point, though.

night violet
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I have tried playing other large fantasy games but I just can't seem to catch the same charm as an Open World Elder Scrolls title or Even ESO has brought me. Which is why I'm really looking forward to some news about TES VI. Anyone think we will at least know which providence we are going to in the next year or so?

eager remnant
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As to when we might hear about TES VI's setting, I have no idea. The next year or so is certainly possible. Is it probable? I don't know.

pale walrus
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I suspect it depends on the public reception to the June Starfield DLC.

opaque ingot
pale walrus
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If an event was planned, they would have announced it weeks ago.

pale walrus
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The fact that the 30th anniversary is not important to BGS is interesting. Think about it - Fallout is now 'covered' by FO76 in terms of entertaining the FO audience. Same with ESO - that's where the ES work is going now and has been for some time (essentially ES is now a Zenimax domain.) BGS learned from its experience with ES and FO and has seemingly focused the lessons learned on Starfield. With all this in mind, the reception of the June Starfield DLC will be very important. If it's well received, that would greatly strengthen any strategic interest in growing Starfield as a multi-title IP. At that point, it will likely provoke BGS to leave any future ES work to Zenimax, which would probably mean that there would be no further single player title releases.

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The fact that ES6 has been spoken about by BGS management as a title that, upon release, is intended to have a 10 year lifespan is a pretty clear indicator that ES single title development is no longer the primary driver of BGS and has not been for at least the last 6 years.

wide garnet
pale walrus
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Actually, the BGS strategy back then was different. They had announced a 5-6 year 'pace' between single player ES titles. But they evidently changed their minds along the way.

wide garnet
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That’s what happens when you try to change things. Things change, not necessarily in the way you want them to,

forest surge
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The biggest problem is also how they haven’t bothered actually making proper Spin off Singleplayer games to make the wait less frustrating, not necessarily in the same vein as the games they make but something smaller scale

feral viper
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Admittedly, that was over 20 years ago, and the markets changed, but some lessons stick harder than others.

forest surge
feral viper
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That something easier said than done especially for what remains a comparatively small studio in the industry.

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It would ultimately require more studios with their fingers in the IP pot, and... That can have mixed results.

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Ultimately, I maintain that I think we're at the point where BGS simply has too many pots on the stove, and it's time to split things up.

But then, the problem becomes, you have multiple studios making games that directly compete with eachother to in the market. Which also isn't a good business move.

So there's not really a great solution, unless all 3 franchises are developed in distinct ways to minimise market crossover.

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And in any case, the sorts of major mechanical developments and refinements that are really needed would only be slowed down by any such division, further diminishing the likelihood of the next release being well recieved.

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So there really isn't a simple, reliable solution.

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Again though, I'm not one to really care about anniversaries. Or even how long between releases. The end result is ultimately all that matters to me, regardless of how long it takes to get there.

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The Basilica de la Sagrada Familia has been under construction for over 140 years, after all. And despite the fact I think it looks absurd and like a termite nest, it may still come together at the very end.

forest surge
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But with that comes expectations from fans believing anniversaries should mean new game reveal or release date

feral viper
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Yeah.

nimble pond
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If anything, you might get some small, vague, tease to chew on and drive you nuts in the meantime.

nimble pond
feral viper
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I think, conceptually, the part of Bethesda open worlds that continues to stick out in the market is... The fact that the 'Stories' are ultimately secondary.

Other open world games are largely driven by their narratives. But in a Bethesda game, those narratives are mostly a backdrop rather than the focus.

pale walrus
# forest surge Granted yes, but Spin Offs are still something that they should be doing more of...

Agreed. Either spinoffs like FONV or additional DLCs. Those can be farmed out. Quality control and 'blessing' the storylines will matter, but it can be done. You could say that ESO is a 'spinoff', and storywise they've done quite well, so the approach/tactic has been shown to work. All it really takes on the part of BGS is making the decision and managing the engagements skillfully. I think they can do it - again, it's worked before. It would be wise as well - carrying FO, ES and SF all together is likely far too much to ask of them.

pale walrus
# feral viper Ultimately, I maintain that I think we're at the point where BGS simply has too ...

Completely agree. They do need to split things up so each IP gets its 'just desserts', kinda. That does complicate things from a management perspective, because there will be both a need and a benefit in the separate teams sharing information and coordinating development plans. But that's what management is for, after all. In terms of improving game mechanics - granted, splitting up the teams puts a kink in that. But maybe splitting teams by IP can also include splitting up mechanics improvements and making them available to the other teams. Again, it's a coordination thing, so it's a management task.

nimble pond
# pale walrus Agreed. Either spinoffs like FONV or additional DLCs. Those can be farmed out. Q...

Some may not like this, but I think the mobile games they been doing suffice as spin-offs, while they focus they're already overbooked schedule on the main titles barely releasing on-time, if not much delayed. For larger spin-offs, they could go the ESO route and task another company to dev it if there is suitable interest. Tho I actually prefer F76 over ESO, the increased time constraint between main titles just isn't worth it imo.

And sure, thinking about BGS doing large single-player spinoffs sounds cool. But in reality, it appears they already have their hands full as it is. But really I think a good amount of DLC can fill that anyway and is it's own kind of "spin-off." Everything else is either mobile, multi-player, or both. So with that in mind, I dont really see the need to open up a new department or hire another just for SP spin-offs and creating further dysfunction with communication between departments. And it's not like that's solely a BGS problem. It's just a common consequence of larger companies. You should hear some of the wild stories I've had with a company as large as AT&T. The sheer amount of cluelessness between departments is beyond me.. 🤦‍♂️

forest surge
nimble pond
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Believe me, we know 😅

pale walrus
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OK then - for some folks, the ESO and FO76 titles are keeping them content with regards to those 'game worlds', for lack of a better term. This would then reduce the pressure on BGS to crank out single player titles - at least to some extent - for both FO and ES. A lot hinges on the reception for the SF DLC in June, then. If it's a flop or gets a lukewarm reception, that will present a strategic dilemma for BGS. If, on the other hand, it is a runaway success and turns the vanilla game into an outstanding success as well, then I think it would make strategic sense for BGS to simply concentrate on further building DLC and new titles for SF, leaving FO and and ES to their multiplayer versions.

nimble pond
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SF will get itself together, even though I personally didn't think it that bad and believe much of the hate is over-exaggerated. F76 had a rougher start with trying their hand on a more expanse multiplayer fallout world. Not to mention it's the first in the series, it's not like with TES or Fallout where the lore has already been established for years and they've already made a couple titles of each franchise. Most of the planning with those is already established ahead of time.

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But look man we need to talk bout serious TES business, like stickies.. I'm talking stickies!

pale walrus
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Yeah, maybe SF will get its legs under it and ultimately turn into a widely popular title, putting the IP on the path of becoming a multi-title series. That would probably be a very strong impetus for BGS to simply focus on this new IP, with ES and FO confined to the MMO space from here on out. I'd say we would then hear about ES6 getting cancelled - there'd be no point in pursuing it.

forest surge
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76 is not an MMO

nimble pond
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Thank goodness it's not 🥳

forest surge
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It wouldn’t work as an MMO Anyway, since Fantasy tends to be more in that space

nimble pond
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I mean I know I've seen MMO shooters out there. You can probably MMO most anything. I just don't generally go for them. I think the last MMO I played was Defiance. Which was like.. idk, sci-fi, fantasy, shooter? It was an interesting game and different, but it just didn't have the support it needed and pretty much got the bare minimum treatment by the owners.

forest surge
pale walrus
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Sorry - just Online Multiplayer for both FO76 and ESO. Nonetheless, if SF takes off after the june DLC, it makes it easy for BGS to adopt a strategy where they only focus on SF from now on, leaving FO and ES new content development to Bethesda Softworks and Zenimax, respectively. From a resource management point of view, that solves a lot of their problems.

forest surge
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Except your missing the crucial point

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There are Many fans who want more Singleplayer games from Fallout and Elder Scrolls

pale walrus
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I hear you. I am one of those fans. But if ES6 is truly still in pre-production as has been said, we may not see the title release until next decade, and a new FO title would be out perhaps another decade. There's no way for BGS to sustain the audience with such a delivery schedule, and no way for them to remain competitive. They have hard choices to make - both if SF turns into a big success and also if it doesn't.

eager remnant
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TES VI officially left pre-production back in August, 2023. According to a Wired interview four months ago Howard stated that approximately 250 developers were still working on Starfield. This means that, as of four months ago, twice as many developers were working on TES VI than the total number of developers who worked on Skyrim. And this number may have rsien even higher in the months since that video was made.

nimble pond
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You seem a bit glum, supreme. It was a rough patch with the engine work, the experimental fallout 76, establishing Starfield, and outside complications such as Covid or however else fearless leaders decide to prove things can always get worse than they already are. But back to their normal schedule, you might could see TESVI anywhere between 2026-2028. And possibly, Fallout 5, in 2030. They want Starfield to last a decade, but I think that also means don't expect Starfield 2 till around that length of time. 😅 And looks to be that way for the other 2 franchises as well in the meantime unless they decide to start releasing their games closer together. Adding a third franchise into the mix has extended the wait time between each franchise title unfortunately.

opaque ingot
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Happy 30th birthday elder scrolls to those living on the 25th already

gusty pine
forest surge
nimble pond
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They had a small amount of people working on TES years before Starfield was even released, then they shifted the majority of that manpower over to TES. Probably follow suit with Fallout 5. They also have had dedicated teams with their more persistent games like F76 in the meantime. Possibly smaller teams for mobile support games. Apparently working with filmmakers too these days.

gusty pine
nimble pond
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Yea, I wasn't saying full-development on two or more games all at one time.

gusty pine
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They typically take 5 or 6 years of full development for a game.

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And with the way tech keeps improving studios will have to keep increasing staff or take longer development times.

nimble pond
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2002, 2006, 2008, 2011, 2015. And then post Fallout 4 with the other stuff going on up until Starfield, 2018, 2023.

glass marlin
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I'm really hoping the Elder Scrolls game that allows use to finally end the Thalmor takes place in Summerset Isles.

gusty pine
# nimble pond 2002, 2006, 2008, 2011, 2015. And then post Fallout 4 with the other stuff going...

The first 3 you mentioned were all using the old gamebryo engine so there was nothing new to learn. 2011 is when they started using the Creation Engine and integrating more advanced programing and mechanics as time went on also development time increased. And FO76 is an online multiplayer those are designed to be basic and built on later so the shorter development time makes sense there.

nimble pond
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You said 5-6 years, I simply listed a history of their release dates. I didn't bother adding mobile games to the list as well since they are smaller in comparison.

gusty pine
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But all and all they do work faster than teams twice their size.

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I wasn't referring to just Bethesda when I said 5-6 years I meant modern triple A games in general.

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The further you go back the shorter the dev times for triple A games. But that's when things were more simple.

nimble pond
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Well, that wasn't what you wrote originally when you brought up TESVI, but I'm not looking to get into a petty argument over nothing.

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It is now midnight. Happy 30th TES 🍻

pale walrus
# nimble pond You seem a bit glum, supreme. It was a rough patch with the engine work, the exp...

Sorry, man. I just started thinking about things and was wondering if I'd been missing some obvious clues. ESO and FO76 were developed not just to make money, but explore an alternate way of delivering new content on each of those franchises. Combining that with the very obvious irritation of Todd Howard when he introduced the ES6 preview vid in 2018 and the commitment to Starfield, I began to wonder if I wasn't 'adding up the numbers' incorrectly.

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Regardless - BGS still has much to sort out from a resource management perspective. Creating new content, improving gameplay mechanics to be competitive and supporting three different franchises is going to take some figuring out.

pale walrus
nimble ore
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Guys anyone knows where to ask questions about the new mobile game castles?

night violet
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Happy 30th birthday to the Elder Scrolls Universe

nimble pond
nimble ore
nimble pond
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You could try the feedback section. But if it don't suit your question, I'd suggest scrolling down to the bottom "discord-suggestions" channel to request what you seek to be added.

feral viper
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I jest. That's actually terrible for your mental health, and if anyone finds themselves in such a slump, they should seek help before it becomes unhealthy.

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Whatever is going on behind the scenes I think they ultimately the point to make is... Better, not More.

There's a lot of mechanics, systems and underlying dynamics that need significant work to bring them into the current decade, let alone future proof it. The foundation is there already, the time just needs to be invested in polishing it.

night violet
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Posted in wrong chat sorry

My favorite Elder Scrolls memory is a character my brother and I were taking turns playing. We would pass the controller back and forth when one of us died. Neither of us were that good at the game yet but we were stubbornly playing on Expert. We were doing Dawnguard and there was this one Falmer Camp we just couldn't beat. Finally I had enough to activated our werewolf form. Tore all the Falmer to bits. My brother:

"I don't know why we didn't try that an hour ago."

It was fun times. Now my brother is a Marine and I don't get to see him much. But we still fondly talk about that Breton character we played together ten years ago now.

thick trail
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Happy birthday TES!

forest surge
frozen notch
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Yoooo, they said there are early builds of TES VI and they are already playable

nimble pond
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@pale walrus Well, that should perk you up

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Here's a thought. Now I really wouldn't care if they did or not as I don't feel the proc gen is advanced enough yet to really make the desired impact of doing this.. but say they were to have the TESVI include the entirety of Tamriel. The catch being all the great hand-detailed stuff and focus of the story and game is on a single province as always. While the rest of Tamriel is proc gen'd much like the outer planets in Starfield. But it might satisfy some of the requests I've seen out there like people wanting to be able to travel all thru Tamriel, more space and opportunity for modding, etc. etc.
Hell, you might even be able to sail clear around Tamriel, but again there would probably be a section of waters more focused on while the rest is as I said before.

nimble pond
forest surge
nimble pond
feral viper
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As a general rule, I think the two are largely complementary.

Though the general trend in the industry today is More, rather than Better, and I think it's been pretty poorly executed on the whole.

uneven crater
feral viper
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It's always worth clarifying, though, that Procedural Generation is NOT randomly generated. Nor it is necessarily generated on demand in the engine.

Procedural Generation is using a system with clear parameters to generate something within a ruleset. In a technical sense, reality it's self is procedurally generated.

So using Proc-Gen is never the issue. The rules and variables that such a system uses are the bigger concern.

frozen notch
uneven crater
frozen notch
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They announced a lot of stuff for Starfield for 2024 - Creation Kit, Shattered Space DLC, "new ways of travel", custom difficulty and much more

gloomy anchor
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Please keep this channel to elder scrolls and not starfield.

uneven crater
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👍

feral viper
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'Playable' doesn't really mean a whole lot. I can make a technical playable vertical slice of an idea in UE5 in about 2 weeks. And I'm not that good at UE5. Someone with more experience could do it in a few days.

'Playable' is a largely meaningless buzzword without more context to indicate what sort of playability is present. Because moving around a small environment with collision test objects is playable. And it doesn't remotely resemble the finished product.

#

And if it's 'Playable' as in 'We're into the polish phase leading up to release' then... We've got much bigger things to worry about.

So IMO, just ignore claims of it being playable.

nimble pond
#

I think some were generally more worried or concerned if TESVI wasn't already at a playable state by this time.

feral viper
#

I would be more worried if it was.

nimble pond
#

While it's possible that ships might be only used for Starfield in the meantime. There is community discussion of naval ships for upcoming TES. I wonder.. if we might see drivable tanks or some post-armageddon, hulking, scrap, land vehicle of the like for F5.

feral viper
#

Functionally, sailing ships are radically different than the ships in Starfield. So we'll have to wait to see what other sorts of transportation they bring, and how it works mechanically, to determine whether or not it would be useful.

nimble pond
#

So I've been thinking about grenades lately. And well, I think it would be uniquely cool to have a sort of assassin, but with assassin-like magic/spells to choose from. I looked at Skyrim's spells and there a few that could fit the criteria such as the runes (kinda like proximity mines) and invisibility. But not much else unfortunately. The illusion school really seemed to be lacking in spells and usefulness. So I figure most of the assassin-like spells could be grouped there. As for these spells, think like, tacticals / special grenades functions from any shooter. Poisonous gas clouds, blinding light, smokes, deafeners, parasitic contagions, transporters (either to quickly shift your own location or transport an enemy over the edge of a cliff, drop heavy or sharp objects overhead) visual decoys, sticky explosive orbs (you could silently stick em to enemies or in their pockets and detonate when they walk back towards a group of enemies, or plant it on a food item and detonate when they go to grab it), distracting noise. Maybe we could even do a sneak attack from behind where you literally force a votile orb of magic down their gullets and watch them obliterate from the inside out moments later. Also, having magic in different forms, like gases, sticky liquids, plasma, etc.
And I think it would be pretty cool to infuse our melee attacks with fire, ice, or lightning at least. You could have ice spiked fingers for extra penetration, flaming hands for burning dmg, and lightning hands for stun effect.
Beyond that, I really enjoy the ability to pick up objects and people and move it all around. I just wish we had some kind of way to stick them too so I can stick all these dead bodies to the ceiling and walls to decorate my humble home. Now that I think about it, do objects float on the water in Skyrim when you drop them or they all just sink? I know I've seen bodies floating, but wasn't sure what happened if you drop something like a quill.

nimble pond
#

Lastly, traps. Let us craft makeshift traps on the fly (or at least at some kind of crafting station) from materials we can easily find and pick up around the world. It be really nice to have this sort of backdrop with my archer builds specifically and keeping distance between targets. Could fit it somewhere among skills/perks.

pale walrus
#

Both thieves and assassins should have their own 'spells' or unique abilities (like perks, maybe) that they can earn as they progress. The spells/abilities should be oriented around stealth, climbing, misdirection and such - like getting lost in a crowd when being pursued, successfully tailing somebody, picking locks, becoming invisible, turning into smoke or into a 2-dimensional representation to get thru barred doors and such, and maybe even charming animals or insects and being able to look thru their eyes as they patrol for you. Lots of room for creativity here.

nimble pond
#

Oh yea, climbing. I don't really mind what avenue they take employing it into the game, but I would love to just crawl over the walls or have that upside down view crawling across the ceiling. A self-transmorgification spell could be useful for spying. You wouldn't be able to do much else in that mode, so yea, probably a tiny insect or something sly, maybe a housefly or rat 😅 just don't get stepped on.

feral viper
#

I'm less inclined to agree. I think over reliance on Magic for stealth to work effectively takes away from stealth it's self. A thief shouldn't get their own magic, they should be entirely capable of functioning without ANY magic.

nimble pond
#

I'm more for including stealth with magic. It's fresh and unique. Can't think of many games that even offer such a build. I'm not sure what Supreme wants. But basically it's much how you can already apply many of the same effects thru BOTH alchemy and magic (you know.. paralyze, slow, etc.). So players have the option if they want to play the traditional assassin, or take a magical assassin for a spin. Interestingly enough, real-life magicians often use things like trickery, illusion in their magic, stealthing the truth from your senses.
What's more, it already has a home with a fitting name, School of Illusion. It just needs some expanding.

feral viper
#

For TES in particular, I'm against it. Otherwise, I'm less commited.

TES, stylistically, is driven by 3 paradigms. The Warrior, the Thief, and the Mage.

Giving the Thief inherent magic just muddies the water with the Mage.

#

Each of these paradigms should present an entirely pure aspect which can function independent of the others.

night violet
#

Therr is a YouTuber named MajorSlackAttack who did full Legendary playthroughs of Skyrim with only rbe skills of each style.

He did pure warrior, pure mage, and pure thief

nimble pond
#

In the case of purity of paradigms over letting players create their own custom classes from an array of interesting options to select from, coming up with some pretty cool hybrid classes at whim.. (and you can still create pure classes like a warrior mind you). they would then have to remove some things like the Illusion school of magic and probably move Conjuration (the black eye among mages, spells commonly used by necromancers) out into some other paradigm or just remove it as well.

night violet
#

I mean I think skyrims classless system works just fine

#

Just update it for the modern gaming style some of course

#

For a first playthrough, you might not know what you want to do. Skyrim allows for a margin of error that another style might make you completely restart the game to try the other style.

#

You might start as a mage but then decide you also want to use a sword. So you become a spell sword when originally you were going to be a mage

nimble pond
#

Exactly

feral viper
#

I think it's entirely possible to create pure paradigms with enough breadth to be both viable and versatile, as is.

Warrior-
1-Handed Weapon
2- Handed Weapon
Armour
Shield
Athletics
Craftsmanship

Thief -
Marksman
(Don't have my notes with me)
Speechcraft
Sneak
Thievery
Alchemy

Mage -
Destruction
Restoration
Alteration
Illusion
Conjuration
Enchanting

#

Basically, Warriors go through problems. Thieves try to go around them. And mages have versatile magical solutions at extra costs.

And MOST people would be some mix of these.

#

I actually have concept lists of up to 8 skills per Paradigm, but... That's in my notes.

nimble pond
#

Terical, what is it you are even arguing here? We just said all that.

feral viper
#

I was in the process of typing it at the time.

But my point is largely that, keeping concepts self contained and using those to determine the viability of a paradigm as a stand alone first, then just let people mix and match after that.

#

So like, Invisibility shouldn't be inherent to the Thief. But if they want to dabble in Illusion to supplement their own skills for that purpose? Absolutely.

#

Just like a Conman may dabble in Illusion for the Charm spell.

nimble pond
#

I think you're mixing up my thoughts with Supreme's or misunderstanding his idea, you'd have to ask him. I never desired to make any skill inherent to any class. I like the free-form design the way it is.

feral viper
#

Maybe.

nimble pond
#

To clarify, I was merely suggesting more stealth-like spells, (spells like the already established muffle, runes, invisibility, etc.). to choose from cause I like the idea of making my own assassin mage build, not to mention some of them would just downright be fun to use.

feral viper
#

Oh, that absolutely. But... That gets into a very long Magic discussion too

pale walrus
feral viper
#

I'd suspect they would have dabbled in Illusion or Alteration then.

Since progression in TES shouldn't be along Class lines, IMO.

#

Though, I rather notoriously hate Classes.

nimble pond
#

Yea, I always felt the "make magic silent" perk in Alteration tree was out of place. Put it in Illusion.

pale walrus
nimble pond
#

I was glad they brought staves in though. Offering a different venue of magic besides it always being hand cast. Though it needs some expanse for sure.

feral viper
#

I think making magic silent would be more impactful if... Well, stealth wasn't such a mechanical mess.

#

Like, you know know how detected you are there's no way to indicate your visibility or the amount of sound you're making. So you can't ever actually adjust, you just need to hope that eye doesn't open

#

Starfield does slightly better in that regard, at least.

pale walrus
#

Question: what would happen if Atmora started to 'defrost'? By implication, skyrim and large portions of HR would become more habitable, while cyrodiil might begin reverting back into a jungle. Also, if Atmora started becoming inhabitable again, people trying to get away from whatever difficulties they're facing in a particular region would have a place to go.

wide garnet
# pale walrus Question: what would happen if Atmora started to 'defrost'? By implication, skyr...

A great big giant mess, that's what. Not only would ancient lore be rediscovered, but there's also the risk of ancient threats coming back. In fact, a real world example of a threat coming back would be ancient diseases that are resistant to antibiotics/Cure Disease potions: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/oct/19/next-pandemic-may-come-from-melting-glaciers-new-data-shows

the Guardian
Next pandemic may come from melting glaciers, new data shows

Analysis of Arctic lake suggests viruses and bacteria locked in ice could reawaken and infect wildlife

pale walrus
#

I'm wondering if some of the tribes would go to war with each other to wrest control of a now-available Atmora from one another.

wide garnet
nimble pond
eager remnant
wide garnet
nimble pond
#

It sounded familiar or similar to from something older in time, just couldn't place it.

wide garnet
#

Actually, accidentally releasing “world-ending leviathans” might make for something the Thalmor might do, and be forced to turn to the Dragonborn for aid.

nimble pond
wide garnet
nimble pond
#

It's always a good day to die, yaaarrrr!

night violet
#

Would you prefer to be a destined hero like Nevaar or Dragonborn in TES VI? Or a character that just happens to be in the right place like the Hero of Kvatch?

wide garnet
eager remnant
#

Myself, though, I lean toward being an average person with no special powers. Overcoming obstacles by relying on our own wits and skills, without supernatural assistance, is more interesting to me.

nimble pond
#

For real though, most games (not just Bethesda) turns you into some kind of hero. That's cool a couple of times, but man does it get stale.

feral viper
#

On the flip side, I find making you just a random schmuck significantly mutes the potential threats.

forest surge
nimble pond
#

A true ray of sunshine

#

I like mixing it up. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

nimble pond
#

It just feels like you are kinda forced into being a certain type of person when embarking the main quest. You were destined, so you never had a choice, unless you just don't do the main quest. Wish there was a way to go about it on your own terms and outcomes.

pale walrus
#

Depends. In Morrowind, the PC was a person of Destiny, but didn't have any special powers - Nerevar was a very talented person, but still just a person. The Oblivion hero was maybe even less than that, though he appeared in Uriel Septim's dreams. The Last Dragonborn, though, is supernatural. That was a very, very different experience than the previous two. Either approach works for me. If ES6 does something different, maybe the PC should be an absolute nobody - not dreamed of, not prophecied, not some sort of Eternal Champion - just some guy who stumbles into something far, far, far bigger than himself. Along the way, he picks up capabilities and skills he never dreamed he would ever have. Perhaps a few aedra and daedra help him along the way, not knowing if their investment in the PC will pay off, but wanting to take a hand in whatever game is being played out in the title.

nimble pond
#

Maybe there could be a false hero (basically you as your typical hero self as the player character has usually been implemented throughout the franchise, but as an npc) humming around rising to power and popularity too while you do your thing, but ends up being not so good or hero-like. Basically you are an anomaly to the whole prophecy system that not even any elder scroll was aware of as a possibility. You may end up rewinding, and rewriting a piece of time, in which case that previous version of you would cease to exist as well.
Anyway, my issue though is basically the main story is written around or focused upon some good-natured hero-like character (which is typically you). I just thought it'd be more interesting to have the events of the story written, but you are free to either support the cause, go against it, or ignore it and let it unfold naturally in it's own way without your influence. And you can mix these kind of actions/choices as you go about each quest/adventure within the questline so you don't have to be locked to one linear path from previous actions/choices. Bethesda can simply decide which reality goes forward in recorded history in the next title chapter, it's not gonna affect my playthrus and player choices on the previous title in any way.

gray oyster
#

Since we received the confirmation that Bethesda is actively developing TES VI and already has first builds, i have a proposition!

Once the game reaches more or less playable state, make it available publicly in alpha/beta through Early Access! That way we, TES fans, will get the opportunity to help You, the Developers, create another Greatest Gem of gaming while also enjoying witnessing the Rise of The Elder Scrolls VI!!!

Thumbs Up if you agree!

feral viper
#

Early access is always a risky proposition. If you include too much of the game in it, people will just finish the game and move on before the official release. Which can hurt end of line sales.

If you don't include enough, it can turn off players and make them unwilling to come back when it's done.

Personally, unless it's for an online game where you're stress testing your servers, I'm more inclined to say no Beta or Early Access.

gray oyster
#

But we have a wonderful example of how Larian handled BG3.

feral viper
#

An exception rather than the rule. And even then, for a vastly different sort of game which has very clear break points between chapters.

gray oyster
#
  • One simply doesn't move on from a TES game. For ex., i still visit Oblivion from time to time.
feral viper
#

Don't get me wrong, I would probably enjoy such a release... But there's a lot of problems Bethesda would have to address to make it work.

And for my part, I'd rather they address problems with the game it's self, not with the delivery of an early access.

gray oyster
#

Yeah, but who knows how many years before the release in the case of No Early Access. I mean, it could likely be not earlier than 11.11.2026 if the workflow and all things go smooth.

feral viper
#

Oh, I fully expect to see nothing until 2027 at the earliest.

gray oyster
#

That only proves my point. Too many years.

feral viper
#

Though... That could be a way to do it without spoiling players on the world...

#

Go back to their roots. Make the 'Beta' an Arena where you can play with some basic mechanics, expanded Perk trees, and physics and what not, in a very enclosed environment.

gray oyster
#

Starfield was relatively bug-free.

feral viper
#

You'd only need a handful of conversations for the Pit area, and a limited enemies and behaviours.

It wouldn't FEEL like an Elder Scrolls game, but...

#

Using an Arena for an early access mechanics test could even be a good platform to generate some hype, by including a few highly requested weapons, and a sneak peak at an armour system .

#

Alright, you know... I am kinda coming around to the idea...

#

If you were to take an Arena scenario, and use it an an early access platform, you'd be able to effectively tick all the boxes.

A: advertise the playability of the game.

B: keep it contained as to not spoil the wider world.

C: be able to include showcases of basically every major mechanical system.

D: really show off the primary gameplay loop and it's improvements.

E: still have something that would technically be useful in the game it's self, rather than being a stand alone.

thorn oxide
#

I dunno if this is the right place to ask, but how do I fast travel to someone on my friends list. It doesn't give me an option to fast travel to my friend, and when I click travel to residence it says i'm unavaiable to

pale walrus
#

Not sure how an early access would work for this style of game. Maybe releasing a gameplay video would suffice.

gray oyster
eager remnant
pale walrus
feral viper
#

Given Starfield's problems with loading screens and regions, I would be very surprised if they kept that up.

They're far more likely to go back to the old (superior IMO) approach and just do a single overworld region.

gray oyster
forest surge
#

I prefer just one region

wide garnet
pale walrus
#

If we do a single province in ES6 - say, HF - for DLC I'd like to see, ranked by interest in the following order: (1) whatever is left of Yokuda, (2) a quick and partial visit to Cyrodiil (very limited physical area - like a border city), (3) balfiera, and absolutely dead last (4) a very limited portion of Skyrim.

#

Yokuda's remnants would be helpful in expanding on the background of the vanilla game. The quick pop into a city in Cyrodiil gives BGS a chance to make up for the many inadequacies of ES4. Balfiera is, I would imagine, utterly unique, and it might be fun to see the place ( I bet the Direnni 'character' of the place is worth exploring.) As I think about it, I would much prefer to have something else for #4 - maybe Artaeum (which would be probably fascinating and I bet stunningly beautiful.)

nova rapids
#

I'm trying to find Meridias Beacon, the quest marker brings me to Dawnguard Sanctuary and its not there or it's invisible. I've watched videos on YouTube and heard it'll be in a random chest or egg sack. I'm on Xbox One Skyrim 5 Special Edition. Can anyone help or share what you know?

bright siren
feral viper
#

If we assume Hammerfell... I think Stros M'kai is a given. It was the namesake of the Hammerfell-Dominion treaty, making it a rather prominent location in modern Hammerfell. Likely, it's one of their larger remaining cities. I would be surprised if it wasn't in the base game.

Thras is a potential, depending on whether or not sailing is a thing. I could see the Coral Tower even serving as an ever changing dungeon environment or 'Roguelike' platform.

The remnants of Yokuda, similarly, are a strong potential, with or without any sailing mechanics.

Orsinium is an inland option, given the long history of the Redguard and the Orcs.

Beyond that.. I wouldn't expect, or really want, to see more.

pale walrus
pale walrus
hidden herald
#

They just gave away Orsinium in ESO as a daily login reward (2 days in March)

feral viper
#

I wasn't super thrilled with Orsinium in ESO. I can forgive a bit of it because it's under construction, but I dunno... It just stinks of the general lack of Fantasy in the setting these days.

ESO has a lot of those problems artistically, with its cities and archetrcture always feeling like toned down reality, and not fantasy, but Orsinium was really just... Eh.

Orcs are fine though, this isn't a criticism of the development Orcs got. Just the artistic direction of the city it's self.

nova rapids
pale walrus
#

Orsinium is a prime opportunity for BGS to unleash its creative impulses. It needs to look a lot different from some medieval castle town. The art and architecture should, in my view, be some blend of High Aldmer aesthetic and a nation on a war footing.

hidden herald
#

Have you seen what Zos did with Orsinium?
TBH, Wrothgar has had many Orsinium, often getting rebuilt in a similar way but in different locations.

feral viper
#

It should feel, in three words, like Brutalist Minas Tirith

hidden herald
#

I would recommend strongly against ignoring what has already been done with Elder Scrolls Online when making suggestions for what they want for future BGS single-player titles.

feral viper
forest surge
hidden herald
forest surge
feral viper
forest surge
feral viper
#

Don't get me wrong, the DLC as a whole is very good. Orsinium as a city is just a notable low point IMO.

forest surge
#

Orsinium is also considered the best story when it comes to it not having a Daedric Prince as a very heavy focus villain wise, like it’s more Political

#

Regarding the Orcs and the Future for them

hidden herald
feral viper
#

As a whole, the artists for both BGS and ZOS have a very narrow view on archetrcture and construction. Pretty much everything is the same slapped together stone and mortar. I mean hell, half the time I can see the mortar in CASTLE WALLS.

#

Do you want your castle to be a Monty Python joke?

forest surge
#

Idk, I say more so for Bethesda than ZOS. And even then I am burnt out in the whole realistic element of architecture these days for a Fantasy Series

feral viper
hidden herald
#

Different timeline than IRL, and including various references can help a series

forest surge
feral viper
#

I understand that, but like... Where's the geometric masonry? Where are the massive stone blocks that were literally used for most of history to build strong walls and fortifications?

Why does everyone in Tamriel build things out of effectively paper mache and gravel?

hidden herald
#

I love modern Saxhleel architecture, though

forest surge
feral viper
#

Orsinium could have been a Sacsayhuaman. Instead it's barely a hill fort.

#

Amd again, I give it less flack for this than I could, because it's a relatively new settlement. It's only recently been rebuilt

#

I don't know if it's leadership problems, or a lack of diverse reference material, or poor direction, or a lack of creative ambition. There's a lot of things that could cause it.

But on the whole, since Morrowind, the artistic side of TES has been very... Eh.

hidden herald
#

This isn't real life, trying to insert too many architectures makes it much harder to implement in any visual media. You could write up thousands upon thousands of ideas, but visualizing them all in videogames? Eternal screaming.

feral viper
#

Better to try, than settle for what we've been getting.

forest surge
#

The part of me just wants to see what is brought in next.

#

Idk, like I said when all you do is look at everything from the Real Life Equivalent and such you are never wowed anymore, and I mean more so if you going into it specifically with the knowledge of the real world

feral viper
#

Oh, I don't think they need to bring in specific references for specific peoples. I'm just so tired of everything only being tangentially different from one another.

These are cultures with literally double the history and development than ANY cultures on Earth. And yet, they're all just doing the same boring stuff in the same boring way, whole acting like their differences mean something.

forest surge
forest surge
feral viper
#

The Orcs are a semi-militaristic adversity driven culture who live predominantly in the fringes of civilisation. Orsinium is a mountain fastness in a harsh land.

What do we get? Generic (and immaculate) medieval fortifications with a superficial visual style that's been labeled Orc.

It would have been a perfect opportunity to incorporate some Incan or Indian or Tibetan influences. Use influence from real people who were reknown for fortifying those sorts of environments.

forest surge
#

Believe it or not Terical I’m part of a server where the people there hate having to call the Elder Scrolls Races specific IRL Cultures, as they put it, they play the games to get away from the Real Life equivalents of the real world.

feral viper
forest surge
forest surge
feral viper
#

The only ones who have really stood out in ESO, are the Argonians and Khajiit. Everything else is either a meme (Wood Elves, High Elves, Nords, Druids) or a simplistic port of a single real world influence (Redguard, Imperials, Bretons).

hidden herald
#

Some people have an internal image of a series and will never believe it to be otherwise.
Plus, a lot of people let their own biases and prejudices, those that harp about it are often those with the strongest biases, and end up trying to compensate for it to force other creatives to follow their own world view.

forest surge
#

Which I have to say in a way plays into what I’m about to say, and I think being an Anthropologist is one of the bigger problems going into Fantasy with people’s and Cultures. As you may never be able to separate the influences.

hidden herald
#

It's impossible to create anything, anything, truly original under the Sun.

feral viper
#

Not entirely true, but close enough that I can agree.

forest surge
#

Except believe it or not some people find it offensive they take from IRL Cultures and blend them together, Dark Elves are one of the ones that get criticized by certain groups for this

forest surge
feral viper
hidden herald
#

Everything in reality is built upon something else prior. This is part of the fundamental Mythos of The Elder Scrolls, figuratively and literally. ||Yes, the literal Mythos, where they hide a great secret||

forest surge
hidden herald
#

TBH, harping about IRL cultures, races, and ethnicities probably goes too much outside what's allowed to be discussed in the #rules

forest surge
feral viper
#

I don't think so in this particular context. Since we're focused specifically on the influences as they pertain to the people's of Tamriel.

#

But honestly, I'm too tired today to keep pushing back against the bland mediocrity. The death of creativity wins this battle, I'm out.

forest surge
#

We aren’t necessarily singling out IRL Cultures and Races, but more so speaking of the influences the IRL Cultures have upon TES and various other Fantasy

#

And how for Fantasy Fans they either tend to dislike it or don’t.

hidden herald
#

It's a non-constructive criticism that always will end up with people never being happy with anything from creatives, ever.

forest surge
#

It’s ultimately why I’m never upset with the inspiration being One Cultures Aesthetics or multiple. I look at Elder Scrolls as a world they are building, whether it’s gonna be 100% realistic in it’s endeavors or not is ultimately up to them, but I’m not really disappointed perse except the lack of making some cultures relevant

feral viper
#

Considering how doggedly people defend the Nords and Bretons for their 'depth' is clear that the bar is difficult to trip over these days

forest surge
#

As that’s where I tend to notice it the most

feral viper
#

Careful now. I've defended Casuals for years. Don't go turning me against them.

forest surge
#

Although I say if Nords were gonna get anything Major it would be the College of Winterhold.

#

And Winterhold in it’s Prime

pale walrus
pale walrus
feral viper
#

Their armour styles have always been eastern inspired. Ranging from Tokugawa period styled Japanese armour in Morrowind, to Tibetan influences in Oblivion, to a rough Mongolian and Hunic style in Skyrim. So the inclusion of my more muted face masks wouldn't be that jarring.

However, if they wanted to play up the fan relation between Orcs and the Dwemer, going full Sargon of Akkad with the mask to draw the stylistic parallels with the Dwemer designs could work.

#

Fortification wise... A blend of Inca and Tibetan is what I would have liked. Terraced fortifications up a slope, using sequential elevated platforms rather than curtain walls to funnel enemy advances into killing fields rather than try to simply hold them back. A more Aggressive Defense strategy instead of the explicit fortification strategy of others.

Then you could blend in that Brutalist Minas Tirith idea by having great megalithic blocks building slab like outjuttings from which spears, arrows and stones can be hurled on the enemy as they make their way up the terraces.

#

As a general rule, fitted masonry is sturdier, last longer and is far more resistant to damage than mortared masonry.

So you'd expect a people who are reknown for the quality of their craftsmanship, and whose entire worldview is centred around weathering the abuses of the world, to put the work into the good stuff. Making the Orcs a perfect platform to draw on some of those stylistic influences.

rose fjord
#

Do you think elder scrolls 6 will be playable on Xbox series X

feral viper
#

Bethesda is now owned by Microsoft, so unless there is a new generation of consoles by then, I would say it's guaranteed.

pale walrus
feral viper
#

Orcs are also a people who, culturally, VALUE violent confrontation and martial conflict. So they wouldn't be likely to hide behind walls. But it would also be suicide to just stand in the middle of a field.

So them relying on fortifications which channel the enemy into smaller fronts would fit perfectly with their cultural mindset and individualistic warrior outlooks.

#

But all of this is why I... Generally try to steer things towards mechanical discussions here. Because when it comes to mechanics, you can more explicitly lay out variables and outcomes in a quantifiable way. There's less subjectivity between a mechanic that allows 10 outcomes, and one that allows 100 outcomes.

When you're looking at writing and worldbuilding and characters and stories... Personal tastes, aversions, perceptions and standards are far more variable and difficult to really find common ground on.

#

What is alright for some, is terrible for others, and amazing for others still. And then you start getting into the merits of complex ideas like distinctness, variable influences, cultural appropriation, and so forth.

I recognise that my standards are head and shoulders higher than some here. And they might as well be in the stratosphere compared to Bethesda (based on their games for the last 2 decades). And I recognise that those higher standards tend to come off as rather critical. Sometimes too critical.

And it's harder to express in a solid and well founded way why Bethesda's worldbuilding is terrible and how to improve it, when there's so many more subjective elements to that evaluation.

The world is ultimately the part I'm more passionate about. The stories and the peoples and the mythology... But it's a harder topic to talk about without sounding condemnatory. So I will often try to steer things back into a more easily structured constructive mechanics topic instead of just 'Heres why the world sucks, and here's how to make it better'.

I COULD rewrite every culture and province on a whim. And I could assert that I would do it better. But that would ultimately be driven by my own personal tastes more than anything (though I do try to adjust to accomodate others). As such, it would be an effort in ego, and worth basically nothing.

But Mechanics? Those ultimately break down into numbers and cause and effect interactions. Those are far easier to lay out and pick apart.

#

And ultimately... It's a video game. It lives or dies on its mechanics, not it's world and stories. A fun game is a fun game, even if it's story is dumb.

pale walrus
#

I agree 75%. I don't think there's anything wrong with giving objective critiques of storytelling. Yes, personal biases can influence that. But think about great movie scripts or great fiction books that have been penned - they build a background and atmosphere in which the characters dwell. Though a writer or scriptwriter needs to get somewhat specific in that background and atmosphere (let's call it 'setting'), and that setting might not be conformal to the tastes of absolutely every reader, we can see that it is possible to create the setting and characters in a way that has very wide appeal. In other words, there is such a thing as great storytelling. So: it's not unreasonable to want BGS to reach such a level. I'm not going to shoot down your critiques - they're good ones. I hope you feel free to express them, as it makes the forum more interesting and likely encourages further contributions from others.

feral viper
#

Oh, if this were a less stringently regulated environment, I'd have no problems going full Academic Discourse (if you know, you know) on the matter. But being TOO critical tends to get one in trouble on official channels.

pale walrus
#

Well, if you feel comfortable doing it, break it down scientifically/rationally/hierarchically. Example: the elements of a good story are A, B, C, D. Classically, it can be boiled down to the Hero's journey. Some essential elements include 1, 2, 3, etc....Obviously, you're not obligated to do this, but I for one would enjoy hearing at least excerpts of this. The story setting would be one of these, in my view. I like the idea of certain NPCs in a story being clearly good or bad, but would also enjoy seeing some nuance - some are bad but choose not to act out their evil in this particular case; others who are good deliberately do some bad things, leaving themselves open to criticism even if the outcome seemed good. Looking at the dragonborn, for example, I'm wondering at the moment why there wasn't an opportunity for him to quite openly take Alduin's place, ruling the dragons and ruling Skyrim - even autocratically/tyrannically, like a super-Miraak. It would take quite an effort to build the supporting structure game-wise for this, but it's not impossible.

feral viper
#

Oh, STRUCTURALLY there definitely grounds for more quantifiable conversations.

Skyrim for instance suffered from terrible structure and pacing issues. While I maintain that the stories themselves were solid, the way they were explored and delivered was at such a breakneck speed that they never had time to really build or explore their own concepts.

You're just rushed from plot point to plot point and then suddenly it's all over.

But whether or not you think those stories were worth telling in the first place is a far more subjective issue.

#

For my part, I'm pretty solidly against the idea of Mutually Exclusive Choices and Alternate Endings. I maintain the opinion that they have consistently made every story they've been crammed into worse by their presence.

In video games, anyway. On the tabletop, with a constant, ACTIVE writer involved, you can actually do something with the idea. But in video games, where you have to pre-empt and sort of decision and then try to write around the consequences of that, it just drags things down and ends up as bloated nonsense.

gloomy anchor
#

This is ender scrolls chat. If you wish discuss other topics you are welcome to move to #off-topic

feral viper
#

Anyway, from a narrative structure standpoint and integrating Choices, I prefer using multifaceted storytelling.

Basically, a story consists of multiple moving parts, and your choice inject your character into different roles, each of which interact with the broader narrative in different ways.

This way, you have multiple groups, agencies, factions, teams, etc. all exploring their own narratives within the greater whole, but only ever have a single outcome. Replay then doesn't come from bending the story to your choice, but rather your choices allowing you to experience different perspectives on the story and deepening your understanding of it.

#

To contextualize with Skyrim's Civil War, for instance. My preferential approach would have been:

3 factions: Imperials, Stormcloaks, Thalmor.

The Imperial storyline is initially about them trying to crush the rebellion, and then pivots into them trying to uncover who has been feeding the Stormcloaks information.

The Stormcloaks focus on them trying to reinforce their claim, then pivots into a crisis of honour over discoveries about their mole in the Empire.

And the Thalmor starts with them manipulating the conflict to prolong it, and then them scrambling to try and cover their tracks when both sides get suspicious.

The end result is a treaty which grants Skyrim the freedom to worship SAINT Talos, as concession from the Dominon for the actions of a 'Rogue' Thalmor agent, while Balgruf is appointed High King as an Imperial Vassal.

#

All three storylines cross over eachother at 3 points, though slightly misaligned.

The Jagged Crown, where the Thalmor leak the location to the Stormcloaks, and then the Imperials in order to force a battle. The Stormcloaks get the crown, before their operative is forced to escape out the back. The Imperials and their operative fail to secure the crown, but capture Galmar.

Then at the Battle of Whiterun. The Thalmor operative infiltrates the city to open the gate and let the Stormcloaks in. The Imperial Agent is charged with evacuating Balgruf and his family. And the Stormcloak agent served as Ulfric' bodyguard as they confront General Tullius.

And then, finally, the peace talks. Where the Imperial Agent serves as now-General Rikke's right hand in thwarting Thalmor attempt to sabotage the talks. The Stormcloak agent intervened to keep some Rebels from starting a fight in Solitude. And the Thalmor agent works behind the scenes to set up a scapegoat.

During all 3 events, the characters the PC takes the role of don't directly meet. But they're all present, doing things out of sight of eachother, and contributing to a wider story.

#

To tap a terribly overused and rather crude expression. It's a ROLE-playing game.

You play a ROLE in the story, rather than having the story bend to your whim.

pale walrus
#

"your choices allowing you to experience different perspectives on the story and deepening your understanding of it." - this would be EXCELLENT. Stories would be far richer from following this. Of course, some stories that are deliberately simple - good guy, bad guy - can be fun, too. But long stories should have the kind of nuance and depth you're suggesting. An idea: sometimes I think it's 'good' if the inevitable outcome is quite bad. That's life, and can be a very dramatic and memorable way to end a particular story. In other words, there shouldn't be a happy or neutral ending to every story; some should turn out bad, no matter what actions a PC takes in support of or against that specific result.

wide garnet
#

@feral viper you don’t mind if I borrow your idea for my Dragon Age: The Lost Scrolls fanfiction, do you?

feral viper
#

Absolutely not. If my ramblings inspire another, they have done some good.

#

Take whatever you like.

feral viper
# pale walrus "your choices allowing you to experience different perspectives on the story and...

With that in mind, I think it's a far easier, and ultimately more characterful concept, to simply present stories and actions without thought of player consideration.

By this I mean... Someone working for the Thalmor will be expected to do terrible things. There's no getting around that. There's no 'good outcomes' based on your choices.

Where the nuance comes from us how YOUR character deals with those actions internally. Are they a good person doing bad things out of patriotism or some desperation? Are they a morally indifferent person just working for a paycheque? Are they actively a bigoted authoritarian who revels in the oppression of others?

#

That's where the depth and nuance comes from. The act it's self remains the same, and the world at large will react to it the same. But it's your CHARACTER that makes it layered.

#

Accepting this sort of idea also gives you more room to develop diverse and interesting characters within those more overtly 'Bad' organisations. Characters they you can reflect off of and use as a means of reinforcing and developing YOUR character's identity.

A sympathetic PC who struggles with their actions may find themselves engaging more with the benign clerk who legitimately believes that the Thalmor are doing good for the world, even if their methods are dirty.

#

Telling structured stories, and then allowing for orbiting interactions to shape how YOU deal with those events as a character, are better than just bending the story to your whims.

last dew
#

Is it too early for Elder Scrolls suggestions?

pale walrus
feral viper
#

That's what the channel is for afterall.

Though sometimes it seems like it's more 'Terical talks to a wall for 500 words'.

dapper lichen
#

whats this elder scrolls castle i saw and heard about?

feral viper
#

It is a mobile game, similar to Falling Shelter.

void hull
#

ES6 needs to have some sort of arena system like Oblivion

#

Change my mind

feral viper
#

Exhibit A:

#

I rest my case

wide garnet
pale walrus
void hull
#

Is Oblivion's that bad

wide garnet
dapper lichen
dapper lichen
pale walrus
#

I just read the statement BGS released for the ES 30 year anniversary. That part about ES6? I don't know. That 'playing early builds' doesn't sound to me like it'll be ready any time soon. "Early builds" to me means "barely functional bare bones trial runs on the earliest version to reveal basic bugs before starting to create actual complexity in the software." In other words, it sounds to me like they have a long way to go. Some articles on the BGS statement are speculating on a 2025 release. My gut is telling me that even 2026 is far too early.

mild hornet
#

Not sure where best to post this. No suggestion topics? My shower thoughts on repeatable content:

  1. Repeatable Fetch Quests: Classic clean a dungeon/kill a boss/steal an item, but with optional randomly generated modifiers for an extra reward. For example: get an item from a dungeon + don't kill anyone in the dungeon + time limit + don't let anyone see you. Or generate a completely different set of modifiers: kill everyone in the dungeon + set at least 3 enemies on fire + find and take extra items, etc. Yes, and it is better to have a quick and easy access to a task source, next to a fast travel teleport point.
    TES already has this (I remember a bank robbing bear in Daggerfall), but I think there is a lot of room for improvement. Like linking quests to a dynamic living world. For example, if a player kills a farmer's family, his internal parameters of responsibility and disposition go down, but his aggression and confidence go up, and he commits a crime, which generates a bounty quest. So a non-scripted moral narrative. But this is more about other systems, not auto-generated quests.
  2. Repeatable Complex Quests: A detective quest, but a criminal, a motive, and clues are randomly chosen from a handcrafted pool. Or to find a dynamically traveling NPC that leaves random traces. Or a series of randomly generated fetch quests that create own story: Bring an ingredient + kill 3 enemies + talk to an NPC + clean a dungeon. Generate a new quest: Bring an NPC to a location + steal an item + kill a boss + bring an NPC to a location.
#
  1. Arena: In addition to a questline with pre-set unique opponents, different modes can be added: choose an enemy type and amount of them, group vs. group, capture a flag, reenact of historical battles, etc. Of course, we can't do without my favorite random: more rewards without leaving an arena between fights, a darkness, drunk effect, disabled magic, activated traps, rings of fire, etc. But the player themself can choose battle conditions for additional glory and rewards and punishments for failure. Call it - Vows: fight naked, with bare fists, with time limit, no damage, etc.
    See Boasts from Fable.
  2. Champions: Give to non-unique enemies random characteristics (advantages and disadvantages) to make fights more unpredictable. For example: Powerful ranged attack, chamelion effect, while standing still, summon of minions, but vulnerability to fire, vulnerability to backstab, fear of wolves.
    See Nemesis system from Middle-earth: Shadow of War.
  3. Randomly Generated Dungeons: For example: Vaermina creates it in a dream. Allowing for interesting combinations of presets and enemies. Can go the roguelike route: add end goals, grind for resources, own progression, secrets, side quests, prizes and mini-bosses. But it is necessary to separate this mode from the main game - strip the hero of all skills and artifacts before entering it, otherwise it will be uninteresting.
    There are attempts to add roguelike elements to AAA games: TES Online's Infinite Archive, Prey's Mooncrash DLC, Assassin's Creed Valhalla's The Forgotten Saga. But it's necessary to look at what works in them and what doesn't.
boreal steeple
last dew
#

I wish we'll get to be the Shezarrine in ES6 just to fight the Thalmor and prevent them from achieving their goals. Just like how there was the Nevarrine fighting against Dagoth Ur.

feral viper
# void hull Is Oblivion's that bad

I would say yes. It's subjective, of course... But I really don't think Oblivion did anything worthwhile, or added anything worthwhile to the setting.

I had a tumultuous relationship with Morrowind initially, having come from Daggerfall. But I grew to love it.

Oblivion is the opposite. The more time passes, the less I like it. And it almost made me quit the franchise entirely to start with.

#

As far as the Arena goes... Theres just nothing to it. It's something that exists solely for the sake of existing it has arguably the ugliest equipment set in this millenium's entire fantasy Genre, and seems to be based around someone reading a single paragraph of what Rome's gladiators were, and going off that.

The Arena is, hands down, the single worst 'questline' in the franchise IMO. And while I like the IDEA of arenas and pit fighters, I don't think there is anything worth emulating from Oblivion's approach to it.

feral viper
# pale walrus I just read the statement BGS released for the ES 30 year anniversary. That part...

I tend to agree, though that's admittedly somewhat hopeful on my part.

There is a LOT that need to be done to bring TES into modern gaming. I maintain that BGS has most of the pieces they need, but... If the game is already in an advanced enougj state that 'Playable' constitutes a reasonable reflection of the end result?

Well, after Starfield, all my faith in BGS actually using those pieces evaporates, and my expectation becomes Starfield with Swords.

night violet
#

I really wish people would stop already writing off TES VI with us knowing nothing about it.

#

I've seen three posts today saying it's going to be hot garbarge

pale walrus
# night violet I really wish people would stop already writing off TES VI with us knowing nothi...

Or it could be cold garbage. 😉 Or it could be ok, like at the level of, say, FO4. Or it could be a tremendous game. We're going off history for our analyses. BGS has made some fun games, but none were perfect. Some were better or worse than others in various aspects, and there has not been a distinct and reliable linear improvement in BGS games over time (though overall there has been improvement.) There is much that COULD be done. Hopefully BGS will do at least some of the things suggested for ES6.

night violet
#

The problem is, even if TES VI is good, i suspect it's going to be torn apart just for being a BGS game. I don't think it's gonna get a fair chance.

eager remnant
# night violet The problem is, even if TES VI is good, i suspect it's going to be torn apart ju...

My experience of 22 years on Bethesda's forums has taught me that each game Bethesda Game Studios releases is destined to be torn apart. I saw it happen with Morrowind, I saw it happen with Oblivion and I have seen it happen with every game Bethesda Game Studios has released since then. And it will happen once again when TES VI is released. But over time the critics tend to move on. Those of use who love these game remain and we form a tight bond over our shared love of the games. The atmospere of outrage always passes in time. Eventually people either learn to accept the latest game or they move to to another game.

night violet
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Fair lol. Still, I'm looking forward to TES VI.

eager remnant
night violet
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I'm always wondering what the one piece of info we have about it means. The ultimate fantasy life simulator.

pale walrus
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Wait - everyone who buys the game is giving it a fair chance, because they are investing both resources (money) and TIME into trying it out. So: ES6 will, by definition, get a fair shake. Enjoyable games get praised. There's always a few holdouts who have complaints - some legit, some not. But if a significant number of people (let's say more than 25%) are significantly dissatisfied, there's reasons for it. What I'm saying is that I'm sure the audience/player base will give ES6 a chance to prove itself and will be very hopeful that it succeeds. Each player will set that bar based on what their favorite ES title has been, with Morrowind and Skyrim being favorites for most players, and some looking at Oblivion as their preferred standard. A few might also compare ES6 to ESO.

nimble pond
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Going back to jobs, I think it'd be pretty cool if we could be a healer (TES doctors 😷).

nimble pond
# night violet The problem is, even if TES VI is good, i suspect it's going to be torn apart ju...

Fr, I don't even know why they play it or "claim" to be BGS fans when all they do is gloat about their games all day, everyday. Not even sure I believe them when they claim to be fans of their games.. probably a lie, or they're just trying to fill their youtube channel. There is a difference between productive critique and unneeded childish, blantant insulting/ridicule that's about as useful as a monkey with a wrench. 🤦‍♂️ They need to go play their Capcom games they praise so much lol. Out of all the games I played in my lifetime, I've had the most fun with BGS products and early Nintendo when I was a kid.

nimble pond
night violet
nimble pond
#

Speaking of Arena. It'd be cool if we could build and customize our own dwemer machines to compete with others in an Arena, or something of that nature besides the whole human gladiator thing.

eternal sorrel
#

Guys what’s the difference between the all dlc pack and the collection: necrom pack on steam

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Apart from 100 bucks

feral viper
# night violet Yeah I don't like the ones that praise the Last of Us. It's a great cinematic ex...

It's also super predictable. Like, I think the people who think it was novel and revolutionary a story, are the same ones who marveled at The Matrix dressing up 17th century Descartian Philosophy with some flashy leather coats.

But, my problem with Bethesda is one of squandered potential. They have made a single GREAT game, and then have only released decent games ever since. But each of those decent games have each been on the threshold of greatness, if only they had some better direction or time in the oven.

I will by TES6. I will almost certainly spend 50 hours in the base game, and (unless it's as ugly as Oblivion) hundreds more once mods come out. But I don't think we should settle for Mods being what make these games good.

Still I try to keep my criticism constructive as much as I can.

feral viper
#

Ok, no. Double checked, the All DLC contains all major and minor DLCs. The Necrom pack only contains the Major DLCs.

eternal sorrel
#

As a new player should I even get any dlc yet or ?

feral viper
#

I'd play through the whole base game first. They's a lot already there, and it would give you the opportunity to decide if you like it or not.

pale walrus
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I'm probably an outlier on this, but I won't get DLC unless I absolutely LOVE the vanilla game. I already have to feel a very strong desire to engage more with the title. Even then, I typically don't like DLC as much as the vanilla game. Skyrim was a rare exception to this - the Dawnguard extension was the best of those for me and added to my enjoyment of the game, with Dragonborn and Hearthfire trailing far behind (in the final analysis, if I had never engaged with those two DLC I would not have missed them.)

eternal sorrel
#

Is it true that race and class doesn’t matter?

#

As they can all use everything

feral viper
#

More or less, yes. Races do have unique skills and bonuses you can invest in, but they tend to be rather minor and don't ultimately impact gameplay significantly unless you're really trying to minmax your character.

proven star
#

Hi guys, new here…. Been a Fallout fan for decades… but just started playing Skyrim 2 weeks ago and I am now an addict… Damn… Skyrim rocks

feral viper
#

Glad you are enjoying it. Have you tried mods yet?

nimble pond
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Hope they introduce more aquatic life. Slaughterfish and horkers just didn't really strike the fear like sharks do when they come inland to beaches/coasts or larger aquatic predators. And eventually some deep sea life as well. Even some jellyfish would be nice

pale walrus
night violet
#

part me is hoping that we get a chance to do more things in TES VI. I want to be an alchemist that brews wine on the side.

#

then i can posion people like Nazeem

pale walrus
#

How about wine and beer brewing as minigames? To make better ones, you need different ingredients which you have to find and different equipment which you have to make. Or perhaps the ingredients come from your own crops which you have to plant and harvest, which means you need property and seeds.

feral viper
#

Alchemy, as it stands, isn't even Alchemy. Might as well use it for beer and wine.

pale walrus
#

In Skyrim, I simply gathered huge quantities of ingredients and continually experimented with them 3 at a time in exhaustive combination. There wasn't any brainpower that went into figuring out what would work best with what else - it was simply a grind. There must be a better way to structure an Alchemy system. Certain ingredients should have basic properties, and certain other ingredients should operate as 'enzymes' of sorts to facilitate reactions. That would make Alchemy more logical and learning could be more thought out with purposeful experimentation.

feral viper
#

Like most things in TES, or Bethesda's game design in general, Alchemy lacks Precision, Control, and Ease of Use.

#

A lot of its systems front load all their variability and just drop it all in your lap. No easing you into it, no way to really streamline or make approachable. You either engage with ALL of the depth all at once, or you ignore it entirely.

And that's Alchemy's first problem. There's simply no way to just make usable potions by recipe. Every single time you have to sort through all your ingredients and mix things the hard way.

pale walrus
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I hear you. I'd prefer some more structure, and a 'framework' that genuinely requires me to think, rather than just grinding randomly. A primitive example: it might be cool to have ingredients that have known properties - antihistamines, decongestants, pain relievers, stimulants, depressants, fever reducers, etc...then there should be a class of catalysts, enzymes, extractors and such. Finally, there should be some weird things that are considered concentrators, accelerators and amplifiers. Now you have ingredients that can be combined more thoughtfully. Perhaps each ingredient has a description that you can use to help you reason thru what might work best with what else. There needs to be a way to include 'magic' ingredients - like a fluid from an 'ice snake' that helps protect against cold, a piece of skin from a 'lava toad' that protects against heat, a chunk from an amphibian gill that assists in breathing underwater, etc...

#

When you combine ingredients, the combinations need to be logical to produce targeted results. There doesn't have to be any guarantee that you'll get what you wanted, but at the same time there shouldn't be nonsensical combinations that produce a specific effect. Example: if you combine a giant's toe, a daedra heart and some diamond dust, and the result makes you fly, it makes absolutely no sense. The alchemy system has to have some sort of logic built in.

feral viper
#

At a very basic level, I'd divide it into two categories. Brewing, and Alchemy.

Brewing is simple. Follow the instructions, mix the ingredients, potion done. Or wine, or liquor, or whatever.

Alchemy, on the other hand, is the process by which you MAKE recipes. And it's where the depth comes in.

eternal sorrel
#

Eso is just so overwhelming rn it’s so big and the maps are complicated don’t know where to start

#

First quest im doing is the event lol I’m running from end to end of the maps doing it

pale walrus
eternal sorrel
pale walrus
livid hound
#

Ight a got a question about Creation Club items and I want to make sure I'm in the right place to ask

#

I bought Creation Club items but they disable my trophies.

I was under the impression that doesn't happen.

eager remnant
livid hound
#

@eager remnant oh dang

feral viper
#

Anyway, weekend over. Back to minutiae.

When Brewing, it's basically the Cooking system that's already in place from Fallout4 and Starfield. You have a recipe. The recipie checks against the listed ingredients and your inventory. If you have the ingredients, you can make the -Whatever-.

In this way, you can produce potions easily and without the need to fuss. Mix the ingredients in a bottle, add the solvent, give it a shake. You're done.

Alchemy, TRUE Alchemy, required a dedicated (and upgradable) station. It is the process that allows you both to create the recipes you can then mass produce, AND refine your basic ingredients into more potent ones, for more powerful concoctions.

#

One major problem past games have had, is the inconsistency in control of what you make. Negative effects make poisons. Positive effects make Potions. But the presence of positive effects sometimes overrides the negative, creating potions, while sometimes it creates mixed results that actively hurt you and sometimes it doesn't.

Eliminate that with Solvents. Another type of ingredient that actively dictates the type of concoction produced. Spirits create Potions. Water created Tonics. Ether creates Elixers. Tars create Poisons. Oils create grenades.

pale walrus
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An upgradeable alchemy station sounds awesome. The fully upgraded version should look like Frankenstein's laboratory 😂

feral viper
#

It's sorta the best of Old and New. The loss of Alchemy Equipment from Oblivion to Skyrim was a sore spot to many. By it make sense. That stuff is incredibly fragile and prone to calibration issues when moved. So you're not lugging around a lab in your backpack, to set up when you camp for the night.

However, everyone having a fully kitted out alchemy lab in their house also isn't really reasonable, and takes away from some of the adventure and iteration of collecting a bunch of high quality equipment.

So having a station you can upgrade with better equipment as you progress through Alchemy, both as a skill and an activity, allows you to fill both holes.

pale walrus
#

I bet that Mannimarco has the COOLEST alchemy lab......😉

wide garnet
wide garnet
#

If you think that’s amazing, I’ve also got planned a Tome of Worms, “handwritten by Mannimarco, himself”, and inspired by the Book of the Dead from the Evil Dead Franchise.

#

I even referenced it in an earlier episode:

“Uncle Jett” Trevelyan: You’re always sticking your nose into trouble. It’s just like that mess with that Argonian Barmaid and the Tome of Worms.

Maxwell: Ok, come on! That was different! I was just—

feral viper
#

I imagine Manni's alchemy lab looks like something Cyn would make in Murder Drones...

wide garnet
feral viper
#

Speaking of existential world ending horrors... That's a good segue into Necromancy.

#

Not... Not actually much to say regarding Necromancy.

Fallout 4s Automaton system could basically just be repurposed as is, to allow construction of undead servants.

wanton egret
#

I want castles…. ;-;

wide garnet
wanton egret
#

Have we gotten any statements about us release timing? All I’ve been able to find is it’s set to release in December but that that’s also a placeholder date and it could be earlier

#

I wish they did global early access, I’d gladly take a potentially buggy and unfinished game, or even a demo version

feral viper
#

As far as I know, there's been no statement regarding Castle's release.

The early access they ran was pretty stable, and about on par with any released mobile game I've personally played, so I imagine the only holdup is adding more content rather than any major changes.

Unfortunately, it's impossible for us to guess how long that will take.

pale walrus
wide garnet
feral viper
#

He ain't called the King of Worms for nothing.

Worms being a derogatory name for the Sload.

pale walrus
#

Since we're talking about ol' Manny, it brings a line of inquiry to mind - that of how exactly a mortal can rise to 'godhood.' I think we've seen it three times - Manny becoming the 'hidden moon' or some such thing, Talos somehow being deemed a god and the Hero of Kvatch becoming Sheogorath. The last one is almost sorta kinda understandable, because he successfully took on the role of Sheogorath by punching out Jygallag (sp?) Manny becoming a god is, I suppose, hypothetically understandable because he accumulated so much power and somehow found a way to step up to the major leagues. Talos makes zero sense to me - he's a crass opportunist with very questionable scruples who used a superweapon to overwhelm people who were otherwise leaving him alone.

#

But in all cases, it seems like an impossible leap for any of those guys to become gods. You have to wonder also why not of the Aedra or Daedra objected to these upstarts trying to play in their sandbox. It's all highly questionable to me.

wide garnet
#

I got something funny planned for my Dragon Age: The Lost Scrolls fanfiction:

The Thalmor, understandably suspicious about the Inquisition, send two agents to find out more about it, but get sidetracked by a cauldron in the fire at the Herald’s Rest.

Thalmor 1: I must say, for you being human, you still make some fine soup.

Inquisitor: That’s polite of you to say that, but that wasn’t soup.

Thalmor 2: It wasn’t?!

Inquisitor: ||Indeed, it’s the best soap in all of Southern Thedas.||

Thalmor 1 & Thalmor 2: ||Soap?! * with bubbles coming out of their mouths *||

Inquisitor: ||Indeed. Made to an old Trevelyan family recipe. Start with some ram tallow and hog fat, add two handfuls of chimney ashes…||

Thalmor 1 & Thalmor 2: ||* moans, with more bubbles coming out of their mouths *||

——

What do you think?

wide garnet
pale walrus
# wide garnet Isn’t there something called ‘mantling’? Or so I’ve heard?

Yeah, I've heard of it. But it's too simple. If you 'mantle' some deity, you take their place. Sure, you have to have a certain amount of power of your own and have to achieve something quite notable, but it's too....straightforward. You'd think the Aedra and Daedra collectively would have something to say about some guy getting into their clubhouse and learning the secret handshake and all that stuff. Some would probably object in certain cases - in fact, maybe quite a few of them would. The Aedra and Daedra seem very sensitive about their power and position and privilege - look how bent out of shape they got with both Lorkhan and Jygallagh. When Mannimarco tried to sneak into the club thru the back door and thru the kitchen, you'd think SOMEBODY would have...called security or something.

feral viper
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Depending on who you ask, there are believed to be a few ways to become a god.

Mantling, or replacing a current god.

Rewriting time so you were always a god.

Or being Elevated to godhood by other gods.

pale walrus
# wide garnet I got something funny planned for my Dragon Age: The Lost Scrolls fanfiction: T...

Make Thalmor 1 and 2 at the beginning of the story a couple of guys in a bar, throwing back shots, who use some impolite words to a waitress who just so happens to be the niece of the Inquisitor, and the soap thing is the Inquisitor's way of getting some payback (like it makes the Thalmor guys unable to use curse words for a solid month, and everything they eat or drink tastes like soap for that time.)

wide garnet
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Also, I've also got that Max has the unfortunate habit of stumbling right into trouble without meaning to, which his grandfather blames on a 1500-year-old curse on the Trevelyan Family.

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The Lady Trevelyan: There is no curse on this family.

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The Lord Trevelyan: There is on the men of this family.

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See if you can guess where that is from.

tired ingot
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Anyone going to the 10-year anniversary in Amsterdam of ESO? 🙂

wide garnet
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I’ve got another funny idea for my Dragon Age: The Lost Scrolls fanfiction:

During the Dragon War, a mad dragon priest and a rogue Dwemer magi-scientist began experimenting with Alteration magic. While the overall goal was to create a “super soldier” race by crossbreeding men, mer, beasts, demons/spirits, and daedra, they still left enough notes for some inappropriately hilarious (and hilariously inappropriate) moments

What I have planned (for now, at least) is a spell that accidentally turns a male Orlesian noble into a female Khajiit.

Lucien: Well, that’s certainly interesting. And odd. And oddly interesting. And slightly disturbing.

Inigo: I am certainly conflicted on this.

Ex-Orlesian noble: * confused and shocked Khajiit noises *

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What do you think of this idea?

feral viper
forest surge
feral viper
forest surge
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I am sad just because I never go to major events like the 10th anniversary

pale walrus
pale walrus
forest surge
eager remnant
forest surge
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Thankfully there will be more Local events outside Amsterdam for the 10th Anniversary. One in the US in Particular which I am kinda dreading because It probably won’t be anywhere close to Manchester.

gray oyster
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One of the things i would love to see in TES VI - seasonal variation better or similar to that of "Seasons of Skyrim" mod.

pale walrus
wide garnet
ivory moat
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Just got back into ESO , any tips on How to level my assault skill line so I can get the perk for a faster mount ??

eager remnant
wide garnet
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Matthias (my Dragonborn): With Solas’ help, I’ve been exploring my newly awakening abilities, especially lucid dreaming and exploring memories in the Fade. I’ve managed to find a, rather unusual memory involving Refined Aetherium:

According to the memory, the Dwemer attempted to create a “blight-resistant” suit of Dwemer armor using Refined Aetherium and decided to test it by wearing it while clearing out a Darkspawn hovel. While, technically, it worked, an unfortunate side effect was, again, an explosion, and now there’s (reputably) a perfectly spherical cave in the Deep Roads that’s half a kilometer in diameter. Also, according to Dorian, there were records of an unusual earthquake striking about the year —2424 according to their records (so, 2,424 years before the current era).

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So, what do you think?

pale walrus
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"Blight resistant"? What do you mean? I thought Dwemer metal was essentially indestructible.

wide garnet
forest surge
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https://vxtwitter.com/Bethesda_UK/status/1775856475191078946?t=ezh6fxV_To3QjFvOZTfM4A&s=19

"A digital illustration reveals a sweeping view of many beloved ESO characters across a watery vista under a blazing night sky. Among them are Lyris Titanborn, Razum Dar, Sharp-As-night, Sai Sahan, Darien Gaultier, Naryu, and The Prophet. Hovering in the sky, a translucent Ouroboros encircles our Three Heroes. Among them in the starry sky are figures of Daedric Princes and living gods."

vxTwitter / fixvx
Twitter
Bethesda UK (@Bethesda_UK)

Today we celebrate 10 years of adventures in Tamriel 🥰

Thank you for joining us on this incredible ongoing journey #ESO10 🥳

💖 71 🔁 24

fickle isle
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Hello guys! ❤️
Pretty new here, I see there are Bundles of Crowns to purchase with real money

Is there a way to get Crowns without buying it? Any quests/activities/giveaway to get them as rewards?

Thanks!

eager remnant
fickle isle
eager remnant
fickle isle
eager remnant
# fickle isle Yes, can you link me to the store to buy them? And also, is there a way to get ...

No. Like I just said, they are purchased with real money. https://store.steampowered.com/app/598120/The_Elder_Scrolls_V_Skyrim_Special_Edition__Creations/

Steam
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition - Creations

Creation Credits can be used in the Creations menu in Skyrim. Browse the selection in-game by category and use your Credits to purchase content. Creations are compatible with the main game and official add-ons, including the Anniversary Edition upgrade.

Price

$4.99

last dew
#

One of the things I want from ES6 is to have the REAL fight to the Thalmor. IMO, they're cartoonishly evil, and I really want to fight them for real like in the Second Great War starting in either High Rock or Hammerfell, primarily defending the Adamantine Tower from being taken or exploited by the Thalmor, and the player protagonist is the Shezarrine. The Last Dragonborn is connected to the Aedra gods, but can optionally do daedric quests, so why not the Shezarrine? The Nerevarine can do that in Morrowind too. But I digress. I want to be able to actually participate in the Second Great War. Not written off in the lore books. I want to be able to slay Thalmor to give them a crippling blow to their Dominion and inspire elves to rebel against the Thalmor. I really want the Thalmor to be the main antagonists of ES6.

pale walrus
# last dew One of the things I want from ES6 is to have the REAL fight to the Thalmor. IMO,...

I confess I'm hoping for something different, at least to some extent. I would like to see all this empire-building nonsense END. In essence, I would like both the Imperials and the Thalmor suffer consequences for their conquering tendencies that lead them to conclude that a 'live and let live' policy going forward is far smarter. Also, from that conclusion, I'd like to see the Altmer become civilizational LEADERS, inspiring by EXAMPLE instead of resorting to domination.

#

Undoubtedly this is pie in the sky optimistic. I'm guessing that the conclusion to ES6 will set up a further crisis in ES7. Hopefully THAT title (coming out at the beginning of the next millenium, probably) will take us to the Dominion - either Summerset (plus Artaeum) or Elsweyr (for some reason, I really want to see that place in its full glory.)

hidden herald
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The ESO anniversary stream starts in about 8 minutes on the official bethesda twitch, in case anyone's interested.

feral viper
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They aren't cartoonishly evil either. That's part of the dread of them. They are RELATABLY evil. They are victims turned victimisers, lashing out at a world they view has wronged them.

They are the single most HUMAN villians the setting has ever seen. Reflecting hundreds of real-world movements and ideologies in such a way that even the most rudimentary execution borders on beautiful.

#

In a setting which usually goes out of its way to glorify the violence and genocide of Humans, and constantly whitewash their crimes, the Thalmor are a refreshing and relatable look at how people deal with a crisis, and the dangers of looking for simple solutions to complex problems.

last dew
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I disagree. I wanna beat the Thalmor up. They just irritate me. I see Thalmor, I kill Thalmor. Can't stand their arrogance. It's baffling that I find people wanting to side with the Thalmor. I don't want to kill the Thalmor because they're elves. I want to kill them because they give elves a bad name and I fight against authoritarianism and dictatorship. That's what the Thalmor are, and they're racist and snobby.

forest surge
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Not to be rude but your only ever seeing things at face value and think the immediate result to kill them off when it’s boring not to make them a longterm villain.

last dew
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We haven't had an Elder Scrolls sequel for about a decade, so I rather we deal with them in ES6 rather than dealing with them in an even longer term. Wait another two decades for another Elder Scrolls game after TES6? Come on.

forest surge
last dew
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I rather they be written better and have a better reason why the Thalmor are like that instead of how it's currently written. All they want is to just control Tamriel and wipe out humans? I want to know a more in depth reason for that.

pale walrus
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Something to consider: the Thalmor have been in power before in Summerset, and then displaced. It's happened more than once, if I remember the lore correctly. There's some sort of 'itch' that periodically needs scratching in Altmer politics, and that cycle of the Thalmor gaining and losing power is evidence. I'm not sure we'll truly understand it until we get to explore Summerset and the Altmer from top to bottom.

forest surge
last dew
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Still, the Thalmor attempting to do the same and enslaving humans is repeating history with the Ayleids. They get arrogant, they are met with insurrection and revolt.

forest surge
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Why do you think they wanted Talos Worship banned? Because they see Tiber as an insult to be worshipped for his atrocities.

Bro it’s not a matter of enslaving Humans, that was the Ayleids who did that, and remember the Direnni Clan had Bretons as Second Class Citizens but never slaves.

last dew
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Thalmor don't seem to want to co-exist with humans.

forest surge
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They want Tamriel to go back to an Elven Dominated Land, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they want to kill off the Human’s or enslave them. They just believe Man cannot be trusted to make decisions anymore.

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And keep in mind this mentality was shared with The First Aldmeri Dominion, the only difference is that Ayrenn didn’t want to treat Human’s and the other races like they didn’t matter if she became Emperor

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It’s definitely a worse Thalmor and Dominion in terms of Morality in some ways but they ultimately are still going for the goal of Elven Supremacy.

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Regardless not all Thalmor or Dominion are necessarily Snobbish and Arrogant, it’s a stereotype that they are if anything.

feral viper
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To date, ONLY human populations in Tamriel have turned to outright extermination of others. Mer have never actually attempted outright genocide.

They don't tend towards equal coexistence, but don't trick yourself into thinking Men are somehow better.

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But that's not really the point. The point is, the Thalmor are the single best antagonistic force the entire franchise has seen.

Wasting them would be a shame.

#

Especially given, again, they are the most HUMAN villians we've had. Even Dagoth Ur was a cartoon villian, taking over the world 'Because'.

last dew
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I'm disappointed I'm the only guy here wanting to fight the Thalmor while no one showed up to agree with me. People I've met on other discords and on Twitter and on YouTube agree with me. Though people did disagree with me while others agreed. This discord, no one even tried to defend my claims. 😮‍💨

#

Maybe visit two provinces in TES6?

dim reef
last dew
dim reef
feral viper
# last dew I'm disappointed I'm the only guy here wanting to fight the Thalmor while no one...

Oh, I want to fight the Thalmor. I just want to do it over the long haul.

Their sort of evil isn't something you can just stomp and be done with. It needs to be understood, confronted, and rooted out.

The Thalmor story needs to play out by exploring the causes and drives that lead people down that route, addressing the trauma and fear, and healing the root causes rather than just crushed violently.

Otherwise it's not going to be defeated at all.

#

As for two provinces... Nah.

I have absolutely zero faith in Bethesda's ability to do that in anything but a half assed way.

Get back to Morrowind quality first, then you can consider 2 provinces.

#

Plus, the Thalmor aren't an existential threat. Yet.

They're a political one.

Ramping them straight up to End Of The World levels too quickly is... Well, kinda fitting for Bethesda's writing really.

feral viper
#

Prevent health from reaching 0

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If that fails, try ~ tgm

feral viper
#

Now... If I had the authority to dictate such, the sequence of titles would be...

TES6: Blackmarsh. Main story focused on Hist dying, and Argonian tribes going berserk. The Thalmor angle would be using them as the source of information about what's happening outside of Blackmarsh, as they are present using An-Xlileel smugglers to supply arms to various rebellious factions.

TES7: Hammerfell. Main story, the HoonDing has emerged and is whipping the disparate Redguard factions into a Jihad. This is because, as the Empire collapses into a succession war, the Dominion has reinvaded Hammerfell. So you have your first real fight against the Thalmor.

TES8: Elsweyr. Main story, the Khajiit struggling with unforseen, long term consequences of the Void Nights. Meanwhile the newly rebranded Empire works for incite revolt amongst the vassal Khajiit states against their Dominion masters.

TES9: Valenwood. As the second Great War looks, the Dominion gets desperate, and the Thalmor try to harness the Ooze as a weapon, to disastrous results.

And then, TES10: Summerset. The Thalmor are in full on panic mode, as their utter failure to make good on their promises of change, and dogmatic stranglehold conflict with a united Tamriel arrayed against them. But desperate despots are often the most dangerous, especially to their own subjexts.

last dew
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About over ten decades.

feral viper
#

Hah, yeah. Based on a strictly TES timetable, with 4 years between games, that would be 20 years...

last dew
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Yes, that's what I mean. A loong damn time. None of us are getting any younger.

feral viper
#

Except Orgnum

last dew
#

The Maomer King? Damn. I envy him.

feral viper
#

Now, I do think there would be ways to... Streamline things a bit to minimise the time between releases...

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But that requires a heavy focus on nailing gameplay mechanics, so you can devote more time for subsequent games in world and storytelling, rather than reinventing gameplay every time

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If you have a tight, well executed gameplay model, you could cut out a significant portion of the development time.

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Which is part of the reason I tend to focus on gameplay discussions here

#

But, as far as the Thalmor go... Human villians like that aren't something you can really just stab and be done with it.

They need to be explored. Unraveled. Given the room to express how people fall into those ideological traps, how they gain and reinforce their authority, and ultimately, how they always spiral into oppression and tyranny.

#

Know your enemy, so you can better recognise and defeat them.

glass marlin
#

This is why I'm hoping whatever Elder Scrolls game treats the Thalmor as the big bad takes place in Summerset Isles.

#

But at the same time I don't want them to be the Big Bad quite yet. Outside of the Great War where you fight them for recontrol of the Imperial City in Legends (as well as thwarting a plan involving Boethiah) they haven't really done anything...impactful on screen so to speak.

pale walrus
#

Just read up on the lore of the Thalmor. In the first and 2nd versions of the Aldmeri Dominion, they were 'orthodox' in their defense of Altmer social and religious institutions, but were otherwise relatively benign. It's the 3rd iteration which seems to have turned into a bunch of weirdos, with the lore indicating that they (or at least factions internal to them) have genocidal intentions against all non-Altmer.

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Oh - and they seem to have gotten on the wrong side of the Argonians - in particular the An-Xileel. This, after HELPING them to revolt against the Empire. Interesting.

feral viper
#

The An-Xileel are basically the Argonian Thalmor. They are ultra nationalist supremacists who actively worked to cull their own population of outside influences.

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Two hyper-supremacist political parties may be willing to work together in short term gains, but their own ideologies tend to cause the working relationship to fracture quite quickly.

tribal hornet
#

It would be amazing to see Gold Trimmed Ebony armor and weapons in ESO.

tribal hornet
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Even different jewelry styles as well.

hidden herald
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Suggestions/Feedback for ESO would need to go to ZeniMax Online Studios, not Bethesda Game Studios. Different developers, while there is some work together on lore and story, most of the development is with ZOS.
They do have an official discord for ESO, but that one is only for posting announcements. You'd need to go to https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/ to submit feedback/suggestions directly to ZOS.

Elder Scrolls Online
English
dim reef
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Hey

dim reef
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Anyone on?

dim reef
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So I have never played an Elder Scrolls game, but have the urge to play a sort of adventure style game, and was wondering if Elder Scrolls 6 is going to be Multiplayer. Also I noticed there is an elder scrolls online and kinda don't understand the vibe of the game is it like a looter shooter minus the shooter.. like the overall endgame is to get better loot with better rolls.

Just wondering

pale walrus
dim reef
forest surge
pale walrus
# dim reef What is ESO like at the moment, just wondering.

I've played very little of ESO. Didn't like it - graphically, the 'feel' of it, none of it felt 'right' to me. There are quite a few people here who have played it that enjoy it immensely, though. Watch some YT vids if you want to get a feel for regular ES games like Skyrim or Oblivion, and also do the same for ESO. Mind you, we don't actually talk about ESO here - it's a channel for the single player ES games. There is an ESO chat forum. I think you can find it on elderscrollsonline. com.

forest surge
forest surge
dim reef
forest surge
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Like I said it’s ultimately dependent on various factors.

dim reef
eager remnant
dim reef
forest surge
#

Massive Multiplayer Online

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I wouldn’t say you have to play it if you don’t want to, Imperial Knowledge, a Youtuber covers various Elder Scrolls Lore and ESO Lore he covers, if you prefer to hear about Lore at times.

eager remnant
#

Here is the Wiki page on MMOs. It explains ithe concept in more detail than we can go into here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massively_multiplayer_online_game

Massively multiplayer online game

A massively multiplayer online game (MMOG or more commonly MMO) is an online video game with a large number of players on the same server. MMOs usually feature a huge, persistent open world, although there are games that differ. These games can be found for most network-capable platforms, including the personal computer, video game console, or s...

pale walrus
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The MMO approach gets in the way of me getting fully distracted by the game. Even though they're just shadows, other people taking part in the game prevent me from getting 'lost' in gameplay. With single player, 4 hours can go by and I'm not aware of it (which has its downsides too, but winds up being lots more enjoyable for me.)

hallow temple
#

Hypothetically speaking, if Elder Scrolls 6 had no modding, but went out of its way to be the largest and most immersive Elder Scrolls single player experience ever, what would you think?

feral viper
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I'd be against it.

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The absolute best games give me about 100odd hours in them.

Add modding, and that can become thousands of hours.

I don't care how good a game is, mods make it better.

pale walrus
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I don't use or contribute to the Creation Kit offerings. More content directly from BGS is fine by me. Those who do use and contribute mods would likely object, though.

feral viper
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Immersion is also something that I don't think should, or really even can, be intentionally designed for..

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It's too subjective.

Like, I am pretty sure what is Immersive for me, isn't immersive for @pale walrus . And the reverse.

pale walrus
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For me, the immersion comes from gameplay where I am completely captivated by my game environment. I have to be alone, both in the game and at the desktop. There can't be another person in either environment. That's why ESO made me so uncomfortable. There were always other player 'ghosts' flitting around, doing things, activating events, and even challenging me.

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Think of it this way: you're hiking a mountain trail. You're alone. There's the wind, sky, trees, trail, the sounds of nature. You hear your footsteps, your breathing, leaves and branches rustling, birds chirping. That's the kind of experience which completely absorbs my attention.

feral viper
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For me, Immersion has always been about holding my attention.

I have never, once, played a game where I was so sucked in that I forgot it was a game. 'Realism' doesn't have that effect on me I guess, I find it too easy to recognise I'm playing a game.

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Immersion is being sucked into the mechanics and dynamics to the point where I lose track of time. Where playing the game becomes the focus, and I forget to do other things.

Somewhat ironically, the most immersive games I have ever played are 4x games. The sort of game I can sit down after work, boot up, and then suddenly the sun is coming up and my boss is wondering where ive been for two days.

pale walrus
hallow temple
#

What if a modless elder scrolls game were to be world simulation driven, where we could do whatever we wanted, and have the simulation feed us events and scenarios that fit our own activities? With AI models going the way they are, a simulation-driven "massively single player online game" could work.

feral viper
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If we hit the point where that's viable, then sure.

However, we're further off than people thing. And further off from it being properly regulated still. So, you're looking at more than a decade for that to even be a possibility.

hallow temple
#

The world would sort of think up scenarios based on our choices. leading to more choices, leading to more unique experiences. That's for open-play. Now events like a main quest, or a variety of other things would still be there, and could even be dropped into the game by Bethesda, but hooked to conditional triggers, so some people may never even see those events, or may be hit with them right off, depending on what they have... or have not done

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Imagine a situation where a major plotline could trigger, if the player has defeated over 100 of a specific enemy type. They think they've been doing a good thing, and maybe they were, but now an entire nation, to whome those enemies were allies, is pissed off and declares war.

feral viper
#

That's much harder to do than you think.

Hypothetically possible, yes, but far more complicated.

If the in-engine AI is fabricating entirely new scenarios on its own, it needs to be able to self-code those scenarios based on its reference material. Considering the amount of back end stuff going on just to make an NPC walk from one place to another, let alone all the other potential interactions such a system would have to account for, you're looking at an incredibly robust AI that is effectively replacing dozens of game designers on the fly.

The processing power alone would be prohibitive.

hallow temple
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And entire quest branch begins growing, unpredictably, based on actions and reactions. even familiart, boring locations could turn into flashpoints

feral viper
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If you're looking at one that assembles pre-designed modules with inbuilt variation to create varied scenarios, well...

Bethesda already does that. That's the basis of how Radiant Quests work. Their issue there is never having enough modules to make the system create enough variety to be interesting, leaving it feeling very repetitive and lazy..

hallow temple
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Let's look at Minecraft for a second. It procedurally generates an entire world so that no two playthroughs are the same, and i one stuck with a single playthrough forever, the world is so big that nobody would explore it all in a lietime without cheating.

Now I don't want a procedurally generated game world in a TES game. But a simulation that procedurally generates scenarios based on LOGICAL elements, not just a random mishmash. Things that can only happen if conditions that make sense are correct.

feral viper
#

And Bethesda already does this. It's how Radiant Quests have worked in Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Starfield.

hallow temple
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Yes... the tech is there... But it's underutilized

feral viper
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Now, I should clarify, I'm a big supporter of the Radiant Quest system. The problem has never been the system it's self, it's been the number of individual modules and stages it uses to assemble quests.

If you only have 3 stages, and only 3 modules per stage, you only have 9 potential outcomes. And that's not going to give you an interesting range..

hallow temple
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It's really painfully obvious when you look at Starfield's procedurally generated content. People mtalk about how they see the same thing over and over, sometimes onsecutively.

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Really, it's like having a grab bag with 3 items in it, and after every draw, you put the item back in, reach and draw again.

Put 10 items in the bag and it isn't so bad. Put 1000 in it and we're getting somewhere

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But if the object gets put back in the bag after every draw, there's still that chance of pulling the same one next draw.

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How to fix it? Have two bags. After drawing the object, from bag 1, put it into bag 2. Only start drawing from bag 2 when all objects have been drawn from bag 1

eager remnant
# hallow temple Hypothetically speaking, if Elder Scrolls 6 had no modding, but went out of its ...

I would probably play it once and go back to Skyrim, Morrowind and Fallout 4. Modding is why I am still here two decades later. The full modding support offered by Bethesda is one of the things that separates their games from the games made by other studios, for me. Modding is extremely important to my roleplaying. I tear apart and rebuild my mod lists with each new character I roleplay, tailoring each mod list to support my roleplaying ideas for that specific character. Mod making and mod using are creative acts with me. Take that away and you take away most of my interest in Bethesda's games.

hallow temple
feral viper
#

I should stipulate too, that I am actually very pro-AI. I think it's a marvelous tool that people hate simply because it can be abused, and that with proper regulation it could be revolutionary for production workflows, especially in gaming.

It's unlikely to replace people until it actually achieves a level of sophistication comparable to human intelligence and agency. And at that point, it would BE a person, so it's not actually replacing them.

But in the mean time, it could be used to significantly increase output by the same creatives who decry it. So long as the influences it's allowed to draw from are regulated in an ethical way.

#

BUT, that's a whole other discussion that has a place elsewhere.

What matters is, the system that's already in place does, in fact, work. It just needs more time and effort put into fleshing out it's draw pool to increase the variety of outcomes.

pale walrus
#

I had always assumed that radiant quests were implemented to stimulate a player to explore a given map more widely. If a radiant quest sends a player to a location that he has already explored, however, I think it's imperative that the 'contents' of that location be different from the original. This could even create a new quest. Example: you're wandering around hammerfell and run into Davidus Livingstonus, a famed explorer of dwemer ruins across tamriel. Your encounter is already notable, in that Livingstonus had not been heard from for years and had been presumed dead in some dwemer location. Livingstonus tells you that he has been searching for a legendary artifact in HF - the Iludium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator. His research indicates that components of the artifact are scattered amongst 5 different locations, and he asks you to retrieve them. He also warns you that there is a competing organization that may likely interfere with this task - namely, Mannimarco's younger brother Marvin and a group of Sload who were members of his fraternity at a Mage's college. This now becomes a very interesting premise for revisiting these locations.

feral viper
#

Yeah, the use for Radiant quests has always been to fill the world with more generic random quests, rather than tell stories.

pale walrus
feral viper
#

In principle, it could work. But having designed procedural generation tools for creating D&D adventures in the past, it's... A bit more complicated

feral viper
#

Basically, the issue with using AI for more structured, narrative storytelling, is its ability to track and refine character instructions and maintain consistent motivation and personality traits.

This is something that human writers also struggle with, but at present AI is pretty bad at it. Mostly because it's a surprisingly complicated thing.

Because of this, stringing together multiple encounters with recurring characters, and keeping those characters consistent throughout, is very difficult to accomplish without a human writer doing active tweaks.

#

In this way, it's practicality in this way is similar to current AI art. It can do a lot of the heavy lifting, but you still need to go in and clean up manually..

hallow temple
# pale walrus Would attaching a story to a set of radiant quests work, or is it outside the bo...

I would say attaching story ELEMENTS to them would be the way to go. It's going to take a while before AI/Procedural Generation is good enough to do anything truly meaningful with storytelling. But stringing story snippets that make sense at each branch point, maybe in the form of interactable "clue" objects that use text boxes to reveal that part of the story. or NPCs with generic dialogue that fits a variety of contexts. Either way, it would have to be something that can adapt itself to a wide array of possible scenarios. Both would involve a significant amount of work and a LOT of testing.

feral viper
#

I think the sort of procedural quest generation that the current tech best supports, is better used for creating 'Jobs'. Freeing up writing time for actual questlines and allowing you to fill out activities for various organisations and character types.

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For instance, using it to generate Jobs for the Fighters Guild, so you can treat it like a job without having to engage with the faction storyline.

hallow temple
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Indeed. I agree that this is what the current iteration of it is best suited for. But what form ought it to take in TES6? There's a massive time gap between Skyrim and now. Surely the tech has evolved... or will be replaced with something more advanced.. At the very least it makes sense to think about how the current iteration can creatively be used to push it beyond its initial scope, to do things that might seem beyond it's scope, simply by turning its limitations into advantages.

In my early game editing days, back when classic Doom was all the rage, there was a map designer named Chris Lutz, whom I had the honor of collaborating with for a time. He had working over/under bridges and sloping surfaces in the regular engine, before the source ports started showing up. The slopes he did using tiny sectors with single-unit height variations. And the over/under bridges were done usi8ng instant-raise/lower lifts with some clever sector definitions that rendered them invisible to the player. There was no getting around the "thunk" sound of the position change, but the functionality it added to his maps gave him a very positive reputation. He understood the hard limits the Doom Engine presented, but rather than saying, "Oh well, my creative idea can't work," he took the "Okay. my idea isn't supported by default, so how do I fake it?"

Granted, AI/ProcGen is a lot more complex, but its stll based on a system of rules and limits that, if clearly understood, can be faked into doing unexpected things.

feral viper
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While I do think the tech has potential, I think Starfield pretty clearly tells us that Bethesda's development and use of it hasn't really developed over the last decade.

It's the same superficial, repetitive dynamic with minimal variation to activities that we've had since Skyrim.

So expecting Bethesda to do something they have consistently demonstrated either an unwillingness or inability to do is... Setting ones self up for disappointment.

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Just to temper expectations before we get too hopeful.

hallow temple
# feral viper While I do think the tech has potential, I think Starfield pretty clearly tells ...

Had Bethesda kept Starfield's world compacted into a single region like their other titles, the ProcGen system would have worked. They talked about having designed as much if not more hand-crafted elements for Starfield as they had for Skyrim. And maybe they did... But...

In Skyrim, you can pepper 1000 hand-crafted locations around a single worldspace and even employe procedural generation to control their scatter, and have it work. But in Starfield, where there are over 1000 large world spaces to serve as exploration zones, with 1000 handcrafted elements, so you end up with these big empty maps with little or nothing to sea. And again as mentioned above, the ProcGen system pulls an element from the grab bag, then drops it back in. Meaning that there is not control mechanism to keep the same element from being pulled multiple times in a row. That's why I suggested the 2 grab bag approach. Pull element from bag 1, use it, then put it in bag 2. don't draw from bag 2 until everything from bag 1 has been drawn.

Frankly, I don't think they even thought about how repetitive things could be. and how obvious it is when you know that when you ender a world space, there's just one real point of interest there, if that. and what gets pulled for this barren lump of rock is the same as what was pulled for the last one, with the color of the sky being the only real difference.

gloomy anchor
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Please keep this channel to elder scrolls. If you wish to discuss starfield, you can do so here: #starfield-chat

feral viper
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Alright, well, cliffs notes... I think as far as environments go, the only really viable application for Procedural Generation in terms of environments, currently, is creating natural environments.

It's easier to set parameters and behaviours for natural environments to populate areas with, effectively, general environmental clutter than it is to create extremely complex environments like cities.

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Use it to generate the topography and roughly populate the world space, then go in and place specific POIs manually.

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Don't use Procedural Generation to create or place those POIs themselves.

gloomy anchor
feral viper
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Sorry, I was working back to TES specifically in relation to Hammerfell.

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The nature of Hammerfell as a location would be relatively well suited to this sort of generation as a once over, due to its harsh environment and relatively focused habitation. Open desert and arid scrubland are environments which are much more suited to this sort of algorithmic generation than dense forests or heavily cultivated pastures.

hallow temple
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Do wer know for absolute certaintyu that it IS going to be Hammerfell?

feral viper
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We do not. But I tend to work under that assumption.

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Based on art images that have shown up in various dev statements, the voices desire to take another stab at Hammerfell, and the fact that other options are either Highrock (Generic McGenericson) or non-human provinces, suggest Hammerfell is likely.

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Would I PREFER Blackmarsh or Elseweyr? Absolutely. But I don't expect them.

hallow temple
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The whole Thalmor thing really needs to be resolved.

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in Skyrim, it just feels swept under the rug to be dealt with later. And there have always been time jumps between main sequence TES titles.

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The civil war thing was more of a McGuffin than a meaningful event.

feral viper
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Nah, keep the Thalmor around for awhile.

hallow temple
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in a way, it creates another warp in the west sort of scenario where both sides win and both sides lose.

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I'll tell you what will make for a good use of procedural generation and a long-running new chapter... The discovery and exploration of a different continent.

feral viper
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Oh, don't even get me started on the Civil War... @gloomy anchor is mad enough at me as it is.

hallow temple
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Maybe we jump ahead a hundred years. Maybe the fracturing of the Empire worked itself out. Maybe expansion is in everyone's best interest. A goal to strive for together rather than end up at each other's throats.

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But what if the Akaviri want the new continent themselves?

feral viper
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I'd rather not see squat from the Akaviri until someone decides to get creative again. Even ESO which has generally (though not always) done better has had to flounder around the Akaviri issue.

feral viper
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Are they Men? Are they Beastfolk? Who knows!

hallow temple
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Nirn is a big place. it would be nice to see something beyond the provinces this time around. Perhaps it can start on the home front of one of the provinces, Preferably in a massive port city. It would be interesting if we are to be the governor of the first Tamrielic colony in the new land. As a Lord/Lady appointed as the expedition leader, authority to decide how the colony progresses while at the same time embarking on discovery and contact with indigenous people of the land, possibly walking a fine line between a diplomat and a conqueror, with the freedom to cross the line... It would be a new TYPE of Elder Scrolls story, but not beyond the realm of possibility.

The Sea hasn't really been much of a part of the main sequence games. Or at least, being part of a major expedition across the sea hasn't.

hallow temple
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It would be refreshing not being the Nerevarine or the dragonborn, or some other supernaturally chosen one fated to save the world. One thing I liked about Oblivion was how we were really just a normal person caught up in a turning point in the destiny of Tamriel. We weren't a king, but rather a kningmaker. We still did all the heavy lifting associated with an epic adventure/RPG, but it was Emperor Martin Septim who was the hero. But he needed us to get where he was in order to do what he did. I'd like to see another TES game where we are just a regular person, with an important assignment.

Having a large world that generates uniquely (but in the context of the story's sequence of events" would really make it about personal discovery. Building a colony has many problems that must be overcome.

pale walrus
# hallow temple Do wer know for absolute certaintyu that it IS going to be Hammerfell?

Wait - where would this colony be? You need some sort of reasonably sized landmass, especially if the place already has an indigenous population/society/culture. Are you thinking of a Yokuda that is beginning to re-emerge from the sea? Perhaps Atmora emerging from its glaciation? A completely undiscovered continent or subcontinent would be a tall order, especially with Akavir already existing but still almost a complete unknown.

hallow temple
# pale walrus Wait - where would this colony be? You need some sort of reasonably sized landma...

Perhaps it's time for Akavir to not be an unknown. My original thought was to have us go to Akavir. You are right. We don't know much about the Akaviri. TESO gave some background, especially concerning the origin of the Ebonhart Pact, which united Skyrim, Morrowind and Black Marsh against the Akaviri, to drive them back across the sea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuSTayvdrrg

YouTube
Velenis
The Ebonheart Pact (Female - Malukah)

The Ebonheart Pact (Malukah)
The Elder scrolls Online song
TESO

We tilled Skyrim's ground despite frozen toil.
We tend to the Kwama beneath Morrowind's soil.
We hunted the Wamasu in Black Marsh's glades.
We three hearts have no need for blades.

Then they came from the seas, folded steel in their hands.
They burned down our homes and ravaged ou...

▶ Play video
#

But these events occured long before TES1's events occurred. So what has become of Akavir and its people? It would be interesting to find out, and to explore a land we've never gone to before

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Whether going to colonize or conquer, or perhaps the Akaviri were ravaged by the Oblivion threat and were hit terribly hard before Martin Septim's sacrifice ended the crisis.

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Whether Akavir or some other continent, I think it's time that the storyof The Elder Scrolls takes us abroad for a look into the wider world of Nirn.

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The first TES actually spanned the entire continent of Tamriel. and for the time it came out, it felt massive. Daggerfall had more of a cohesive story, and also felt massive.

But since Morrowind, everything has been compacted, with the provinces limited to something that can be walked across in an hour. I want that wide unknown feeling back. Starfield proved that world size is no issue, though would be better handled if it can be a contiguous world rather than fractured into over a thousand world self-contained world spaces. But if we were to get a Daggerfall scale world in a contemporary visual presentation, we really can get an immersive experience.

Execution was Starfield's problem. It need not be TES6's problem..

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At the very least, exploration of a single province, but to actual scale is now possible. And I want to see them try it.

feral viper
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Making a full, settled world is a far cry from making a bunch of mostly uninhabited planets.

Especially given the narrative considerations of such a scale.

I'm perfectly content with one province at a time. Both because it allows for tighter narratives, and because I frankly have no faith that Bethesda could pull it off.

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I'm not even a supporter of the unfortunately popular Hammerfell & Highrock request.

hallow temple
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But who would want to take days if not weeks to walk from one city or village to another, either cross-country or by following the road? Well if one is following some main quest, fast travel by horsedrawn cart or by boat, or by ship would work like it has from TES1 to now. But for the adventurous sort interested in seeing the world and finding places to delve into while traveling has its appeal. And the distance traveled has real meaning, as the possibility of well and truly getting lost in the wilds would be there, but with clever event generation even that could be made to feel like just part of the unique experience.

There is so much that real-time ProcGen can allow to happen, but it needs more than just a handful of items in the draw pool.

Bethesda and Mojang should sit down and have a conversation. It might prove fruitful. And with both owned by Microsoft, such a meeting of the minds could work wonders.

feral viper
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Tripling the gamespace to increase the relative scale would be enough, I think. At most. Too big, and you push the game into mindless Loading Screen territory.

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If you make the game world too large to practically traverse manually, you've pushed size too far.

hallow temple
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It depends on who you ask.

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What is it about a game like Minecraft that has kept people playing for as long as they have?

feral viper
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As it is, Fallout 76 takes about 20 minutes to cross corner to corner. Three times that, would mean crossing the map would require a dedicated hour to achieve.

That's a lot of traversal time just to get from one place to another. If you had to free up any more than an hour to walk from Skaven to Taneth, I doubt many people would do it..

hallow temple
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There's no real story, yet many people are compelled to set out in a random direction just to see the next hill beyond yonder hill.

feral viper
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Very different sort of game, though. TES isn't a survival builder game.

pale walrus
feral viper
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And even in Minecraft, most people don't set off and walk in one direction for an hour just to get somewhere.

eager remnant
pale walrus
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Side note (BRIEF) of SF: my gut tells me BGS has plans for those 1k worlds - sort of a combination of the best of ES and ESO. We might see lots more expansions for SF in the future, if the June DLC is successful.

hallow temple
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You take a generated world like that and find a way to populate it with cities and other things, and figure a way for dynamic events within those places to constantly feed the player a narrative that they can get involved with, and you've got a RPG to kill all other RPGs.

steep relic
hallow temple
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All the resources to make it so are already there. But it just needs someone with vision to make it happen.

feral viper
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TES and Minecraft are, ultimately, very different types of games with very different loops and goals.

I think if you have more than an hours travel time between two points on the map, without the need for Fast Travel, you're going to very quickly make the game unwieldy.

And if you rely too much on fast travel, you're going to end up with a game that feels like it's just a chain of loading screens.

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So much larger than 3x the size of Fallout 76 isn't going to work well.

At the same time, because TES is already so heavily scaled, you could very easily fit all of Hammerfell in that gamespace. You wouldn't need a second province like Highrock in there to justify the size.

pale walrus
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But regarding Akavir - I also would like to visit the place. Maybe there's a 'happy middle' for this. Exploring a whole new continent with 4 (at least) new tribes/cultures is far too ambitious. But as part of ES6, maybe we can 'visit' a small portion of Akavir as a DLC. For instance: a Tsaesci diplomat shows up in HF to establish permanent relations with the Crowns and starts building an embassy. You are tasked by the Crowns to visit the Tsaesci homeland to begin discussions to build an embassy there. You get on a trade vessel and arrive in some Tsaesci coastal city on Akavir. The authorities welcome you, but your travel pass restricts you to the city limits. The entire DLC takes place within the city walls (though you can look over the walls to tantalizing vistas of the surrounding landscape.)

feral viper
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And when you factor in the geography of Hammerfell, with mountains, Deserts, messas, valleys and coastal clifflines, you have plenty of delineation to make it feel much larger than it really is.

hallow temple
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Todd Howard keeps wanting to go bigger, but he doesn't seem to know how to go deeper. He seems stuck on the same design modfel that's been used since Morrowind, with no interest in going beyond. So while the tech is now there, the resources are now there, he's still dwelling in the past.

After Starfield, TES6 has GOT to really be something different. It can't just be more of the same. It cannot be afraid to use the tools that are available to take it to the next level.. But the status quo needs to go.

pale walrus
feral viper
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And I don't think going bigger is going to let them go deeper.

Better to focus on depth, rather than size.

pale walrus
feral viper
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But the focus on depth is also why I'm against multiple provinces.

hallow temple
# feral viper But the focus on depth is also why I'm against multiple provinces.

You seem to be expecting shallowness.

I expect depth.

And with ProcGen, size is not an issue. It is the depth of gameplay which needs to go into SYSTEMS that the ProcGen stuff would hook into. ProcGen is not just randomization of things. It is dependent on rules so that the randomization makes sense. The SYSTEMS that drive the gameplay would be the rules. Imagine if Bethesda were to be the first developer to truly make a RPG that, more or less, builds itself and expands upon itself. were while there may be a central narrative to track an over-all arc of events, with a specific beginning and ending, everything that happens in between is totally unknowable until it happens. Even to them.

They of course would know everything that could possibly happen, but it would ultimately be players choices which drives what does happen. Now we're talking about broad-stroke type stuff. The fine strokes, delivered through hand-crafted narrative-driven content can and should still exist. Nothing should replace that. But having the world beyond just a main quest or faction related story being procedurally driven by a simulation process will ensure that even when the story is resolved, the world goes on and things can be discovered even years later.

nimble pond
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It would be kinda cool if the underground dwemer ruins could be used as an alternative sort of method of transportation, like a subway system all over the map

feral viper
nimble pond
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I wonder if we'll ever get to explore more of the Dreamworld in TES. Like a whole other world within it.

feral viper
nimble pond
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And fast-travel I like to look at as a sort of teaching where one is exploring the map within their own mind of "memories." Instead of it just being a point and click thing lol

pale walrus
# nimble pond It would be kinda cool if the underground dwemer ruins could be used as an alter...

That WOULD be cool. But the steampunk subway would have to be functional. That's possible; after all, dwemer constructions are incredibly durable and robust. However, we might run into other.....'passengers' or 'toll agents' on the subway. That could make things interesting or irritating - depends on how BGS handles it. To be honest, I'd like to see air travel available as well - perhaps thru dwemer airships. The Sload and Altmer apparently have air travel methods as well.

hallow temple
# feral viper I try to set my expectations based on what has been demonstrated to be the most ...

I can well understand that position. But that's the problem. When people like Todd say "It's a Bethesda Game, through and through," WE know exactly what that means. More of the same with a different coat of paint splashed on it. It's one thing to maintain a familiar aestheticand general feel. but for years now those who really haven't understood, the Creation Engine has been the problem. All an engine is is a framework designed to handle a variety of functions and resources in a specific way. But the design model is really the problem. If Bethesda were to switch to Unreal Engine 5, the next title released will still have loading screens, because Todd Howard will not even consider a different design model.

He has insisted on sticking to Creation Engine becuse it does what the design model calls for very well, and the team are intimately familiar with it. With Starfield, the same worn out design model proved incongruous with the scope.

The same quantity of handcrafted elements scattered across over 1000 large world space maps is not the same as that same number of elementys scattered over a single world space.

But they would not have bothered pushing the large scale of Starfield unless Todd also wants to push large scale for TES6 next.

The design model must be made congrouous with that scale. Meaning Todd is going to have to look at things differently. And that demands either a departure from, or a complete overhaul to the design model.

nimble pond
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Simply for the humor factor of it, I would much like to have a few locations on the map where you can be catapulted clear across the map and then sorta skydive/parachute down. Some insane new method of travel

hallow temple
nimble pond
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Medieval ODST lol

feral viper
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If you're pushing for a near infinite (practically) world space, then the number of assets don't really matter. It's going to be.. uninspiring anyway.

Better to use Proc-Gen for what's it's good for currently, and hand-craft the points of interest directly.

Especially when the track record for that hand crafting it's self has been spotty for the last 20 years.

TES needs love. And size isn't going to give it the love it needs, while developing the necessary tools to simulate that sort of love hasn't even been demonstrated by anyone yet.

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One province, one culture. And until Bethesda demonstrates the ability to at least replicate Morrowind (which still could be improved upon) then they shouldn't be trying to suddenly jump ahead of the pack.

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They need to pull back the scale, and focus on detail. Not constantly chase bigger and bigger at the cost of what little detail they have left.

As is, I don't expect anything deeper than Tamriel: Arabian Nights. And until they demonstrate otherwise, no amount of optimising is going to overrule that expectation.

bright siren
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Maybe a hot take, imo tes:6 wouldn’t even need to be an entire province. Morrowind takes place in just part of a province and is fine to explore

hallow temple
# feral viper One province, one culture. And until Bethesda demonstrates the ability to at lea...

They tried to jump ahead already with Starfield, and we know how that has turned out for them. But like I said, execution was the real problem, not the idea.

A massive ProcGen world in a contiguous region rather than being broken up 1000 ways from Sunday can work. Especially if done like Daggerfall.

I will concede that procedural generation of cities is a massive pill to swallow. But procedural generation of the landscape between or at least AROUND those cities is something that has been done before offering those who want to explore a large land to do so.

So really I advocate a return to TES's roots, but with the visual fidelity that is possible now, rather than the cubes and harsh angles that were the thing back then.

nimble pond
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One thing I would like is more distance between cities and such. I look back at Skyrim and everything just felt too close together, even when just walking. I'd always end up finding some house or building every few mins, I never really had that true feeling of being out there in the wilderness when away from the cities. Even a sizeable dense, dark forest free of civilization would of been nice. I mean it's partyly a medival world too and I don't even remotely feel a sense of danger when outside the city and too often bump into another person, it's as if I'm inside the city walls in the entire province. ):

eager remnant
feral viper
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But, I would personally like more space between POIs. It's just a risk of going TOO big, and making it a chore to move anywhere.

nimble pond
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There could be an offer of different methods of travel and at varying speeds, whichever is comfortable and offers choice to the individual player.

hallow temple
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Also, Cities themselves could be massive, feeling like the home to MILLIONS of people rather than 20 NPCs wandering around... The system of alleys and back streets could be ProcGen, if the player decides to go poking around looking for whatever. The plot-centric buildings would exist as they always do, and there should be direct paths that lead efficiently to them. But it's when the players want to go off-narrative that the game needs to fill in the blanks. How many grand fantasy novels do we read where the protagonist manages to get lost in a big city and has a series of minor misadventures before finding their way back? That's what's missing. There is no getting lost anywhere in these games. No accidental wrong turn that sends us wandering around a really bad part of town where the folks we see stare at us like we've grown a second head, and the ones we don't see stare at us like prey.

I remember getting lost in the cities in Arena and Daggerfall. Having to ask for directions and get places marked on our map. Spend enough time there and you learned where things were.

So yeah, I want that sense of scale back. That feeling of being in a truly large world.

If Daggerfall or even Arena had Skyrim's visual Aesthetics... All I can say is... Damn...

feral viper
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I'm not keen on massive cities either. I find them... Less Alive, and more Crowded, if that makes sense.

nimble pond
hallow temple
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But no... Let's keep dumbing things down and making things smaller and god forbid if anyone feels that looking for a shop be inconvenienced.

feral viper
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Cities in TES feel better than GTA.

hallow temple
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Not from what I've seen of GTA...

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At least when you drive around, you feel like you're driving in a real city.

feral viper
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Nah. It feels like a one dimensional simulation of a city.

I live in a city. I can pick anyone at random and engage with them. Cities full of drones that do nothing but take up space run face first into my suspension of disbelief

hallow temple
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I look at videos like the one I just shared and see what is possible

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As to the drones as you put them, look how long that game has been out and look what sort of tech advancements have been made since.

feral viper
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And not a one has demonstrated a city populated by NPCa as opposed to Drones.

hallow temple
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They're meant to be drones. play-things for us to torture, which many GTA videos show being done.

hidden herald
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This is more for #tech-chat than specifically The Elder Scrolls.

hallow temple
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They could have been designed to be more 3-dimensional. Other games have done better with random NPCs.

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Again, I'm talking about what is possible if someone with the mind to see it done were to step up and see it done.

feral viper
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And I'm saying I much rather Bethesda games with characters, rather than drones. Skyrim is vastly superior in that regard than Starfield.

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And if I need to settle for only 50 NPCs in a city, I'll take that. I'd rather Nazeem over the alternative.

hallow temple
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Bethesda can do whatever they set it in their mind to do. I just wish they'd go back to what they abandoned when they did Morrowind. Give us a vast world that we can get lost in. use ProcGen the way it originally was used to give us those vast places. but use contemporary resources to keep contemporary visual presentation.

feral viper
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Morrowind didn't use procedural generation though. It was entirely hand crafted.

hallow temple
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That's YOU. not ME.

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They HAD it before. They can have it again and KEEP meaningful characters. They are not mutually exclusive... Not anymore

nimble pond
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I like what they started with Starfield, essentially offering players both. You have your central hand-detailed more focused on the center. And then you have all these other worlds out there you can travel thru if you want but not needed to.

feral viper
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They can't even really do meaningful characters either.

Asking for things they haven't demonstrated the ability to do is just... Seem like wishlistinf for me.

hallow temple
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But the average person wandering the streets with no concept beyond what's going on in their little personal world, how deep do they need to be?

feral viper
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And setting expectations which are doomed to disappointment

hallow temple
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So why come here then?

feral viper
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I'm generally here for more technical discussions and deconstructions, rather than just wishlisting.

nimble pond
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Nothing wrong with wishlisting, dreaming, technicalities and such here. Co-exist. One thought can inspire another.

hallow temple
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What was your first TES game?

feral viper
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Daggerfall.

hallow temple
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Then you know what was once done, and what could be done again while preserving what has been done since.

feral viper
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And I know what's been done for the last 2 decades, and the quality concerns that has caused.

hallow temple
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I share those concerns, but I would rather hold their feet to the fire than just shrug and go, "meh."

feral viper
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Bethesda has given me zero reason to believe they are capable of this.

So I would rather set my expectations to something more reasonable, and focus my recommendations on standards they've achieved in the past, before wanting more.

nimble pond
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I'd have to take the risk of failure over the safety net, even in the face of adversity or a bad history, shoot for the moon anyway.

hallow temple
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Otherwise we get what we've gotten ... Stagnation

nimble pond
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But I also understand going beyond reason. I think a good middle-ground between the two is best, while leaning too much in either direction to be too extreme. But between the two if I had to choose, I'd go with the latter as at least you might gain something among that risk as opposed to not gaining anything. Took a lot of ambition to get man to space.

steep relic
feral viper
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Size doesn't mean much, if you don't have the mechanics to engage with it. And Skyrim is our last real experience with fantasy from Bethesda

nimble pond
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Well let's assume they do that, can't just get stuck on one stepping stone of conversation for the next 5 years, there has to be more. And even if they don't, well it is what it is

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The question is, do they make one province, but have it feel like the size of a entire world. With all the main stuff more focused on the center while the rest on the outer layers is just to make that entire province living on it's own and allowing you to travel almost as long as far as you want. Or do they still make it one province, but open up the entirety of tamriel (prob would be less detailed in comparison to say one province the size of a world, but on the flip side you'd be able to visit other provinces and build/mod there too). I'd honestly be pleased either way.

feral viper
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I would say yes. At its smallest scale, the last 3 TES games have been at MINIMUM 1:1000 scale. They could comfortably make the game world many times larger, and keep it to a single province..

hallow temple
nimble pond
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Yea it would be interesting to see that. I liked what they did with Starfield where you have the focused areas that are comparatively more detailed, whilst also offering this other form of exploration of the game world, while not as detailed in comparison to the main settled areas, it still offers that sense of going out there into the world and taking it in doing whatever you want and being a part of it on your own terms outside the story. So while they could have it in a single province and also open up all of tamriel, they could essentially provide the same thing by just making one province feel like it's own whole world full of diversity (not just majorly sand or snow everywhere). And having these other layers where yeah it really feels like you are out there when traveling between cities. You might find yourself in a more secluded area free of civilization and more akin to feeling like you've stepped on an untouched planet even though you're in the same province. Having several areas feeling like their own distinct planets (not actual size of planets, but you feel the difference in it's scale and distinct details) in the wilderness between. It's essentially the same thing in Starfield with the diversity of planets, only instead of spreading them out over space, you're spreading out the feeling of different planets within a province that feels like it's the size of one entire world not just because of distance, but also because of the distinction of all the differences and the distance between them.

eager remnant
hallow temple
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I can get behind this. One thing I have always found annoying with the single province thing is that you knowthat there's a wider world beyond, but you are stopped by an invisible barrier all around. At least with Morrowind, they locked you in mournhold due to the Corprus crisis. The city was under quarantine. In Skyrim, we did have a big closed gate at the border, but that was it. No contingent of Imperial soldiers garrisoned urging that travelers turn back because the provinces beyond will not receive refugees from the civil war. etc...

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But that's what happens when you limit yourself to one specific area. Invisible walls.

nimble pond
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But that's how I wish it was. I think the whole making each section of a province have it's own environmental theme that is largely one dimensional like this is the land of snow.. land of sand.. land of rocky coast, ocean world, etc. I'd much rather each province all have their own areas of each environment type and having different cultures living in those areas from province to province. Like skyrim nords living in the snowy mountains would be distinct from the ones living in the same environment type in another province. Maybe even mix it up like even though Khajiit typically prefer warmer environments, you find one group that willingly chooses to live in the snow and has adapted to it in their own unique way apart from other khajiit.

feral viper
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I'm generally ok with the invisible walls, so long as they're off the beaten path enough that you aren't constantly running into them. Oblivion was especially egregious for it, as a big stretch of the southern border blocked you from traveling directly to Bravil and Leyawin.

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But my preference for a single province lies entirely with the writing and development focus on a single (already broad) people rather than splitting it between multiple.

nimble pond
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But that could just be because of how they do it, giving us one province at a time. If all tamriel was available each title with a different story each time, I guess I wouldn't feel that way. But this way, even tho you're in one province, you'd feel like you're experiencing all of tamriel each title. The story itself can be about the province or particular people, but let us still experience the province as if it was the entirety and diversity of tamriel.

feral viper
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And... Well... I think that would be technically possible...

IF they really nailed mechanics, and settled on a set visual style and quality to move forward.

#

The problem then becomes deciding if you're just one hero, or multiple.

nimble pond
feral viper
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I mean, if you start with one game, in one province, and explore that provinces story, then move to another province and explore it's story, do you approach it as literally the same character, or just keep the stories self contained and let the Player head canon what they want.

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So, say, if you're the HoonDing in Hammerfell, but the Mane in Elsweyr (not that I would support being either in the first place)

nimble pond
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Um, I like the one province per title and keeping pc separate from each one. I feel like getting tamriel map every title over and over would lose its appeal

feral viper
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So do I.

But, from a technical sense, if they nail the mechanics, they could just focus on gamespace for the foreseeable future, allowing more games in quicker succession.

Then it becomes a question of expansion, or entirely new game?

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I suppose you could sorta do both... Do a Total War: Warhammer; Immortal Empires thing...

#

But again, that really requires nailing mechanics, and settling in a visual style and fidelity.

nimble pond
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But eventually I think Tamriel (and probably Nirn) will be destroyed eventually by it's own hand. Because creation is just as greedily hungry as the Serpent whom wishes to consume it and the wastes of it's prior destruction, because creation never stops wanting to create and often with creation there is destruction, such as what happened to those responsible for Nirn's creation, in a sense. None of this may be true with the lore, just some ramblings bc I ain't asleep yet

pale walrus
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If the Adamantine Tower is the only one still working, then deactivating it is the key to ending the Kalpa. But nobody has been able to 'flip the switch' on it. You'd think Akatosh would do it - after all, he and the other Aedra would presumably get the power back which they gave up in creating Mundus. Not sure what's stopping him.

feral viper
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We don't actually know what the key to ending the Kalpa is, or even how Kalpas work. It's a vague enough concept that there are several competing theories, all of them basically relying on rampant speculation and the few scant references that actually exist.

hallow temple
# nimble pond But eventually I think Tamriel (and probably Nirn) will be destroyed eventually ...

There is also the possibility that at some point in the future it is learned that both the Aedra and the Daedra are really just a group of rogue Starborn who collectively agreed to play a very long-running joke on the citizens of Nirn, and once the people have their awakening, these Starborn move on to find more gullible beings elsewhere in the multiverse... After which, the Nirn Confederation rises and will one day become the first spacefaring civilization humanity encounters.

nimble pond
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I think the unstarborn would feel kinda left out on this one

hallow temple
feral viper
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But anyway. I'm not going to get into the... Problems, with the whole Starborn concept. This isn't the place for that.

Simple fact is, Kalpas as a mechanism for ending the world are extremely poorly understood, and may not even actually be a thing.

hallow temple
feral viper
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Aaah... To be able to write the narrative trajectory of the setting for the next few games...

forest surge
feral viper
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I think the name was deliberate, as they're supposed to be viewed as the bad guys.

forest surge
feral viper
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Oh absolutely. The CIS has more legitimate grievances than say, the Stormcloaks. But they also are deliberately set up to be the antagonistic force.

#

Still not really important to TES. Unless we get a Creation which has a Battledroid show up on Tamriel.

forest surge
feral viper
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As loathe as I am for a representation of Talos to be right in any way, either the collapse of the Empire, or its transition to a more Confederation structure would certainly fit with Wulf's statement about change.

forest surge
feral viper
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Eeh... It was definitely a skewed relationship, and depending on who you ask, bordering on the abusive.

#

So it still wasn't perfect.

forest surge
feral viper
#

Different people seem to have different takes on the willingness of the whole... Interbreeding thing.

#

Though the actual evidence is pretty scarce. For obvious reasons.

hallow temple
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It's not just Man and Mer that must be unified, but ALL sentient races of Nirn. But that begs the question, have we actually seen all of the sentient races of Nirn? That feeds back into the Akaviri question...

forest surge
feral viper
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Maybe. Again, reproductive trends have... Been understandably avoided by most TES media since the turn of the millennium.

forest surge
feral viper
#

You LITERALLY have military veterans who were close enough to Kamal to STAB THEM, and yet no one seems sure what they looked like.

forest surge
feral viper
#

It's like the reaction to the overwhelmingly negative response to their human appearance in Oblivion resulted in a blanket 'DO NOT SHOW AKAVIRI' order across the franchise.

#

Which, you know... Is the wrong response to that.

Make them better, don't just avoid them entirely.

hallow temple
#

One thing that Skyrim showed us for sure is that the Tamrielic Empire is a shadow of its former self. Emperor Titus Mede was a puppet of the Thalmor. Sure, the legion remains a force to be reckoned with, butif the Emperor would make concessions that favor one faction that lead to the persecution of the people of an entire province, then his Empire is doomed.

feral viper
#

Uuuhh... No it's not quite that bad.

Mede isn't a strong ruler, sure, but he's no more a puppet than Ulfric is. Less so, really.

#

But the sociopolitical and geopolitical complexities of Skyrim (which exist almost entirely in what Bethesda DIDN'T write rather than what they did) are more for the Lore channel.

forest surge
feral viper
#

One of the running problems with the various races of Tamriel, is the diverse physicality and mental faculties of them, and the issues with wider integration on a broad level.

Like, what do you do about Giants? Are Trolls a race or a monster? How do you accommodate Lamia? That sort of thing.

#

Trolls, Harpies and juvenile Sload are of a particularly complicated topic in that regard.

forest surge
feral viper
forest surge
hallow temple
#

What if the Empire really has disbanded by the time TES6 events start happening. Does the continent of Tamriel collaps into chaos, or do the majority recognize that unity is the answer and stand against the Thalmor, mandating that they either give up their Elven Supremacy agenda (let's not call it something else, because that is exactly how their behavior is presented) and take their rightful and equal place among the whole, or be crushed underfoot by the majority who will not tolerate their garbage. If everyone else is against them, I think pride will push them to choose to be sensible.

A new government would logically spring up, possibly starting out as the Tamrielic Confederation... A forerunner to a possible future Nirn Confederation.

feral viper
#

Don't keep avoiding the issue and putting it off, creating new problems in the process.

Make a decision, and commit to it.

feral viper
#

So IF the Empire were to collapse entirely, the most likely outcome would be the expansion of the Dominon into the ensuing power vacuum.

#

Now, if the Empire were to reform itself into something else, while maintaining governorial and military continuity, then you could have the continued resistance against that other power.

But without plot armour, the collapse of the Empire almost certainly means the ascendancy of the Dominion.

hallow temple
# feral viper One of the running problems with the various races of Tamriel, is the diverse ph...

These would be societal considerations that would likely be ongoing for the Council of the Confederation. If equality and freedom are truly bedrock principles of the government, then a much broader net will need to be cast in terms of recognizing such individuals as citizens. A desire to reason is likely a prerequisite. If they want to not be thought of as monsters, then they must demonstrate willingness to act as people.

hallow temple
# feral viper From a real world historical point of view, it's rare for Balkanisation in the f...

It depends on how much of a time jump there is between Skyrim and TES6

Set it too soon after and you are completely right. But jump ahead say a few centuries, and the aftermath of Skyrims events and the obvious Thalmor involvement in the triggering of them, and you get the different provinces wondering how long before the Thalmor start coercing the Empire into ostracising them for whatever excuse they may find. After all, Tiber Septim was a Nord, and his Dynasty was prosperous for all concerned. And if the Thalmor could successfully cast a pall over that, what might they manage to do to other notable people and events of other provinces. These deliberations, given enough time, and the possibility of the Thalmor actually targeting another people for persecution, a series of reformc could occur.

feral viper
#

The problem is... Equality and freedom are not bedrock principles, either in the real world or in Tamriel. And it's not actually something shared by people uniformly. Freedom means something very different to Bretons than it does to Dunmer, for instance. And Equality isn't something that actually exists as much of a concept in Tamriel.

Old biases, rivalries and outright hatreds add a further level of complication to this. Some would be more than happy to see those they hate suffer, even if it means failing to seize on an opportunity to better their own lives. Skald the Elder, for instance, so hate the Empire that he doesn't even like having people use perfectly serviceable armour of theirs in his city. Do you think he's about to agree to support a new nation that includes those he hates?

nimble pond
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No, no I don't think Nirn or even Tamriel would be destroyed by a mere kalpa, in comparison I was thinking something a bit beyond that in total power.

feral viper
#

In an ideal world, yes. Everyone would put aside their differences and work towards a better future. But Tamriel is not and never has been, an ideal world.

#

I mean, look at us. We've been struggling with those same ideals for centuries and are arguably further away from achieving them than we were 200 years ago.

#

Plus... Stability and harmony don't typically lend themselves to adventurous storytelling.

So, both in terms of realism, narrative potential, and just plain playable functionality... I both expect and want a very slow, very painful climb into the future.

hallow temple
feral viper
#

True, you can handwaved a lot away with a big enough time jump. Just look at Mass Effect Andromeda.

But I think doing so would squander so many interesting stories, and the ability to see change as it happens, rather than in retrospect.

#

Again though, the Empire and Dominion ARE NOT ALLIES. In fact, they are the exact opposite.

They have a PEACE TREATY which comes with conditions that the Empire is expected to follow.

hallow temple
#

In fact, Before there can truly be willing unity between an entire collective of different cultures, som emajor catalyst needs to happen to trigger that un ity. Perhaps THAT is how the Akaviri can come into play. A new invasion of Tamriel, so strong that everyone has no realistic course than to unite... Even the Thalmor. At this point, it's not the Empire, either of old or reformed, but rather an alliance of all people of conscience.

feral viper
#

While it CAN happen, typically those sorts of events actually lead to backstabbing and attempting to solidify individual positions rather than a unified front.

In practice, 'The enemy of my enemy' is usually also my enemy. And everyone can get bent.

#

So that would most likely just lead to an Akaviri conquest of Tamriel, provided their force is large enough.

Though again, Tamriel is big... And that would require a LOT of military assets.

hallow temple
feral viper
#

It's exactly what they want. But the Empire's leadership, at least, thought it worth the gamble in an attempt to buy time to rebuild their losses.

Because the Great War really sucked for the Empire.

#

And this isn't exactly unreasonable. It's. A tactic that has been used many times throughout history, for different polities, to great success. Sometimes its worth paying some tribute to buy time, rather than fighting to the death today.

hallow temple
#

What if the Thalmor are pawns?

forest surge
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What If I’m a pawn… what if you’re a Pawn?

feral viper
#

Everyone in TES is a pawn of the Gods, in the end. Capricious, selfish nobs that they are.

hallow temple
#

What if they have ties to the Akaviri, and are the tools being used to weaken the Empire to the point where an invasion could break them.

feral viper
#

In fact, given Tiber Septim's character... I wouldn't be surprised if Talos somehow orchestrated the whole thing to try and depose Akatosh as the chief god. The egotistical son of a... Would never just settle with being A god, he'd go for the top dog's seat

hallow temple
#

Everyone sees the Thalmor as the threat... But what if the real threat has yet to reveal itself?

feral viper
#

It's possible, though I think taking it in that direction would waste the valuable thematic and narrative potential of the Thalmor themselves..

hallow temple
#

Not really... If they don't KNOW they're being used...

feral viper
#

They're great as an enemy, because they're a human enemy. People often complain about them being comedic moustache twirling evil doers...

But the Thalmor, what they represent, how they think, and how they came to be, aren't even over the top. They're very realistic and human.

hallow temple
#

Akaviri or some other power, a true threat to Tamriel from the outside would need to play a very long game, and only reveal itself when the time is right.

feral viper
#

And that evil is so much more tantalising than some grand mastermind pulling the strings from the shadows. Because then the evil is People, not some Comic Book Supervillain.

#

Personally, id save the Akaviri for well, well into the future. Plenty of story threads to play with already, trying to do a 'Its all part of the plan' twist of some ultimate villian in the 4th act is just...

It never goes well.

hallow temple
#

We've had all these supernatural threats to overcome. Why not from a global superpower that has managed to keep its true face hidden, always acting through others who can't even be sure of where their orders came from.

#

Some sort of Nirn-based Illuminati...

#

It's not the Aedra or Daedra or dragons or some twisted cult. It's about a secret order that thrives on chaos.

feral viper
#

Mankar was just so terribly executed, nobody really noticed.

hallow temple
#

The oblivion incident and then the return of the dragons were perfect sources of chaos. Throw in a civil war, on top of it, and what I'll call "The Power that Is" couldn't be happier.

feral viper
#

It was SUPPOSED to be the continent spanning cultic conspiracy that has orchestrated the events of all 3 previous games..

hallow temple
#

A conspiracy can still exist, with the Thalmor simply being the latest piece.

feral viper
#

You could definitely do it, yeah.

I'm just not very keen, at least in part because no one really doesn't well. And Bethesda's struggled with pretty basic stories, let alone convoluted conspiracies spanning decades of games.

hallow temple
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All they have to do is create a marginally convincing connection to the different events on the people side of the events. The Oblivion incident was going to happen eventually. Enter a cult sent to help make it happen. Look what happened to those who supposedly were worthy of entering "Paradise." hunted and slaughtered by dremora and other denizens of Mehrunes Dagon's plane of Oblivion... There would be no sharing of glory or power.

The return of the Dragons was always going to happen. Because Alduin was only sent forward in time. Ironic that the thalmor-triggered civil war and Skyrim happen at the same time...

#

The Power that Is likely knows what the Elder Scrolls foretell. And further, they may know when the events are to happen...

Tell me... do we really know who wrote the elder scrolls?

feral viper
#

The games, or the artifacts in them?

hallow temple
#

The artifacts... what is their true origin?

feral viper
#

We don't know.

hallow temple
#

If the Elderscrolls foretold the return of dragons, in a time after Oblivion opened, when the Sons of Skyrim would spill their own blood... What if the hypothetical "Power that Is" is using them as some sort of playbook. What if one of their own wrote them, and all this time their interpretations have been leading Tamriel down a path that has been laid out for far longer than anyone might assume.

feral viper
#

Some say Akatosh. Some say Magnus. Some say Hermaeus Mora. Some say Xarxes.

hallow temple
#

I've always felt that if the origin, true nature and purpose of the Scrolls were ever discovered, it would be a major "oh crap" moment

feral viper
#

Potentially. But, I gotta take my baby to the vet. I'll be back in a few hours.

hallow temple
#

k

#

It's like in Star Wars... the prophecy of the Chosen One... It doesn't hold up according to the way things played out. But it was something the Jedi looked forward to seeing fulfilled. But if you look at it as a lie whispered into Jedi ears by the Sith, it's the perfect mniddle-finger from the Sith that takes something of great hope and ultimately proves it to be the catalyst for their greatest torment. In a way, the Dark Lord of the Sith let his enemy see his playbook, with the real strategy so twisted and tied around a lie accepted as truth.

What if something like that is going on with the Elder Scrolls?

pale walrus
# feral viper So IF the Empire were to collapse entirely, the most likely outcome would be the...

Wait - other things could happen. Example: the Empire collapses as Cyrodiil breaks in half and both HR and SR split from the Imperium. However, as the Dominion tries to take advantage of this situation, it finds itself suffering a surprise DEFEAT on re-invading Cyrodiil (remember - nothing is static in war. If both sides survive, they will continually try to gain advantage and momentum over the other guy, and until there is a complete victory, things will remain dynamic), and also starts suffering severely from simultaneous (though uncoordinated) piracy at the hands of privateers from HR, HF, SR, Pyandonea and the Sload. The weakening of Dominion military resources results in Elsweyr and Valenwood throwing off the Dominion yoke, and the situation becomes utterly chaotic.

#

I'm not saying this WILL happen, but there are other possibilities.

hallow temple
#

What if the endgame of the whole saga ends up involving a "He Who Remains/Kang" type being, who for all intents and purposes is just a person, but existing outside of time, and he gave Nirn the Elder Scrolls, knowing that by doing so, their interpretation while seemingly helping weather the many calamities to come, were in fact that history and all the players involved would line up according to his design?

pallid forum
#

I love oblivion it's one of my most played games next to fallout nv/4 and halo

#

I wish i could play the good version of morrowind but i only have the Xbox version

#

I had a few fleeting moments to play daggerfall unity and pc morrowind but my pc broke after like a week

hallow temple
pallid forum
nimble pond
#

So I just learned basilisk eyeballs make for good explosive powder 😳

feral viper
#

High in Sulfur.

pale walrus
#

Why would a basilisk's eyes be high in sulfur?

forest surge
pale walrus
#

For me it goes back to the Alchemy discussion - ingredients need to make sense in an alchemy system. Otherwise it's just a random grind of ingredients to create potions, and that's a wasted opportunity to create interesting content and an absorbing mini-game.

feral viper
#

Agreed. The general trend has just been to slap effects on to ingredients and call it a day.

There's not even really any reason why every ingredient should have to have 4 effects. That's just an arbitrary value imposed for its own sake.

hallow temple
# feral viper Agreed. The general trend has just been to slap effects on to ingredients and ca...

From a gameplay perspective, it does allow every ingredient to have a variety of purposes from start to finish, though only the first purpose is readily available from the start. In other games, one would abandon early-available resources in favor of ones that deliver better stats for whatever purpose. I like the idea of being able to unlock new uses for things that had been around from the beginning.

feral viper
#

It certainly does, but it also creates the same sort of problem that Fallout 4s hard locked 4 dialogue options created. The lack of situational versatility means that you're both bloating and throttling options in favour of a median outcome.

Which it's self ends up creating far more limitations than anything.

#

But that again sorta leans into just how clunky an mechanically oversimplified Alchemy is as a system in game, and how that oversimplification actively limits it.

hallow temple
#

You know, speaking of dialogue choice, I miss the way Dialogued worked in Morrowind. When they decided to go fullly voiced diaqlogue, things got dumbed down considerably.

With Generative AI voices now a thing, the ability to engage with NPC over a broad spectrum of topics is possible while still providing complete voice dialogue. The trick would be for Bethesda to train the voice fonts using material provided by voice actors who would contract out for that sort of thing. But that falls in with the whole argumant concerning generative AI to begin with, and I thinbk that debate will not be resolved before TES7 comes out, let alone TES6.

#

We know there are really good VAs in the community who have lent their voices for a variety of mod projects. But we're talking about the sheer amount of dialogue that could exist per character in Morrowind compared to the amount in Oblivion and Skyrim, because it had to be voiced.

tardy tiger
#

TBF most NPCs in Morrowind were generic.

hallow temple
#

But God forbid people actually have to read anymore...

hasty frigate
#

I'm starting ESO rn

#

what race/class should I choose ?
(I don't like ranged or wizardry in games)

hallow temple
# tardy tiger TBF most NPCs in Morrowind were generic.

True... And as they were not voiced the way they have been since, allowed potentially any amount of dialogue. It was very freeing from a narrative standpoint. Through clever usage of database filtering, unique dialogue could appear for the same topic. It made for adding character-intensive story mods very easy in Morrowind, while Oblivion onward made text-only dialogue awkward, especially when the rest of the game uses voiced dialogue.

hallow temple
hasty frigate
#

oh it isn't?

steep relic
hasty frigate
#

is there a discord for it?

steep relic
hasty frigate
#

thanks

steep relic
#

There is not an active chat channel in the Discord channel

hasty frigate
#

oh

#

yep I see

pale walrus
# hallow temple You know, speaking of dialogue choice, I miss the way Dialogued worked in Morrow...

I very much like the reading approach to dialogue. It benefits the game in a technically practical way - voice files are big. Also, a lot can be communicated in writing if your storytelling is both good and 'rich.' I remember Deus Ex had quite a bit of voiced dialogue, but I always turned on the text accompaniment because of the richness of the dialogue. It added a great deal to gameplay. Clearly text dialogue was a great addition to Morrowind as well.

feral viper
#

I used to think the same.

The I played Pillars of Eternity, and HATED it.

No thanks. I'll take the voiced dialogue.

#

Part of the problem with text dialogue is... People tend to think that just because they CAN write more, they have to.

And it makes it so no one talks naturally, everyone is incredibly verbose (rich coming from me, I know) and you just end up throwing paragraphs and paragraphs at the wall and not actually doing anything meaningful with it.

Plus, it's impossible to maintain any flow of dynamic tension in texts dialogue, and real time gameplay.

#

While I'm not a fan of voiced PCs, I think a return to Morrowind style dialogue is a massive step backwards and lacks sufficient value to make it an attractive option.

nimble pond
#

I wouldn't mind more approaches to communication. It's always words, words, words. But there are a lot of different ways people communicate with each other, even when they don't share the same language they find other ways to connect.

eternal ridge
#

Hi, may I ask where can I find DXScanCodes?

hallow temple
eternal ridge
#

nvm found it

hallow temple
#

And I hate voiced PCs. I prefer to imagine how my character sounds myself, not have someone else dictate it for me. It would be different if TES were like a Final Fantasy game, where the character you play is a specific pre-created individual. But in a game where the main character is entirely the choice of the player, it just doesn't work for me.

#

I sincerely hope that TES6 continues to have a non-voiced PC.

eager remnant
# hallow temple And I hate voiced PCs. I prefer to imagine how my character sounds myself, not h...

Voiced protagonists ruin roleplaying for me. I don't want my mage to sound like my barabarian, my idealisic healer to sound like my nihilistic assassin, my elderly characters to sound like my younger characters. It is true that they work better when playing someone else's character. But I dislike playing someone else's character too. I no longer buy games that do not allow me to create many characters of my own choosing. I want to be able to create my own characters in a roleplaying game.

feral viper
#

I think, in a functional sense, we're over the threshold where voiced dialogue for NPCs are a limiting factor. The last decade of RPGs have shown that you can very comfortably fit in orders of magnitudes more talking than we had in the past, with dialogue line counts quickly approaching 7 figures.

So I don't think it's necessary to go back to older approaches. What we do need however, are SMARTER approaches..

feral viper
nimble pond
#

Do they have like crutches and stuff in TES? I keep thinking about how it would feel getting completely ***-whooped by a grand wizard in a medival fantasy wheel chair.

feral viper
#

I would assume so. We have evidence of crutches going back much further than writing, so if they haven't figured it out in Tamriel, they're doomed.

gloomy sentinel
#

Hello

wide garnet
last dew
#

When Elder Scrolls 6 comes out and if it doesn't have spears in the game (actual wieldable spear weapons and not reikling spear arrows), and if there's going to be an elder scrolls 6 suggestions channel like Starfield suggestions, I'm immediately going to to suggest spears.

feral viper
#

IF they had a viable mechanical niche, I'd gladly support Spears returning.

But if they're just going to be a generic 'I do damage' weapon with no mechanical role or place... Eh.

#

At this point, I'm much more in the camp of Better Inclusions, rather than More Inclusions. If something exists just for the sake of having it, the time putting it in is better spent elsewhere.

#

I DO think that there are ways to make spears distinct and worthwhile of course.

But if I had to choose between having Spears, and having Swords/Axes/Maces be worthwhile distinctions instead of just ham bats... I'll take distinct weapons over pokey sticks.

pale walrus
#

I'm a bit surprised that BGS has never hired one or more combat experts, modeled them, and used their feedback to incorporate attributes into weapons such as swords of various kinds, daggers, spears, maces, axes and other edged or blunt weapons. The attributes should include the effectiveness of a given weapon against various kinds of protective clothing/hide or equipment.

#

The combat itself needs to go beyond 'hit your FIRE button on your mouse.' It needs to become clear that if you employ a particular weapon, there are better and worse ways to use it, and it provides advantages and disadvantages based on the situation. I hope the system does not become so complex and demanding that only martial artists who have been training for at least a decade could hope to use it effectively - after all, it still needs to be accessible and usable by the average player and it also needs to be 'fun.' But we very obviously need some sort of genuine step forward in combat.

nimble pond
#

Meteor hammer 🤤🤤🤤
Explosive/magic meteor hammer 🤤😍🤪

honest torrent
#

Hi, I have a problem with The Elder Scrolls Online, I just installed it and when creating an account I get the error that there is already an account created with my gmail address, but when I enter the page "https://account.elderscrollsonline.com/es/users/recover_user_id" and try to recover my username to be able to use my email address, the page simply does not send me any email to be able to recover my username, what can I do?

nocturne stone
# honest torrent Hi, I have a problem with The Elder Scrolls Online, I just installed it and when...

Hello! Please note that this server is for games developed by Bethesda Game Studios specifically, and The Elder Scrolls Online is developed by ZeniMax Online Studios. If you would like to discuss The Elder Scrolls Online, you can do so on the forums here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/

That being said, I will be happy to provide you with the following link which has some steps to take when you are not receiving emails from us: https://help.elderscrollsonline.com/#en/answer/24893

honest torrent
nocturne stone
honest torrent
nocturne stone
feral viper
# pale walrus The combat itself needs to go beyond 'hit your FIRE button on your mouse.' It ne...

Yeah, and this is why I tend to constantly bring up combat as the part of TES that needs the most attention.

At the end of the day, Fallout and Starfield are solidly shooters. And thats a game type which is pretty well defined and well refined. They aren't GREAT in that regard, but they're definitely serviceable.

Melee, though, is not. It's basically just barely functional. 'Beat until it stops moving' is the entire concept of combat in TES. And it's really not good.

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Every single fight is nothing but a straight endurance encounter. You have so few tactical options that your only hope is to do enough damage to make their HP drop to 0, before yours does.

Skyrim tried to add a little more variability to the dynamic than previous games, using forced staggering with Shield Bashing and such, but it simply wasn't enough.

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At the very least, we need more Active Mitigation/Avoidance options, and clearly structured Attack Types that allow for variable damage modifiers.

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Whereas Character Options, Backgrounds, Dialogue, Storytelling and Generation, all have the building blocks present in Bethesda games to make something wonderful...

Combat is not in the same boat. I don't think there's enough present in any Bethesda game to date, to make strategic, thoughtful, or even satisfying combat.

opaque iron
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I`ve lost hope for TES VI 😢 I need to go to work ill come back later and explain why but the gist of it is that I think BGS has gotten complacent and cant compete with modern RPGs anymore and there are signs showing that to be the case

pale walrus
feral viper
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Hope is a lie. In the grim darkness of the 3rd millenium, there is only nihilism.

pale walrus
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At least there are sweetrolls......... 😉

eager remnant
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People have been "losing hope" in BGS since the day Morrowind came out and Daggerfall fans raked it over the coals because it was "dumbed-down" for casuals. Personally, I prefer Skyrim over Oblivion, Fallout 4 (and, nowadays, even Fallout 76) over Fallout 3. I think there is a ton of cool stuff in Starfield that I hope Bethesda expands and improves in future games. So I am not one of those who are "losing hope."

hidden herald
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If you gather too much hope, you get a Mehrunes Dagon.

pale walrus
rough ravine
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Is ESO cannon?

forest surge
eager remnant
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According to Zenimax Online, Elder Scrolls Online is canon: "Yes, ESO is canon. We work closely with Bethesda to ensure that all lore in ESO is historically accurate & canon-appropriate."

pale walrus
forest surge
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… What?

feral viper
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Howitzers and Mortars are types of cannon.

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One C, is orthodox body of texts considered to be truthful or relevant.

Two Cs, is a large metal tube you use to explode projectiles long distances.

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Personally, as a naval man, my preference is for columbiads.

pale walrus
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🤣

uneven fog
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question, should i create a post in the elder scrolls support about a content id claim on youtube for the song nerevar rising, wishing to know if its a legit one

feral viper
violet lily
distant lion
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hey im trying to get into the sewers or solitude in the saints and seducers questline but i cant open the lid did i do something wrong?

pale walrus
distant lion
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There's a bell?

nimble pond
# feral viper Personally, as a naval man, my preference is for columbiads.

We do things in style in the deep south, prefer mine on the airboat. They just don't make games like they used to and don't even get me started on the phenomenal soundtrack! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ8cCrkZMao&pp=ygUZUmVkbmVjayByYW1wYWdlIDIgdHJhaWxlcg%3D%3D

YouTube
Retro Game Trailers
Redneck Rampage Rides Again (1998) - Official Trailer

Trailer to the direct sequel to Xatrix's amazing Redneck Rampage.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/redneck-rampage-rides-again

▶ Play video
opaque iron
# feral viper Anyway, I feel like I was overly facetious. I for one would still like to hear y...

I don't think BGS has lately been able to compete with other games. Btw I like Starfield. But after playing it for quite some time it seems like my personal expectations and of others as well is that maybe TESVI wont be what Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim were in the years they lanced. I didn't play Morrowind at launch. But I know its a loved title amongst all of gaming. Oblivion was huge when it came out I remember thinking couldn't Skyrim even be as big as Oblivion, and it surpassed it. BGS has done that because they were pioneers and masters at their craft always ahead of the game. Since Fallout 4 i noticed its decline. Fallout 76 and sadly Starfield shows that maybe they cant get out of the rut they are on. It would be a total 180. I still have hope but this is the first time that I'm actually worried. I thought i would never say that about TESVI.

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To be honest I would like to say more but its just gonna be a "too long didn't read"

pale walrus
pale walrus
# opaque iron I don't think BGS has lately been able to compete with other games. Btw I like S...

It's an interesting situation. ES5 was great fun, though it still had notable flaws. A huge improvement over ES4, of course. FO4 had good and bad - overall, it was still decent fun but I found it less enjoyable than either 3 or NV and was quite surprised. I avoided FO76 after terrible reviews and customer base reactions on launch, and have also avoided SF (which seems to have received the overall same mixed reception of FO4.) But let's not forget that ESO started out slow but has improved greatly and is very widely admired by the customer base, and FO76 has improved as well. It could be that SF still has its best days ahead of it - we'll have to wait and see. Most importantly, the overall Bethesda-Zenimax organization very obviously has the combined talent to produce an outstanding title - you can see this from the admired features in FO76, ESO and SF. It's really a matter of 'management' to bring it all together. Let's hope they can do so for ES6.

pure rampart
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I would love to see systems hybridized in the elder scrolls 6. So have the combat that is very skyrim, but the magic system to be a mixture of oblivion and morrowind. Oh and I would love to see the locking system to be a mix of oblivions and skyrims.

pale walrus
# pure rampart I would love to see systems hybridized in the elder scrolls 6. So have the comba...

There's been a lot of discussion on a future combat system. Most people seem to want something more from ES6 in that regard than was offered by Skyrim. Personally, I'd like to see weapon types be handled in a more sophisticated way - some weapons are good or bad for a given situation and have intrinsic advantages and disadvantages. Also, the combat itself needs to be more intricate - not "Pai Mei" level of difficulty, but nonetheless more involved.

opaque iron
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Morrowind Oblivion and Skyrim were loved at launch. Except the bugs of course. Then their objective wasn't to fix the game but add to an already great game with expansions and dlcs.

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One thing I do wanna give credit to Starfiled is it really is the best optimised and less buggy game BGS has ever done. I sometimes think the people who say Starfield is a buggy mess even played the game. I rarely encountered bugs. I hope they do the same with TESVI

hallow temple
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Starfield's ultimate success or failure will depend on how strong it's modding community is. Already some amazing things have been achievbed with third party tools. But I don't think Bethesda will be measuring those tools in terms of overall success/failure... Only Creation Kit 2 and supporting resources, when they finally decide to get around to thinking about officially launching it/them.

However... Starfield is not TES6, anymore than Fallout 4 is Starfield. Bethesda really needs to be learning from both FO4 and Starfield in terms of what they want TES6 to be, from both a core game AND modding community standpoint. Both games have their strong and weak points unto themselves. Mechanically and technically speaking, these need to be heavily weighed in the balance, but at the end of the day, what will determine how well TES6 is received will be how centrally being the sixth TES title factors into its core design. It cannot be a "This time we put a 'VI' in the title." thing.

loud sigil
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Star field is just tes couple more years in the future

hallow temple
loud sigil
hallow temple
loud sigil
hallow temple
loud sigil
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I’m working on it

rich stone
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Gday folks happy monday

pale walrus
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I'd say BGS needs to draw lessons - good and bad - from not just FO4 and SF, but also ESO and FO76. Expectations are stratospheric for ES6. The pressure must be quite high on the team.

opaque iron
# pale walrus I'd say BGS needs to draw lessons - good and bad - from not just FO4 and SF, but...

I wonder if they care. Sure they say they do. But I mean since Fallout 4 we've been telling them and what they are changing isn't much. Sure there are positives. Starfileds conversation system is BGS best system after Fo4s atrocious dialogue 4 option system. But SF felt like 1 step forward and two steps back. Also let's say TESVI is two steps forward and one step back. It could be a better game compared to Skyrim and there past titles. But BGS style of making games is outdated. And that's coming from someone who loves how they make their games. I'm not saying for them to completely change everything. Just see how other rpg games are doing it. The 3 golden examples are Balders Gate 3, Cyberpunk and the Witcher 3. For instance. The writing and quests arent as fun as the ones in those games. They have to step up their game. Higher new writers quest designers. Also I would love to see a day were people wouldn't make fun of the facial expressions of npcs during conversations. They should look at the 3 golden rpgs I mentioned

pale walrus
# opaque iron I wonder if they care. Sure they say they do. But I mean since Fallout 4 we've b...

Wait - remember that after FO4 they conducted certain experiments in title development - things that were 'outside' of the plan, so to speak. FO76 was one. That took a while to fix (though they seem to have been successful at this effort.) Starfield was another. There were also some other mobile phone titles (three if you include Castles) and there was a card game in there somewhere. These all threw a wrench into the gears, because they took BGS off of the 5-6 year rhythm they had promised regarding alternating FO and ES titles. However, they do indeed seem to be very, very cognizant of the fan interest in ES6 and the very, very high expectations they need to meet. If fortune favors us, they will take the best features/mechanics from FO4 up to SF, improve them, and take significant steps at improving many of the other areas which have lacked sufficient attention in the past (combat, alchemy, spell crafting, strong storytelling and lore development/adherence, some other things.) ESO actually is a source of hope in this regard, as the Zenimax crew has done quite a bit on several of these features. Most importantly: after the first SF DLC is released, we are owed a substantive update on ES6. Let's see what happens in June.

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I'll be the odd man out in this, but there is something I'd like to see in ES6 we haven't had before - boats (even canoes) that we can use to navigate rivers and lakes. I remember that there's a river with its mouth near Rihad in the southeast of HF that seems pretty large and goes inland quite a ways. I'd like to be able to canoe up the river, and maybe coming down from higher elevation I'd like to maneuver thru the milder rapids. I'd also like to take the canoe up the river that empties into the eastern end of the Iliac Bay.

eager remnant
feral viper
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The catch with boats would be scale. The world would need to be notably larger to make them really usable, as MOST waterways in Oblivion and Skyrim are barely waist deep.

Again, I refer to my 3x the size concept. Doing so would make most water ways traversable by small water craft, be they canoes, rafts or skiffs, while larger waterways could handle larger crafts such as Sloops. You still wouldn't be fitting a caraval or frigate down any rivers, since something like the Danube would still be half the map, but...

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This scale would also leave it so general traversal wouldn't be impossible. The 3x scale would mean you'd have about an hour of straight sprinting to get from one side of the map to the other. Which is a lot of time doing nothing, yes, but still doable if you want to. That way, if you really want to avoid Fast Travel, you still can.

Much larger than that, and you're entering into Mandatory Fast Travel territory for the game. Which, as we learned with Starfield, has its problems.

feral viper
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As a general rule, travel by Wagon is about the same as travel on foot (about 10-15km/day) Horseback is twice as fast (20-30km/day) and a boat is 3-5(30-75km/day) times as fast in MOST cases, with up to 12x (120ish km/day) in the case of dedicated racing boats.

So if you're tripling the size of the world space from Fallout 76 as a base, you're looking at about an hour to cross it on foot. 30 minutes to cross it on horse. And between 12 and 20 minutes by boat. Assuming a straight line the whole way at max speed.

That's still more time on average than it takes to cross Skyrim's map, without the need for a Loading Screen Fast Travel. But not so long a travel time that it becomes a full play session just to go from one town to another.

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Of course, if the decision is to just stick it to the 'No Fast Travel' purists, and make fast travel mandatory to functionally move around (such as in Daggerfall) then those considerations are entirely irrelevant.

feral viper
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In any event, you're never going to have a straight shot across the map. So you'll always need to make detours, regardless of what mode of transportation your using (unless you can fly) so these relative ratios are going to be longer in a functional sense.

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But, the core issue remains. If you're dealing with a map the size of Skyrim boats of any sort just aren't going to be worth it. They'd move too fast, across too small a map.

opaque iron
# pale walrus I'll be the odd man out in this, but there is something I'd like to see in ES6 w...

Oh btw I completely agree with you that if TES6 is gonna be in Hammerfell it needs ships. Not only it makes sense for the location but also for travel. And if my prediction that High Rock will be in the game as well that's a huge amount of water space to have activities. Its what i have been saying about they advancing. AC Odyssey did ship exploration and combat very well imo and that was years ago. My worry is they don't add ships because the engine doesn't allow for the physics of it. Like waves interacting with the ships movement's. Bigger battles also. But even though I firmly believe TES6 will come out in 2029 and will be a next gen title I don`t think it will allow massive battles. But at least 250 vs 250 npcs on screen has the illusion of a battle akin to LOTR. You mentioned the Castles mobile game also. Im actually excited for that one, Fallout Shelter was a pretty good mobile game compared to most that are trash

opaque iron
# feral viper The catch with boats would be scale. The world would need to be notably larger t...

I agree with you that ships on river would be a problem map size and traversal gameplay wise. But a boat like in The Witcher 3 for rivers and ships for sea i wouldn't mind. But if they just make so you could sail on the sea and not rivers i wouldn't mind that also. TESVI is gonna have a bigger map anyways. But I think they will learn their lesson with Starfield. Starfield has multiple planets vs its gonna be one land mass so in that area im not worried.

pale walrus
# feral viper The catch with boats would be scale. The world would need to be notably larger t...

This is a great idea. I like the idea of being able to cross large areas - either by canoe or walking - where I don't have a violent encounter every 5 minutes with bandits, goblins, cliff racers, ogres, dragons, minotaurs or whatever. Of course, if I am walking/canoeing for two or three hours and I don't see any interesting ruins or other structures and I also see no creatures (hostile or peaceful), that's a bit too quiet. There needs to be a happy medium. There were areas of Skyrim where I could wander for 15 or 20 minutes and not run into any place or monster - that was fine. I'd just like more of that.

hallow temple
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I don't care about fast travel being needed to actually get somewhere different in a massive to-scale world. So long as fast travel includes a filtered list in addition to icons on the map.

A town or other POI location traveled to by fast travel can be hand-crafted, with the landscape in all directions being procedural based on seed so that the general height map, biome distribution, etc are the same, with logical hooks into other discoverable POIs that are not tied to specific questlines, but give players thematic places to find, explore and loot, that are retained for the duration of the playthrough. This can be likened back to Arena. You left the city through the gate and could travel for miles and miles discovering things along the way, satisfying that desire for untethered dungeon crawling.

Cities were a lot bigger, with hooks into all sorts of things not tied to quests.

Arena let us be "That Person" in an AD&D game who always wanted to just go exploring off-script, forcing the DM to either slap an arbitrary "You can't do that" down, or their DMing skills were put to the test as they come up with encounters and discoveries on the fly, because it's the players' adventure and they can't be made to go one way when they want to go another.

All of the quest-related locations should be handcrafted. Everything else should be procedurally generated. Arena got away with generating seemingly endless overworld terrain around a location, because what got spawned in was algorithm-driven, rather than physicalized space. This is 25-year-plus-old tech Why can't it be adapted to work with world space environments now?

opaque iron
# feral viper Of course, if the decision is to just stick it to the 'No Fast Travel' purists, ...

Im a no fast travel purist but I think there should be fast travel in TESVI and i understand people that do it. But i would love then to have carriges where you pay someone to take you to another town where you could just ride or click a button to skip it. Also if you're riding there have the guy controlling the carriage talk to you about random stuff. Great for world building and making it look alive

opaque iron
hallow temple
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The entire overworld surrounding a hand-crafted POI that is tied to a quest, which contains hooks to procedurally generated dungeons, caves, fortresses, etc..

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A procedurally generated dungeon would be built from hand-crafted pieces that snap together at junctions and doorways. Grid-based flagging for active/inactive would prevent pieces from overlapping. For example, a doorway that might otherwise lead into a room or corridor that is walled off from the other side, would be replaced with an alcove that might have a statue placed in it... or a small table with decorations on it. or a chest... or nothing at all. If these are also algorithm generated, then it need not be a physicalized map file.

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A crypt will have stairs leading up to the surface. a series of corrifors with doorways leading to rooms with coffins, urns and vaults. etc. What's in them would be randomly pulled from a Crypt-themed loot table.

No two crypts would be exactly the same layout, though they might all pull from the same 3D tileset.

hallow temple
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Rules for generating a small, medium and large Crypt might include parameters like the number of rooms, number of floors, whether or not one of the vaults is the resting place of someone important and therefore might contain some more valuable loot.

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A small crypt might have 4 rooms which could just be a single short corridor with 2 rooms on each side. It can be a slightly longer corridor with 3 rooms on one side and one room on the other. It could be a straight hallway with all 4 rooms on one side.

A medium crypt might have 8 rooms. This could be distributed between 2 floors or all be on one floor.

A Large Crypt might have 12 rooms, distributed across up to 3 floors or all be on one floor.

All Crypts would be underground, so the overworld entrance would be a single mausoleum with just one door.

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One thing I would like to see, especially for procedurally generated interior spaces, is pitch black areas that you need a torch, lantern or magical illumination to explore. I always found it silly that everywhere you go in Skyrim, it's always well-lit, with candles and stuff everywhere. If I go into an abandoned crypt, if I see lit candles and/or torches, then I need to expect to encounter people down there... Either squatters or cultists or something. But if nothing has been in there for years, it should be pitch black. And there should be things lurking in the dark that might kill you instantly if you aren't carrying a bright enough light source.

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Same thing should apply when wandering the overworld at night. Some nights might be bright due to the light from the moons, but some nights might be moonless and starless, and going out into the wild on those nights without night vision spells or a good light source should make ones rear end try to swallow itself.

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Good atmospheric sounds for dark nights in the wild will help sell the fear factor. Things rustling in the bushes and trees... Red glowing eyes in the shadows that jerk away if you face them directly. the snarling and howling of predators that you don't see and may or may not come running at you from the darkness... Things that actually make the player question the wisdom of being in that place at that time of night.

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But then... the greater the risk, the greater the reward. Some useful ingredients for potions/food might only be found at night in the wild, so there would be a purpose for venturing out after dark. But it should never be done without being prepared.

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If the systems are all set up correctly, meaningful gameplay, even without story elements, can be had that makes the player feel like they are engaging with a living massive world.

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So while exploring for miles, when it's time to return to town, when I go to the map, there would be a "Return to X button" which would calculate travel time based on distance from 0,0 and do a fast travel back to the town gate. Inside if during the day... outside if after dark depending on how secure the town is.

feral viper
# hallow temple I don't care about fast travel being needed to actually get somewhere different ...

Neither do I, in principle. But there are a lot of people who DO. And that's something that needs to be considered.

For my part, I have never done a No Fast Travel playthrough. Even in Morrowind, the lack of reliable fast travel systems means I always have a Recall spell on hand just to cut out the chaff. I find the act of walking from place to place over and over again to be incredibly tedious, and anything the disables fast travel (like FO4s Survival Mode) instantly gets a 'No Thanks' from me.

My time is valuable to me, and I'm not going to waste it all just GETTING to the location I have an actual activity in.

But there ARE people who play that way. And just saying 'Too bad' isn't a constructive way to approach their concerns.